HIT & MISS – The WHY Files and the Electric Universe

by David Drew

I watched the WHY FILES Electric Universe episode again recently and experienced the same mixed emotions. As much as I enjoyed it (and no publicity is bad publicity, or so they say), I was disappointed by the muddled approach and some of the basic errors.

As it happens, I’m a long-time subscriber to WF? on YouTube. (I guess the channel name, Why Files, is a clever play on the better-known X Files, although I don’t recall the show hosts ever mentioning it despite obvious similarities in subject matter.) I enjoy their work, and Hecklefish always makes me laugh. Hecklefish, for those who don’t know, is an animated goldfish who sits in a bowl beside the show’s human host, AJ. A fish that is fast on sarcasm, inclined to radical and conspiratorial views, and who sports a tin foil hat over his bowl. It’s a clever arrangement that allows the two protagonists to spar a little, venture some outlandish ideas, and also provide some balance between the bizarre, the credible, and the baseless. AJ is to Hecklefish as Scully is to Mulder, perhaps.

The Electric Universe episode first aired on October 23^rd, 2023, and followed the standard show format. EU concepts were explored enthusiastically to begin with, before AJ appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner, and then proceeded to pass verdict after examining some perceived weaknesses. As ever, the show finished on a positive note. The importance of keeping an open mind and the fact that we always have more to learn. They get it right more often than they get it wrong, IMHO.

It is surprising that they con“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questionedtinue to be surprised by all the surprises.
Richard Feynman

If I had to be critical of the Why Files, I would say the video titles tend to be sensational. I can understand this because we can all be tempted to bite on a little clickbait now and again, and the wording can also be important when gaming the algorithms on social media platforms. Unfortunately, the Electric Universe episode perpetuated several misconceptions. I am not suggesting this was deliberate, and I can guess why it happened. For a start, there are a lot of mischief makers out there spreading disinformation, and there are several misunderstandings about EU ideas still doing the rounds, not least because many of its basic premises fly in the face of orthodox science.

There is another way of looking at it. It is important to understand that while the Electric Universe can accommodate many ideas dismissed by orthodox science, it does not rest on them. Its basic tenets can be tested, and many of them have been verified, even if the implications remain to be fully recognised. Still, some of its more radical and challenging claims concerning cosmology and mythology are more difficult to test. Only time will tell.

The biggest problem I had with this Why Files was that it tried to cover too much in one episode. Different aspects of the EU model like Birkeland currents, the æther, the electric sun, electric comets, planetary scars, petroglyphs, mythology, and the nature of gravity, for example, would each require at least 20 minutes to cover the basics. Those who didn’t already know a little about the EU are likely to have been overwhelmed, let alone confused. Entertained for sure (it’s a great show, after all), but confused all the same.

Furthermore, the Electric Universe is a subset of Plasma Cosmology or the Plasma Universe. While they share more similarities than differences, EU ideas tend to go a step further than the generally more conservative approach of the latter. The following quote from Thunderbolts.info sums up their common ground.

The cosmic theatre has outgrown the Newtonian stage, and we need a larger setting to understand the broader cosmic drama. Instead of a vision of isolated bodies turning gear-like in a vacuum, we need a vision of electrical circuits embedded in a conducting medium whose components drive each other and may be in resonance. We have left the familiar world of solids, liquids, and gasses. We have entered a world of plasma, where the rules are different and more complex. We now live in an Electric Universe.”

Before I list my issues with the EU episode, I have to say I loved the conclusion. It was perfect, emphasizing that so-called ‘pseudoscience’ very often becomes accepted science given time and that the term has always been thrown around with reckless abandon by dogmatists. Science, as they say, often proceeds in three steps. New theories are dismissed and laughed at, then their importance is denied, and then it is pretended they were known all along, at which point the initial hostility is usually glossed over.

The Why Files is a commercial enterprise, I get that, and UFOs, monsters, and conspiracies will always pull in viewers. Regardless, I think more cerebral content can also draw an audience when it is well-presented, and the Why Files is certainly a slick production model.

The WF? EU episode, as per the screen-grab top, is entitled “Gravity is a Lie, Light Speed is Slow, Nothing is Real, the Universe is Electric.”

I’ll take one at a time.

Gravity is a Lie

Miss! Well, straight off the bat, the EU has never claimed that “Gravity is a Lie,” as inferred. The central issue is simple to summarise. While orthodox science works with only one tool in its box – gravity, the EU recognizes that plasmas and electromagnetism (EM) play more important if not dominant roles on the grand scale, hence the filamentary structure of the universe now observed via radio astronomy and, more recently, the JWST.

Hit. At 06:05 AJ says “Gravity isn’t strong enough to keep all this stuff in place.”

As early as 1937 Hannes Alfvén — the father of plasma physics and plasma cosmology — proposed that our galaxy contained a large-scale magnetic field and that charged particles moved in spiral orbits within it, owing to forces exerted by the field. He occasionally used the term Electric Universe. Plasmas carry the electrical currents that create the magnetic field. This EU premise remains controversial to this day, of course.

Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century…”
Hannes Alfvén, Nobel prize winner, and the ‘father of plasma physics and plasma cosmology’

Light Speed is Slow

Hit. Well, given the vastness of the universe, light Speed certainly is slow (snail’s pace, even). According to Special Relativity, the speed of light is a constant and the upper-speed limit of the universe. The EU challenges both claims and more. The EU view is that light is a wave in a medium — the aether of classical physics. To begin with, if light is a particle moving through a vacuum, as Einstein proposed, then how can it also display wave-like properties? It should also be noted that Newton viewed gravity as an instantaneous force before Einstein conceptualised as a property of ‘curved’ space and limited to the speed of light. (See also The æther below.)

I consider this extremely important. Light cannot be anything else but a longitudinal disturbance in the æther, involving alternate compressions and refractions. In other words, light can be nothing else than a sound wave in the æther.
Nikola Tesla

Wal Thornhill proposed an electrical dipolar model of gravity. The textbook view that gravity and electromagnetism must be unrelated because EM can be shielded and gravity can’t is too simplistic. See also Principia Scientific article.

Nothing is Real

Miss! Although the EU takes a more philosophical stance on science (which was originally known as Natural Philosophy, after all), I am not aware of any of its adherents claiming that ‘nothing is real’!

Institutional science, on the other hand, displays something approaching an irrational fear of philosophical issues. In simple terms, philosophy can be boiled down to three questions: what do we know? how do we know it? and how sure can we be? In respect of modern math-based cosmology, these three questions can be simplified into just one: Is mathematics really an infallible tool for establishing universal truths?

Philosophy is dead … Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.
Stephen Hawking

Typical of orthodox science today, did Hawking’s attitude towards philosophical skepticism amount to a fear of scrutiny? Typical of his ilk, Hawking, after all, was a Theoretical Physicist, not an empirical scientist in the traditional sense.

Check out some of the work of Natural Philosopher Michael Armstrong: The Nature and Definition of Space | Thunderbolts

The Universe is Electric

Hit! At 7:20 AJ says: “If the Electric Universe theory is true, it will change everything we know about physics and reframe our understanding of the Cosmos.”

Cosmology (the study of the nature of the universe)provides the building blocks for most other scientific disciplines. This adds to the inertia against change. Think grants, egos, and prestige. The Electric Universe represents a paradigm shift. It does not claim to have all the answers, but it is at least pointing in the right direction and can explain a lot more than the gravity-only paradigm.

The Big Bang is the dominant cosmology right now, together with its partners in crime, General and Special Relativity. While questions abound about their veracity, the EU is NOT the only critic of institutional science in this respect. As AJ points out, Spooky Action at a Distance (quantum entanglement) challenges the notion that lightspeed is the upper-speed limit of the universe (a central tenet of Special Relativity). Several tests have demonstrated that particles can ‘know something about each other’ over vast distances instantaneously.

My recent Blog Einstein and the Cult of Celebrity explores some of the doubts Einstein harboured about his own work before others ran with his ideas, and ran, and ran.

“Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.” Albert Einstein

More EU topics that do not appear in the title are covered. Again, WF? gets more right than they get wrong, but small errors can distort the whole picture. I will therefore focus mostly on a few of the shortcomings, albeit in no particular order.

Dark Matter

Hit! 06:07: “Gravity isn’t strong enough to keep everything together … everything should fly apart, but it doesn’t … so what is holding everything in place … Dark Matter … but there is no proof that it exists … it’s a Band-Aid …”

Fine, but this also relates to the shortfall in the mass required by gravitational theory. (Gravity is a property of mass.) Working on the assumption that their mathematical gravity-only theories must be correct, orthodox science has therefore balanced (fudged) the ~~equivocations~~ equations with hypothetical entities like Dark Matter. Furthermore, Dark Matter and Dark Energy allegedly make up more than 90% of the universe.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are the blank cheques required to postpone the falsification of bankrupt theories.
Thunderbolts Project

The EU contends that once plasma and EM are factored in, dark matter and dark energy are NO longer required, which also relates to the math problem. The trouble is, plasmas and EM are very difficult to model mathematically, and cosmology today is dominated by mathematicians (mathmagicians some say).

… the underlying assumptions of cosmologists today are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not ‘understand’ how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them.
Hannes Alfvén

The æther

Wide! 32:50: “The medium is the plasma that fills the entire universe. Physicists Kozyrev and Tesla called this the æther … and thought that we could tap into this æther or plasma … this is zero-point energy.”

Well, not exactly. The æther of classical physics is something different from plasma. It can be thought of as a fine elastic medium or plenum that permeates everything. Think of it like this. While electrical currents travel in wires, electrical energy travels in the electrical fields outside the wire … on the hypothesized æther. The filamentary plasmas in space can be thought of as the electrical wiring of the universe. Our understanding of the æther, as it stands, is at a metaphysical level beyond this, although it is required by Maxwell’s equations.

In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of currents that transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure.
Hannes Alfvén

Sure, the æther has a lot in common with much talked about zero-point energy — they may well be one and the same thing — but the key point is that space, once thought to be a near-perfect vacuum, is now known to be alive with plasma and EM, and we still have a lot more to learn about both…

Deep Impact and Electric Comets

Miss! At 35:10 AJ says he can find no record of Thornhill’s successful predictions regarding Deep Impact, the copper projectile that was crashed into comet Tempel 1 in 2005. These are, in fact, well documented, but it is not the first time they have been denied or downplayed. I’m guessing AJ has been misled by some of the so-called debunkers out there.

Among other things, Thornhill stated that the impact crater would be much smaller than anticipated and that there would be a very bright pre-impact flash. He was right on both counts. NASA scientists were astonished by the events that unfolded and expressed their amazement on camera in no uncertain terms: “I’m at a loss to explain it…” was just one typical exclamation.

Anyway, Matt Finn has beaten me to it. He has already Set The Record Straight in this YouTube response from the Thunderbolts Project.

Wal Thornhill

Miss! Wal Thornhill is the man behind the broad synthesis that is the contemporary Electric Universe. (At the beginning of the last century many thought a better understanding of EM was the best way forward for cosmology.

At 35:50, AJ says he can find no evidence of Thornhill’s qualifications, and that he worked as a salesman. Well, Wal received his B.Sc. (physics and electronics) from Melbourne University, Australia, in 1964, and spent most of his life working in software for IBM, not sales. He has his own page on the prestigious IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) website: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/38180764100

Even before university, Wal discovered the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, whom he would later meet in person. Velikovsky inspired him to take a broad and interdisciplinary approach to the sciences, which became his lifelong passion. Much of Wal’s work can be viewed on his website, holoscience.com. In July 2013 he was awarded the prestigious Sagnac Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 20th annual conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

It is hard to imagine Wal saying something like “I have no peers,” as claimed, other than perhaps jokingly. More seriously, peer review is problematic, as we explained in the first episode of the Misconceptions series. According to Brittanica.com, “the primary function of peer review is gatekeeping.”

All the same, if Peer review does it for you, Wal, together with Doctor Michael Clarage, has written a peer-reviewed paper on Supernova 1987: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1707326

It seems AJ has been listening to the debunkers again. By contrast, a number of academics and journalists take Thornhill’s work very seriously. For example, Dr Ghada Chehade takes a look at it from the perspective of CDA, critical discourse analysis. Not If, But When: Cosmology in Crisis & The Coming Paradigm Shift, Part 1

The Saturn Model and Immanuel Velikovsky

Wide! As early as the first minute, AJ takes a deep dive into mythology. “Beware the shocking fury of planet Saturn,” he says.

The planet Saturn is not directly associated with terror and disaster, although even today our language retains the age-old cultural ambivalence towards this most ancient of ‘Gods’. The word Saturnian expresses the splendour and munificence of the Golden Age, while the word Saturnine (morose, gloomy) reflects the melancholy of Paradise Lost. Saturday (Saturn Day) was the original Sabbath day.

It should be noted, however, that Velikovsky did NOT propose the Saturn model. He wrote only one paper on Saturn’s role in prehistory, which went unpublished. Inspired by his work, others explored the role of Saturn further. David Talbott, for example, wrote the Saturn Myth, and he did so before he was aware of the role of plasma and EM in celestial mechanics. Before he met Wal Thornhill, in other words.

Nonetheless, AJ provides a reasonable summary of the Saturn model as proposed by some EU advocates.

Hit and miss! 12:40 “When Velikovsky released his bestselling book Worlds in Collision he turned astronomy on its head.”

This much is true. Velikovsky certainly rocked the establishment boat when he concluded that the planets of our solar system have shifted on their orbits within human memory, in pre-history, thus accounting for the paroxysms testified by our ancestors. He remains persona non grata to orthodox science, of course, where it’s assumed the planetary orbits have remained more-or-less stable since, well, the formation of our solar system. This assumption has solidified into dogma. The catastrophist view, by contrast, exposes our existential fears. (Velikovsky later wrote Mankind in Amnesia where he returns to Worlds in Collision as a psychoanalyst to address the traumas experienced by our ancestors and repressed into our collective unconscious.)

Wide. At 41:15 AJ reneges on much of his good work when he says “Velikovsky was probably wrong, about everything!” He could have left this more open. Velikovsky effectively gave a voice to the ancients. He didn’t dismiss their legacy as the work of ignorant, superstitious savages. The Thunderbolts of the Gods, for example, is a consistent theme the world over, but who were the gods, and what were the thunderbolts?

While Velikovsky’s work is still viciously attacked and dismissed by pop science, some notable scientists have been more magnanimous. In 1963, for example, the famous geologist Harry Hess wrote to him:

“…I am of course quite convinced of your sincerity and I also admire the vast fund of information which you have painstakingly acquired over the years.

“I am not about to be converted to your form of reasoning though it certainly has had successes. You have after all predicted that Jupiter would be a source of radio noise, that Venus would have a high surface temperature, that the sun and bodies of the solar system would have large electrical charges and several other such predictions. Some of these predictions were said to be impossible when you made them. All of them were predicted long before proof that they were correct came to hand. Conversely, I do not know of any specific prediction you made that has since been proven to be false. I suspect the merit lies in that you have a good basic background in the natural sciences and you are quite uninhibited by the prejudices and probability taboos that confine the thinking of most of us.

“Whether you are right or wrong I believe you deserve a fair hearing.”

Furthermore, although the Electric Universe opens the door to planetary catastrophe scenarios, it should also be noted that not everyone associated with the EU is on board with the same. Many only go so far as to acknowledge a more significant role for plasma and EM, past and present. Mythologist Rens van der Sluijs falls into this category. He has spoken at several EU conferences and written numerous articles which can be viewed in the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day (TPOD) archives. He doubts there has been any change in planetary orbits within human memory, but argues that the auroras have been far more intense in the distant past, thus accounting for much of the ancient art and tradition that records plasma phenomena. Rens coined the term Plasma Mythology and has collaborated with renowned plasma physicist Anthony Peratt on numerous field trips around the globe. He has also conducted a number on his own.

Peratt’s exhaustive and meticulous research provides compelling evidence to support the enhanced aurora hypothesis. It all started when comparative mythologist David Talbott presented him with some petroglyph images which he immediately recognised as plasma-related. Interestingly, it was the first time Peratt had seen them outside a classified environment! After getting over his initial shock, it inspired him to research them in the field. Beyond the artistic consistency displayed by disparate cultures, the location and orientation of petroglyphs, and very often their 28- and 56-fold symmetry, are also significant.

While his famous stick-man research is eloquently covered by AJ, again it is important to understand that Peratt’s work stands alone independent of Velikovskian ideas. Critics of the Electric Universe very often conflate the differing approaches to mythology, usually in an attempt to discredit all of them.

Yet again, it must be stressed that while the Electric Universe can accommodate many radical ideas — also relating to ‘myth and legend’ — it does not live and die by them.

The Grand Canyon

Hit! 08:12 “The Grand Canyon is one of the most iconic places in the world.”

On the subject of radical ideas. Did a cosmic thunderbolt (giant lightning strike) carve out the Grand Canyon within seconds or minutes? The idea sounds ludicrous on the face of it, of course, but the Why Files cover it well. Conventional geology certainly has a hard time explaining the Canyon. Just to begin with, why did water flow uphill from lower ground to the high plateau? Why did it cut through layers of soft and then hard rock without changing course? Where did the missing five trillion cubic yards of rock go? The Enigma of the Grand Canyon goes into more detail.

High-profile geologist Robert Schoch has picked up on the cosmic thunderbolt theory recently. Before now he has also acknowledged plasma phenomena in antiquity.

Planetary Scars

Although the Grand Canyon is no doubt too much in the way of cognitive dissonance for many, the evidence for planetary scarring on a less dramatic scale is abundant. Take a look at our moon’s surface, for example. The craters are nearly all flat-bottomed and roughly the same depth regardless of size, most of them are almost perfectly spherical, some craters overlap without damaging the symmetry of those that went before them, and they all appear to have been impacted from ninety degrees above. How can the impact hypothesis explain this? You would expect impacting material to arrive from a variety of angles.

Brian J. Ford, an amateur astronomer, argued the case for cosmic electrical discharge more than fifty years ago. The British journal Spaceflight published his work on January 7th, 1965. In his laboratory experiments, Ford used spark-machining apparatus to reproduce some of the most puzzling lunar features, including craters with central peaks, small craters perched on the high rims of larger craters, and crater chains. He also observed that the ratio of large to small craters on the Moon matched the ratio seen in electrical arcing.

Based on this EM premise, Velikovsky predicted that moon rock would exhibit magnetic properties. This was another big surprise for orthodox science.

Planetary scars alone would surely make for an interesting Why Files episode.

The Electric Sun

As mentioned, while plasma cosmology and the electric universe share more similarities than differences, they are at variance in some respects. The PC view, which is based on solid verifiable science — although still largely ignored by orthodox science — acknowledges that many of our local star’s behaviours are essentially electromagnetic in nature.

“The forthcoming scientific revolution is presaged by the rapid pace of discoveries about our own star, the Sun, and its total plasma environment.” Plasmas.org

Wal Thornhill’s EU view goes a step further, contending that stars are powered externally by Birkeland currents in space. The Electric Sun model was first proposed by Ralph Juergens in the 1970s.

“The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the sun’s energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the solar interior is contradicted by nearly every observable aspect of the sun.” Ralph E. Juergens, 1980

The Safire Project

The Safire Project takes its lead from the Electric Sun model. This methodology has inevitably led to some sneering attacks, but the project is still going strong. Now called Aureon Energy, this recent video explains the latest set-up, Aureon Energy – The SAFIRE Project Walkthrough.

The US military has taken an interest, even providing some of the specialist equipment that has verified the successful transmutation of elements. Some might like to read into this.

Lowell Morgan left the project after a personal dispute and has since been critical of it, which some detractors have been quick to seize upon. Although he has some background with plasmas, in this video from 2015 Morgan admits he knows “…nothing about solar physics, almost nothing at all…” (11:48). Lowell Morgan: The Physics of Plasmas | EU2015

Debunking the Debunkers

Direct Hit! At almost 39 minutes it is as if AJ has an epiphany when he says: “Whenever I cover alternative science, I also give the view of the skeptics, but that is when with this episode I started to get upset … there are debunkers who think that Thornhill, Velikovsky, and other proponents of the Electric Universe should be silenced and that their research should be removed from the internet … to protect us from ‘disinformation’ … that’s censorship, and there’s no place for it in science.”

I can’t argue with any of that. I think it’s a fine summary.

EU ‘debunkers’ are also quick to resort to ad hominem attacks. In one YouTube video, for example, a certain detractor dismissed all interested parties as a “gullible corner of the internet.” Contrary to this unfounded generalisation, Quantcast provided the following analysis of Thunderbolts.info visitors not so long back.

A comparison was made with Badastronomy.com run by Dr Phil Plait, and Universe Today, the most popular mainstream astronomy websites and forums at the time.

Thunderbolts also outranked Scientific American and Space.com. This is not to say non-academics are any less intelligent but, well, you get the picture…

The Knockout Punch

Despite appearing to go soft around the 40-minute mark when he goes ‘all mainstream’ on Velikovsky, AJ later regains his composure and launches a broadside against institutional science.

43:10 “Science is now used to give more wealth to the wealthy. Science is used to give more power to the powerful, and science is now weaponized…”

Well, well. Strong stuff.

At 43:25 he goes further: “Science isn’t about truth, not anymore. Promote the right science and get a book deal or a guest spot on cable news … and highly paid speaking engagements. Promote the wrong science and lose your reputation, lose your career, get deplatformed from social media.”

Again, powerful stuff, but there’s even more.

44:05 “When there’s a mainstream view out there that suppresses debate and censors scientists that disagree … that mainstream view exists for money and power, not for the truth, and on that there is no debate!“

Wow. What a perfect and powerful ending! Bravo Why Files.

Re-edit?

Given the fact that WF? shot a little wide on occasion, perhaps a re-edit is in order? Why not WHY FILES?

There is precedence for this. They recently re-edited an earlier video about the Aerial School UFO in southern Africa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L6M2mRcux4

EU episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIgbsZ05O2A

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWhyFiles

ADDENDUM

Hannes Alfvén, Irving Langmuir, and Kristian Birkeland, among others, are not mentioned in this WF? episode, which is a shame given that they pioneered much of the sound science on which the EU is based. Alfvén and Langmuir won Nobel Laureates for their work, and Kristian Birkeland probably would have done so had he lived long enough. He was nominated shortly before his death. Anthony Peratt, who is mentioned, was a student of Alfvén.

Langmuir was the first non-academic scientist to win the Nobel Prize, an accomplishment he realized in 1932. Langmuir probes which can be used in space are named after him.

YouTube video — David Drew: Hit & Miss — WF? and the Electric Universe | Thunderbolts

David Drew, who hails from the UK, has enjoyed a long interest in science, philosophy, and cosmology. He has been involved with the Electric Universe since around 2004 and published his own website, plasmacosmology.net in 2006. The purpose of his website is to provide an introduction to the emerging Plasma Universe paradigm and to explore some of the many far-reaching implications. David was the first to publish videos promoting EU ideas on YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. One of the most popular of these explores parallels with the work of the cult hero, Nikola Tesla and the Electric Universe. David is also known as The Soupdragon.

Ideas and/or concepts presented in Thunderblogs do not necessarily express or represent the Electric Universe Model of Cosmology or the views of The Thunderbolts Project or T-Bolts Group Inc.