Composite image of M87 in X-ray (blue) and radio emission (red-orange).
Credit: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/N. Werner, E. Million et al.

 

M87—Bringing it Home
Feb 24, 2011

Established scientific societies have a long history of denying evidence and proclaiming new theories to be impossible. (Stones can’t fall from the sky; washing hands between surgeries has no health benefit; electricity in space doesn’t do anything.) They especially resist “cognitive blowback,” as when a new theory is reluctantly considered for explaining new evidence, but obvious implications for re-explaining already-explained phenomena are rejected out of hand.

The jet activity in M87 is explained in analogy with eruptive activity of volcanoes on Earth. What we know locally is applied to understanding similar phenomena in deep space. (Bear in mind that “similarity,” like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it’s a human eye: What we see is a selection effect of biological senses and historical habits of interpretation. Doubt is always in order.)

But if we learn that phenomena in deep space can be understood better with another theory, the symmetry of argument by analogy should urge us to reconsider our provincial knowledge from the viewpoint of the other theory. If M87’s activity is electrical, explainable as a plasma discharge, perhaps volcanoes on Earth are electrical, too.

The idea that volcanoes are exclusively mechanical phenomena, which can be explained with principles of convection, necessarily explains (away!) observed lightning activity as the incidental effect of friction among dust particles in the plume. Observations indicating that the electrical activity is surprisingly powerful for foot-scuffling-on-carpet static are brushed aside—much as were reports of megalightning and lightning to space in storm clouds.

The fact that an electrical field exists between the surface of the Earth and the ionosphere is unacknowledged. The existence of diffuse but powerful electrical currents beneath the surface is unmentioned. The likely relationship with the electrical phenomena of earthquakes is unexamined.

The Electric Universe doesn’t stop at the atmosphere. It goes all the way to the core of the Earth and to the core of all that we presume to know.

Mel Acheson