THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL VI, No 8 Dec 15, 2002 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS MEASURING THINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Acheson BIRTH OF VENUS . . . . . . . . . discussion with Ken Moss, Dwardu Cardona, and Wal Thornhill PARADIGM PORTRAIT XI: NOBEL PRIZE 2002 . . . Amy Acheson THE REMARKABLE SLOWNESS OF LIGHT . . . . . . Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< MEASURING THINGS "It's easier to take measurements than to know what you're measuring." --Plaque on wall of medical lab. "Taking measurements" is the aligning of marks. A physicist rolls balls down an inclined plane and marks their locations at various times. An astronomer photographs the spectrum of a galaxy and marks the location of the K line in a comparison spectrum. Scientists spend a lot of time and effort aligning marks. But they're not interested in the marks alone. Their interest lies in the "knowing what". The physicist is not seeking marks on a board; he's seeking an insight into a pattern of orderly behavior. The astronomer is not seeking displacements of spectral lines; he's seeking an intelligibility discernible in the displacements. Scientists are not so much interested in results as in the interpretation of results. Measurements are seldom presented as raw data: "The K line in the galaxy's spectrum is displaced 0.2 mm toward the red from the K line in the comparison spectrum." Instead, we read: "The galaxy has a redshift of 6800 kilometers per second," or "The galaxy is 300 million light years away." Measurements are an essential part of "knowing what", but they are not the knowing and they are not the what. Measurements are only taken in the context of some idea of what's being measured. That idea is, strictly speaking, a "pre-conception", a presumption. The measurement of K-line displacement has been supplemented with -- one could almost say, buried under -- presumptions about doppler interpretations of redshift, expanding universe interpretations of doppler interpretations, and big bang interpretations of expanding universe interpretations of doppler interpretations. A geologist drives her jeep toward a mountain, stopping to take measurements along the way. She claims to measure the gravitational force of the mountain. What she actually measures is the alignment of a needle with a mark on the scale of a meter. But interpretation stands alongside the mountain as the object of her inquiry. She presumes gravity rules the universe, or at least the mountain. But even prior to that, she has presumed that the concept of gravity will explain adequately the constellation of data she has in mind when she invokes the presumption of gravity's rule. Between turning on the instrument and noting the deflection of the needle, she has unconsciously answered the question: "What else could it be?" The "what" of gravity is a judgement, a choice, a selection from the bag of "what else". Insofar as the geologist has presumed an answer to "What else could it be?" her measure of the mountain's gravity is also a measure of the extent of her presumption. Because interpretation depends on both presumption and measurement, errors in either will produce an erroneous interpretation. The errors in measuring the meter's needle can be compensated for with statistical methods. But how are errors in presumption to be compensated for? How can presumption be calibrated or checked? How is it even to be noticed when it's taken so much for granted that it goes unnoticed? One clue that interpretation is deficient in presumption is the rhetorical use of the question, "What else could it be but ...! This defensive exclamation is hiding a failure of imagination, a surreptitious petitio principii. It's a measure of the need to stop measuring meter needles and to increase the measure of presumptions, speculations, and possibilities from which to choose, to test, and to judge. The question, "What else could it be?" should always be taken seriously. The astronomer who questions the doppler interpretation of redshift is dismissed with "What else could it be but doppler!" Halton Arp and a small cluster of colleagues amassed data indicating statistical and physical connections among objects with large differences in redshift. The additional discovery that redshifts occur at preferred values in a regular sequence defied conventional interpretations. Finding themselves unable to imagine a non-doppler mechanism to explain these recalcitrant facts, most astronomers simply turned away: "What else could it be but doppler!" The geologist who questions the impact interpretation of craters is dismissed with "What else could it be but impact!" Astronomers used to prefer to call craters volcanoes because they knew artificially generated impact craters bore little resemblance to celestial craters. Geologists rejected such a notion because the celestial craters bore even less resemblance to volcanoes. Finding themselves unable to imagine a non-impact mechanism for craters, geologists and astronomers alike simply turned away from the intractable details: "What else could it be but impact!" The mythologist who questions the conventional explanations of myths and legends is dismissed with "What else could it be but supernatural fantasies or psychological parables!" The references to Saturn and to a celestial configuration unrecognizably different from that proclaimed original by astronomers make no sense. The occurrence of the same references in societies separated by oceans is dumbfounding. Being unable to imagine a physical basis for the references, mythologists turned away from them: "What else could it be but superstition!" This turning away from the unexplained and the underexplained provides a second clue to compensating for errors in presumptions. Instead of retreating to the safety of supposedly "secure knowledge"?of the "What else could it be but!"?you can look for alternatives to the presumptions underlying that "secure knowledge." You can design tests not so much to confirm or to falsify a theory but to distinguish among the implications of various presumptions. It's a method Douglas Allchin calls an "error probe." He writes in "The Epistemology of Error:" "[S]everity [of tests] is contingent upon the possible alternative explanations of results?on, colloquially, sources of error. Reliable conclusions, accordingly, depend partly on a suite of experimental results that invalidates different errors." The criterion of reliability avoids basing judgements on feelings of confidence arising from what may be self-congratulatory confirmations. Confirmation, after all, only confirms presumptions. A long list of confirmations of a theory's predictions can give you a strong feeling of confidence in the theory. But that only tells you the theory works where it works. It can't tell you whether an alternative might work better. Confidence can be generated at will simply by not considering or testing possible alternatives. An illustrative case from plasma physics was Chapman's refusal to look?or even to acknowledge the invitation to look?at Alfven's demonstration of the electrical properties of plasma. "[R]eliability hinges on a dual process of confirmation and ruling out error," Allchin writes. "Reliability deepens by investigating and excluding possible error." It requires systematic conjecture, methodical speculation. He even suggests a slogan that could be mounted under the one in the medical lab: "Check for flaws before declaring laws." Checking presumptions with error probes is especially important when new and unforeseen measurements flood the previous data base. At such times, it's easier to imagine that what's being measured might be different from what's presumed. We live in such a time: All currently accepted theories were developed from measurements and presumptions confined to the Earth. Now we have sensors in space taking measurements of plasma. The "what" of our geocentric measuring and anthropocentric presuming were solids, liquids, and gasses. The "what" of plasma is different. It's an opportune time to conduct error probes of such presumptions as the universality of gravity and the velocity cause of redshift and the hot gas behavior of plasma. Especially we need to probe the presumption that humans have never had any more experience of plasma than we have had in recent centuries. The congruence of ancient images with modern images of plasma should raise the eyebrows of every presumption. What else could it be? Probing presumptions is the only reliable way to find out. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com www.dragonscience.com ************************************************************ BIRTH OF VENUS A discussion Ken Moss began: It is my that Tony Peratt thinks Venus was always part of the Saturnian configuration, which I tend to agree with myself. However, Wal Thornhill and Dwardu Cardona claim Venus was, or may have been, born out of Saturn within man's memory. DWARDU CARDONA replied: Speaking for my own position on this, "may have been," rather than "was," is where I now stand. The problem here is that both hypotheses, Peratt's and mine, raise problems. See more below. MOSS: That is, Venus was the core of Saturn that was pulled out or ejected by some means when the Saturn system came in 'contact' with the solar system. But there is an important difference between the two ejection scenarios. Wal says Venus came out equatorially and Dwardu thinks it came out Saturn's pole, the same one Mars and Earth was 'under.' CARDONA: ... Yes, I do hold that *IF* Venus was ejected from Saturn, it would have been ejected poleward. MOSS: Can mythology and physics combine to show what really happened? CARDONA: Seeing as the mytho-historical record is limited to what was seen from Earth's perspective, its value in correctly surmising what really took place in space is limited in this particular instance. All that we can glean from the record is that VISUALLY Venus had not always been there. So that, if it WAS there, it was not visible to Earth-bound eyes. The record implies that Venus appeared SUDDENLY after long ages of proto-Saturnian stability. As for physics, as Peratt has stated, the implication seems to be that all of the configuration planets were formed at the same time. Personally, I have problems with this, DESPITE LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS. MOSS: My recent reading of Egyptian myth supports Tony in that the appearance of Venus is treated in a rather low-key way. The sun- god One is alone in the heavens then Tefnut/Venus and Shu/Mars are either quietly spit out (no sense of real force is implied) or they simply become visible at some point, one in front of the other and both in front of the disk of Saturn, from Earth's perspective. CARDONA: But there you have it. Whether forcefully or not, Venus IS said to have been "spat out." In other words, it had not been visually apparent before that event. And as for whether the "spitting" was violent or not, we have to analyze other than just the Egyptian myth. From my own study of this subject, I can safely say (without being adamant) that the first appearance of Venus WAS a violent event. MOSS: On the other hand, Wal's view is supported by the birth myth of Athena/Venus who suddenly burst out of the forehead of Zeus fully armed and ready for battle. This does sound like a far more dramatic appearance and fits the equator ejection model as Venus would have been seen to suddenly appear out to the side of Saturn and not between Mars and Saturn. CARDONA: The correct translation is "skull" not "forehead." Even so, I do not see how that necessarily translates as an EQUATORIAL ejection. And, in any case, that was Hesiod's take. There are other Greek versions of the birth of Athena. WAL THORNHILL adds: The equatorial ejection model is supported by Venus' retrograde spin. As Eric Crew made clear in his electrical core expulsion model, the ejected matter is given a retrograde spin by the very nature of its birth. If Venus had been born from the pole of Saturn in some unspecified manner, then it would be expected to mimic Saturn's axial alignment and spin rate. It does neither. CARDONA: You are here assuming that Venus spun retrogradely from its very inception. I can argue that it did not. And, no, I am not saying that Venus stopped spinning and then resumed in the opposite direction. It's spin did not change. But it did go through a tippe-top inversion, very much in the manner that Warlow hypothesized for Earth. As seen from Earth, the effect would have been the same as if Venus changed its direction of spin. MOSS: The more contentious scenario, to me, is Dwardu's and the problem has more to do with the physics than any mythology. If Wal is right, that it was a combination of attraction (between the sun and the core) and sudden electric charge difference (between Saturn's outer shell and core) that drove the ejection, how could that happen in the already-aligned configuration consisting of Saturn, Mars and the Earth? For the core to come out of the pole that Mars and the Earth were 'under' it would mean that the configuration came into the solar system TAIL FIRST (Saturn being the head and Earth the tail of the string of planets). CARDONA: The problem here, as in many other cases, is the Sun. Why are we assuming that Venus was "pulled out" of proto-Saturn by the gravitational pull of the Sun? That, surely, is NOT the manner in which planets are born. So that whether the proto-Saturnian systems entered the Sun's domain tail-first or head-first has no bearing on THIS particular issue. (To be sure, this question HAS to be answered, but in relation to an entirely different problem.) MOSS: And if this were so, surely the Earth, being the closest body to the sun, would have been subject to tremendous forces. Surely these forces would not have left us in peace while reaching over us (and Mars), so to speak, in order to pull out Saturn's core? CARDONA: Saturn's core, IF THAT IS WHAT VENUS WAS, was not "pulled out" by anything. Again, that is not the way in which planets are born. THORNHILL agrees: See my article in Aeon VI:1. The gravitational attraction of the Sun had little to do with the birth of Venus. It might have contributed an offset in the expulsion from proto-Saturn's equatorial plane -- which may be reflected in the fact that Venus' spin axis does not line up with any of Earth, Mars and Saturn. But the major effects would have been felt when crossing the Sun's plasma sheath at some great distance from the Sun and well beneath the ecliptic. (That accords with the shared axial alignments of Earth, Mars and Saturn, together with the observed revolving crescent of sunlight seen from Earth on the body of Saturn). The plasma sheath is the region of the Sun's virtual-cathode where almost the entire voltage difference between the Sun and the galactic plasma exists. The effect upon Saturn would have been, I imagine, spectacular and catastrophic, leading to the expulsion of Venus in an effort to adjust electrically. A part of the process would see Saturn accelerated from the center of its small planetary system, leaving the more distantly orbiting satellites to trail behind. That is the only way, dynamically, that I can see a close polar configuration forming. BTW, the preferential constant acceleration of Saturn, as the most highly charged body in the assembly, toward the Sun fits perfectly with the observed constant deceleration of charged spacecraft moving away from the Sun. A dynamic polar equilibrium could only be sustained by such a constant tug on proto-Saturn. ************************************************************ PARADIGM PORTRAIT XI: NOBEL PRIZE 2002 By Amy Acheson On Oct 8, 2002, space.com posted an article about the winners of this year's Nobel prize in physics. The prize was split three ways -- half of the million dollar award was split between Raymond Davis Jr., 87, and Masatoshi Koshiba, 76, for their roles in the development of neutrino detectors and the other half went to Riccardo Giacconi, 71, for his role in the development of the x- ray telescope. See article here: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/nobel_astrophysics_021008.html COMMENT: At first glance, these winners appear to be the strongest opponents of the Electric Universe paradigm. As described in the article, the instruments designed by this year's Nobel Laureates are praised for adding new insights about the nuclear fusion which power the sun and the black holes at the cores of galaxies. Electric Universe theory opposes both. But let's look at these Prize-winning inventions from a future viewpoint, after the paradigm has shifted to acceptance of the Electric Universe theory. From this new vantage point, everybody will know there are no nuclear stars or black holes, especially not the big bang -- a theoretical black hole from which the whole universe exploded. Everyone will understand that the sun and galaxy are both powered by plasma and that the universe goes on farther than we can measure in time and space. What will become of this year's Nobel Prize-winners in light of the new viewpoint? Will they be laughed at because they didn't have a clue? No. The instruments they developed are data collectors. The paradigm they claim to support is theoretical. If the paradigm shifts, it will be because the data collected by these instruments supports the new paradigm better than it supports the old. The choice of the Nobel committee will be a wise one, no matter which way the paradigm pendulum swings. And if these elderly Laureates live to see the paradigm shift, they may not approve. Similarly, Joseph Priestly objected violently to his name being connected to the discovery of oxygen. But under an Electric Universe paradigm Davis and Koshiba's neutrino detectors will be honored for its role as "a definitive falsification" of the nuclear fusion model of stars. And Giacconi's X-ray telescopes will be praised for discovering the electrical nature of nebulae, stars, planets, comets, and galaxies. And they will be honored for supporting connections between active galaxies and their quasar offspring, which will lead to the overthrow of today's Big Bang universe. Is it significant that this year's Nobel Prize in physics went to the people who built data-collectors instead of the ones who used the data to support today's theories? Without asking the nominating committee, there's no way to know. But I'm hoping that the ambiguity of this year's awards is a sign that the paradigm is poised for a major shift toward the Electrical Universe. ~Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ************************************************************ THE REMARKABLE SLOWNESS OF LIGHT By Wal Thornhill ?The more one reflects on the nature of light, matter and gravitation, the more he realizes that there are problems connected with them that are quite insoluble in terms of our current notions. But we no longer reflect intelligently on these things.? ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The following report comes from the BBC, 8 August, 2002: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2181455.stm ] EINSTEIN'S THEORY 'MAY BE WRONG' The theory that the speed of light is always constant has come under fire. Australian physicists propose that it may have slowed over the course of billions of years. It's entirely possible that the speed of light would have got greater and greater as you go back towards the Big Bang. Paul Davies, the theoretical physicist said: ?If true, it would mean a rethink of Einstein's theory of relativity.? The idea is floated in a brief communication in the journal Nature. It is based on astronomical data involving light from a quasar, a very distant star-like object. Observations suggest the light has taken about 10 billion years to reach the Earth. What is more, a key constant involving the interaction of light photons and electron particles seems to have changed. It appears to have been smaller 10 billion years ago. According to Paul Davies, a physicist at Macquarie University, Sydney, this can be explained only if the speed of light or electron charge has changed since then. "But two of the cherished laws of the Universe are the law that electron charge shall not change and that the speed of light shall not change, so whichever way you look at it we're in trouble," he says. Star Trek hope Studies on black holes suggest that the second option is more likely, according to Davies' team. The theoretical physicist believes the speed of light was faster six to 10 billion years ago than its current value - 300,000 km (186,300 miles) per second. "It's entirely possible that the speed of light would have got greater and greater as you go back (through time) towards the Big Bang and if so it could explain some of the great mysteries of cosmology," he says. He admits that further work on light from quasars is needed to firm up the theory. In addition, the physics of black holes are known to be extremely shaky. But there are startling implications if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned. "Maybe it's possible to get around that restriction, in which case it would enthral Star Trek fans because at the moment even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy," says Davies. It's a bit of a bore really and if the speed of light limit could go, then who knows? All bets are off." ----------------------------------------------------------------- HERBERT DINGLE writes: "It is usually taken for granted that the processes of mathematics are identical with the processes of reasoning, whereas they are quite different. The mathematician is more akin to a spider than to a civil engineer, to a chess player than to one endowed with exceptional critical power. The faculty by which a chess expert intuitively sees the possibilities that lie in a particular configuration of pieces on the board is paralleled by that which shows the mathematician the much more general possibilities latent in an array of symbols. He proceeds automatically and faultlessly to bring them to light, but his subsequent correlation of his symbols with facts of experience, which has nothing to do with his special gift, is anything but faultless, and is only too often of the same nature as Lewis Carroll's correlation of his pieces with the Red Knight and the White Queen - with the difference whereas Dodgson recognised the products of his imagination to be wholly fanciful, the modern mathematician imagines, and persuades others, that he is discovering the secrets of nature.? ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, (1972) pp. 127-8. WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: For many years Prof. Dingle wrote the entry for special relativity in the Encyclopedia Brittannica -- until he notoriously recanted. The nonsensical responses to his simple argument against Einstein led him to publish the book from which the quotes are taken. Einstein?s legacy lives on. There are so many assumptions hidden beneath the thinking in the above report that it should have been published in the Star Trek Manual, not the science journal, Nature. It is the second ?scientific? report to refer to Star Trek in recent months. The other, also from Australia, raised the future possibility of teleportation (?Beam me up Scottie?). Both reports exhibit the malaise in physics brought about by its disconnection from reality and the modern need to indulge in show business to gain recognition and funding. We still have no idea what light is. Our confusion is evident when we talk about a photon in one experiment and an electromagnetic wave in another. Maxwell is supposed to have mathematically described the electromagnetic wave, but he required a medium -- the ether -- for its transmission. Einstein ?thought? the ether away but no one is quite sure how he did that, even though the Michelson-Morley experiment was supposed to have clinched it. HERBERT DINGLE: ?... Lorentz, in order to justify his transformation equations, saw the necessity of postulating a physical effect of interaction between moving matter and ether, to give the mathematics meaning. Physics still had de jure authority over mathematics: it was Einstein, who had no qualms about abolishing the ether and still retaining light waves whose properties were expressed by formulae that were meaningless without it, who was the first to discard physics altogether and propose a wholly mathematical theory.? ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, pp. 165-6. THORNHILL: The fact remains that everything we know about electric and magnetic fields requires electric charges, in other words, a medium, as a focus for the fields. If there is to be a wave, there must be something to wave! We know that the ?vacuum? of space is teeming with neutrinos. Countless trillions of the ghostly particles pass through each square centimetre every second. Maybe neutrinos constitute the medium of ?empty? space? It makes sense if, as I suggest elsewhere on this site, all particles are composed of orbiting massless electric charges. And neutrinos are the most collapsed form of particle. ETIENNE KLEIN AND MARC LACHIEZE-REY: ?All hope to restore some unity is not lost, though. To start with, even in the absence of any theoretical or experimental proof, it is not unreasonable to assume that the particles known today are actually composites, and that their eventual description (which remains to be discovered) will involve a smaller number of new and truly elementary constituents.? ~Etienne Klein & Marc Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY -- The Adventure of Physics. THORNHILL: This brings us to the speed of light, ?c.? We know from experiment that ?c? varies depending on the medium. More particularly, ?c? varies depending on the electrical characteristics of the medium. The speed of light in a vacuum cannot then be simply declared a universal constant, because a vacuum is not empty space -- it is filled with vast but varying numbers of neutrinos and some other particles. It seems more reasonable to suggest that the speed of light is the speed with which an oscillating electrical disturbance is transmitted through a dielectric medium. The speed of light is highest in a medium where the rate of charge polarization in the particles of that medium is greatest. Neutrinos, having the lowest mass, or inertia, of any particle, have the fastest rate of internal charge polarization and response to an electric field. Therefore ?c? is a maximum in a vacuum, paradoxically full of neutrinos. The notion that c was considerably faster in the past has appeal to both cosmologists and creationists. Both camps have severe difficulties in explaining the observed universe, even with their vastly different time frames, unless things happened much faster initially. Cosmologists would like to see a near infinite speed of light immediately following the big bang and creationists about 10^11 times ?c.? Both are misled by their misunderstanding of the creation myths. It was no accident that a Belgian priest, Georges LeMaitre, proposed the big bang theory, as it came to be known. Science is as much driven by culture and religion as any other human activity. Proof that the cosmologists are mistaken both in their speculations about light-speed and the big bang hypothesis comes from the very source referred to in the above report -- the light from a quasar. The above-quoted article says that the quasar is 10 billion light years distant. That is based on the most peculiar big bang theory that the volume of the universe is increasing. It follows the observation that faint objects have their spectrum shifted towards the red. The discoverer of this phenomenon, Edwin Hubble, was careful to not attribute this ?redshift? to the Doppler effect of the velocity of recession of the object, but theorists were not so circumspect. The redshift -- velocity - distance equation quickly became another of the many dogmatic assumptions of cosmology. The astronomer, Halton Arp, plays the role of a modern Galileo in this story. He discovered that redshift is largely intrinsic to a quasar and is a measure of its youth, not its distance. The faint, unresolved star-like quality of a quasar is because it is a baby galaxy, recently born with high-redshift and low brightness from a nearby low-redshift active galaxy. The quasar referred to by Davies is nearby and faint, not 10 billion light years distant. He is not looking at 10 billion-years-old light. Such a discovery lays waste to big bang cosmology. The response of the cardinals of astronomy, now as in Galileo?s time, was to refuse to see what Arp had discovered and, in effect, to take his telescope away from him. HALTON ARP: ?The greatest part of the progress independent researchers have made in the past decades, in my opinion, is to break free of the observationally disproved dogma of curved space time, dark matter, Big Bang, no primary reference frame and no faster than light information.? ~Halton Arp, The Observational Impetus For Le Sage Gravity. THORNHILL: The picture of the universe given to us by Arp makes far more sense than the big bang. We see only a small part of an immensity of unknown extent and origin. The objects around us are almost static and form discernible families with parent active galaxies giving birth to quasars in the jets from their cores. The quasars grow more massive with time and slow down to become companion galaxies. Their redshift decreases as they age. The plasma cosmologists further show us that the entire process is driven electrically, the power being delivered by a vast cosmic web of power lines originating from beyond the visible universe. The galaxies are strung like beads on a string along those power lines. Full text with photos available at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/slow_light.html Be aware that this image (see website) is highly distorted because the galaxies have been placed by the computer at their redshift distances. It has been responsible for the ?fingers of God,? illusion, where echelons of galaxies appear to point toward us. Commonsense should have sounded the alarm bells immediately for theorists, instead of reverential awe. Nonetheless galaxies do form linear chains. Such structure is not expected from a gravity- driven formation of the Universe. However, it is expected from plasma cosmology, where galaxies form at the intersection of two intergalactic Birkeland current filaments. Something else that is never mentioned in polite scientific company is the astounding discovery by Arp and William Tifft that the redshift of quasars and galaxies is quantized! It has led to the false impression of ?great walls? of galaxies at various distances from us. That too, should have set off another loud alarm. It spotlights the inadequacy of a purely mathematical quantum theory, divorced from any classical physics underpinning, and the nonsense that it only applies to the subatomic realm. If Einstein got anything right, it was his suggestion that quantum theory pointed to some lower level of complexity in particle physics, instead of requiring the removal of the foundation stone of physics -- causality. His god was not a gambler. I agree with Davies that the charge on the electron has not changed. But neither has the speed of light. Unlike Davies, it seems to me that the basis of the physical universe is electric charge, governed by a near-instantaneous electrostatic force. All forms of matter and its interactions spring from that simple basis. Every particle and collection of particles is a resonant system of orbiting charges, from which comes resonant quantum effects and the manifestation of inertial mass. Resonance explains the puzzling non-radiating ground-state of an atom. Gravity, magnetism and nuclear forces can all be understood in terms of electric dipole forces between distorted systems of orbiting charge. Einstein is not required. Space cannot be warped or expand. Time is effectively universal and has nothing to do with space. Black holes do not exist. It is an Electric Universe. There is no crisis of theory in an Electric Universe. The speed of light in a vacuum depends only upon the nature of the vacuum. A vacuum is not empty space. However, ?c? is unlikely to vary significantly in space. ?c? has no connection with the size or age of the universe. Size and age are meaningless concepts anyway, given Arp?s clear-sighted view of the cosmos. But can the Electric Universe offer any explanation for the redshifts? I think so. We know from Arp?s careful observations that quasars are episodically ejected in pairs in opposite directions along the spin axis of an active galaxy. The brightness of the quasars is higher and their redshift lower the further away we find them from their parent active galaxy, and therefore the older they are. Their mass seems to increase with age and they slow down to eventually go into orbit about the parent as a companion galaxy. Plasma cosmology provides the insights into what is going on in the centers of active galaxies. It does not require a mythical black hole, merely a plasma focus effect. A plasma focus effect is the result of a cylindrically symmetrical electrical discharge. It provides the most concentrated form of electrical energy known. It takes the shape of a tiny plasma donut, or plasmoid, lying in the plane of the spiral galaxy and at its center. The plasmoid accumulates electrical energy from along the spiral arms until it suddenly begins to break down, forming an intense jet of neutrons, particles and radiation along its axis. Electrons, being much lighter, are trapped in the focus for a longer time. The neutrons in the jet begin to decay into protons and electrons, forming hydrogen atoms and some heavier elements, by neutron capture. (Given the extreme electromagnetic environment, we should not expect the neutron decay characteristics to mimic those seen on Earth). The material in the jet forms a ?knot? and becomes an electron deficient (positively charged) quasar. Meanwhile, electrons are being slowly released by the decaying galactic plasmoid and they stream in a thin beam after the quasar. They form the great radio jets seen emanating from the nuclei of active galaxies. It seems that as the quasar attracts electrons its matter becomes progressively more polarized, or massive, as Arp found. It is similar to what we observe in particle accelerators -- the more a particle is distorted, or polarized, in an electric field, the more massive it appears to become. If an electron orbiting a nucleus becomes progressively more massive in a globally changing electrical environment, it will require to compensate at intervals by executing small quantum jumps to new resonant orbits closer to the nucleus. The energy of those orbits will be higher and the result is a quantized shift away from the red end of the spectrum. The quasar becomes brighter and less redshifted. It is not closer. DINGLE: ?The idea then arose that it [the electron] was a sort of mist of electricity, and Eddington probably gave it the most candid description as ?something unknown doing we don't know what.? We are no wiser today; nevertheless, we speak of the mass of an electron as though it were equivalent to the mass of a lump of lead.? ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, pp. 141-2. THORNHILL: It is the lower energy electron orbits in new quasar atoms that may give rise to the effect remarked upon by Davies and his co- workers. If so, it is due to a different inertial mass of an electron in a quasar atom, not a different speed of light 10 billion years ago. The result is simply that Planck's constant and consequently the fine structure constant will differ by a very small amount from that measured on Earth. Once again we see the trouble caused by arbitrarily assuming universality of physical constants measured on Earth. Another serious problem faced by conventional thinking is that the quantum shifts seem to occur galaxy-wide without delay. No object has been found with two different redshifts. Yet a change propagating at the speed of light would take something like 100,000 years to traverse a galaxy. It seems that the kind of particle dipole distortions that create inertial mass and gravity propagate at the near infinite speed of the electrostatic force. So, once begun, the quantum shift in atomic orbitals could spread across a galaxy in less than a second. I suppose it could be termed ?galactic quantum entanglement.? So, the good news for Star Trek fans is that Einstein?s speed limit is repealed. But the Warp Drive and Teleporter are out, I?m sorry. They are illogical. Space cannot be warped. And matter can neither be destroyed nor created, despite the widespread misconception that the ?m? in E = mc^2 means matter, and that antimatter annihilates matter. [The only possibility that I can imagine for a Teleporter would be to create an identical physical copy from materials already to hand at the receiver. But there is far more to biology than meets the scientific reductionist eye. Would the copy be alive? And if so, who, if anyone, would it be? And what do you do with the original -- kill it and dispose of the body in the process?] Despite all of these absurdities, gravitational big bang cosmology still comes out the clear winner in the science fiction category. As for Prof. Davies recent book, How to Build a Time Machine -- save your money, space fans, and put it into antigravity research! As taxpayers we pay dearly for this fiction anyway. It is incredible that we entered the 21st century with an advanced technology that is crucially dependent upon electricity and yet a cosmology where the powerful electrical force has no role, when we know that electric charge is the foundation of all the matter in the universe. Davies? bewilderment is understandable, ?If what we?re seeing is the beginnings of a paradigm shift in physics like what happened 100 years ago with the theory of relativity and quantum theory, it is very hard to know what sort of reasoning to bring to bear.? Precisely. The revolution in thinking will not come from the present generation of theoretical cosmologists. It must come from the next generation of practical electrical engineers, plasma physicists and observational astronomers. ARTHUR LYNCH: ??I have no doubt that there will arise a new generation who will look with a wonder and amazement, deeper than now accompany Einstein, at our galaxy of thinkers, men of science, popular critics, authoritative professors, and witty dramatists, who have been satisfied to waive their common sense in view of Einstein's absurdities. Then to these will succeed another generation, whose interest will be that of a detached and half-amused contemplation; and in the limbo of forgotten philosophies they may search for the cenotaph of Relativity.? ~Arthur Lynch, The Case Against Einstein, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1933. (c) Wal Thornhill 2002 - author of The Electric Universe: A Holistic Science for the New Millennium See http://electric-universe.org ************************************************************** PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA GROUP WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/html/sales.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.aeonjournal.com/index.html http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.electric-cosmos.org/ http://www.electric-universe.org http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm http://www.science-frontiers.com http://www.dragonscience.com ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. thoth at Whidbey.com New readers are referred to earlier issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above.