Thunderbolts Forum v3.0

[b]The Wal Thornhill January Reader
[/b]
Note: this is only [i]a suggested syllabus[/i] for the Electric Universe Reader in January, without any links or the text, yet.

[b]January 1998[/b]
Thoth Vo 2 No 1
"Ionizing the Galaxy"

Thoth Vo 2 No 2
"The Big Bang Never Happened" Discussion

Wal Thornhill would retire from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with the Australian government within the year 1998, at the age of 56.

[b]January 1999[/b]
Thoth Vo 3 No 1
"Superflares"
"Did They Really Say That"
"Electric Universe Predictions Confirmed"

Thoth Vo 3 No 2
"The Solar Gas Record in Lunar Samples and Meteorites"

Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Chairman, 1998-1999

[b]January 2000[/b]
Thoth Vo 4 No 1
"Tektite Question"
"Other Stars, Other Worlds, Other Life?"

Thoth Vo 4 No 2
"Kroniatalk Question"
"Shocks from Eta Carina"

Aeon Vo 5 No 5
"Stars in an Electric Universe"

[b]January 2001[/b]
Thoth Vo 5 No 1
"Strange Gravity"
"The Year 2001" by Dave Talbott and
an article written by Dr. Halton Arp

Thoth Vo 5 No 2
"Discussion on Eros"
"Black Hole Proof a Spoof"

[b]January 2002[/b]
Thoth Vo 6 No 1
"Brown Dwarfs and Iron Suns"

holoscience.com
"Charge Separation of the Mind"
"The Balloon Goes up over Lightning"

[b]January 2003[/b]

[b]January 2004[/b]
holoscience.com
"Ockham's Beard"
"Comet Wild 2"
"Spirit Chases a Martian Mirage"

[b]January 2005[/b]
holoscience.com
"Titan -- A Rosetta Stone for Early Earth?"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (collaboration)
"Thunderbolts of the Gods Tutorial" by Silver Wolf Productions was made in 2005 with Dave Talbott, Don Scott, Mel Acheson, and Rens van der Sluijs, and featuring cameos of Anthony Peratt from past conferences

[b]January 2006[/b]
holoscience
"A Real Theory of Everything"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2007[/b]
Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

In the year 2007 Wal Thornhill published several papers with the IEEE.

[b]January 2008[/b]
holoscience.com
"2008-Year of the Electric Universe"
"Astronomical Myths of Mercury and the Sun"
"Comet-Asteroid Link Confirmed"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2009[/b]
holoscience.com
"Astronomy Has Little to Celebrate in 2009"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2010[/b]
Bath Royal Literature and Scientific Institute
I believe he gave a talk here in Jan 2010.

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2011[/b]
none known
(In 2011, Wal Thornhill was speaker at the NPA18 in July and published a paper for the proceedings, published on holoscience in May, Aug, Sep, and Oct, and gave interviews in May, Aug, Sep and Oct)

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2012[/b]
Electric Universe 2012 The Human Story
Jan 6-9 Las Vegas, NV
"Returning Science to Real Physics"
"Electric Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2013[/b]
Electric Universe 2013 Tipping Point
Jan 3-6 Albuquerque, NM
Presentations; Interview; Panel
Orion's Spectacular "Cosmic Bullets" | Space News

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2014[/b]
Thunderbolts Project Space News
"When Mind Games Masquerade as Physics"
"Remembering Halton Arp"
"Halton Arp and the Electric Universe"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

[b]January 2015[/b]
Thunderbolts Project Space News
"An Electric Cosmology for the 21st Century"

Thunderbolts.info
20+ Picture of the Day articles (extensive collaboration)

cont'd

[b]8. Electrical Cratering[/b]

fig 7. Zeus

Electric discharges between closely approaching bodies takes the form of “thunderbolts of the gods”, or distinctively shaped helical plasmoids. Such plasmoids were sculpted by many ancient cultures when depicting Jupiter hurling his thunderbolt.

Jupiter’s thunderbolt raises questions about the history of mankind and the Earth that have never before been asked. When it comes to dating planetary surfaces, plasmoids cause characteristic electrical arc scarring in the form of sinuous channels and neatly circular craters with steep walls and occasional central peaks. Such craters are universally misinterpreted as impact craters. The sinuous channels are wrongly classified as riverbeds or lava channels. Minutes or hours of electrical scarring can produce a surface like that of the Moon, which is later interpreted in ad hoc fashion to be billions of years old. Hemispheric differences in cratering are expected in this model. And for the sceptics, subdued electric arc machining of a planet-sized body continues to this day on Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io. See the news items on this website for many successful predictions about the discoveries that would be made as close-up images of Io became available.

fig 8. Io surface

Planetary geologists are not trained to recognize electric arc scarring otherwise they would have seen at a glance the characteristic cathodic surface erosion and cathode jets on Io. They are definitely not volcanos as we know them from geology textbooks.


[b]9. Electrical Weather[/b]

fig 9. Venus lightning

Most people are unaware that we have no understanding of how lightning is created in clouds. The simplest answer is that lightning is not generated there at all. Clouds merely form a convenient path to Earth for electricity originating in space. Without clouds it is possible to have a “bolt from the blue”. That is happening on Venus (although the sky certainly isn’t blue). Weather systems are driven primarily by external electrical influences.

Consequently the Sun has weather patterns. And the most distant planet, Neptune, has the most violent winds in the solar system though it receives very little energy from the Sun. Electric discharges from space cause Mars’ huge dust devils and planet-wide dust storms. They are responsible for Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and the “spokes” in Saturn’s rings. It is why Venus has lightning in its smog-like clouds and its mountain-tops glow with St. Elmo’s fire. It is why the Earth has lightning stretching into space in the form of “red sprites” and “blue jets”, and why tethered satellites “blow a fuse”.

However, nobody is trained to consider electrical energy input to weather systems.

The image above is a NASA artist’s view of lightning on Venus during the descent of one of the Pioneer probes. Venus has smog-like clouds that are not expected to generate lightning and yet the planet suffers intense lightning. This argues against the popular notion of what causes lightning.


[b]10. Life Itself[/b]

It seems that when a dwarf star or gas giant planet “gives birth” to a rocky satellite, parent and child usually remain closely bound. Our solar system, with its widely spaced orbits and chaotic features, appears to be the result of a recent cosmic “traffic accident”. This seemingly wild conjecture is supported by the global stories of prehistoric planetary encounters. So to use our situation as a measure of a normal planetary system will give wildly misleading ideas of how life begins and estimates of the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe. The most benign situation for life in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® is inside the electrical cocoon of a brown dwarf star. Radiant energy is then evenly distributed over the entire surface of any planet orbiting within the chromosphere of such a star, regardless of axial rotation, tilt, or orbital eccentricity.

The exceedingly thin atmosphere of such stars has the essential water and carbon compounds to mist down onto planetary surfaces. The reddish light is ideal for photosynthesis. Such a model provides one reason why the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project is unlikely to succeed. Any advanced civilization on such a planet will be unaware that the universe exists outside its own stellar environment, and radio communication through the glow discharge of the star is impossible!

Our education systems are not suited to the broad interdisciplinary knowledge required in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®.

[b]11. Some Basics[/b]

“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first philosophical systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
– Adam Smith.

The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® takes a simplifying leap by unifying the nuclear forces, magnetism and gravity as manifestations of a near instantaneous electrostatic force. Instead of being “spooked” by the concept of action-at-a-distance, like most physicists this century, the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® accepts it as an observational fact. Anyone who has tried to force two like poles of magnets together has demonstrated action-at-a-distance. “Electromagnetic” radiation is then simply the result of an oscillating electrostatic force.

At the level of the atom, the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model takes a lead from the work of Ralph Sansbury, an independent New York researcher. Foremost is the simple recognition of the basic electrical nature of matter and the primacy of the electrostatic force** in matter interactions. It also rests upon the simple assumption that the proton, neutron and electron are composed of smaller charged particles, orbiting each other in a classical sense in stable, resonant orbits. That is, the energy exchanged between those sub-particles in elastic deformation during each orbit sums to zero. Being charged, the sub-particles interact via the electrostatic force. A simple calculation shows that the sub-particles that form an electron must travel at a speed far in excess of the speed of light – some 2.5 million light-years per second, or from here to the far side of the Andromeda galaxy in one second! So the electrostatic force must act at a speed which is almost infinite on our scale for the electron to be stable. It is the stable orbital resonances of these sub-particles, both within and between particles that give rise to the phenomena of protons, neutrons, electrons and atoms. Other denizens of the particle “zoo” are merely transient resonant states of the same charged sub-particles. The so-called “creation” of matter from energetic photons is an illusion in which pre-existing matter is reorganized into new resonant states that give the impression that a particle has suddenly materialized. Antimatter is a misnomer since it too is formed from the same sub-particles as “normal” matter except that the total charge is mirrored. Matter cannot be created or annihilated.

A Conventional View of Forces in Physics
1. Nuclear forces keep the nucleons (protons and neutrons) together in the atomic nucleus. They are the dominating forces in the nucleus, but of no importance at large distances from it.

2a. Electric forces. A positive charge and negative charge attract each other, but similar charges repel. Electric forces keep the atoms together (” bind ” the electrons to the nucleus). They are of a certain importance in the nucleus. At large distances electric forces are usually not so important because of a screening effect. For example, a positive charge attracts negative charges to its neighborhood so that they screen off the field from the positive charge.

2b. Magnetic forces are closely related to the electric forces. Because they cannot be screened very easily, they are efficient at larger distances than electric forces. Example: the Earth’s magnetic field.

3. Gravitation is much weaker than electric forces and therefore of no importance in the atom. As the gravitation cannot be screened, it is the dominating force at large distances. The orbits of the planets and the motions of stars and galaxies are ruled by gravitation. – H. Alfvén.

Quantum Theory
For the first time the highly successful quantum theory gains a physical explanation in terms of resonant motion of charged particles, mediated by a near-instantaneous electrostatic force. A quantum electron orbit is one in which the exchange of energy between all of the sub-particles in the nucleus of an atom and those in an orbiting electron, sum to zero over the orbit. Exchange of energy takes the form of distortion of a particle to form an electrostatic dipole or a move to a new resonant orbit.

Relativity Theory
Einstein’s Special Theory was designed to define simultaneity in a universe where the fastest force or signal was restricted to the measured speed of detection of light from a distant source. With an electrostatic force of near-infinite speed acting between the sub-particles of all matter, relativity theory reduces to classical physics. This leaves open the question of what we are measuring when we determine the speed of light. The speed of light in galactic terms is exceedingly slow, requiring about 150,000 years to cross our galaxy. However, the astronomer Halton Arp has shown that the redshifts of entire galaxies are quantized which requires some form of near instantaneous, galaxy-wide communication at the sub-atomic level. There are now several reported experiments that demonstrate faster than light effects. With the Special Theory gone, and the universe in communication with its parts effectively in real-time, there can be no time travel and space and time are independent. Common sense has always suggested that this was so. Einstein’s General Theory was devised to explain gravity. It attempts to discard the observed action-at-a-distance of gravity by proposing a counter-intuitive warping of space in the presence of massive objects. This unnecessary complication of space is then added to the current metaphysical concepts of what constitutes the mass of an object. But space must also “warp” at near infinite speed to produce the observed planetary orbits. Common sense, observation, and parsimony of hypotheses all suggest that the electrostatic model of gravity (see below) is superior. There is now experimental evidence from gravity measurements at the time of a total solar eclipse that supports the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model and discounts the General Relativity model.

E = mc2
Einstein’s famous mathematical expression E=mc2, equating energy and mass is known by almost everyone. However, most textbooks go on to use the word “matter” in place of “mass.” But nowhere has it been shown that mass and matter are interchangeable. In fact, we are entirely ignorant of what constitutes the mass of an object. So it is inadmissible to imply that energy and matter are interchangeable. The ultimate expression of this idea led to the nonsense of the big bang. It seems simpler and more sensible to suggest that both nuclear and chemical energy is released or absorbed by the rearrangement of the resonant orbits of charged particles. It is then common sense to suggest that mass is the measured response of a system of charged particles to an external electrostatic force. The more massive an object, the more the electrostatic force contributes to the elastic deformation of its protons, neutrons and electrons, rather than their acceleration. This is the phenomenon seen in particle accelerators and conventionally attributed to relativistic effects. But relativity reduces to classical physics in a universe where the electrostatic force has near-infinite speed. The first question to be asked is – if it is that simple, why hasn’t it been thought of long ago? The answer seems to lie in the propensity for mathematical theory to supersede common sense and observation. There is also a problem of language when mathematicians attempt to provide real meaning for their symbols.

[b]Synopsis 12 – So What?[/b]

12. So What?

The consequences and possibilities in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® are far-reaching. First we must acknowledge our profound ignorance! We know nothing of the origin of the universe. There was no Big Bang. The visible universe is static and much smaller than we thought. We have no idea of the age or extent of the universe. We don’t know the ultimate source of the electrical energy or matter that forms the universe. Galaxies are shaped by electrical forces and form plasma focuses at their centers, which periodically eject quasars and jets of electrons. Quasars evolve into companion galaxies. Galaxies form families with identifiable “parents” and “children”. Stars are electrical “transformers” not thermonuclear devices. There are no neutron stars or Black Holes. We don’t know the age of stars because the thermonuclear evolution theory does not apply to them. Supernovae are totally inadequate as a source of heavy elements. We do not know the age of the Earth because radioactive clocks can be upset by powerful electric discharges.

The powerful electric discharges that form a stellar photosphere create the heavy elements that appear in their spectra. Stars “give birth” electrically to companion stars and gas giant planets. Life is most likely to form inside the radiant plasma envelope of a brown dwarf star! Our Sun has gained new planets, including the Earth. That accounts for the “fruit-salad” of their characteristics. It is not the most hospitable place for life since small changes in the distant Sun could freeze or sterilize the Earth. Planetary surfaces and atmospheres are deposited during their birth from a larger body and during electrical encounters with other planets. Planetary surfaces bear the electrical scars of such cosmic events. The speed of light is not a barrier. Real-time communication over galactic distances may be possible. Therefore time is universal and time travel is impossible. Anti-gravity is possible. Space has no extra dimensions in which to warp or where parallel universes may exist. There is no “zero-point” vacuum energy. The invisible energy source in space is electrical. Clean nuclear power is available from resonant catalytic nuclear systems. Higher energy is available from resonant catalytic chemical systems than in the usual chemical reactions. Biological enzymes are capable of utilizing resonant nuclear catalysis to transmute elements. Biological systems show evidence of communicating via resonant chemical systems, which may lend a physical explanation to the work of Rupert Sheldrake. DNA does not hold the key to life but is more like a blueprint for a set of components and tools in a factory. We may never be able to read the human genome and tell whether it represents a creature with two legs or six because the information that controls the assembly line is external to the DNA. There is more to life than chemistry.

We are not hopelessly isolated in time and space on a tiny rock, orbiting an insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy. We are hopefully connected with the power and intelligence of the universe.

The future in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® looks very exciting indeed!

5. Electric Galaxies
For more than 10 years plasma physicists have had an electrical model of galaxies. It works with real-world physics. The model is able to successfully account for the observed shapes and dynamics of galaxies without recourse to invisible dark matter and central black holes. It explains simply the powerful electric jets seen issuing along the spin axis from the cores of active galaxies. Recent results from mapping the magnetic field of a spiral galaxy confirm the electric model.

fig 5. M82 and a Plasma galaxy

On the other hand, cosmologists cannot explain why spiral shapes are so common and they have only ad-hoc explanations for galactic magnetic fields. More recently, inter-galactic magnetic fields have been discovered which is the final straw to break the camel’s back. Incredible gravitational models involving invisible “black holes” have had to be invented in a desperate attempt to explain how the attractive force of gravity can result in matter being ejected in a narrow jet at relativistic speeds.

fig 6. Centaurus A

Why do we accept such science fiction as fact when an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® predicts spiral shapes, magnetic fields and jets? The cosmic magnetic fields simply delineate the electric currents that create, move and light the galaxies.

6. Electric Stars

fig 7. The Sun

Plasma physicists argue that stars are formed by an electromagnetic “pinch” effect on widely dispersed gas and dust. The “pinch” is created by the magnetic force between parallel current filaments that are part of the huge electric currents flowing inside a galaxy. It is far more effective than gravity in concentrating matter and, unlike gravity, it can remove excess angular momentum that tends to prevent collapse. Stars will form like beads on a wire until gravity takes over. The late Ralph Juergens, an engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona, in the 1970’s took the next mental leap to suggest that the electrical input doesn’t stop there and that stars are not thermonuclear engines! This is obvious when the Sun is looked at from an electrical discharge perspective. The galactic currents that create the stars persist to power them. Stars behave as electrodes in a galactic glow discharge. Bright stars like our Sun are great concentrated balls of lightning! The matter inside stars becomes positively charged as electrons drift toward the surface. The resulting internal electrostatic forces prevent stars from collapsing gravitationally and occasionally cause them to “give birth” by electrical fissioning to form companion stars and gas giant planets. Sudden brightening, or a nova outburst marks such an event. That elucidates why stars commonly have partners and why most of the giant planets so far detected closely orbit their parent star. Stellar evolution theory and the age of stars is an elaborate fiction. The appearance of a star is determined largely by its electrical environment and can change suddenly. Plasma physicists and electrical engineers are best able to recognize plasma discharge phenomena. Stellar physics is in the wrong hands.

7. Planets

Earth-like planets and moons are similarly “born” by electrical expulsion of part of the positively charged cores of dwarf stars and gas giants. That explains the dichotomy between the dense rocky planets and moons and the gaseous giant planets. In the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model, gravity itself is simply an electrostatic dipolar force. So planetary orbits are stabilized against gravitational chaos by exchange of electric charge through their plasma tails (Venus is still doing so strongly, judging by its “cometary” magnetotail, and it has the most circular orbit of any planet) and consequent modification of the gravity of each body. Planets will quickly assume orbits that ensure the least electrical interaction. Impacts between large bodies are avoided and capture rendered more probable by exchange of electric charge between them. Capture of our Moon becomes the only option, it cannot have been created from the Earth. Evidence of past planetary instabilities is written large on the surfaces of all solid bodies in the solar system. That evidence is in the form of electric arc cratering.

The Wal Thornhill January Reader:
1997-1999: Synopsis of the Electric Universe


Synopsis
1. Preface
“The most merciful thing in the world … is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality… That we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
– H. P. Lovecraft

In a broadly interdisciplinary inquiry such as this, communication itself can pose quite a challenge. Typically, the greatest difficulties in communication will occur when one is questioning something already “known” to be true. On matters of underlying principle, the confidence behind established ideas can be so high that discussion itself may seem quite senseless. This difficulty is aggravated by fragmentation of the process by which information is gathered and evaluated. The specialization of intellectual inquiry carries with it certain risks when assumptions within one discipline rest upon prior assumptions in other disciplines. No one can be an expert on everything, and when considering possibilities outside one’s personal expertise, it is only natural to defer to what specialists in other studies claim to know. But what are the consequences of this when theoretical suppositions, though perceived as fact, cannot account for compelling new fields of data?

Given the extreme fragmentation of established science today it is difficult to imagine that the enterprise as a whole could ever “correlate all its contents.” Yet extraordinary strides toward that “someday” envisioned by Lovecraft may now be possible through a new approach – one in which electrical phenomena receive the full attention they deserve, and all appropriate fields of evidence are included. To some, the prospects may appear every bit as disturbing as Lovecraft imagined. But for those who instinctively seek out unifying principles, the new horizons will be at once breathtaking and hopeful.

This introduction will present a new “deep focus lens” for viewing the physical universe, from sub-atomic particles to galactic realms unknown before the Hubble telescope. The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® is a holistic answer to myopia* -that narrowing of vision which naturally accompanies the fragmentation of knowledge and learning. For those with the courage to see clearly, the required “unlearning” of fashionable ideas carries no real cost whatsoever. The terror Lovecraft envisioned is only the first rush of uncertainty, when ideas long taken for granted are thrown into question by facts and simple reasoning previously ignored. The “piecing together of dissociated knowledge” will only require us to confront the deep contradictions in things experts have long claimed to know. With the courage to see clearly, the adventure itself could well be “the most merciful thing in the world,” adding new insights into the greatest dramas of early human history and vital perspective to humanity’s situation in the cosmos. Lovecraft did not realize that the “terrifying vistas” are but a mirage seen through an open door. The truth is always unified, and as such it can only be friendly to those who seek the truth first. As we pass through the door, it is not fear that goes with us, but the exhilaration of discovery.

– Wal Thornhill / David Talbott

*Myopia – a disinclination to acknowledge the existence of something.




Synopsis 2 – The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®
2. The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®
The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model is a coherent “Big Picture” of our situation in the universe, spanning many disciplines. It highlights repeated electrical patterns at all scales that enable laboratory experiments to explain the strange, energetic events seen, for example, in deep space, on the Sun, and on Jupiter’s moon, Io. The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® works backward in time using observations rather than forward from some idealised theoretical beginning. It provides simple answers to problems that are now clothed in fashionable metaphysics and mysticism. It is more interdisciplinary and inclusive of information than any prior cosmology. It points to practical possibilities far beyond the limits set by current science.

The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model grew out of a broad interdisciplinary approach to science. It is not a technique taught in universities. The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® is based more on observations and experiment than abstract theory. It recognizes connections between diverse disciplines. It concludes that the crucial requirement for understanding the universe is to take fully into account the basic electrical nature of atoms and their interactions. Strangely, this is not the case in conventional cosmology where weaker magnetism and the infinitely weaker force of gravity rule the cosmos. Such a simplification may suit a theoretical physics based on electrical neutrality of matter in Earthly laboratories but it does not apply in space where plasma dominates.

fig.1 Plasma ball

Plasma has been called the “fourth state” of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. Most of the matter in the universe is in the form of plasma. A plasma is formed if some of the negatively charged electrons are separated from their host atoms in a gas, leaving the atoms with a positive charge. The negatively charged electrons, and the positively charged atoms (known as positive ions) are then free to move separately under the influence of an applied voltage or magnetic field. Their net movement constitutes an electrical current. So, one of the more important properties of a plasma is that it can conduct electrical current. It does so by forming current filaments that follow magnetic field lines. Filamentary patterns are ubiquitous in the cosmos.



3. A Little History
“To be sure, nature distributes her gifts unevenly among her children. But there are plenty of the well-endowed, thank God, and I am firmly convinced that most of them live quiet, unobtrusive lives.”
– ALBERT EINSTEIN

The pieces of the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® “Big Picture” are supplied by some remarkable individuals, most of them unknown and who have lived or are living “quiet, unobtrusive lives” away from universities. For those with a sense of history this fact should serve to increase curiosity rather than dull it. Most revolutions in science have come from people who taught themselves outside the academic system and were not constrained by the fallacies and fashions of the day. It has been well documented that modern institutions of science operate in such a way as to enforce conformity and prevent research and publication of revolutionary ideas. J. R. Saul argues that medieval scholasticism was re-established during the 20th century. If so, the new “Enlightenment” will have to come, as before, from outside academia.

Immanuel VelikovskyFor me, enlightenment began with the controversial polymath and author of Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky. In 1950 he demonstrated an interdisciplinary, comparative technique for uncovering hard evidence of planetary catastrophe from the recorded memories of the earliest civilizations. His method was forensic in that he looked for reports of physical events of a highly unusual nature that were nonetheless corroborated globally by totally separate cultures. Then by applying scientific knowledge of cause and effect, it was possible to build a very detailed model of the sequence of those events. Finally, the model enabled specific predictions to be made and confirmed – a requirement of a good scientific theory. Some of the predictions he made were outrageous at the time: Venus would be near incandescently hot, Jupiter would emit radio noise, the Moon rocks would be magnetised, and so on. Velikovsky was right, astronomers of the day were wrong. However, you will not find any textbook that gives him credit because his theory was judged to be wrong. Presumably they were all lucky guesses!

It became clear to Velikovsky that Newton’s concept of gravity was insufficient to explain the reported behaviour of the planets. And it certainly could not answer the obvious question, “why do the skies look so peaceful now?” This allowed a dogmatic response by academia to Velikovsky’s seminal breakthrough. It was said his theory didn’t obey Newton’s laws. But what did Newton know of electricity? And if anyone believes that Newton’s laws guarantee a stable planetary system – think again! Any gravitational system with more than two orbiting bodies is unstable. Yet the question is hardly ever asked, let alone answered, “what produces the observed stability of the solar system?” Velikovsky was convinced that the clue lay in his discovery that electrical forces dominate the incredibly weak force of gravity at times of planetary close encounters. Although he was unable to explain at the time how this would create the observed stability of the solar system, with his uncanny prescience he had pointed the way to the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®.

fig.2 The Sphinx

Since then sceptical scholars have shown Velikovsky’s historical perspective of cataclysmic events to be wrong. However, his basic premise of planetary encounters has been confirmed and the details fleshed out to an extraordinary degree. Several pioneering researchers in this new field now agree that awe-inspiring planetary encounters did occur in pre-history. To the most ancient civilizations they were a culturally defining memory. They were the inspiration for pyramids, megaliths, statues, totems and sacred rock art. The survivors of global upheaval felt it imperative that the memory be preserved and passed down faithfully to future generations in the expectation that the “gods” would return. The memorialization took the form of architecture, ritual and story to re-enact the apocalyptic power of the planetary gods over human destiny. Such a catastrophic beginning explains why civilization appeared like a thunderclap out of nowhere. Unfortunately, with no reference points in the present behavior of the planets, the stories lost their real meaning. This short explanation may seem contrived until the wealth of supporting evidence can be presented. However, it highlights the crucial distinction between the planetary catastrophism of the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® and that of neo-catastrophists who attempt to explain the evidence for planetary encounters in terms of cometary phenomena. Modern comets simply do not fit the descriptions from the past. Nor can they account for abundant evidence of fresh looking planetary cratering and scarring. Besides, in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® comets are not the apocalyptic threat to the Earth imaginatively portrayed by artists. Such pictures are entirely fanciful because a comet would be disrupted electrically by a cosmic thunderbolt before it hit the Earth. The only visible evidence remaining would be an electric arc crater like Meteor Crater in Arizona.

The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model grew from the realization that a new plasma cosmology and an understanding of electrical phenomena in space could illuminate the new work being done in comparative mythology. In return the images of events witnessed in the prehistoric sky and their sequence could help unravel the recent history of the Earth, Mars and Venus. By accepting data over a far wider span of knowledge and human existence than conventional cosmology allows, the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model began to provide pragmatic and common sense answers to many questions that seem unrelated. It followed the entreaty of the Nobel Prize winning plasma physicist and cosmologist, Hannes Alfvén, to work backwards in time from observations rather than forward from some idealized theoretical beginning.

“We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.”
– Evolution of the Solar System, NASA 1976, H. Alfvén & G, Arrhenius, p. 257.

fig.3 Hannes Alfvén

The result is now a “Big Picture” that emphasizes our dramatic prehistory and essential connectedness to the universe. No longer do we have to look at ourselves and the universe through the distorting sideshow mirrors of modern science.

The implications of electrical activity between planets will be profoundly disturbing for those who have built their cosmology around the weak force of gravity, acting in an electrically sterile universe. This strange, dogmatic oversight guarantees that nothing will remain in future of the fanciful Big Bang theory or the simplistic story of the formation of the solar system.



4. What Big Bang?

fig.4 Halton Arp

The Big Bang is already dead! The unheralded “Galileo of the 20th century”, Halton Arp, has proven that the universe is not expanding. The Big Bang theory is based on a misinterpretation of redshift. The redshift of a distant galaxy is measured in the light coming from that galaxy. Lines in the spectrum of that galaxy show a shift toward the red compared with the same lines from our Sun. Arp discovered that high and low redshift objects are sometimes connected by a bridge or jet of matter. So redshift cannot be a measure of distance. Most of the redshift is intrinsic to the object. But there is more: Arp found that the intrinsic redshift of a quasar or galaxy took discrete values, which decreased with distance from a central active galaxy. In Arp’s new view of the cosmos, active galaxies “give birth” to high redshift quasars and companion galaxies. Redshift becomes a measure of the relative ages of nearby quasars and galaxies, not their distance. As a quasar or galaxy ages, the redshift decreases in discrete steps, or quanta.

The huge puzzle for astrophysicists is why a galaxy should exhibit an atomic phenomenon. So we turn to particle physics. This difficulty highlights the fact that quantum “mechanics” applied to atoms is a theory without physical reality. The weirdness of quantum theory has been attributed to the subatomic scale to which it applies. But now that we have quantum effects in something the size of a galaxy, this convenient nonsense is exposed. If Arp is right many experts are going to look very silly. His discovery sounded the alarm in some halls of Academe and since nobody likes a loud noise – particularly if they are asleep – the knee-jerk response was to attack the guy with his finger on the alarm button. Arp’s telescope time was denied, papers rejected, and he was forced to leave the US to pursue his work.

cont'd

The Wal Thornhill January Reader:
the year 1997

Note: This newsletter followed the 1997 World Conference in Portland Or. Though not the first Conference convened by those who would later become the Thunderbolts Project and the Electric Universe, it was this gathering of specialists and scholars who would bring the Velikovsky thesis into the age of the internet. It represents the momentous laying of a living foundation stone for future books, documentaries, papers and conferences. Familiar names such as Cj Ransom, Dave Talbott, Michael Armstrong, Mel and Amy Acheson and many others set out together to thoughtfully and thoroughly explore such topics as:
[list=]planetary migration and capture,
the electric sun & electric comets,
self-replication of galaxies,
petroglyph-to-plasma-formation comparisons,
plasma scarring of planetary surfaces, and
the witnesses to stupendous global electrical catastrophes which are found in folk and sacred literature around the world.
[/list]
Wal Thornhill contributed a "short and sweet" introduction and synopsis which is found in the link to the newsletter. I have decided after much thought to include the Synopsis of the Electric Universe from holoscience.com, which was published only a bit later in 1999, as the introduction instead, since they are so similar. ~end of note.


[b]THOTH, An Electronic Catastrophics Newsletter https://saturniancosmology.org/othergroup/thoth/thoth01.txt
VOL I, No. 1
January 25, 1997
[/b]


EDITOR: Michael Armstrong
PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke

CONTENTS:

WELCOME....................................... Michael Armstrong
WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT............................Walter Radtke
SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW.............................David Talbott
PLANETS, STARS AND PLASMA PHYSICS..............Wallace Thornhill
ARCTIC CLIMATE SHIFTS..............................Clark Whelton

[b]WELCOME
By Michael Armstrong[/b]

Quote of the day:

The idols of the pagan world are, in fact, congealed history, and will some
day be intelligently studied as such.
Ignatius Donnelly, "Ragnarok: The age of fire and gravel", 1883.

Welcome to the kickoff issue of the THOTH catastrophics electronic
newsletter published by Kronia Communications. It has been over 46 years
since Immanuel Velikovsky published his revolutionary Worlds in Collision
and conditions are right for a sea-change in our world view. By virtue of
the space exploration efforts and the ongoing march of science and
technology, there have been an overwhelming number of developments and
discoveries in the various disciplines, virtually all of which support an
astral catastrophic mechanism playing a major role in the geological
history of the earth and the psychological history of humankind.

One of the basic problems we as catastrophists face in getting the
catastrophic reconstruction considered seriously, especially those of us
that are "Saturnists," is that of paradigm lockout. This is where pieces
of the old paradigm that are almost universally accepted but are incorrect
preclude or lockout consideration of pieces of a new or more correct
paradigm. Even though almost all of the leading cosmologists have
proffered some form of astral catastrophic mechanism, the scientific
establishment is constantly throwing up such pieces of the gradualistic or
uniformitarian paradigm that are clearly incompatible with the Saturn
reconstruction or any other astral catastrophic scenario. So, in this
issue David Talbott, author of The Saturn Myth, gives an overview of the
Saturn scenario reconstruction from the mytho-historical viewpoint,
physicist Wallace Thornhill summarizes some major aspects of traditional
scientific thinking that are misguided and starts an ongoing discussion
about the electrical/plasma nature of the physical universe, and Clark
Whelton talks about some recent findings in the Arctic Circle that
fundamentally challenge the current world view paradigm.

If you understand and accept in general the theme of recent astral
catastrophism--especially the Saturn myth reconstruction--the implications
and ramifications of the reconstruction become enormous. The range and
extent of intellectual knowledge and spiritual belief change becomes almost
unmanageable or overwhelming for the modern man immersed, educated, trained
and conditioned in the popular world views built around either the
"godless" or purposeless evolutionistic gradualism of establishment
science, or his "religion" based on some external authority figure (book,
tradition, denomination or hierarchal priesthood, leadership pr clergy), or
some mind and soul numbing combination thereof. It is to this dilemma
that this newsletter is directed.

Our intention is to publish the THOTH newsletter every seven to ten days,
and over the course of the next year to provide you with a significant
amount of important material to keep you abreast of what's going on in the
world of inter-disciplinary synthesis. In the next issue we will publish a
list of categories into which the various articles and items can be
classified. We suggest that you save the newsletter material, and
ultimately build some kind of directory or folder structure to
cut-paste-and-save to from your word processor.

Is it important to be concerned about the extent and ramifications of the
reconstruction? One of the vital reasons is given by physicist Nick
Herbert in his Quantum Reality:

The search for the picture of the "way the world really is" is an
enterprise that transcends the narrow interests...for better or worse,
humans have tended to pattern their domestic, social, and political
arrangments according to the dominant vision of physical reality.
Inevitably the cosmic view trickles down to the most mundane details of
everyday life.

May the year of 1997 see us to a truer picture of the "way the world
really is."


[b]WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT
By Walter Radtke[/b]

The event was a great success with a Friday night crowd of over 400 and a
full 3-day registration crowd of over 120. There were 3 film crews on
hand to document the event and Laura Lee arrived on Sunday to conduct
radio interviews for her nationwide talk show. An invitation had been
extended to non-Velikovskian catastrophists and much interesting material
was presented by Zecheria Sitchin, Paul LaViolette, Rand Flem-Ath,
Victor Clube and Tom Van Flandern. The Sunday dinner banquet featured a
violin performance by speaker Richard Heinberg. Richard Hoagland backed
out at the last minute & we have subsequently learned that he is apt to
do that if he feels less than in-control of an event.

The conference was held at one of Portland's Red Lion Inns which happened
to be set against a backdrop of catstrophe as the Columbia River was
within 3 feet of flood crest just outside the meeting hall. Many
attendees came from distant locations around the world- Australia,
Germany, Belgium, England, Malaysia, and Canada.

William Mullen and Roger Wescott stood out in my mind for their energetic
and erudite presentations. Wallace Thornhill presented some brilliant
synthesizing of plasma physics as operant in intergalactic and
interplanetary space- a potential revolution in its own right. The
Saturnians- Dave, Ev and Dwardu presented a salvo of compelling
mythological work which we are hoping to take on the road to the Whole
Life Expos around the country this spring and summer. Robert Bass
unveiled new orbital dynamic material produced by his own orery program
and showed himself to be a one-man library of references to current
applicable research, keeping the other speakers busy taking notes during
the day-after meeting. And Ted Holden, our curmudgeon cum laude,
presented an update of his compelling material on the impossibility of
sauropod (big dinosaurs) scaling in earth's present gravity.

Paleontologist Robert Dunlap showed clips from 4 of his video productions
about extinctions and meteor craters and after some some prompting &
cajoling, managed to get a handle on Ted Holden's compelling sauropod
scaling argument. C. J. Ransom provided much needed comic relief with
his witticisms and ironies regarding basic resistance to Velikovskian
catastrophism. Conference organizer, Dave Talbott's talk on Sunday
barely seemed to get started when his time was up so an invitation was
extended for the banquet crowd to see it through to completion after the
dinner. It appeared that the entire company of attendees, some 150 plus
wanted to see Dave complete his thoughts and found themselves staying
late to see an in-depth university quality exposition on the mythic
memories of humanity.

And it was generally agreed at the Monday meeting that Roger Wescott's
suggestion that the term "catastrophism" is itself an oversized dinosaur
and should be replaced with "catastrophics" was a good one, since we
should conceive ourselves less as an ideology and more as a discipline.
Ev Cochrane made the observation that the "Saturnist" wing of the
Velikovskian movement knew more about mythology than anyone on the
planet & with a "bring 'em on!" challenged academia at large to a duel of
mythological proportions (couldn't resist)- any mythologist, anywhere,
anytime.

The Wal Thornhill January Reader

Introduction

From the publication of Worlds in Collision in 1950 to the passing of Wallace Thornhill in 2023, the Electric Universe model came a long way. First, it was in the early 1960s that the space age began to truly get underway, as satellites, telescopes and space probes slowly multiplied in number. They then continued to proliferate, year-on-year and decade-by-decade, until the fleet of successfully completed and ongoing space missions now exceeds what could have been any reasonable expectations or hopes of those first days.

Many who were inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky's thesis, that the solar system had suffered a recent disruption and rearrangement because of an interloping brown dwarf star, were witnesses to the data from the space missions as they came in. Their witness of the seemingly constant incongruencies of the observations with the current Big Bang Model, and the Nebular Hypothesis, are invaluable. One such witness of the space age is Wal Thornhill, whose nearly monthly publications over a span of 30 years carefully registered the discordant data, as well as the evidence of the primary role of plasma and electricity in space, even as the unexpected cosmic events and the well-planned space missions transpired. Sometimes within the same day.

In an interview in December of 2014, when asked if he was originally from Canberra, Australia, he put it this way:

[list=] "So, for our listeners, you're based in Canberra. Have you always lived down there?"

"No, I'm a Melbourne boy, born and bred, went to Melbourne University, and I started to do a research year at Melbourne University in the upper atmosphere research group, but uh, I had been infected with an alternative idea before I went to university and I felt that, as a heretic, there was no future in academia. --Which was unfortunate because I always wanted to be a scientist. So I had to be an independent one."

"And I joined IBM because as a physicist you, um, you know the job opportunities are not great unless you are going to do a PhD; and so I had a career with IBM for eleven years, and they moved me to Canberra, where I was the systems engineer at the National University. And that was at a perfect time, because that was the time of the moon landings, and the moon rocks being returned and analyzed by the geophysics school here."

"So I used to go to all the lectures, in my spare time, and hear all of the latest results. And I had the temerity to ask questions in those days about things associated with Velikovsky's work, that the Solar System has a recent history, and the moon was involved in all that, of course. And it doesn't seem to be registered by anyone that Velikovsky made some successful predictions about what they would find on the moon. But of course that wasn't accepted because his theory was wrong, we were told, by the experts."

"However he made a lot of other predictions which were outrageous at the time, but were later shown to be correct, like the extreme temperature of Venus and the radio noises from Jupiter and all this kind of thing, and that Venus would've had a remnant cometary tail. And that also was discovered about that time."

"So I thought that I had a fairly strong reason to pursue alternatives. So I've actually done that, for the rest of my life." [/list]

His lifelong dedication to identifying the role of plasma and electricity in space, his meetings with key scientists, his collaboration and friendly terms with so many talented and accomplished people across the years, along with their scholarship, resulted in a voluminous, coherent, and remarkably complete body of work called the Electric Universe. There are many ways of approaching so much material. In this series I hope to present his work using a simple, straightforward organization that affords us the opportunity to experience the space age from Wal Thornhill's alternative (yet consistent and coherent across the years), Electric Universe vantage point: that is, as a Primary Historic Witness of the Space Age.






ref: "The Electric Universe Unveiled with Wal Thornhill"
globalfreedommovementmedia.fireside.fm/25