Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Books, journal articles, web pages, and news reports that can help to clarify the history and promise of the Electric Universe hypothesis.

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Cargo
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Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:02 pm

Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by Cargo » Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:12 pm

My father recently dropped off a box of books from his basement that he couldn't see being throw away. And I'm glad.
Inside was the complete set of Time Life Science Library books from 1963.
The volume that my son just happened to pick up and open was Matter. Later I began reading it. It is a total joy to have material like this, untainted and fresh in the age of discovery. So, in the final chapter 'The Start of an Unfinished Chain Reaction" which deals with the science of the "new" atom, on page 176 is quite a gem. So much I had to OCR Scan it. Here it is straight from the scanner. I will bold the good parts.
tion was based on an awareness of an even more hellish source of energy.
Until well into this century, physics concerned itself with the three
states in which matter is commonly found on earth-solid, liquid and
gas. But it is estimated that a preponderance of the material of the uni-
verse exists in yet a fourth state, a violent material that is comparative-
ly rare in human experience. We call it plasma, a name given it in 1920
by one of the early explorers of its properties, the Nobel Prize-winning
American scientist Irving Langmuir.
As noted earlier in these pages, the state of a given substance under a
given pressure depends directly on its temperature. As the temperature
goes up, ice becomes water and water steam. Eventually, if very great
heat is applied, the movement of the H20 molecules becomes so violent
that they start smashing themselves into electrically charged ions. This
. ionization is actually the same process that we observed, in Chapter 6,
in the gases within J. J. Thomson's Crookes tubes. It is the door to the
fourth state of matter.
Plasma, then, is a swarming mass of hot, electrically charged particles
-free electrons carrying a negative charge, and positively charged ions,
the whole being electrically neutral.
Some substances require less heat
than others to ionize, but the phenomenon usually does not begin until
temperatures reach at least 5,000° F. or 6,000° F., and it is not really go-
ing full blast until 100,000° F. Even then, the particles keep recombining
spontaneously; thus there are generally neutral atoms along with the
charged particles of the plasma.
The raw material of stars
Plasma pervades the universe in various degrees of concentration. It
is the raw material of which the stars are made, and it fills the space
between all celestial bodies with a thin matrix that throbs and pulsates
with strange waves and currents. Except in stars, its consistency is thin-
ner than any vacuum that man has been able to create on earth.
Despite the fierceness associated with its fiery temperature, plasma
is almost too delicate to exist in this cold and narrow corner of the uni-
verse we call earth. Here it is usually found only in such inhospitable
places as the heart of lightning bolts, the aurora borealis, and in electric
arcs.
In ordinary earthly circumstances, plasma particles in their frantic
movement dash into the sluggish molecules of their colder surroundings
and lose their energy. Nevertheless, so full of portent for man's future
is this unearthly state of matter that its investigation has become in re-
cent years one of the largest research programs in the physical sciences.
As long ago as 1920, scientists began to assume that some sort of nu-
clear reaction must be going on within the plasma in the blazing mass of
the sun. Otherwise how could one explain its immense and long-term

I don't know, maybe it's just me (been reading tpod since before I can remember, but this just got me so excited to see confirmation like this I had to register and post here for everyone.
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes

Osmosis
Posts: 423
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Location: San Jose, California

Re: Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by Osmosis » Thu Sep 16, 2010 8:51 pm

Hi Cargo,

A great find! :D :D. Perhaps EU will prevail, after all!

osmosis

jjohnson
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Location: Thurston County WA

Re: Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by jjohnson » Fri Sep 17, 2010 10:04 pm

Cargo,
Swee-e-e-t!

Don'tcha love to find stuff from older times that confirms what we are re-finding out today and projecting as the way to think about things from here on out? Where were those Time_Life Science Books when today's astronomers and astrophysicists were growing up?

I need to go out to Half-Price Books or Orca Books and see if they have gotten some sets of these in. Places like that occasionally get some real gems, unknowingly, and let it go for a very reasonable price. "Not too spendy", as we put it in the Northwest US.

Jim

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Shelgeyr
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Re: Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by Shelgeyr » Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:14 pm

Cargo,

If you've got the book that covers "Lightning" (and since there's almost a 40-year gap in my memory since I last saw the book I can't tell you which one it was in), would you please, please, please scan and post the picture of the gigantic bolt of lightning (you can't miss it) that looks like a twisted rope or bedsheet? I think it was a full-page picture or nearly so.

I barely recall that the caption credited the twisted shape of the bolt to "chemicals in the air igniting", or words to that effect, but now, many decades later, I think it would be a beautiful example of a rotating Birkeland Current in lightning form.

Anyways, sorry to be asking a favor of a stranger, but I've been thinking about that picture for a couple of months and your post brightened my day.

Thanks!
Shelgeyr
Sometimes I feel like a tiger’s got my leg...

Cargo
Posts: 294
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:02 pm

Re: Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by Cargo » Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:28 pm

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback. After doing some searches about the series, I've realized I do not have ALL the books. There are about 25 books in the series, I have about 15. I found complete sets for sales around $150-200 online. I'd like to get complete, but I'm pretty happy with what I got for now.

Luckily, I do have the Index book which covers all the series. :D

Lightning is mostly covered in WEA (Weather) but also has some mention in C (The Cell). I have neither of those unfortunately.

I looked at the references in Energy which I do have, an the only interesting bit would be this quote:
"the real nature of electricity is not yet understood. But we are fairly certain that electrical phenomena lie at the very core of life--that the atom itself is an electric entity."

HAHA, Can you get ENOUGH of this?!!? :D

Not all is great though, I dove into Energy even more looking at how they describe "fossil fuels" and nuclear power, it was in complete opposite to the text in Matter. Almost a complete disregard to the discovers and science of Plasma (the 4th State of Matter). Oh well.
So remember, each book as it's own set of primary Author(s), secondary authors, and editors. It just so happens the book on Matter may be the best one.

And since Arthur C Clarke is the primary author in the book Man and Space (MS) I don't have much hope there will be any real revelations in there, so I'm not too upset that is another book I don't have.

Thanks again,
Chris
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes

Cargo
Posts: 294
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:02 pm

Re: Found old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma

Unread post by Cargo » Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:31 pm

By the way, there are also Index References for Lightning:
PL (Planets) "on Jupiter" 155, 159
I don't have Planets either, that could be interesting.
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes

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