A picture and essay from the perspective of the Electric Universe.
Jan 15, 2016 Speculations on electrical aspects of the sun were common long before Birkeland. Up to this point, the electron had not yet been discovered. Around 1879, the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) reasoned that “solar spots are cavities by which hydrogen and other substances escape from…
Jan 14, 2016 Dwarf galaxies do not appear to follow conventional models of galaxy development. The Milky Way galaxy is not a solitary wanderer; it is accompanied by dozens of smaller galaxies with a more diffuse and irregular structure. As conventional models suggest, there are too few dwarf…
Jan 13, 2016 Speculations on electrical aspects of the sun were common long before Birkeland. The ideas of the Irish-English physicist Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912) marked a further intellectual milestone. In a few little-known articles dated to 1870 and 1871, he suggested that cometary tails are not appendages ‘evaporated’ from…
Jan 12, 2016 What force creates energetic beams that span distances measured in light-years? What confines them into narrow jets? Explaining the jets of ionized particles and X-rays often seen erupting from various galaxies and quasars ranks as one of the most difficult tasks facing modern astronomers. The prevailing theory…
Jan 11, 2016 Speculations on electrical aspects of the sun were common long before Birkeland. Might the solar corona not just resemble, but actually facilitate the terrestrial aurora? The German baron Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach (1788-1869) professed as much when he posited, in 1851, that the earth’s magnetic field…
Jan 8, 2016 PART I “The usual fate of attempts to found a cosmo-physical theory upon experimental results is scarcely such as to encourage imitators.” —Eugen Goldstein (1881) ‘Electric sun’ is a vague term, as equivocal as it would be to speak of an ‘electric earth’ or a ‘gravitational…
Jan 7, 2016 Most nebulae exhibit the unmistakable characteristics of electrical activity. Previous Thunderbolts Picture of the Day articles argue for an electrical interpretation of astrophysical observations. It is an alternative available for those who want extracurricular exploration and deeper levels. Every science journal describes nebulae like NGC 6537 in…
LEFT: BARON CARL LUDWIG VON REICHENBACH (1788-1869). © RUDOLF HOFFMANN (1820-1882). COURTESY SMITHSONIAN LIBRARIES, WASHINGTON, DC. RIGHT: ARCS AND POLAR STREAMS ON ONE OF BIRKELAND’S MAGNETISED TERRELLAE. © BIRKELAND. Jan 6, 2016 In an earlier post, it was shown that Kristian Birkeland was by no means the first to conduct…
Jan 5, 2016 The Milky Way is more complex than previously thought. Any substance containing charged particles is a plasma: electrons, positive ions, electrically charged dust, neon lights, lightning, planetary magnetospheres, the so-called “solar wind,” stars, and even galaxies are plasma. However, Electric Universe advocates do not consider plasma…
Dec 31, 2015 An X-2 class solar flare recently missed a direct impact with Earth. Heliophysicists classify solar flares according to their brightness in X-ray wavelengths. C-class flares are the smallest on the scale, with X-ray measurements in the 10^-6 watts per square meter range (W/m^2), while X-class flares can…
