by Anaconda » Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:50 pm
Michael Mozina,
You are correct. Most of the deniers are not the actual scientists, but just supporters of the status quo, and the forums while ostensibly governed by rules of decorum & civility often allow a laxed version when Electric Universe supporters present their ideas and supporting scientific papers.
These forums seem to be so inbred that interlocutors don't care if they engage in the most obvious denial because they are safe in the knowledge that other readers will be on their side almost no matter what is written.
Even, here, on this forum, when self-identified astro-physical researchers, whether anonymous or named, are confronted by solid scientific fact & evidence, tend to write, "interesting," or words to that affect, and quickly move on to some comment that doesn't require an admission or agreement, and when again confronted and pinned down, often retire without coming back to the forum or that discussion thread. (It's hoped that these researchers will later examine their opinions in the privacy of their own mind and, perhaps, even discuss the ideas in their own trusted circle of colleagues.)
What to do?
Wal Thornhill and Don Scott, in my opinion, have the right approach and that is to present the case in public conferences where the appearance of employing and being bound by the scientific method is at its highest level. (Most scientists don't want to appear as their cohorts do on the various scientific forums -- intolerant of dissent from the status quo -- whether in their mind they are intolerant or not.)
The toughest thing is that there is little in the way of colleges or universities with graduate programs which teach the physics of Electric Universe or less specifically plasma cosmology. This means almost every researcher who subscribes to EU principles or plasma cosmology in space has to be self-taught and a maverick to some degree.
Such a formalism has built up around the status quo with numerous apple carts that group-think is rampant.
Think about it, Hannes Alfven, Nobel Prize winner, with numerous successful predictions and a quantified formalism (mathematics) backing his work, and many formal & constrained scientific papers to his credit, had a hard time getting a fair hearing. And, since Alfven's passing away, his predictions have had even more success, still, the resistence to his ideas is firm -- even from those who claim to be experts on plasma dynamics in space environments.
Where does that leave the average Thunderbolts Forum member?
According to the status quo: There were no electric fields in space plasma until it became undeniable that there are electric fields in space plasma, still, ideas such as "magnetic reconnection" which, for the most part, omit reference to electric fields or particle acceleration, go unchallenged in status quo circles.
Again, public presentation at scientific forums, and, perhaps, behind-the-scenes outreach and discussion with the most objective truth seekers in the astro-physical community is a must. What is frustrating about that is for most of us forum members, we won't get that chance. So, while we provide solid scientific principles and supporting scientific papers, thus, reason & logic constrained by demonstrated empirically observed & measured physical principles, that is not enough, and that is not how science should be, but, alas, that is how it is in today's astro-physical community.
It's not easy being a 'truth seeker', but then again, it never has been easy being a 'truth seeker'.
Look at how Galileo was treated. I've brought up the way the great scientist was treated in his day and the "haters" do not see the irony at all. There seemingly is no self-wareness of their mind-set or behavior.
Instead, it's "how dare you think the status quo is wrong and how could you possibly have a better grip on physical reality than we, of the status quo, do?"
Yes, it's political, even religious, and via "pecking order by authority", which is akin to 'argument by authority'. Another way to think about it is "hierarchy by authority" and if you aren't in the hierarchy you have no right to challenge the authority. It's trible, in that only those in the tribe can challenge the 'chief' and only those within one or two rungs of the 'chief' in the "pecking order" can successfully challenge the 'chief' authority.
Again, that's not the way science is supposed to be done, but there it is.
Basically, there has been bult-up a great edifice and few from within the status quo are willing to pull down the critical supporting columns because it's clear that we are not talking about some minor deviation or mistake, but a fundamental series of mistakes and the whole edifice is wrong.
That's an extremely bitter pill to swallow for most everybody involved.
"How could I have been so wrong? How could this whole group of trained scientists be so wrong?" It causes too much cognitive dissonance.
And, "How could this 'no account' outside group be the ones who possessed the truth the whole time?"
But just as Alfven persevered and countless others, so I suggest, eventually so will EU and plasma cosmology because of two things: The presence of electric fields in space plasma can no longer be denied by anybody of intellectual integrity and Maxwell's equations, universally accepted as true, even in the astro-physical, status quo community, state unequivocally that electric fields are reciprical and inseperable from magnetic fields.
Although, parenthetically, it is possible to have an electric field without a magnetic field because coloumb force is exerted even by stationary charged particles, but magnetic fields are only caused by charged particles in motion. Be that as it may, stationary charged particles are very rare in nature.
