A variety of editorial commentaries by in-house and guest contributors.
Lightning Scarred Earth, Part 2 By Andrew Hall In Lightning Scarred Earth, Part 1, Shiprock was presented as an example of a pinnacle created by lightning. Fulgarites are created when lightning strikes and current penetrates the ground, leaving a hollow tube of glassy, fused material behind. Current from the lightning…
Lightning Scarred Earth, Part 1 By Andrew Hall The blue-white arc of a lightning bolt stuns the senses. Blinding radiance, elemental beauty, awesome power and primordial danger flash into existence from thin air and vanish before the mind catches-up. We stare, immobile, unthinking and awestruck. In that moment, a channel…
History of Electric Comet Theory: Part 4 By Hannes Täger Ph.D. The Situation in the early 20th Century As was mentioned in Part 3 (Electric Comet Ideas Infiltrate Mainstream – 19th Century), the success of Arrhenius’ theory of the ray pressure of the Sun seemed to satisfactorily explain parts of…
Science as a Personal Journey By Chris Reeve There is something you need to know about scientific controversies: Your own personal reaction to controversial science says much about the depth of your own thinking and your own propensity to lead. When we treat controversies as an open-ended clash of worldviews…
History of Electric Comet Theory: Part 3 By Hannes Täger Ph.D. As electricity became a common element of many laboratories worldwide, its fascinating properties and massive potential began to capture the imagination of more and more researchers, many of whom were well known and well-funded public figures. Scientists now had…
History of Electric Comet Theory: Part 2 By Hannes Täger Ph.D. General knowledge and understanding of electricity progressed at an exponential rate in the late 18th century as electricity increasingly offered new and feasible explanations for hitherto mysterious natural phenomena. Scientists across Europe and the World wrote a vast number…
History of Electric Comet Theory: An Introduction By Hannes Täger Ph.D. Significant scientific hypotheses and theories asserting the electrical nature of comets have been proposed and explored for at least 250 years. Many natural philosophers, physicists, and astronomers believed that the characteristic physical and light phenomena of comets were fundamentally…
Tornado — The Electric Model By Andrew Hall Cold, Dusty Plasma… Previously, in Nature’s Electrode, we looked at an Electric Earth model for lightning genesis driven by a plasma corona formed from condensing and freezing water vapor in the central updraft of the thunderhead. We also looked at the thunderstorm…
The Summer Thermopile By Andrew Hall In a previous episode, we talked about Nature’s Electrode. . . how a cold plasma corona is the proper electronic model for lightning genesis, and how mechanisms for ionization in a thunderstorm work. Now let’s take in the bigger picture to get a more coherent…
Nature’s Electrode By Andrew Hall The image above is from NOAA and illustrates the consensus theory of lightning genesis. As you can see, it shows electrons collecting like marbles in a sink, accelerating down a slippery slope into what looks like a drain. A typical cloud-to-ground lightning needs a billion-trillion…
