Thoth - A Catastrophics Newsletter (Archive)

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The Thunderbolts Project Presents:
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter
The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our initial focus will be on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation.
Curator's Note: While great pains were taken in curating this archive, the original source was an e-mail newsletter, copied to text files. It is entirely possible that in the process of curating this archive or due to problems with the original source material, some errors may have crept in. Where necessary, please refer back to any original sources cited to verify accuracy.
This document brought to you courtesy of the tireless efforts of Michael Gmirkin.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ 2 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 1 (January 25, 1997)................................. 32 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 32 WELCOME .............................................................................................................................. 32 WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT ........................................................................................ 33 SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW ........................................................................................... 34 THE POLAR CONFIGURATION....................................................................................... 34 PLANETS, STARS, AND PLASMA PHYSICS ..................................................................... 36 GRAVITY............................................................................................................................. 37 ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES ............................................................................................ 37 STARS .................................................................................................................................. 37 PLANET FORMATION ...................................................................................................... 38 COSMOLOGY ..................................................................................................................... 38 ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGES ............................................................................................. 39 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 2 (February 5, 1997)................................. 41 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 41 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 41 RED SPRITES AND BLUE JETS ........................................................................................... 42 SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (2) .................................................................................... 43 THE OLDEST KNOWN STONE TOOLS, OR BAD DATING? ........................................... 45 GIZEH PYRAMID IRON PLATE........................................................................................... 46 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 3 (February 18, 1997)............................... 48 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 48 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 48 SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (3) .................................................................................... 48 QUEEN OF HEAVEN ......................................................................................................... 50 WARRIOR-HERO ............................................................................................................... 50 PRIMEVAL SEVEN ............................................................................................................ 51 CHAOS MONSTER............................................................................................................. 51 CHAOS HORDES ................................................................................................................ 51 REJUVENATED CREATOR-KING ................................................................................... 51 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter AGE LIMITS OF THE EARTH'S BIOSPHERE ..................................................................... 52
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 4 (March 2, 1997)..................................... 55 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 55 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 55 SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (4) .................................................................................... 56 CRATERS: IMPACT OR DISCHARGE EXCHANGE? ........................................................ 58 VENUS GREENHOUSE QUESTIONED AGAIN ................................................................. 61 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 5 (March 14, 1997)................................... 62 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 62 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 62 THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE .................................................................................... 63 GOLDEN AGE..................................................................................................................... 63 REMEMBERING THE END OF THE WORLD .................................................................... 64 THE VENUS COMET (2)........................................................................................................ 65 ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA ............................................................................................ 65 ATMOSPHERIC ROTATION............................................................................................. 67 ATMOSPHERIC BREATHING .......................................................................................... 67 IN SUMMARY:.................................................................................................................... 67 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 6 (March 16, 1997)................................... 69 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 69 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 69 THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE (2)............................................................................... 69 THE VENUS COMET (3)........................................................................................................ 71 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 74 THE ELECTRIC SERPENT .................................................................................................... 74 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 7 (March 23, 1997)................................... 76 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 76 EDITORIAL SECTION ........................................................................................................... 76 THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH .................................................................. 77 THE ELECTRICAL SUN ........................................................................................................ 78 ABSTRACT:......................................................................................................................... 78
The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (1) ............... 79 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 8 (April 5, 1997)....................................... 82 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 82 THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2) ............................................................ 82 THE ELECTRICAL SUN ........................................................................................................ 84 ABSTRACT:......................................................................................................................... 84 RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (2) ............... 84 NOTES.................................................................................................................................. 87 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 9 (March 31, 1997)................................... 88 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 88 THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (3) ............................................................ 88 THE ELECTRICAL SUN ........................................................................................................ 91 ABSTRACT:......................................................................................................................... 91 RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (3) ............... 91 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 10 (April 22, 1997)................................... 96 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ........................................................................................................... 96 SATURN: THE ANCIENT SUN GOD ................................................................................... 96 THE ELECTRICAL SUN (4)................................................................................................... 99 ABSTRACT:......................................................................................................................... 99 RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (4) ............... 99 SCHOLARS IN DESPERATION .......................................................................................... 101 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 11 (May 3, 1997).................................... 104 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 104 EDITORIAL SECTION ......................................................................................................... 104 THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (1) ........................................................................... 105 HALE-BOPP: ARTICLE AND COMMENTS ...................................................................... 107 HALE-BOPP OBSERVATIONS WITH HUBBLE AND IUE SURPRISE ASTRONOMERS............................................................................................................... 107 Meteorite study shows glimpse of Red Planet's ancestry ....................................................... 109 EARTH AT RISK OF COLLISION WITH UNSEEN COMETS ......................................... 110 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 12 (April 29, 1997)................................. 112 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 112 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (2) ........................................................................... 112 LANGUAGE OF THE POLE ............................................................................................ 112 POLAR SUN ...................................................................................................................... 113 ELECTRICAL SCARRING ON EUROPA ........................................................................... 116 PUTTING A NEW FACE ON PREHISTORY...................................................................... 118
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 13 (May 16, 1997).................................. 119 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 119 THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (3) ........................................................................... 119 NEWS ITEM: Aviation Week & Space Technology ............................................................. 121 EUROPA PREDICTION AND DISCUSSION...................................................................... 121 Book Announcement: ............................................................................................................. 125 CONTROVERSY - CATASTROPHISM AND EVOLUTION: THE ONGOING DEBATE ............................................................................................................................................. 125 PLASMA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY URL's ............................................................. 127 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 14 (May 21, 1997).................................. 128 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 128 EDITORIAL SECTION ......................................................................................................... 128 THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (4) ........................................................................... 129 HYAKUTAKE X-RAYS SHOW ABILITY TO MONITOR COMETS AND SOLAR WIND ................................................................................................................................................. 130 MORE VENUS DIALOGUE ................................................................................................. 132 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 15 (June 7, 1997).................................... 136 EDITORIAL SECTION ......................................................................................................... 136 VELIKOVSKY AND PLANETARY CATASTROPHE....................................................... 137 TETHERED SATELLITE DEBACLE .................................................................................. 140 TETHERED SATELLITE INVESTIGATION REPORT IS RELEASED............................ 141 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 16 (June 15, 1997).................................. 143 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 143 LOUIS FRANK'S MINI COMETS STIR NEW CONTROVERSY...................................... 144 ICE CUBES FROM SPACE PROVE THE SCOFFERS WRONG....................................... 144
COMMENTS ON INTERPLANETARY SNOWBALLS ..................................................... 145 SNOWBALL MINI-COMETS............................................................................................... 146 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 17 (June 30, 1997).................................. 150 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 150 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS ...................................................................................... 150 VELIKOVSKIAN RESEARCH AND CATASTROPHISM............................................. 151 PLANET'S TAIL OF THE UNEXPECTED .......................................................................... 152 RALPH SANSBURY'S WORK............................................................................................. 153 GRAVITY NEWS ITEM ....................................................................................................... 154 SOLAR ECLIPSE AFFECTS A PENDULUM -- AGAIN!............................................... 155 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 18 (July 3, 1997)..................................... 156 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 156 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (2)................................................................................. 156 QUETZALCOATL............................................................................................................. 158 FINGERS CROSSED FOR JULY 4 ...................................................................................... 159 GREAT RED SPOT SPECULATION ................................................................................... 160 SCIENCE MAGAZINE ITEMS: ........................................................................................... 161 Giant Planet Formation by Gravitational Instability........................................................... 161 Worlds Around Other Stars Shake Planet Birth Theory..................................................... 161 51 Peg and the Perils of Planet Searches ............................................................................ 161 Extreme Cratering............................................................................................................... 162 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 19 (July 16, 1997)................................... 163 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 163 PORTLAND SEMINAR REPORT........................................................................................ 164 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (3)................................................................................. 164 SOUL-BIRD, WINGED STAR.......................................................................................... 164 FEATHERED SERPENT................................................................................................... 165 XIUHCOATL ..................................................................................................................... 167 FORMATION OF CHONDRITIC METEORITES ............................................................... 167 PECULIAR FEATURES OF CHONDRITES ................................................................... 168 EXPECTED FEATURES DUE TO ELECTRIC DISCHARGE PHENOMENA ............. 169 UPDATE............................................................................................................................. 171 MISSING UNIVERSE MASS ............................................................................................... 171
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 20 (August 3, 1997)................................ 173 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 173 EDITORIAL ........................................................................................................................... 173 META-MYSTICAL MUSH............................................................................................... 174 FAR APART, TWO PARTICLES RESPOND FASTER THAN LIGHT ............................. 174 From Sun to Earth: Tracking a new storm.............................................................................. 175 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (4)................................................................................. 176 THE GREAT COMET ....................................................................................................... 176 ON EVIDENCE AND LOGIC........................................................................................... 177 THE MYTH OF THE COMET VENUS............................................................................ 178 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 21 (August 11, 1997).............................. 180 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 180 EDITORIAL ........................................................................................................................... 180 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (5)................................................................................. 181 METHODOLOGY AND OUTCOME ............................................................................... 181 LIGHTNING OF THE GODS................................................................................................ 184 Twist of fate ............................................................................................................................ 185 Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander .............................................................................................. 186 NEW WEEKLY CABLE SERIES TO FEATURE PLANETARY CATASTROPHE ...BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP. ...................................................................................................... 186 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 22 (August 31, 1997).............................. 189 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 189 EDITORIAL ........................................................................................................................... 189 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (6)................................................................................. 190 THE GREAT COMET AND THE DEATH OF KINGS ................................................... 190 SOUL OF THE CREATOR-KING .................................................................................... 193 SCIENTISTS DISCOVER MASSIVE JET STREAMS FLOWING INSIDE THE SUN..... 194 REMARKS ON SOLAR JET STREAM WEATHER ........................................................... 195 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 23 (August 17, 1997).............................. 197 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 197
ANNOUNCEMENTS............................................................................................................. 197 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (7)................................................................................. 198 QUETZALCOATL AND THE FEARS OF KINGS.......................................................... 198 MESOAMERICAN ASTRONOMY.................................................................................. 199 HUBBLE FINDS A BARE BLACK HOLE POURING OUT LIGHT ................................. 200 COMMENTS ON BLACK HOLES....................................................................................... 201 What Cannot Be Said in Science ............................................................................................ 201 NARROW DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE............................................................................... 202 STIGMA OF POPULARIZATION.................................................................................... 203 THE POINT OF GENERALIZATION .............................................................................. 204 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 24 (October 20, 1997) ............................ 205 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 205 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (8)................................................................................. 205 VENUS AND COSMIC UPHEAVAL............................................................................... 205 VENUS AND THE END OF THE WORLD ..................................................................... 206 CALENDAR....................................................................................................................... 207 TODAY ON GALILEO ......................................................................................................... 209 ABOUT THOSE "BLOBS IN SPACE" ............................................................................. 210 BLOBS IN SPACE: THE LEGACY OF A NOVA ............................................................... 210 Back to the Drawing Board................................................................................................. 211 Stellar Detectives ................................................................................................................ 211 Waves of Violence.............................................................................................................. 211 Stellar "Tree Rings" ............................................................................................................ 212 Vampire Star ....................................................................................................................... 212 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 25 (November 3, 1997) .......................... 214 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 214 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (9)................................................................................. 214 52-YEAR CALENDAR ROUND ...................................................................................... 214 ONE FEAR, MANY EXPRESSIONS ............................................................................... 216 HERE WE GO AGAIN .......................................................................................................... 216 E-mail Conversations about Uranus and Neptune .................................................................. 218 Re: Saturn's Revolving Crescent......................................................................................... 218 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 26 (November 15, 1997) ........................ 223 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 223 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10)............................................................................... 223
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter DEMONS OF DARKNESS ............................................................................................... 223 MARS MISSION: NASA Mapping Info................................................................................ 225 KRONIA GROUP DISCUSSION: Dialogue on Comets....................................................... 226 WORMS LIVING ON METHANE HYDRATE ................................................................... 230
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 27 (DECEMBER 10, 1997) ................... 231 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 231 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (11)............................................................................... 231 RITES OF SACRIFICE...................................................................................................... 231 LIFE ON MARS ..................................................................................................................... 233 OF CORES AND SOCKETS ................................................................................................. 235 MAGNETIC MARS ............................................................................................................... 235 SPECULATIONS ON MAR'S SPIN RATE .......................................................................... 237 SPECULATIONS ON POLAR CONFIGURATION ............................................................ 238 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 1 (January 15, 1998) ............................. 240 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 240 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (12)............................................................................... 240 VENUS, THE GREAT COMET, AND THE WARS OF THE GODS ............................. 240 IONIZING THE GALAXY.................................................................................................... 244 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 2 (January 31, 1998) ............................. 246 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 246 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (13)............................................................................... 246 SWEEPING AWAY THE NIGHT..................................................................................... 246 HUBBELL CAPTURES A ONE-HIT WONDER ................................................................. 249 THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED ................................................................................ 250 The Great Comet Crash .......................................................................................................... 252 News of interest to catastrophists: .......................................................................................... 253 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 3 (February 15, 1998) ........................... 254 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 254 VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (14)............................................................................... 254 THE MYTH OF THE GREAT COMET............................................................................ 254
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INTERSTELLAR "COMETS"............................................................................................... 256 WOODHENGE FIND RIVALS STONE CIRCLES ............................................................. 257 News of interest to catastrophists: .......................................................................................... 259 Astronomy Picture of the day ................................................................................................. 260 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 4 (February 28, 1998) ........................... 262 A HEARTY WELCOME TO AMY....................................................................................... 263 EUROPA CLOSEUPS............................................................................................................ 263 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTIONS FOR SPACE PROBE.......................................... 264 A GEOLOGIST LOOKS AT VALLES MARINERIS .......................................................... 265 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 5 (March 15, 1998) ............................... 267 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 267 ECHOES ................................................................................................................................. 267 PARADIGM AND PERCEPTION ........................................................................................ 268 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD AVAILABLE .......................................................................... 270 WATERY MOON .................................................................................................................. 270 ANTARCTIC MICROBES .................................................................................................... 271 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 6 (March 31, 1998) ............................... 274 SHAMELESS PROMOTION OF PET PARADIGMS.......................................................... 274 ON THE RELIABILITY OF HUMAN WITNESSES........................................................... 275 FALLACIES OF GRAVITATION ........................................................................................ 277 GEOMAGNETIC FIELD AND DAYS LENGTH ............................................................... 279 EL NINO SLOWS EARTH DOWN .................................................................................. 280 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 7 (April 15, 1998) ................................. 281 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 281 LUNATIC FRINGE OR CUTTING EDGE? ......................................................................... 281 THE LOGIC OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE........................................................................ 282 IF THE HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT, WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?...... 283 MORE THAN ONE TYPHON .............................................................................................. 284 THE GREAT RED SPOT: COMMENTARY........................................................................ 286
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter Jupiter: The Great Red Hurricane ....................................................................................... 286 CYDONIA COMMENTS ...................................................................................................... 287
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 8 (May 15, 1998)................................... 289 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 289 APPLIED CATASTROPHICS............................................................................................... 289 A BRIEF ORIENTATION ..................................................................................................... 290 WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MYTH?.................................................................. 290 BUT YOUR CONCLUSIONS ARE NOT THOSE OF OTHERS WHO DEVOTED LIFETIMES TO THE STUDY OF MYTH. HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO MYTH PRODUCE SUCH SURPRISING CONCLUSIONS? ....................................................... 290 WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? ...................................................................... 291 WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE STATEMENT THAT THE PLANETS APPEARED AS "GIGANTIC BODIES IN THE SKY"?........................................................................ 291 BUT WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE SKY HAS CHANGED SO DRASTICALLY? ............................................................................................................................................. 292 SO YOU ARE CHALLENGING THE IDEA THAT THINGS HAVE NOT REALLY CHANGED THAT MUCH WITHIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM. ........................................ 292 HOW DO YOU DISTINGUISH THESE IDEAS ABOUT "PLANETARY" MYTH FROM THE IDEAS OF OTHER RESEARCHERS SUCH AS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, CARL JUNG AND MIRCEA ELIADE?....................................................................................... 293 WHAT IS THE REAL MESSAGE OF MYTH, IN YOUR VIEW? ................................. 293 COMMENTS ON ELECTRIC STARS.................................................................................. 293 ELECTRICAL EFFECTS OF PASSING BODIES ............................................................... 295 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 9 (May 31, 1998)................................... 297 DINNER WITH WAL & MICHAEL & MEL ....................................................................... 297 ON THE USE OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE...................................................................... 298 YOU'RE SUGGESTING THAT EARLY MAN WITNESSED SPECTACULAR EVENTS IN THE SKY. BUT SKEPTICS WOULD CLAIM THAT ANCIENT RECORDS ARE A HOPELESSLY ELUSIVE SOURCE FOR "PROVING" SUCH A CLAIM..................... 298 SKEPTICS MIGHT SAY THAT YOU CAN "PROVE ANYTHING" BY RESORT TO MYTH................................................................................................................................. 298 AND YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN "PROVE" YOUR CASE ON THE BASIS OF MYTHICAL AND HISTORICAL EVIDENCE? .............................................................. 299 NEVERTHELESS, YOUR DEPENDENCE ON MYTHICAL IMAGES WILL SURELY INSPIRE SKEPTICISM. .................................................................................................... 299 WHAT, THEN, IS THE HEART OF YOUR ARGUMENT? ........................................... 300 AND HOW DO THE PLANETS FIGURE INTO THIS?.................................................. 301 CATASTROPHIC RESEARCH ............................................................................................ 301 THARSIS THOLUS ............................................................................................................... 302
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 10 (June 15, 1998)................................. 305 PUZZLES AND PARADIGMS ............................................................................................. 305 THE MEANING OF MYTH .................................................................................................. 306 THE GOLDEN AGE: VARIATIONS ON A THEME .......................................................... 308 DWARDU CARDONA RESPONDS: ............................................................................... 308 DAVE TALBOTT ALSO RESPONDS: ............................................................................ 309 IMAGES OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE ......................................................................... 310 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 11 (June 30, 1998)................................. 312 ASTRONOMY AS ART ........................................................................................................ 312 NOTES ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD .................................................................... 313 VENUS AS THE DOVE ........................................................................................................ 314 CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS ........................................................................................... 314 A NEW VIEW OF MASS EJECTIONS: WATCHING THE SUN COUGH ....................... 315 What Are CMEs?................................................................................................................ 315 LASCO ............................................................................................................................... 316 The Solar Wind ................................................................................................................... 316 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 12 (July 31, 1998) ................................. 317 OPPORTUNITIES IN CATASTROPHICS ........................................................................... 317 GROUNDRULES FOR RECONSTRUCTING ANCIENT EVENTS (1) ............................ 318 SATURNISTS PLAY MARBLES ......................................................................................... 319 IMPACT: THE ELECTRICAL VERSION............................................................................ 323 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 13 (August 31, 1998) ............................ 325 IT'S STILL THE SAME ELEPHANT ................................................................................... 325 RESPONDING TO A CRITIC............................................................................................... 326 VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY............................................................................................... 329 Grinspoon's Venus .............................................................................................................. 329 Velikovsky's Originality ..................................................................................................... 329 The Youthfulness of Venus: ............................................................................................... 330 THE WORD ACCORDING TO PAM................................................................................... 330 INTERLUDE: THE HISTORIC ELEPHANT ....................................................................... 331 THE ELECTRIC ELEPHANT: SHOCKING VIEWS FROM THE JOVIAN SYSTEM ..... 332
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 14 (September 15, 1998)....................... 334 DYING AND FLYING .......................................................................................................... 334 Heroes of the Iliad................................................................................................................... 335 RETHINKING GRAVITY..................................................................................................... 337 ANTI-GRAVITY FIND STUNS SCIENTISTS ................................................................ 338 ELECTRIFYING NEWS ABOUT IMPACT CRATERS...................................................... 339 Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 339 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 15 (October 1, 1998) ............................. 340 GRAVITATION AS FROG ................................................................................................... 340 THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY" .......................................................................... 341 TWO MAORI MYTHS .......................................................................................................... 343 Number One:....................................................................................................................... 343 Number Two: ...................................................................................................................... 344 THE DOMES ON VENUS..................................................................................................... 345 LICHTENBERG FIGURES ................................................................................................... 346 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 16 (October 15, 1998) ........................... 347 HERONS AND CORMORANTS .......................................................................................... 347 THE COMET VENUS AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD ......................................... 348 ANCIENT FLYING MACHINES ......................................................................................... 351 MORE ON INTRINSIC REDSHIFTS ................................................................................... 352 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 17 (October 31, 1998) ........................... 354 PEPPERONI AND THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE................................................................ 354 ON STABLE AND UNSTABLE WORLDS ......................................................................... 354 HALLOWEEN WITCHES AND GIANTS ........................................................................... 357 JUPITER'S RINGS ................................................................................................................. 360 GALILEO FINDS JUPITER'S RINGS FORMED BY DUST BLASTED OFF SMALL MOONS .............................................................................................................................. 360 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 18 (November 15, 1998) ....................... 362 SEAGULLS AND SCIENTISTS ........................................................................................... 362 THE WARRING GODDESS ATHENA................................................................................ 363 THE EYE GODDESS......................................................................................................... 364 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
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THE SHIELD GODDESS .................................................................................................. 365 PEER REVIEW AND CATASTROPHICS ........................................................................... 366 SPACECRAFT NEARS ASTEROID ORBIT ....................................................................... 366 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 19 (November 30, 1998) ....................... 371 WHY THE SATURN THESIS?............................................................................................. 371 VISUALIZING COLLINEAR SYSTEMS ............................................................................ 372 ELECTROMAGNETICALLY INDUCED LAMARCKISM................................................ 375 SATURNISING...................................................................................................................... 376 PRE-SATURNIAN TIDBITS ................................................................................................ 376 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 20 (December 31, 1998) ....................... 378 SOMETHING NEW UNDER A DIFFERENT SUN............................................................. 378 THE "TERRIFYING GLORY" OF VENUS ......................................................................... 379 CATASTROPHIC'S TESTIMONIALS ................................................................................. 382 ERUPTION or CAPTURE? ................................................................................................... 383 INTERPLANETARY ELECTRIC FUSION ......................................................................... 385 The World's Simplest Fusion Reactor: and how to make it work. ..................................... 385 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 1 (January 15, 1999) ............................ 387 STATE OF THE UNIVERSE: 1999 ...................................................................................... 387 MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (1) ............................... 387 THE SNC-METEORITES.................................................................................................. 389 SCENARIOS OF EJECTION AND TRANSPORT........................................................... 390 MERCURY IN MYTHOLOGY............................................................................................. 393 SUPERFLARES ..................................................................................................................... 394 Superflares Can Zap Planets - Astronomers Puzzle over Other Stars ................................ 394 DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?....................................................................................... 395 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTION CONFIRMED ....................................................... 396 A Baffling New Finding - Sun Shrinks, Then Puffs........................................................... 396 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 2 (January 31, 1999) ............................ 398 CAPTIVES OF SIMPLIFYING ASSUMPTIONS ................................................................ 398 MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (2) ............................... 399 Nergal and Indra ................................................................................................................. 400
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter Rudra................................................................................................................................... 402 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 404 SACRIFICE AND AMNESIA ............................................................................................... 405 PLUTO: A NEW CLASS OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP............................................................ 406 THE SOLAR GAS RECORD IN LUNAR SAMPLES AND METEORITES...................... 406 THE SOLAR GAS RECORD IN LUNAR SAMPLES AND METEORITES.................. 407
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 4 (February 15, 1999) .......................... 408 THE BENEFITS OF CATASTROPHE ARE UNDERAPPRECIATED .............................. 408 THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD ......................................................................................... 409 POLAR CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION ......................................................................... 411 HISTORICAL ANALOGY .................................................................................................... 412 ELECTRIC STAR COMMENTARY .................................................................................... 413 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 5 (March 15, 1999) .............................. 415 THE PARADIGM SHOPPE................................................................................................... 415 MORE TESTIMONIALS....................................................................................................... 416 ELECTRICAL GRAVITY ..................................................................................................... 417 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ELECTRIC SUN...................................................................... 418 GALACTIC CURRENTS AND THE OUTER PLANETS ................................................... 419 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 6 (March 31, 1999) .............................. 421 STEREOSCOPIC VIEWPOINT OF CATASTROPHICS..................................................... 421 THE BIG BANG AS A RELIGIOUS WORK ....................................................................... 422 SHOEMAKER-LEVI SPECULATIONS............................................................................... 423 SUMMARY OF RALPH JUERGEN'S ELECTRIC SUN MODEL...................................... 424 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 7 (April 30, 1999) ................................ 428 THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE............................................................................................... 428 GRAVITY/ELECTRIC DISCUSSION.................................................................................. 429 WHAT TO DO! ...................................................................................................................... 431 MARS' NORTHERN ICECAP .............................................................................................. 432 THE OUTER PLANETS........................................................................................................ 432 PLASMA QUESTIONS ......................................................................................................... 434
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SATURNIAN BIOSPHERE................................................................................................... 434 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 8 (May 31, 1999) ................................. 436 ENTERTAINING CONTRADICTORY THEORIES ........................................................... 436 DESERT GEMS ..................................................................................................................... 437 SATURN CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION ...................................................................... 437 ANOMOLOUS OUTBURSTS............................................................................................... 439 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE IN THE NEWS .............................................................................. 440 THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING...................................................................................... 441 Letter to the editor of the Canberra Times.......................................................................... 443 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 9 (June 15, 1999) ................................. 445 LOOKING UP ........................................................................................................................ 445 SATURNIAN STUDIES ........................................................................................................ 446 SEEING RED: REDSHIFTS, COSMOLOGY AND ACADEMIC SCIENCE..................... 447 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE QUESTIONS ................................................................................. 449 ARE WE GETTING THERE? ............................................................................................... 451 EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO Seeing Red, Quasars, Cosmologies and Academic Science................................................................................................................... 452 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 10 (July 30, 1999)................................ 453 PLAYING THE JOKERS ...................................................................................................... 453 SATURN AND VENUS......................................................................................................... 454 SEEING PINK ........................................................................................................................ 456 THE ARTICLE:.................................................................................................................. 456 SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION -- I .................................................................. 456 Sahara's abrupt desertification started by changes in Earth's orbit, accelerated by atmospheric and vegetation feedbacks................................................................................ 457 SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION -- II................................................................. 458 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 11 (August 15, 1999) ........................... 461 JUMPING FOR JOY .............................................................................................................. 461 COSMIC SYMBOLS ............................................................................................................. 462 THE SPIRAL:..................................................................................................................... 462
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter HEAVENLY TWINS IN EGYPT:..................................................................................... 463 RITUAL BALL GAMES ....................................................................................................... 463 IO's AURORAL LIGHTS ...................................................................................................... 463 Auroral lights on Io reveal secrets of jovian moon's atmosphere ....................................... 464 CIRCULAR ORBITS ............................................................................................................. 465 DEFINING PLASMA ............................................................................................................ 466
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 12 (August 31, 1999) ........................... 469 PARADIGMS AND IDEOLOGIES....................................................................................... 469 BY JOVE ................................................................................................................................ 470 ASTROBIOLOGY ................................................................................................................. 472 CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR IO ................................................................................... 472 CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR JUPITER MOON HINTS AT SALT PRESENCE ON SURFACE........................................................................................................................... 473 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 13 (October 15, 1999).......................... 476 QUOTE OF THE DAY: ......................................................................................................... 476 GRAVITY VS. PLASMA ...................................................................................................... 476 STAR WORDS....................................................................................................................... 478 STATE OF THE UNIVERSE ................................................................................................ 480 ACTION AT A DISTANCE .................................................................................................. 482 SULFURIC ACID ON EUROPA........................................................................................... 483 BATTERY ACID CHEMICAL FOUND ON JUPITER'S MOON EUROPA .................. 483 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 14 (November 1, 1999)........................ 485 MOVING BEYOND FALLING ............................................................................................ 485 THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE............................................................................. 486 IS IT RIGHT? or DOES IT WORK?...................................................................................... 490 WEBSITES OF NOTE ........................................................................................................... 491 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTS GALILEO AT RISK .................................................. 492 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 15 (November 15, 1999)...................... 494 GOING IN CIRCLES ............................................................................................................. 494 MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (2)................................................................................ 495
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THE ACID TEST ............................................................................................................... 496 LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN............................................................................................... 497 UPDATED GALILEO PREDICTIONS................................................................................. 502 CLOSEST EVER PICTURE OF IO....................................................................................... 502 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 16 (December 1, 1999) ........................ 504 CLOSING THE GAP ............................................................................................................. 504 MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (3)................................................................................ 505 CHAOS AND THE RISE OF NEGATIVES. .................................................................... 505 PRIMAL UNITY: THE "ONE" AND THE "ALL". .......................................................... 506 CREATION. ....................................................................................................................... 507 CONJUNCTION................................................................................................................. 507 CATASTROPHIC WORD ORIGINS.................................................................................... 509 THE ABSURDITY OF NEUTRON STARS ......................................................................... 511 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 17 (December 15, 1999) ...................... 515 WHAT SCIENCE SAYS........................................................................................................ 515 THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY.......................... 516 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 516 THE AGE OF DARKNESS ............................................................................................... 517 THE TIMELESS ERA........................................................................................................ 517 THE BEGINNING OF TIME............................................................................................. 518 THE SATURNIAN SUN.................................................................................................... 518 PROGRESS OF "PROGRESS".............................................................................................. 519 IT HAS TO BE MOONGLOW!............................................................................................. 520 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 18 (December 31, 1999) ...................... 522 BLINDNESS, STUPIDITY, AND SPECULATION............................................................. 522 THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (2) .................... 523 THE POLAR STATION..................................................................................................... 524 SATURN 101.......................................................................................................................... 525 CLOSEST FLYBY OF IO...................................................................................................... 527 THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER! ........................................................................... 528 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No. 1 (January 15, 2000)............................ 530 SLIP STICKS AND WRONG THEORIES ........................................................................... 530
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (3...................... 531 THE LITHIC BULGE ........................................................................................................ 531 THE AXIS MUNDI............................................................................................................ 532 THE WHIRLING COLUMN ............................................................................................. 533 THE ENTWINED SERPENTS .......................................................................................... 534 THE WATERY VORTEX ................................................................................................. 535 THE FLOOD FROM THE NORTH................................................................................... 535 THE CHURNING OF THE OCEAN ................................................................................. 536 TEKTITE QUESTION ........................................................................................................... 536 OTHER STARS, OTHER WORLDS, OTHER LIFE............................................................ 537
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No. 2 (January 31, 2000)............................ 541 TRUTH OR FASHION .......................................................................................................... 541 THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: (4) ................... 542 THE ARCTIC CARNAGE................................................................................................. 542 THE ONSLAUGHT OF ICE.............................................................................................. 544 EARTH'S SHIFTING AXIS............................................................................................... 545 SATURN'S DEPARTURE ................................................................................................. 545 KRONIATALK QUESTIONS ............................................................................................... 546 SPANISH ICE BLAMED ON WEIRD WEATHER ......................................................... 547 SHOCKS FROM ETA CARINA ........................................................................................... 547 FOR THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE THERE ARE NO SURPRISES................................ 548 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 3 (February 15, 2000)........................... 549 WHAT IF ................................................................................................................................ 549 CONJUNCTION THEMES.................................................................................................... 550 THE NEUTRINO QUESTION .............................................................................................. 553 REFERENCES: .................................................................................................................. 554 PARADIGM PORTRAITS .................................................................................................... 555 ALIEN SKIES ........................................................................................................................ 556 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 4 (February 29, 2000)........................... 559 FINDING ATLANTIS............................................................................................................ 559 THE NATURAL REFERENCES OF MYTH........................................................................ 560 EVENT AND INTERPRETATION................................................................................... 560 THE ANCIENT STORYTELLER ..................................................................................... 561 UNIVERSAL THEMES OF MYTH .................................................................................. 561 AGE OF GODS AND WONDERS.................................................................................... 562
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GOLDEN AGE................................................................................................................... 562 KING OF THE WORLD .................................................................................................... 563 DOOMSDAY ..................................................................................................................... 563 DYING OR DISPLACED GOD ........................................................................................ 563 WARS OF THE GODS ...................................................................................................... 564 DRAGON OF DARKNESS ............................................................................................... 564 CONNECTIONS ................................................................................................................ 565 MISLEADING NOMENCLATURE...................................................................................... 565 Galileo Millennium Mission Status .................................................................................... 565 THUNDERSTORMS ON JUPITER ...................................................................................... 566 Jupiter's massive storms resemble Earth's but are powered by the planet itself, not the sun, Cornell astronomers say...................................................................................................... 566 LIGHTNING IN JUPITER'S GREAT RED SPOT................................................................ 568 Thunderstorms found to be an energy source for Jupiter's Great Red Spot, other large features................................................................................................................................ 569 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 5 (March 15, 2000)............................... 571 ON SEEING SPECTACLES.................................................................................................. 571 WORLD MOUNTAIN ........................................................................................................... 573 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (2)............................................................................................... 574 ELECTRIC SUN SKEPTICS ................................................................................................. 575 THE SUN'S MAGNETIC FIELD HAS A GOOD MEMORY .......................................... 580 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 6 (March 31, 2000)............................... 582 WANTED: COSMO-CENTRIC IDEAS................................................................................ 582 THE NAME OF GOD ............................................................................................................ 583 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (3): YOUNG GALAXIES ......................................................... 585 SUPERLUMINOUS EJECTION QUESTIONS .................................................................... 587 FOUNTAINS OF IO............................................................................................................... 589 PATTERNS OF HUMAN MEMORY ................................................................................... 589 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 7 (April 15, 2000)................................. 593 CONCEPTUAL CHROMATOGRAPHY.............................................................................. 593 MEMORIES AND SYMBOLS OF PLANETARY UPHEAVAL ........................................ 595 OF PLANETS AND GODS ............................................................................................... 595 PLANETARY UPHEAVAL AND HUMAN MEMORY ................................................. 596 ARCHETYPE AND SYMBOL.......................................................................................... 596 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (4): Galactic Ejections ............................................................... 598 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE ................................................................................ 599
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 8 (April 30, 2000)................................. 602 THE COLOR PURPLE .......................................................................................................... 602 RECONSTRUCTING THE SATURN MODEL.................................................................... 604 IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY............................................................................................ 604 THE ESSENTIAL VELIKOVSKY.................................................................................... 604 VELIKOVSKY'S SATURN HYPOTHESIS ..................................................................... 605 A SATURN MODEL ......................................................................................................... 605 POLAR CONFIGURATION.............................................................................................. 606 MAY 5th CONJUNCTION .................................................................................................... 607 SCIENCE HEADED FOR A BIG BANG.............................................................................. 608 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 9 (May 31, 2000) .................................. 612 I DON'T BELIEVE THIS! ..................................................................................................... 612 THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS ...................................................................................... 614 UNSTABLE SOLAR SYSTEM......................................................................................... 615 IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY............................................................................................ 615 PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: COSMIC JETS .................................................................... 617 IO'S WANDERING PLUMES............................................................................................... 618 WANDERING PLUMES, SEEING RED, AND SLIP-SLIDING AWAY ON IO ........... 618 So NEAR, yet so far from UNDERSTANDING.................................................................... 620 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 10 (June 15, 2000) ................................ 623 FINDER'S FALLACY............................................................................................................ 623 CRACK IN EINSTEIN'S PEDESTAL................................................................................... 624 PARADIGM PORTRAITS V: EJECTION JET .................................................................... 627 BIGGER BUT NOT BETTER ............................................................................................... 628 FORTRESS AND LABYRINTH ........................................................................................... 631 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 11 (July 15, 2000)................................. 636 THE UNIFORMITARIAN PRINCIPLE................................................................................ 636 ON DIAMONDS AND CANYONS AND COMPUTER RESETS ...................................... 637 [1] ANCIENT RIVER THEORY ....................................................................................... 638 [2] HOPI LAKE THEORY................................................................................................. 638 [3] RIVER CAPTURE THEORY ...................................................................................... 639
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[4] REVERSE FLOW THEORY........................................................................................ 639 OF DONKEYS, DONUTS, and WEATHER......................................................................... 640 LABYRYNTHS...................................................................................................................... 641 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 10 (July 31, 2000)................................. 643 SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS.............................................................................................. 643 MALE GODS ......................................................................................................................... 645 PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: NASA BUILDS PLASMA LABS ...................................... 647 FAILED STAR OR FAILED SCIENCE?.............................................................................. 648 A Brown Dwarf Solar Flare................................................................................................ 648 A Giant Starspot on HD 12545........................................................................................... 650 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 13 (August 31, 2000)............................ 651 HOW YOU KNOW................................................................................................................ 651 A UNIFIED THEORY ........................................................................................................... 653 UNIVERSAL MONARCH ................................................................................................ 653 QUEEN OF HEAVEN ....................................................................................................... 654 WARRIOR-HERO ............................................................................................................. 654 PRIMEVAL SEVEN .......................................................................................................... 655 CHAOS MONSTER........................................................................................................... 655 CHAOS HORDES .............................................................................................................. 656 REJUVENATED SOVEREIGN ........................................................................................ 656 Additional Notes ................................................................................................................. 657 CARNIVAL............................................................................................................................ 657 A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE ..................................................... 658 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 14 (September 30, 2000) ...................... 661 A RHINOCEROS SHAPED HOLE....................................................................................... 661 SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT................................................................................ 662 LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO .................................................................... 664 FROM THE FOOTNOTES: ............................................................................................... 666 NON-VELOCITY REDSHIFTS ............................................................................................ 666 Redshifts: The Wolf Effect and Gravitational Redshifts .................................................... 666 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS...................................................................................... 667 WHAT BIG BANG?........................................................................................................... 668 ELECTRIC GALAXIES .................................................................................................... 668 ELECTRIC STARS ............................................................................................................ 669
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 15 (October 15, 2000) .......................... 670 OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND ......................................................................................... 670 ONE STORY TOLD ROUND THE WORLD....................................................................... 671 HUMAN NATURE AND SATURNIAN RITUAL............................................................... 672 STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC........................................................................... 673 PROBLEMS WITH THE THERMONUCLEAR (FUSION) MODEL ............................. 673 THE ELECTRIC SUN HYPOTHESIS .............................................................................. 676 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS (2) ................................................................................ 677 ELECTRIC STARS ............................................................................................................ 677 PLANETS ........................................................................................................................... 677 ELECTRICAL CRATERING ............................................................................................ 678 ELECTRICAL WEATHER................................................................................................ 678 LIFE ITSELF ...................................................................................................................... 678 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 16 (October 31, 2000) .......................... 680 SWIMMING AROUND ROCKS........................................................................................... 680 WHITE CROWN.................................................................................................................... 681 RENS' OUTLINE OF MYTHICAL THEMES ...................................................................... 682 STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (2) ..................................................................... 684 The Electric Sun Hypothesis............................................................................................... 684 Sunspots and Coronal Holes ............................................................................................... 687 ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS: Part III ........................................................................ 688 SOME BASICS .................................................................................................................. 688 A Conventional View of Forces in Physics ........................................................................ 688 Quantum Theory ................................................................................................................. 689 Relativity Theory ................................................................................................................ 689 Gravity ................................................................................................................................ 690 Magnetism........................................................................................................................... 690 Light.................................................................................................................................... 690 Mass .................................................................................................................................... 690 Antimatter ........................................................................................................................... 691 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 17 (December 15, 2000)....................... 692 MATTER, CHARGE, AND CONJECTURES ...................................................................... 692 STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (3) ..................................................................... 693 Prominences, Flares, and CME's ........................................................................................ 694 The Power Source ............................................................................................................... 694 Why Doesn't the Sun Collapse of Its Own Weight? ........................................................... 695 Questions............................................................................................................................. 696 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
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Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 696 References:.......................................................................................................................... 696 RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION .............................................................................................. 697 BRIEF SIS REPORT .............................................................................................................. 699 GALACTIC CONNECTIONS ............................................................................................... 700 RUSSIAN DISCOVERY CHALLENGES EXISTENCE OF 'ABSOLUTE TIME' ......... 700 SPINNING ELECTRONS...................................................................................................... 702 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 1 (January 15, 2001) .............................. 704 ERROR PROBES, TRUTH PROBES, AND SPACE PROBES ........................................... 704 YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND ONE.................................................................................. 706 INTERSECT 2001 .............................................................................................................. 706 THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS .................................................................................. 706 DATABASE. ...................................................................................................................... 706 SNAPSHOTS OF THE POLAR CONFIGURATION....................................................... 706 SCHOLARLY AND SCIENTIFIC OUTREACH.............................................................. 707 PERATT INSTABILITIES. ............................................................................................... 707 HUBBLE TELESCOPE RELEASE CHALLENGED........................................................... 707 A PERPENDICULAR EXPLOSION..................................................................................... 709 STRANGE GRAVITY ........................................................................................................... 713 May the Force Be With You? Mysterious Effect May Influence Spacecraft Trajectories. 714 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 2 (January 31, 2001) .............................. 715 KEYHOLE EPISTEMOLOGY .............................................................................................. 715 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (7): DARK MATTER MAPPING............................................. 716 THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM ............................. 718 INTRODUCTION: ............................................................................................................. 718 THE HR DIAGRAM: ......................................................................................................... 718 STELLAR EVOLUTION:.................................................................................................. 718 ADD A NEW HORIZONTAL AXIS:................................................................................ 719 RED AND BROWN DWARFS: ........................................................................................ 719 MAIN SEQUENCE STARS: ............................................................................................. 719 WHITE AND BLUE STARS: ............................................................................................ 720 FISSIONING: ..................................................................................................................... 720 FG SAGITTAE:.................................................................................................................. 720 ERASER ON EROS ............................................................................................................... 721 BLACK HOLE PROOF A SPOOF ........................................................................................ 722 The Twilight Zone .............................................................................................................. 722 Pulse Trains......................................................................................................................... 723 The Thunderbolts Project http://www.thunderbolts.info
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 3 (February 28, 2001) ............................ 725 QUESTION GRAVITY.......................................................................................................... 725 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (8): COMET TALES ................................................................. 726 DESCRIPTION OF HALE-BOPP TODAY: ..................................................................... 726 THE PUZZLE:.................................................................................................................... 727 CONCLUSION:.................................................................................................................. 727 THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM (2) ....................... 728 Red Giants........................................................................................................................... 728 White Dwarfs ...................................................................................................................... 728 Stars in Globular and Open Clusters................................................................................... 728 Blue Stragglers.................................................................................................................... 729 Variable Stars...................................................................................................................... 729 Gamma Ray Bursters .......................................................................................................... 730 Pulsars ................................................................................................................................. 730 The Crab Pulsar................................................................................................................... 731 Supernova Remnant G11.2-0.3........................................................................................... 731 Electric Star Evolution........................................................................................................ 731 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 732 EROS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS ............................................................................................ 732 MORE MYSTERIES.......................................................................................................... 732 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 4 (March 15, 2001) ................................ 736 WHEN LOGIC FALLS SLOPPY DEAD .............................................................................. 736 THE THUNDERBOLT IN MYTH AND SYMBOL............................................................. 737 SEEKING A UNIFIED THEORY ..................................................................................... 738 WEAPON OF PLANETARY GODS................................................................................. 739 THUNDERBOLT AS ARCHETYPE ................................................................................ 739 RULES OF INVESTIGATION.......................................................................................... 740 ACID TESTS OF A HYPOTHESIS................................................................................... 740 CONVERGENCE OF MYTH AND SCIENCE ................................................................ 741 LABORATORY CONFIRMATION.................................................................................. 741 THE MYTHICAL "CHAIN OF ARROWS" ..................................................................... 741 PERATT INSTABILITY.................................................................................................... 742 BIG BANG GENESIS............................................................................................................ 742 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 5 (April 15, 2001) .................................. 746 REALLY? ............................................................................................................................... 746 OF THUNDERGODS AND CELESTIAL MARVELS ........................................................ 747 EVIDENCE FROM MANY FIELDS ................................................................................ 748 THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE............................................................................................ 749
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DO PLANETS CARRY CHARGE? .................................................................................. 750 WHEN PLANETS SPEAK ELECTRICALLY.................................................................. 751 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (9): DISTANT SUPERNOVAS ................................................ 752 IO-THE ELECTRIC MOON.................................................................................................. 753 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 6 (May 31, 2001) ................................... 755 TOOL TIME B ....................................................................................................................... 755 POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT ......................................... 756 MEMORIES OF DOOMSDAY ......................................................................................... 757 MEMORIES OF PLANETARY DISORDER.................................................................... 757 THE SATURN MODEL..................................................................................................... 758 ARCHETYPES CONCERNING THE GOD OF BEGINNINGS...................................... 758 GODDESS THEMES ......................................................................................................... 759 WARRIOR-HERO THEMES ............................................................................................ 759 A SNAPSHOT OF GATHERED PLANETS..................................................................... 760 PARADIGM PORTRAITS (10): MAPPING THE UNIVERSE ........................................... 760 Scientists Detect the Traces of the Seeds of Cosmic Structures......................................... 761 TWO SPACECRAFT WATCH AN ARC WELDER ON IO................................................ 761 KINKS IN SOLAR WAVES.................................................................................................. 763 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 7 (July 15, 2001) .................................... 765 IN PRAISE OF ORTHODOXY ............................................................................................. 765 IMAGES OF CONFERENCE: INTERSECT 2001 (1).......................................................... 766 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 8 (July 31, 2001) .................................... 776 THE NO-BELIEF BELIEF SYSTEM.................................................................................... 776 INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (2)............................................................... 778 CONFERENCE IMPRESSIONS ........................................................................................... 783 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 9 (August 15, 2001) ............................... 785 IT'S A NEW UNIVERSE ....................................................................................................... 785 INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (3)............................................................... 785 STUDENT VIEWPOINT ....................................................................................................... 794 SUMMING UP ....................................................................................................................... 795 1. Interdisciplinary breadth ................................................................................................. 795 2. Interdisciplinary Corroboration ...................................................................................... 796 3. Evidence.......................................................................................................................... 796
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 10 (August 31, 2001) ............................. 798 THE VICINITY OF THE FAMILIAR................................................................................... 798 SUDBURY NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY REPORT: AN ANALYSIS ............................ 799 THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:.............................................................................. 799 PRESS RELEASES:........................................................................................................... 799 ANALYSIS OF THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: ................................................... 800 SOLAR NEUTRINO PUZZLE IS SOLVED? ....................................................................... 802 WHY DOES THE STANDARD SOLAR MODEL HAVE A NEUTRINO PUZZLE? ... 802 WHAT IS THE NUCLEAR PROCESS THAT IS SUPPOSED TO MAINTAIN THIS UNIMAGINABLE TEMPERATURE?.............................................................................. 802 THE NEUTRINO PROBLEM: .......................................................................................... 803 WHAT IF THE NEUTRINO DISCOVERY IS CORRECT? ............................................ 805 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 11 (October 15, 2001)............................ 807 BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE SKETCH OF THAT "E" WORD.......................................... 807 CELESTIAL CATASTROPHES IN HUMAN PREHISTORY?........................................... 808 BINARY STARS: FUSION VS. COLLISION ...................................................................... 810 MARS AND THE GRAND CANYON ................................................................................. 810 THE GRAND CANYON ................................................................................................... 810 A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SOLUTION................................................................... 812 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 1 (January 15, 2002)............................. 816 CREDIBILITY ....................................................................................................................... 816 THE CAPTURE QUESTION AGAIN................................................................................... 818 THE FUTURE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES ........................................................ 819 MISSING "DARK" MATTER!! ............................................................................................ 820 MACHOs, WIMPs & MOND ............................................................................................ 822 The Real Explanation: Dynamic Electromagnetic Forces in Cosmic Plasmas................... 822 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 823 BROWN DWARFS AND IRON SUNS ................................................................................ 824 Strange Object Found, Defying Ideas of Solar System Formation..................................... 824 Sun Is Mostly Iron, Not Hydrogen ..................................................................................... 825 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 2 (March 15, 2002)............................... 827 THE LOGIC OF PROOF........................................................................................................ 827 LIGHTNING DOGS: in myth and plasma labs...................................................................... 828 DARK RIDER AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS:............................................................. 830
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How is a sprite formed? .......................................................................................................... 830 How a sprite is formed [conventional hypothesis] ............................................................. 831 Toward an Electric Universe model of Sprites ................................................................... 832 Do we have any proof of interplanetary electric currents? ................................................. 834 No one can explain 'stringy things' in space? ..................................................................... 835 Glossary: ............................................................................................................................. 836 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 3 (May 31, 2002) .................................. 838 THE TRUE DISBELIEVER................................................................................................... 838 A YOUNG AMATEUR EXAMINES CRACKPOTTERY IN SCIENCE ............................ 839 MILLISECOND PULSARS:.................................................................................................. 842 Pulsars are simply relaxation oscillators............................................................................. 843 A MYSTERY SOLVED -- WELCOME TO THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE!....................... 844 Solution of the mystery:...................................................................................................... 845 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 4 (June 30, 2002) .................................. 848 GETTING AT THE TRUTH.................................................................................................. 848 FROM: THE MANY FACES OF VENUS ............................................................................ 849 PULSAR REDSHIFT ............................................................................................................. 852 ANTIGRAVITY? ................................................................................................................... 853 Warped Minds..................................................................................................................... 856 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 5 (Aug 30, 2002) .................................. 858 BACK TO BASICS ................................................................................................................ 858 MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (1)............................................................................................. 860 THE AMAZING ROLE OF MICROBES IN GEOLOGY: ARE BIOLOGICAL TRANSMUTATIONS INVOLVED? ................................................................................ 860 PRESERVATION OF FOSSILS........................................................................................ 861 GOLD AND SILVER......................................................................................................... 861 RADIOACTIVITY. ............................................................................................................ 863 WATER ON MARS? ............................................................................................................. 864 Large Former Lake, Catastrophic Flood Identified on Mars .............................................. 865 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 6 (September 30, 2002) ........................ 870 A SPECULATIVE ENTERPRISE ......................................................................................... 870 MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (2)............................................................................................. 871 MANGANESE AND IRON. .............................................................................................. 877 Additional biological roles of microbes:............................................................................. 880
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter MEMO TO EARL STAELIN................................................................................................. 880
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 7 (Oct 31, 2002).................................... 882 SPARKING IMAGINATION ................................................................................................ 882 THE SERPENTS OF CREATION......................................................................................... 883 ENVISIONING THE ANCIENT SKY .............................................................................. 884 SERPENTS IN THE SKY .................................................................................................. 884 THE COSMIC SERPENT IN CREATION MYTHOLOGY............................................. 885 THE "LIVING" POWERS OF HEAVEN .......................................................................... 887 THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS A BEARD..................................................................... 889 THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS LONG-FLOWING HAIR. ........................................... 889 THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS WINGED OR FEATHERED. .......................................... 890 THE SERPENT-DRAGON DISPLAYS HORNS. ............................................................ 890 THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS A TWIN-FORM. .............................................................. 890 DUSTY PLASMA: THE PRIMA MATERIAL OF CREATION ..................................... 890 ABSORPTION LINES IN STELLAR SPECTRA................................................................. 892 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 8 (Dec 15, 2002)................................... 895 MEASURING THINGS ......................................................................................................... 895 BIRTH OF VENUS ................................................................................................................ 897 PARADIGM PORTRAIT (11): NOBEL PRIZE 2002 .......................................................... 899 THE REMARKABLE SLOWNESS OF LIGHT ................................................................... 900 EINSTEIN'S THEORY 'MAY BE WRONG' .................................................................... 900 Star Trek hope..................................................................................................................... 901 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 1 (February 28, 2003).......................... 906 BEYOND DARK AND EMPTY ........................................................................................... 906 DEFINING SCIENCE: SCIENCE, PSEUDOSCIENCE, CRACKPOTS AND SKEPTICISM: WHAT ARE THEY? .............................................................................................................. 908 INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE .................................................................................. 908 WHAT IS SCIENCE?......................................................................................................... 908 WHAT IS PSEUDOSCIENCE? ......................................................................................... 909 WHAT IS A CRACKPOT? ................................................................................................ 909 WHAT ARE SKEPTICS AND SKEPTICISM? ................................................................ 910 WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?........................................................................................ 910 SUNSPOT MYSTERIES........................................................................................................ 911 NEW PHOTOS AF THE SUN ARE MOST DETAILED EVER...................................... 911 WHY IS THE SUN COVERED IN BRIGHT "GRANULES"? ........................................ 914 WHAT CAUSES A SUNSPOT?........................................................................................ 914
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 2 (March 15, 2003).............................. 917 RHINOMORPHIC LACUNAE ............................................................................................. 917 COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND.......................................................................... 918 COLUMBIA: QUESTIONS OF SOME GRAVITY.............................................................. 922 TO THE MOON IN A SPACE ELEVATOR?................................................................... 923 GRAVITY IS THE PROBLEM: UNDERSTANDING IT IS THE SOLUTION.............. 924 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 3 (April 30, 2003)................................ 927 THE MYTHS OF THE ANCESTORS................................................................................... 927 Wolfe Creek Crater ................................................................................................................. 929 STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO.............................................................. 931 HOW TO SEARCH FOR ALIENS........................................................................................ 932 Earth was a freak................................................................................................................. 932 ELECTRIC STARS ............................................................................................................ 934 Where do planets fit into this picture? ................................................................................ 935 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 4 (June 15, 2003)................................. 937 WHAT MOVES?.................................................................................................................... 937 PLANET BIRTHING ............................................................................................................. 939 Planet formation: Worlds apart........................................................................................... 941 SCIENCE REWRITES GENESIS ..................................................................................... 945 THE PREHISTORIC SKY ................................................................................................. 945 THE BOTTOM LINE......................................................................................................... 946 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 5 (July 31, 2003) ................................. 947 WHAT IS ACTUALLY THE CASE?.................................................................................... 947 PLANET BIRTHING - MORE EVIDENCE ......................................................................... 949 Planets Prefer Metal: Stars with high metal content are most likely to harbor planets. ..... 949 SQUASHED STAR FLATTENS SOLAR THEORY............................................................ 951 Flattest star puts astronomers in a spin ............................................................................... 951 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 6 (September 30, 2003)....................... 955 A MATTER OF DEFINITION .............................................................................................. 955 GRAND CANYON REVISISTED ........................................................................................ 957 MYSTERIOUS MARS........................................................................................................... 960 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 7 (October 31, 2003) ........................... 965
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter MYTH..................................................................................................................................... 965 WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ................................................................................................ 966 SPIRAL GALAXIES & GRAND CANYONS ...................................................................... 972 THE ACCEPTED MODEL................................................................................................ 974 IMPLICATIONS OF THE PLASMA MODEL ................................................................. 975
THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 8 (November 30, 2003) ....................... 977 OCKHAM'S BEARD ............................................................................................................. 977 FOOTNOTES: .................................................................................................................... 978 Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations ..................................................................... 979 THE SUN ? Our Variable Star................................................................................................ 981 Solar super-flare amazes scientists ..................................................................................... 982 The Bottom Line ................................................................................................................. 986 Update 25 November 2003: ................................................................................................ 986 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VIII, No 1 (March 15, 2004) ............................ 988 MOONWALKING ................................................................................................................. 988 SPIRIT CHASES A MARTIAN MIRAGE............................................................................ 990 Unweathered surface mineral ............................................................................................. 992 Cohesive Soil ...................................................................................................................... 993 Chlorine and Sulfur............................................................................................................. 993 Spirit Finds Carbonates....................................................................................................... 994 Hollow Mystery for Mars Rover......................................................................................... 995 THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VIII, No 2 (March 31, 2004) ............................ 998 SCIENTIFIC INFIDELITIES................................................................................................. 998 OLBER'S PARADOX .......................................................................................................... 1000 OPPORTUNITY FAVORS THE HERETIC ....................................................................... 1002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 1 (January 25, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: WELCOME WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW PLANETS, STARS AND PLASMA PHYSICS ARCTIC CLIMATE SHIFTS
Michael Armstrong Walter Radtke David Talbott Wallace Thornhill Clark Whelton
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
By Michael Armstrong 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, phycisist 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
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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."
WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT

By Walter Radtke 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 nonVelikovskian 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
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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.
SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW

By David Talbott THE FOLLOWING IS EXCERPTED FROM A SUMMARY-IN-PROGRESS ON A PRIVATE EMAIL GROUP The origins of ancient mythology; the birth of the first civilizations; a violent history of the solar system: these are the primary themes of what has been called the "Saturn Theory." In the broadest sense, what I have proposed is an explanation of the myth-making epoch as a whole. Astronomers and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and students of ancient myth and religion are asked to reconsider the most common assumptions about ancient history, including many that have rarely if ever been doubted. The underlying principles of the theory are these: 1. Major changes in the planetary order, some involving Earth- threatening catastrophes, have occurred within human memory. 2. Through myth, ritual and symbol around the world, our ancestors preserved a global record of these tumultuous events. 3. The first civilizations arose from ritual practices honoring, imitating and memorializing these events and the planetary powers involved. It should go without saying that if these principles are correct, there is an extraordinary evidential value to the mythical-cosmological underpinnings of the first civilizations. Hence, the communications challenge: this evidential value is virtually never acknowledged by conventional schools. Nevertheless, the model I have offered holds one advantage that prior catastrophist notions based on ancient testimony have lacked. It is specific enough to be easily disproved on its own ground if wrong. Whatever else one may think of the thesis, it meets this test of a good theory.
THE POLAR CONFIGURATION

The theory holds that a unique congregation of planets preceded the planetary system familiar to us today. For earthbound witnesses, the result was a spectacular, at times highly unified apparition in the heavens, the obsessive focus of human attention around the world. For more than 20 years, I have claimed that this fear-inspiring image once stretched across the northern sky, towering over ancient starworshippers. I termed this planetary arrangement the polar configuration because it was centered on the north celestial Pole. And I have proposed that the history of this
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configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in the fantastic stories, pictographs and ritual reenactments of the first star worshippers. A vast field of data is therefore available to the investigator. Remarkably similar pictures of a "sun" in the sky, revealing no similarity to our sun today. A pictographic crescent placed on the orb of the "sun" and a radiant "star" placed squarely in its center. The universal chronicles of a cosmic mountain, a pillar of fire and light rising along the world axis. The myth of a central sun or motionless sun at the celestial pole. Identification of this ancient "sun" with the planet Saturn in early astronomies. A radiant city or temple of heaven, providing the prototype for the sacred habitation on earth. Global memories of a star-goddess with long-flowing hair. An angry goddess raging across the sky with wildly disheveled hair, threatening to destroy the world. A flaming serpent or dragon disturbing the celestial motions or attacking the land. An ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star-goddess to vanquish the chaos-serpent or dragon. Is it even possible that such diverse motifs could have a unified explanation? Well, one fact remains uncontested after many years of publishing on this subject. The hypothesized planetary configuration does predict or account for hundreds of ancient themes never before explained--and at a level of detail or specificity that could not be denied. Indeed, I have gone so far as to brashly claim that not a single general motif of ancient myth, ritual or symbolism is left unexplained in the most straightforward way by the model. And that's what I mean when I say the model supports a general theory of ancient symbolism as a whole. It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that the historical argument for the polar configuration is fully testable against a massive historical record. And I would hope that this will provide some assurance to those unnerved by the source material (ancient testimony): if the model is fundamentally incorrect, the experts on ancient myth and symbolism will have no trouble whatsoever refuting it. Vine Deloria, author of the recently-published book, *Red Earth, White Lies*, has asked a couple of questions which I would like to address. But not in one shot, because the questions are too fundamental for that. I'd like to see if I can divide the issues into segments that could make for useful discussion. The Saturn theory arose from a "historical argument," in the sense that the argument relates to the human past, as implied by the details of human memory in ancient times and by human artifacts. I shall offer this series of summaries as an exercise in clarifying the historical argument, without the aid of visual presentation. One obvious and immediate question is whether something as ambiguous as myth could actually qualify as "evidence"? The historical argument focuses on *points of agreement* in the memories of widespread races, suggesting levels of coherence often missed by historians and anthropologists, and raising the possibility that this coherence arises from a core of human experience that has been missed as well. There is an overarching idea in this argument. We've not only misunderstood the past, we've failed to recognize the consistency of ancient memory in pointing to extraordinary events never considered by modern science. Remarkably, every motive of our early ancestors directs our attention to experiences impossible to comprehend in terms of any natural phenomena occurring today. This consistency will be seen even at the most fundamental levels of human memory, in the most deeply-rooted themes of the first civilizations-The universal memory of a former age of the gods. The universal memory of an ancestral Golden Age, inaugurating the age of the gods. The universal memory of a celestial "king of the world" whose life inspired the ancestral leap into civilization. Descriptions of the gods as luminaries of immense size and power, wielding weapons of thunder and stone. The universal claim that the ancient world evolved by critical phases or cycles, punctuated by sweeping catastrophe. Global traditions of gods and heroes ruling for a time, then departing amid terrifying spectacles and upheavals. The frequently-stated transfiguration of the departed gods into distant "stars". The identification of these ruling gods with planets in the first astronomies. The relentless urge of starworshippers to draw pictures of celestial forms never seen in our
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sky. Their desperate yearning to recover the semblance of a lost cosmic order. Their collective efforts to replicate, in architecture, the towering forms claimed to have existed in primeval times. Their festive recreations, through mystery plays and symbolic rites, of cosmic violence and disorder. Their repetition, through ritual sacrifice, of the deaths or ordeals of the gods. Their brutal and ritualistic wars of expansion, celebrated as a repetition of the cosmic devastation wrought in the wars of the gods. Such motives as these constitute, in fact, the most readily verifiable underpinnings of ancient ritual, myth and symbol. How strange that in their incessant glance backwards, the builders of the first civilizations never remembered anything resembling the natural world in which we live! What is needed in the face of unusual but widely repeated memories is brutal intellectual honesty. How did human consciousness, emerging from the womb of nature, converge on the same improbable ideas *contradicting* nature? For centuries we've lived under the illusion that our ancestors simply made up explanations of natural phenomena they didn't understand. But that's not the problem. What the mythmakers interpreted or explained through stories and symbols and ritual re-enactments is an unrecognizable world, a world of alien sights and sounds, of celestial forms, of cosmic spectacles and earth-shaking events that do not occur in our world. *That* is the problem. From an evaluation of the global themes of ancient cultures, we have hypothesized a world order never imagined by mainstream theory--a world in which *planets* moved on different courses, appearing huge in the sky. Heaven-spanning celestial forms dominated human imagination to the point of obsession at the time of civilization's birth. Our contention will be that hundreds of ancient themes speak for a unified experience, an experience more specific in context and detail than any of us had ever imagined when we started our research. No universal theme stands alone or in isolation from any of the others. All are connected. All speak for the presence of a coherent memory beneath the surface of seemingly random detail. In offering these summaries, I am not asking or expecting anyone to embrace the extraordinary theory of planetary history involved, only to consider highly interesting evidence. One of the values of this reinterpretation of evidence is that the model *works*. It explains the subject matter. Even if you do not for an instant believe that the suggested events occurred, merely discovering the active memory will throw remarkable new light on the ancient structures of human consciousness. In the course of these summaries, questions and challenges will be welcome, and wherever possible I will try to incorporate these into the narrative as we go along. Dave
PLANETS, STARS, AND PLASMA PHYSICS

By Wallace Thornhill Hello everyone from Down Under! Dave has asked me to give a summary of my interest and position in the debate about the Saturnian configuration. I was one of the early science undergraduates, in the late 50's, who had read Velikovsky's works before entering University. In my naivet, I thought that no questions were taboo in the halls of academe. To my surprise and profound disillusionment with "experts", I soon discovered that this was not so. I then began to do what Dave has done and looked for further evidence, working on my own. So far as I know, I was the only science undergraduate who haunted the anthropology section of the library bookshelves. It was enough to convince me that there was a major case to be explored for a "recent" rearrangement of the solar system.
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I did not pursue the mytho-historical threads, since my first love is astronomy. But I have applied the same principles in that field that Dave has done in his work--that is, pattern recognition and matching. The results have been very encouraging and interesting. I should state my prejudices concerning the present state of science. I would characterize the scientific age as being the age of homo sapiens ignoramus. To be specific about our ignorance in the areas most likely to affect the Saturnian configuration, I would list the following:
GRAVITY
Einstein, with his geometric DESCRIPTION of gravity has held back understanding by the better part of a century. The most promising work in EXPLAINING gravity is being done by a handful of Classical Physicists who see it as a minute imbalance in electrostatic forces associated with fundamental particles. The recent announcement of the accidental discovery of gravitational shielding by a rotating superconductor seems congruent with the classical approach. It certainly could not be predicted from the current metaphysics of gravity theory.
ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES
This is crucial. We do not understand what causes earthly lightning so we are unlikely to acknowledge plasma discharges in space. The little plasma physics that astronomers are taught is flawed: that plasmas are electrically neutral and superconducting (they trap magnetic fields). So apart from gravity, magnetism is the only other force we hear about. We are told that energetic events on the Sun are due to "magnetic reconnection" (whatever that means). The strongest force (barring nuclear)--electrical--is never mentioned. We find it easy on Earth to generate x-rays using electric discharges, but astronomers insist on Nature doing it the hard way in space. It is also not generally known that electrical discharges are very efficient at removing material against gravity and dumping it into space or onto another nearby object.
STARS
We do not understand what makes them tick. As Ralph Juergens said in the 70's, practically every feature of our Sun has no business being there if it is purely a thermonuclear engine radiating into space. Magnetic fields do not occur without an associated electric current. The Sun is essentially an extended, conducting plasma subject to electric stress. The phenomenon we call the Sun is purely a ball of lightning. That the Earth and other planets intercept some of the galactic plasma discharge is shown by the recent discovery of diffuse stratospheric discharges (sprites), x-rays and gamma-rays above earthly storms. This is a precise analogue of the corona (x-rays), chromospheric glow discharge and photospheric lightning (granulations are the tops of the discharges) on the Sun. The umbra of a sunspot gives us a glimpse of the true temperature of the body of the Sun. As a result of this realization, it follows that the conventional stellar evolutionary story is pure fiction. Stars are what they are because of their environment. Their variability is caused by their environment, not their internal workings. This explains the speed with which some stars change their characteristics. Heavy elements are not built up solely in supernovae, but at the surface of all stars in the non-thermal compression and acceleration of plasma discharges (granulations). Hence, nucleosynthesis and what little neutrino production there is fall as the sunspot number increases. The differential rotation of the Sun, its magnetic field and the sunspot cycle are all influenced by the Sun's passage across large Birkeland currents flowing along, and defining the arms of our galaxy.
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PLANET FORMATION
The Laplacian theory and its variants are garbage. The Hubble Space Telescope has shown that in regions of star formation large bodies are being shot out as if from a gun, which is peculiar if gravity is the operative force. Once again plasma discharges provide a mechanism which can simply explain this. The view is that diffuse hydrogen and dust is efficiently scavenged and compressed by the well known magnetic pinch effect of an electric current flowing along the arms of a galaxy. At some point gravity takes over and stellar objects are formed. Beyond a certain size proto stars become electrically unstable and "fission", spitting out some of the core and giving rise to one or more companions. This explains the predilection for stars to be found in pairs or multiples. Not all of the matter ejected from the core of a proto-star may coalesce into a companion star. It may be in the form of one or a number of gas giants. (The recent discovery of a Jupiter-like body orbiting very close to a nearby star argues strongly for this model and against the standard theory). A gas giant, in turn, due to either internal or external electrical disturbance may fission, spitting out its core, to give rise to the highly condensed planets, moons, asteroids, comets etc.
COSMOLOGY
All of the above gives rise to the conviction that cosmology should be in the hands of the plasma physics experimenters (not the theorists). It is ironic that they have been chasing the holy grail of fusion power "just like the Sun", when that is patently wrong. (Interestingly, a recent breakthrough in fusion energy research came about in my home town, Canberra, when the researchers configured their plasma discharge in the form of a Birkeland current ring - a precise analogue of that flowing along the arms of our galaxy). But astronomers will continue to be surprised by results pouring in from space probes when their fundamental paradigms rest on Newtonian and billiard-ball physics. The current paradigm has no predictive power whatsoever. The book "The Big Bang Never Happened" by Eric J Lerner is a pointer to the cosmology of the 21st century. So, what are the patterns that apply from all this to the Saturnian Configuration (SC)? The following are some ideas: 1. The core discharge mechanism of planet formation is a plausible way to generate the SC, a string of objects with the largest near the middle. 2. The reliance on the degree of electric stress in the enveloping plasma for the characteristics of the larger bodies enclosed in that plasma could see rapid changes occur, even the disruption of one of the stellar or gas giant objects. It could certainly involve jets of material being emitted by such bodies and forming a diffuse cloud enveloping the SC. It could also be the destabilising influence which finally breaks it up. 3. As seen in the high speed objects shooting out of the Orion Nebula, plasma discharges taking place in the core of a star or gas giant can result in considerable acceleration of the resultant debris. This may provide some of the source of the energy required to position Jupiter and Saturn much farther out in our solar system. The redistribution of charge amongst objects in a solar radial field also REQUIRES that their orbits will change. 4. Charged bodies orbiting eccentrically in a radial electric field around the Sun will dissipate energy through electromagnetic induction heating in such a way as to quickly spiral into a circular orbit. For any object with a high eccentricity, electrical breakdown will occur within its Langmuir sheath and cometary discharge phenomena will be seen, regardless of its size (Venus?). 5. If gravity is essentially an electrostatic phenomenon, the unusual environment of the Saturnian configuration would be expected to have caused a difference in the perceived gravity at the surface of the Earth. It is conceivable that the electric stress within the plasma sheath enclosing
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the SC was less than that which the Earth endures in its current solar environment. This would result in an effective lower gravity. The breakup of the SC would have caused a sudden change. An interesting sidelight to this idea is that the apparent very low density of Saturn may be due to the use of a UNIVERSAL Gravitational constant in the determination. There may be no such thing! (Measurements of G in laboratories on Earth don't seem to agree). In Saturn's electrical environment we may have shared an apparent low gravity. 6. Various odd phenomena associated with plasma discharges would have been observed from Earth and should appear in ancient depictions of the SC. These include helical, serpentine glows surrounding a central column or twined rope-like around each other. These would be representations of Birkeland currents flowing between planets enveloped in the same plasma sheath. The number of "strands" may have varied and given rise to the depictions of Venus with different numbers of radiants. We should also look at photographs from deep space of "exploding stars" for clues to the imagery since they are electric discharge phenomena writ large. One example is where we see bright rings at the bases of cones. From below, they would possibly look like rings around the column or a series of flared skirts. Another effect is seen in discharge tubes filled with low pressure gas where a series of light and dark bands are formed transverse to the discharge axis. This might give rise to a kind of "stairway to heaven" or ziggurat appearance. Then there is the self-contained plasmoid, a corkscrew within an overall football shape which forms the interplanetary equivalent of lightning and appears to have been depicted as Zeus' thunderbolt.
I have looked in some detail at chondritic meteorites which I expect to be left-overs from a planetary discharge event. They show all the characteristics to be expected of material that has been subjected to flash heating, acceleration, collision and ion implantation in a spatially restricted compressed gas stream together with isotopic modification by enhanced radiation, followed by sudden cooling - all the symptoms of a plasma discharge. I predicted that the features of the enigmatic chondrule shells could be reproduced in the lab in a plasma oven. (A planetary discharge is a very effective way for Martian meteorites to have been created). Very strong evidence for planetary electrical scarring comes from the Magellan Orbiter images of Venus. Also, the Jovian moon, Europa was presumably a part of the SC and would also have been subject to electrical scarring. I predict that when closeups of Europa are available in December, the so-called cracks in the ice will be found to be electric discharge channels with the raised levees on either side and the dark-light-dark cross section caused by discharge modification of the excavated material. (In the manner of the green glass beads formed from the melted soil excavated by an electric discharge along the lunar rilles). The "cracks" on Europa show no lateral displacement where they intersect, though displacement would be expected if they were due to shifting ice. Discharge channels will throw material from the younger channel into the older where they intersect. Cracks should not show this characteristic. After that I need a long, cold Fosters! Wal Thornhill
ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGES

By Clark Whelton The discussion about mammoths on Wrangel Island in the Arctic prompts me to re-post an earlier message about well-preserved temperate forests at 79 degrees north latitude. The discovery of nonmineralized fresh-looking deciduous trees and the fossils of tropical fauna on Axel Heiberg Island still strikes me as remarkable. Clark W.
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(Reposted message below) The appeal to continental drift does not explain the well-preserved remains of temperate forests discovered on Axel Heiberg Island, which, at 79 degrees n. latitude, is deep within the Arctic Circle. Articles in "Canadian Geographic" (Vol. 106, no. 6) and "Equinox" (May-June 1986) describe the surprise that awaited a member of the Geological Survey of Canada when he arrived on Axel Heiberg in 1985. "He had found the remains of a 45 million year old forest just 1,100 kms. from the North Pole... The sense of being transported into the past is made all the more real by the remarkable preservation of the fossils. The wood (swamp cypress and dawn redwood) has not been altered through all this time; it looks and feels like freshly cut wood -- it splits and splinters, it can be carved with a knife, and it burns as readily as kindling. Most impressive of all, it still has that reddish hue we often find in softwood lumber. The only thing missing is the scent (of fresh wood)." The fallen tree trunks of the deciduous trees and their still-rooted stumps were perfectly preserved. Beneath a layer of silt were found well-preserved leaf mats. "Sorting through these mats is much like probing beneath a modern forest." On Ellesmere Island, also in the high Arctic, have been found "tree trunks so perfectly preserved they give the illusion of having fallen yesterday, rather than 50 million years ago. A close examination of the fossilized wood revealed regular growth rings, a sign of seasonality... the Arctic trees (had been) growing in swamps, which were also inhabited by alligators and giant salamanders (and numerous other tropical and temperate fauna)." It's not clear how deciduous trees and reptiles survived six months of Arctic darkness, let alone the accompanying cold. And, regarding continental drift: Axel Heiberg is today only a few hundred kilometres closer to the North Pole than it was when these forests flourished. Clark W.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 2 (February 5, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION RED SPRITES AND BLUE JETS SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW (2) OLDEST KNOWN STONE TOOLS? GIZEH PYRAMID IRON PLATE
Michael Armstrong Wal Thornhill David Talbott Michael Armstrong Clark Whelton
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

When Saturn ruled the skies alone That golden Age, to Gold unknown, This Earthly Globe to thee assign'd Receiv'd the Gifts of all Mankind. ~Johnathan Swift, A Panegyric on the Dean
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong As we publish this second edition of the THOTH newsletter, the catastrophic reconstruction of ancient history is alive and well based on an ever- deepening understanding of the ancient sources, records, mythologies, and cultural themes, as well as a developing understanding of the electric/plasma nature of the universe. The best source of information about what happened in ancient times is, of course, the witnesses themselves. But this testimony is only the beginning and must, in the final analysis, be reconciled with what science can tell us about physically plausibility, the geological record, and other data bearing on our reconstructions. This is essentially what has been happening in an ongoing debate between catastrophists and the scientific mainstream, and you can expect an acceleration of discussion in the coming months and years. There is reason to believe that, just a few thousand years ago, ancient cultures around the earth worshipped the planet Saturn as the "sun"-god, and under the duress of cosmic upheaval they sacrificed their children in that name. These ancient nations were not ignorant or sub-human savages, but the builders of advanced civilizations. Why did they worship a planet as a sovereign god? The reconstruction presented in this newsletter will suggest that they lived under a much different celestial environment than our own. The mission of THOTH is to offer for discussion a new view of our cosmic history, based on the universal testimony of ancient sources, buttressed by the most relevant information coming from the hard sciences. Our contention will be that ancient sources and solar system physics make possible an entirely new way of seeing planetary history and the evolution of human consciousness.
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Below is a preliminary list, as promised, of themes you will find explored in this and subsequent issues of the THOTH newsletter: New models of planetary history based on systematic cross-cultural comparison. Global myths and symbols of an alien sky. Scars of planetary violence in the solar system, as exposed by recent space exploration. The new catastrophist profile of the planet Venus, resulting from the Magellan probe. Those improbable meteorites from Mars. The mystery of former oceans and rivers of Mars. Evidence of massive electrical scarring on the Moon, Venus, Mars, and (most recently) Jupiter's moon Europa. Unified approaches to electricity and gravity. From chaos to order. Dynamical issues arising from new "catastrophist" hypotheses. Principles affecting the present stability of the solar system and the circularization of orbits within geologically brief spans of time.
This is, of course, only a preliminary listing of key theoretical issues, and the list will doubtless be expanded as our discussion proceeds.
RED SPRITES AND BLUE JETS

By Wallace Thornhill On 26 December, 1996, while I was enjoying the hospitality of Dave Talbott and Walter Radtke at Kronia Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon, there was a very interesting segment on the Discovery Channel on the topic of "blue jets" and "red sprites" above lightning storms. The final words were: "...we don't understand them at all". At the Cambridge '93 and '94 Portland symposia I had offered the following explanation: The principal difficulty in understanding the origin of lightning is likely to be the assumption that the Earth is a closed electrical system with no input from the solar plasma environment via the plasmasphere (magnetosphere in the conventional lexicon). As long ago as the McMaster symposium in 1974, it was reported by a physicist from Cornell University that a glow discharge between the ionosphere and the centre of a hurricane was observed from an orbiting satellite. Low light cameras have captured discharges originating 14km above the Earth over storm clouds, rising like fountains another 20km into the stratosphere [1]. Our Earth-centered view is exemplified by the researcher's comment that it is one way for the storm to dissipate energy into the magnetosphere. Instead, it would seem reasonable to suggest that storm clouds which span great heights offer a convenient path to ground for charge originating in the ionosphere. As further evidence of this phenomenon, in April 1990 the space shuttle photographed on the horizon: ...a lightning bolt extending an estimated 31 kilometres into clear air above an isolated thunderstorm. At least 15 pilots have reported seeing such lightning at some lime in their flying careers. [2] In the summer of 1992, two pilots flying at midnight at 41,000 feet, six miles from a storm cell, reported they: ...were startled [to say the least] by a massive single stroke of vertical lightning coming straight out of the cell. Massive describes not only its 'thickness' but the altitude above us to which it
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seemed to penetrate. It seems reasonable to guess this thing went 20,000-30,000 [feet] above us, perfectly straight, no 'branches' and no 'flickering'. [3]
Lightning occurring preferentially in the evening, and cloud clearing after a day of rain, may be associated with observed changes in the ionospheric layers. Everyone is familiar with the change in radio reception at dusk, which is due to decay of the lower ionosphere. Meteorologists may be missing a major energy input into weather systems by ignoring ionospheric electricity. [1] R C Franz et al, Science 249 (1990), p 743. [2] J McClellan, Flying 120:7 (July 1993), pp 9,10. [3] R M Baird, Flying 120:9 (September 1993), p 14. Since those earlier symposia, gamma ray bursts were accidentally observed coming from higher levels again. By way of confirmation of electric discharges extending from space into the ionosphere, I should mention the enigmatic "spokes" in Saturn's rings. The spokes are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. sporadic in occurrence; occur preferentially where the ring is emerging from shadow; occur in a particular magnetic sector of Saturn; are formed radially in less than 5 minutes; decay with the distortion expected of Keplerian movement of the ring particles; have shapes classified as 'broad with diffuse edges', 'sharply defined wedges' pointing to Saturn, and 'filamentary'. 7. appear to co-rotate with Saturn. The appearance of the spokes is said to be caused by displacement of ring particles above the ring plane by some unexplained mechanism (ionized meteor trails was one suggestion). All of these phenomena, collectively, seem to be an analogue of the electrical activity seen on the 'surface' of the sun. That is, the blue jets are equivalent to spicules on the sun, which spew ions into the chromosphere to add charge carriers to the plasma in order to carry the electrical discharge load. The red sprites are equivalent to the long streamer discharges seen to advantage in the penumbra of sunspots. This would make the 'tufted' tops of the red sprites equivalent to the solar granules. The gamma ray bursts above that again are equivalent to the x-rays and gamma rays in the sun's corona. This would mean that all planets in the solar system have a source of external energy other than the radiant energy received from the sun. The planets are intercepting directly some of the energy which drives the sun! This would help explain the curious energetic plasmaspheres, weather systems and excess heat being radiated by the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. It also offers the possibility that there may be life supporting possibilities away from the electrical influence of a star like our sun. More on that idea later. Wal Thornhill
SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (2)

By David Talbott Vine Deloria, one of the most enjoyable speakers I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, has provided a catalyst here. I'd like to respond in discrete steps, to avoid getting ahead of myself.
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As to myth interpretation--if we have some scenario that suggests unusual physical activities and then find in so-called myths FACTS that must connect to the storyline we are in good shape. I think basically that is what Talbott is doing. I only wish it was clearer. Vine is certainly not the only one. But there's a dilemma here. Unlike many competing catastrophist models, the "Saturn theory" involves explicit pictures showing *exactly* what we are proposing the ancients saw. And the claimed celestial images relate specifically to the positions of *planets* in the sky, planets that are *named*. Moreover, the proposed celestial forms behave in an incredibly precise way. Hence, this behavior can be tested against all domains of evidence globally. A picture of one phase in the hypothesized planetary configuration is shown on the Kronia Communications website. [See listing of websites at the end of this newsletter.] The claimed celestial form is very specific, as I'm sure all will agree. Readers of this submission who are unaware of the proposed collinear planetary arrangement are referred to either the video documentary, "Remembering the End of the World," or the first overview article in AEON: A Journal of Myth and Science (IV:3). But there is also an issue of methodology. How can we prove something we are claiming was remembered and celebrated above all else around the world? In the methodology I am suggesting, nothing counts as ground floor evidence except *points of agreement* between widely disbursed cultures. To follow this methodology religiously is to have--well, a religious experience. Suddenly, it becomes crystal clear that ancient races really *did* remember things which, under the spell of the now-uneventful solar system, we have forgotten. I listed several fundamental and universal principles in my first submission. But it occurs to me that, in working from the general to the specific, I did not start at the *most* elementary level. For example, Vine asked the question, How many mythical themes are there? Well, it all depends. At one level--the most fundamental level of all--there is only one story, told with a thousand symbols. Here is rough paraphrase of "THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD." Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. Creator-king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the *exemplary* epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations. But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens. And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens. THE END Is it really possible that this *one story*--a story so pristine and elementary--was remembered around the world? Is it really possible that all of the recurring storylines of world mythology are only a part of this singular story? Yes, I will swear by this. In fact I am eager for a challenge to this sweeping and seemingly outrageous statement. (A challenge will often help me to clarify such statements, in a context of interest to the one issuing the challenge.) But remember: I DID NOT SAY THAT I GAVE YOU THE WHOLE STORY. For example, I did not mention the mother goddess, and I did not mention the ancestral warrior-hero. Both are inseparable linked to this one story. But we're going for simplicity here.
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Now let's go back to the most pervasive motivations of early civilizations, a topic I noted in my earlier submission. Is it possible to reduce the cited motives of ancient cultures to more elementary principles, without falling into the reductionist fallacy? I think it is, indeed, possible. There is a singular principle, for example, that is beyond dispute: the builders of the first civilizations were incessantly looking backwards. In the first expressions of civilization, human imagination was dominated entirely by *things remembered*. Moreover, two contradictory impulses will be discerned in this alignment to the past, and neither will make any sense in terms of conventional assumptions about human history. One impulse is nostalgia, a yearning for something remembered above all else, but lost. The second impulse is terror: the pervasive, ever-present fear that something terrible that happened in the past will happen again. No civilization in the ancient world failed to express these contrasting motives, reflected in monument-building, commemorative rites, hymns and prayers to the gods, kingship rites, ritual sacrifice, and holy war. How is this to be explained? One possibility has been consistently overlooked by the specialists--the possibility that celestial events of an unimaginable scale cast their shadow over all of civilization. But why do nostalgia and terror exist side by side in such a paradoxical relationship? A comparative approach will show that this is no accident, that a unified memory lies behind both of the expressions--the memory of an ancient "paradisal" condition, the mythical "Golden Age," giving way to overwhelming catastrophe, universal darkness, cosmic tumult, and wars of the gods. Look at the deepest yearning of civilization's builders, and you will see the yearning for paradise, a desperate longing to recover the lost Golden Age. For the Egyptians this was the revered Golden Age of Ra, and for the ancient Sumerians it was the Golden Age of An--a theme reverberating around the world. But now look at the deepest fears of the same peoples, and you will see the Doomsday anxiety, the terror of the great catastrophe. This is not an isolated memory, but a memory inseparably linked to the theme of the ancestral paradise. The remembered events were not just catastrophic; they were the events that brought the Golden Age to an end, when the sky was overrun by chaos. Two seemingly incompatible motives trace to a common experience, and both bring us back to the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Hence, the implication cannot be avoided. Something extraordinary was remembered by the first skywatchers, something profound and yet unexplained.
THE OLDEST KNOWN STONE TOOLS, OR BAD DATING?

By Michael Armstrong According to the LA Times--Washington Post news service on January 22,1997, scientists announced the discovery of the world's oldest stone tools, dated about 2.5 million years old. Some 3000 tools were discovered between 1992 and 1994 in arroyos of the Ethiopian badlands and supposedly show that the prehuman creatures that made and used them were "surprisingly sophisticated" toolmakers. Of course these scientists are excited about the implications of this anomaly and are speculating about pre-hominid toolmakers, an undiscovered early species of Homo, etc. According to the news service article, the fist-sized cobble tools "were sandwiched between layers of volcanic rock and ash that could be precisely dated by the Berkeley Geochronology Center using radioisotope and paleomagnetic techniques." The exciting implication of the finding, of course, is that it pushes "back the origins of technology by at least 250,000 years." Well, what's another quarter million years when you've got "meellyuns and beelyuns." Precisely what they should get excited about is the non-validity of their dating methods. But noooooh...
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GIZEH PYRAMID IRON PLATE

From: Clark Whelton The message below was posted in the Ancient Wisdom conference. Has anyone heard of this iron plate before? It was news to me. Clark The following information about the iron plate episode comes from "Keeper of Genesis": On Friday, 26 May 1837, after a couple of days of blasting and clearing [the southern shaft of the Kings Chamber at the Great Pyramid (GP)], Hill discovered the flat iron plate mentioned... Vyse [Hill's boss] was soon afterwards to trumpet it in his monumental opus, "Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh," as "the oldest piece of wrought iron known", but Hill at the time was content to write up the discovery in the proper, sober manner: This is to certify that the piece of iron found by me near the mouth of the air-passage, in the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, on Friday, May 26th, was taken out by me from an inner joint, after having removed by blasting the two outer tiers of the stones of the present surface of the Pyramid; and that no joint or opening of any sort was connected with the above mentioned joint, by which the iron could have been placed in it after the original building of the Pyramid. I also shewed the exact spot to Mr Perring , on Saturday, June 24th. Perring was a civil engineer. He examined the find spot with Marsh, another civil engineer. Both came to the conclusion that the iron plate was contemporary with the Pyramid, ie. inserted while the Great Pyramid was being built. The plate was sent to the British Museum, where the feeling was the iron plate could not have been contemporary as iron was supposedly unknown in the Pyramid Age. However, two series of examinations (done in 1881 and 1989) clearly disprove that view: It was examined in 1881 by Flinders Petrie who concluded: Though some doubt has been thrown on the piece, merely from its rarity, yet the vouchers for it are very precise; and it has a cast of a nummulite (fossilized marine protozoa) on the rust of it, proving it to have been buried for ages beside a block of nummulitic limestone, and therefore to be certainly ancient. No reasonable doubt can therefore exist about its being a realy (sic) genuine piece. In 1989 examination was done by Dr Jones (Senior Tutor in the Mineral Resources Engineering Department at Imperial College, London) and Dr Gayer (lecturer in the Faculty of Petroleum and Mining at Egypt's Suez University). They, through checking on the nickel content of the plate, were able to exclude the possibility that the plate had been manufactured from meteoritic iron. Their tests also showed that it was most probably gold-plated. They concluded: It is concluded, on the basis of the present investigation, that the iron plate is very ancient. Furthermore, the metallurgical evidence supports the archaeological evidence which suggests that the plate was incorporated within the Pyramid at the time that structure was built. The reaction of their colleagues and others could have almost been predicted. They labeled the conclusions "highly dubious". Calls from the two scientists who undertook the examination, and others, for additional independent tests to be done to either confirm or disprove their findings
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have been completely ignored; and it's very easy to see why: the specialists have to redate the beginning of the Iron Age, with all the implications that go with it.
Clark Whelton
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 3 (February 18, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (3) AGE LIMITS OF THE EARTH'S BIOSPHERE
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Dr. Robert W. Bass
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh,... and for ~Molech (Saturn). 1 Kings 11:7
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong Chronos, marker of time. But how much time? In this issue Dr. Robert Bass introduces two of the more straightforward indicators for the outside limit of the age of the bioshpere, as it is now generally constituted, being in the range of tens of thousands of years. One other powerful, very simple and significant indicator is the decline or decay of the earth's magnetic field. This is seldom talked about, but the earth's magnetic field has been carefully measured and recorded for some centuries now. The curve of the decay when projected back just 2000 years gives a value that is 3 times as great. In "geologic" time scales this is an incredibly huge rate of decay, and if projected back some 30,000 years gives values that are unacceptably high. Other crude yet simple indicators that there was a major upheaval within the last 10,000 years are the salinity increase rate for the Dead Sea (about 5000-6000 years), the rate of erosion for the Niagara Falls escarpment (5000-6000 years), the rate of erosion of the sandstone bluff along the shipping channel crack at South Whidbey island, etc., etc. The point is that essentially all cosmologists have proposed some kind of astral catastrophism, but generally insist that these catastrophes happened eons ago, buttressing their position with questionable dating methods, and counting on inertia to hold their world view together. But if major upheavals happened within human memory, it is now time to listen with an open mind to what ancient peoples have to say on the subject.

By David Talbott
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In the course of these submissions, I'll attempt to engage various comments by others, trying to maintain a sense of direction at the same time. In response to my previous notes, Vine Deloria wrote-OK - then all we need is to establish the various sequences of interaction with earth and try to get some dates down - even approximations - and some idea of the disruption of our strata here plus whatever was "dumped" from the other planets and we have something to work with. We can now ...ask the question - how did human society and/or civilizations get off the ground..., etc Chronology. Physical Evidence. Dynamics. All of these issues intertwine. Moreover, various individuals exploring catastrophist ideas will work from different perspectives, and will hold different ideas as to what constitutes the most solid ground for a starting point. The solid ground in my own orientation to these things is the substratum of human memory. It is this substratum that raises the deepest historical questions and sends us scurrying about to find answers, even if the answers upset various specialists, asking them to reconsider the most fundamental assumptions of their discipline. My own conclusion came as a great surprise: the substratum of human memory is incredibly dependable. But others would consider that to be a losing proposition out of the gate. So there's an immediate problem of communication here. (A definition just to avoid misunderstanding: By the "substratum of human memory" I don't mean Jungian collective memory, though Jungian archetypes may indeed come into the equation in the bigger picture. For now, I mean the common mythical, symbolic and ritual themes of widely separate cultures. Another way of putting it might be, "Points of agreement concerning remembered events.") In this inquiry, I think there are certain things we can all agree on. Truth is unifying, because it eliminates contradictions. When you are looking for the truth of a matter, any significant and incontrovertible fact is good news, because it can save you from heading in the wrong direction. It's particularly good news if it compels you to change your mind, because in doing so it has liberated you from a burden that could only grow. When it comes to the more fundamental errors, a whole life time could be spent on a dead-end course. Physical data and physical theory will be involved--and implicated-- at every step. Whatever happened is not impossible. What is impossible didn't happen. There will be no unified theory in the sense we are all looking for, until what was remembered can be comprehended. Not just comprehended as a set of anciently- supported images, but comprehended in terms of what is possible, and in terms of the physical signature of the events involved. But before I wander off, let's return to THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Since we are claiming this to be one memory reflected in the myth-making adventure as a whole, I had better republish the story. (Already my second printing. It's not long, you will recall): Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. *Creator*king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the *exemplary* epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations. But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens. And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens.
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THE END What an outrageous claim to make--to suggest that there are no domains of ancient myth that can be isolated from this singular story! But I am not just arguing by proclamation here. I am contending that the truth can be demonstrated by following certain rules. Call these the RULES FOR RE-ENVISIONING HUMAN HISTORY. Our first rule is: we will always work from the general motif to the specific. A second is: only broadly recurring themes count as evidence, particularly in the early stages of the reconstruction. And there is a third rule: Earlier-recorded versions of the recurring themes must be permitted to explain later variants. Okay, just one more rule: we must allow ancient drawings to illuminate the myths and rites, while permitting the myths and rites to illuminate the drawings. This last rule is crucial because, around the world, ancient skygazers drew remarkably similar pictures of things that do not exist in our sky. And the things depicted are the *subjects* of the myths and rites, though this vital truth has not been generally recognized, either by catastrophists or by mainstream scholars. Now let's take the ONE STORY a step further, in response to Vine's question: how many archetypal figures of myth are there? There are SEVEN, I say with smug assurance. Well there *are* just seven! But it all depends how you count these guys (and gals). For openers, we know there is at least one archetypal figure, because he is the god whose ancient name was "ONE", the primeval, all-encompassing "Unity". This figure is, of course, the Universal Monarch, the subject of our ONE STORY (So our ONE STORY might be subtitled the "The Story of ONE'"). Examples would include: Egyptian Atum and Ra, Sumerian An and Utu, Akkadian Anu and Shamash, Hindu Varuna and Brahma, Greek Ouranos and Kronos, Aztec Ometeotl and Quetzalcoatl, to name a few. Our claim is that all others stories, all other archetypal figures, when investigated at the core, lead back to the ONE STORY, intersecting with this story in the most remarkable and explicit ways. Here are the other figures:
QUEEN OF HEAVEN
Wherever you find the Universal Monarch you will find close at hand the ancient mother goddessthe goddess whom the Sumerians called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians Ishtar, and the Egyptians Isis, Hathor, and Sekhmet, each with numerous counterparts in their own and in other lands, and virtually all of them viewed symbolically as daughter or spouse of the creator- king, and the mother of another, equally prominent figure.
WARRIOR-HERO
This is the great national hero, originally the Demiurge, the servant of the creator-king, but passing into later myth as the laboring warrior, messenger or servant of a great chief or regional ruler. He is the Hercules archetype, a figure combining knowledge and brutish strength, quick wit and episodic foolishness. He defeats the chaos monsters in primordial times, and he reconfigures the world. With a personality clearly dominating the later mythical chronicles, the warrior-hero is the prototype of the famous tricksters and buffoons of later myth and folklore, flowering into thousands of tribal variations. Egyptian Shu, Horus and Sept, Akkadian Nergal, Hindu Indra, Norse Thor, Greek Ares and Hercules, Aztec Huitzilopochtli. Also, in North America: Coyote and Raven. But countless others as well, because the warrior-hero is far and away the most active figure in the myths.
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PRIMEVAL SEVEN
These satellite figures are presented in a variety of contexts, as wise men, patriarchs, seers, children, dwarves, stones of fate, stars, orbs, heads of the chaos monster. They are the first reason for the sanctity of the number seven in ancient symbolism.
CHAOS MONSTER
Here we meet the darker, more menacing powers, possessing an often-hidden link to aspects of the mother goddess or warrior-hero type. Of these darker creatures none is more prominent than the cosmic serpent or dragon, a monster that descends on the world to preside over the twilight of the gods, and whose ultimate defeat signals the birth of a new age or, symbolically, a new year. Babylonian Tiamat. Egyptian dragon of Apep. Greek Typhon. But within every culture, endless variations will be found: hundreds of monsters repeating the primeval catastrophe, each providing a different nuance, a different accent, a different way of remembering the cosmic agent of Doomsday.
CHAOS HORDES
These are the companions of the monster figures. They are the swarming powers of disorder and calamity, the fiends of darkness--flaming, devouring demons which so many magical rites were contrived to ward off. From the Norse Valkyries to the Greek Erinyes, from the Babylonian Pazuzu-demons to the Egyptian "Fiends of Set." Every culture remembered the onslaught of these chaos demons, moving across the heavens as a sky-darkening cloud and ushering in the cosmic night. In their earliest expressions, they do not just announce the primeval catastrophe, they *are* the catastrophe.
REJUVENATED CREATOR-KING
And lastly, there is the compelling personality of the dying god- king, often a resurrected or transformed figure, whose springing back to life is reflected in the dramas of the New Year, symbolically the passing from one age to another. Though his identity is inseparably tied to the Universal Monarch, he nevertheless emerges in distinction from that god as his *son*the younger version, or *rejuvenated* form of his own father. Examples would include: Egyptian Osiris, Akkadian Marduk; Persian Ahura Mazda; Norse Balder; Hebrew Yahweh; Phoenician Bel, Greek Zeus. So there are just seven archetypal personalities of myth, if you count them in this way. We are not separating the chaos monster into it's male and female aspects, so we count only one monster. We *are* separating the Universal Monarch into his elder and younger versions, however. We arrive, therefore, at our first critical juncture. An acid test. Can a mere seven categories actually encompass all of world mythology? While there are numerous complexities and ambiguities to slow us down periodically, the vast majority of well-documented regional figures of myth can be readily identified in terms of these archetypes. And the implications are quite astounding if you set this principle beside the different theories offered to explain myth in the past. NOT A SINGLE THEORY PROPOSED BEFORE VELIKOVSKY OPENED THE DOOR WILL ACCOUNT FOR THE ARCHETYPES, THE BEDROCK OF MYTH. But the implications become all the more astounding when you begin to see that each of the archetypal figures is linked in no uncertain terms to the ONE STORY. (I'll give some key examples in the next few submissions.) A *universal structure* to ancient memory is present. The six additional biographies re-tell
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the "story of ONE", but each with a slight turn of the prism, putting the focus on a particular aspect of the story and providing more colorful action and detail. What an amazing principle, if true. Of all the skills that the independent researcher might bring to this inquiry, none will prove more crucial than that of pattern recognition. There is structure to myth. Structure that has never been sufficiently acknowledged. Structure implies coherence, an integrity between the parts. Clearly human imagination must have gone wild to have produced the incredible vistas of the ancient mythscape. But structure is there too, and structure means that human imagination was not operating in a vacuum. What could have unleashed human imagination in this way, while yet inspiring a universal myth? Nothing less than the most awesome and traumatic experiences in human history, I would say. Dave
AGE LIMITS OF THE EARTH'S BIOSPHERE

By Dr. Robert W. Bass
Recently I spoke on the phone with my old friend, Nitro-Nobel Medalist & physical chemist, Dr. Melvin Cook, who is now 85 and "totally blind" (except that he can read a computer when it is set to 150X Magnification and thereby he is still reading & writing research papers). Cook received a special Gold Medal in Stockholm in 1968 for doing the best work on the physical chemistry of High Explosives since Alfred Nobel discovered dynamite in 1867. (This medal was awarded by Nobel's company, not the Nobel Foundation, and it was for, among other things, inventing nondangerous "slurry explosives" which are blasting agents as powerful as nitroglycerine but not anywhere so dangerous to handle.) One of Cook's most extraordinary breakthroughs came when he discovered, by accident, and then explained theoretically the remarkable phenomenon of a fully ionized plasma in the state of a liquid metal (rather than a gas, which is what all conventional plasma theorists believe is the ONLY possibility). Though he is not infallible, he is certainly a genius who has made very important discoveries. And his works on prehistory merit serious study. Cook is the author of the highly-scientific, very quantitative, and very difficult to read book "Prehistory & Earth Models" (PEM) published in London by Max Parrish & Co in 1966, but now out of print. The book is highly condensed, and reading is complicated by use of 3-letter acronyms for almost every technical term the second time -- and all later times -- but the book is in my opinion extremely valuable. In 1993 Dr. Cook (a retired Prof. of Metallurgy at the U of Utah) updated PEM by a new book "Scientific Prehistory", 336 pages, many photos, tables, drawings, and graphs, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-74404. This is a leather-covered hardbound book. Cook had 150 copies printed and placed in 150 libraries so it CAN be borrowed, but I don't believe that any copies are available for sale. Cook's address is: Dr. Melvin A. Cook, 1586 East Tomahawk Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84103. In December, 1993, Cook put out a 15-page privately-printed paper which summarizes the main findings (especially the main NOVEL findings in comparison to PEM) of his new book. I have the impression that Cook would send a free copy of the paper to anyone who writes & requests it. I believe that his material on solar nuclides would interest plasma cosmologists such as Wal Thornhill. Like the late Ralph Juergens, who had an isothermal model of the Sun, Cook does not believe in the
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conventional fusion-energy explanation of the Sun's energy, and he provides evidence that all of the Sun's energy can be explained" by the observed rate of matter falling into the Sun (i.e. rate of accretion). Cook has chapters on ALL of the radiometric dating methods, and in my opinion, demolishes them all. He also computes that IF the cosmic rays are in "nuclear thermodynamic equilibrium" (NTE) then the Solar System and Earth are about 4.5 billion years old. However, the surface features of the Earth cannot possibly be more than 100,000 years old for many reasons. For example (& the Editor of "Nature" admitted that this is the biggest anomaly which ever crossed his desk) the radiogenic helium escaping from the Earth's crust at a known rate and escaping into outer space at a known rate "prove" that the present atmosphere cannot be more than 100,000 years old. See "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?," Nature, vol. 177 (1957), p. 215. Also, radiocarbon is being produced in the stratosphere at a rate TWENTY FIVE PERCENT discrepant with its well-measured absorption into the hydrosphere, lithosphere & biosphere; Cook once showed me correspondence that he had with Willard Libby over 25 years wherein Libby finally admitted he was wrong, the discrepancy is REAL and cannot be ignored. The deduction is that the Earth's atmosphere cannot be more than 30,000 years old, else it would have attained equilibrium already, which it has NOT! In Cook's view, the radiocarbon balance in the earth's atmosphere has attained 73 percent of its equilibrium value in the approximately 5,000 years "since the Flood." In his latest unpublished paper Cook is providing evidence for a theory that the Flood resulted from a combination of his ice-cap model tipping the Earth or its crust as a result of certain Asteroid impacts which he thinks he has pinpointed. [this statement is made on Cook's verbal summary to me, and may be inaccurate] Physicist Dr. Larry Vardiman has jumped onto the helium-escape problem, and written a 32-page mathematical paper: THE AGE OF THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE: a Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere, 1990 in which he reviews in detail dozens of mainstream attempts to explain away the anomaly, and satisfied me (as a professional mathematician who checked his differential equations) that they have failed, and that the present atmosphere could have been produced in at most 2 million years. (This of course is 2,500 TIMES shorter than the uniformitarian age of the earth.) He quotes mainstream experts as admitting that "this helium escape problem will not go away, and it is unsolved." Vardiman has also written an impressive-looking paper on the Ice Core dating method (which I have not studied myself). At the recent Portland conference, on "Planetary Violence in Human History Dr. Paul LaViolette disputed the Hapgood "Earth Crust Slippage" theory as argued by Rand & Rose Flem-Ath to place Plato's lost continent of Atlantis under Lesser Antarctica (which was supposedly in the Temperate Zone up until 10,500 years ago), by means of Ice Core dating. Hence, Vardiman's study of the flaws & fallacies in that method should be of interest to Dr. Laviolette. Personally, I find the Earth-crust slippage model much more likely than the entire earth tipping over. Nevertheless, in my 1987 paper at Glasgow (of which I no longer have a copy) I mentioned that the Australian government Astronomer for West Australia had sent me an unpublished book showing his historical researches on the Obliquity of the Ecliptic (in which he compared the tilt from "gnomon measurements" and as they got more ancient the departure from the famous formula of Simon Newcomb became more & more pronounced. This Cambridge-trained astronomer then fit the observations with a dynamical model of the earth as a spinning top, and showed that the observations indicated that the axis of the earth was stabilizing in a new position after the entire earth had turned over about 2,500 BC (or whatever his particular dating of the Flood was).
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I also have to admit that I have not yet checked out the mathematical accuracy of a paper sent me by a "Saturnist" mathematician in Italy named Dr. Spedicato by his friend, a Prof. Barbiero, in which Barbiero posits that an asteroid hitting the spinning earth under certain conditions could cause the Earth itself (rather than merely its crust) to tilt by a large amount. Reading the Flem-Ath book has motivated me to want to check the Barbiero calculation, but there are not enough hours in the day! Bob
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 4 (March 2, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION NEW WEB SITE SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (4) CRATERS: IMPACT OR DISCHARGE VENUS GREENHOUSE QUESTIONED
Michael Armstrong http://www.tcel.com/~mike/paper.html David Talbott Wal Thornhill Ted Holden
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

[R]eligion, like science, began with the inscrutable and majestic spectacle of the heavens. This points again to the fact that they are destined to compete: they are occupying the same territory. ~Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Man Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know. ~Montaigne
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong It is useful to recognize that there are primarily four categories or types of knowledge. These can be listed as: 1) INTRINSIC: Intrinsic knowledge is a kind of "hard-wired" or intuitive knowledge that can still be further developed as time goes on. Intrinsic knowledge shows up in our rationality, our "knowing how to know" and our knowing how to apply logic, do math, and come to conclusions. This type of knowledge or ability allows us to receive data, recognize facts, become informed and to make conclusions that lead to knowledge. It allows us to learn and grow intellectually. 2) EXPERIENTIAL: Experiential knowledge comes to us through some kind of personal experience. Descartes'fundamental conclusion came to him through his experience and apprehension of his fundamental fact -- "I think", thereby enabling him to know intrinsically "therefore I exist." As I type this article on my computer, I empirically experience the various aspects of that process. That knowledge has come to me experientially, directly to me through some combination of my five senses. The above two categories of knowledge are the most reliable knowledge that we can have. We generally trust our rationality and, if we are careful, our logic. I know that 2 + 2 = 4 every time, and I know that I will get it right every time. I also know the monitor and keyboard are on the desk as I type. No one can "talk" me out of this kind of knowledge. 3) EVIDENTIAL: Evidential knowledge is composed of personally experienced evidence which directly implies conclusions reached beyond a reasonable doubt. With this type of knowledge we
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experience some of the evidence but not the thing itself. This makes such knowledge less reliable than that based on experience because it involves some subjective inference and some limiting interpretation of the evidence. A simple example would be where we got up in the morning, looked out the window and observed a fresh and unblemished covering of snow over everything. We would say we know it snowed during the night even if we didn't see it happen. Or if we saw tire tracks in the snow on the driveway, we would say that a car had driven in and out. Through good sense we limit our interpretations. Of course, it's possible that some joker hung from a very long crane and carefully rolled a tire to make two parallel tracks in our driveway. But not likely! 4) CONSENSUAL: Consentual knowledge is composed of knowledge that others have shared that we consent to know because we trust (rightly or wrongly) in the person or source passing on this knowledge. Often the consent is given based on irrelevant psychological factors such as authoritative stance or attitude, charisma, enthusiasm, etc., and often the consent is given based purely on the lack of any apparent reason not to trust. Consentual knowledge can be further broken down into four distinct categories: a. That based on other's experiences, their recollection, interpretation and account of that experience b. That based on other's experienced evidence, their recollection, interpretation and account of such. c. That based on other's consentual knowledge. d. That based on other's beliefs, opinions, estimations, guesses, imaginations, fantasies, falsities and misunderstandings. The latter two categories of evidential and consentual knowledge are simply and clearly less direct than the other types, and therefore intrinsically less reliable. Without considerable care and cross-checking, the reliability of these two kinds of knowledge can fall off rapidly. Consentual knowledge is the most prevalent and voluminous in our knowledge base, but the least reliable, and it is staggering to realize to what extent we have incorporated consentual knowledge into our general theories. There would be a lot more humility and much less acrimony if the popularizers and promoters of scientific dogma were aware of the scale of this component in their "knowledge base." It is also difficult to fathom the extent to which our "knowledge" and concepts in one arena or discipline are conditioned and constrained by our "knowledge", assumptions, and beliefs in the other areas of understanding. When you radically change your view in one domain, the repercussions may be extensive in the others. When the underpinnings to of a modern world view are ripped out by a major reconstruction, one may as well start all over in examining what one knows and what one believes. In confronting the ramifications of the reconstruction, modern man now faces the challenge of an intellectual, social and spiritual revolution unmatched by those introduced in the last two millennia a la Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Semmelweiss, et al.

By David Talbott In seeking out the roots of ancient experience, one will continually face an issue concerning the use of ancient testimony as evidence. How can the disparate threads of memory, expressed in seemingly contradictory symbols, through stories that are often barely intelligible, and in archaic words of uncertain meaning, ever provide a dependable guide for reconstructing cosmic events? The first essential is to expose the *substratum* of memory, and this can only be accomplished by limiting what counts as evidence. Only broadly-repeated themes are to be included in the early phases of the inquiry, and only the clearest facts, or undisputed principles, qualify as building blocks in the reconstruction.
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When I speak of the "historical argument" for the Saturn theory, I am referring to all sources of evidence suggesting *things remembered*. Before the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hindus, or Greeks ever raised a temple, they would consciously and deliberately look backwards to a remembered event. The foundation ceremonies would *reenact* an archetypal occasion in the lives of the gods--the construction of a vast dwelling in primeval times, a "temple" brought forth by the Universal Monarch, a temple "floating on the clouds." Similarly, when the warrior-kings of Egypt and Assyria and numerous other lands launched their campaigns against neighboring peoples, they summoned memories of cosmic catastrophe, when the gods themselves battled in the heavens. Symbolically, foreign armies meant "the fiends of darkness," and were to be dealt with accordingly. The warrior-kings saw themselves defeating neighboring forces in the same way that, in primeval times, the great gods devastated and controlled the Chaos Hordes, when these dark powers overwhelmed the cosmic order. It is a remarkable fact that the builders of civilization declared, with one voice, that the first cities and first kingdoms organized in the ancient world, the first pictographs drawn on rock or on temple walls, the vast complexes of sacred festivals and rites, had their prototypes in dramatic events occurring in the age of the gods. Ancient art and architecture, hymns and prayers, the origins of writing, the rise of kingship, nationalistic wars of expansion, ritual sacrifice, the first athletic competition, the roots of drama, tragedy, and comedy--and all other forms of collective activity associated with the flowering of civilization--were commemorative in nature, remembering, re-enacting, re-living, and honoring above all else the archetypal events, when the gods themselves ruled the world. Such an idea may seem incomprehensible to us, but there is no escaping the festive and commemorative aspects of emerging civilizations, all pointing *backwards* to remembered events. Hence, the field of evidence we must draw upon includes literally every feature distinguishing these civilizations from the prior, more pastoral epoch of human history. That is a huge library of evidence! Moreover, there is a taproot feeding the explosive, upward movement of the first civilizations. That taproot is the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Every recurring cultural theme, in truth, is linked in the most explicit ways to this global memory. But don't forget that the memory is at once pristinely simple and highly complex, depending on which level you are looking at. To the figure of the Universal Monarch, the subject of the ONE STORY, I added six additional archetypal figures of myth, brashly asserting that these personalities all intersect with the ONE STORY in highly specific ways, and claiming that the myth-making epoch has not presented us with any other elementary types. If true, this will mean that the pervasive motives of the first civilizations, cited above, must bear a direct relationship to the *remembered activities* of the seven archetypal figures. Hence, this is a testable hypothesis. If it is incorrect, it can and will be easily disproved under the groundrules we have proposed. This leaves two other issues relating to the foundations of a theory. What are the relationships of these root personalities to *planets*? And what is their relationship to the illustration presented on the Kronia website as a starting point for this discussion? It needs to be emphasized that the planetary identifications suggested here did not fall off the wall. They are the result of a patient reconstruction of ancient astronomical traditions over many years. Portions of the material have already been published either in *The Saturn Myth*, or in AEON articles. So let's go back to the beginning. But to do so I must refer readers to the illustration (see the Kronia website directory under of the "Saturn Theory). The Universal Monarch, the true subject of the ONE STORY, is the planet Saturn. In the illustration, this is the large sphere visually dominating the sky from its fixed position at the celetstial pole. The Mother Goddess is the planet Venus, the luminous, central orb seen squarely in the center of Saturn and from which radiating streams of material course outward. The Warrior-Hero is the planet Mars, the small red orb seen inside the sphere of Venus. Our subject, in other words, is a collinear configuration of planets, with each planet stationed at its own equilibrium position, and all sharing the same period of revolution.

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The Primeval Seven, though not shown in the oversimplified illustration, should be considered as seven smaller orbs revolving in the vicinity of Saturn. The Chaos Monster denotes the interacting forms of Mars and Venus in periods of instability or cosmic *disorder*, as gas and dust (or other material) stretched between planets, giving shape to the evolving forms of the monster in different phases of the configuration. The Chaos Hordes mean the material stretching between planets. Hence, they constitute both the retinue and the *form* of the Chaos Monster. (This latter identification is complicated by the fact that, in the illustrated phase, the material is not chaotic. Whatever this stuff is, it moves in the vicinity of the participating planets, with a complex (stable and unstable) history going far, far beyond the illustrated phase.) The Rejuvenated Creator-King is the planet Jupiter, not visible in the illustrated phase because it was hidden behind Saturn, but becoming visible with the disruption of the collinear system.
But what is the most efficient way to clarify and to test the hypothesis as a whole? The only way to prove a theory is to demonstrate its explanatory power. And what I believe we can demonstrate through rigorous testing is that the Saturn theory does indeed account for, or predict, the recurring themes of myth, ritual, and symbol, down to hundreds of extraordinary details. This testing procedure will show that there was a *myth-making* epoch, involving a natural environment and intense human experiences unlike anything known in our own time. We can achieve this testing by simply granting the hypothesized condition, then asking if that condition leaves any aspect of a particular theme unexplained. Then we can go to the next theme, then another, until we have explored every general theme of myth (if our endurance holds up that long). This kind of testing can be very explicit and will remove subjective interpretation and selective use of evidence altogether, because only acknowledged or indisputable, broadly recurring themes count as evidence, and once the question is asked, the answers will tend to be self-evident. We need interpret nothing for the skeptic, simply note the acknowledged themes so that he can determine for himself whether the predictive ability is as complete as we have claimed. Let me explain what I mean by this. While the theory suggests events never entertained by modern science, no one would dispute that *if* Saturn hung immense in the sky, the identity of Saturn as the dominant luminary or "sun" god in most ancient times is explained. *If* the gas giant did indeed occupy the summit of the world axis, there can be no surprise in finding that diverse traditions actually placed the ancient Saturn at this astronomically absurd location. And no one would dispute that *if* Venus formerly appeared as a radiant "star" in the center of Saturn, the worldwide "sun" pictographs depicting precisely this relationship are explained. Similarly, no one would deny that *if* light from the solar orb placed a crescent on Saturn, the enigmatic crescent wrapped around the ancient, Saturnian "sun" god is explained. And how could anyone claim that, *if* a collinear planetary system once towered above ancient stargazers, the mystery of the Great Conjunction of Saturn's Golden Age would remain unsolved? Through a comprehensive testing process of this sort, I believe it can be made clear that the Saturn theory does, in fact, achieve what could not be achieved by a fundamentally incorrect hypothesis. Successful predictions in one or another case will never validate such an usual theory. But the ability to predict *all* of the global themes of the myth-making age--and all of the indisputable, concretely-defined relationships *between* these forms--could not be an accident. Dave Talbott
CRATERS: IMPACT OR DISCHARGE EXCHANGE?

By Wal Thornhill
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A scientific critic has posted: I find it incredible and unbelievable to argue that Meteor Crater or any other well-known earth craters such as the Ries Crater in Germany or Manson in Iowa originated from a giant bolt of lightening, because the bulk of ejecta in all the above and all others I have read about is not fused. Response: Your reaction is understandable because, as it is with so much evidence for catastrophism, we are dealing with mechanisms outside our normal experience. It is like arguing that the effects of a lightning strike cannot be so, based only on evidence from the spark from a hair comb. However, some earthly lightning scars are capable of indicating what is possible. Melting only occurs in the very centre of the lightning channel and therefore as a maximum may only constitute a few percent of the material excavated. It is strongly dependent on the duration of the discharge and the nature and conductivity of the material receiving the current. The National Geographic of June 1950 has a photograph, referred to by Juergens, of a trench dug by lightning which excavated 50 to 60 cubic ft of earth and distributed it either side of the trench. The earth was not melted. But even a meteorite impact would not cause much melting. Thomas Gold has said of it: ...the transport by conduction of heat cannot account for more than a very thin layer of liquefaction. So the degree of melting cannot be considered diagnostic. More of the post: Ries is considered the source of the Moldavites, which were melted, but they are only a small fraction of the total ejecta. Furthermore, the basement is extensively fractured ahead of the maximal penetration of the projectile. Clearly, that is a feature of mass impaction. Response: I don't have any useful info on the Ries Crater, but regarding the buried Manson Crater in Iowa, the largest known "impact" structure in the continental U.S, at 38km diameter; it too has the classic shape of the circular, ringed crater with a central peak which would argue for it being in the interplanetary discharge category, rather than impact. May I add a few thoughts out loud? A part of the problem in thinking about the consequences of an interplanetary discharge is to be able to imagine what would have taken place, and to forget about the puny sparks which constitute terrestrial lightning. In addition, as individuals we have to be aware of our human nature. Francis Bacon said "Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true". So, I should state my preference: it is to assume what the ancients had to say about electrical phenomena involving the planets is true since it may illuminate both the new plasma cosmology and in turn - in bootstrap fashion - confirm the veracity of ancient testimony. Also, ultimately, it should be easily verifiable. So, I begin with photographs of spark machined surfaces which show circular, ringed craters with melted floors and central peaks, together with simple craters in ratios which mimic those seen on the moon. Then I see photographs of liquid drops falling into viscous liquids, creating effects like a ringed crater. How that relates to the impact of a hypersonic projectile is not clear to me except that we then have the inevitable backup from computer models, which generally include so many variables and assumptions that the results can be made to mimic what the "experimenters" prefer to believe. However, in recent real experiments here in Canberra, high voltage, low energy, extended duration discharges into dry, low conductivity modelling clay created continuous circles of craters, the clay being excavated to form a rough moat with a central peak. It occurred to me that this might be the mechanism by which the interplanetary discharge operates. Electric current in a plasma flows in thin filaments - more
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current, more filaments. These filaments twist into a braid, constrained by a long range attractive force, and short range repulsive force. They are known as Birkeland currents. So, when one of these current "ropes" strikes the surface of a planetary body, the strands describe a circle on the surface. It is where each strand touches down that cratering takes place. It is well known that if the pressure in a discharge filament exceeds some critical value, the discharge will "quench" or stop. So, in complex lunar craters, the blast pressure-wave as each "simple crater" is formed, quenches that discharge and the impinging current filament moves on to form the next crater, in a circular pattern. Evidence for this comes from the conspicuously crenelated appearance of the rim crests on large lunar craters. In any electric discharge, there is a steep rise in current to some maximum value. During the current rise, the current filaments in the discharge rope are squeezed tighter, reducing the diameter of the "rope". It would also be expected that the density of filaments would be lower at the periphery of the discharge Lunar craters, like the 93km Copernicus, show the precise characteristics to be expected from the inward collapse of the cratering "rope" and its lower peripheral density, which results in terracing of the crater walls. Some terraces even have areas with the same flat, melted appearance of the inner crater floor. As expected, the terrace edges also exhibit crenelation. In a large crater, the fraction of the blasts directed radially inwards, if reasonably symmetrical and synchronous, would create an axial over-pressure, tending to quench any filaments attempting to discharge near the centre of the crater. So, the central peak should escape "spark machining" and show similar crenelation to the crater rim (which is also observed). The central peak should also exhibit blast shocked crystals but be basically made up of the same layered rock structure as it was before the cratering event. (I note that the Manson crater peak is layered, shocked breccia, rather than a frozen melt). Like all large lunar craters, the 200km diameter Tsiolkovsky crater has another interesting characteristic: the unflooded areas of the crater floor (i.e. unmelted) inside the rim are exceedingly rough on a fine scale. Looked at closely, it is covered with circular craters and sinuous rilles, down to the limits of resolution. The melted floor looks like fresh tarmac by comparison. Sinuous rilles are diagnostic of electrical cratering, similar scarring having been observed on Earth (on a much reduced scale) from powerful lightning bolts. The analogy of the effects of the discharge to that of a shaped router bit biting into the Moon's surface comes to mind. If you can imagine that the outer edge of the bit breaks off rapidly and incrementally, the analogy is even better. The scar would not be formed instantaneously in one colossal blast as the impact theory would have it, but spread over 10's of seconds, or minutes. So, the collateral damage would be many orders of magnitude less. This would, for example, explain why Saturn's 390km diameter moon, Mimas, can have a huge 130km diameter bullseye crater and still be in one piece. Sudden jumps in discharge current will form multiple-ringed craters. Such sudden jumps, from diffuse to more concentrated are commonly observed in electric arcs. The mighty triple ringed Mare Orientale, at 900km diameter, is a good example. The size and shallow nature of these large features argues for a more diffuse discharge. There is a simple relationship between the diameters of the rings which seems to hold regardless of the surface characteristics and even which moon or planet is involved. It appears to be a fruitful area for more electrical discharge research. One last thought: It has been noted by a number of astronomers (and Ralph Juergens) that "ejecta" from some large lunar rayed craters, such as Tycho, appears not to be distributed radially, but rather tangentially to the crater rim. Ralph thought that such rays were not ejecta but the equivalent of "Lichtenberg figures", created by surface-hugging streams of electrons, rushing to form the lightning "leaders" for the interplanetary discharge. The apparent different origin point for the long rays and the shorter, more diffuse rays centred on the crater might, Juergens thought, be due to an offset between the departure point of discharge "leaders" from the Moon, and the return stroke. Juergens' explanation is the only sensible one I have
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seen for rayed craters. In addition, if my view is correct for formation of the crater itself, the moat forming blasts will not come statically from the centre of a large crater, but dynamically, with a rotary movement about the centre. Therefore I would expect some evidence of layered, non-radial ejecta just outside the crater rim, burying the rays which a few seconds earlier had pin-pointed the target for the return stroke of the interplanetary thunderbolt. Such a dark ring of ejecta around Tycho is easily visible from Earth, but may require an on-site inspection to detect the effect. However, while I wait for that, there is highly visible evidence for rotary arcing on crater floors in the form of arcuate rilles, running parallel with the crater floorwall contact. By the way, I have absolutely nothing against impact cratering. I would expect that almost all non-circular craters, that are not comprised of near co-incident circular craters, are caused that way - and maybe even a few circular ones too. Something less than 1% of the craters on the Moon, I would guess. Wal Thornhill
VENUS GREENHOUSE QUESTIONED AGAIN

Wal Thornhill posted: The Venera spacecraft found continuous lightning activity from 32km down to about 2km altitude, with discharges as frequent as an amazing 25 per second. The highest recorded rate on Earth is 1.4/sec during a severe blizzard. The Pioneer lander recorded 1000 radio impulses. Thirty-two minutes after landing, Venera 11 detected a very loud (82 decibel) noise which was believed to be thunder. Ted Holden adds: The Venera also noted "gloom" in the middle atmosphere, and then, finally light which appeared beyond some point in its descent and increased down to the surface. Electrical discharge and/or plasma phenomena may be one way to account for this. I have never yet seen any reasonable statement from establishment scientists as to why this should not invalidate Sagan's "super-greenhouse" theory, which requires that the supposed 2% of incident sunlight reaching the surface generates the 900 F temperatures. I don't see how anybody could claim that as much as 2% of sunlight even reaches the surface when all surface light appears to be local. Ted Holden
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE REMEMBERING THE END OF THE WORLD THE VENUS COMET (2)
Michael Armstrong David Talbott movie reviewed by Steven Parsons Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Tiger got to hunt Bird got to fly Man got to sit and wonder why, why, WHY? Tiger got to sleep Bird got to land Man got to tell himself he understand. ~Kurt Vonnugut's little jingle
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong The word paradigm comes from the Greek word, "paradeigma," which means "model or pattern." A paradigm is the undergirding conceptual framework within which we seek to understand the world. It describes boundaries, shapes our perceptions, and in many ways determines our conclusions. One cannot meaningfully "know" or believe anything without a paradigm to "hold" that knowledge and belief. Most people do not consciously question the paradigms effecting their interpretation of natural events or human history. The difficulty comes when a new paradigm gives rise to possibilities never considered from within the previous boundaries. It seems there are two contrasting ways to introduce a radically new paradigm. One way is with parables or analogies (literally "outside of logic;" if the idea or truth is the milk, the paradigm is the container.) Analogies are designed to engender an intuitive insight into the new idea or truth being communicated. Since one partial definition/description of a language is a set of words, each of which is definable by other members of the set, the "harder and slower" way is by exchange of information, logic and reason--a brickby-brick building approach--which requires a shared genuine interest in the question raised, and an unqualified commitment to the reasoning process. THOTH is dedicated to exploring a new paradigm for understanding our cosmic history. And we will honor both of the paths to new insight. Responses from readers--including challenges from fact, reason or intuition, will be welcome.
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THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE

By David Talbott In this and several submissions to follow, I will offer some background notes on a few mythological themes that are integral to the historical argument of the Saturn theory- Golden Age/Ancestral Paradise Universal Monarch/King of the World Saturn as Ancient Sun God Myth of the Polar Sun Saturn at the Pole
GOLDEN AGE
When the world began, according to the biblical account and other Hebrew myths, Adam, the first man and prototype of man, occupied a garden of abundance, in communion with God Himself--a deathless realm, free of sickness and any need for human labor. Loss of that original paradise was nothing less than a cosmic rupture, and never, since that rupture, has man experienced a comparable terrestrial condition. The Eden story is filled with interesting and familiar images. Four rivers of paradise, tree of Life and tree of the Knowledge, devious serpent, Adam's rib, temptress Eve, flaming sword at the gate, and more. But what immediately concerns us is a single underlying theme, a theme clearly linked to a myth preserved on every habitable continent. A global myth declares that the world has not always been as it is experienced now. In a former time, man lived in a kind of paradise, close to the gods. It was the Golden Age. Throughout an eternal spring, the earth produced abundantly, free from the seasonal cycles of decay and rebirth. And under this remarkable cosmic order, man experienced neither war nor sickness, neither hunger nor any requirement of human labor. This recurring and unexplained myth was carried into modern times by primitive races the world over. In Mexico native legends spoke of an ancestral generation whose every need was met, without cost. There was no sickness or hunger no poverty or sadness, and the gods dwelt among men. But this harmonious age didn't last, eventually succumbing to an overwhelming catastrophe. According to the Cheyenne of North America the original race roamed naked, innocent and free, enjoying the natural abundance of an eternal spring. What followed, however, was an age of flood, war, and famine. The Caribs of Surinam have a poignant memory of this fortunate epoch. "In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers of our grandmothers were not yet born," they say, "the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony, and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the jaguar " The South American Indians of Gran Chaco and Amazonia recall this as the Happy Place, where work was unknown because the fields produced abundance of their own accord.
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The Hopi Indians proclaim that in the earliest time they were a marvelously contented race, at peace with their brothers. They knew nothing of sickness or conflict, and all things were provided by Mother Earth without any requirement of labor. But these are just the American Indian versions of the story. The aborigines of Australia insist that their first ancestors enjoyed a Golden Age, a Paradise of abundant game and without conflict of any kind. Northern Europeans once celebrated this earliest age as the "Peace of Frodi," a mythical Danish king. Throughout this peaceful epoch no man injured another and a magical mill ground out peace and plenty for the entire land. Memories of a Golden Age pervade the myths of Africa. The distinguished folklorist Herman Baumann reported: Everything that happened in the primal age was different from today. People understood the language of animals and lived at peace with them; they knew no labor and had food in plenitude. Sacred texts of ancient India recall this as the Krita Yuga or "Perfect Age," without disease, labor, suffering or war. The Iranians called it the age of the brilliant Yima, an age with "neither cold nor heat," an eternal spring. According to ancient Chinese lore, the purest pleasure and tranquillity once reigned throughout the world. Mythical histories called it "the Age of Perfect Virtue" and declared that "the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness... all things grew without labor; and a universal fertility prevailed." How old, then, is this ancient memory of a lost paradise? It is this question we will take up in our next installment.
REMEMBERING THE END OF THE WORLD

-A Feature-Length DocumentaryReview by Steven Parsons This documentary takes the viewer on an extraordinary journey into the collective memory of our species. The compelling audio/visual effects and thoughtful narration weave a story so deep that I felt excited for days. I found that I was unable to explain to my friends, in just a few sentences, what I had learned during my 90 minute viewing of "Remembering the End of the World." I felt compelled to watch the video a second time, then a third. With each viewing, I gained a greater appreciation for the utter enormity of the topic and the deceptively large amount of information presented. If David Talbott is correct, the common themes of myth that have been told and re-told by all cultures of the world point to actual physical events, global events. Deep in our collective memory, beneath conscious awareness for most of us living today, we remember the golden time with nostalgia and longing. We remember doomsday with dread. In a consistent way, these deep memories have erupted into form through the arts, through stories and through cultural ritual. According to this theory, our ancestors actually did live in a paradise, an Eden, a Golden Age that ended in chaos. This golden time occurred recently enough that our distant ancestors remembered. During the Golden Age and its confusing aftermath, the sky looked very different than it does today. During this period, neighboring planets loomed very large in the sky.
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The people of this earlier time did not invent stories of gods in the heavens just to entertain themselves. Rather, the towering presence of planetary spheres in the sky could only be understood in super-human or god-like terms. These gigantic planetary spheres enacted the original dramas that have been depicted in myth and art ever since. Those dramas in the sky deeply impacted the inhabitants of that era, even creating world-wide terror and destruction. David Talbott presents a convincing argument. The preponderance of mythical evidence points to dramatic global events, and already several experts in the physical sciences have stepped forward to present theoretical ways of understanding these events. Perhaps our ancient astronomers deserve more credit. Perhaps Venus and Mars really did display character attributes such as flowing beauty or war-like intensity, and displayed these vividly. Perhaps the historians of Greece and Rome deserve more credit, too. What if we take their descriptions of earthshaking events in their own history to be fact? What if we were to listen to the ancient voices and to look for truth there? We would find that their collective story paints a picture of a past that is radically different than modern science has assumed. If we temporarily regard myth and art as bearing the same level of usefulness as bones and rock, the expressions of those story tellers and artists carries more information than once thought. This documentary summarizes a very large and very important story. If the story proves to be true, its acceptance today will deeply impact astronomy, depth psychology, cultural anthropology and many other sciences. A consideration of the hypothesis will not only boost our planetary understanding but may also open a door for healing and integration within deep layers of the collective psyche. The pacing of the narrative is gradual and the visual effects serene at times. Very skillfully, the periods of quiet, the scenes of winter rains and forest streams invite the viewer into a contemplative mood. Such a mood seems necessary so that the probing questions posed by the narrator may ripen in one's mind, unanswered. The magnitude of this topic requires inner calm for its realization. Let no one be fooled by the conservative pacing of delivery here, influenced by Canadian-style film making. This production contains an enormous amount of visual and verbal information. I believe the director did an excellent job in weaving an immense story together with supportive evidence, while maintaining a high level of audio/visual interest. I regard this as a high quality production in every respect.
THE VENUS COMET (2)

By Wallace Thornhill For those who prefer to believe that the early description of Venus as a comet can be explained away as a case of mistaken identity, I present some of the physical evidence which must also be explained away. Much of the following material comes from my paper to the 1993 SIS Cambridge conference.
ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA
The Venera spacecraft found continuous lightning activity from 32km down to about 2km altitude, with discharges as frequent as an amazing 25 per second. The highest recorded rate on Earth is 1.4/sec during a severe blizzard. The Pioneer lander recorded 1000 radio impulses. Thirty-two minutes after landing, Venera 11 detected a very loud (82 decibel) noise which was believed to be thunder. Garry Hunt suggested at the time that: '... the Venusians may well be glowing from the nearly continuous discharges of those frequent lightning strokes'.
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A 'mysterious glow' was detected coming from the surface at a height of 16km by 2 Pioneer probes as they descended on the night hemisphere. The glow increased on descent and may have been caused by a form of St. Elmo's fire and/or chemical reactions in the atmosphere, close to the surface. In D. Grinspoon's recent book, 'Venus Revealed', he writes on p.245: One of the most puzzling [patterns] was this: the highest mountains of Venus are all surprisingly shiny. At altitudes above about thirteen thousand feet, the reflectivity jumps up and the ground abruptly gets very bright. Surface roughness cannot explain this, so something in, or on, the ground at these high elevations is different, making it highly reflective. Grinspoon puts forward the idea that some chemical reaction takes place at the lower temperature, 820 degrees F, to form a radar reflective mineral. This requires the unlikely situation that all peaks on Venus have the same chemistry. A much simpler answer is that the diffuse electric discharges of St. Elmo's fire, occurring preferentially at the highest altitudes of mountain peaks, forms a highly conductive plasma which is a superb reflector of radar signals. Lightning is poorly understood. The mechanism of charging of storm clouds remains a mystery. Because lightning is conventionally associated with violent cloud movement on Earth, it was a surprise when investigators found strong evidence of lightning in the quiescent atmosphere of Venus. 'On Venus the clouds tend to resemble fogbanks,... You don't see much lightning in fog'. The Venusian ionosphere is directly coupled to the solar wind. Intense airglow emission in long wavelength UV was observed to occupy a large volume of the ionosphere on both the day and night sides of the planet. The intensity seems to be linked to solar activity. I would therefore expect lightning activity on Venus to be generated, not from cloud motions, but from electrical input originating in the Solar plasma. If ions are scarce in the lower atmosphere (and there are no counterparts to earthly clouds on Venus), fewer but more equally energetic lightning discharges would be expected than on Earth. There is evidence that this is so; the rate detected by the Galileo spacecraft as it swung around Venus would require 2,000 years for a strike to occur in a given square kilometre. On Earth, 7 strikes would be expected each year in a square kilometre. Six out of nine events detected by the Galileo spacecraft were strongly clustered in frequency spectrum and power, a situation not found on Earth. If the extremely rapid lightning detected by the Venera spacecraft is verified, there may be two modes of discharge on Venus: firstly, a continuous glow of St. Elmo's fire at high points on the surface with rapid, low energy lightning, rather like that on Earth, and secondly, high energy superbolts which fire from the upper atmosphere - as detected by the Galileo spacecraft. Another argument for expecting lightning on Venus comes from the idea proposed by Juergens. He identified cometary tails with objects which are under enhanced electrical stress from the solar plasma due to the radial component of their movement toward or away from the Sun. THE COMET-LIKE PLASMA TAIL OF VENUS WOULD SUGGEST THAT THE PLANET HAS NOT YET ACHIEVED ELECTRICAL EQUILIBRIUM AFTER A RECENT COMETARY HISTORY. That being so, lightning of considerable violence and/or frequency would be expected on Venus. It would also fit the observation that the solar wind is tightly coupled to the planet. The magnetic flux 'ropes' of the solar wind, entwined about the planet, are indicative of electric (Birkeland) currents flowing from the solar wind directly into the planet's ionosphere. This is most simply explained by a high potential difference between the planet and its surroundings. The solar wind shock front observed by Pioneer Venus at solar maximum was 35% larger than the shock front observed the Soviet Venera 9 and l0 spacecraft at solar minimum. It was expected that the size of the bow shock would be determined by the size of the planet and the solar wind speed (which remains remarkably constant throughout the solar cycle) and remain unchanging. However, plasma sheaths change in thickness in response to changes in electric stress. Cometary comas show similar variability during solar storms. This implies that the solar cycle either causes, or is caused by, a change in the electrical environment of the Sun.
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Another manifestation of electrical effects in the ionosphere of Venus is the well-known 'Ashen light' which is often seen as a faint illumination of the dark part of the crescent disk. There can be no doubt that the true origin of the Ashen Light is electric. It is a night-sky glow, similar to that in our own sky but estimated to be 50-80 times stronger. It has a line emission spectrum sufficiently strong to be photographed... [V A Firsoff] The associated puzzle as to why Venus maintains a nightside ionosphere, given that night on Venus lasts about 58 Earth days, has not been answered. It is known that the nightside atmosphere is bombarded by fast electrons and that there is an unexplained large, fast drift of plasma (up to 10km/sec or 23,000mph) from day to night hemispheres.
ATMOSPHERIC ROTATION
The energy required to move the upper atmosphere of Venus violently about the slowly rotating planet may also be attributable to electromagnetic effects coupling through the ionosphere. In other words, the Venus equivalent of the Van Allen radiation belts would be forced into an equatorial belt of ionised gas in the upper atmosphere. Firsoff has noted that if Venus does have an intrinsic magnetic field it may both contribute to driving the ferocious high level winds and at the same time mask the planet's magnetic field. If planetary magnetic fields are caused by the rotation of charge intrinsic to the planet, the slow rotation of Venus would result in a small planetary field. The general 4 Earth-day retrograde global rotation is only disturbed by the notable 'eye' pattern in the high level haze caused by solar heating at the sub-solar point. The near equal temperatures, day and night, and from equator to the poles is totally inadequate to drive the energetic atmospheric movements observed.
ATMOSPHERIC BREATHING
In 1972, a 'breathing' phenomenon was discovered in the Venusian atmosphere. It is as if the cloud cover is acting like the lid on a kettle of boiling water; the infrared CO2 lines swing through a four day cycle akin to a relaxation oscillation which builds up slowly during each cycle and then collapses. This indicates that the cloud deck moves up and down through 1 km over the entire planet. Such a phenomenon requires considerable energy input which is difficult to account for on a very slowly rotating planet if solar energy is the only source. The 'breathing' has been confirmed by the Magellan orbiter which underwent variable atmospheric braking at the lowest point of its orbit, with a 4 day cycle. This strange phenomenon is analogous to the lid on a kettle of boiling water and indicates planet-wide heat input. It is one of the strongest arguments for Venus' heat being sourced internally and is consistent with the the four Pioneer probes discovery of twice the radiation coming from the surface as was incident from sunlight. The surface radiation also varied by a factor of two which is difficult to explain by any greenhouse theory.
IN SUMMARY:
The comet-like magnetosphere, extreme heat, strong electrical interactions with the solar wind and intense lightning, ionospheric and atmospheric activity suggest that Venus has not yet achieved electrical or thermal equilibrium with its environment in the solar plasma. This, in turn, lends physical support to the interpretation of early reports of the planet as COMET VENUS and of its interaction with other planetary bodies.

Then there is the evidence of the surface scars... Wal Thornhill
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE (2) THE VENUS COMET (3) THE ELECTRIC SERPENT
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Wal Thornhill The Economist
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

One of the reasons, I believe, that knowledge is in a state of useless overproduction is that it is strewn all over the place, spoken in a thousand competitive voices. Its insignificant fragments are magnified all out of proportion, while its major and world-historical insights lie around begging for attention. There is no throbbing, vital center. ~Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong It is a common attitude in our time that truth is relative. You have your truth and I have mine. Mine is just as good as yours, ISN'T IT?. As a dedicated scholar, why shouldn't I just cling to my truth, be "broadminded" and let you go your way with yours? And then we can both play that popular game of competing to come up with more irrelevant or insignifcant fragments of knowledge. There isn't any meaningful payoff to striving to come to a common understanding, is there? After all, truth (religion) is personal. The Constitution says it is. Well... If there isn't one truth--a common possible-to-perceive reality, a set of values that transcends cultural differences--for human beings then we are truly alien. We may share the same body chemistry and may be physically classified as the same, but in the ultimately important aspects we are psychological, intellectual and spiritual aliens. We may be able to procreate together and share the same species label as Homo Sapiens but the name is a bad joke. The originators of the THOTH electronic newsletter believe that we truly need a "throbbing, vital center" and that a correct reconstruction of our past--not one based in denial--has to be a crucial part to such a unifying focus. Such a reconstruction is, of course, our mission.
THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE (2)

By David Talbott
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In their myths, rites and hymns the ancient Sumerians contrasted their own time to the earliest remembered age--what they called "the days of old," or "that day," when the gods "gave man abundance, the day when vegetation flourished." This was when the supreme god An "engendered the year of abundance." To this primeval age, every Sumerian priest looked back as the reference for the preferred order of things, which was lost through later conflict and deluge. In the city of Eridu at the mouth of the Euphrates, the priests recalled a Golden Age prior to familiar history. The predecessors of their race, it was claimed, had formerly reposed in the paradise of Dilmun, called the "Pure Place" of man's genesis. This lost paradise of Dilmun, about which scholars have debated for decades, is strangely reminiscent of the paradise of Eden. "That place was pure, that place was clean. In Dilmun...the lion mangled not. The wolf ravaged not the lambs," the Sumerian texts read. The inhabitants of this paradise lived in a state of near perfection, in communion with the gods, drinking the waters of life and enjoying unbounded prosperity. Ancient Egypt, an acknowledged cradle of civilization, preserved a remarkably similar memory. Not just in their religious and mythical texts, but in every sacred activity, the Egyptians incessantly looked backwards, to events of the Tep Zepi. The phrase means the "First Time," a time of perfection "before rage or clamor or strife or uproar had come about," as the texts themselves put it. This was the Golden Age of Ra, and the memories of that time echoed through centuries of Egyptian thought. "The land was in abundance," the texts say. "There was no year of hunger ... Walls did not fall; thorns did not pierce in the time of the Primeval Gods." Or from another text: ...there was no unrighteousness in the land, no crocodile seized, no snake bit in the time of the First Gods. Cosmic harmony. Abundance. Paradise. To this Golden Age, according to the great nineteenth century scholar Francois Lenormant, the Egyptians "continually looked back with regret and envy." The golden age of Ra was, for the Egyptians, the Great Example setting a standard for all later ages. A surprising fact emerges. The legend of the Golden Age is as old as civilization. And the implications are well worth pondering. A coherent set of ideas has survived all of the twists and turns of cultural evolution for at least five thousand years--and on every continent. Now that's an astonishing verification of the durability of myth! Many of us had always thought of myth as the outcome of reckless invention--illiterate savages entertaining themselves by contriving magical stories out of nothing. Imagine such a process going on for thousands of years, and ask yourself if any possibility of a universal memory would remain. Remember that the myth-makers did not just recount a charming tale; they strove desperately to recover what was lost. In the infancy of civilization collective activity reflects a singular reference to the age of the gods--the honoring of the gods through celebration, representation, reenactment, codification, and massive construction activity. In fact, there are numerous grounds for saying that civilization itself was the outcome of this fundamentally religious activity. Perhaps the most accomplished analyst of mythology in modern times was the late Mircea Eliade, chairman of the Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion. From his meticulous, lifelong survey of the subject, professor Eliade drew a stunning conclusion: literally every component of early civilizations--from religion to art and architecture-expressed symbolically the desire to recover and to re-live the lost Golden Age. That which symbolically transported the participant back to the First Time, the Golden Age, was sacred. That which did not was transient and mundane, of no interest. Around the world, early man yearned for a return to paradise. Every coronation of a king, every New Year's festival, monumental construction, every recitation of temple hymns and prayers, every holy war,
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every sacrifice to the gods was motivated by a desire to recapture some aspect of the Golden Age, to live, if only for a symbolic moment, in the original age of the gods.
THE VENUS COMET (3)

(An Exchange between Wal Thornhill and Tim Thompson) [Thornhill as original poster... ] In D. Grinspoon's recent book, 'Venus Revealed', he writes on p.245: One of the most puzzling [patterns] was this: the highest mountains of Venus are all surprisingly shiny. At altitudes above about thirteen thousand feet, the reflectivity jumps up and the ground abruptly gets very bright. Surface roughness cannot explain this, so something in, or on, the ground at these high elevations is different, making it highly reflective. Grinspoon puts forward the idea that some chemical reaction takes place at the lower temperature, 820 degrees F, to form a radar reflective mineral. This requires the unlikely situation that all peaks on Venus have the same chemistry. A much simpler answer is that the diffuse electric discharges of St. Elmo's fire, occurring preferentially at the highest altitudes of mountain peaks, forms a highly conductive plasma which is a superb reflector of radar signals. [A posted response] [Tim Thompson] The peculiar radar reflectivity of the Venusian highlands is one of the interesting outstanding problems that remain in our solutions, but as Grinspoon himself says, they are only tentative, and his 'fools gold' idea is a lark more than anything else. But his comments do make use of the fact that the vertical temperature profile is pretty much the same everywhere on Venus, in the lower atmosphere, so this kind of chemical solution is a physically sound idea in principle. However, Thornhill's proposed solution is not. Plasmas are not "superb reflectors of radar signals", they are suberb *refractors* of radar signals. Ham radio signals skip off of an active ionosphere, not because they reflect, but because the ionosphere refracts the radio signal back down. This works because the ionosphere is thick, and the radio waves arrive at an appropriate angle of incidence. A thin 'St. Elmo's fire' plasma over the surface of Venus would have no effect at all on the Magellan radar beam, except perhaps to increase the dispersion of the return echo. Such a plasma layer is so thin, it would probably go unnoticed altogether. [WT] TT has chosen as an example of a plasma, an ionosphere, which is a tenuous, partially ionised plasma which refracts radio signals as he says, and is also transparent to certain frequencies. This is quite distinct from the plasma I was describing. The density of the atmosphere at the surface of Venus is about 1/10 that of water. St. Elmo's fire is a highly ionised state involving actual discharge. Put the two together and you have a dense plasma - which conducts like a metal and therefore reflects radar like a metal surface. The thickness of such a plasma would have no more effect on radar reflectivity than the thickness of a metal sheet would. Since the plasma would coat the surface rocks (whatever their composition), the radar return would be an enhanced version of that being received from nearby, uncoated, electromagnetically dissipative rocks, and would be greater than that returned from fool's gold. I consider my hypothesis is simpler than one relying on chemical or physical changes in rocks of unknown composition. [WT- original] Lightning is poorly understood. The mechanism of charging of storm clouds remains a mystery. Because lightning is conventionally associated with violent cloud movement on Earth, it was a surprise when investigators found strong evidence of lightning in the quiescent atmosphere of Venus. 'On Venus the clouds tend to resemble fogbanks,... You don't see much lightning in fog'.
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[TT's response] This is absolute hogwash. Lightning is very well understood, and the charge separation mechanisms in terrestrial thunderstorms are subject to intense scrutiny. Thornhill is talking through his hat. See references 8-12. Lightning on Venus was not expected, but this kind of surprise is not so uncommon in science. [WT-new] Maybe I should have said lightning generation is not understood. None of the references given [8-12] explain how charge separation occurs to create lightning. They all deal with detailed aspects of the phenomenology of lightning. I quote from TT's Ref [15]: The electrification of clouds in the Earth's atmosphere and generation of lightning is one of the commonest and most spectacular terrestrial phenomena and has been the subject of numerous scientific investigations. Yet, in spite of investigation with modern theoretical and measurement techniques, lightning in the Earth's atmosphere is not fully understood and remains one of the most complex, unsolved and elusive scientific problems. Given TT's language, I am driven to ask why it is that skeptics are so cocksure of themselves in the face of our monumental ignorance? They certainly lack that prime requirement of a true scientist, that is, curiosity. If more were needed to bolster my argument, Martin Uman, a University of Florida professor of electrical engineering and one of the world's leading experts on lightning has said: We don't know how lightning attaches to the ground and not much about how it gets started in the cloud. This lack of understanding has been highlighted recently with the surprise discovery of "red sprites" and "blue jets" above electrical storms. Recent attempts to explain them still rely on the dogma of electrical self-sufficiency of the Earth and only serve to compound the mystery. I believe that the main reason for wanting to discount the discovery of lightning on Venus was that the clouds on Venus are essentially layers of haze, within a highly stratified atmosphere. The standard description of how lightning is generated just doesn't apply on Venus. I should also mention that there is no explanation for "bolts from the blue" on Earth, with no clouds involved at all. The very reason that lightning was not expected on Venus was due to our lack of understanding. [WT-original] The Venusian ionosphere is directly coupled to the solar wind. Intense airglow emission in long wavelength UV was observed to occupy a large volume of the ionosphere on both the day and night sides of the planet. The intensity seems to be linked to solar activity. I would therefore expect lightning activity on Venus to be generated, not from cloud motions, but from electrical input originating in the Solar plasma. [TT's response] This is not a justifiable conclusion. Yes, the Venusian ionosphere, unlike that of the Earth, interacts directly with the solar wind. However, there is insufficient energy in the thin solar plasma to drive lightning deep inside the atmosphere. The mechanisms for lightning on Venus are almost certainly the same as for the Earth. [WT- new] This paragraph is a statement of opinion with no evidence to back it up. The last sentence is true but since the mechanism on Earth is not understood, that just means we don't understand lightning, period. It is perfectly proper and scientific, under the circumstances, to offer a new hypothesis. [WT-original] If ions are scarce in the lower atmosphere (and there are no counterparts to earthly clouds on Venus), fewer but more equally energetic lightning discharges would be expected than on Earth. There is
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evidence that this is so; the rate detected by the Galileo spacecraft as it swung around Venus would require 2,000 years for a strike to occur in a given square kilometre. On Earth, 7 strikes would be expected each year in a square kilometre. Six out of nine events detected by the Galileo spacecraft were strongly clustered in frequency spectrum and power, a situation not found on Earth. If the extremely rapid lightning detected by the Venera spacecraft is verified, there may be two modes of discharge on Venus: firstly, a continuous glow of St. Elmo's fire at high points on the surface with rapid, low energy lightning, rather like that on Earth, and secondly, high energy superbolts which fire from the upper atmosphere - as detected by the Galileo spacecraft. [TT again] There is no justification for any of this. The observed rate of lightning on Venus differs little, if at all, from that on the Earth [13,14,15], and there is no reason to presume that the mechanism that generates lightning on Earth does not operate on Venus as well. [WT-new] My information came from D A Gurnett et al, 'Lightning and Plasma Wave Observations from the Galileo flyby of Venus', Science 253(1991). R A Kerr summarises the findings on p.1492. Also, Sky & Telescope, June 1992, pp.610, 611 have a news item on the same issue of Science, titled "Lightning on Venus Revisited": According to team member Scott Bolton (JPL), who presented the results at a meeting of planetary scientists in November, the lightning strokes must have been at least as strong as those in terrestrial thunderstorms to have registered on Galileo at all. But they don't occur nearly as often as previously estimated. Based on the Galileo rate it would take 2000 years for a stroke to occur over a given square kilometer of Venus' surface. Longtime lightning skeptic P A Cloutier (Rice Univ) remains unconvinced by the Galileo results. He points out that six of the nine events are strongly clustered in frequency and power--a situation he says would have 'essentially zero' probability of occurring among terrestrial lightning strokes. Cloutier's argument is based, as I have shown, on total ignorance of the cause of terrestrial lightning. On the basis of my hypothesis, however, the clustering of power would be expected. [WT-original] Another argument for expecting lightning on Venus comes from the idea proposed by Juergens. He identified cometary tails with objects which are under enhanced electrical stress from the solar plasma due to the radial component of their movement toward or away from the Sun. [TT again] He was wrong, a common problem for Juergens. Comet tails consist of dust, and ionized gas, pushed away from the Sun by the streaming solar wind plasma (dust tail), or direct pressure from solar photons (the ion tail). [WT-new] The standard mechanisms of formation of comet tails obviously play some small part in the phenomena. The question is, are they sufficient? That comets are not well explained can be judged by the failure of most predictions about their appearances. The obvious similarity of the jets from the nucleus to electric spark machining should give pause to any curious scientist. Combine that with the strangely accelerated ions near the nucleus, cometary x-rays, and the flare up of comets at great distances from the sun during solar outbursts, and I think TT has more to do than just dismiss Juergens' and Dr Earl Milton's work as wrong. More later Wal Thornhill
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REFERENCES
[8] "Lightning Flashes with High Origins" D.E. ProctorJournal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 102(D2): 1693-1706 (Jan 27 1997) [9] "The Spatial and Temporal Development of Intracloud Lightning" X.M. Shao & P.R. Krehbiel Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 101(D21): 26641-26668 (Nov 27 1996) [10] "On the Initiation of Lightning Discharge in a Cloud .1. the High-Field Regions in a Thundercloud" M.D. Nguyen & S. Michnowski Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 101(D21): 26669-26673 (Nov 27 1996) [11] "On the Initiation of Lightning Discharge in a Cloud .2. the Lightning Initiation on Precipitation Particles" M.D. Nguyen & S. Michnowski Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 101(D21): 26675-26680 (Nov 27 1996) [12] "Electric Field Magnitude and Lightning Initiation in Thunderstorms" T.C. Marshall, M.P. McCarthy & W.D. Rust Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 100(D4): 7097-7103 (Apr 20 1995) [13] "Optical Detection Of Lightning on Venus" S.A. Hansell, W.K. Wells & D.M. Hunten Icarus 117(2): 345-351 (Oct 1995) [14] "Venus Planetary Lightning Rate as Deduced from VLF Bursts" C.M. Ho, R.J. Strangeway & C.T. Russell Advances in Space Research 15(4): 93-98 (1995) [15] "Lightning on Venus Confirmed" R.N. Singh & C.T. Russell Current Science 66(7-8): 550-561 (Apr 10 1994)
THE ELECTRIC SERPENT

Under the heading "Here be serpents" in The Economist for 8 March 1997, p. 102, appeared the following article: NEAR the centre of the Milky way lurks something at least as weird as dark matter, but definitely visible. Through their radio telescopes, astronomers can see a bright strand, 150 light years long and a couple wide; and kinked in two places. They call it the Snake. Since its discovery in 1991 by Andrew Gray at the University of Svdney. the Snake has been a puzzle. Other 'threads,' as they are known, have been found inside the Galactic Centre Lobe, a barrel-shaped region of space where the interstellar gas is slightly more rarefied than outside it. Among the many exotic theories of their genesis is that they are loops of magnetism-perhaps blown like smoke rings off newly forming black holes-which bounced off the inside wall of the Lobe. But the Snake, being outside the Lobe, defies this explanation. Other theories, which did not depend on the Lobe, seemed capable of explaining smooth filaments, but not kinked ones. Gregory Benford, of the University of California, Irvine, who proposed a competing theory before the Snake was found, has just updated it, and thinks it can account for these anomalies. His idea is that the Snake is an electrical discharge, like a vast lightning bolt-so vast that it just hangs in space, instead of disappearing as earthly lightning does. Its source is a giant electrical dynamo. When something that conducts electricity sweeps through a magnetic field, a current starts to flow through it (this is the basis of a dynamo). Gas clouds in the middle of the galaxy are, everyone agrees, partly ionised radiation flying through has battered electrons off some of the atoms in the gas. Because electrons are what carry electricity, the clouds should therefore be electrical conductors. Dr Benford reckons some of them could have built up an electric current as they moved through the strong magnetic field that pervades the centre of the galaxy. Once this had happened, the current could gradually have extruded itself
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from one of the denser areas of cloud, and followed it as it drifted through space-hanging on, in Dr Benford's words, like a lamprey. However, this current itself twists around and around as it flows through the magnetic field, the way a torrent of water twists up a fire-fighter's hosepipe. That explains the kinks. Dr Benford reckons the Snake is actually something like a corkscrew shape seen side-on. Such knowledge may not be entirely esoteric. Dr Benford thinks a better understanding of the Snake could give clues about how to handle similar (if smaller) structures on earth. That is something nuclear fusion researchers would love to do. To achieve their goal, they need to learn how to control ionised gases similar to those thought to compose the Snake. But the Benford theory has not kicked its rivals down yet. Don Melrose, also at Sydney, points out that the gas in the middle of the galaxv might already be so strongly ionised, and thus such a good electrical conductor, that current would leak away rather than build up into a concentration like the Snake. Dr Morose also thinks that some of the other theories, though they have shortcomings, do not rule out filaments with kinks. If Dr Benford's theory is right, though, it also predicts that the Snake is slowly expiring. The radio signals that make it show up come from electrons flowing in it as they spiral through the galactic magnetic field. But this uses up energy, so the Snake is slowly glowing itself to death. Perhaps only its eventual disappearance will settle the debate. [emphasis added]
[Wal Thornhill Comments]: Two items stand out: 1. The filamentary nature of "the snake". 2. The corkscrew shape. I suppose the third thing that stands out for me is the evident lack of understanding of galactic discharges on the part of astronomers. Such a structure is expected on the basis of the plasma cosmology presented in Eric Lerner's book "The Big Bang Never Happened" - but I'll bet you won't see mention of that in any of the scientific journals.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (1)
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Ralph Juergens
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. ~Huxley
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong In keeping with our present dual focus on mythology and the physics of the electrical universe, the following paragraphs should be of interest to our readers. They are taken from an article by Dr. William William . "The Center Holds", PENSE I, May 1972: It is not surprising that in 1950 physicists felt absolved from considering Velikovsky's historical evidence because it contradicted their "known laws." He foresaw conflict from the beginning, and in the original preface defended his procedure explicitly: If, occasionally, historical evidence does not square with formulated laws, it should be remembered that a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with laws.* Methodologically this is unassailable. Still, tactically speaking, sooner or later it is necessary to meet the physicists on their own ground. From the historical facts established in Worlds in Collision more adequate physical laws still wait to be formulated in detail. The specific laws the book was thought to contradict are those of the celestial mechanics which assumes the solar system to be electrically sterile and on that assumption successfully calculates planetary positions. It should be well known that since the early Fifties radiology and space probes have rendered such an assumption false many times over. However, the accusation is still heard that if Velikovsky dethrones Laplacian celestial mechanics, he must offer something better in its place; until then he has not approached the problem "quantitatively" and therefore physicists are still absolved from considering it. The less generous among them even assume that he was not aware of the problems involved.
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It is not so well known that in his correspondence and discussions with Einstein, which grew in complexity till the latter's death in 1955, the relationship between electromagnetic and gravitational forces was the principal subject. That was only as it should have been, since Einstein's own work in his last years was towards a unified field theory explaining the two orders of phenomena in common terms... *I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (Doubleday, 1950), vii.
THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH

By David Talbott It's amazing how frequently the earliest-remembered events occur on a mythscape of uncertain location! Where *was* the ancient paradise? Where did the gods and goddesses and heroes of the mythical epoch actually live? Beyond the north wind? Atop the world's highest mountain? In the land of the rising sun? On a lost island in the middle of the sea? If anything has been proven by the flood of ancient texts that have come to light in the past hundred and fifty years, it is that the central personalities of myth did not, in the original concepts, dwell on earth. The theater in which the great mythical events were first played out was the sky. Here is an indisputable fact: If you will trace the claimed history of any ancient nation backwards, you will, in every instance, reach a point at which man lives in the shadow of the gods. This distant epoch--what the Egyptians called the "time of the primeval gods"--cries out for clarification. Originally, the gods rule the world. First in an age of gold, but this age is followed by catastrophe and cosmic disharmony. That is the archetypal memory repeated around the world. In their earliest historical expressions, the gods are celestial through and through. As the stories are told and re-told across the centuries, however, these celestial powers are progressively localized, re-entering the chronicles in increasingly human guise. All of the profound cosmic events expressed in the earliest ritual, symbol, and myth are eventually brought down to earth. In the typical instance, through a relentless process of identification, the gods eventually emerge as legendary *ancestors* of the nation telling the story.. Each of the nations recalling the Golden Age, for example, insisted that their own forefathers had descended from the gods. At first glance, this pervasive claim will appear as sheer arrogance, a nationalistic pride carried to absurd extremes. But the origins of the idea have never been adequately appreciated. In truth, this worldwide racial claim, that "we are descended from the gods," or that "our race was originally divine," or "we were the favored children of the gods," offers a key to the primitive experience: it confirms early man's unqualified sense of connection to the enigmatic celestial powers so vividly portrayed in the myths. And one cannot afford to ignore the equally significant principle: that these celestial powers are *no longer present*, no longer visible and active in the world. Our subject, in other words, is far more than an enchanting idea. To explore the mythical age of the gods is to confront the driving force of the first civilizations--the most powerful memory in human history Some of the particulars of this myth are remarkable. All of the well-preserved myths of the Golden Age, for example, say that this magical epoch was distinguished by the rule of a Universal Monarch, a celestial king of the world. On every continent, it was declared that before a king ever ruled on earth, a prototype of kings arose in heaven, and it was this "best of kings" who had founded the original paradise. For the Egyptians it was the creator-king Ra, for the Sumerians it was the high god An, from whom kingship descended. Similarly, the Hindu Brahma, the Chinese Huang-ti, Mexican Quetzalcoatl, Mayan Itzam Na and numerous counterparts among other nations, all preside over the Golden Age, while establishing the ideals and principles of kingship.
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In Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, China, Greece, Italy, northern Europe, pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America--in fact, wherever the institution of kingship arose--the royal genealogies lead backwards to this exemplary ruler, celebrated as the first in a sacred line of kings. The different myths recount in rich detail how the god built a great temple or city in primeval times, invented the alphabet, or taught a new language to a pre-literate race. They say it was he who invented the wheel, introduced the science of agriculture, instituted laws, and taught the true religion--in short, brought to a barbarous race all of the arts of civilization. There is also a crucial connection here. This "ancestor-king" is so completely identified with the Golden Age that it is impossible to separate the one myth from the other. There is no Golden Age without a founding king, no founding king without a Golden Age! The fabulous chronology of Egyptian kings or pharaohs offers a telling example. In his sweeping history of ancient Egypt, the Greek historian Herodotus enumerates the early lineage of kings. He tells us that there was a first king of Egypt, and his name was Helios. This first king of Egypt was not a mere mortal! He was a celestial power. Of course Herodotus was simply translating an Egyptian name into Greek. For the Egyptians, the institution of kingship began with the rule of the primeval sun god Atum or Ra, who, prior to his retirement from the world, founded the Tep Zepi, the First Time, or Golden Age. In Egypt all of the kingship rites point backwards to the age of Ra, a supreme god celebrated from one end of Egypt to the other as the prototype of kings. Indeed, every historical king's or pharaoh's authority derived from a connection to the ancestral king, for as the best Egyptologists have pointed out, the pharaoh was *accredited as such* by the claim that the blood of Atum-Ra coursed through his veins. In rites deeply rooted in Egyptian cosmology, each new king symbolically ascended the throne of Ra, took as spouse Ra's own mistress, the mother goddess, wielded Ra's scepter, built temples and cities modeled after Ra's temple or city in the sky, adorned himself with the beard of the god, wore the crown of Ra as his own, and defeated neighboring enemies in just the way that Ra had defeated the hordes of darkness or chaos in the Tep Zepi. Identification of local king and celestial prototype was absolute. Such is the universal tradition: every king was, in a magical way, the Universal Monarch reborn. And this is why, among all ancient nations, the chroniclers of kingship took such pains to establish the unbroken line of kings: Only by proclaiming that the local king carried the blood of his predecessor, the Universal Monarch, could they certify his suitability for the prescribed function of kings. Dave
THE ELECTRICAL SUN

By Ralph Juergens [EDITOR'S NOTE] With the following piece, we begin a series of articles by the late Ralph Juergens, one of the pioneers of a new perspective on the role of electricity in the Cosmos.
ABSTRACT:
The interplanetary medium is capable of confining the electric fields of charged celestial bodies within space-charge sheaths of limited dimensions.
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This phenomenon explains the success of gravitational theory in describing and predicting orbital motions in the present, relatively stable Solar System. Disruption of space-charge sheaths during close encounters between electrified planetary bodies may account for the catastrophic electromagnetic effects observed and reported by the survivors of near-collisions in ancient times. The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge--the probable source of all its radiant energy.
RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (1)

Physical scientists were outraged in 1950 when Immanuel Velikovsky (1) published historical evidence from around the world suggesting that the order and even the number of planets in the solar system had changed within the memory of man. Ideas in nearly every field of scholarship were challenged, but most seriously challenged of all were certain dogmas in the field of astronomy which had only in recent centuries succeeded in convincing mankind that Spaceship Earth was a haven of safety. The emotional outburst from the community of astronomers that so blackened the name Velikovsky and so successfully--if only temporarily--discredited Worlds in Collision has been laid to many causes, from the psychological and the political to simple resentment against invasion of the field by an outsider. Whatever the nature of such intensifying factors, however, I believe it is only fair to acknowledge an underlying and totally sincere scientific disbelief in the historical record. Perfectly valid dynamical theories valid in the sense of having met and passed every conceivable kind of test--simply could not be reconciled with the story told by Velikovsky. In short, conventional celestial mechanics, which had proved time and again its ability to describe and predict planetary motions in today's solar system, could in no way accommodate a disordering and rearrangement of the planets as recently as 3,000 or 4,000 years ago. In terms of celestial mechanics, a system of bodies whose motions are governed entirely by gravitational forces and the inertia of masses could not conceivably restabilize itself within mere millennia--let alone within the few decades or centuries allowed by the historical record--following disruptions of the kind described in Worlds in Collision. Even were each near-collision in such a series so providentially contrived as to leave one or the other participant moving along a near-circular orbit close to the ecliptic plane, the final encounter must necessarily leave at least one participant traveling on a highly eccentric orbit--one that must return the body again and again to at least one point of possible collision with its late antagonist. Yet today's solar system--with one possible exception involving Neptune and Pluto--seems ordered in such a way that further planetary collisions are out of the question. Velikovsky was quite aware of the discord between his findings and current ideas as to what constitutes propriety in celestial mechanics. He insisted, however, that the fault must lie in dynamical theory, not in the evidence of history. He suggested that the sun and the planets must be electrically charged, and that electromagnetic and electrostatic forces--which could quite easily be capable of cushioning collisions, altering rotational motions, tilting axes, and perhaps even damping orbital eccentricities over relatively short spans of time--must play unrecognized roles in celestial affairs. As we shall note presently, there is compelling evidence to indicate that the sun, the earth, and the moon, to name only a few major bodies in the solar system, are electrically charged. Yet the very precision with which gravitational theory accounts for the planetary motions seems to belie this evidence. Perturbations due to repulsive electrical forces, for example, are nowhere in evidence today --not even, I hasten to suggest, in the strange behavior of comet tails, about which I shall have more to say later. This impasse between celestial mechanics and the notion of cosmic electrical interactions was recognized long ago. A reconciliation seemed so unlikely that physical scientists of half a dozen
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successive generations felt compelled to devise all sorts of exotic theories to explain away the most obvious evidence for electric charge on the earth. An important clue to the vanity of all such ad hoc theorizing was radioed back to earth in 1962 by Mariner 2. Man's first successful Venus probe established once and for all that the interplanetary medium is not a near-vacuum, as most astronomers had always supposed, but is actually a plasma--a gas of dissociated positive ions and electrons. This disclosure instantly invalidated the argument that the planets, if electrically charged, would perturb one another in most obvious ways. According to the physics of electricity, a charged body isolated in a vacuum, which is a dielectric medium, surrounds itself with an electric field that reaches to infinity, with strength diminishing as the square of the distance. Thus, in a vacuous interplanetary medium, or even in a medium of neutral atomic or molecular gases, planetary charges must give rise to electric fields detectable by their influences upon planetary motions. In an interplanetary medium consisting of ionized gas, however, things are radically different. One of the primary characteristics of a plasma has up to now received little or no attention from astronomers. This is its ability to shield itself from the electric field of any body in contact with it, or contained within it, and charged to an electric potential different from that of the plasma itself. The mechanism by which such shielding is accomplished was named the space-charge sheath by those who first studied the phenomenon. In a space-charge sheath, positive and negative charges collect and arrange themselves in such a way that the electric field of a body with alien potential is contained within a limited region surrounding the body. This does not mean that the total electric charge of the isolated body must be compensated by equal and opposite charge in the sheath; rather, it means only that enough charge must be assembled in the sheath to increase or decrease the potential of the outer sheath boundary to match the potential of the surrounding plasma. As a laboratory phenomenon, the space-charge sheath was described, studied, and given a measure of quantitative theoretical explanation half a century ago. The most lucid accounts of this work are probably those to be found in the papers of Irving Langmuir (2), the physicist who coined the term "plasma" in reference to fully ionized gases. Up to this point I have neglected to mention two most important facts about space-charge sheaths and plasmas: 1. An isolated body whose alien potential is not continually renewed by means of electric currents will quickly acquire the potential of the surrounding plasma, and its sheath will disappear; and 2. A plasma does not necessarily possess an intrinsic electric potential. Where plasmas form in electrical discharges, however--and this is the connection in which Langmuir studied them--they do acquire non-zero potentials. These are clearly matters of immense importance. I will return to them later. For now, we can say that in a solar system pervaded by plasma, each charged planet with a potential unlike that of the local plasma must have its electric field bound up in a space-charge sheath of limited volume. When no orbital conflict exists, the system operates serenely under the direction of forces accounted for in conventional celestial mechanics. But let us imagine what might occur should two electrically charged major bodies in this system find themselves on intersecting orbits. Inevitably, as the two bodies pursued their separate paths on separate time tables, the stage would be set eventually for a rendezvous at one or another point of orbital contact.
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Since the spacecharge sheaths of the bodies would occupy greater volumes than the bodies themselves, a collision between sheaths would actually be more likely to take place than a direct, bodily collision, and in any case it would occur first. When the moment arrived for the inevitable encounter, sheaths would make contact. Unleashed electric fields would clash. Almost instantly, forces immeasurably greater than gravitation would be brought to bear on the charged bodies. Cosmic thunderbolts would flash between the bodies in an effort to equalize their electric potentials. The list of unthinkably disastrous effects that would result could go on and on. The point to be made, however, is that Worlds in Collision--at least in my opinion--documents historical evidence to indicate that phenomena associated with spacecharge-sheath destruction were actually suffered and survived by peoples of antiquity. 1. I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (Doubleday, New York, 1950). 2. I. Langmuir, Collected Works (Pergammon Press, 1961), Vols. 3 & 4. The late Ralph Juergens was a civil engineer living in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was formerly associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 8 (April 5, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2) RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (2)
David Talbott Ralph Juergens
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

It seems astonishing that in the course of half a century of studies of the sun in context with the thermonuclear theory, very few professional astrophysicists have ever expressed the slightest discomfort over discrepancies between observation and theory, or even over the fact that an ad hoc extra theory has had to be devised to explain practically every individual feature of the solar atmosphere. ~Ralph Juergens
THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2)

By David Talbott The ancient Sumerians repeatedly proclaimed that kingship had descended directly from the creator-king An, the most ancient and highest god of the pantheon, and the revered founder of the Golden Age. Consider the myths and images of the Hindu Brahma, Manu or Yama, the Iranian Yima, Danish Frodhi, or Chinese Huang-Ti--all models of the good king, ruling over a primitive paradise. The respective cultures esteemed these mythical figures as *prototypes*. In later ages the chroniclers have such figures ruling on earth. But in the earliest traditions the kingdom is in the sky, and this ancient kingdom of the Universal Monarch is one of the most pervasive archetypes of world mythology. Natives of Mexico insisted that the great god Quetzalcoatl, a sun god who ruled before the present sun, was their first king and founder of the kingship rites. He not only introduced all of the arts of civilization, but presided over the Golden Age. The ancient Maya proclaimed that their once-spectacular civilization had its origins in the rule of the creator-king and god of the Golden Age, Itzam Na. At the center of Mayan culture, stood the sovereign chief, announcing himself as something like "the King of Kings and ruler of the world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na." The leading Mayan expert, J. Eric Thompson, saw this an "inflated notion of grandeur," "a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned James I green with envy." And yet throughout the ancient world, one encounters this divine "grandeur" of kings at every turn. The original concept may appear as self flattery, but it actually has more to do with a *burden* of kings: the requirement that the king live up to the mythical aura of kings. Never was there a king in early times
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that did not wear the dress of a mythical god--the model of the good ruler. Whatever the celestial, founding king had achieved, it was the duty of the present king, pharaoh, or emperor to duplicate, at least through symbolic repetition. For such was the first test of a *good* king. This historical burden of kings will explain why every king was expected to renew the primeval era of peace and plenty. Why, for example, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III so eager to announce that he had restored conditions "as they were in the beginning", in the Tep Zepi or Golden Age of Ra? Or why did the Pharaoh Amenhotep III congratulate himself so for having made the country "flourish as in primeval times..."? The Pharaoh was expected to repeat the achievements of the celestial prototype! In the same way, when the Sumerian king Dungi ascended the throne, it was declared that a champion had arisen to restore the original Paradise.. Indeed, every Sumerian king was expected to reproduce the wonders of "That Day," or the "Year of Abundance"--the Golden Age of An. When the famous Assyrian king Assurbanipal took the throne, the chroniclers proclaimed that "the harvest was plentiful, the corn was abundant ... the cattle multiplied exceedingly." For such was the accreditation of a good king. Among the Hebrews, the expectation was continually expressed that the king would introduce a new Golden Age. The Irish King, according to the respected expert J. A. MacCulloch, ruled under the same expectation: "Prosperity was supposed to characterize every good king's reign in Ireland," MacCulloch writes, and "the result is precisely that which everywhere marked the golden age." This is, of course, a very familiar idea. The ancient king was, in the words of the eminent psychoanalyst, Carl Jung: ...the magical source of welfare and prosperity. It's interesting how often scholars have noticed the theme, without explaining it. How did this universal idea arise--that the earth is *fruitful* under the good king? The ideals of kingship, according to the myths themselves, were a mirror of the life and personality of the great celestial king whose rule brought abundance and cosmic harmony. Hence, the same state of things should accompany that king's successors who share in the blood-line and charisma of the great predecessor, whether that predecessor is called Ra or An, Quetzalcoatl or Itzam Na. Perhaps it will seem a bit strange that an ancient god identified as the creator would be so intimately associated with the idea of kingship, or remembered as having ruled on earth during the Golden Age. There is a fascinating paradox here: In the earliest traditions, as we've already noted, the Universal Monarch is a celestial power through and through. He is, in fact, the central light of heaven. But as we've also noted, in the course of time the creator-king's domain is progressively localized and the god takes on an increasingly human countenance as the "first king" of the particular nation telling the story. In certain lands such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, we are able to observe the process over many centuries. In the earliest memories, Ra and An rule the sky, but later chroniclers in both lands depict them as *terrestrial* rulers. This localization of the creator-king is simply one part of a larger evolutionary process. As the myths evolve over time, the gods and heroes are brought down to earth, one nation after another claiming these divine powers as *ancestors*. And how could it be otherwise? Remember that all sacred activity within the respective cultures arose from the same collective links to the past, to the beauty and terror of the primeval age. "The further we go back in history," observed Carl Jung, "the more evident does the king's divinity become..." And when you trace the royal lineage backwards, you eventually confront the radiant figure at the head of the line. Since the story of this creator-king is as old as the myth of the Golden Age--it is older than the institution of kingship!
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Historians have always claimed that the myths of celestial kings were nothing more than images of local kings and kingship rites projected onto the sky. But comparative analysis will demonstrate that the reverse is true. The memory of the creator-king came first, and it was this remarkable memory which provided the mythical aura supporting and legitimizing kings the world over. Who, then--or what--was the source of this worldwide theme, this universally-remembered and profoundly charismatic power behind the rule of kings?
THE ELECTRICAL SUN

By Ralph Juergens EDITOR'S NOTE; The article below continues our republication of groundbreaking work by the late Ralph Juergens, in which he introduces the concept of an electrically powered Sun.
ABSTRACT:
The interplanetary medium is capable of confining the electric fields of charged celestial bodies within space-charge sheaths of limited dimensions. This phenomenon explains the success of gravitational theory in describing and predicting orbital motions in the present, relatively stable Solar System. Disruption of space-charge sheaths during close encounters between electrified planetary bodies may account for the catastrophic electromagnetic effects observed and reported by the survivors of nearcollisions in ancient times. The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge--the probable source of all its radiant energy.

Let us now consider the problem posed by the seeming fact that the sun and the planets, all immersed in the interplanetary plasma, ought to acquire the electric potential--zero, one would guess --of that plasma. Some might claim that the problem itself is spurious, and that dispensing with it is as simple as chucking Worlds in Collision into the trash heap I contend, nevertheless, that the problem is real, and that observational evidence from many parts of the solar system can be marshaled to resolve it. This problem is real because we have ample evidence that the sun, the earth, and the moon are electrically charged bodies. Only one of the three--the moon--seems to have an electric potential equal to that of its environment, but from this we can only conclude that the environment itself has a potential as high as that of the moon. A quick review of just a few points of evidence will serve here to establish the reality of our problem. The sun is known to have a magnetic field of great complexity. Observations of coronal streamers at the poles of the sun during total eclipse suggest that at least a portion of this field has a dipole configuration, similar to that of the earth's field. Other observations suggest that in the sun's lower atmosphere the field is in a state of continual torment. The existence of the field, however, and even the existence of the complexities of that field in the lower atmosphere, can only be laid to electric currents. No matter how much theorists might like to minimize or even deny it, the fact remains that only electric currents give rise to magnetic fields.
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It is misleading to state simply that "moving charges" generate magnetic fields. Any body of ionized gas, for example, might be described as a collection of moving charges, since its charged particles are indeed in motion. For that matter, each charged particle moving about in such a gas can be said to constitute an elementary electric current. But so long as there is no net differential motion between positive and negative charges, the net electric current will be zero, and the body of gas will generate no magnetic field regardless of how violently it may be agitated. (However, if charges of one sign predominate over charges of the opposite sign, so that the body of gas indeed has a net electric charge, the effect of bulk gas motion will be quite different.) The fact that magnetic fields and effects attend motions in the sun's ionized gases--prime examples being the strong fields evident in connection with rotary motions in sunspots--is explainable most simply and satisfactorily by the conclusion that the solar gases are electrically charged--they contain an excess of particles of one kind--either positive or negative, but almost surely negative. The dipole component of the solar magnetic field can only be attributed to the rotation of the charged sun as a whole, as Dr. Velikovsky pointed out more than two decades ago (3). The earth's magnetic field was tentatively ascribed to electric charge on the earth nearly 100 years ago. In 1878, H. A. Rowland attempted to calculate the electric potential the earth would have to sustain to produce its observed magnetic field. His result--more than 4 x 1016 volts, negative-- seemed to him so ridiculous that he rejected it immediately. An electric charge of the necessary magnitude to give the earth such a potential, wrote Rowland: ...would undoubtedly tear the earth to pieces and distribute its fragments to the uttermost parts of the universe (4). Such arguments have convinced geophysicists ever since Rowland's time that an electric charge on the earth cannot be held responsible for terrestrial magnetism. Most recently, it has been fashionable to rest content with the so-called dynamo theory as an explanation for the earth's magnetic field. It is supposed that the field is generated by motions in the molten core of the earth. No one, however, has yet been able to show how electric currents might be produced by such motions. Professor James Warwick, of the University of Colorado, recently pointed out that the "dynamo theory has not yet successfully predicted any cosmical [magnetic] fields. Its use today rests on the assumption that no alternative theory corresponds more closely to observations (5)." [Warwick's italics] Even stronger objection to the dynamo theory is implied in this remark by Palmer Dyal and Curtis W. Parkin of NASA's Ames Research Center: No rigorous theory has evolved that satisfactorily explains the earth's permanent magnetic field (6). "Satisfactorily," of course, means without acknowledging the electric charge of the earth. Before proceeding, let us consider Rowland's notion that an enormous electric charge must blow the earth to smithereens. This is the same idea advanced by Donald Menzel in 1952 to add zest to his "quantitative refutation of Velikovsky's wild hypothesis" that the sun is electrically charged (7). In the first place, as Professor Fernando Sanford pointed out 40 years ago: [Such] conclusions are all based upon the assumption that electric charges are held to conductors by [gravity] ... If this assumption were correct, it would be impossible to give a negative charge to any small conductor while in the gravitation field of the earth (8).
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Sanford also pointed out that "a soap bubble and a platinum sphere of the same diameter, if joined by a connecting wire and charged from the same source, will take equal charges. This shows conclusively that whatever the force may be which holds electrons to a charged conductor it is not a force which acts between the electrons and the atoms of the conductor. This being the case, the outward pressure of the charge upon a conductor will have no tendency to pull the conductor apart." The earth's atmospheric electric field has been the subject of controversy ever since it was discovered, about 200 years ago. At issue is the question of where resides the electric charge responsible for it-negative charge on the earth itself, or positive charge high in the atmosphere? In 1803 Professor Erman, of Berlin, demonstrated the negative charge of the earth by a simple experiment. He found that a gold-leaf electroscope fitted with a short, pointed collecting rod showed positive electrification when he first grounded it and then raised it a few feet in the air. When he discharged it to the ground while holding it in the upper position and then lowered it, it showed negative electrification. After he placed a ball over the collecting rod--even after he placed the entire apparatus inside a sealed glass tube--and found the same results, he concluded, correctly, that the effects observed were due to electrical induction from a negatively charged earth (9). Erman's findings were derided, then promptly forgotten, even though only one year later two balloonists were mystified, when their collector and electroscope gathered only negative charge from high-level air, instead of the positive charge they expected (10). In 1836 Peltier, on the basis of experiments similar to but rather more elegant than Erman's, came to the same conclusion: the earth is negatively charged, and this charge gives rise to the atmospheric electric field (11). Through all the years since, no one has come up with a more plausible theory of atmospheric electricity than that of Erman and Peltier. Time after time, scientists have tried by one means or another to detect an excess of positive charge high in the atmosphere, but always in vain. (In Scientific American for March 1972, Professor A. D. Moore, writing on the subject of "Electro-statics," states: The atmosphere of the earth is somehow supplied with a positive charge that sets up a downward electric field amounting to between 100 and 500 volts per meter on a clear day. One might question the efficacy of "somehow" as an explanation; but perhaps it suffices for a phenomenon whose existence no one has been able to demonstrate.) In the closing years of the nineteenth century the electrical genius Nikola Tesia built and operated an electrical observatory in the Colorado mountains. Very early in his researches he proved that the earth harbors enormous numbers of free electrons. One of his obsessions at the time was to transmit electric waves through the ground. He reasoned that if the earth were not negatively charged, it would act as a vast sink into which enormous amounts of electricity would have to be injected to bring it to a state where it would vibrate electrically. He discovered that the necessary electrification was already present in great abundance (12). Tesla's finding was recently--and quite inadvertently--repeated for the moon. In Nature for November 12, 1971, Winfield Salisbury and Darrell Fernald, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, reported that they had received signals from the command module of the Apollo 15 flight at a time when it was behind the moon. The signals had been carried around the curvature of the supposedly radio-opaque moon by electric waves in the moon's surface layers (13). If then the sun, the moon, and the earth are electrified bodies, how may we square this fact with the ubiquitous presence of plasma in the solar system?
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One is nagged by the suspicion that F. A. Lindemann was not entirely mistaken concerning free (excess) charges on the sun when he wrote as follows in 1919: It is easy to show that appreciable electrostatic forces cannot exist on the sun. The outer layers ... must certainly be highly ionized ... so that any charges on the sun as a whole would rapidly be neutralized by the emission of ions (14). In other words, the mutual electrical repulsions among excess like charges must drive them outward and away from the sun. Lindemann went on to assume that the electric forces must be balanced by gravitational forces --the concept later shown to be invalid by Sanford. But if we neglect gravity, the argument seems to lead to the conclusion that the sun's potential can only be zero, instead of the few thousand volts calculated by Lindemann. Furthermore, Lindemann's case seems to gain from our present knowledge of. the inter-planetary medium. Surely a conducting plasma pervading space can only facilitate the dissipation of excess charge by the sun. But Lindemann's argument is sound only if two unstated assumptions are valid: 3. The interplanetary medium is devoid of electrical strain the plasma harbors no electric potential of its own - and can therefore serve as a sink for excess solar charges; and 4. The sun's electric charge is not continually renewed via electric currents. I propose to challenge both these assumptions. However, as the reader may already surmise, this can be done only at the cost of challenging astrophysical dogmas more precious than that which denies the sun and the planets electrostatic charge. I offer what follows merely as a very brief summary of my own notions as to how and why the solar system is electrified in spite of all arguments that it can't be.
NOTES
5. Velikovsky, "Cosmos Without Gravitation" (Scripta Academica Hierosolymitana, 1946), p 18. 6. H. A. Rowland, American Journal of Science, (3)15 (1878), 30-38; cited by F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 193 1), P. 79. 7. J. W. Warwick, Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors, 4 (North-Holland, 1911), p 229. 8. P. Dyal and C. W. Pirkin, Scientific American (August, 1971),66. 9. D. Menzel, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96 (1952) 525. 10. F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 1931), p. 80. 11. Gilbert's Annalen, 15 (1803), 386; cited by Sanford, ibid., p. 106. 12. F. Sanford, op. cit., p. 107. 13. Ibid., p. 107. 14. J. O'Neil, Prodigal Genius - The Life of Nikola Tesla (Ives Washburn, 1944), 178. 15. Science News (November 20, 1971). 16. F. A. Lindemann, Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, Vol. 38, No. 228 (December, 1919), 674. The late Ralph Juergens was a civil engineer living in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was formerly associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (3) THE ELECTRICAL SUN: RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (3)
David Talbott Ralph Juergens
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

O Lord, grant that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds. ~Old Scottish Prayer
THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (3)

By David Talbott In exploring ancient images of the Universal Monarch, we now enter the realm of classical thought. Our own civilization owes its greatest debt to Greek and Latin poets, philosophers and historians, who received and interpreted countless mythical traditions of nations throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, often drawing on literary sources that were later lost and are now unavailable to us. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the present age is but a shadow of a former epoch--called the Golden Age of Kronos. "First of all," Hesiod writes, "the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos, when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: Miserable age rested not on them ... The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint." Kronos was the father of beginnings; in the words of the Orphic poet--the "Lord of the World, First Father." But this harmonious and peaceful epoch, founded by the god-king, gave way to world-ending disaster and devastating wars of the gods (the Clash of the Titans). In honor of the Age of Kronos, the Greeks celebrated an annual festival called the Kronia, during which the celebrants symbolically renewed the epoch of peace and plenty. Each year, according to Lucius Accius, the Greeks held large feasts throughout the towns and countryside, reversing the normal social order, exchanging gifts, enjoying merrymaking free from the normal restraints, with each man waiting on his slaves In this way the Kronia festival symbolically transported the celebrants back in time to a mythic period before law and cultural constraints, when Kronos first ruled the world. According to Plato in his often-studied work, *The Statesman*, man formerly lived in a paradise, under the rule of the creator himself. But the mortal realm, Plato declared, was later separated from the creator, and that was the cause of the evils descending upon the world.
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So the Greeks, in accord with the universal tradition, remembered the age of Kronos as the *model* for later generation. In *The Laws*, Plato writes that 'we must do all we can to imitate the life which is said to have existed in the days of Kronos...both in private and public life." In the third century B.C. the neoplatonist Porphyry, drawing on the work of the Greek philosopher Dicaearchus, offered a simple explanation for the human yearning for paradise. The source of this yearning is the memory of the Age of Kronos, he wrote, when men "lived a life of leisure, without care or toil, and also--if the doctrine of the most eminent medical men is to be accepted--without disease...And there were no wars or feuds between them. Consequently, this manner of life of theirs naturally came to be longed for by men of later times." Like his many counterparts in the ancient world, Kronos was the acknowledged prototype of kings, his rule in heaven providing the standards for rule on earth. Every Greek king thus bore the universal burden of royalty, for the Greeks applied exactly the same test of the just or good ruler as did other peoples. Homer, most famous of the Greek poets, announced as the ideal "a blameless king whose fame goes up to the wide heaven, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barley and the trees are laden with fruit...and the people prosper." It was the duty of the king, as the First Father's successor, to renew the Golden Age! One additional aspect of the Kronos image draws our attention. It seems that the former ruler of the sky entered later traditions as a renowned terrestrial king. For in later times it was claimed that Kronos had actually dwelt on earth. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for example, in remembering the Golden Age, was emphatic on the point: "Kronos ruled on this very earth," he insisted. The same idea was proclaimed in Orphic tradition. The correspondence with the global myth and its evolution over time (as the gods were brought down to earth), is indeed remarkable. But the Greek myth of Kronos brings us to a critical juncture. For this celestial power is identified, and the identity leads inexorably to a series of far-reaching discoveries. All Greek astronomical traditions agreed that Kronos was the planet Saturn. What is now the sixth planet from the Sun stands at the center of the Greek paradise myth. Kronos, the planet Saturn, ruled the heavens for a period, presiding over the Golden Age, then departed as the heavens fell into confusion. How did it happen that a remote planet, now a bare speck in the sky, found its way into such an improbable, yet deeply-rooted memory? Our own names for the planets came from the Romans who gave the outermost visible planet the name Saturn. Latin poets, philosophers, and historians, including Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca, preserved an archaic legend about Saturn. In unison they insisted that long, long ago the now-distant star had ruled as god-king, founding an ancient kingdom, a paradise on earth. The Chronicler Virgil remembered: the life golden Saturn lived on earth, while yet none had heard the clarion blare, none the swordblades ring. Saturn, the poet proclaimed:
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...gathered together the unruly race, scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium...Under his reign were the golden ages men tell of, in such perfect peace he ruled the nations... The Latin naturalist Seneca repeated the idea more than once: No wars the nations knew, no trumpets threatening blasts...and the glad Earth herself willingly laid bare her fruitful breast, a mother happy and safe amid such duteous nurslings. But perhaps the most eloquent expressions came from the poet and historian Ovid: The first millennium was the age of gold ... No brass-lipped trumpets called, nor clanging swords ... and seasons traveled through the years of peace. The innocent earth learned neither spade nor plough; she gave her riches as fruit hangs from the tree ... Springtide the single season of the year. What the Greeks called the Kronia, celebrating the fortunate era of Kronos, the Romans termed the Saturnalia, a symbolic renewal of the Saturnia regna or reign of the great god Saturn. As in the Greek festival, the rules of social standing and obligation were temporarily suspended, with all things reverting to the primeval state, as master and slave took their place at one table In remarkable agreement with the myths of other peoples, the Romans regarded Saturn as the model and source of cherished national customs. Tracing their ancestry and national identity to this very god-king, the chroniclers claimed that, in an earlier time, the Latins deemed themselves "Saturnians". "Be not unaware," Virgil writes, "that the Latins are Saturn's race, righteous not by bond or laws, but selfcontrolled of their own free will and by the custom of their ancient god." Nothing symbolized this ancient tie to Saturn more dramatically than the mythical ancestry of kings. It was for a very clear purpose that the chroniclers exerted themselves on the subject, announcing that the early Latin kings were part of an *unbroken line* leading back through mythical history straight to the god-king Saturn. From the mythical king Latinus the line led upward to Faunus, then to Picus. As Virgil puts it: Faunus' sire was Picus, and he boasts thee, O Saturn, as his father; thou art first founder of the line. To him by heaven's decree was no son or male descent, cut off... Since the line of descent was unbroken, Virgil could insist that Augustus Caesar himself be honored as the son of a god, destined to repeat the accomplishments of the founding king-Here is Caesar, and all Iulus' seed, destined to pass beneath the sky's mighty vault. This, this is he whom thou so oft hearest promised to thee, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who shall again set up the Golden Age amid the fields where Saturn once reigned. Just as we have observed among other peoples, Roman mythology preserved the myth of Saturn on two levels. On the one hand, there was the tradition of the celestial Saturn ruling in the sky. "When ancient Saturn had his kingdom in the sky," Virgil wrote, "the deep earth held lucre all in its dark embrace." But the same god was also localized by the Romans as the legendary first king of Latium--a glaring contradiction the chroniclers overcame by asserting that, after the celestial ruler's exile or flight, he had taken up residence in Latium. "I remember how Saturn was received in this land," Ovid wrote. "He had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms. From that time the folk long retained the name of Saturnian." At every level, the Roman memory of Saturn resonates with a global tradition of the Universal Monarch. In the very fashion we have observed in other lands, we see the god entering local history as the primeval founding king, ruling an ancestral kingdom. And with the same result: that the nation telling the story then claimed to have *descended* from the god-king himself.
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The message couldn't be more clear. Long after the mythical age of the gods, every ancient culture continued to honor the great luminary remembered as the king of the world.
THE ELECTRICAL SUN

ABSTRACT:

I can find no way to state this diplomatically, so let me be blunt: 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. It seems astonishing that in the course of half a century of studies of the sun in context with thermonuclear theory, very few professional astrophysicists have ever expressed the slightest discomfort over discrepancies between observation and theory, or even over the fact that an ad hoc extra theory has had to be devised to explain practically every individual feature of the solar atmosphere. Apparently with a steady hand, Fred Hoyle wrote some years ago: We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three kilometres up ... Instead, the atmosphere is a huge bloated envelope (15). And today we know that this "bloated envelope" extends out among the planets. Even the photosphere, where theory would suggest the sun ought to "end," fails miserably to conform with expectations. Its opacity almost conspires to prevent the sun from radiating away its internal energy, if that is indeed where the energy comes from. The granular structure of the photosphere is still attributed to "non-stationary convection," even though Minnaert pointed out decades ago that the Reynolds number of the photospheric gas exceeds the critical value by eight powers of ten--which is to say, by a factor of 100 million--and therefore convection currents in the photosphere should be completely turbulent (16). (The convection currents themselves are postulated to explain how all that internal radiant energy is brought to the surface in spite of photospheric opacity.)
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In the solar atmosphere at intermediate altitudes, astronomers observe an amazing variety of phenomena, none of which can be shown to have any business there if the sun's prime purpose is to shed energy liberated deep in its interior, as the thermonuclear theory would have it. Essential to the received theory is the conviction that inside the sun is a steep temperature gradient, falling toward the photosphere, along which the internal energy flows outward. If we stack this internal temperature gradient against the observed temperature gradient in the solar atmosphere, which falls steeply inward, toward the photosphere, we find we have diagrammed a physical absurdity: The two gradients produce a trough at the photosphere, which implies that thermal energy should collect and become stuck there until it raises the temperature and eliminates the trough. That this does not occur seems to bother no one. But suppose we remove the hypothetical internal temperature gradient. What then? Why then we see that the sun's bloated atmosphere and the "wrong-way" temperature gradient in that atmosphere point strongly to an external source of solar energy. Professor Melvin Cook dared to call attention to this matter in the 1950's (17). However, since he was not a professional astrophysicist, his comment was as unnoted as it was unsolicited. The phenomena of the photosphere, the phenomena of the chromosphere, the phenomena of the corona, and the known characteristics of the interplanetary medium all fit so nicely into a unifying hypothesis based on energy supplied to the sun from the outside that I cannot resist mentioning it here: I believe that the sun behaves as an anode collecting electric current from its environment, and that the energy it radiates is delivered entirely by way of this postulated electrical discharge. C.E.R. Bruce identified an impressive number of solar atmospheric phenomena as electrical-discharge effects as long ago as 1944 (18), and since then he has compiled an impressive record of prediction in the field of astrophysics with a comprehensive theory of cosmic electrical discharges (19). Apparently, however--and puzzlingly, too, in view of some of his conclusions concerning the nature of our galaxy--he does not question the idea that the sun and the stars are thermonuclear engines that live and die totally oblivious of their surroundings. For reasons I can only touch upon here, I would urge Bruce to modify his grand scheme to embrace the idea that stellar energy is electrical in origin. This, to my way of thinking, would finally justify his vision that "it is the breakdown of electric fields ... which has shaped and lit the universe from the beginning (20)." The kind of electric discharge I conceive to be responsible for solar radiation must necessarily be driven by an electric potential in interstellar space--a condition to be expected in a galaxy electrified by the separation of charges on a truly magnificent scale. Just such a situation is postulated by Bruce, who explains the spiral arms of our galaxy as electrical discharges initiated by the breakdown of a radial electric field extending through the entirety of galactic space. And just such a situation could provide the enormously high space potential (negative) that the discharge hypothesis requires. As I see it, then, the sun, already negatively charged to an extremely high electric potential, behaves as an anode and collects more negative charge because its interstellar environment has a potential that is even higher, in the negative sense. It is a matter of relative potentials. By analogy with electrical discharges studied in the laboratory, we can predict certain conditions that should prevail in interplanetary space if the sun is indeed fueled electrically. For now, I would mention only this: The interplanetary medium near the earth seems to be characterized by approximately equal numbers of protons and electrons, which fact identifies it as a true plasma. Farther out--say, near the orbit of Jupiter--the protons should be traveling away from the sun with considerably increased velocities, and the electrons should be present in lesser numbers than the protons.
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Hopefully, the Grand Tour space probe of the outer planets, which is projected by NASA for the late 1970's, will be instrumented to sample the interplanetary medium, and thus will be able to furnish evidence in support or in refutation of the discharge hypothesis. The presence of thermal electrons from the solar corona as far out as Jupiter would put the idea on very shaky ground, it seems to me. But if protons alone are still being accelerated away from the sun at that distance, no other conclusion could be drawn but that an electric current flows through interplanetary space. Even in the earth's neighborhood, by the way, solar-wind theorists have been experiencing great difficulty in reconciling observations of particle densities and temperatures with Eugene Parker's hypothesis (21) that the solar wind represents material unavoidably boiled off by the sun's hot corona (whose millions-ofdegrees temperature, so predictable on the basis of a discharge hypothesis, is unexplained in terms of the conventional theory of stellar energy). Positive ions in the solar wind cross the orbit of the earth with velocities and in numbers close to those predicted by Parker. Solar-wind electrons, on the other hand, seem unacquainted with the rules of the game. In numbers they match the protons pretty well, but they travel rather too slowly and tend to become sidetracked along magnetic field lines (22). Interestingly enough, a solar-wind model that claims better than average success in squaring predictions with observations is that of two Belgian scientists, J. Lemaire and M. Scherer (23). An unusual feature of this model is that it calls for an electric field high in the solar corona to slow electrons and accelerate protons to observed speeds. Even more interesting is a recent summary of solar-wind-speed observations covering a nine-year period. Published in 1971 by J. T. Gosling et al (24), this study shows that "the yearly distributions of solar wind bulk speeds during the years 1962-1970 ... are found to be remarkably constant from year to year. There is no tendency for the solar wind speed to increase with increasing solar activity." This suggests to me that the solar wind is more nearly related to the sun's energy supply, which is also remarkably constant, than to the sunspot cycle. If solar energy actually derived from processes going on inside the sun, one could expect disturbances of the types characteristic of the most active phase of the sunspot cycle to affect the outward flow of the energy; if, however, solar energy did arrive from outside the sun, events upon the solar surface would be much less likely to affect the dissipation of that energy back into space in the form of visible and invisible radiation. The interplanetary medium, considered as a current-carrying channel in an electrical discharge, offers an explanation of the fact that Jupiter radiates several times as much energy as it receives from the sun (25). If Jupiter and its space-charge sheath (magnetosphere) are intercepting energetic primary electrons headed for the sun, the source of the giant planet's excess energy is no longer a mystery. In cosmic rays we have a mystery that has never been solved: where and how are these subatomic particles accelerated to the tremendous kinetic energies they exhibit when they reach the earth? But in the fact that they do reach the earth we find one more important bit of evidence that the earth is negatively charged. And the electric- discharge hypothesis suggests a possible answer to the mystery of cosmic-ray energies. Edward O. Hulburt, writing in The Scientific Monthly (Feb., 1954), noted that the primary cosmic rays deliver a very considerable amount of positive electric charge to the earth. By his calculation, an aggregate positive charge of 7 x 106 coulombs, sufficient to prevent the arrival on earth of any more cosmic-ray protons with energies of 1010 electron-volts or less, would accumulate in only 16 years. Annually, then, the positive charge collected by the earth from this source amounts to more than 4 x 105 coulombs. Hulburt brought out these facts before electrons--negative charges--were discovered in the flux of cosmic rays. Electrons are now detected with more sensitive and more sophisticated devices than were available in the early 1950's, but they have proved to be only about one percent as numerous as protons in the total cosmic-ray population. So, for all practical purposes, Hulburt's calculation is still valid.
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Cosmic rays, in spite of the fact that they deliver 4 x 105 coulombs of positive charge to the earth each year, continue to arrive in undiminished numbers year after year. Presumably they have "always" done so. If we assume, then, that "always" is a matter of billions of years, we can only conclude either that the earth started out with a negative charge in excess of, say, 1016 coulombs, so that in all those years the cosmic-ray protons haven't yet been able to cancel that negative charge, or the earth picks up at least an equal amount of negative charge each year by some other means. In any case, the earth can be neither electrically neutral nor positively charged; only a negatively charged earth fits the evidence provided by the cosmic rays. At first glance, the solar-discharge idea might seem confounded by the fact that cosmic-ray protons reach the inner parts of the solar system. After all, the hypothesis requires that protons from the sun be accelerated out of the system, and indeed that these protons carry practically all of the discharge current as far as the local disturbance extends into interstellar space. Should not the cosmic rays--the 99 percent of them that are positively charged particles--be turned around and driven out of the system in the same way? But suppose that the sun's driving potential--the drop in potential between the sun and the boundary of its discharge is of the order of 10 billion volts. Then solar protons reaching the boundary would be launched into interstellar space with energies of 10 billion electron-volts. They would be cosmic rays in their own right. Astrophysicists tell us that the sun is a rather mediocre star, as far as radiating energy goes. If it is electrically powered, it would seem reasonable to conclude, at least tentatively, that its mediocrity is attributable in some measure to a relatively unimpressive driving potential. This would mean that hotter, more luminous stars should have driving potentials greater than that of the sun and should consequently expel cosmic rays of greater energies than solar cosmic rays. A star with a driving potential--cathode drop is a more appropriate term--of only 20 billion volts would expel protons energetic enough to reach the sun, arriving with 10 billion electron-volts of energy to spare. Such would be merely average cosmic rays, as we know them here on earth. Actually, particles with energies up to 100 billion billion electrons volts reach the earth from galactic space; to such cosmic rays, the adverse electric field in the sun's postulated 10-billion-volt cathode drop would be less than negligible. What all this suggests to me is that cosmic-ray protons and other atomic nuclei reaching the earth are nothing more nor less than the spent current carriers of stars other than the sun. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the calculated energy density of cosmic rays in our galaxy is comparable to the total energy density of electromagnetic radiation, including starlight. This is what one would expect to be the case if electric stars were responsible. 17. F. Hoyle, Frontiers of Astronomy (Mentor Books, 1957), p. 103. 18. M. Minnaert , Chapter 3 in The Sun, G. P. Kuiper, ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 171-172. 19. M. A. Cook Bulletin of the University of Utah, Vol. 46, No. 16 (November 30, 1955). 20. C. E. R. Bruce, A New Approach in Astrophysics and Cosmogony (London, 1944). 21. C. E. R. Bruce, Problems of Atmospheric and Space Electricity, S. C. Coroniti, ed., (Elsevier, 1965), pp. 577-96. 22. Private communication, September 21, 1965. 23. E. Parker, Astrophysical Journal, 128 (1958), 664-67. 24. See, for example, M. D. Montgomery et al, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. Vol. 52, No. 4 (April, 1971), 336; and K. W. Ogilvie et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 76, No. 34 (December 1, 1971) 8165ff. See also J. V. Hollweg, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 76, No. 31 (November 1, 1971),749lff. 25. J. Lemaire and M. Scherer, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 76, No. 31 (November 1, 1971), 7479ff.
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26. J. T. Gosling, R. T. Hansen, and S. J. Bame, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 76, No. 7 (March 1, 1971), 1811ff. 27. Science News (June 13, 1970).
Ralph Juergens
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: SATURN: THE ANCIENT SUN GOD THE ELECTRICAL SUN (4) SCHOLARS IN DESPERATION Book Review of "Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky: Essays in the Continuing Velikovsky Affair"
David Talbott Ralph Juergens Earl Milton
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true. ~Nietzsche
SATURN: THE ANCIENT SUN GOD

By David Talbott Many threads of Greek and Roman astronomy appear to lead back to a priestly astronomy arising in Mesopotamia some time in the first millennium B.C. The Babylonians were apparently the first to develop systematic observations of the planets, and they recorded the celestial motions with considerable skill. But in laying the foundations of later astronomy, they also preserved a crucial link with the past. Again and again they asserted a claim that could only appear preposterous to the modern translator. They declared that the distant planets were the *gods* of former times. Sumerian myths, we noted earlier, say that the rites and standards of "kingship" descended from the central luminary An, founder of the Golden Age. In Babylonian myth the Sumerian An appears as Anu, first in the line of gods and kings. And according to the best authorities on Babylonian astronomy, the god Anu was mysteriously linked to *the planet Saturn*. The association was stated most bluntly by the renowned expert on Babylonian astronomy, Peter Jensen, in *Die Kosmologie der Babylonier*: Anu was Saturn. What makes this identity stand out is the degree to which one nation after another repeated the same connection. It's an interesting fact, not often noticed, that the ancient Hebrews regarded their race as having been "Saturnian" in the beginning, when they lived under the rule of the creator El. That is, the Hebrews honored the same ancestral tie to Saturn as did the Romans. Indeed, the consistency with which early astronomies identity Saturn as the former creator-king is extraordinary. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew Saturn as the heaven-sustaining Zurvn, "the King and Lord of the Long Dominion." The Iranian god-king Yima, a transcript of the Hindu Yama, founder of the Golden Age, was also linked to Saturn. The Chinese mythical emperor Huang-ti, first in a great
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dynasty of kings and mythical founder of the Taoist religion, was identified astronomically as the planet Saturn. Even the Tahitians recall of the god Fetu-tea, the planet Saturn, that he "was the King." Many ancient nations commemorated the era before the fall, the harmonious condition of the "first time," by designating one day of the week as a holy day, the Sabbath. But is it significant that originally the Hebrew Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, was the day of Saturn? So was the seventh and most sacred day of the Babylonian and Phoenician weeks. For the Romans this commemorative day was Saturni dies, "Saturn's day." The same day passed into the Anglo-Saxon calendar as the "day of Seater [Saturn]," which, became our own Saturday. When scholars today look back at this esoteric connection of the Sabbath and Saturn, they see little more than an oddity of minor significance. That is because historians as a whole have missed the ancient link of Saturn to kingship, to the origins of civilization, and to the roots of ancient myth and symbol. But there is an even more significant aspect of the Saturn mystery. Here is a remarkable fact: though numerous figures of the Universal Monarch are translated conventionally as the "sun" god, the celestial power invoked by the world's first religions is not the body we call sun today. In fact the star-worshippers specifically distinguished it from our Sun by calling it best sun, the primeval sun, the central sun. Natives of Mexico recall that prior to the present age, an exemplary sun ruled the world, but this was not the sun of today. His name was Quetzalcoatl. The Maya maintained essentially the same idea, calling the primeval sun god Huracan. The Incas of Peru spoke of a former sun superior to the present sun. To the ancient Egyptians, the sun god Atum-Ra, the model ruler, reigned over the fortunate era for a time, then retired from the world. The Sumerian An, ruling with "terrifying splendor," was the central luminary of the sky, but not our sun, and later departed to a more remote domain. When it comes to the well-known sun gods of early man, nothing in the mythical record seems to have unnerved the experts. As to the original solar character of the Greek Helios, Latin Sol, Assyrian Shamash, or Egyptian Ra, scholars have maintained an unwavering confidence. And surely you can see why: could it really be doubted that Helios, radiating light from his brow, is our sun? In Egypt, countless hymns to the god Ra extol him as the divine power opening the "day." "The lords of all lands ... praise Ra when he riseth at the beginning of each day." Ra is the "great Light who shinest in the heavens ... Thou art glorious by reason of thy splendours..." In the same way, Assyrian and Babylonian texts depict the god Shamash as the supreme light of the sky, governing the cycle of day and night. Such images would seem to leave no question as to the solar character of these gods. And yet the profile of the great "sun" gods presents a fascinating dilemma. During the past century several authorities noticed that Greek and Latin astronomical texts show a mysterious confusion of the "Sun"--Greek Helios, Latin Sol--with the outermost planet, Saturn. Though the designation seems bizarre, the expression "star of Helios" or "star of Sol" was applied to Saturn! Of the Babylonian star-worshippers the chronicler Diodorus writes: To the one we call Saturn they give a special name, 'Sun-Star.' Similarly, the Greek historian Nonnus gives Kronos as the Arab name of the "sun," though Kronos meant only Saturn and no other celestial body. Hyginus, in listing the planets, names first Jupiter, then the planet "of Sol, others say of Saturn." A Greek ostrakon, cited by the eminent classicist, Franz Boll, identifies the Egyptian sun god Ra, not with our sun, but with the planet Saturn. This repeated confusion of the Sun and Saturn seems to make no sense at all. Can you imagine any difficulty in separating the two bodies, or distinguishing the one from the other?
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One fact beyond dispute is that the word Helios did become the Greek word for our Sun, just as the Latin Sol gave his name to our Sun. The same can be said for the older Shamash and Ra: the names of these gods became the names for the solar orb. But that's where the connection with our Sun ends and the mystery of Saturn, the Universal Monarch, begins. In seeking to explain the curious confusion of the sun and Saturn, late nineteenth century linguists came up with a simple explanation: The confusion, they said, was the result of the similarity of the Greek name Helios to the Greek rendering of the Phoenician god El, a god identified with Kronos, the planet Saturn. So it was all just a misunderstanding of language. But this explanation could not survive more than a few decades. For as the leading expert Franz Boll soon pointed out, the identification of the "sun" god as Saturn was more widespread and more archaic than previously acknowledged. In the Epinomis of Plato (who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.), there is an enumeration of the planets, which, as customarily translated, entails this unstartling statement: There remain, then, three stars (planets), one of which is preeminent among them for slowness, and some call him after Kronos. Yet the original reading is not Kronos but Helios--which is to say that the original text gave the name Helios to Saturn. But later copyists, who could not believe that Helios was anything other than the sun, "corrected" the reading to "Kronos." Moreover, as Boll discovered, this practice of "correcting" the name of Saturn, from Helios to Kronos, was quite common among later copyists. Based on his reading of the most original Greek manuscripts, Boll drew a startling conclusion: the sun god Helios and the planet-god Saturn were "one and the same god." Now if this only seems to accentuate the puzzle, there is more. Hindu astronomical lore deemed the planet Saturn as Arka, the star "of the sun." And certain wise men of India often asserted that the "true sun" Brahma, the central light of heaven, was none other than Saturn. This in turn, reminds us of a rarelynoted teaching of the alchemists, preservers of so many ancient mysteries. The planet Saturn, they recalled, was not just a planet; it was "the best sun"! Such language--true sun, best sun--is strangely reminiscent of that language used by native Americans when describing the superior sun, who had presided over the era of peace and plenty. Among the Assyrians and Babylonians, the "sun"-god par excellence was the well-known figure Shamash, the "light of the gods" In countless texts and symbolic representations Shamash is depicted as the ruling light and god of the day. Most familiar is the image of the god standing in the cleft of a mountain, a curved, notched sword in hand, introducing the dawn. Or, alternatively, he is shown holding or turning a great celestial wheel. Apart from a few experts on Babylonian astronomy, historians and mythologists as a whole seem to be unaware that in Babylonian astronomical texts, the sun god Shamash and the planet Saturn merge in a most unexpected way. Where one would expect references to the Sun, one finds instead the name of the planet Saturn! In the nineteenth century, the pioneering archaeologist and historian, George Rawlinson, noting that Shamash was repeatedly associated with the planet Saturn, put an exclamation point to the mystery. "How is it possible," Rawlinson asked, "that the dark and distant planet Saturn can answer to the luminary who 'irradiates the nations like the sun, the light of the gods?'" In 1909, the leading expert Morris Jastrow brought this anomaly to the attention of others in a fascinating article entitled "Sun and Saturn." According to Jastrow, Babylonian astrological texts could not have presented the equation of Saturn and the sun more boldly: "The planet Saturn is Shamash," they say.
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As strange as it may seem, as difficult as it may be to comprehend, the ancient sun god is not the body we call "Sun" today. But how could such a strange identity have attached itself to the now-distant planet [It must be emphasized that we are not claiming our Sun was absent. What should become clear in the course of this investigation is that the Sun was simply not a subject of ancient myth, or the Age of the Gods. The celestial drama takes place at a particular location far removed from the path of the Sun.] A first, crucial step is to distinguish the original meanings of "day" and "night." Many hymns to Shamash and Ra--the celebrated suns of Mesopotamia and Egypt--describe these gods coming forth at the beginning of the ritual day, and the terminology will appear to signify our sun rising in the East. One of the chapters of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, for example, is "The Chapter of Coming Forth by Day." The sun gods of both Egypt and Mesopotamia turn darkness into day, inaugurate the day, appear as lord of the day, and so on. The language is *so strong* it may seem to make any interpretation other than the solar interpretation appear preposterous, since in our sky only the Sun could ever answer to such images. But there is a profound enigma here. It turns out that the "day" actually began with what we would call the "night"--at sunset, with the darkening of the sky, and the coming out, or growing bright of other celestial bodies. It is widely acknowledged that the Egyptian day once began at sunset. The same is true of the Babylonian and Western Semitic days. We know the Athenians originally computed the space of a day from sunset to sunset, and the habit appears to have prevailed among northern European peoples as well. Who, then, is the great god--the god of terrifying radiance--whose coming out or coming forth inaugurates the day? This god of the archaic day, beginning at sunset, is in fact called Shamash, Ra, Helios, and Sol--the very god explicitly identified with the planet Saturn.
THE ELECTRICAL SUN (4)

ABSTRACT:
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All this has seemingly led us far astray from the subject matter of Worlds in Collision. Nevertheless, I am convinced that an excursion like this into astrophysical problems in regions of space as far removed as distant stars and the outer reaches of the galaxy is necessary to make some kind of sense out of problems inside the solar system. If the galaxy is electrified, as [C.E.R.] Bruce supposes, that fact cannot help but have major implications for the solar system. If the galaxy is not electrified, it would seem to me that prospects will ever remain poor for reconciling evidence of electrification within the solar system and celestial motions that seem to deny that evidence. Back toward the beginning of this paper I promised to return to the subjects of space-charge sheaths and comet tails. Actually, in terms of the postulated electrical discharge centered on the sun, these would appear to be not two subjects, but merely two aspects of a single subject. A comet on an extremely eccentric orbit spends by far the greater part of its time in the uttermost parts of the solar system. This is because, according to Kepler's Laws, orbital speeds near aphelion are so much less than near perihelion. Supposing, then, that space potentials in such regions are vastly greater, in the negative sense, than they are close to the sun, as the discharge hypothesis requires, any long-period comet could be expected to acquire local space potential quite readily during its long sojourn far from the sun. Quite possibly, too, its body materials would become electrically polarized in response to the buildup of charge on its surface. Consider next what would happen to this charged, electrically polarized body as its orbit brings it with ever increasing speed back toward the sun. By the time it reaches the orbit of Jupiter, solar-wind protons will have stripped away its superficial blanket of negative charge. No longer does its surface potential match that of its surroundings, yet its internal (radial) polarization produces an external electric field, just as polarization in an electret made of wax exhibits an external field here on earth. A space-charge sheath will begin to form to shield the interplanetary plasma from the comet's alien field. As the comet races toward the sun, its sheath takes the form of a long tail stretching away from the sun. This happens, not because the electrified sun repels the tail material, but because voltage differences between the comet and the interplanetary plasma vary sharply with direction, and because sheath thicknesses are dictated not only by voltage differences, but by gas pressure as well. The potential difference between the head of the comet and the plasma in the direction of the sun might be substantial. But in any case, the potential difference between the comet and plasma farther out from the sun will be greater still. Also, the plasma density is greater nearer the sun than farther from the sun. Hence the sheath remains close to the comet on the sunward side, and it reaches perhaps millions of miles into space on the antisolar side. This rather sketchy qualitative explanation for comet tails is not advanced here as any sort of final answer to the comet-tail mystery. I include it only as an example of the kind of explanation that can at least be discussed in the light of the discharge hypothesis. Hopefully, too, it offers a measure of solace to those who might feel cheated by the fact that the interplanetary plasma knocks down the idea that comet-tail gases might be repelled by the sun's electric charge. By the same sort of analysis, I would conclude that the earth has a potential not quite in keeping with its space environment, and that it therefore is surrounded by a space charge sheath. For the same reasons that a comet's sheath is elongated away from the sun, I would suppose that the earth's sheath has a tail; in other words, I would equate the terrestrial sheath with the earth's so-called magnetosphere. It seems to be pretty well established that the earth's "magnetotail" does not reach as far as Mars, and thus the two planets no longer perturb one another electrically. (The moon, however, sweeping in and out of the earth's sheath every month, does appear to be perturbed by non-gravitational forces--a point emphasized by Dr. Velikovsky on many occasions.) But it seems conceivable that the long reach of the earth's space-charge sheath may have played an important role in settling Mars on an orbit at a safe distance from the earth.
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A century ago, James Clerk Maxwell, in his monumental Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, wrote these prophetic words: The phenomena of electrical discharge are exceedingly important, and when they are better understood they will probably throw great light on the nature of electricity as well as on the nature of gases and of the medium pervading space. For the next 50 years, studies of the electrical discharge were pursued with considerable vigor, and the world was led into the age of electronics. After that, however, as Professor Hannes Alfvn reminded us when he accepted the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics (26): ...most theoretical physicists looked down on this field, which was complicated and awkward ... not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories. The theorists, says Alfvn, preferred to approach plasma physics by way of the kinetic theory of gases, which led to "mathematically elegant" theories. In Alfvn's estimation: ...the cosmical plasma physics of today ... is to some extent the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulas which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong ... several of the basic concepts on which theories of cosmical plasmas are founded are not applicable to the condition prevailing in the cosmos. They are 'generally accepted' by most theoreticians, they 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... The implication of Alfvn's remarks is clear enough: astrophysicists must bone up on the neglected field of electrical discharge phenomena. I, for one, believe that when they do so the new lines of inquiry will rather quickly lead to the rejection of the idea that stars are thermonuclearly powered. 26. Lecture published in Science, 172 (June 4, 1971), 991-94. Ralph Juergens
SCHOLARS IN DESPERATION
-A book review by Earl MiltonA new book Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky has been published by Ivy Press of Forest Hills, New York. The name of Stephen Jay Gould is likely familiar to readers of commentaries about contemporary science. Alas, Immanuel Velikovsky's name is not as well known to these same readers. An explanation for this will become apparent long before readers finish Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky. The book offers important incidents in the continuing Velikovsky Affair. Immanuel Velikovsky, then a practising psychiatrist, landed in the United States on the eve of World War Two. He came to America to do library research. While waiting to return to his medical practise in Palestine Velikovsky makes several profound discoveries about historical events. What he found suggests a different version of the past than most of us know. It is the unusually violet reaction to Velikovsky's research that is examined in this new book. In brief what happened is:
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Since 1950 Immanuel Velikovsky has been lambasted shamelessly by academic scholars across the spectrum of the disciplines. The worst offenders have been the astronomers angered because Velikovsky asserts that a series of close passages between pairs of planets happened within the Age of Man. Historians are provoked by Velikovsky's suggestion that documented events do not fit chronological sequences which are taken as history and taught as fact by professors. This is particularly true of Egyptian History which Velikovsky reconstructed eliminating a six-hundred year period thereby removing an embarrassing pause in events known as the Dark Age of Greece. This gap is more than an interruption of the Greek story in that all regional national histories whose events are fixed using Egyptian dates also include a Dark Age (of some length) which keeps them in-step with events in Egypt. History as altered by Velikovsky fits together: each nation has links to its neighbours. The same is not true when the conventional historical timescale is applied to these same happenings. Immanuel Velikovsky's third difficulty arises in his treatment of the human state. The story he tells begins with the Earth suffering a major catastrophe whose devastating consequences facilitate the escape of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt--The Biblical Exodus story. Velikovsky, writing as a psychiatrist, concludes that such an upheaval must leave the human race in a state of trauma. The intensity of the event, Velikovsky believes, forces humans to deny the catastrophe driving human behaviour. Worse, Velikovsky maintains that the cosmic disaster-induced trauma predisposes mankind to warfare. During the Twentieth century wars pose a dangerous consequence. If worst comes to worst a global war might accomplish what several cosmic "collisions" between the Earth and now distant planets failed to do. As stake is the survival of the Earth's inhabitants and even the planetary environment itself. Because restoring mankind to mental stability is mandatory Velikovsky wrote down his ideas. So, in 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky introduced much evidence for his view in the book Worlds in Collision. Its publication unleashes a fusillade of abuse upon Velikovsky's idea, his competence to present that idea, and upon the man's character itself. Since 1950 investigators with no connection to Velikovsky have exposed much evidence supporting Velikovsky's position. This is particularly true of findings made in space. Thus Velikovsky's hypothesis that mankind does not want to know what happened may be proven. It certainly explains why astronomers continue to deny that planets can pass closely to one another wreaking damage upon each other. The scars seen on the faces of the Moon and the planet Mars, the near molten state of the surface of Venus, and the thoroughly cracked crust of the Earth speak loudly for Velikovsky. Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky touches upon the incidents as the scholars attempt to censor Velikovsky and keep his work out of the public eye. The most opposing scholars will admit is that Velikovsky's book is an example of an outrageous misinterpretation of the real facts of the Earth's and mankind's history. His equally qualified supporters disagree. Their book is a documentary which presents several episodes staged to tyrannize Immanuel Velikovsky and besmirch his reputation. It contains a rich collection of quotations by Velikovsky's critics juxtaposed against Velikovsky's own words. The patient reader who can survive the 662-pages of evidence which the authors present gets to a position where he or she can decide whether or not Velikovsky has been wronged by these opponents. Over the years a parade of prominent critics have railed against each of Velikovsky's books as they are published: their efforts in the main deal with gross misinter-pretations of what Velikovsky did, said, or wrote. In reality the uncharitable observer might be moved to classify these critiques as packs of lies. Whether they are or not Velikovsky's opponents have been effective at stifling any serious examination of the catastrophes and how they affect history and civilization. No person who considers himself informed about human history, planetary behaviour, or natural evolution can afford to ignore this book. It gives a first step you can make to free your mind of forty-seven years of propaganda directed against Velikovsky. Your reward for reading the book will be the discovery of an alive and dynamic tableau of history which is fully integrated with and effected by cosmic events. As well,
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mankind's role in creating that history becomes obvious. Culture, too, makes great sense once tied into Velikovsky's bigger picture of history. The book Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky tells what has been done to hide the truth from you. The solution: buy the book and read it. You won't regret the day you did so for potentially your life could be changed for the better once you discover the truth of the matter.
Stephen Jay Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky: Essays in the Continuing Velikovsky Affair. By Charles Ginenthal, Irving Wolfe, Lynn E. Rose, Dwardu Cardona, David N. Talbott, and Ev Cochrane. Edited by Dale Ann Pearlman. Published by Ivy Press, Forest Hills New York, 11375. Copyright 1996. 795 pages plus indexes and bibliography. Hardbound.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 11 (May 3, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (1) HALE-BOPP PRESS RELEASE EARTH AT RISK OF COLLISION WITH UNSEEN COMETS
Michael Armstrong David Talbott comments by Wallace Thornhill sci.astro (Usenet) Nick Nuttall
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might suspect, by the ignorant mass --which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught--but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a two-fold threat to academic mediocrities; it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed intellectual edifice may collapse. ~Arthur Koestler in The Sleepwalkers
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong Earlier today, while reading a book on the philosophy of science, I paused at the obligatory section on science and religion, where I found an interesting view expressed. Though the typical definitions will have science dealing with the physical world and religion with the spiritual, others have said that science is concerned with knowledge and HOW, and religion is concerned with belief and WHY. But this particular author reasoned that, while "religion" relates to the deepest personal--or subjective--experience, science is the attempt to build a common way of describing the predictable world, based on a certain faith in human rationality and logic, reproducibility of results, and universally recognized conventions. No doubt all of the definitions add something to our perception of science and religion. But notice that the definitions of words tend to shift over time. I looked up the word "religion" in a dictionary giving the Greek, Latin, or romantic European language roots. It seems that "religion" is a compound word combining "re," meaning to do again, and "ligion," which comes from a word meaning to bind back and which has its roots in the Greek word "lego," which means to communicate with logic. Putting this all together, it is clear that when the word was first used it meant "to bind people together again with logic." How has this word, speaking for such a simple and beautiful idea, come to mean so many different things to different people? In the minds of many, "religion" signifies a world of make believe and man-made doctrine--mere superstition dignified as god-given truth. It has also come to mean a root conflict between cultures and nations. But it is surely more than any of these more narrow perceptions. Though science arose with the hope of transcending myth and subjective imagination, its institutionalized forms often take on the
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attributes of a NEW religion. Defenses of "scientific" theory can look very much like an inquisition, though the heretics are not burned at the stake, only left disgraced and without a job. Rather than attempt to paint either religion or science in black and white terms, perhaps a wiser approach will seek to cultivate the quest for truth in both realms, while acknowledging the mixtures of human strengths and weaknesses in actual practice.
THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (1)

By David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: The following continues David Talbott's introductory comments on the "Saturn theory." New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website (address listed at the end of this newsletter). Go to the THOTH page and click on the image of "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.] Our next step is particularly vital because it will bring us to the threshold of a reconstruction, a concrete way to begin re-envisioning the past. In any investigation of the ancient sun god you will inevitably run into a theme of profound influence on ancient thought: You will confront the myth of the central sun--the motionless sun, the sun that did not rise or set, but stood firmly in one place. There is, in fact, a decisive difference between the great luminary celebrated as the king of the world, and the body we call the Sun today: unlike our rising and setting Sun, the archaic sun-god did not move. Perhaps the idea of a giant but visually stationary body in the sky will seem not just bizarre but impossible to visualize in any practical sense, given a rotating earth. There is an answer to that issue, arising from the ancient traditions themselves, but that answer will only raise other questions, so we've reached a point at which we have to be most attentive to the witnesses themselves. From the first stirrings of civilization in the Nile Valley, all of the tribes of Egypt celebrated the memory of Atum or Ra, father of kings, founder of the Tep Zepi or Golden Age. Without exception Egyptologists have identified Atum-Ra as the rising and setting sun. And that's the first challenge we must meet, because there's a world of difference between the literal meanings of the texts and the familiar translations. In the Egyptian religious system, the ruler of the sky occupies a designated place, presiding over what the priests remembered as "the age of the primeval gods." The Egyptian sun god gives motion to the heavens, but he does not himself move. It is said of Atum, for example, that he "gives motion to all things." But his domain is, emphatically, the cosmic center, a place of motionlessness or "rest." The texts say of Atum-The Great God lives Fixed in the middle of the sky Atum occupies, and is the cosmic center, the "place par excellence," to use the expression of one of the most perceptive Egyptologists, the late T. Rundle Clark. Thus one text proclaims Atum to be the "Firm Heart of the Sky." Other sources describe this cosmic center as the celestial "resting place" achieved by Atum. In the Egyptian chronicles this place of rest, the motionless center and summit of the sky, becomes the focus of the great celestial events of the First Time.
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Nothing misrepresents original meanings more profoundly than the common translations of Egyptian texts relative to the daily cycle of the sun god. In the language of the Egyptians themselves, the god does not rise and set, but grows bright and dims. He shines brightly, then his light recedes. The most frequently-used Egyptian words for the this occasion are uben. and pert. The first word, uben, means "to grow bright." The second, pert, means "to come forth." Now the truth of the matter is that neither these, nor any other Egyptian words translated as the sun rising on the eastern horizon actually carry such a meaning. When Egyptian sources speak of the sun god coming out, or coming forth, the meaning is precisely what you would intend in saying that "the Moon comes out at night", or "the stars come out." You would not mean that the moon or stars rise. You would mean that they "grow bright." And that is the literal meaning of the Egyptian words usually translated as "to rise": Related hieroglyphs mean to grow strong, to awaken, to come to life, and so on. It is the resting, stationary god who comes forth at the beginning of the day. But remember what we've already learned. The ancient day began at sunset, as the sky darkened. So we need to be very clear on this. The planetary components were vastly more dramatic and unlike anything appearing in the sky today. It was the planetary bodies that occupied the center stage in the mythmaking era. As the sky darkened, the large planetary bodies--extremely close to the earth--began to put on a spectacular display. Then, at sunrise, as the sky lightened, the radiance of these planetary bodies began to recede. That's the fundamental character of the ancient daily cycle, and the mythmakers endlessly recorded images of the contrasting phases, as we will see. One of the most common Egyptian expressions combined with words for "growing bright" or "coming forth" is the phrase em hetep. The sun god "comes forth em hetep." As usually translated the words mean "in peace." Now in what sense might we say that "Ra comes forth in peace."? Well, the root meaning is far more concrete. The words mean "to be at rest," or what is the same thing, "to stand in one spot." In other words, the phrase em hetep directly complements the idea of the creator-king occupying his "resting place" in the sky. Literally, the Egyptian sun god "comes forth" or "grows bright" at the stationary resting place--again, the center and summit of the sky. [A note of caution, however, is needed here,. There is also a great deal of evidence suggesting that the great sphere revolves through phases and that these phases are inseparably tied to the cycle of day and night. A sphere turning in the sky is much different than a rising and setting sphere. ] The principles of the central sun appear to hold far beyond Egypt--even in cases where scholars have never doubted the god's solar identity. No cuneiform specialist has questioned the identity of the Babylonian "sun" god Shamash. Yet the texts describe Shamash "suspended from the midst of heaven." "Like the midst of heaven may he shine!" they say. "O Sun-god, in the midst of heaven..." His place in the sky is "the summit house," called also "the fixed house" and the "house of rest." In the cuneiform language these are not abstract phrases, but designations of very specific attributes and a very specific place in the sky. Center and summit (or "zenith" in many translations) are one and the same place: "In the center he made the zenith," states one text. The language makes clear that Shamash was a precise Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart of the Egyptian sun god Ra. The equation of center and summit--the cosmic place from which the sun god ruled in both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems--points to an archetypal idea. We will find that the idea pervades the myths of India, of China, the great native cultures of the Americas, and numerous other cultures as well. The conclusion is revolutionary: the first stargazers did not care about the body we call Sun today, while there was nothing in the world they cared about more than the exemplary life of the primeval, central sun. How could people on a rotating earth see a huge planetary body as stationary in the sky?
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For an earthbound observer, there is only one stationary spot in the revolving sky. It is the celestial pole-for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the north celestial pole, roughly identified in our night sky today with the star Polaris. Close by you see the constellation of Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, most familiar to us as the Big Dipper. When you look at the northern sky at night, the stars you see are actually cutting a circle around a motionless point. This wheeling of circumpolar stars around the visual center is, of course, due to the rotation of the Earth. As the earth rotates, the Great Bear will revolve visually around the motionless Polaris. [Since the Earth wobbles very slowly over thousands of years, the celestial pole has not always been Polaris, of course.] You can see this motion through a time lapse photograph of the circumpolar region. That stationary point, in the ancient religious and astronomical systems, is the sacred center and summit. Resting place, motionless site, axis, pivot, still place, silent region, the fixed or stable center of the turning heavens, the zenith, summit, top of the world--a rigorous, comparative approach will leave no doubt that this very spot is the remembered station of the primeval sun. Of course from the vantage point of modern astronomy the entire idea is outrageous. So our next step must be to look carefully at the language of the cosmic center in the different cultures.
HALE-BOPP: ARTICLE AND COMMENTS

By Wallace Thornhill The latest (27 March) press release from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) team:
HALE-BOPP OBSERVATIONS ASTRONOMERS
WITH
HUBBLE
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IUE
SURPRISE
Completing an unprecedented year-long study of Comet Hale-Bopp using two NASA observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, astronomers report that they are surprised to find that the different ices in the nucleus seem to be isolated from each other. They also report seeing unexpectedly brief and intense bursts of activity from the nucleus during the monitoring period. The Hubble observations suggest that the nucleus is huge, 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) across. The findings, by a team of scientists, led by Johns Hopkins astrophysicist Harold Weaver, are being published in the March 28 issue of the journal Science. "Hale-Bopp will probably provide the most revealing portrait of the workings of a cometary nucleus since the spacecraft missions to comet Halley in 1986," said Weaver. "This is a unique opportunity; we have never had the chance to examine a comet in this much detail, over this large a range of distance from the Sun." The key results: Violent Eruptions on the Comet's Surface During the course of long-term observations, which began in August 1995, astronomers unexpectedly caught the comet going through a sudden brief outburst, where, in little more than an hour, the amount of dust being spewed from the nucleus increased at least eight-fold. "The surface of Hale-Bopp's nucleus
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must be an incredibly dynamic place, with `vents' being turned on and off as new patches of icy material are rotated into sunlight for the first time," Weaver said. [W.T. Comments] These sudden, brief outbursts are characteristic of electric discharges which spark-machine surface material into space in well collimated jets. The discharges should switch on on the sunward side where the electric stress is greatest, and switch off as the jet rotates away from the Sun. They have nothing to do with "vents" somehow being turned on and off, and patches of icy material. How many more ad-hoc notions are needed by astronomers before they cut themselves badly on Occam's razor? [End of W.T. Comment] A Complex, Mottled Nucleus To their surprise, astronomers found that water ice sublimates (turns directly from a frozen solid into a gas) at a different rate than the trace ices, implying that those components are not contained within the water on the comet. This conclusion is further supported by Hubble data showing that the rate at which dust left the nucleus was much different than the sublimation rate of water. This result is contrary to previous models for a comet's nucleus which suggest that the trace components, such as carbon disulfide ice, are contained inside of the most abundant ice on the comet, frozen water. As water sublimates the trace components and dust should be released at similar rates, but this is not what Hubble observed. [W.T. Comments] I would not expect there to be any correlation between the sublimation rate of water ice, other ices and dust emission under the electric discharge model. Spark machining will remove material from the surface indiscriminately. THIS IS A NEW CONFIRMATION OF THE ELECTRICAL MODEL. (The other recent one was x-rays from a comet). [End of W.T. Comment] A Monstrous Nucleus By studying Hubble Space Telescope images, the astronomers have estimated that its nucleus may be about 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) in diameter. The average comet is thought to have a nucleus of about 3 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter, or even smaller. The comet or asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago, possibly causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, was probably about 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) across. [W.T. Comments] The electrical parturition model of formation of highly condensed planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteorites suggests that there are no real constitutional differences between them. Comets appear as they do because of their charge difference with the inner solar system and the fact that they have been better able to preserve their volatiles in the depths of space. (Tom Van Flandern's exploding planet model would also have no intrinsic difference between comets and asteroids). [End of W.T. Comment] Because Hale-Bopp was unusually bright when it was still a great distance away, well outside the orbit of Jupiter, it has given scientists their best view ever of the changes in a comet's nucleus as it gets closer to, and is progressively heated by, the sun. [W.T. Comments] That Hale-Bopp was so bright at such a great distance is not well explained by solar heating. It is to be expected if its charge was considerably different from its surroundings, even at that distance. [End of W.T. Comment] Those changes, in turn, provide information about the composition and structure of comets, which are believed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago. Learning
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more about comets can provide important information about the materials and processes that formed the solar system. [W.T. Comments] Once more the fairytale. Once more the benediction. Once more the surprises. [End of W.T. Comment] GIF and JPEG images, captions and press release text are available via the World Wide Web at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/08.html and via links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html
Meteorite study shows glimpse of Red Planet's ancestry

Press Release posted to the sci.astro (Usenet newsgroup): March 18, 1997 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- While the controversy continues over whether a Martian meteorite bears evidence of ancient life on Mars, a Purdue University scientist says the rocky fragments can tell us something about the early life of the planet itself. Michael Lipschutz, professor of chemistry who has analyzed trace elements in 11 of the 12 known Martian meteorites, says the samples contain a different mix of volatile elements than do rock samples from Earth, indicating that the Red Planet was created from a different nebular womb. "It looks like the cloud of gas and dust from which Mars was born contained more volatile elements such as thallium, bismuth and cadmium than did the cloud from which Earth was formed," Lipschutz says. Prior studies of the oxygen isotopes in the Martian meteorites indicated that they all came from the same planet. But other studies, using nonvolatile chemical markers, had revealed differences in their composition, indicating that the samples had encountered different experiences as the planet formed and evolved. "Our study is the first to show that the characteristics revealed by the nonvolatile elements are also present in the volatile elements," Lipschutz says. "That is to say that these meteorites share some common characteristics, but due to differences in their composition, they belong to the three separate categories that are commonly used to distinguish these meteorites." He presented his findings today (3/18) at the 28th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Lipschutz, who has studied the solar system and meteorites for more than 30 years, based his findings on studies of 15 trace elements in 11 of the 12 meteorites identified as originating from the planet Mars. He will complete studies of the 12th meteorite this spring. His studies of the Martian meteorites focused on the volatile trace elements, the chemical elements that were most likely to condense last as the planet solidified from a cloud of dust and gas. Trace elements and ultratrace elements--especially volatile ones found in parts per million or parts per billion--can yield important information about a meteorite because the composition levels are so low that even the smallest change induced by a physical or chemical transformation is magnified into a relatively large change.
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In addition, the samples from Mars show that the planet has experienced at least two fractionation events--events that separate the volatile trace elements from the non-volatile elements, Lipschutz says. "The amazing thing is that whatever chemical fractionation events Mars experienced, all of the elements-volatile or not--were able to remain and record the events," he says. "This is unlike the situation in other extraterrestrial bodies where late heating, caused for example by the shock of an impact, can vaporize the volatile elements and destroy evidence of past events. In the case of some of the meteorites from the moon, chemical elements were introduced by events such as volcanism, which also clouded the historical record." Purdue News CONTACT: Lipschutz, (765) 494-5326, e-mail rnapuml@vm.cc.purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@uns.purdue.edu
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article about the latest research findings by Prof Mark Bailey and his Russian colleague Vacheslav Emel-Yanenko appeared in today's THE TIMES (London, 4 February 1997) on page 6. Prof Bailey is the Director of the Armagh Observatory and a member of the Organising Committee of the 2nd SIS Cambridge Conference.
EARTH AT RISK OF COLLISION WITH UNSEEN COMETS

By Nick Nuttall Thousands of invisible comets may be hurtling into the solar system on a potential collision course with Earth, scientists said yesterday. But spotting the comets - called "dead" comets because they are inactive and pitch black - is "like looking for a black cat in a coal cellar", according to one expert. The findings will increase concern among some scientists that mankind is at risk from a devastating impact of the kind that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Asteroids had previously been thought to pose the greatest danger of extraterrestrial devastation: craters on the Earth's surface bear testimony to bombardements from space from objects about a kilometre across. The new research indicates that the danger from dead comets which, like Halley's comet, are formed in a place called the Oort Cloud on the edge of the solar system, may be as big, if not bigger, than that posed by asteroids. Only about 20 comets, such as Halley's, have previously been detected but new research indicates that between 1,000 and 4,800, up to six miles across, may be heading this way unseen. Many are likely to have orbits that bring them through the solar system every 200 years, which means that 50 a year could be passing by on paths that may take them near to Earth. The research, to be released later this month at the Fermor Memorial Meeting of the Geological Society in London and at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in March, has been undertaken by Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland and Vacheslav Emel-Yanenko, an astronomer from Chelyabinsk in the Russian Federation. Professor Bailey said yesterday:
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We are aware of around 20 comets like Halley's. For every one we see, there may be at least 100 times as many in similar orbit that we do not see. This may be a conservative figure. Our calculations indicate that there may be between 1,000 and 5,000 that we have yet to see.
The findings are based on studies into the rate at which comets are entering the solar system from the Oort Cloud. Professor Bailey said that about one new comet arrived every year. Most of these are ejected into interstellar space but the scientists estimate that about 1 per cent are trapped into short-period orbits that take them around the Sun every 200 years. The researchers believe that they survive for half a million years, leaving up to 5,000 in orbit. Professor Bailey said that comets such as Halley's were visible because they had volatile gases and streams of jets firing into a tail. Dead comets were inert. It is also possible that dead comets, technically known as cometary asteroids, may disintegrate far faster than the team supposes. This would mean that many may now be little more than pencil-thin streams of meteoroids which would be hard to detect but which could cause no harm to the Earth. Several astronomers have called on governments to set up networks of telescopes to give an early warning of approaching asteroids, large chunks of celestial debris formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The belt is considered to be a graveyard of rubble from a planet that failed to form, with asteroids ejected from time to time. Several hundred have been detected. Professor Bailey said that it may now be necessary to supplement such a system with infra-red telescopes covering the whole sky to seek out the dead comets.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (2) ELECTRICAL SCARRING ON EUROPA PUTTING A NEW FACE ON PREHISTORY
David Talbott Wal Thornhill News Item
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. ~Thomas Jefferson

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: The following continues David Talbott's introductory comments on the "Saturn theory." New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website (address listed at the end of this newsletter). Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.]
LANGUAGE OF THE POLE

In the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes of Colophon offered this definition of the true god: There is one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals. He abides ever in the same place motionless, and it befits him not to wander hither and thither. I think it will become clear to anyone who takes up this subject with any seriousness that Xenophanes was expressing, not a new abstract philosophy, but a very ancient tradition elevated to a philosophical principle. A remarkable parallel occurs in the Hindu Upanishads: There is only one Being who exists Unmoved yet moving swifter than the mind Who far outstrips the senses, though as gods They strive to reach him, who, himself at rest
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...Supports all vital action He moves, yet moves not.
As more than once scholar has pointed out, such images arose from the idea that the ruler of the sky stood motionless at the polar center, while yet turning the heavens. Which is to say that the philosopher's Unmoved Mover had an ancient mythical prototype in the central sun, the founder of the Golden Age. So one step in the reasoning here is simply to note the language applied by the first astronomers to the celestial pole and to compare that terminology to the earlier language applied to the great rulers of the sky. Consider the image of the pole in Shakespeare-...I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament The speaker here is Shakespeare's Caesar--whom tradition regarded as the supreme ruler on earth, a replica of the celestial power. Is it significant that he locates this supreme power at the celestial pole? Many centuries before Shakespeare, Hipparchus spoke of "a certain star remaining ever at the same place. And this star is the pivot of the Cosmos." That language turns out to be the very language used by the ancient Chinese in describing the pole star as the "star of the pivot." And this was anything but an abstraction, for Chinese astronomy insisted with one voice that the pivot was the ancient location of the celestial emperor Shang-ti, the ruler of beginnings. To the Polynesians the pole is the station of the "Immovable One." The Pawnee call it "the star that stands still" and regard it as the governor of the sky. This star, they say, "is different from other stars, because it never moves." To the Hindus, the star is Dhruva, meaning "firm," while the region of the pole is esteemed as the "motionless site," the celestial "resting place" of gods and heroes.
POLAR SUN
The worldwide astronomical designations of the celestial pole become crucial pieces in a puzzle, for this reason: the language establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that the pole is the remembered location of the archaic sun god Saturn. In modern astronomical terms, a planet at the celestial pole is a preposterous idea. All of the planets in our sky, together with the Earth, move on a common plane around the Sun, so that from Earth we see the planets moving on roughly the same arc across the sky as the Sun. The paradox is glaring. No planet today approaches Earth's celestial pole! And yet the ancient tradition of the polar sun confronts us everywhere. In ancient Egyptian cosmology, possibly the oldest known thought-system, one finds a mystifying connection of the sun god Atum with the pole. The French scholar Jacques Enel, in his study of Egyptian imagery, for example, assures us that the Egyptians remembered Atum's station as "the single, immovable point around which the movement of the stars occurred." To the Egyptians, states Enel: Atum was the chief or center of the movement of the universe at the pole. Much the same language is used by the eminent Egyptologist, T. Rundle Clark, who tells us the pole was the place par excellence. Atum, according to Clark, is "the arbiter of destiny perched on the top of the world pole." So when the text declare that "the great god lives, fixed in the middle of the sky," the reference is to the polar station, according to Clark.
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Clark writes that "the celestial pole is 'that place,' or 'the great city.' The various designation show how deeply it impressed the Egyptian imagination. If god is the governor of the universe and it revolves around an axis, then god must preside over the axis." That the Egyptians would remember a former sun god at the celestial pole may seem hard to digest. And yet the preeminence of the celestial pole as the resting place of Atum is both emphatic and unequivocal. Clark writes: No other people was so deeply affected by the eternal circuit of the stars around a point in the northern sky. Here must be the node of the universe, the center of regulation. (Our only disagreement here is with Clark's assumption that ancient nations outside his own area of expertise--Egypt--were less preoccupied with the celestial pole.) Atum, the first form of the sun god Ra, was thus the 'Unmoved Mover" described in Egyptian texts many centuries before Aristotle offered the phrase as a definition of the supreme power. The Egyptian hieroglyph for Atum is a primitive sledge, signifying "to move." To the god of the cosmic revolutions, the Book of the Dead proclaims "Hail to thee, Tmu [Atum] Lord of Heaven, who givest motion to all things." But while moving the heavens Atum remained em hetep, "at rest" or "in one spot." Throughout all of Egypt this "resting place" of Atum was remembered as the site of the First Occasion, the drama of cosmic beginnings. Remember that the sun god Atum and the sun god Ra were one and the same, though the Egyptians insisted that the god himself evolved with the unfolding events. The god who was Atum became Ra in the course of his own unfolding, as the originally formless god began to acquire certain distinct attributes. Thus Atum's counterpart Ra, according to the sources themselves, "rests on his high place." He does not roam about the sky. Like Atum, Ra is the pivot, with the lesser lights revolving around him. These are, as the texts say, the "stars who surround Ra." "These gods shall revolve round about him." "The satellites of Ra make their round." Again, the picture is of a stationary god serving as the pivot of celestial motions. As I have already noted the ancient Sumerian counterpart of Atum was the creator-king An, the Akkadian Anu, whose "terrifying glory" was a repeated subject of the hymns and rites. This was "the terror of the splendour of Anu in the midst of heaven," and the starworshippers did not mean by the "midst" of heaven some vague and unfamiliar metaphor. The "midst" (kirib sami, Kabal sami, meant, very concretely, the cosmic center), making the polar god, according to Robert Brown, Jr., a nocturnal sun. The words translated as the "midst" mean, according to Brown, "that central point where Polaris sat enthroned." Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts are replete with references to the "firm" and "steadfast" or "motionless" character of the dominant gods. The great god Enki of Eridu is "the motionless lord," and god of "stability." A broken Sumerian hymn, in reference to Ninurash, a form of Ninurta, reads: Whom the 'god of the steady star' upon a foundation To...cause to repose in years of plenty. [AUTHOR'S NOTE: AS WE WILL SEE THE "POLAR" GODS INCLUDE NOT JUST THE SUN GOD SATURN, BUT OTHER FIGURES AS WELL. NO CONCLUSIONS SHOULD BE DRAWN HERE WITH RESPECT TO PLANETARY IDENTIFICATIONS, EXCEPT WHERE SUCH IDENTIFICATIONS HAVE BEEN STATED IN PRIOR NOTES.] Failing to perceive the concrete meaning of such terms, solar mythologists like to think of the place of "repose" as a hidden "underworld" beneath the earth, a dark region visited by the sun after it has set. But the place of repose is no underworld. It is: The lofty residence... The lofty place...
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The place of lofty repose...
What, then, of the famous Assyrian and Babylonian god Shamash, the sun god whom we now recognize as Saturn? A remarkable fact is that Shamash "comes forth" (shines) and "goes in" (declines, diminishes) at one spot, the "firm," "stable" or motionless station of supreme "rest". This place par excellence was symbolized by the top of the ziggurats the famous Babylonian axis-towers constructed as symbolic models of the Cosmos. Hence, the uppermost level was deemed the "light of Shamash," and the "heart of Shamash," denoting (in the words of E.G. King) the pivot "around which the highest heaven or sphere of the fixed stars revolved.:" The Babylonian tradition of the polar sun has been preserved up to the twentieth century in the tradition of the Mandaeans of Iraq. In their midnight ceremonies these people invoked the celestial pole as Olma l'nhoara, "the world of light." It is therefore not surprising to find that chroniclers of the Mandaean rituals call the polar power the "primitive sun of the star-worshippers." The recurring concepts are these: a stationary location, the celestial place of rest, the place round which the heavens turn, and the cosmic center, the place where the myths begin. Firmness, stability, pivot, axis, center, and summit or zenith. The imagery is both archetypal and universal. To the Hindus the sacred celestial spot, the province of the creator-king, was the place of "supreme rest," called also "the motionless site." The Hindu Dhruva, whose name means "firm," stands on this very spot-"a Spot blazing with splendor...and which subsists motionless." In the Sanskrit texts, Dhruva means the celestial pole. What remains to be explained by mythologists is that the sun god Surya "stands firmly on this safe resting place." Surya, states the Sanskrit authority V.S. Agrawala, "is himself at rest, being the immovable center of his system." Just as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sun gods "rise and set" in one place, Surya occupies samanam dhama--"the same place of rising and setting." The words translated as "rising" and "setting" can only mean the phase of brightness followed by the phase of receding light. Another name for the stationary sun, according to Agrawala, is Prajapati. "The sun in the center is Prajapati: he is the horse that imparts movement to everything," The motionless Dhruva, Surya, and Prajapati compare with the light of Brahma, called the "true sun." This is the ancient sun, the texts say, which "after having risen thence upwards ... rises and sets no more. It remains alone in the center." Here, too, center and summit are synonymous. Brahma, observes Rene Guenon, is "the pivot around which the world accomplishes it revolution, the immutable center which directs and regulates cosmic movement." Moreover, this stationary and axial character of the greatest gods seems to be common to all of the primary celestial figures in Hindu myth, with its diverse pantheon gathered from so many cultural traditions. The god Varuna, "seated in the midst of heaven," is the "Recumbent," and called the "axis of the universe." "Firm is the seat of Varuna," declares one of the Vedic hymns. In him "all wisdom centres, as the nave is set within the wheel." One of Varuna's forms is Savitar, the "impeller." While the rest of the universe revolves, the impeller stands firm. "Firm shalt thou stand, like Savitar desirable." Also occupying the stationary center is the popular god Vishnu--who takes a firm stand in that resting place in the sky." The location is the celestial pole, called "the exalted seat of Vishnu, round which the starry spheres forever wander." Vishnu is the polar sun or central fire: "Fiery indeed is the name of this steadfast god," states one Vedic text. To the Buddhists this is the center of the cosmic wheel, the throne of the Buddha himself. It is acalatthana, the "unmoving site," or the "unconquerable seat of firm sance." Thus, as noted by Coomaraswamy, the Buddha throne crowned the world axis.
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Given the great variety of mythical figures pointing to the same underlying concepts, it is crucial that we recognize where Hindu and Buddhist myth located this cosmic center, the celestial resting place. It was, according to the most widely respected Sanskrit authorities such as Ananda Coomaraswamy, the celestial pole, the axis of the turning heavens, a verdict repeated again and again by Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and others. According to ancient Chinese astronomy the revered Emperor on High, prototype of kings, stood at the celestial pole. Chinese astrologers, according to Gustav Schlegel, regarded the polar god as "the ArchPremier ... the most venerated of all the celestial divinities. In fact the Pole star, around which the entire firmament appears to turn, should be considered as the Sovereign of the Sky." It was thus proclaimed that the celestial pole was the seat of the supreme ruler Shang-ti, mythically, the first king of a great dynasty in the remote past. His seat was "the Pivot," and all the heavens turned upon his exclusive power. Raised to a first principle, the polar power became the mystic Tao, the motor of the Cosmos. The essential idea is contained in the Chinese word for Tao, which combines the sign for "to stand still" with the sign for "to go" and "head" The Tao is the Unmoved Mover, the supreme ruler, who "goes," or "moves" while yet remaining in one place--revealing a striking correspondence with the images of the polar power in other lands. Chinese sources proclaim the Tao to be the "light of heaven" and "the heart of heaven." "Action is reversed into non-action," states Jung. "Everything peripheral is subordinated to the command of the centre." Thus the Tao, in the words of Erwin Pousselle, rules the "golden center, which is the Axis of the World." Significantly, these same overlapping images of a polar sun or sovereign luminary at the pole occur in the Americas. In southern Peru the Inca Yupanqui raised a temple at Cuzco to the creator god who was superior to the sun we know. Unlike the solar orb, he was able to "rest" and "to light the world from one spot." As the pioneering Mesoamerican scholar, Zelia Nuttal, noted many years ago, the only reasonable position in the sky for fulfilling this requirement is the celestial Pole. "It is an extremely important and significant fact," writes Nuttall, "that the principal doorway of this temple opened to the north." (Since the north celestial pole is not visible from Cuzco, 14 below the equator, Nuttall assumed that this tradition of a polar sun was carried southward.) It seems that the memory of the central sun established itself around the world. Other reflections of the polar power in the Americas are noteworthy. Cottie Burland tells us that, among the Mexicans, "the nearest approach to the idea of a true universal god was Xiuhtecuhtli, recalled as the Old, Old One who enabled the first ancestors to rise from barbarism. Xiuhtecuhtli appears as the Central Fire and "the heart of the Universe." "Xiuhtecuhtli was a very special deity. He was not only the Lord of Fire which burnt in front of every temple and in the middle of every hut in Mexico, but also Lord of the Pole Star. He was the pivot of the universe and one of the forms of the Supreme Deity." An apparent counterpart of this central fire is the Maya creator god Huracan, the "Heart of Heaven" at the celestial pole. The Pawnee locate the "star chief of the skies" at the pole. He is the "star that stands still." Of this supreme power they say, "Its light is the radiance of the Sun god shining through."
ELECTRICAL SCARRING ON EUROPA

[Wal Thornhill original post] Europa seems to have suffered many episodes of electrical scarring judging by the multiple layers of crisscrossing linear features. This would be expected if its orbit brought it repeatedly into the danger zone between Saturn and Venus.
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Electrical scarring seems to follow the law of fractals. So I would expect the new closer up shots of Europa to show similar scars down to the limit of resolution. That is, trenches consisting of circular craters, possibly being so close together as to appear continuous; levees on each side of the trenches; the parallel "racetracks" to be composed of many trenches, side by side. [Respondent poster] Did you see the images released on April 9? The ones with the "ice floes" that have broken into pieces, but where you can still see the pattern continued on the broken pieces? My question to you is--given the fact that the surface is clearly active, does that in any way change your interpretation of ANY of the features? I.e., can you grant that maybe more than one type of process is at work on Europa? [Dave Talbott responds] Can't speak for Wal, but I spent about 45 minutes studying the incredible recent close-up pictures of Europa. Clearly there has been more recent activity on Europa than any astronomer had imagined prior to the Voyager probes. There are significant sections of the surface which have been re-arranged by the movement of ice. These in particular put a huge exclamation point the long, narrow channels, whose formation COULDN'T be due to ice movement or any geological process "deep within the planet," as the planetary geologists had claimed. Where melting has occurred and sheets of ice have been randomly shifted about, you can a get a very dramatic picture as to how irregular the spacing is between the broken fragments under such conditions-literally nothing like the thousands of narrow channels running side by side, some up to hundreds of kilometers--which geologists had tried to explain by fracturing and subtle movements of the ice. And notice that in the fields of formerly melted ice, after the various fragments had been frozen into place again, additional channels were carved out, up, down, and over the previous fragments. The consistent pattern of these channels suggests an instrument being dragged along the surface to plow out the long, parallel furrows. Try as I may, I could not see anything in the character of the channels to suggest internal geology. That recent chaotic motions of planets and their moons might account for the catastrophic melting and re-freezing would seem self-evident.
[Wal Thornhill response] Dave has effectively answered the question for me while I was in Melbourne. The surface *was* recently active with both electrical sculpting and melting. The evidence for an episode of melting and re-freezing of the ice is graphically depicted in photo P-48526. It must be water ice for the creation of ice floes. Satellite photographs of Antarctic sea ice breaking up do not show parallelism, constancy of width, levee banks, the dark-light-dark appearance, or anything to match the scale of the "cracks" on Europa. Certainly nothing to match the appearance of "freeways". The larger "cracks" range up to 70km in width and stretch as far as 3,000 km in straight or curved paths across Europa's surface. When seen in close-up, the "cracks" look like furrows. The best conventional explanation for this appearance is some form of gas venting through the cracks from below. But the material vented had to be "dirty" to provide the colouration of the levees. It had to be remarkably consistent over great distances. Then clean ice had to fill the bottom of the "crack" to give the bright centre line. (I would not expect to see any dark central lines of dirty ice beneath the furrows when seen in cross section where the ice floes have broken away. The photos are not yet sufficiently detailed to test this suggestion). The lightning discharge hypothesis is the only one to explain all of the observed linear features from the smallest to the largest scale. The central line is bright because that is where the lightning vapourized the ice to blast it outwards and form the levees. We are looking at a clean bed of ice at the bottom of the channel. The colouration of the levees may come from shock heating and rapid cooling of the ice and any resulting chemical changes in dissolved or suspended material. (The same mechanism that formed the green glass beads found near rilles on the Moon). The larger furrows stand out as much more deeply
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coloured than their surroundings. So it may be that the electric discharges that created them were sufficiently intense to cause nucleosynthesis in the form of the conversion of oxygen atoms (from the water) to sulphur. Elemental sulphur takes many colours ranging from yellow through red to black (look at Io's surface) and could account for the reddish colouration of the ejected material. Alternatively, and I think less likely, the coloured material may be exogenous and implanted by the discharge itself (as described by Ralph Juergens). Of course, when we finish discussing Europa, we have the linear features on Ganymede and Callisto to explain--not to mention the moons of Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
PUTTING A NEW FACE ON PREHISTORY

Skeletons Suggest Caucasoid Early Americans By Boyce Rensberger Washington Post Staff Writer Skeletons unearthed in several western states and as far east as Minnesota are challenging the traditional view that the earliest Americans all resembled today's Asians. The skeletons' skulls hear features similar to thoae of Europeans, suggesting that caucasian people were among the earliest humans to migrate into the New World more than 9,000 years ago. Anthropologists have known of such bones for years, but did not fully appreciate their significance until reappraising them over the last few months. The new analyses were prompted by the discovery last summer of the newest addition to the body of evidence-the unusually complete skeleton of an "apparently Caucasoid" man who died about 9,300 years ago near what is now Kennewick, Wash. D. Gentry Steele, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University, speculates that people of both races migrated into North America in separate waves, possibly thousands of years apart. Where they met, he suspects, they "made love, not war," and thus both populations may be ancestral to some or all of today's Native Americans. Until now, most anthropologists thought that the earliest humans to inhabit the Americas all resembled today's Asiatic peoples, popularly called Mongoloids. Prehistoric Americans are thought to have migrated from Siberia into Alaska and then spread southward, probably during an ice age when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than now, exposing a "land bridge. Now, however, many anthropologists believe that early colonization of the Americas was a more complex process, involving not only Mongoloids but Caucasoids as well, probably in separate migrations. Some Native American peoples today resemble the people of Asia and some are more European. Much of this mixture is the product of intermarriage in recent centuries, but some may date back thousands of years.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (3) NEWS ITEM: Aviation Week & Space Technology EUROPA PREDICTION AND DISCUSSION BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Controversy--Catastrophism and Evolution: The Ongoing Debate PLASMA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY URL's
David Talbott comments by Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
Ian Tresman
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress. ~Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: The following continues David Talbott's introductory comments on the "Saturn theory." New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website (address listed at the end of this newsletter). Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.] To the traditions of a polar power, previously cited, should be added the following: In the Persian Zend Avesta the creator-king Ahura Mazda rules from atop the world axis, the fixed station "around which the many stars revolve." Iranian cosmology, as reported by Leopold de Saussure, esteemed the celestial pole as the center and summit of heaven, where resided Kevan, the sovereign power of heaven, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky." Throughout the ancient Near East, according to the comprehensive research of H. P. L'Orange, the "King of the Universe" appears as a central sun, "the Axis and the Pole of the World." These archaic traditions can help us re-interpret the images of the sun god kept alive by Greek and Roman symbolists. In astrological representations, the primeval "sun" occupies the central, axial position while the other planets or stars revolve around him. The definitive celestial profile of Helios is as Basileus, the Royal Sun, recognized by Franz Cumont as the prototype of terrestrial kings or princes surrounded by their guards. In the time of the Roman emperor Nero, the sun-god was still remembered as the axis, the genius loci, the center of the cosmos, and presented as such in astrological depictions, with the emperor himself serving as the terrestrial image of the original sun god.
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It is significant too that, as noted by John Perry (Lord of the Four Quarters), the Etruscans--predecessors of the Romans--claimed there was one supreme deity, held to be the axial "Pole" Star. "According to Jewish and Muslim Cosmology," wrote the eminent authority on Semitic religions, A.J. Wensinck, "the divine throne is exactly above the seventh heaven, consequently it is the pole of the Universe." (An echo of the ancient tradition will be found in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who locates the throne of El in the farthest reaches of the north.) Amongst Finno Ugric peoples, the supreme ruler of the sky is Ukko. As stated in the Finnish Kalevala the seat of Ukko was at the Pole. And this assertion, according to the prominent chronicler Uno Holmberrg, was part of a pervasive tradition of the creator-king seated atop the world pole. A remarkable counterpart is provided by the Ashanti of Ghana, who remembered the old sun god as "the dynamic center of the Universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven." Thus, according to the Ashanti, this former sun god is "the center around which everything revolves." This idea of an ancient sun god ruling from the axial center stands in dramatic contest to the common suppositions of mythologists and historians. To the modern mind nothing could be more absurd than a polar sun. Yet the unmoving sun is the ancient tradition, as noted by E.A.S. Butterworth in his insightful work, The Tree at the Navel o the Earth. Upon evaluating the archaic images of Helios and other ancient sun gods, Butterworth concluded that this luminary "is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems, ever at the zenith...There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun." How could such an improbable "ambiguity" have dominated the cosmological thought of ancient star worshippers--in every corner of the world? Butterworth's insights have a considerable history behind them. The precedence of the cosmic center among the great ancient cultures has been noted and documented by others. Almost a hundred years ago, William F. Warren, in his groundbreaking work, Paradise Found, identified the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god of ancient races. "The religions of all ancient nations...associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it. [Yet] no writer on comparative theology has ever brought out the facts which establish this assertion." In the following years a number of scholars, each focusing on different bodies of evidence, reached the same Conclusion. The controversial and erratic Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt), claimed that the religion and mythology of a polar god was first formulated by the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt and spread from Egypt to the rest of the world. In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O'Neill (Night of the Gods, two volumes) insisted that mankind's oldest religions centered on a god of the celestial pole. The renowned Mesoamerican authority, Zelia Nuttall, in Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilization, undertook an extensive review of New World astronomical themes, concluding that the highest god was polar. From Mexico she shifted to other civilizations, finding the same unexpected role of a polar god. Reinforcing the surprising conclusions of these researchers was the subsequent work of others, among them the noted Finno-Ugric authority, Uno Holmberg (Der Baum Des Lebens), who documented the preeminence of the polar god in the ritual of Altaic and neighboring peoples, suggesting ancient origins in Hindu and Mesopotamian cosmologies; Lopold de Saussure (Les Origines de l;'Astronomie Chinoise), who showed that primitive Chinese religion and astronomy honor the celestial pole as the home of the supreme "monarch" of the sky; Ren Guenon (Le Roi du Monde and Le Symbolisme de la Croix), who sought to outline a universal doctrine centering on the polar gods and principles of ancient man.
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In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century these revelations were viewed as highly unorthodox and generally given little attention. But more recently the pioneering historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, together with many of his colleagues, has documented numerous traditions of the cosmic center--the place where it all began--and noted again and again the relations of the cosmic center to the celestial pole. Most of the writers cited above possessed a common--if unspoken-faith in the ceaseless regularity of the solar system, seeking to explain the polar god in strictly familiar terms: the center of our revolving heavens is the celestial pole; the great god of the center and summit, in view of his role as axis, must have been the star closes to this cosmic pivot. But then, as we have seen, it's simply impossible to separate the tradition of the polar power from that of the former sun god, the central sun, lighting the world from one spot. So it is not just a matter of ancient star worshippers looking up at the pole and noticing that the circumpolar stars slowly wheel around that center. The mystery is the location of the supreme luminary, the power many nations called "sun", at this improbable station in the sky. How did an idea contradicting all natural experience today, establish itself around the world?
NEWS ITEM: Aviation Week & Space Technology

Wal Thornhill In the same issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology (Feb 3, 1997) that was referred to concerning Europa's terrain (should that be Eurrain?), there is another item headlined - "Twisters" Found In Stellar Clouds. Accompanying the article are two stunning photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the Lagoon Nebula. [http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/38.html]. Following is a partial quote from the report: Analogous to Earth's tornadoes, the large difference in temperature between the hot surface and cold interior of the interstellar clouds, combined with the pressure of starlight, may produce strong horizontal shear to twist the clouds into their tornado-like appearance. While the spiral shapes suggest the clouds are twisting, future observations will be needed to confirm that. I would like you to note the exceedingly weak explanation for the formation of the "twisters". It is yet another manifestation of astronomers clinging to simple gas models rather than more complex plasma models. It should also be noted that earthly tornadoes are not well understood either because, I would suggest, electrical effects are ignored. Helical filaments are a natural configuration of current carrying plasmas and are seen in the powerful jets emanating from active galactic nuclei. I have no doubt that the clouds in the Lagoon Nebula will be found to be twisting (rather than being some pressure wave effect). One of the telling arguments for the veracity of recent planetary interactions is the recurring helical, serpentine imagery associated in mythology with the planetary gods and in particular, Jupiter's corkscrew thunderbolts.
EUROPA PREDICTION AND DISCUSSION

[Wal Thornhill wrote]:
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Back on 17 Jan, I posted an item about what I expected would be found on the closer images of Europa. The earlier post ran, in part, as follows: Since so many of the moons of the outer planets have similar markings, I can visualize a situation where they may have repeatedly gotten in the way of a large discharge between the gas giant planets and other bodies, like Venus or Mars. The Saturnian scenario has not yet dealt with the minor players in the celestial drama, but the moons of Jupiter and Saturn must have been swarming around between them. If Europa, for instance, had come between Venus and Saturn (for argument's sake) while Venus was the focus of plasma streams from Saturn, then Europa would have been entwined (and I use that word deliberately) in the interplanetary plasma "ropes". As I have said of the markings on Venus, when the plasma ropes are constrained to flow parallel to the surface of a planet (or moon), the result is a number of parallel marks or scars often running for great distances. The precise appearance of the scarring depends on many factors: the dielectric properties of the surface material, gas pressure at the surface, etc. The argument is strengthened when it is remembered that even the tiny moons of Mars exhibit linear scarring and circular craters. Europa seems to have suffered many episodes of electrical scarring judging by the multiple layers of crisscrossing linear features. This would be expected if its orbit brought it repeatedly into the danger zone between Saturn and Venus. Electrical scarring seems to follow the law of fractals. So I would expect the new closer up shots of Europa to show similar scars down to the limit of resolution. That is, trenches consisting of circular craters, possibly being so close together as to appear continuous; levees on each side of the trenches; the parallel "racetracks" to be composed of many trenches, side by side. [Response by James G. Acker]: Wal, Did you see the images released on April 9? The ones with the "ice floes" that have broken into pieces, but where you can still see the pattern continued on the broken pieces? My question to you is--given the fact that the surface is clearly active, does that in any way change your interpretation of ANY of the features? I.e., can you grant that maybe more than one type of process is at work on Europa? [Response by Dave Talbott]: Can't speak for Wal, but I spent about 45 minutes studying the incredible recent close-up pictures of Europa. Clearly there has been more recent activity on Europa than any astronomer had imagined prior to the Voyager probes. There are significant sections of the surface which have been re-arranged by the movement of ice. These in particular put a huge exclamation point the long, narrow channels, whose formation COULDN'T be due to ice movement or any geological process "deep within the planet," as the planetary geologists had claimed. Where melting has occurred and sheets of ice have been randomly shifted about, you can a get a very dramatic picture as to how irregular the spacing is between the broken fragments under such conditionsliterally nothing like the thousands of narrow channels running side by side, some up to hundreds of kilometers--which geologists had tried to explain by fracturing and subtle movements of the ice. And notice that in the fields of formerly melted ice, after the various fragments had been frozen into place again, additional channels were carved out, up, down, and over the previous fragments. The consistent pattern of these channels suggests an instrument being dragged along the surface to plow out the long, parallel furrows. Try as I may, I could not see anything in the character of the channels to suggest internal
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geology. That recent chaotic motions of planets and their moons might account for the catastrophic melting and re-freezing would seem self- evident. [Wal Thornhill]: Jim, Dave has effectively answered the question for me while I was in Melbourne. The surface was recently active with both electrical sculpting and melting. The evidence for an episode of melting and re-freezing of the ice is graphically depicted in photo P-48526. It must be water ice for the creation of ice floes. Satellite photographs of Antarctic sea ice breaking up do not show parallelism, constancy of width, levee banks, the dark-light-dark appearance, or anything to match the scale of the "cracks" on Europa. Certainly nothing to match the appearance of "freeways". The larger "cracks" range up to 70km in width and stretch as far as 3,000 km in straight or curved paths across Europa's surface. When seen in close-up, the "cracks" look like furrows. The best conventional explanation for this appearance is some form of gas venting through the cracks from below. But the material vented had to be "dirty" to provide the colouration of the levees. It had to be remarkably consistent over great distances. Then clean ice had to fill the bottom of the "crack" to give the bright centre line. (I would not expect to see any dark central lines of dirty ice beneath the furrows when seen in cross section where the ice floes have broken away. The photos are not yet sufficiently detailed to test this suggestion). The lightning discharge hypothesis is the only one to explain all of the observed linear features from the smallest to the largest scale. The central line is bright because that is where the lightning vapourized the ice to blast it outwards and form the levees. We are looking at a clean bed of ice at the bottom of the channel. The colouration of the levees may come from shock heating and rapid cooling of the ice and any resulting chemical changes in dissolved or suspended material. (The same mechanism that formed the green glass beads found near rilles on the Moon). The larger furrows stand out as much more deeply coloured than their surroundings. So it may be that the electric discharges that created them were sufficiently intense to cause nucleosynthesis in the form of the conversion of oxygen atoms (from the water) to sulphur. Elemental sulphur takes many colours ranging from yellow through red to black (look at Io's surface) and could account for the reddish colouration of the ejected material. Alternatively, and I think less likely, the coloured material may be exogenous and implanted by the discharge itself (as described by Ralph Juergens). Of course, when we finish discussing Europa, we have the linear features on Ganymede and Callisto to explain--not to mention the moons of Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. Wal Thornhill responded to further comments by James Acker: [WT] The surface *was* recently active with both electrical sculpting and melting. The evidence for an episode of melting and re-freezing of the ice is graphically depicted in photo P-48526. It must be water ice for the creation of ice floes. [JA] Well, that was expected. Good that we agree. [WT] Satellite photographs of Antarctic sea ice breaking up does not show parallelism, constancy of width, levee banks, the dark-light-dark appearance, or anything to match the scale of the "cracks" on Europa. [JA] I don't think we can compare the sea ice of Antarctica or the Arctic to Europa. The scale of heating is dissimilar. Europa is postulated to have the same kind of heat source as Io, though at a lesser intensity. Because it's internal, it will have a different surface manifestation. Believe it or not, Aviation and Technology Week (or something similar) had an article on Europa. It must be a weekly, because it was the same pictures I saw on the Web. My office-mate gets it. The scientists are already describing what they are seeing in the long ridge systems as cracking, upwelling, and refreezing. I'm not surprised by that. All I can say is that I think the lava lake analogy is apt.
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[WT] I used the Antarctic sea ice description because it's the one often used as an analogue of the Europa markings and in a book I saw in Melbourne, it had the photographs side by side for comparison. There are close-ups of Europa which show the same features and which I accept as fractured ice. P47170 is an example with a circular pattern and wedge- shaped cracks evident. I still think that the number of special conditions required to satisfy the appearance, range of sizes and sheer number of linear features argue against the standard mechanism. Certainly nothing to match the appearance of "freeways". The larger "cracks" range up to 70km in width and stretch as far as 3,000 km in straight or curved paths across Europa's surface. When seen in closeup, the "cracks" look like furrows. The best conventional explanation for this appearance is some form of gas venting through the cracks from below. But the material vented had to be "dirty" to provide the coloration of the levees. It had to be remarkably consistent over great distances. Then clean ice had to fill the bottom of the "crack" to give the bright centre line. [JA] Looking very closely, I'm not sure of that. We may be only seeing light and shadow. I say that based on the appearance of the close-up and the cracks on the floes. [WT] To get some idea of the coloration you need to look at the global colour images where the contrast between the reddish "cracks" and the white surface is quite marked. [JA] Gotta delete the rest, sorry. I know you mentioned Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede is supposed to be ice and rock, and Callisto doesn't have a lot of lines, just a lot of craters. At least I think they're craters. [WT] In the article "Strange Forces Alter Europa's Terrain" in Aviation Week & Space Technology (Feb 3, 1997) and referred to by Jim Acker, three forces are seen as shaping the moon's surface. They are: lateral spreading of surface plates; water vulcanism; and a mysterious local obliteration process. I quote from the NASA description: This is the highest resolution picture ever taken of the Jupiter moon, Europa. The area shown is about 5.9 by 9.9 miles (9.6 by 16 kilometers) and the smallest visible feature is about the size of a football field. In this view, the ice-rich surface has been broken into a complex pattern by crosscutting ridges and grooves resulting from tectonic processes. Sinuous rille-like features and knobby terrain could result from surface modifications of unknown origins. Small craters of possible impact origin range in size from less than 330 feet (100 meters) to about 1300 feet (400 meters) across are visible. Notice the use of the words "sinuous rille-like features". The accompanying image: [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov:80/galileo/europa/p48227.html] shows detail down to a resolution of 230ft. It looks as if the resurfacing has been caused by fracturing of the ice, floating apart and re-freezing of the exposed water. The re-frozen surface is more lightly scarred by furrows (sinuous rilles?) which suggests that a short-lived thermal and/or torsional event occurred during the scarring process. The edges of the cracks are sharp. The distinction between cracking and furrowing is easy to see and to term the furrows evidence of water vulcanism is, in my opinion, stretching the imagination past the elastic limit. The furrows are no respecters of existing topography and the levees are so consistent in appearance over long distances that it begs explanation by the water vulcanologists as to how this might be achieved by eruption of a fluid. A rough calculation from the dimensions of one of the furrows shows that the levees are formed solely from the material excavated from the channel. It does not require additional matter from beneath the crust nor does it require subsidence of the fluid to leave the central channel. This suits the electrical discharge formation process, as does the uniformity over long distances and the disregard for existing surface
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topography. The arcuate nature of the longest furrows on Europa may also be consistent with the influence of the self-induced magnetic field of a plasma discharge on the motion of the discharge. Many of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn exhibit the same kind of linear (often parallel) scarring, even though their sizes and composition vary markedly. Some moons featuring such scars are so small that to talk of volcanic features is nonsense. As I remarked in an earlier posting on the subject, I propose that many of the moons of the gas giants were probably unfortunate enough to become secondary electrodes in an interplanetary discharge between planets. In such an event, since a moon is a better conductor than surrounding space, plasma ropes will twine around the moon, ripping charge carriers (electrons and ions) from the surface and forming circular craters, rayed craters, and furrows (or rilles) in the manner described by Ralph Juergens for the Moon. The precise nature of the scarring (rilles, circular craters, rays, etc.) will be determined largely by the characteristics of each moon's surface, but the hallmarks of electrical machining will be evident. When it comes to the proposed plasma discharge experiment in an evacuated chamber with magnetized spheres, it would be worthwhile to include an extra sphere, representing a moon, between the cathode and anode, with an electrical connection so that its voltage may be varied. In this way it may be possible to photograph the kind of effects to be expected on an object like Europa. Wal Thornhill
Book Announcement:
Trevor Palmer:
CONTROVERSY - CATASTROPHISM AND EVOLUTION: THE ONGOING DEBATE

Plenum Company: New York/London [to be published in early 1998] For the last 20 years, Professor Trevor Palmer has been one of the most outstanding yet least known British chroniclers of the paradigm shift in the natural sciences, particularly with regards to the scientific revolution in the fields of cometary astronomy, neo-catastrophism and evolution. Since the late 1970s, when Trevor began to write about these startling new research findings in SIS REVIEW, he has been continuously following the implications of impact-related research on palaeontology and evolutionary theory. Over the years, Trevor Palmer has been influenced by quite a number of neo-catastrophists and SIS speakers such as Rene Gallant, Archie Roy, Victor Clube, Ruppert Sheldrake, Chandra Wickramasinghe - to name be a few of the British players in this scientific drama - who have enlightened many meetings of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies since its foundation in 1974. In his book, CONTROVERSY - CATASTROPHISM AND EVOLUTION: THE ONGOING DEBATE, Trevor outlines a new history of evolutionary theory, natural selection and adaptation, all of which appear to be founded more on 19th century natural theology rather than pure science. He shows how and why Lyell's religious belief in uniformitarian gradualism supplanted catastrophism by the middle of the 19th century and how, during the last 20 years, a prolonged scientific revolution has once again brought catastrophism to the forefront of the natural sciences. Darwinian natural selection, long thought to hold all keys to evolution, is critically reappraised and revised in view of new astronomical, geological and palaeontological evidence. Trevor's book will most certainly
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accelerate the process of up-dating evolutionary theory by demonstrating how the theory of impactgenerated evolution might help to explain many of the current anomalies. Whilst Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, Steven Stanley or David Raup have come up with similar speculations about punctuated equilibrium and catastrophic evolution, Trevor Palmer has gone a step (some would rather say a mile) further than his American colleagues. He has applied the model of 'coherent catastrophism' by Clube, Napier, Bailey et al. to both the evolution of hominids, Homo sapiens and human civilization and has thereby underlined the "erratic descent" of Man and culture. Professor Trevor Palmer is Head of the Department of Life Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics at Nottingham Trent University. He is the Chairman of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies and (together with Professor Mark Bailey and myself) a member of the Organizing Committee of the 2nd SIS Cambridge Conference. CONTENTS: 1. The Context of Evolution: The Earth and Its Surroundings. 1.1 The Solar System 1.2 Possible causes of catastrophe on Earth 1.3 The fall and rise of catastrophism. 2. The Establishment of Gradualism 2.1 Catastrophism, gradualism and evolution 2.2 Myth, cosmogony and pre-nineteenth century catastrophism 2.3 Catastrophism and evolution in early nineteenth century France 2.4 Hutton and his legacy 2.5 Natural theology and diluvialism in early nineteenth century Britain 2.6 The catastrophism-uniformitarianism debate in the 1830s and beyond 2.7 Lamarck, Darwin and evolution 2.8 Towards a gradualistic evolutionary synthesis. 3. Gradualism under Challenge 3.1 From catastrophism to neocatastrophism 3.2 Eustasy, impacts and mass extinctions 3.3 Phyletic gradualism and quantum evolution 3.4 Punctuated equilibrium and species selection 3.5 Gould's view of life. 4. Nemesis for Evolutionary Gradualism? 4.1 Iridium, tektites and the death of the dinosaurs 4.2 Conflicting views about the K-T transition 4.3 A periodicity in extinctions? 4.4 Current views on mass extinctions. 5. The Erratic Descent of Man 5.1 Early views on human evolution 5.2 The molecular revolution 5.3 Early hominoids 5.4 Hominids 5.5 Arguments over patterns in hominid evolution 5.6 The changing environment 5.7 Our uncertain origins. 6. Towards a New Evolutionary Synthesis 6.1 Darwinism challenged and defended 6.2 Life itself - accident or design? 6.3 More heat than light - the evolution debate as reflected in books of the early 1980s 6.4 The continuing evolution of evolution
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6.5 Evolution today - Darwinism, Lamarckism, Matthewism, or what? 6.6 The pattern of the past, and of the future.
PLASMA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY URL's

With the interest in space plasmas, THOTH readers may be interested in the following Web resources. PLASMA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY There are almost 200 topical areas in plasma science and technology, including about 80 applications areas! See INFORMATION RESOURCES link for SPACE PLASMAS. http://www-plasma.umd.edu./ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Space Plasma Physics http://sumppu.fmi.fi/plasma.html Queen Mary and Westfield College, UK and Int'l Space Plasma links http://www.space-plasma.qmw.ac.uk/DOC/useful_links.html CAN GRAVITY be INDUCED? ABSTRACT: The Sun is inducing gravity without a corresponding quantity of mass. This phenomenon is brought about by a plasma in a magnetically unified state; a magnetically sustained 'non-space', an absolute vacuum held in place by the photospheric plasma shell. http://www.goodfelloweb.com/nature/cgbi/ Submitted by Ian Tresman
For those with interests in Egyptian antiquities, the following sites may be helpful: The Ministry of Tourism, Egypt The Egyptian Tourist Authority http://interoz.com/egypt/ Features: Egyptian Antiquities Cataloguing many of the most interesting Egyptian Antiquities, both inside and outside Egypt. The Egyptian Bulletin Board System (BBS) Allows messaging and real time chat on a number of different subjects, including travel questions, Ancient Egyptian Science, Ancient Mythology, Egyptian Mysteries, Egyptian News from Around the World, Egyptology and Archeology, Modern Egyptian Entertainment and more. Ian Tresman
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (4) HYAKUTAKE X-RAYS MORE VENUS DIALOGUE New URL Section
Michael Armstrong David Talbott submitted by Ian Tresman Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate. ~Omar Khayam, Rubaiyat quatrain XXXI [Submitted by Pam Hanna]
EDITORIAL SECTION
Michael Armstrong In the second issue of THOTH we published a brief quote showing that Johnathan Swift had a knowledge of the ancient Saturn myth. Swift shows in various other passages that he was aware of remembered catastrophes involving Mars and Venus as well. The quote from Omar Khayam above suggests that this author, too, had a knowledge of Saturn's place in the ancient celestial scheme. (Ancient Arabic tradition connected Saturn with the "seventh heaven" at the celestial pole.) It seems that memories abound of an ancient sky so different from our own that only a fundamental reappraisal of cosmic history will get to the bottom of things. One culture after another claimed that the planets themselves were once active in the heavens, directly affecting the fate of the world. That these memories have persisted into modern times, shaping our language and literature, is a remarkable testimony to the impact of ancient events on human imagination. Perhaps you, our readers, have questions with respect to unusual ancient motifs or passages you have encountered. If so, we invite you to send us any quotes or questions, which we will then submit to David Talbott and his colleagues for a response.
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David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: The following continues David Talbott's introductory comments on the "Saturn theory." New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website (address listed at the end of this newsletter). Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.] In this investigation we will see that many threads of evidence lead to the same unified conclusions. In preceding segments we have reviewed these unexplained associations- Helios as Saturn; Helios as central sun, and Helios as axis of the celestial revolutions. Assyrian Shamash as Saturn, Shamash as central sun, Shamash at the polar "midst" and "zenith." Egyptian Atum-Ra as central sun, Atum-Ra as Saturn, Atum-Ra atop the world pole.
There is a way to test the integrity of the ancient ideas we have reviewed. Are there any independent astronomical traditions enigmatically connecting the outermost visible planet to the celestial pole? This would be particularly significant because nothing in the appearance of Saturn today could conceivably suggest such a connection? And it would show a coherence of the collective memory beyond anything historians would have thought possible. The answer is clear, and it is stunning. Wherever ancient astronomies preserved detailed images of the planet Saturn, it seems that Saturn was declared to have formerly occupied the celestial pole! The priestly astronomy of Zoroastrianism knew the planet Saturn as Kevan, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky," and they located the primeval seat of Kevan at the celestial Pole. In neo-Platonist symbolism of the planets, Kronos-Saturn is claimed to rule the celestial Pole, or is placed "over the Pole." It is also known that Latin poets remembered Saturn as god of "the steadfast star," the very phrase used for the pole star in virtually every ancient astronomy. Thus Manilius recounts that Saturn, in his fall, toppled to the "opposite end of the world axis." Hence his original throne could only have been atop the world axis. A stunning example of the polar Saturn is provided in Chinese astronomy, where the distant planet was called "the genie of the pivot." Saturn was believed to have his station at the pole, according to the eminent authority on Chinese astronomy, Gustav Schlegel. In the words of Leopold deSaussure, Saturn was "the planet of the center, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of heaven." Interestingly, the theme also appears to have passed into the mystic traditions of numerous secret societies (Rosicrucian, Masonic, Cabalistic, Hermetic, and others rooted in an unknown past). The greatest authority on such societies was Manly P. Hall, who published numerous volumes on the related belief systems. In the general traditions reviewed by Hall, the god Saturn is "the old man who lives at the north pole." Even today, it seems that in our celebration of Christmas we live under the influence of the polar Saturn, for as Hall observes: Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children of men a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name of Santa Claus. Santa Claus, descending yearly from his polar home to distribute gifts around the world, is a muffled echo of the Universal Monarch spreading miraculous good fortune. But while the earlier traditions place his prototype, the Universal Monarch, at the celestial pole, popular tradition now locates Santa Claus at the geographical pole--a telling example of originally celestial gods being brought down to earth A planet at the celestial pole? The consistency of the message cannot be denied, and it is anything but the message anticipated by conventional models of the ancient sky.
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As odd as this tradition of Saturn at the pole may appear, it has been acknowledged by more than one authority, including Leopold de Saussure. The principle also figured prominently in the recent work of the historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana and the ethnologist Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet's Mill. According to an ancient astronomical tradition, the authors suggest, Saturn originally ruled from the celestial pole! As for the rationale of Saturn's polar station, the authors could only suggest that the concept arose as a "figure of speech" or astral allegory whose meaning remains to be penetrated. "What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the Pole?" they asked. "It is not in the line of modern astronomy to establish any link connecting the planets with Polaris, or with any star, indeed, out of reach of the members of the zodiacal system. Yet such figures of speech were an essential part of the technical idiom of archaic astrology." It seems that the primordial age, as chronicled in accounts around the world, stands in radical contrast to our own era. One can no more explain Saturn's ancient connection with the pole by reference to the present arrangements of the planets than one can explain, within conventional frameworks, Saturn's image as the Universal Monarch, as founder of the Golden Age, or as primeval sun god. Yet the fact remains that throughout the ancient world these images of Saturn constituted a pervasive memory which many centuries of cultural evolution could not obliterate. Separate threads of evidence, each posing its own mystery for the specialists, thus suggest a remarkably unified memory: myth of the Golden Age, myth of the creator-king or celestial prototype of kings, reverence for a former sun god, the archaic day beginning at sunset, placement of the sun god at the cosmic center and summit, identification of the cosmic center with the axis of the turning sky, Saturn as founder of the Golden Age, Saturn as creator-king, Saturn as primeval sun or best sun, Saturn as god of the day (the day beginning at sunset), Saturn as resting god or god ruling the "day of rest," Saturn at the cosmic center and summit, Saturn ruling from the celestial pole. In attempting to comprehend such enigmatic threads, we can no longer afford to ignore the most fundamental of questions: Is the sky we observe today the same sky experienced by the first stargazers?
From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>:
HYAKUTAKE X-RAYS SHOW ABILITY TO MONITOR COMETS AND SOLAR WIND

RELEASE: 97-92 Douglas Isbell Headquarters, Washington, DC May 9, 1997 (Phone: 202/358-1753) Lynn Chandler Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (Phone: 301/286-9016) Sally Pobojewski University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (Phone: 313/647-1844)
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A supercomputer simulation of Comet Hyakutake's interaction with the solar wind demonstrates that resulting X-ray emissions can be used to monitor comets and solar wind phenomena, NASA- funded researchers write in today's issue of Science. The simulation was conducted using an Earth sciences supercomputer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The results match and explain March 27, 1996, observations of Comet Hyakutake by Germany's ROSAT satellite, the first detection of X-ray emissions from any comet. The model also supports a leading theory for how the X-rays are generated. "Cometary X-rays present a potentially powerful new tool to monitor comet activity far from Earth, as well as the composition and flux of the solar wind," said co-author Dr. Tamas Gombosi of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "By capturing these X-rays' detailed energy spectrum, it might be possible to monitor the propagation and evolution of spectacular solar wind phenomena, such as the coronal mass ejections seen this January and April." About one percent of the solar wind, which flows from the Sun out past Pluto, is composed of minor ions: atoms (such as oxygen, carbon and neon) that have been nearly stripped of their electrons and thus have a high positive charge. Dr. Thomas Cravens of the University of Kansas theorizes that these minor ions steal electrons from neutral atoms and molecules of cometary origin. The electrons are first seized in excited states, traveling in the ions' outer orbitals. As the electrons fall to lower orbitals, Cravens' theory asserts that X-rays are emitted, in addition to other forms of radiation. "Considering the magnitude and shape of the emission, we believe the most satisfactory theory to be this mechanism of charge exchange excitation," Gombosi said. "Other explanations produce neither the crescent pattern nor the intensity observed by ROSAT and duplicated by our simulation." Within this pattern, some electron orbital transitions emit distinct wavelengths of X-rays that can be measured. The computer simulation shows that the overall X-ray spectrum for Comet Hyakutake depends mainly on the solar wind composition, and not on the comet. Because of this independence, researchers can determine the relative size of the comet's atmosphere from the proximity of the brightest X-rays to the icy nucleus. "In Hyakutake, the brightest X-ray region was 18,700 miles (30,000 kilometers) ahead of the comet, on the Sun side," said University of Michigan co-author Dr. Michael Combi. "If the comet has enough of an atmosphere, the solar wind minor ions recombine with electrons far from the nucleus. If the comet were producing less atmospheric gas, the place of maximum emission would be closer to the nucleus," Combi said. This theory will be tested on Comet Hale-Bopp, which is scheduled to be observed by Japan's ASCA Xray satellite this September. "Comet Hale-Bopp should have the emission shifted further sunward; it is bigger than Hyakutake," Combi said. Active comets are typically first observed in visible light at large distances from the Sun. After discovery, the orbits of comets can be established with very high accuracy as they pass through the inner solar system. "If X-rays are observed from the known location of a comet, one can conclude with great confidence that the X-rays originated from the comet," Gombosi said. The University of Michigan team used March 27, 1996, solar wind density measurements from NASA's WIND spacecraft. Their model first considers the global interaction of the solar wind with the comet. It projects the comet into a three-dimensional grid that automatically applies finer resolution where more activity occurs. This physics component predicts the deflective paths and speed of the solar wind traveling through the comet. Other co-authors of the Science paper are Roman Haberli, Darren De Zeeuw and Kenneth Powell. The University of Michigan team is one of nine Grand Challenge Investigations funded by the NASA High Performance Computing and Communication Program's Earth and Space Sciences Project. Additional
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funding comes from NASA's Office of Space Science, the National Science Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Simulation images are available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://hpcc.engin.umich.edu/HPCC/recent3/index.html Submitted by Ian Tresman
MORE VENUS DIALOGUE

[EDITOR'S NOTE: IN PREVIOUS POSTS WALLACE THORNHILL HAS CONTENDED THAT THE PLANET VENUS SHOWS SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE OF ELECTRICAL INTERACTION WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT, A CONDITION SUGGESTING BOTH AN ELECTRICAL IMBALANCE AND AN UNUSUAL, "COMET"-LIKE HISTORY.] [Wal Thornhill, continuing his dialogue with Tim Thompson]: The Venera spacecraft found continuous lightning activity from 32km down to about 2km altitude, with discharges as frequent as an amazing 25 per second. The highest recorded rate on Earth is 1.4/sec during a severe blizzard. The Pioneer lander recorded 1000 radio impulses. Thirty-two minutes after landing, Venera 11 detected a very loud (82 decibel) noise which was believed to be thunder. Garry Hunt suggested at the time that: '... the Venusians may well be glowing from the nearly continuous discharges of those frequent lightning strokes'. A 'mysterious glow' was detected coming from the surface at a height of 16km by 2 Pioneer probes as they descended on the night hemisphere. The glow increased on descent and may have been caused by a form of St. Elmo's fire and/or chemical reactions in the atmosphere, close to the surface. [Tim Thompson:] I cannot trace or verify Thornhill's remarks with regards the Venera spacecraft. (PIB -- I assume Mr. Thornhill's original paper for the SIS included such references. Perhaps Mr. Thornhill or someone from the SIS can get a copy to Mr. Thompson for his perusal.) While the initial reports of lightning from Pioneer are easily available [1,2,3], those from Venera appear not to be [4,5], as they were published in obscure, or difficult to obtain sources. The Pioneer lightning detections were based on the observation of whistler mode waves (about 100 Hertz) when the orbiter neared periapse. The interpretation of those waves as lightning, supported by Scarf et al. [3], continues to be a matter of considerable controversy. There are a number of ionospheric processes that will produce such waves, and the Pioneer data lack sufficient spectral resolution to unambiguously tell the difference between lightning and these other possible sources. [WT] My first obscure reference was NASA News 79-12 (4.19.79) p 1., as follows: The Russian Venera spacecraft found continuous lightning activity from 32km down to about 2km altitude, with discharges as frequent as an amazing 25 per second. The Pioneer Orbiter also observed this lightning, measuring such discharges during every pass across the planet's night hemisphere. The eye would not be able to separate such frequent flashes and an observer on Venus might see the landscape and dense atmosphere bathed in a continuous eerie electrical glow, accompanied by continuous peals of thunder. Pioneer experimenters, Dr. Boris Ragent, Ames Research Center, and Dr. Jacques Blamont, University of Paris, now believe that the 'mysterious glow' measured by their instruments is real light on Venus, and not something happening on the spacecraft. The glow started at about ten miles altitude, and increased as the two night-side probes approached the surface.
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'Chemical fires' due to reactions of various compounds in the super-heated atmosphere close to, or on, Venus' surface have been cited as a possible source for the glow. Pioneer measurements suggest a 'chemical stew' near the surface whose reactions could fuel such fires. Lightning discharges also are a possible source of this glows except that the increasing intensity observed going down would be unlikely for lightning, as would be the very steady character of the glow.
More detail was given on pp.5-6, under the heading "Continuous Lightning Confirmed": The Soviet Union's Venera spacecraft, which entered Venus' atmosphere in late December, detected 13 minutes of electromagnetic signals similar to terrestrial lightning storms. The signals began at above 32 km and ended at about 2 km. At times, the Soviet spacecraft detected as many as 25 strokes of lightning per second--an essentially constant bombardment of Venus' atmosphere. Thirty-two minutes after landing, Venera 11 acoustic equipment detected a very loud (82 db) noise which is believed to have been thunder. The first U.S. detection of lightning came on December 30, 1978, when the Pioneer Venus inditer instruments picked up intense and highly impulsive electric field signals characteristic of terrestrial lightning detected during the first day that the Orbiter's point of closest approach occurred on the night side of Venus, the signals were picked up near that closest point. Scientists said the lightning signals, which are well below the ionopause, are detectable either because they are coming through "holes" in the ionosphere, or because they are "whistler" signals which are able to pass through the ionosphere. Whistler radio waves on Earth are generated by lightning or by high energy electrons. The second reference was, G. E. Hunt: A Pioneer's view of Venus, Nature 278 (1979), p.778: One of the most startling observations was made as the spacecraft descended toward the surface, where in the altitude range of 6-14 km, Iightning storms were encountered. At least 1.000 impulses of radio noise mere measured. Lightning on Venus is not unreasonable, since the atmosphere is electrically active. By way of comparison, there are typically 100 lightning strokes every second scattered all over the Earth. But on Venus there may be several times that number in a localized area. Instead of being illuminated for a brief instant by a dazzling flash of lightning, as on Earth, the Venusians may well be glowing from the nearly continuous discharges of those frequent lightning strokes. The third reference was by R. A. Kerr: "Lightning found on Venus at last?", Science 253 (1991), p. 1492, under the sub-heading: Galileo's fortuitous pass by Venus has yielded the best evidence yet that somehow Earth's neighbor generates lightning. This reference brings us forward by more than a decade and shows the change in tone and some of the controversy that had arisen since the first confident announcements. This is one good reason for looking at the earliest discovery announcements, while free-wheeling ideas are often expressed and before 'scientific correctness' steps in. You will note the use of the word "somehow" above as a description of the mechanism for lightning generation on Venus. This is central to the debate and is symptomatic, as I said in my original post, of the ignorance of what causes lightning (despite TT's confident assertion to the contrary). But I will come back to that later. I have included most of the reference because it sets the scene in a highly readable fashion: Earth's atmosphere crackles with lightning. Jupiter has it too, sporting bolts 100 times more powerful than terrestrial ones. There are signs of strong electric discharges in the atmospheres of
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Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But making a case that lightning flickers through the dense atmosphere of Venus has been difficult. Now new electric field observations from the Galileo spacecraft's swift flyby of Venus have provided strong evidence that--however it does it--Earth's sister planet can also electrify itself. The news from Galileo challenges some conventional wisdom. Theorists have long doubted that Venus' quiescent atmosphere could generate the strong electric fields needed for lightning, and past evidence for lightning on Venus has drawn strong challenges. In the absence of new missions dedicated to the study of Venus, the prospects for resolving the debate did not seem bright. That all changed when NASA replotted the trajectory of the Jupiter probe Galileo after the Challenger disaster. A Venus encounter hadn't been in the cards, but new safety considerations forced a cutback in the power of the rocket booster that would propel Galileo away from Earth after its release from the space shuttle's cargo bay. Unable to head directly for Jupiter, the craft was sent on a complex course that included one swing by Venus and two Earth flybys to give it a trio of gravity-assisted boosts. The serendipitous encounter with Venus gave space physicist Donald Gurnett of the University of Iowa and his team the opportunity to use the craft's plasma wave instrument - designed to study the electric field signals generated by plasmas moving in Jupiter's intense magnetic field - to listen for radio discharges from Venusian lightning. Listening for enlightenment wasn't a brand new idea. The Soviet Venera landers of the 1970s and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, which reached Venus in 1979, may have detected flashes, though the meaning of the data has been in dispute for a decade. But Gurnett and his colleagues expected that Galileo's instrument would be able to detect lightning signals with much more confidence than the earlier probes. And their expectations were rewarded on 9-10 February of last year, when Galileo swept by the night side of Venus and recorded six abrupt noise bursts that looked just like lightning signals. How convincing is the claim? Compared to Pioneer Venus, Galileo could record signals at much higher frequencies, up to 5.6 megahertz, which makes them easier to distinguish from plasmagenerated signals and the usual types of spacecraft interference. "I would say our confidence is reasonably high," says Gurnett of his findings, which appear in Science this week (p. 1522). And there are indications that the results are already impressing some of the doubters, if not immediately winning them over. Paul Cloutier of Rice University, a leading critic of the Pioneer Venus data, agrees that the Galileo results have strengthened the lightning advocates' case. "Gurnett's is perhaps the only credible result in the last few years that might be a detection of Venus lightning," he says. Lightning proponents such as space physicist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles, go further. "I was confident before" that Pioneer Venus had detected lightning, says Russell, "but I'm pleased by the independent confirmation." Still, the data leave wide open the question of how Venus manages to produce its electricity. The atmosphere itself seems an unlikely candidate. "It's hard for people to imagine how the atmosphere of Venus would create lightning," says planetary scientist Larry W. Esposito of the University of Colorado. Venus, he points out, seems to lack the lightning-generation system so familiar in terrestrial thunderheads: strong updrafts of condensing vapor, which provide the particles that can carry opposite electrical charges and the vertical motions needed to separate them. (The sudden combination of the separated charges is a stroke of lightning. ) On Venus, the clouds tend to resemble fog banks, says Esposito. "You don't see much lightning in fog," he notes. Maybe the Venusian fog generates electric fields by some still-unimagined mechanism. Or maybe, researchers speculate, the lightning is born not from atmospheric processes but from geologic ones. On Earth, particles rubbing against each other inside turbulent plumes of volcanic ash sometimes generate lightning, and the same thing might happen on Venus.
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Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 15 (June 7, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: EDITORIAL SECTION VELIKOVSKY AND PLANETARY CATASTROPHE TETHERED SATELLITE DEBACLE New URL Section
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Wal Thornhill
Quotes of the day: Anyone with knowledge of college level physics should be able to work out for themselves that Velikovsky's idea is in breach of various laws of physics and hence is untenable. Nevertheless, a breed of Velikovsky disciples emerged, similar to alien-contact enthusiasts, and they proved to be the bane of astronomers, with occasional resurrections occurring even today. ~Astronomer Duncan Steel, Rogue Asteroids and the Doomsday Comet The existence of a pervasive paradigm is one of the worst problems that faces science in all its manifestations. The concept of a paradigm shift is often exalted by the very people who do most to obviate such changes in doctrine, their conservatism being the barrier. For the majority of the time, dogma rules supreme. ~Astronomer Duncan Steel, Rogue Asteroids and the Doomsday Comet
EDITORIAL SECTION
By Michael Armstrong It has been pointed out by many a clear thinking scientist or philosopher that a paradigm is only a framework or model for understanding things we observe. It does not mean the last word on THE NATURE OF THE WORLD. We tend to think that the "laws" of science are inviolate, though in truth our formulations are constantly changing, and sometimes the most drastic revisions are needed. It will be obvious, for example, that the familiar "laws of gravity" can only address a limited range of phenomena, and in the forms customarily expressed these "laws" actually invite contradictions. Any high school physics student can see the problem posed by photographs of galactic and globular cluster structures, where spiral arms are visible but the stars farther out along the arms rotate around the center at a higher velocity than those closer in--not the condition predicted by Newton's laws! Globular clusters are smaller spheroidal galaxies in which either the stars just "sit there" without falling in towards the center as Newton's gravity demands, or they rotate around the center at all angles to each other, a condition which should produce one "smashing" occasion after another. To be sure, astrophysicists are STILL looking for answers to these dilemmas, but they are conducting their investigation within a paradigm that will not survive another generation.
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The conventional understanding of our own planetary history poses a closely-related challenge. There is overwhelming evidence that the human past has been profoundly misunderstood by modern science. Yet the first response to well-researched and well-documented but NEW ways of seeing planetary history will typically be "that's impossible!" or "you are contradicting the laws of physics!" How easily we forget that, in a thousand ways, currently-observed phenomena contradict "laws of physics' as earlier stated. To put it in the simplest and bluntest of terms, there is much more to the history of our solar system than Newtonian gravity operating across empty space.
VELIKOVSKY AND PLANETARY CATASTROPHE

David Talbott In confronting the strange consistency of planetary mythology one must ultimately ask the question asked more than 45 years ago by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of Worlds in Collision. At the heart of Velikovsky's controversial thesis was a seemingly outrageous idea. He claimed that planets, moving on quite different courses than observed today, formerly disturbed the motions of the Earth and caused great destruction to ancient nations. These extraordinary events, Velikovsky claimed, are recorded in ancient chronicles, myths and rites around the world, sources that are simply incomprehensible in terms of celestial motions today. Velikovsky contended that the planet Venus, just a few thousand years ago, possessed a spectacular, comet-like "tail", and its orbit intersected that of the Earth. Though Velikovsky's interest in the subject began with a reading of biblical accounts of the Exodus period, the plagues of Egypt, and the spectacles of the wandering in the desert, what led to his startling conclusions was a thorough cross-referencing with global myths of disaster--stories in which the agent of catastrophe takes the form of a great comet or flaming dragon, a body consistently identified with the planet Venus. Velikovsky also argued that the planet Mars, in the eighth and seventh centuries before the present era, moved on an erratic course, disrupting the Earth. Celestial upheavals caused by the unstable movements of Mars, according to Velikovsky, are the true reason why Mars appears in ancient records as a great war god, shaking the heavens and producing general pestilence and devastation. Additionally, in a brief unpublished manuscript, Velikovsky made an extraordinary claim about the planet Saturn. He claimed that during a remote epoch remembered around the world as the Golden Age, the planet Saturn was the dominant body in the sky of the terrestrial observer. For the simple answer to the question of Velikovsky's place in the history of science, you can ignore almost everything else you may have heard about the heretic. Why? Because, if Velikovsky was as wrong on the fundamentals as critics would have us believe, then nothing could be more wasteful than spending any time at all on the subject. But if Velikovsky was even close in his discernment of planetary instability and catastrophe, he is one of the true intellectual pioneers of the twentieth century. It really is that simple. Of course the stakes are high here, because if Velikovsky was right in any fundamental sense, then the treatment of Velikovsky by an arrogant and thoughtless scientific elite will be exposed as exactly what Velikovsky's supporters have claimed--a horrifying picture of business as usual within the scientific establishment. The fact that major theoretical edifices would collapse under the impact of anything resembling Velikovsky's revelations is not a small matter either--a consideration one could hardly ignore in examining the rampant psychology of denial in conventional treatments of Velikovsky. So who was Velikovsky? Here's a common-sense suggestion. When someone claiming knowledge on the subject issues a sweeping dismissal of Velikovsky, the first thing you might ask yourself is whether the speaker could be an ignoramus or fool masquerading as a historian. It's a fact: Velikovsky commanded the respect of intellectual giants of the twentieth century, a respect clearly demonstrated by his friendship
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and scholarly discourses with the likes of Claude Schaeffer, one of the deans of modern archaeology; the eminent geologist, Harry Hess of Princeton University; Horace Kallen, founder of the respected New School for Social Research in New York; the esteemed Robert Pfeiffer of Harvard University; the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud; and of course Albert Einstein, who edited the physics and mathematics sections of Velikovsky's publication Scriptas Universitatis. But was Velikovsky himself a physicist or astronomer? No. His training was in law, economics, history and medicine. Did he pretend to be a physicist or astronomer? No. But intensive historical research did lead him to believe that physicists and astronomers have failed to understand the history of the solar system. Moreover, as stated by the leading astronomers Archie Roy, Lloyd Motz and Valentin Bargmann--and more recently by Victor Clube (Oxford department of astrophysics) and the astronomer Tom Van Flandern--Velikovsky did show a remarkable ability to converse with specialists outside his own field, even the ability to expose certain weaknesses or anticipate unexpected discoveries in other fields. Not one of these astronomers, it must be added, embraced Velikovsky's comet Venus or anything like the planetary instability claimed by Velikovsky, but in no case did any of them engage in the kind of belittling commentary that seems always to lead the way when the dimmer lights of science begin to expound on Velikovsky. In the years since publication of Worlds in Collision a relatively small group of researchers--some wellaccredited academically and some working entirely as outsiders, but all inspired to investigate questions first raised by Velikovsky--has produced interesting and highly significant results. The work ranges from the study of physical markers consistent with interplanetary upheavals, to the systematic exploration of the great ritual and symbolic traditions of the ancient world. All told, the work raises issues that urgently need to be addressed in a forum free of prejudicial rhetoric and posturing. Keep in mind that not just Velikovsky's conclusions, but his entire theoretical approach, challenged conventional ideas. He insisted that events remembered by ancient peoples count as evidence. When far flung cultures preserve the same distinct, but highly unusual memory, or employ quite different symbols to tell the same extraordinary story, there must be an explanation we have overlooked . Velikovsky saw in ancient literature, with its pervasive imagery of cosmic disaster and improbable monsters in the sky, a story of planets out of control, and he claimed that the collective records of early man will permit a reconstruction of the crucial events, if only we will suspend our judgment long enough to rigorously assess the material from a new vantage point. And keep in mind as well that Velikovsky's argument for large-scale catastrophe was offered in 1950, at a time when astronomers and geologists were entirely captivated by uniformitarian models, in which catastrophes played virtually no significant role in the history of the solar system, in the history of the Earth, or man's own past. So we have to ask ourselves: under the weight of space age discovery, has it been Velikovsky, or his critics, that have had to give the most ground? Who could deny that, by comparison with the intellectual environment of 1950, the affected sciences have moved dramatically toward more catastrophist models, sounding more Velikovskian every year? But what about Velikovsky's use of ancient mythical, religious and historical material--a body of evidence the scientific elite, in the 1950's, considered to be ludicrous? Well it seems that even this remaining chasm between Velikovsky and established science is closing. Consider, for example, the work of the British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier, authors of The Cosmic Serpent, and Cosmic Winter, offering a theory of cometary catastrophe that not only sounds a lot like Velikovsky, but is Velikovskian in more ways than one--even in its broad use of ancient myth and symbolism as evidence. These respected astronomers bring to their argument a great deal of scientific credibility. Recently, for example, the eminent astronomer, Fred Hoyle, expressed personal support for the Clube and Napier general thesis. What Clube and Napier have done is write a Velikovskian thesis of cometary catastrophe in historical times while replacing the comet Venus with the known comet Encke, thereby removing the potential embarrassment posed by Velikovsky's planetary "comet." In the process they have created for
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themselves a different set of unanswered questions: 1) why do ancient sources repeatedly identify the intruder with the planet Venus? and 2) why do so many global aspects of the story refuse to fit a theory based on the comet Encke? (Much has already been published outlining universal imagery of the "Great Comet" that simply cannot be explained by the comet Encke, under any conceivable scenario. I can only urge the intellectually curious to begin with the publication AEON: A Journal on Myth and Science.) Issues of this sort are moving science inexorably toward a final reckoning on the Velikovsky question. If Clube and Napier's use of previously forbidden evidence (ancient chronicles) is accepted, there will be just one core issue remaining. And if that issue is answered in Velikovsky's favor--as I am certain it will be--the final victory will be Velikovsky's even if, on the way to victory, he erred a hundred times and more. This issue is: did the planet Venus, only a few thousand years ago, appear as a comet-like form in the sky, moving close to the earth and contributing to remembered upheavals? All that is needed here is an appropriate methodology allowing the researcher to apply common-sense rules of logic and demonstration. If Venus' did, in fact, once roam the skies in anything like the fashion Velikovsky suggested, this attribute would--beyond a shadow of a doubt--show up in the ancient language and mythical images of Venus, even though the images would have no relationship to Venus' appearance in our sky today. What a fascinating juncture this is! After more than forty five years, the challenge sparked by Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision has come down to an issue on which the evidence is overwhelming. If I speak with assurance on this, it is because I have (along with fellow researcher Ev Cochrane) spent many years examining the images of Venus around the world. And I can say without the slightest equivocation that wherever astronomical traditions of Venus are preserved in any detail, Venus is the mythical Great Comet, appearing in the sky at a time of world-destroying catastrophe. You will find this identity confirmed from Mexico and Peru to ancient Greece and Rome, from ancient China to even more ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Long-haired star. Bearded Star. Smoking star. Torch star. Feathered star. Cosmic serpent or dragon. In fact, literally all of the astronomical hieroglyphs for "the comet" are simultaneously attached to Venus and to the revered great goddess, who is Venus in the first astronomies.
To apply common-sense rules of logic, one should start with the obvious: 1) the symbols cited above are the acknowledged, most frequentlyemployed hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world, and 2) the only astronomical phenomenon answering to these glyphs is the comet. Additionally, as a matter of simple logic, the attachment of these distinct comet glyphs to Venus must be considered alongside the convergence of these glyphs on a biologically impossible monster-- the bearded serpent, long-haired serpent, flaming serpent, fire-breathing serpent, and feathered serpent. In none of these instances could phenomena observed today account for the incongruous motifs, which occur again and again throughout the ancient world. But let the comet glyphs mean what they meant in the ancient languages themselves, and the incongruity vanishes. Should it surprise us that one acknowledged comet glyph would be brought into conjunction with another comet glyph? And will anyone propose with a straight face that these universal comet images could have found their inspiration in the quiet and regular motions of Venus today? (Just in case the point is missed: the comet as celestial serpent or dragon, and the comet as long-haired star leads to the simple and undeniable identity of the comet as the long-haired serpent, etc. If, as a matter of curiosity, you will investigate the incredible extent to which ancient language, in seeming denial of nature, combined words and images for "serpent" and for "hair", you will begin to sense how deeply the roots of civilization itself were shaped by experiences the modern world failed to understand. In the Egyptian language, for example, numerous, words mean, at once, "hair" and "serpent", a fact which the conventional schools could only explain as a ridiculous coincidence. And by such an explanation they must ignore the worldwide juxtaposition of hair and serpent in myth, language and religious symbolism. Try as you may, you will never find an explanation for this apart from the global identity of the "long-haired star"/Great Comet with the cosmic serpent/Great Comet)
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To see the integrity in the ancient profile of the Great Comet is to simply take the first step. Even more stunning is the inseparable link of these Venus images to the larger themes of ancient myth and ritual. Velikovsky's comet Venus is, in fact, a key to the substructure, enabling us to re-envision human history and the history of the solar system in ways never anticipated by established science. In the end, many revisions in Velikovsky's reconstruction will be necessary, but none of these revisions will diminish the stature of the pioneer.
TETHERED SATELLITE DEBACLE

Wal Thornhill I mentioned this interesting cockup at the World Conference in January as a good example of the naive view that scientists have of the Earth's environment. The report is attached. The current dogma is that the Earth's magnetosphere is created by the Earth's intrinsic magnetic field and traps plasma to form a buffer against the buffeting of the solar wind. However, I believe that Ralph Juergens, Earl Milton and others are correct when they attribute electric charge to the planets and the Sun. With this single, simple assumption, backed up by myriad observations, the Earth's magnetosphere is plainly a PLASMASPHERE, which is formed to shield a charged body from the surrounding plasma. The Earth's magnetic field is then an effect of the rotating, charged Earth, rather than a cause of the magnetosphere. A plasmasphere has a strong radial electric field, with a voltage drop equal to the difference between the Earth and the solar plasma. As an indication, the clear air field at the Earth's surface is about 500volts/meter. (This field has been a long-standing puzzle). Along come some bright sparks who decide that they could provide electric power for satellites by running a long wire out radially away from the Earth, while orbiting at 17,000 miles/hr. The wire would cut the Earth's magnetic field and, hey presto, you have a simple electric generator. What they didn't count on was the radial electric field. Even if it is conservatively estimated at 500 volts/metre, by the time you have reeled out 20km of wire you have 10 million volts being short-circuited! Now, the plasma in space being very tenuous, it puts up with this insult until breakdown suddenly occurs and the tether is vaporized - which is precisely what happened. But what does the NASA report say? The arcing occurred because either external foreign object penetration (but not orbital debris or micrometeoroids) or a defect in the tether caused a breach in the layer of insulation surrounding the tether conductor. I don't believe it would have mattered much how good the insulation was. An indication that they were heading for trouble was the-arcing, which began in an intricate part of the Tethered Satellite System known as the lower tether control mechanism, sputtered intermittently for nine seconds as the moving tether passed through deployer mechanisms and then into the boom area of the tether system. At the time, tether was continuing to play out at one meter per second, or slightly more than three feet per second. An odd phenomena was observed from Earth after the tethered satellite broke away. It was observed glowing like a neon sign, in the shape of a giant question mark! The glow of the fine wire tether is also explicable in terms of the electrical nature of the plasmasphere.
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Wal Thornhill
TETHERED SATELLITE INVESTIGATION REPORT IS RELEASED

RELEASE: 96-112 NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) today released the report of the investigative board appointed to determine factors which resulted in the Feb. 25 tether break and loss of the Tethered Satellite during the STS-75 Space Shuttle mission. Findings of the board, included in a 358-page document, identified primary causes which accounted for the tether break during deployment of the Tethered Satellite. "The tether failed as a result of arcing and burning of the tether, leading to a tensile failure after a significant portion of the tether had burned away," the report concludes. The arcing occurred because either external foreign object penetration (but not orbital debris or micrometeoroids) or a defect in the tether caused a breach in the layer of insulation surrounding the tether conductor. The insulation breach provided a path for the current to jump, or arc, from the copper wire in the tether to a nearby electrical ground. The board found that the arcing burned away most of the tether material at that location, leading to separation of the tether from tensile or pulling force. The break occurred when approximately 12.2 miles (19.7 km) of tether was unreeled, in a period when the tether was experiencing normal stresses of approximately 15 pounds (65 newtons). In addition to the two primary causes for the tether break, the board cited, as one contributing factor, that "the degree of vulnerability of the tether insulation to damage was not fully appreciated." The board noted that the actual environment that the tether was exposed to in flight made it more vulnerable to damage than was expected. And, it noted that the high voltages under which the system was operating could, over a period of time, have reduced the ability of the tether insulation to withstand electrical breakdown due to contamination found in the tether. "The tether itself was a remarkable engineering achievement," said Ken Szalai, who chaired the investigative board, "and produced some startling scientific discoveries." Scientific papers recently presented at an American Geophysical Union conference reported that currents generated by the tether were three times higher than theoretical models had predicted prior to the flight. "Constructing a tether that was strong, lightweight and electrically conducting took the project into technical and engineering areas where they had never been before," said Szalai. "Now, with 20/20 hindsight, they know where the system is vulnerable and can improve the design." The Tethered Satellite System is a joint NASA-ASI system that was flown aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in an experiment to better understand the electrically charged environment of Earth's ionosphere, and how tether systems behave in it. ASI had the responsibility of providing the satellite, while NASA had the responsibility of the Deployer, which includes the tether, and the overall responsibility for payload integration and operations. The provision of science investigations was shared by ASI and NASA. The system was generating 3,500 volts DC and up to 0.5 amps of current during satellite deployment. That high level of electrical energy resulted from the length of conducting tether extending from the Shuttle, coupled with the 17,500- mile-per-hour speed at which the Shuttle and tether were cutting through Earth's magnetic field lines.
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The board found sufficient evidence to identify two possible causes of the breach in the insulation -- foreign object damage, or a defect in the tether itself. Debris and contamination found in the deployer mechanisms and in the tether itself could have been pushed into the insulation layer while the tether was still wound on its reel. The investigation found evidence of damage to copper wire in the tether, and also established that normal forces on the tether while on the reel could push a single copper strand or foreign debris through the insulation. The arcing, which began in an intricate part of the Tethered Satellite System known as the lower tether control mechanism, sputtered intermittently for nine seconds as the moving tether passed through deployer mechanisms and then into the boom area of the tether system. At the time, tether was continuing to play out at one meter per second, or slightly more than three feet per second. "This arcing produced significant burning of most of the tether material in the area of the arc," the board found. The tether was designed to carry up to 15,000 volts DC and handle tensile forces of up to 400 pounds (1780 newtons). It used super-strong strands of Kevlar as a strength-providing member, wound around the copper and insulation. However, postflight inspection of the tether end which remained aboard Columbia showed it to be charred. The board concluded that after arcing had burned through most of the Kevlar, the few remaining strands were not enough to withstand forces being exerted by satellite deployment. Extensive, rigorous tests performed in support of the investigation established that undamaged tether would not arc, even when subjected to electrical potentials much higher than the 3500 volts experienced during the mission. The board was able to exonerate a number of factors which clearly did not cause the break. These factors include the satellite, the science equipment hardware and operations, which were being conducted prior to the break, in addition to micrometeoroids or orbital debris impact, and electrical storm activity. The investigation panel made several detailed recommendations which it said should be followed for any future space missions involving electrodynamic tether systems such as that flown aboard Columbia. These include more precautions to ensure any such tether systems in the future do not suffer from possible debris or contamination damage and specific attention during design to minimize the possibility of high-voltage arcing. The board offered, in the form of observations, its assessment that the STS-75 tether problem "is not indicative of any fundamental problem in using electrodynamic tethers." It also noted that in spite of the break, a "significant amount" of scientific data was obtained from the Tethered Satellite operations during STS-75. The nine-member independent review panel was formed in consultation with ASI and appointed by NASA's Associate Administrator for the Office of Space Flight, Wilbur Trafton, shortly after the tether break. The board was chaired by Ken Szalai, director of the Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA, and included representation from NASA and the ASI.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: LOUIS FRANK'S MINI-COMETS STIR NEW CONTROVERSY ICE CUBES FROM SPACE PROVE THE SCOFFERS WRONG SCIENTISTS COMMENT ON THE "SNOWBALLS" SNOWBALL MINI-COMETS
Benny Peiser Robert Matthews Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

It's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. ~John Dayton
"When the Planets were the Gods" THE COMING REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE BIOGAPHICAL NOTES: David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill David Talbott was the founder and publisher of the ten-issue Pense magazine series, Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, and is the author of book, The Saturn Myth. He is also the founder of the periodical, AEON: A Journal of Myth and Science, in which his articles have regularly appeared. More recently he became a regular contributor to the electronic newsletter THOTH, published approximately every week to ten days. Wallace Thornhill is a physicist and a computer systems engineer, whose papers on the youthful Venus, the origin of chondritic meteorites, and the electrical character of the solar system have gained much recent attention in catastrophist circles. His most recent work has focused on sinuous rilles of the Moon, Venus, Mars, the Moons of Mars, and the moons of the gas giants. He has shown these rilles to be the scars from massive electrical dischargesa finding that could well produce one of the great scientific controversies of this century. Talbott and Thornhill are now collaborating on a book, GOLDEN DAWN, COSMIC NIGHT, an introduction to the "Saturn theory," supplemented by a summary of the "electric universe," all designed for the general reader. The book will review the global memory of the Golden Age and the world-changing catastrophe that brought that unique period of human history to its catastrophic conclusion. It will also show how plasma physics enables us to understand these events dynamically, in ways that can be replicated in the laboratory. Processes that have mystified astronomers and planetary geologists need not remain obscure any longer.
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 12:14:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk> Subject: LOUIS FRANK'S MINI COMETS STIR DEBATE
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LOUIS FRANK'S MINI COMETS STIR NEW CONTROVERSY

Last week's press release about Louis Frank's latest research findings about watery and icy mini comets which are claimed to impact our atmosphere at a rate of one every three seconds(!), has provoked a new scientific controversy among astrophysicists. For the non-astronomer, it remains extremely difficult to assess whether or not Dr Frank's findings are based on valid interpretation of observational data or whether the evidence is still too ambiguous (as the skeptics have pointed out on this network). Should Louis Frank's findings be corroborated, though, the implications would not only affect the understanding of our cosmic environment; it might also demonstrate - once again - the Kuhnian suggestion that astronomers tend to apply 'biased' observational technics which - in one way or another simply mirror and compliment their personal views about the solar system. What is more, some dogmatic leaders in their field might even try to suppress contradictory evidence. Or how should one explain the reluctance of many astronomers to publish (never mind test) Dr. Frank's theory? Let's hope that something good will come out of this debate - whatever its outcome - and that the great attention will now generate the essential tests. I have attached Robert Matthews' essay about this latest controversy below. He not only describes the "unscientific approach" by Frank's fellow astronomers to his theory but also places this episode in its proper historical context within the ongoing debates about neo-catastrophism. The article appeared in yesterday's SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. Benny J Peiser
ICE CUBES FROM SPACE PROVE THE SCOFFERS WRONG

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 1 June 1997 Robert Matthews Many scientists are having to eat humble pie this weekend, following the revelation that the Earth is constantly pelted by cosmic snowballs the size of houses. And not before time either, as these same scientists have spent a decade disparaging Dr Louis Frank of Iowa University for his refusal to bow to orthodoxy and deny the evidence of his own eyes. That evidence first emerged in 1982, when a student of Dr. Frank's was analysing images of the Earth sent back by two Nasa satellites. To the student's frustration, many of the images were spoiled by tiny black dots. At first sight, they appeared to be faulty data, but careful study revealed that they behaved far too regularly to be dismissed as random flaws. Instead, they appeared to be tiny comet-like objects that were striking the atmosphere at a rate of one every three seconds, each dumping tons of water on to the Earth. For a few years, other researchers showed no more than polite interest in Frank's claims when they were mentioned at conferences. It was when he tried to get his research published in academic journals that Frank discovered the fate that awaits those who make radical claims in science. The leading journal Nature rejected his claims, saying that "a representative poll" had been taken of experts in the field and they had voted against publication. Frank's attempt to answer his critics with fresh evidence by using major telescopes were met with obstruction and foot- dragging, with astronomers insisting that the enterprise was a waste of time.
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When Frank did succeed in getting access to a telescope, it revealed objects streaking across the atmosphere at 20,000mph - as he had predicted. It made no difference: the findings were still rejected for publication. Now, after 10 years of obstruction and ridicule, it is Frank's turn to laugh. Cameras he designed aboard Nasa's Polar spacecraft have revealed the existence of the small comets beyond all doubt. Spectacular images taken by cameras show the comets streaking into the atmosphere before dumping their water. They arrive at the rate about one every three seconds - just as Frank had claimed. Frank himself has always been surprisingly sanguine about the controversy, apparently taking the view that the "truth will out" (sic). But there is no getting around the fact that many scientists have taken a woefully unscientific approach to the whole issue. While extraordinary claims must demand extraordinary evidence, the reluctance of many to consider Frank's evidence was matched only by their keenness to block his attempts to gather more. Frank's experience in this quintessentially Strange but True story are far from unique. The whole issue of bombardment by cosmic debris is one that has always been dogged by mule- like intransigence dressed up as academic rigour. Until the early 19th century, anyone claiming to have seen stones falling out of the sky was regarded as having had a few beers too many; the French Academy of Sciences even declared such claims to be a scientific absurdity. When hundreds of stones were reported to have smashed on to the French village of L'Aigle in 1803, the Academy dispatched a young astronomer to debunk the story. He returned with bad news: the reports were correct. Everyone now accepts the existence of meteorites but the confirmation came too late to save hundreds of specimens from being unceremoniously thrown out of museums as "superstitious artefacts". The now widely-accepted theory that a hugh meteor struck the Earth 65 million years ago, pushing the dinosaurs into extinction, also came in for a least as much abuse as the idea of micro-comets when it was originally proposed. When the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his team first published their evidence for the giant impact in 1980, one authority described it as "a nutty theory of pseudoscientists posing as paleontologists". Today it is the nutters who argue against it. There is one aspect of the Earth bombardment issue that remains a source of incredulity among many scientists: the idea that humanity is under serious threat from meteor impacts. The sceptics are still demanding hard evidence for this threat. We can only hope that the "hard evidence" doesn't come in form of a billion-tonne meteor any time soon. **end**
COMMENTS ON INTERPLANETARY SNOWBALLS

From: David Morrison [Director of Space, NASA Ames Research Centre] It should be remembered that Lou Frank has not detected mini-comets directly, and at issue should be his interpretation of the spacecraft data. This has been missed in most of the press reports I have seen, which assume that his mini-comet hypothesis of 1986 is now verified. But we must remember that the impact rate proposed by Lou Frank for 5-m comets is about a million times greater than that given by a power-law size distribution, which is well anchored by observations of objects just an order of magnitude
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higher than the sizes that Frank suggests are so abundant. Is it physically possible for the numbers of NEOs to increase by six orders of magnitude in the one order of magnitude size range from 50 m to 5 m diameter? I think we should all be skeptical. I look forward to seeing a refereed, published paper on these results and theirinterpretation. And we should all ask if these objects could have been missed by other detection techniques, including our eyeballs looking up at the night sky. After all, he is talking about roughly Hiroshima size flashes happening at a rate of 10 per minute, rather than the accepted rate of once every few months. How could thesehave been missed? David Morrison Following are some additional comments from Al Harris (JPL): 1. If they are there we should see them. We know within a factor of a few what the flux of ~5m sized objects is. We may arguably not know if they are ice or rock or metal, or their density, or their albedos, but within reasonable limits we certainly know the numbers to better than an order of magnitude, and Frank's numbers are a million or so too high. If there really were that many 5 m objects out there, even at albedo 0.05, you should be able to seeseveral in an evening scanning the sky with binoculars: about one per 400 sq. deg. at magnitude 8.5, and moving at about the speed of a slow earth satellite. 2. Nothing breaks up at "600 to 15,000 miles above the Earth." Not even icy fluff balls, certainly not a 5 meter object which weighs 30 tons. Anything so weak as to come apart in that environment wouldn't stay intact even in heliocentric orbit. 3. The mass he proposes (~10/minute impacts of ~30 tons) adds up to a fair fraction of the Earth's mass (~10-20%) in the age of the solar system. That's about 1 cm of water a decade, which is measurable. The oceans aren't rising that fast, and certainly haven't for a geologically significant length of time. **end**
SNOWBALL MINI-COMETS
By Wal Thornhill Dr. Louis Frank's recent announcement of confirmation of his theory of icy comets bombarding the Earth has stirred up considerable controversy after more than a decade of rejection by most astronomers. The "proof" comes in the form of some images from orbiting spacecraft of glowing trails plunging toward the Earth, hundreds of kilometers above the surface. The glowing, ionized trails are said to emit the characteristic radiation of excited atoms and ions associated with water. The size of these "mini water comets" is thought to be about 5-20 metre diameter and density about 0.2g/cc, which would mean they are fluffy like a snowball. Dr. Frank's theory was developed from observations, beginning in 1981, of "holes" in dayglow images of the Earth returned by orbiting spacecraft. Dayglow is caused by sunlight exciting oxygen atoms high in the ionosphere which then emit ultraviolet light, invisible to the naked eye. Frank and a co-worker noticed that the dayglow images had small blemishes in the form of dark spots. After considerable effort to determine that the spots were not just noise or errors in transmission (since the spots were often no more than a pixel wide) it was found that the spots were real, that they grew and faded quickly and moved in a prograde fashion like meteoric dust. So the cause appeared to be extraterrestrial. The next question was what could cause the rapid extinction and recovery of the dayglow over a circle about 30 miles (48km) in diameter? The holes are too big to be caused by a solid object, so Frank decided it must be a cloud of water vapour. This led to the notion that comets must be the cause since they are believed to be composed largely of water ice. The biggest hurdle for Frank's theory is the number of holes measured, which implies that 20 comets per minute are striking the Earth. That's 10 million comet-like objects per year, up to the size of a small
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house! It is understandable that people in the Spacewatch program are very concerned that they haven't seen anything of these impactors. Astronomers have rightly asked why it is that we haven't detected this barrage by some other means. It should provide ample water to make the rare, stratospheric noctilucent clouds a continuous feature of our skies. It would be sufficient to give the Moon an appreciable atmosphere and cause seismic shocks and surface erosion there - none of which are apparent. Earth satellites would be expected to have detected the plasma disturbance in their wake. It is unlikely the military would have missed them. Frank's answer to the objections is that the phenomena is real and no one has come up with an alternative explanation. In his words: There was no other reasonable explanation. The new photographs of the bright trails of objects entering the Earth's ionosphere, reported widely, have focussed attention on Frank's theory but in no way constitutes proof. If anything, the NASA publicity has polarised the astronomical fraternity. On the one hand are the skeptics who view it as an ill-judged NASA publicity stunt which may have the undesirable effect of reducing confidence in future press releases. On the other are those who point to the oppression they feel Dr. Frank has suffered at the hands of the establishment for more than a decade for peddling such an audacious theory. When I saw the news item, it occurred to me that I had a possible alternative explanation for the ionospheric holes. It is an extension of an idea I presented to the SIS Cambridge conference in 1993. I have read most of Frank's papers on his discovery and theory as well as the arguments against. I find that I agree with the astronomers who are unconvinced by Frank's explanation. Apart from the objections raised by astronomers about the lack of supporting evidence for the existence of these "comets", there are many special ad-hoc requirements of the comets to allow them to exist in such numbers in the inner solar system. For example they must contain enough "dust" to prevent the ices from sublimating away in the Sun's radiation. They must have low density (snow) to allow them to breakup in the ionosphere. This adds even more restrictions to the simplistic dirty ice model of comets which itself is not well supported by recent comet observations. Frank noted two important characteristics of the ionospheric "holes": first, the rate of occurence is qualitatively similar to that for radar meteors (that is, meteors whose presence can be detected by radar echoes from their ionized trail through the atmosphere); second is that the movement of the holes showed the prograde motion characteristic of meteoritic debris. These observations provide a strong link between the holes and simple meteors. So, with the benefit of a little more thought, I present an alternative "reasonable explanation" for the ionospheric dayglow holes which does not require cometary impacts. The hypothesis is a logical extension of my paper of 1993 (1) which provided a model to explain another mysterious earthly phenomena, this time in the realm of lightning - red sprites and blue jets. There were reports in 1990 of low-light TV cameras capturing discharges, later dubbed "blue jets", originating 14km above the Earth over storm clouds, rising like fountains another 20km into the stratosphere. There followed a report, published in New Scientist of 19 August, 1995, p.34: "...in the summer of 1994, using two aircraft flying about 50 kilometres apart, they [Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott of the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks] caught the first colour videos of sprites at work. 'The flashes look like the Fourth of July, like Roman candles with fountains,' says Sentman. Observing the same sprites from two different directions allowed Sentman and Wescott to work out their altitudes and dimensions for the first time. 'Prior to that other groups had speculated they go up to 40 kilometres, maybe 50, tops,' Sentman recalls. 'It was stretching the imagination too far to speculate they might go all the way to the ionosphere.' But that's exactly what happened: the sprites stretched right up into the ionosphere more than 90 kilometres above the Earth. The sheer size of the sprites is daunting, according to John Molitoris of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco. 'You're talking about a flash roughly 60 kilometres in diameter,' says Molitoris. Our view of the Earth as an electrically neutral and isolated body is exemplified by the researchers' comment that it is one way for an electrical storm to dissipate energy into the magnetosphere. It is merely
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assumed that energetic events above the storm must be driven by the storm below. However, there are severe problems with that notion. For at the very edge of space, above the storm, gamma rays have been detected! I propose a simple model which has the virtue of offering solutions to a number of mysteries with one simple assumption - that planets transact electrically with the solar wind. From that perspective, magnetospheres should properly be called Langmuir plasma sheaths, or plasmaspheres, and exhibit a radial electric field within the sheath. The radial field was inadvertently detected by the Tethered Satellite last year, when it caused arcing and burned through the tether. In the New Scientist of 31 May, p.18, there is a news item, "Planet's tail of the unexpected," which, unnoticed, provides direct confirmation of electric currents flowing between a planet and its surroundings. The "stringy things" detected near the Earth and causing such puzzlement can only be "Birkeland currents" which alone are capable of maintaining narrow plasma filaments over vast distances. It is the only force free configuration for a current carrying plasma. Hannes Alfven described them in his works and they feature in the recent plasma cosmology book, The Big Bang Never Happened, by Eric Lerner. So, I suggest that storm clouds which span great heights are merely providing a convenient path to ground for electric charge conducted through the ionosphere from the plasmasphere. It is at this point where the importance of the correlation of ionospheric holes with meteors may be crucial. It has been suggested that red sprites may be triggered by meteors as they blaze an ionized, conducting trail through the ionosphere and mesosphere. I believe this to be highly likely. I then note one of the less well known characteristics of lightning in its ability to compress and accelerate atmospheric ions along the discharge channel from regions of high pressure to regions of lower pressure. In other words, to create a roughly vertical fountain of warmer air. Such a phenomenon has been reported: One afternoon in July 1971 a retired general practitioner, Dr L.H. Worth, climbed to the rounded summit of the Puy Mary, 1770m, in central France. He could see a storm in the valley below him about 3km away and he heard the thunder. A few seconds later he felt a blast of hot air, so powerful that he had to lean against it, and this occurred three times in the next few seconds. That it was not an imaginary or hallucinatory experience is shown by the fact that people on the mountain near him rushed away for shelter.(2) In the case of the ionospheric holes, it would seem that a "red sprite" type of diffuse lightning discharge occurs preferentially along the ionized trail created by a meteor. The result is that a fountain of air from lower levels punches through the airglow level, causing a sudden decrease in the airglow until the newly exposed atmospheric gases can be dissociated by solar radiation. As well, the sudden localised change in the electrical balance of the airglow layer quenches the UV output momentarily. The dimensions of red sprites are of the order of magnitude required to explain the diameters of ionospheric holes. My proposed mechanism of formation of blue jets and red sprites sees them resulting from ionospheric discharges to ground via thunderstorms in the troposphere. In other words they form part of an electrical energy input from the solar plasma to weather systems, quite distinct from solar insolation. So the discharge will be found to extend in diffuse form into space. I speculate that the radial spokes in Saturn's rings are a graphic indication of a similar electrical input to that planet, with particles being displaced above and below the narrow plane of the rings by the electrical discharge. I would even hazard a guess that the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter is, for reasons as yet unknown, the continual focus of a powerful ionospheric discharge. I deduce this from an example of the same effect on a much smaller scale on Earth in the reported glow discharge seen from space above tornadic storms on Earth. It would be of interest to know if Jupiter's ionosphere is the site of diffuse electrical discharges above the GRS. This model does not require large quantities of water to quench the Earth's airglow in the ionospheric holes. I am suggesting that material is not being dumped into the ionosphere from space, but erupted from the atmosphere below. I would expect that the phenomena of radar meteors can be correlated with the ionospheric holes. It is also probable that it is not a necessary condition for a meteor to initiate such an ionospheric discharge. In that case, ionospheric holes should also be looked for above exceptionally violent electrical storms. Wal Thornhill
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(1) Thornhill, W., Evidence for the Extreme Youth of Venus, Proceedings of the 1993 Cambridge Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, pp.74-94. (2) Worth, L.H., Atmospheric mystery, Nature, 236, 413(1972).
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS PLANET'S TAIL OF THE UNEXPECTED RALPH SANSBURY'S GRAVITY GRAVITY NEWS ITEM New URL Section
David Talbott Jeff Hecht Wal Thornhill Ian Tresman
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common knowledge. ~John Locke
VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.] In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky noted many tales of disaster and upheaval in which the agent of destruction possesses cometary attributes, even as it is identified with the planet Venus. The anomalous "cometary" traits of Venus in world mythology thus became key pieces of the argument, and the strength of the argument derived from the breadth of sources. Velikovsky did not rely on traditions of one region only, but drew on key evidences from every ancient civilization. He noted, for example, that in Mexican record, Venus was "the smoking star" the very phrase natives employed for a "comet." He noted in both the Americas and the Near East, a recurring association of Venus with celestial "hair" and with a celestial "beard," two of the most common hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world. But another popular glyph for the "comet" was the serpent or dragon, a form taken by the planet Venus in virtually every land. And the same planet, among the Babylonians and other races, was called the "flame," or "torch of heaven," a widespread symbol of a comet among ancient peoples. According to Velikovsky, the history of the comet Venus, inspiring the most powerful themes of ancient myth and ritual, speaks for a collective memory of global upheaval: earthshaking battles in the sky, decimation of nations on earth, an extended period of darkness, the end of one world age and the birth of another. BOB FORREST When it comes to debunking Velikovsky's historical argument, no critic has applied himself more energetically than Bob Forrest of England. In a six volume work, Velikovsky's Sources, Forrest undertook
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to analyze virtually every historical reference employed by Velikovsky, concluding that, when taken in their actual context, the data brought forth by Velikovsky simply do not support the thesis of Worlds in Collision. Forrest's work was later updated, corrected and summarized in a very readable volume called A Guide to Velikovsky's Sources. which is the source we will use in this overview. Since publication of the latter work in 1985, Forrest's critique has been frequently cited by scientific skeptics as a definitive blow to Velikovsky, delivered on Velikovsky's own turf (ancient myth and history). And whatever one's opinion on the merits of Forrest's analysis, it is to his credit that, in the forty years since publication of Worlds in Collision, his work is the only substantial critique of Velikovsky's use of myth. "Despite the scholarly appearance of Velikovsky's work," Forrest writes, "I think the theories put forward in Worlds in Collision are wrong at an elementary and common sense level." And what, at an "elementary level," does Forrest object to? "The gist of the objection to it is that one will nowhere find anything like a direct historical reference to catastrophic bombardments by the planets Venus and Mars." Having devoted more than twenty years to the exploration of myth, I find the objection particularly interesting because my own conclusion is quite the opposite. The planetary subjects of Worlds in Collision are Venus and Mars, and the catastrophic roles of these planets in ancient times are not only evident, but provable through normal rules of logic and demonstration. (For the sake of focus, these brief submissions will consider only the cometary Venus.) It is not only possible to answer the question--was Venus formerly a "comet"?--but to answer the question in overwhelming detail, with verifiable data and an inescapable conclusion: Velikovsky's comet Venus lies very close to the center of ancient religious, artistic and literary traditions. How can it be that two researchers, approaching the same field of data, can draw such incompatible conclusions? The heart of the issue, I suggest, has to do with one's approach to the subject matter. In penetrating to the core of ancient celestial imagery, methodology is everything.
VELIKOVSKIAN RESEARCH AND CATASTROPHISM

The gap separating the mainstream sciences and social sciences from Velikovsky's revolutionary approach to myth needs to be appreciated: The Velikovskian investigator has discovered that none of the primary themes of myth answers to our familiar sky. Hence, to focus on recurring themes is to focus on the recurring anomalies of myth. But rather than confront the issue of recurring anomalies, Forrest descends into a swamp of marginal details, picking at virtually every paragraph of Worlds in Collision, while rigorously avoiding crossreferencing. As a result, the author consistently fails to see past the veil in which modern perception has wrapped ancient myth. It is as if general patterns and connections are of no interest. In every case of an anomaly noted by Velikovsky, Forrest's "answer" is simply to cite someone else's guess at an explanation (and I DO mean guess)--though many of the cited authorities offered their guesses prior to Velikovsky's novel interpretation, and none of these authorities seems aware of the larger pattern. In this way, Forrest reverses Velikovsky's approach, for Velikovsky connects anomalous Venus images of one land with corresponding anomalies from other parts of the world. Recurring anomalies, as correctly perceived by Velikovsky, are the key to discovery. Let me say at the outset that I have no interest in defending Velikovsky's every word. More than once, Velikovsky did misuse his sources. (I had stated this emphatically to others perhaps ten years before Bob Forrest's published criticisms) And my own opinion is that Velikovsky placed the events in the wrong time.
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Additionally, I think that many mythical-heroic figures Velikovsky assumed to have been historical were in fact part of a mythical tradition having nothing at all to do with men of flesh an blood.) Can globally-experienced events account for the recurring "catastrophe myths," or must they all be explained by wholly separate, localized disasters? If one resorts to the latter explanation, then no underlying integrity of catastrophe myths is even possible in significant detail. But the inescapable counterpart of this observation is that, if the myths of widespread cultures present the same improbable story in significant detail, then it is the localized explanation that becomes impossible. A reasonable methodology cannot ignore the convergence of recurring themes on an underlying idea, even if that idea stands outside modern perception. To make this point it will be helpful to start with a single example in one region, then work toward a comparison with the Venus symbolism of other lands.
PLANET'S TAIL OF THE UNEXPECTED

New Scientist (31 May 1997). By Jeff Hecht, Boston One of our neighboring planets can still pack a few surprises, it seems. Using satellite data, an international team of researchers has found that Venus sports a giant, ion-packed tail that stretches almost far enough to tickle the Earth when the two planets are in line with the Sun. "I didn't expect to find it," says team member Marcia Neugebauer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It's a really strong signal, and there's no doubt it's real." NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter first found the tail in the late 1970s. Around 70,000 kilometres from the planet, the spacecraft detected bursts of hot, energetic ions, or plasma. The tail exists because ions in Venus's upper atmosphere are bombarded by the solar wind, a stream of plasma that blows out from the Sun. But now Europe's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a project partly sponsored by NASA, has shown that the tail stretches some 45 million kilometres into space, more than 600 times as far as anyone realised. This satellite, which sits about 15 million kilometres away from the Earth, passed through the tail last July, when it was roughly in line with Venus and the Sun. Over a period of five hours, SOHO detected three unexpected bursts of between 35 and 60 oxygen and carbon ions. Each burst lasted less than 45 seconds. In the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters (vol 24, p 1163), the team concludes that the satellite may have passed through three separate streams in the ion tail. Alternatively, it may have been a single filament that was "flapping" in the solar wind. "We don't know if we saw the same ray three times, or three different ones," Neugebauer says. Neugebauer suspects the tail is "a lot of little stringy things" like those of some comets, which can have several ion tails. If so, says Neugebauer: ...the theorists are going to have fun trying to explain why they're as narrow as we saw them. Standard physics says that narrow plasma streams are unstable and should dissipate fast. No one can yet explain how they hold together over tens of millions of kilometres. The Earth and Jupiter are well shielded from the solar wind because they have magnetic fields, which deflect the ions. But because Venus has no magnetic field, the solar wind may have stripped away a significant amount of the ions in the planet's upper atmosphere over its lifetime of about 4.5 billion years. Janet Luhmann of the University of California at Berkeley says that this effect would have been strongest
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early in the life of the Solar System, when the Sun was more active. "It's likely the escape rate was much higher," she says. Scientists believe that interactions between sunlight and the surface of Venus were most important in shaping the composition of the planet's corrosive atmosphere, which is laden with sulphuric acid. Luhmann now speculates that the ion loss may also have played a role. Copyright New Scientist, IPC Magazines Limited 1997 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/970531/nvenus.html Submitted by Ian Tresman
RALPH SANSBURY'S WORK

Wal Thornhill Wal wrote: Ralph's work has enormous implications for physics and heralds a return to classical models of subatomic particles and away from the metaphysics which now underpin cosmology and particle physics. My humble view is that it is the breakthrough needed for fundamental science to progress once more. Questioner writes: I look forward to it! Do you have any references to Ralph Sansbury's work to keep me occupied till then? Wal replies: I think relevant copies of the Journal of Classical Physics may be obtained from Ralph by e-mail request to rns@concentric.net Ask about his other published material too. A good background in math and physics is desirable to understand the work, but from what you have said that should suit you. Wal answers another question: In answer to your second question, I think the fact that the gravitational "constant", G, measured on the Earth, is so inconstant is evidence for a connection. It would be interesting to see if G was measured at the time of a rotational "glitch" caused by dumping of charge on the Earth by a solar flare. I would expect an anomalous result. Questioner writes: How to you figure this? Is it speculation or are there scientific findings that suggest this? It's an idea that I haven't followed up yet. The line of reasoning goes like this: 1. It is known that the Earth's rotation changes suddenly when it intercepts a mass of charged particles hurled from the Sun by a major flare. The rotation asymptotically recovers to its preglitch value over a period of months. 2. A rotating charged body has a proportion of its moment of inertia attributable to the charge. Change the charge and you change the moment of inertia. The body speeds up or slows down accordingly. 3. I, and others, have argued that mechanism (2) applies to the Earth and explains (1) best. 4. If Sansbury's electrostatic polarization model of gravity is correct, a change in the electrostatic charge on the Earth's surface will affect the Earth's gravity directly and should show a sudden change followed by an asymptotic return to its former value as the charge leaks away. It may be that the change in G is down in the noise of the experimental determinations. Certainly, the readings would have to be compared from the one laboratory since determinations of G at different laboratories often exhibit inexplicable differences and variations. I am suggesting here a cause of those
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variations in G and a correlation with solar flares which has never been contemplated, so presumably hasn't been looked for. Questioner continues: How is the strength of gravity determined on other planets? Has gravity and density/mass been determined independent of each other for planets, or has one been used to calculate the other? If they are not determined separately, how can we be sure both are correct since we don't even really know what causes gravity? Wal replies: Density has not been determined independently from gravity, therefore statements about the density of planets are not worth much. It is well known that there are severe problems in estimating core composition and sizes in some planets and moons from standard models because of their calculated average densities. Questioner: I thought as much; kind of nice to have self-confirming measurements. So then, astronomers must be able to predict the planetary motions only because of the stability of the present planetary system (assuming an electrical link to gravity). Wal comments: Yes, in my view we owe the stability of our n-body system to the hypothesized link between charge on a planet and the planet's gravity. It gets around the old problem of how can electrical forces between planets play any part in modifying their orbits when the solar plasma shields from such forces. Electrical forces obviously don't play a role (unless two planets approach very closely and the plasma sheaths contact). But gravity is not shielded by plasma at all. An example of what I mean by the stabilizing influence: A planet with an unstable orbit will exhibit increasing eccentricity in its orbit. There will be an increasing radial component of motion relative to the Sun. In the electrically stressed plasma enveloping the Sun, this would result in a modification of the charge exchange between the planet and the solar plasma. (An extreme example is the comet where the charge exchange is energetic enough to create light and even x-rays in the enclosing plasma). As the eccentric planet moves toward the Sun, increasing positive charge would be accumulated from the solar wind which would reduce the negative surface charge, which would reduce the electrostatic polarization, which would reduce gravity, which would reduce the inward acceleration, which would reduce the eccentricity. The reverse argument applies as the planet moves radially away from the Sun, with the result gravity increases and the eccentricity is reduced on this leg too. Planets which orbit too closely to one another will suffer charge exchange via the plasma sheath of the inner planet (magnetotail in old-speak) once each synodic period which, by transfer of positive charge from the inner planet to the outer planet, will tend to push the orbits apart. Bode's law presumably results from this electro-gravitic form of the least-interaction principle. If so, isn't Nature wonderful!? In my opinion, it is the only plausible way we could achieve the current low eccentricity solar system from the breakup of a Saturnian system only thousands of years ago. Wal Thornhill
GRAVITY NEWS ITEM

See this item from Science Frontiers,
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Full report at: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/sf074/sf074a05.htm
SOLAR ECLIPSE AFFECTS A PENDULUM -- AGAIN!

The period of a Foucault pendulum located at Jassy University, Romania, was carefully monitored during the solar eclipse of February 15, 1981 ... the pendulum produced a perturbation by describing an ellipse whose major axis deviated in relation to the initial plane by approximately 15. Submitted by Ian Tresman
"Geomagnetism a Gravity Measured by Magnetic Material: The Infinite or Finite Speed of Gravity and Light?," by Ralph Sansbury, published 1994 by CP Institute, 492 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, NY 10185. Sansbury has also posted a summary of his thesis in talk.origins under the title "Velikovsky like theory of gravity and magnetism", and other newsgroups under the title "Electrostatic Magnetism & Gravity". A copy of the post appeared in the SIS Internet Digest 1996:1. The original post can probably be found using the DejaNews Usenet Newsgroup search service at http://www.dejanews.com Submitted by Ian Tresman
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 18 (July 3, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS FINGERS CROSSED FOR JULY 4 GREAT RED SPOT SPECULATION SCIENCE MAGAZINE ITEMS * Giant Planet Formation by Gravitational Instability * Worlds Around Other Stars Shake Planet Birth Theory * 51 Peg and the Perils of Planet Searches * Extreme Cratering
David Talbott Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~Albert Einstein
VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (2)

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: This continues Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.] SMOKING STAR In arguing for the cometary character of Venus, Velikovsky cited Aztec records suggesting that the planet Venus shared the same title given a comet. The early traditions of the peoples of Mexico, written down in pre-Columbian days, relate that Venus smoked. "The star that smoked, la estrella que humeava, was Sitlal Choloha, which the Spaniards called Venus." "Now, I ask," says Alexander Humboldt, "what optical illusion could give Venus the appearance of a star throwing out smoke?" Sahagun, the sixteenth century Spanish authority on Mexico, wrote that the Mexicans called a comet "a star that smoked." It may thus be concluded that since the Mexicans called Venus "a star that smoked," they considered it a comet. In Bob Forrest's mind, the Aztec references could have nothing to do with "what may or may not have happened back in the mid second millennium BC" --because the references to Venus "smoking" come from the sixteenth century A.D.
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In a number of instances Aztec records say that the earth shook and the star sitlal choloha (Venus) smoked. To account for the curiosity Forrest simply accepts the guess of Alexander von Humboldt: ...who suggested that the 'smoke' related to the volcano Orizaba, situated to the east of the city Cholula, and whose glow, when seen in the distance, resembled or was symbolically related to the rising Morning Star. Forrest was apparently satisfied with the first guess he uncovered. "All we have are some sixteenth century records which say, every so often, that the star smoked, but since the smoking seems frequently to be intertwined with earthquake activity, Humboldt's assumption seems reasonable." With that stated, Forrest moved on, never returning to the issue of the Aztec "smoking star." A quite different approach would have been to explore the possibility of a broader Venus-comet association to see where the available evidence leads. Guided by this intent, Forrest would have quickly found, for example, that Aztec association of "earthquake activity" with "smoking stars" belonged to the general mythology of the comet among the Aztecs. Thus, with respect to the comets portrayed in the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the respected authority on Mexican astronomy, Anthony Aveni, writes: Comets (citlalimpopoca, or the stars that smoke) are represented frequently by the surviving historical documents, usually by a stellar image on a blue background with emanating streams of smokeThese usually signify that a person of nobility will die; for example [one picture] tells of the death of the ruler of Tenochtitlan following the apparition of a comet; later another comet occurs, then an earthquake, all of nature's events being connected in the Aztec cosmic view. As I hope to demonstrate fully in this series of articles, the connectedness of these images derives from a universal substratum of myth. Appearance of a comet, death of a great ruler, quaking earth--not in Mexico alone, but in one ancient culture after another, the skywatchers repeatedly placed these unusual themes in juxtaposition, despite this crucial fact: no comet observed by science has ever justified the symbolic connection. But Forrest seems unaware that the language employed in astrological texts and omens is drawn from ancient mythical images. Following his methodological groundrules, therefore, no records of "portents" in the sky recorded in the last three millennia would be of any relevance to Velikovsky's argument, even when repeatedly attaching explicit cometary images to Venus! With respect to the image of the planet Venus as the "smoking star" in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Aveni offers his own attempt at an explanation: Perhaps a cometary object appeared near the planet. Of course, Forrest could just as easily have cited this guess, then dropped the whole issue. But is there something more worth investigating here? Throughout the Americas, including Mexico, natives called a comet the "star with hair," or a "long-haired star," or a "maned star," an appellation that fits comfortably with the global language of the comet. In fact, the "long-haired star" is the single most common phrase for the comet around the world, and our own word for comet comes from the Greek kometes, the "long-haired star" . Yucatec Maya dictionaries give as a gloss for "smoke star" the "maned comet". But curiously, the Aztecs used this very language for Venus. As noted by Velikovsky, they called the planet Tzonte-Mocque, meaning the "mane"-star, or "long-haired" star. And not the Aztecs alone: for one finds among the Maya the same enigmatic association of the planet Venus with long flowing hair. A commonly observed Maya hieroglyph is the Caban- curl, a flowing tassel or lock of hair repeatedly attached to acknowledged Venus symbols, including the glyph-name of Venus itself. To encounter the long flowing locks of Venus, one need only consult available sources. Turn to the Incan language of Venus, for example. I can remember, in the first few days of investigating images of Venus,
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looking through a standard summary of Incan mythology and encountering the name of Venus as Chasca, translated as the "long-haired star"--the precise phrase for the comet in the global lexicon. It was instances such as this that continued to fuel my own interests in learning more. According to William Prescott, Venus was "known to the Peruvians by the name of Chasca, or the 'youth with the long and curling locks.'" Burr Cartwright Brundage tells us that among the Inca, Venus was "the Radiant Star with the Flowing Hair." "The morning star, Chasca (The Disheveled One), dispensed stores of freshness and loveliness upon flowers, princesses, and virgins below. She was the deity of the rosy cloud rack of morning, and when she shook out her long hair she scattered the dew upon the earth." The point here is that Forrest's "explanation" of the Aztec Venus/smoking star association fails to acknowledge converging lines of evidence: Aztec comet as smoking star, Aztec Venus as smoking star, Aztec and Mayan long-haired star as comet; Aztec Venus as long-haired star, Mayan Venus with or as flowing lock or tassel, Incan Venus as long- haired star. Hence, the methodological issue is placed in sharp relief. Here is another way of looking at the issue logically: Around the world there are only a small number of pre- astronomical hieroglyphs for the "comet." You could, in fact, count the primary glyphs on the fingers of one hand: heart-soul of a deceased god-king or great leader rising in the sky. long-haired star (star with flowing locks, mane, tresses, disheveled hair, beard, hairy tail); torch-star (ember, flame, smoke, smoking star, train of fire, spark, or train of sparks); celestial feather (winged star, soul-bird, bright feathers, feathered headdress, shining bird's tail); cosmic serpent, dragon, or similar monster.
The remaining general hieroglyphs for the comet could be counted on the fingers of your second hand! They include: a sword, a bundle of grass or straw (whisk, broom), or a spiraling rope (cord, tie, or knot). At what point, then, does a "coincidence" or seemingly irrational use of language (comet-words or glyphs attached to Venus) become an anomaly worth pursuing? Forrest not only sidesteps the implications of parallel cometary images of Venus in other lands, he ignores the convergence of such images in Mexico. As a methodology, the approach is disastrous, because there is much, much more.
QUETZALCOATL
In the popular Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the Venus-comet anomaly grows by leaps and bounds. And in this case, the completeness of the cometary motifs leaves no room for ad hoc explanations. Whether remembered by the Aztecs as a former great king and founder of the golden age, or a former sun god ruling a primordial epoch, Quetzalcoatl was a cultural hero without equal in the Aztec pantheon, his countenance adorning temple walls and the stucco bases of pyramids, painted on countless frescoes and codices, and engraved on sarcophagi and nonoliths strewn across Mexico. The climactic event in the Quetzalcoatl myth is the god's catastrophic death and transformation in an overwhelming disaster--an event endlessly repeated in sacrificial rites and supplying the cornerstone of Aztec calendar rituals and astronomical symbolism. In a pervasive version of the myth, at the death of Quetzalcoatl the god's heart or soul rose in the sky as a great spark or ember, trailing smoke and fire- a "star" whose fiery train the Aztecs portrayed as the streaming tail of a quetzal-bird. Was this flaming star a "comet"? One notes that the Quich Maya called a comet uje ch'umil, "tail of the star," and Aztec artists often drew comets as stars with quetzal tails, the bright and luminous plumes of the quetzal providing a particularly well-suited hieroglyph for a comet. The symbolism accords well with that of other peoples. The Pawnee gave to the comet the name u: pirikis kuhka, "feathered headdress" (an appellation that proves telling; see later discussion of the plumed
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headdress in our next installment). In Africa, the streaming comet's tail was identified as the feathers of the nightjar, and the natives say of a comet, "it is wearing streaming feathers." Astronomer Carl Sagan, in his review of worldwide comet motifs, notes that comets are called "tail stars" and "stars with long feathers." Germanic races called a comet the peacock's tail, while in China a comet was seen as both a peacock's tail and a pheasant's tail. That Quetzalcoatl's "flaming" or "plumed" heart-soul meant a comet-like star is substantiated by converging lines of evidence. Its cometary character, for example, would agree with a general tradition among the Aztecs that comets were the ascending souls of great chiefs. That Quetzalcoatl was the model of the good king gives perfect sense to the symbolic motif. But Quetzalcoatl was also the prototype of the Aztec shaman (that is, he was the celestial figure whose biography provided the general myth and symbolism of the shaman). It is thus worth noting that in South American lore, the soul of a shaman was believed to depart in the form of a comet. Noteworthy as well is the fact that a comet appearing some time prior to the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortez was "reckoned as a positive sign that Quetzalcoatl would eventually return to Mexico." To suggest that the heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl rose as a comet is simply to place the Aztec symbolism alongside a universal tradition: cultures around the world proclaim the comet to be the soul of a dying king. Thus, we have listed this significant theme as number one in our short list of comet symbols above. (See discussion to follow.) But there is a problem here. While several variations on the story of Quetzalcoatl's death have been preserved, one of the central elements is the identification of the heart- soul as the planet Venus. Burr Cartwright Brundage gives this summary: The god's heart, like a great spark, flies up to become a new and splendid divinity, the Morning Star. Thus a native source declares: Then the heart of Quetzalcoatl rose into heaven and according to the elders, was transformed into the Morning Star, and Quetzalcoatl was called the Lord of Dawn. We shall have more to say about this transformation. The fact at hand is that in their myths and rites the Aztecs say the separated heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl, following a period of darkened sky and cosmic upheaval, rose as the planet Venus. If the story has roots in any celestial occurrence (as explicitly claimed in the myths), the "death" of Quetzalcoatl must have involved a cosmic disaster of unprecedented scale, for no mythical-historical event left a deeper impression on Aztec thought and culture. Upon this traumatic episode, the Aztecs evolved their collective sense of cyclical time, including a calendar of world ages: the death of Quetzalcoatl, the onset of celestial confusion, and the transformation of his heart-soul into the planet Venus meant nothing less than the end of one world age and the beginning of another.
FINGERS CROSSED FOR JULY 4

Given the many successes of space missions involving orbiting spacecraft around other planets, it is odd that the closest planet, Mars, has had more than its share of sudden, complete failures of spacecraft on final approach. Is it possible that the Maruts of Mars, as described by Velikovsky, have their unseen remnants still orbiting the planet - creating an unsuspected hazard for all approaching spacecraft, including future manned missions to the red orb? If, as I surmise, the colossal scar on Mars known as the Valles Marineris was spark-machined out of the planet's surface only a few thousand years ago, as the ancients report, then I would expect there to be more debris orbiting Mars than just the two remnants of that cataclysm, Phobos and Deimos. These two
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asteroids, dignified with the title, "moons", show the surface markings expected of objects which have been subjected to electrical discharge machining. Those characteristics are: linear chains of circular craters; large circular craters which, had they been formed by impact, would be unlikely to have exhibited such circularity on an odd-shaped target; large craters which would have been expected to disrupt the body; and small circular craters perched on the rims of larger craters. The electrical scarring of Mars' asteroidal moons likely occurred as part of the powerful event which ripped 2 million cubic kilometres of surface rock out of Mars and hurled it into space. It is hardly surprising that we find Martian meteorites on Earth! This leads to the subject of asteroids. Those that have been imaged in detail, Gaspra and Ida, show the same kinds of surface markings as Phobos and Deimos. It is also apparent in recent times that the distinction between asteroids and comets is becoming blurred. Such discoveries accord with a paper I wrote for the SIS Review in 1987 which detailed seventeen puzzling features of chondritic meteorites and showed how they could all be explained simply in terms of an electric discharge in a plasma. A discharge of the magnitude required would be expected to occur during the close approach of planetary bodies and (I wrote - following work of Eric Crew) also give rise to comets and asteroids, the distinction initially being purely in their orbital characteristics. A portion of the asteroid belt is probably Martian and gives a clue to the location of the events involving Mars and the Saturnian configuration. I envisage a scenario like that publicised by the astronomer Tom Van Flandern who, after careful analysis, proposed that comets, asteroids, etc. are the remnants of a planet which exploded some millions of years ago. Tom had to resort to nuclear energy and some ill-defined and improbable event to cause the explosion. However, electrical discharges can provide a mechanism for lofting huge quantities of planetary material into space (arc welders routinely transfer molten metal against the force of gravity) and modifying it precisely in the way captured and frozen into the complex structure of meteorites, without destroying the whole planet. Such a mechanism has the added virtue of eyewitness support if we have the wit to accept what the ancients have been trying to tell us. There are a number of asteroid "families" which indicates that there has been more than one episode of expulsion of matter from a planet. This creates a severe problem for the exploding planet theory since it requires multiple occurrences of an inherently implausible event. But in Velikovskian terms it supports the dynamic recent history of the solar system. So, let us all keep our fingers crossed for the Mars Pathfinder mission. If it succeeds in negotiating the Maruts, I have no doubt that it will confound the experts and provide more direct support for Mars as the wounded hero of Saturnian legend. Wal Thornhill
GREAT RED SPOT SPECULATION

On the recent topic of cometary snowballs impacting the Earth, I made a comment about Jupiter's GRS: I would even hazard a guess that the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter is, for reasons as yet unknown, the continual focus of a powerful ionospheric discharge. I deduce this from an example of the same effect on a much smaller scale on Earth in the reported glow discharge seen from space above tornadic storms on Earth. It would be of interest to know if Jupiter's ionosphere is the site of diffuse electrical discharges above the GRS. In the recent issue of Earth, Moon and Planets 73: 1996, pp. 167-179, there is a paper titled "SolarPlanetary Cycles in Jupiter's Great Red Spot Darkness." The conclusion of the paper states:
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The jovian GRS darkness or visibility varies systematically in various modes. The main cycles of variation are approximately 33 years, 13-15 yr, 11 yr, 9 yr, and 3 yr... The obtained cycles are of variation are the result of combined effects of several agents of varying intensity - the solar activity expressed by the sunspot numbers and flares, as well as, solarplanetary interactions and internal jovian phenomena. ...The effect of solar activity on darkness (of the GRS), for previous solar cycles, is also reinforced from earlier works on atmospheric activity and relative intensity of the GRS. Correlations of GRS darkness with solar activity and planetary alignments is the kind of effect I would expect if the GRS is an electrical discharge phenomenon. The work currently uses data up until 1976 and is being extended with later data which might have better resolution of short term changes in the GRS. I expect correlations with solar activity to be more striking when this is done. Wal Thornhill
SCIENCE MAGAZINE ITEMS:

Giant Planet Formation by Gravitational Instability,
Number 5320, Issue of 20 June 1997, pp. 1836-1839 The recent discoveries of extrasolar giant planets, coupled with refined models of the compositions of Jupiter and Saturn, prompt a reexamination of theories of giant planet formation. An alternative to the favored core accretion hypothesis is examined here; gravitational instability in the outer solar nebula leading to giant planet formation. Three-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations of protoplanetary disks show that giant gaseous protoplanets can form with locally isothermal or adiabatic disk thermodynamics. Gravitational instability appears to be capable of forming giant planets with modest cores of ice and rock faster than the core accretion mechanism can. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC 20015-1305, USA. (c)1997 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science. Alan P. Boss, Volume 276,
Worlds Around Other Stars Shake Planet Birth Theory Volume 276, Number 5317,
Issue of 30 May 1997, p. 1336 James Glanz Starting just 20 months ago, observers began detecting planet after planet around other sunlike stars, throwing planet-formation theory into turmoil. Many of these new worlds dwarf the giant planets we know, orbit much closer to their parent star than Mercury, or follow wildly eccentric paths. Now theorists are coming up with scenarios that might explain this strange bestiary. Among them are planet-forming mechanisms that would flout all the standard assumptions about planet size, proximity to the parent star, and orbital eccentricity. (c) 1997 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
51 Peg and the Perils of Planet Searches

1997, p. 1338 James Glanz
Volume 276, Number 5317, Issue of 30 May
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The first planetlike object found around a sunlike star, detected some 20 months ago at the star 51 Pegasi, has faced more than its share of scrutiny. The latest doubts are coming from astronomers at the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, who have observed the star with a powerful telescopic array called an infrared interferometer and seen hints that the object orbiting 51 Peg may be a dim companion star, not a planet. (c) 1997 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Extreme Cratering
McKinnon
Volume 276, Number 5317, Issue of 30 May 1997, p. 1346 William B.
When large objects collide with planets, these violent events leave behind distinctive craters. How craters form on Earth and other planets and what craters tell us about planetary collisions are the subject of some of the sessions of the annual Lunar and Planetary Science conference. In his Perspective, McKinnon gives an overview of the highlights of impact cratering results presented at the 1997 meeting. The author is in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and McDonnell Center for Space Sciences, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130, USA. (c) 1997 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science. Above items submitted by Ian Tresman
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 19 (July 16, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: PORTLAND SEMINAR REPORT VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (3) CHONDRITIC METEORITES MISSING UNIVERSE MASS
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Wal Thornhill Louis Hissink
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

What can be said about almost all men is that they have never demanded the answers to the deepest questions nor success at the highest level. ~MA
UPDATE -- UPDATE -- UPDATE -- UPDATE -- UPDATE -- UPDATE The Seattle event (Sunday, July 20) is on, and we will be going with a workshop strategy and extending the workshop into the evening to accommodate the kind of interest we saw in Portland. The Seattle location is-Ramada Inn, 2200 Fifth Avenue, in downtown Seattle
The SEATTLE EVENT will begin at 8:30 A.M. and culminate in an evening discussion with participants to begin building a communications network, encouraging cross-pollination with other researchers and organizations. Registration will begin at 8:00 A.M. And we have reduced the cost to just $75 for the full day. Two themes will combine in one event: "Symbols of an Ancient Sky" reconstructs the extraordinary planetary environment giving rise to the great myths, rites, and symbols of ancient times. "The Electrical Solar System" challenges modern astronomy and science by looking at the true nature of interactions between the Sun, the planets, and our galactic environment. If you desire to attend the Seattle event, PLEASE DO NOT SEND A CHECK. JUST SHOW UP! We will register you at the room. What we promise you is some stunning new information and a most compelling story, together with a great opportunity to get to know other explorers, with whom you will certainly have plenty of common interests.
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THE NEXT WORKSHOP IN THE PORTLAND AREA WILL BE SUNDAY, JULY 27. The event will run from 8:30 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. Please email us at (kronia@teleport.com) for details. OR CALL US DIRECTLY TO SAVE TIME: 503-643-5863. At the Portland seminar this past weekend, the enthusiasm of participants was overwhelming, with one person after another asking to play some part in a continuing communications project. Though we are still formulating the concepts (with the help of some new contributors) our present plan is to sponsor a workshop in the Portland area at least twice a month, allowing prior participants to play a direct role in follow- up communications with others.
PORTLAND SEMINAR REPORT

Michael Armstrong Portland Airport Sheraton. July 13. This was, without question, the most effective seminar I have seen. After introductions by science and technical writer Stephen Parsons, Dave Talbott presented Part One of his slides on "Symbols of an Ancient Sky," outlining the mythical themes, symbols, and iconography supporting the Saturn theory reconstruction. This was followed by about an hour-long slide show and lecture by Thornhill showing how plasma physics supports and predicts the mythological model. The balance of the day was filled by two more slide-lectures by Dave and an additional slide lecture by Wal, concluding with an hour-long interactive discussion with participants in the seminar. The combination of alternating lectures on the mythical themes and on the physics was very powerful and the audience responded with exceptional interest. Both Dave and Wal did a great job in their lectures as well as their answers to questions. Clearly, some incredible strides have been made in the presentation of a new model of planetary history. The consensus of participants was that we are in for one helluva an intellectual revolution.

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: This continues Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.]
SOUL-BIRD, WINGED STAR

In connection with the departure of the god-king's heart- soul as a "plumed" or "burning" star, one notes that Mesoamerican traditions produced many variations on the underlying idea. One influential variant was the idea of the heart-soul sprouting wings and soaring away. "On the death of a great noble, his soul was thought of as taking flight like a bird or a butterfly. At such a time he was addressed by those attending: Awaken, it has reddened, dawn has set in. Already, the flame-colored cock has sung, the flame-colored swallow, already the flame-colored butterfly flies. The most popular form of the "soul-bird" appears to have been the quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala. My friend Phil Peters, who lived for several years among the Quiche Maya of the Guatemala lowlands, recounts the story of the famous hero, Tecm-Umm, who lived at the time of the Spanish invasion. On the plains of Xelaju, the story goes, Tecm-Umm was killed by Pedro de Alverado, of
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Cortez' army. "Then the quetzal bird that was in his headdress took flight, and since that tragic occasion, the quetzal no longer sings." What is crucial in any study hoping to comprehend such ideas is the ability of the celestial reference--the mythical archetype--to give meaning to the symbol. In the Vienna Codex, or Vindobonensis, the planet Venus is depicted with wing-like appendages. Can the "wings" of Venus--said to represent Venus' "radiance" or "greatest brilliancy"-be separated from the global myth of Venus as the soul-bird? Though we cannot here stop and review the countless parallels in other lands, we would be remiss if we failed to observe that the avian flight of the heart-soul is a worldwide theme. The earliest instances will be found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the Venus goddesses Inanna, Ishtar, Isis and Hathor (to name only the most prominent instances) all represent the "soul" in the form of a bird taking flight. Thus, the great god-kings, whose heart-souls are the star Venus, customarily depart in the form of a dove, partridge, or swallow, virtually universal symbols of Venus, of transformation, and of the departing "soul". (The reader will find many examples in the remaining installments.) Are these widely dispersed recollections of Venus as soul-bird different from the universal myth declaring that the great king's or chief's soul appeared in the sky as a comet? Though the issue will not be resolved in a few paragraphs, cross referencing will suggest potentially fruitful lines of inquiry. It is certainly of interest, for example, that the Babylonians employed the phrase "winged star" for the comet. Additionally, as we will see, it is when Venus as soul-bird spreads its wings that the cometary images are most emphatic.
FEATHERED SERPENT
In our brief list of comet glyphs cited earlier we have also listed the cosmic serpent or dragon, and in Mexico this fascinating theme proves to be crucial. Once the researcher has learned that Mesoamerican stargazers considered a comet to be the ascending heart-soul of a great chief, he can no longer ignore the full range of related symbols: the planet Venus, the rising heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl, is not just portrayed as an ember-like star (= comet), not just depicted as a star with quetzal-tail ( = comet), but is said to have taken the form of a great cosmic serpent (= comet both in Mexico and in the universal language of comets). The name Quetzalcoatl itself is simply a combination of two Nahuatl terms--that for the quetzal-bird, known for its long brilliant turquoise tail, and the serpent or coatl." Thus two of our listed five most common comet glyphs are brought together in the name of the god. And the combined hieroglyphs clearly have a long history. The earliest known version of the plumed serpent pre-dates the Aztecs by many centuries, appearing on monuments of the Formative Olmecs. Conceptually, the avian serpent reached significantly beyond Aztec culture. The Maya name for the same god, Kulkulkan, carries an equivalent meaning, as does the Quich figure, Gucumatz. The same figure appears to have entered Zuni ritual as the plumed serpent Kolowisi and Hopi ritual as the plumed serpent Palulukong. Though the figure of Quetzalcoatl is complex and appears to combine originally distinct traditions, the identification of the spiraling serpent itself (the transformed heart-soul) with Venus has survived even into modern times. Some of the Tzotzil groups, for example, still describe Venus as "the Big Serpent" (Mukta Ch'on.) Among the Chichimec tribes, Venus is still remembered as the "Serpent Cloud." Is it significant, then, that Aztec manuscripts depict a comet as a fiery serpent or dragon-like creature descending from the stars? The priest-astronomers knew the comet as "the star serpent." In his exploration of comet symbolism, Peter Lancaster Brown observed that the natives of Mexico represented comets "by the plumed serpent depicted in various forms." But what does this say about the acknowledged identification of the plumed serpent with the planet Venus, the ascending heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl? "It seems very likely that the white and bearded god who appeared in the east associated with the Quetzalcoatl (Serpent God) legends of pre-Columbian Middle America relates to the apparitions of spectacular comets in the morning sky and not to the planet Venus," Brown writes. Here again we see an author attempting to rationalize a clearly stated Venus-comet connection, offering his own explanation.
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But in this instance the "explanation" involves nothing less than a rewriting of the Aztec religion: for the identity of the transformed heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl as the planet Venus was an unshakable tenet of the myths and rites. With respect to the Mesoamerican celestial serpents and dragons, there is also the issue of attached streamers that often look more like long-flowing, spiraling locks of hair than like feathers. This unique feature is particularly significant since the disheveled "mane" of the celestial serpent-dragon is a worldwide motif. And yet, remembering that pre-Columbian astronomy depicted the comet as both a celestial serpent and a "mane-star," should it surprise us that the serpentine form of Venus possesses streamers suggestive of the flowing "hair" of countless celestial serpents and dragons in other lands? Since Venus was itself the "mane" or long-haired star in widely dispersed cultures, the underlying integrity is undeniable. In fact, no stretch at all is needed to establish the equation of flowing mane and serpent-dragon or chaos monster. The Aztec Tzonte-Mocque, identified with the planet Venus, and whose name Brasseur translated as "mane," was depicted as a dragon-like monster approaching the Earth in periods of eclipse or universal darkness. (As we will discover, every eclipse of the Sun and Moon became a symbol or reminder of the primeval cometary disaster and the arrival of the world-ending night). A counterpart of this chaos- or eclipse-demon is the Aztec Tzitzimitl, with "madly disheveled hair," descending upon a darkened world. This is, of course, precisely the image of the raging comet in numerous other lands. "A comet was supposed to be a tendril of the Great Mother's hair appearing in the sky as the world was slowly overshadowed by her twilight shadow of doomsday," writes the noted student of world mythology, Barbara Walker. But the interconnected comet glyphs attached to the chaos monsters range far beyond these instances. A symbolic counterpart of this streaming "hair" is the enigmatic, but frequently depicted beard of the Mesoamerican serpent- dragon. The Aztec Plumed Serpent, the Mayan Great Bearded Dragon and numerous counterparts of these celestial monsters are distinguished by flowing beards that are every bit as preposterous, on the face of it, as their streaming "manes". The reader will recall the celestial beard or bearded star in our short list of comet symbols, as a logical extension of the "long-haired star". (Thus the Greek pogonias, the beard-star, means "comet".) While a bearded serpent is a biological absurdity, the anomalous beard is immediately explained if the Venusian serpent is a long-haired star or comet. If the celestial beard did not mirror a comet-like form in the sky, then the bearded serpent is one more anomaly left unanswered, despite a consistent pattern that seems to cry out for recognition. To keep all of this in perspective it needs to be remembered that Quetzalcoatl--whose heart-soul became the plumed serpent--was himself the white and bearded god, with many counterparts spread across preColumbian America--one more anomaly to add to the equation. Thus Frank Waters, surprised at the prevalence of this unusual figure among the dark-skinned natives of the New World (typified by Quetzalcoatl and the Incan Viracocha), assures us the myth was "so common throughout all of preColumbian America that we can regard it as arising from a concept in the unconscious." A relationship with the planet Venus is clear, though not without wide-ranging interpretations by the specialists. According to Thompson, the Maya described Venus as being "very ugly with a heavy beard," and the Aztecs preserved a similar tradition: of Ehecatl, whom most authorities identify with Venus, it was said that "his beard was exceedingly long." Lastly, on the matter of the flowing hair, mane, or beard of the celestial serpent or dragon, I should like to register an opinion on one additional oddity--that of the Mesoamerican feline dragon. Here, too, we are dealing with an image begging for a comparative study, since the "outlandish" merging of cat, lion, jaguar, tiger, or lynx with a celestial serpent seems to have occurred in all major cultures. Since noticing the oddity in Mesoamerica, I have noted as well the general disinterest of the specialists in accounting for such an incongruous monster. A cat and a serpent? Here, nature itself provides not a clue as to how anyone (much less skywatchers around the world) could think of the one when confronted with the other.
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But an analysis of this mythic creature can be advanced dramatically by the Velikovskian methodology. What one looks for is an underlying shared attribute (not of the terrestrial symbols, which offer no shared attribute, but of the celestial reference inspiring the symbols), and in this instance there can be no doubt that it is the mane of the celestial feline figure and the twisting body or tail of the celestial serpent. While this is not the place to attempt a summary of evidence I shall present in future installments, I will simply mention the Egyptian instance of the goddess Tefnut, the Eye (= heart-soul) of the former sun god Ra. The Eye of Ra, on its departure, becomes the raging Uraeus serpent. But in the account of the goddess Tefnut as departing Eye, the raging goddess (serpent) is also depicted as a lion head with flaming, smoking mane. Of course it is not one instance, but the repeated instances of such motifs that will make the case secure. I register the supposition now to prepare the way for a comparative testt.
XIUHCOATL
Throughout Mesoamerica one will find numerous variations on the theme of the celestial serpent and just as many connections with the planet Venus. A particularly fascinating instance is the so-called "Fire Dragon" , whose name, translated literally, means Turquoise Dragon. Significantly, Xiuhcoatl was described as a "heavenly torch". "In mythology he becomes the fiery weapon hurled by the victorious sun at his enemies, the stars," writes Brundage. Perhaps there is more here than the reader will immediately recognize. A torch or flame in the sky, only a minor variation on the "smoking star," belongs to the universal comet myth--item three in our list of the five most common comet glyphs. Moreover, as I intend to demonstrate, one of the repeated themes in the myth of the prototypical comet is that it appears as a divine weapon hurled against rebelling powers. Consider the lines of Shakespeare, in Henry VI--I.I.1: Comets, importing change of times and states Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky And with them scourge the bad revolting stars. That have consented unto Henry's death. The motifs are: death of the king, celestial rebellion, and appearance of the comet as both a sign of world change (passing of world ages) and a weapon launched against the rebels. Similarly, the Aztec dragon Xiuhcoatl, the flaming serpent, appears as the "fire stick" wielded by the celestial hero Huitzilopochtli when the heavens were overrun by the demons of darkness. Was the comet-like Turquoise Dragon, then, linked to the planet Venus? "In Teotihuacan the dragon is plainly portrayed as an overarching sky motif, a path for stellar objects," writes Brundage. "He is a plumed rattlesnake [i.e., a counterpart of the plumed serpent of the Quetzalcoatl myth] ... He can be identified, from the quincunx (the five points that together form the emblem of the morning star) that adorns him, as the planet Venus."
FORMATION OF CHONDRITIC METEORITES

Wal Thornhill It is the thunderbolt that steers the Universe. ~Heraclitus, c.500 BC Meteorites are important in the scheme of things because they are thought to be the Rosetta stones of the formation of the solar system. I don't believe that. Rather, I think they are a snapshot taken during the more catastrophic phases of the recent development of the solar system. In 1987 I published a paper which examined some of the puzzling features of the largest class of meteorites, the stony chondritic
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meteorites, or chondrites. Chondrites are so named because they contain chondrules or small spherules of olivine, enstatite or another of the meteoritic materials. The chondrules are embedded in a matrix of similar material. Current theories of their formation see them as products of the condensation of the solar nebula, very early in the history of the Solar System. Their irregular form, different sizes and evidently complex history create many problems for the nebular hypothesis. However, despite their wide range of composition and structure, there are regularities that suggest a common origin.
PECULIAR FEATURES OF CHONDRITES

The following puzzles must be answered by any theory of chondrite formation: 1. There are 4 identified concentric zones within the asteroid belt which yield 4 distinct types of chondritic meteorite. Each type has few, if any, components that are identical to those in other types. 2. Chondrites contain high melting-point inclusions (calcium- and aluminium-rich inclusions, or CAI's) which characteristically have thin shells or rims surrounding them. 3. All refractory components appear to have suffered some'flash' heating event of unknown origin and consequently show a complex and 'unearthly' chemistry and morphology. 4. The high and low temperature components of chondrites are well mixed, generally as separate entities. They have not grown from a refractory core outwards to a less refractory rim. The chemistry of the components is complementary and must have originated in a closed system. 5. The thickness of the CAI shells does not seem to vary much from one inclusion in a specimen to another. 6. Despite the often complex shape of the inclusions, the shells follow the surface faithfully with little variation in thickness. 7. The rare earth 'signature' of the CAI shells indicates that they have been formed from the body of the inclusion rather than being deposited from some external source. 8. The CAI shell is enriched up to 5 times in the refractory rare earths and have a europium/ytterbium (Eu/Yb) anomaly which indicates that the inclusions have been strongly heated and 80% of the surface layer sublimed away. 9. The heating was brief, <100 sec, as evidenced by the sharp inner edge to the CAI shells and the fact that CAI cores are largely unaffected by the heat pulse. The retention of volatiles in chondrules also indicates that the heating was of very short duration, measured in seconds. Therefore the zone of formation must have been highly localised. It could not have taken place in an extensive solar nebula. 10. The growth of the refractory components (CAI's) was interrupted while they were still at high temperature. 11. The temperature required to give the observed Eu/Yb anomaly in the CAI shells is 1500 degrees Centigrade, or more. 12. Since the most refractory components are found in the most distant chondrites from the Sun, solar radiation was evidently not the source of heat for their formation. 13. The cooling period must be measured in minutes or hours. It should also be noted that the chondrules, which are glassy drops of silicate, show evidence of rapid chilling. Strangely, they are almost all non-spherical. 14. The inclusions are surrounded by a halo of very fine grained matrix material for several millimetres, then the chondrules and coarser, more volatile components that enclose that halo. 15. The core of the inclusion has an excess of heavy magnesium (Mg) isotopes, while the shell has normal Mg isotope ratios. 16. Many chondrules contain relict grains, indicating that they are not formed by condensation. Grains larger than 0.2mm are inconsistent with formation from interstellar dust which is believed to have a very small percentage of grains of such size.
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17. The existence of compound chondrules is evidence for collisions between molten chondrules. Also some grains may have been incorporated into fully or partially molten chondrules by collision.
I wrote at the time: Currently there is no single theory that can account for these observations. Nothing has changed since my explanation in 1987 for the formation of meteorites, which was based on Eric Crew's theory of ejection of material from a planet by an intense electrical discharge (for example, on a small scale, the recently formed giant Valles Marineris canyon on Mars which removed 2 million cubic kilometers of its surface. It is not surprising therefore that we should find Martian meteorites on Earth). The arc of material leaving the parent body would be composed of ionised gases, liquids and solids ranging in size from microns up to asteroid or planetoid dimensions. Electric discharges would take place between the parent planet and the highly charged departing matter. These powerful plasma discharges would give rise to a number of effects, as follows.
EXPECTED FEATURES DUE TO ELECTRIC DISCHARGE PHENOMENA

1. Heating would be most intense along the axis of the discharge, falling off with radial distance from the axis. This might explain some of the chemical differences between CAI's by varying degrees of vaporisation of precursor solids. Such differential heating would have the more refractory type A CAI's condensing and cooling last along the hot discharge axis and having inclusions of less refractory type B CAI's, which formed at lower temperatures and cooled earlier, further from the axis. The magnetic 'pinch' effect of the discharge would accelerate the type B CAI's radially inwards and thus cause implantation by collision of type B CAI's within type A, as has been discovered. The converse has not been seen. 2. At some distance from the discharge axis low melting point minerals would melt to form chondrules, trapping grains or partially melted solids. The consensus is that chondrules are formed by melting of preexisting solids. 3. Refractory particles would have their exterior surfaces evenly 'flash-heated' to temperatures of the order of thousands of degrees Celsius for the short period of the discharge, probably measured in seconds or minutes. 4. Volatile elements would be preferentially vaporised in the discharge channel and accelerated along the discharge axis, causing some refractory/non-refractory element zonation along the channel as well as radially. It is found that some chondrites are rich in volatiles while others are depleted in a complementary fashion. The gaseous 'blast' along the discharge channel would also deform cooling molten droplets. Chondrules are found almost without exception to be nonspherical. 5. On quenching of the discharge, cooling would follow rapidly, in minutes, giving rise to the sharp inner boundary between the refractory particle shell and its core. It is difficult to provide such rapid heating and cooling in an extended nebular cloud, as is widely believed to be the birthplace of meteorites. Also, when the discharge ceases the magnetic 'pinch effect' ceases, accompanied by an explosive fall in gas pressure leading to the observed interruption to growth of the CAI's while still at high temperature. 6. By the electric discharge mechanism all shells should be formed at the same instant, under fairly uniform, highly localised conditions, thus giving rise to shells of a thickness which does not vary much from one specimen to another. 7. The plasma discharge heating would be uniform over all exposed surfaces, unlike ballistic heating in a gas, and therefore the observation that the shells follow the complex surface features of the refractory inclusions may be explained. This effect is used in industry in plasma ovens to evenly modify the surface of complex shaped objects.
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8. After the discharge has extinguished, the sub-micron particles will be electrically attracted to the charged larger particles, thus giving rise to the observed halo of very fine grained matrix material surrounding the inclusions. Electrostatic attraction between the very smallest particles during the discharge might also help explain the observation that the CAI formation mechanism discriminates against small bodies. 9. The magnetic pinch effect of the discharge will cause the dispersed material and gases to accelerate radially inward towards the axis of the discharge, so that after the discharge is quenched there will be collisions of inrushing molten chondrules with the radial gaseous blast (thunderclap) giving rise to the formation of compound chondrules and grain inclusions. This also fits the observation that regions of chondrule formation were homogeneous over small distances. The thunderclap will cause volatiles to be included in some meteorite precursors. The meteoritic bodies may then be formed by agglomeration, near the spent discharge axis, of the various meteorite components; chondrules, refractory inclusions, volatiles, matrix material, etc. The mixing would be chaotic, with probable collision-induced splintering giving rise to the observed irregular forms of chondrites. This mechanism explains the mixing of high and low temperature components in chondrites as separate entities. 10. It is expected that some evidence of the electric discharge and its magnetic field would be found in remanent magnetism of some meteoritic components. It has been shown that carbonaceous chondrites and ureilites had surprisingly large ancient magnetic field intensities. 11. Such giant electric discharges would probably be of sufficient power to cause nucleosynthesis, transmutation of elements and the formation of isotopes and radionuclides. The chondrule evidence strongly suggests their origin in an unspecified energetic event, definitely not pre-Solar System, and Tom van Flandern confirms that "the presence of isotopic anomalies in carbonaceous meteorites implies the action of nuclear processes, not just chemical ones." The observed anomaly of isotopic composition of the shells of refractory inclusions when compared with the core might be explained by ion implantation of transmuted atoms. More importantly, meteorites exhibit many other isotopic anomalies, chief among them being the appearance of isotopes of xenon and iodine which are known to be the decay products of relatively short-lived, heavy, radioactive parents. This poses problems for the conventional view in that it requires the formation of meteorites shortly after a stellar nucleosynthesis event, possibly as remnant of a supernova. Yet neither tektites nor meteorites have been found in any ancient geological formation, which suggests that most surviving meteorites are relatively quite young. Also, it has been found that the quantities of spallation-produced neon-21 in irradiated grains from some meteorites exceed that plausibly attributable to either galactic or present- day solar cosmic ray irradiation, and associated solar wind neon seems to be underabundant. 12. The electric discharge mechanism would render radiogenic dating meaningless. It would further obviate the need to have chondritic components formed millions of years apart and 'parked' before somehow being brought together to form the final chondrule. 13. It should be noted in the case of chondrule formation that lightning within a solar nebula has been proposed as a plausible mechanism, but the argument betrays a lack of understanding of plasma discharges. The electric discharge theory does away with the problematic formation of bodies from a solar nebula and introduces a new evolutionary picture, with the birth of objects from the size of stars right down to meteors by electrical parturition. This is consistent with the fact that the non-volatile components of chondrites have approximately solar proportions. 14. The astronomer, Tom van Flandern has proposed the formation of comets, meteorites, asteroids and tektites from the explosion of a larger former planet in the Solar System by some unknown mechanism. He shows how many anomalies in the characteristics of our solar system may be simply explained by such an event. The stratification of chondritic types within the asteroid belt certainly indicates at least four separate events in that region of the Solar System. The differences in composition of meteorites from those regions may be diagnostic of the parent bodies. It should be remembered that all of the giant planets have ephemeral ring systems, which by this theory are indicative of past expulsion of matter. Saturn's rings would appear to be the most recent.
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UPDATE
In the October, 1993 issue of Sky & Telescope there was a report headlined "Primordial Lightning? in which evidence is provided for powerful electromagnetic surges ripping through the solar system as it was forming. Disregarding the once-upon-a-time paradigm paralysis, the meteorites show selective melting of small flecks of dark minerals inside a more transparent silicate exterior. Laboratory tests suggested that very powerful lightning discharges could have created the observed effects
MISSING UNIVERSE MASS

Louis Hissink There is something amiss in the universe: the astronomical community asserts that 90% of the universe's mass, from gravitational calculations, is missing! Well, this is probably so, not because the universe is short of mass but because the human created "law", the cosmological model, is probably the result of a shortage of grey cells in the astronomical disciplines; or this law is at best incomplete, or at worst... wrong. Consequently I suggest that our understanding of gravity must be incomplete since the massy problem of missing mass is totally based on this fundamental assumption. There are, however, what could only be described as significant departures from this theory in practical situations, since at the atomic scale gravity effects are ignored on the basis that electrical forces, such as those of protons, are 1039 times greater in magnitude than the assumed gravitational attraction between the same protons. At the other end of the scale, gravity effects between galaxies and larger structures are also ignored, as mentioned by S.W. Carey in his book, Theories of the Universe, when discussing implications of the Hubble expansion. To these exceptions to the law of gravitation we can now add the more recent data of Peratt, (in Lerner, p.232) where the computer generated shapes of galaxies created by the simulation of various cosmic-plasma models also ignored the effect of gravitation. Peratt managed to closely model most of the known galaxy shapes, suggesting that his empiricism is on track, unlike that of orthodox astronomy and cosmology which assert that physical reality is in error, in preference to their elegant mathematical models based on gravitational theories. Interestingly the current cosmological gravitational model has many similarities with the doctrine of Papal infallibility, a source of unassailable authority not based in empirical fact but from divine inspiration, and in our, more prosaic case, mathematical elegance. And has all this any relevance to geology ? Yes, much, and let me recount some comments by Lyall Watson in one of his recent books, "Dreams of Dragons"; Watson devoted one chapter to the "Wonder of Water", and amongst other interesting facts mentioned the effect small variations in temperature have on water, and its interesting effect on the operation of gravity in a fluvial environment. He mentions that in the early 1920's a young Austrian forester, Viktor Schauberger, had a startling experience one cold night in the forest, when he literally saw almost head- sized stones begin to move in a circular path in a mountain stream. "..The stone was egg-shaped and in the next instant was on the surface, where it appeared to float, lit by the full moon. It was followed by a second and a third, until nearly all the stones of the same shape were on the top, while other more angular ones remained below and did not move", (Watson, p.127.) As Watson states, Schauberger did not imagine this, as the phenomenon is known as cycloid or hyperbolic space curve motion, and easily demonstrated in the laboratory. (Schauberger's discovery later formed the basis of a commercially successful sluicing system to transport forest logs; but read Watson's book for more details if you find this fact problematical.)
Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations: Archaeological, Geological and Astronomical Perspectives. A conference at Fitzwilliam College. Cambridge. 11th-13th July 1997

I am pleased to announce that abstracts for each speaker are now on-line at: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/cambconf.htm
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Ian Tresman, Publicity Officer, Editor/Compiler SIS Internet Digest Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) 9 Ashdown Drive, Borehamwood, Herts. WD6 4LZ. United Kingdom. Tel: +44 181 953 7722. Fax: 905 1879. email sis@knowledge.co.uk World Wide Web: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/ Above items submitted by Ian Tresman
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 20 (August 3, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: EDITORIAL FAR APART, TWO PARTICLES RESPOND FASTER THAN LIGHT FROM SUN TO EARTH: TRACKING A NEW STORM VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (4)
Michael Armstrong by Malcolm W. Browne Science News David Talbott
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

The more absurd the model, the better the public will like it. It will then become a "fact." ~Wal Thornhill
EDITORIAL
By Michael Armstrong
The Photon experiment referenced in the article below is just another confirmation of what John Bell has already proven logically and mathematically in his "Interconnectedness Theorem," a theorem some physicists have seen as one of the most profound developments in the history of science. In 1964, while wrestling with the famous EPR paradox, physicist John Bell came up with his Interconnectedness Theorem which he "rigorously proved", stating that you cannot retain both "objectivity" and "locality" on a fundamental level. At the phenomenal level (in contrast to the level of experience), either one, or both of these are a false. In 1982 this was verified in the laboratory by physicists Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibard and Gerard Roger of the Institute of Optics at the University of Paris, and the point has subsequently been verified in other places as well. What this literally means is that if reality is "objective" (you aren't some bad dream all in my own mind) then all experienced reality (the explicate or manifest realm) is some kind of projection from another "nonlocal" realm (implicate or non-manifest realm) a la Karl Pribram and David Bohm's Holographic Universe paradigm. The implicate realm would be a dimensionless realm comparable to hologram interference patterns in which all aspects of experienced reality, including distance and separateness (locality) are only implied. Electromagnetic signal propagation in the implicate realm would be instantaneous, giving an infinite velocity between any two points in the projected or manifest realm. As far as the photon experiment described below, the theory would say that "pairs" of particles are comparable to perpendicular projections of an underlying reality, thus giving rise to two simultaneously projected views of only a single entity.
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META-MYSTICAL MUSH
After a lucid account of the experiment in the first half of the article, the author descends into the kind of "meta- mystical" musing typical of the proponents of Quantum Theory, replete with a reference to the most absurd "explanation" of them all, i.e., the "many worlds" hypothesis. This last hypothesis is the most outrageous copout ever dignified by journalism. If taken seriously and to its logical conclusion, it would undermine any basis for serious science, including any basis for morality, in that no matter what choices one would make in this world, any and all possibilities would inexorably take place in another. This "many worlds" hypothesis also violates one of the most fundamental principles of philosophy by saying "everything" and "nothing" simultaneously. It is unfalsifiable, unuseable, unhelpful and unwarranted; the perfect capstone for the modern mythology.
FAR APART, TWO PARTICLES RESPOND FASTER THAN LIGHT

by Malcolm W. Browne (From the New York Times Science Section, Tuesday, July 22, 1997) It was as if some ghostly bridge across the city of Geneva had permitted two photons of light nearly seven miles apart to respond simultaneously to a stimulus applied to just one of them. The twin-photon experiment by Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and his colleagues last month was the most spectacular demonstration yet of the mysterious long- range connections that exist between quantum events, connections created from nothing at all, which in theory can reach from one end of the universe to the other. In essence, Dr. Gisin sent pairs of photons in opposite directions to villages north and south of Geneva along optical fibers of the kind used to transmit telephone calls. Reaching the ends of these fibers, the two photons were forced to make random choices between alternative, equally possible pathways. Since there was no way for the photons to communicate with each other, "classical" physics would predict that their independent choices would bear no relationship to each other. But when the paths of the two photons were properly adjusted and the results compared, the independent decisions by the paired photons always matched, even though there was no physical way for them to communicate with each other. Albert Einstein sneered [at] the very possibility of such a thing, calling it "spooky action at a distance." Scientists still (somewhat shamefacedly) speak of the "magic" of "quantum weirdness." And yet all experiments in recent years have shown that Einstein was wrong and that action at a distance is real." One of the leading experimentalists in quantum optics, Dr. Raymond P. Chiao of the U. of California, Berkeley, hailed the Geneva experiment as "wonderful." But an underlying enigma of quantum mechanics remains unfathomed. The connections that persist between distant but entangled particles are "one of the deep mysteries of quantum mechanics," Dr. Chiao said in an interview. "These connections are a fact of nature proven by experiments, but to try to explain them philosophically is very difficult," he said. Quantum events obey the laws of quantum theory, which governs the behavior of minute objects like atoms and subatomic particles, including photons of light. By contrast with the laws of "classical" physics (which apply to the relatively large objects of the everyday world), quantum physics often exhibits behavior that seems impossible.
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One of the weird aspects of quantum mechanics is that something can simultaneously exist and not exist; if a particle is capable of moving along several different paths, or existing in several different states, the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics allows it to travel along all paths and exist in all possible states simultaneously. However, if the particle happens to be measured by some means, its path or state is no longer uncertain. The simple act of measurement instantly forces it into just one path or state. Physicists call this a "collapse of the wave function." The amazing thing is that if just one particle in an entangled pair is measured, the wave function of both particles collapses into a definite state that is the same for both partners, even separated by great distances. Among several proposed explanations of all this is the "many worlds" hypothesis: the notion that for every possible pathway or state open to a particle, there is a separate universe. For each of 10 possible pathways a quantum particle might follow, for example, there would exist a separate universe... ...The late Rockefeller University physicist Heinz Pagels, like many other theorists, believed that quantum physics is a kind of code that interconnects everything in the universe, including the physical basis of life itself. In his book, The Cosmic Code, Dr. Pagels, an ardent mountain climber, wrote: I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. Gravel gave way, I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness. In 1988 Dr. Pagels was killed in a climbing accident.
From Sun to Earth: Tracking a new storm

Space scientists who gathered last week at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD., had but one goal: to hone their understanding of a solar eruption that sent a huge cloud of gas hurtling toward Earth last January. In addition to grappling with the earlier data, however, the scientists found themselves dealing with a new event. On April 7, the day before the meeting began, another large solar outburst blazed forth, blasting Earthward a blob of gas and magnetic energy at a speed of 1.6 million kilometers an hour. Researchers called the resulting storm, which didn't reach Earth's vicinity until 3 days later, relatively mild. There were no reports of problems with spacecraft or electric power outages on Earth. Ground-based detectors, however, measured sizable increases in the energy of electrons in Earth's ionosphere, and sky-watchers as far south as Boston were treated to a dazzling auroral display. As they had for the January eruption, the researches relied on an armada of spacecraft to track the disturbance, known as a coronal mass ejection because it originates in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona (SN: 2/1/97, p. 68). This time, an ultraviolet camera aboard the SOHO spacecraft, which continuously monitors the sun, was in operation and researchers could view the disturbance deeper in the corona than ever before.
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"If the last event was [captured] from cradle to grave, this one was from birth to grave," says Nicola Fox of Goddard. Like the earlier outburst, which researchers classify as a magnetic cloud, the blob of material ejected on April 7 forced the interplanetary magnetic field around it to point south, allowing it to dump energy efficiently into the oppositely oriented magnetic domain of Earth. Despite similarities, the April event was much more complex, says Charles C. Goodrich of the University of Maryland at College Park. Researchers predicted, from January's records, that the material would strike Earth's vicinity late on April 9. That night came and went, however, with no sign of the blob's arrival. Scientists worried that they had miscalculated. In fact, says Fox, the material had plowed into an unusually slow solar wind, the stream of charged particles blowing out from the sun. The expanding blob "had to go through molasses to get to us," Fox says. In addition. says Goodrich. this material does not qualify as a magnetic cloud because it abruptly switched the direction of its magnetic field and did not show a drop in temperature. Curiously, he notes, the Wind craft, situated so that it detects solar disturbances about an hour before they get to Earth, recorded two large increases in the density of ionized gas. One increase occurred about 3 p.m. eastern daylight time on April 10 and the other 10 hours later. The researchers are currently examining the ground-based data for evidence of a double signal. Goodrich speculates that the solar outburst may have separated into two independent blobs of gas or that, like an erupting volcano, the sun actually spewed two separate blasts of gas. R. Cowen

By David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: This continues Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.]
THE GREAT COMET

In seeking out the general patterns of the Mesoamerican Venus as serpent-dragon, we cannot fail to observe that our listed "cometary" symbols are not just present, but prominent, that they are enigmatically but self-evidently connected, that they do not direct us to any present forms either in the sky or in the natural world today (rather, they contradict all natural forms at every level), and that they remain unexplained, despite decades of microscopic examination by the best experts. One conclusion is inescapable, even if interpretations will differ: the Mesoamerican symbolism of the planet Venus--in that planet's guise as serpent-dragon or chaos-monster--is a compendium of globallyrecognized comet symbols, representing in one mythical form all five of the most frequently employed cometary glyphs! Yet in more than forty years since Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, no mainstream scholar has even acknowledged this stunning fact. Of course, no comet admitted by modern science has ever justified the lines of Shakespeare previously cited, or the Aztec image of a comet-like "weapon" in the form of a fiery dragon. But our appreciation for the symbolism changes dramatically once we entertain a new possibility--that in earlier times mankind experienced a far more spectacular and devastating comet than ever experienced in more recent times, a cometary archetype that could fully account for the later symbols. It was said of the great fire serpent Xiuhcoatl that it spewed forth comets. That is exactly the language we should expect if Xiuhcoatl was not just a comet, but the parent of comets, the concrete source of a mythical archetype, from which arose the entire reservoir of comet images. Every cometary
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apparition, taking its symbolism from the cosmic original, would then be considered a child of the primeval, flaming serpent or dragon remembered in the myths.
ON EVIDENCE AND LOGIC

In all of this there is a fundamental issue of logic. How does one properly weigh the lines of evidence, the repeated convergence of comet words and symbols upon Venus? Having had many opportunities to muse over the way the experts skirt the issue, I am convinced the real question never enters their minds. Until one asks the question-did Venus formerly present itself as a spectacular "comet"?--even the most obvious evidence will be seen as something else, as confirmation of the recklessness and confusion of myth, another reason not to take myth seriously. The question is not asked because the "Velikovskian" field of study lacks all credibility in the eyes of mainstream authorities. Thus the Mayan scholar Peter Joralemon explained the highly unnatural convergence of symbols on the celestial dragon-The primary concern of Olmec art is the representation of creatures that are biologically impossible. Such mythological beings exist in the mind of man, not in the world of nature. It's easy to see how one might draw this conclusion. But if the symbolism lacks any roots in "the world of nature" and is simply the result of chaotic imagination, then an even greater issue arises: Why do the same symbols continually occur in juxtaposition? Once the critic resorts to unbridled imagination as an explanation of highly specific forms, he is left with nothing but coincidence to account for the convergence. But when it comes to the convergence of all five of the world's most common cometary symbols on one celestial creature, is it reasonable to expect sheer imagination and "coincidence" to account for the situation? In truth, virtually all respected authorities continually look for natural references, because no one could seriously believe that such dramatic images as the plumed serpent could dominate an entire civilization without a link to natural experience. Only the rarest of specialists would suggest that the primitive mind conjured its primary mythical forms out of a wholesale denial of the world. In truth, if they can find even the most remote natural explanation, the experts will use it. Miguel Len-Portilla, for example, offers a picturesque explanation of the Venus- Quetzalcoatl relationship-The association of Venus and Quetzalcoatl can probably be attributed to the fact that when this planet sets upon the moving waters of the Pacific, its reflection seems not unlike a serpent with brilliant scales and plumes. Here is a "natural explanation" that would fit easily into Bob Forrest's analysis, as if there is nothing in the plumed serpent crying out for a comparison with the highly improbable yet similar images of other peoples--and as if the combined cometary associations need not concern us. How, then, does one break through the vicious circle? Go back to the list of the five most frequentlyemployed comet images, each of them occurring not only in Mexico but in the global symbolism of the comet. How does one weigh the fact that all five comet glyphs are attached to the Mexican Venus? Indeed not only the general motifs, but virtually all of the listed variations are attached to Venus. Is sheer coincidence even possible in such an extreme case as this? For starters, it needs to be understood that we are not dealing with a "multiple choice" when it comes to possible interpretations. If one is permitted to include in the lexicon of comets the "shooting star," whose mythical image is drawn from the same reservoir, then the only known and provable celestial phenomenon called a "long-haired star" is a comet; the only celestial phenomenon known to have been called a torch star or a flaming star is a comet; the only celestial phenomenon known to have been represented as a star with streaming "tail feathers" is a comet. The only celestial phenomenon known to
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have been represented as a star with a serpentine tail is a comet. That these very glyphs are consistently attached to Venus cannot be explained away by ad hoc reasoning. Now add the mythical role of the comet as the ascending soul of a former great king, together with the explicit role of Venus as the ascending soul of the prototypical king Quetzalcoatl, and you will begin to see what is at issue here. If nothing else the stunning convergence of cometary images should make clear that Humboldt's guess about the "smoking star" Venus and a local volcano is not a sufficient answer! The juxtaposition of cometary motifs with the now- peaceful planet--a planet whose appearance today could not begin to explain these associations--forces us to confront the logical alternative: if Venus did appear as a comet, the entire assembly of improbable "coincidences" disappears.
THE MYTH OF THE COMET VENUS

To establish the coincidence of cometary themes relating to Venus is not to end the subject, but simply to open the door to a new vantage point, one in which the researcher enjoys the freedom to consider unusual possibilities. Do the Aztec and Mayan codices, the inscriptions on stone, the oral histories, and the towering monuments speak for events no longer occurring in the skies? The unexpected symbolic parallels give the researcher a new way of perceiving his subject. Grant the possibility of a world-threatening comet Venus--frightening enough and destructive enough to substantiate man1s deepest fears--and the culture will no longer look the same. Re-envisioning the ancient world in this way will not remove the role of magic and superstition in the myths; nor will it soften the profoundly barbaric components of native rituals; nor will it give to the myths and rites that loftier wisdom we so often seek in ancient words. What it will do is lend the missing perspective, providing new frameworks for understanding the experiential roots of the culture. The candid researcher must first admit that even the most capable authorities, when considering the core of pre- Columbian thought and culture, find that convincing explanations elude them. Can modern scholars, for example, really claim to understand the cloud of anxiety that hung over Mexican cultures, an anxiety only heightened by the arrival of the Spaniards? Nothing in that civilization's monumental splendor could hide this apprehension. But to expose its roots the researcher must be willing to follow the clues, rather than dismiss them just because they seem so out of touch with the world we know. These clues will lead--inescapably--past the cover of cultural anxiety to its roots in celestial terror. The sensitive chronicler, Fray Diego Duran, writing just a generation after Columbus, recounted a story about the great emperor Moctezuma, concerning an experience prior to arrival of the conquistadors. It happened that Moctezuma had received word of a comet hanging over Mexico at sunrise. Though the report did not come from his personal astrologers: ...he was so filled with fear that he thought his death would arrive within the hour. Moctezuma then asked the king of neighboring Texcoco to tell him what the comet meant. The answer was as Moctezuma must have feared-It is an ill-omen for our kingdoms; terrible, frightful things will come upon them. In all our lands and provinces there will be great calamities and misfortunes, not a thing will be left standing. Death will dominate the land! All our dominion will be lost On hearing this news, Moctezuma-- wept bitterly, saying: O Lord of All Created Things! O mighty gods who gives life or death! Why have you decreed that many kings shall have reigned proudly but that my fate is to witness the unhappy destruction of Mexico?
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It would be senseless to attempt to isolate or explain Moctezuma's fears outside a cultural tradition far more telling than the individual biographies of kings. No king in earlier times could free himself from the mythical and ritual contexts of kingship. And in the overarching symbols of the power and fate of kings one encounters invariably the archaic language of the comet. Of the comet in Moctezuma's day, Duran's modern translators write: it is curious to note that the Aztecs looked upon comets as ill omens, just as the contemporary Europeans regarded them as signs of war, famine and pestilence. Among the Aztecs, "Comets and earthquakes, which were always carefully marked down each year in the hieroglyphic manuscripts, were always considered omens of misfortune," notes Jacques Soustell. In our investigation we have grouped comet and meteor symbolism together because mythically the two are synonymous. "Comets are referred to in Quich [highlands Maya] as uje ch1umil, 'tail of the star,' and are considered omens of massive pestilence," observes Barbara Tedlock. "Throughout the Mayan area, meteors are thought to be evil omens forecasting sickness, war, and death." The Mesoamerican theme resonates with a global fear that no comparative study can ignore: around the world, the comet signaled the approach of doomsday. And it mattered not how quietly and unobtrusively the visitor made its appearance, because the archetypal image did not originate in the little wisps of gas that periodically adorn our sky. With the rarest of exceptions, the cometary omen was ominous (the two English words being derived from the same Latin root). For the ancient stargazers, the comet was the fear-inspiring portent of disaster, the "ill-omened star". And thus does our word dis-aster (evil star) echo the ancient fear of a star (comet) presiding over universal catastrophe (another word reflecting the evil aster or star, the comet of world mythology). But this brief note on language of the evil star does not even scratch the surface when it comes to the depth of man1s memory of a world-ending cometary disaster.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: EDITORIAL VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (5) LIGHTNING OF THE GODS TIPPE-TOP INVERSION FROM SUN TO EARTH: TRACKING A NEW STORM NEW CABLE SERIES
Michael Armstrong David Talbott Wal Thornhill News Items Paul Hillman
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

It is evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that, however wide any of them seem to run from it, they still return by one passage or another. [We must] march directly up to the capitol or center of these sciences to human nature itself; which once being masters of, we may everywhere else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquest over all those sciences... There is no question of importance, whose decision is not compromised in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending, therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a complete system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security...The science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences. ~David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, p 12-13.
EDITORIAL
By Michael Armstrong However much one may disagree with the underlying metaphysical assumptions that Hume started with for his new "system of the sciences," or the conclusions that he reached, it is very difficult to disagree with the above quote. Just as it is of paramount importance for the individual on the road to spiritual integrity to take "the inward journey" to know himself, it is of equal importance for the human race to reconstruct the true nature of its past, at least those events and experiences that have left such a dramatic imprint on our individual and collective psyches. It is with this conviction that we continue our investigation of the ancient world, through the study and analysis of myths, rites and symbols, supported by new physical models and cosmology. If the great issues of human origins, purpose of life, evil in the world, and human destiny are showcased in a falsely constructed view of our past, how can any conclusions derived therein be valid?
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METHODOLOGY AND OUTCOME

We have previously observed that, in seeking out Velikovsky's comet, "methodology is everything." A useful methodology will not dismiss a widespread theme just because it appears highly irrational or incapable of explanation. In Bob Forrest's critique he acknowledges such "comet" themes as the death of a king or great leader at the appearance of a comet, good wine in the year of a comet, and the comet signaling outbreaks of war. As to the roots of such odd ideas, "heaven only knows," he exclaims. So why should we accept only those comet ideas that support Velikovsky's thesis? Here Forrest missed each and every opportunity to account for what he assumed could never be explained. If worldwide comet symbolism originated in the experience of a truly terrifying intruder, it is simply impossible to know which portions of comet lore are relevant prior to reconstructing the story from the global evidence. And in truth, ALL of the comet themes cited by Forrest are illuminated by the biography of the Great Comet, as I intend to demonstrate with more than sufficient evidence in this series. First there is the matter of pervasive fear; for when it comes to "irrational" terror carried as luggage from the past, little else compares to the universal fear of THE COMET. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, in their book Comet, find the fear to be virtually universal: Rarely have so many diverse cultures, all over the planet, agreed so well. In the history of the world, more societies have advocated incest or infanticide than have taught that comets were benign, or even neutral. Everywhere on Earth, with only a few exceptions, comets were harbingers of change, ill fortune, evil. It was common knowledge. Most of us are, in fact, so accustomed to the common expressions of this fear that we fall into a trap of illogic: "Comets, of course, were always regarded in antiquity as omens of disaster," wrote the esteemed authority on comparative religion, Theodore Gaster. It sounds as if ("of course") the overwhelming fear is completely natural and needs no explanation BECAUSE it is so universal. The trap also caught author David Ritchie: For thousands of years comets have been associated with all manners of disasters and misfortune. This association is easy to understand. But the pervasiveness of an irrational fear is not an explanation. I find it of interest that Fred Whipple, one of the deans of modern astronomy, did not find an easy explanation for the hysteria. Why should comets--those graceful, sometimes majestic, creatures of the sky--frighten people? They move very slowly, without startling changes in shape or aspect. They make no sounds and emit no dazzling flashes of light. In short, they do nothing that seems to me to be threatening. Yet comets have terrified people as long as there have been people to terrify. The ancient and poorly understood fear aroused by the appearance of a comet continued through the Middle Ages and even (in a more tempered expression) into the twentieth century, with the arrival of Halley's Comet in 1910. "We may all die laughing when the comet [Halley] comes," the French astronomer Camille Flammarion was quoted as saying, with language that fed a widespread pre-existing apprehension of the fin du monde.
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In earlier times the extent of comet fear was deadly. On the arrival of the comet of 1528, the famous French surgeon Ambroise Par described the public reaction: This comet was so horrible and so frightful and it produced such great terror in the vulgar that some died of fear and others fell sick. The range of comet fears is impressive. According to Aristotle, the comet brings wind and drought. Among both the Greeks and Romans, "The comet was inevitably the presage of some cataclysmic event," states A. Barret. Josephus reports in his History of the Jews that prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies, "a comet shaped like a sword" hung over the city for an entire year. (While Carl Sagan hastens to point out the impossibility of the literal occurrence, it effectively mirrors the mythical role of the comet.) According to Servius, the ancient and infamous comet Typhon produced terrible famine. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle recorded "firedrakes"--fiery dragons--"seen flying in the air" at the time of a great famine in 779, observing as well that a great comet appeared at the time of famine in 975. And so too does a comet bring great famine in the traditions of the Masai of East Africa. In Byrhtferth's Manual, published in the year 1011, occurs this description of a comet: "There is a star called a comet. When it appears it betokens famine or pestilence or war or the destruction of the earth or fearful storms." Similarly the Eghap of Nigeria say that pestilence is the regular companion of the feared comet. Even the historian Isidor Bishop of Seville (602-636), a well known skeptic when it came to astrology, could not set aside the belief that the comet presaged "revolutions, wars, and pestilence." Gregory of Tours (c. 541-594), writing in De Cursu Stellarum, tells us that when a comet "spreads its hair abroad darkly, it announces rain to the country." Nor is it surprising to find the rumor that the Great Plague of London was due to the appearance of a comet; or that a comet is also said to have accompanied the great earthquake at Lima, Peru, in 1746. While the association of the comet and wide-ranging disaster is worldwide, the pattern may initially seem diffuse, with insufficient coherence to support any unified theory of comet fears. Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia, for example, included the following description under the heading "comet": Not only in antiquity, but through the centuries among all peoples, comets have aroused in man a feeling of terror and foreboding. These mysterious visitors in the heavens have been thought to be connected with war, famine, the plague, the downfall of kings and monarchs, the end of the world, universal suffering, ill-luck, and sickness. How, then, did this curious profile of the comet arise? The darkly pessimistic ideas about comets inspired Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan to muse-There is an overwhelming sadness to the literature of comets. With melancholy consistency we discover that disaster has always been a commonplace; that any comet at any time viewed from anywhere on Earth is assured of some tragedy for which it can be held accountable. Such is the logic of efforts to explain mythical ideas through experiences familiar to our own day: the commentator simply assumes that when a comet appeared the undisciplined primitive mind freely associated it with one or another disaster occurring around the same time. But this suggested habit will not explain why the first instinct of stargazers was to look for a COMET to account for the occurrence of great disasters. Nor will the stargazer's haste to connect the comet and disaster explain the deeper theme of the WORLDENDING apocalypse. If one looks at comet lore more closely, it will be realized that what the stargazers feared most was no local calamity.
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Ancient Chinese comet lore held that "Comets are vile stars. Every time they appear in the south, something happens to wipe out the old and establish the new." In the language of myth that means the end of the world. Both the Sibylline Oracles and a Dead Sea Scroll (War of the Sons of Light and Darkness) present the comet as a sign of the Last Days--all of which sounds very much like the Aztec's comet-like plumed serpent presiding over the end of one world age and beginning of another. Consider, for example, why it is that the comet soars into prominence as our own calendar approaches a "critical moment," at the end of a millennium. (Yes, it seems that round numbers and "critical moments" go hand in hand, fed by the sense of cyclical time and the global myth of a world age ending in sweeping catastrophe.) Mary Proctor tells us that as the year 1000 approached "even the most simple phenomena assumed terrible proportions." And this included, not surprisingly, "reports of earth-quakes, and a comet visible for nine days." Here again is the earthquake-comet association despite the failure of any known comet to redeem the association. The role of an archetypal myth in influencing reports of ostensibly historical comets will be clearly seen in the following chronicle of the year 1000, cited by Proctor-The heavens having opened, a kind of burning torch fell upon the earth, leaving behind a long train of light similar to a flash of lightning...as this opening in the heavens closed, imperceptibly there became visible the figure of a dragon, whose feet were blue, and whose head seemed continually to increase. Even the world-famous dragon finds its way into the story, when the calendar calls for it! But let us not forget the distinction between the symbol and the thing symbolized. Every break in the natural order was a reminder (symbol) of what world mythology presents as a universal disaster; in this sense, the local pestilence needed a comet to find its place in the mythically-defined scheme, particularly at the end of the millennium. Even today, as we approach a new millennium, the apocalyptic fear expresses itself with every local catastrophe, offering a "sign" of the anticipated end of the world--just as, century after century, virtually every wisp of a comet played its required part in the psychological drama. How the underlying story and its symbols originated is an entirely different matter, involving patterns that could never be explained by any local disaster or any local experience whatsoever. That many of the most significant patterns are poorly recognized is due almost entirely to the methodology and suppositions of the investigators. The result is a heap of evidential fragments--more than sufficient to illustrate the global fear of comets, but with little or no comprehension of the remembered events from which the patterns emerged. The "portentous" news brought by the comet can be summarized as follows: the comet foretells the fall of the kingdom; the comet predicts the arrival of plague, famine, earthquake, pestilence; the comet means the end of a world age, the arrival of universal darkness or night, the occlusion of the sun by chaos monsters, a victory (though temporary) of rebelling powers. the comet forecasts the death of kings or great rulers; the comet heralds cataclysmic wars.
For the present discussion, I shall simply cite enough instances to illustrate the key ideas. These recurring motifs do not explain themselves! Why the repeated idea that a comet means the death of kings? It is the archetype and nothing else that will explain the symbol. (As we will see, appearance of the Great Comet was synonymous with the death of the Universal Monarch, the PROTOTYPE of kings.) While the unobtrusive comets observed in our time only accent the irrationality of ancient fears, the worldwide portent symbolism of the comet answers so completely to the Great Comet (Venus) as to logically preclude the customary, localized explanations of these fears. The things which ancient nations believed about comets are, in every case, inseparably tied to the story of one heaven-shattering, universally-remembered comet, an archetype in every sense of the word.
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LIGHTNING OF THE GODS

By Wal Thornhill [EDITOR'S NOTE: This begins a series of articles by Wal Thornhill on the electrical character of stars and planets.] 'It is the thunderbolt that steers the Universe'' ~Heraclitus, c.500 BC Heraclitus, 2,500 years ago, was closer to the truth than modern astronomers. In years to come, people will look back on the present era with incredulity. How could we have been so blind? Why did we regard the universe as electrically sterile, when the evidence that it is not was staring us in the face? In answering these questions I will show how badly science suffers from paradigm paralysis. Breaking free from old paradigms allows amazing connections to be forged between disciplines presently thought to have nothing in common. Who would have thought that mythology could illuminate plasma physics and celestial dynamics and vice-versa? And this must be the hallmark of correct paradigms - no data can be ignored or discarded when searching for the truth. Every piece must fit the puzzle. Some of the results are astounding on first meeting - for example that our Sun and all stars are giant balls of lightning - but so obvious and simple when the evidence is presented. That evidence comes from the totality of human experience of phenomena in the skies, spanning prehistoric cave paintings to modern space probes. This is as it must be. According to David Talbott's meticulous research spanning 25 years, the "Saturnian Configuration" was a spectacular arrangement of looming planets in Earth's prehistoric sky, universally remembered and depicted by the ancients. The appearance of that sky beggars even the modern imagination which has been conditioned to the weirdness of phenomena seen in deep space. Since shortly after their assumed creation 4 or 5 billion years ago, the planets are believed to have moved like clockwork along their separate orbits. Yet, it is well known among astronomers that Newton1s law of gravity when applied to more than 2 orbiting bodies, leads in a relatively short time to chaotic motion. How can the solar system have remained in its apparently stable configuration for the 5 eons required by current theories of solar system evolution? And why, if the planets and moons were formed from the same primordial cloud of gas and dust, are they such a fruit salad of physical characteristics, axial tilts, rotation rates and orbits? Why do many of the moons show sharp hemispherical differences? What really caused the strange pristine scars seen on the inner planets and moons? How is it that many of these scars are of such colossal size? In several cases we see, smaller moons, craters so large that the moons should have been pulverized by the impact, if indeed the craters were formed by impacting bodies. The ad-hoc nature of most expert answers to these questions prompts skepticism of the current paradigm. It seems much too easy to dismiss the Saturnian Configuration of planets as science fiction. Astronomers may reassure themselves and us that such an arrangement of planets is impossible, but in doing so there is no acknowledgment of the alien sky, depicted with remarkable specificity and consistency by ancient peoples around the world. Consequently, many loose ends in other disciplines are left dangling. This is characteristic of modern scientific knowledge. It has been left to a few qualified people with more imagination to show that there is a stable dynamical system of planets conforming to the Saturnian Configuration. But it raises the additional question: if the solar system has been so drastically reordered since prehistoric times, how is it that it shows no sign of it now? I will show that by scaling up electrical effects seen on Earth and in the laboratory, I can provide stunning support for the ancient imagery of a different sky and hence the likelihood that planets and moons did move in close proximity in the recent past, as proposed by David Talbott's model. An electric universe model provides a simple mechanism for re-ordering a chaotic planetary system in a very short time and
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maintaining that stability. It has other startling consequences which confirm that science fiction writers are the best predictors of the future. My approach to the problem has been like Talbott's, using pattern matching, but converging from the physical sciences rather than the humanities. It is a lesson we both learned early from Immanuel Velikovsky. It has given amazing results for the synthesis of a new cosmology and history of the human race. It provides the first glimpse of the interdisciplinary knowledge of the third millennium. So, what do I mean by an electric Universe? Astronomical theory presents gravity and magnetism as the only forces participating in the mechanism of the Universe. This may seem a very strange attitude when it is known that magnetism requires electrical currents to flow, but I think it highlights our mistaken models of the material world and our failure to discern the interactions of seemingly separate parts. I will show that a re-examination of basic physics points to an intimate connection between the electrical force and magnetism and gravity. The result is a more holistic, interconnected view of the universe and its interactions, from the subatomic level on up through living beings to the planets, stars, and great streaming galaxies.
The following news items were submitted by Ian Tresman:
Twist of fate
New Scientist, 2 August 97 By Jeff Hecht The crust and mantle of the Earth twisted 90 degrees around its liquid core in a mere blink of geological time around half a billion years ago, claim geologists in California. The repositioning of the continents may have caused the unprecedented Cambrian explosion in species diversity. Evidence for the theory comes from the directions of magnetic fields in the minerals in rocks. The magnetic fields in molten rocks align with the Earth's and become frozen in as the rocks cool and solidify, providing a permanent record of the position of the rocks at that time relative to the Earth's field. Geologists had already looked at the magnetic signatures in Australian rocks that solidified between about 534 million and 519 million years ago in the Cambrian. At that time, Australia was part of a supercontinent called Gondwanaland that also included what are now Africa, South America, Antarctica and India. The rocks suggested that over 15 million years, Australia rotated through almost 90 degrees. Geologists suspected that the data were misleading, however, because they suggested unrealistically rapid motion. In last week's Science (vol 277, p 541), Joseph Kirschvink and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena report that they reanalyzed the Australian data and now conclude that Gondwanaland really did turn about 90 degrees over some 15 million years. They believe this means that the entire solid part of the Earth rotated as a unit, with the points that had been the ancient north and south poles ending up on the equator. Data from North America also back this up, they say. Kirschvink says that this might have happened due to changes in the distribution of mass within the Earth following the formation of Gondwanaland 550 million years ago. "We're not sure exactly what the changes were," he admits. But had the distribution changed, heavier regions would have shifted towards low latitudes due to the spin of the Earth. "Excess mass tends to go toward the equator," Kirschvink says. The rapid movement of the continents could explain the Cambrian explosion, when species diversified very rapidly. Continents and oceans would have shifted into new climate zones. Kirschvink suggests that
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this upheaval would have fragmented ecosystems, leaving isolated populations that could have evolved rapidly. Other geologists are unconvinced, however. "It's plausible, but it has in no way been demonstrated," says Rob van der Voo, a geologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Christopher Scotese of the University of Texas at Arlington adds that the team only used a small subset of the available data: Where you have really good data, in the past hundred million years, the amount of true polar wander is negligible. (c) Copyright New Scientist, IPC Magazines Limited 1997
Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander
Science Magazine Volume 277, Number 5325, Issue of 25 July 1997, pp. 541-545: Joseph L. Kirschvink, Robert L. Ripperdan, David A. Evans Analysis of Vendian to Cambrian paleomagnetic data shows anomalously fast rotations and latitudinal drift for all of the major continents. These motions are consistent with an Early to Middle Cambrian inertial interchange true polar wander event, during which Earth's lithosphere and mantle rotated about 90 degrees in response to an unstable distribution of the planet's moment of inertia. The proposed event produces a longitudinally constrained Cambrian paleogeography and accounts for rapid rates of continental motion during that time. J. L. Kirschvink and D. A. Evans, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. R. L. Ripperdan, Department of Geology, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Mayaguez 00681, Puerto Rico.
NEW WEEKLY CABLE SERIES TO FEATURE CATASTROPHE ...BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP.
Dear Friend,
PLANETARY
Yes, we are excited about a new opportunity to tell a story of planets and catastrophe, but we need your help in more ways than one. Again and again we've heard from people asking for a full overview of the Saturn theory, a story whose breadth and sweeping implications far exceed the sum of published articles. This requested overview is exactly what we intend to deliver, but with a surprise. It was only in the past year that the work of David Talbott, author of The Saturn Myth, converged with the work of the Australian physicist Wallace Thornhill. The great surprise for us has been the perfect fit of Thornhill's "electrical solar system" with the historical data gathered by Talbott and his colleagues. How confident am I in this "perfect fit"? Well, the most compelling evidence is the response of participants in our recent northwest regional workshops. To the best of our knowledge not one person left these
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events believing that science has gotten the picture right. And all agreed that Thornhill's work pulls the rug out from under the typical objections to the Saturn model based on mainstream physical theory. Let me give you just one of many examples. When the European SOHO satellite, just a few months ago, unexpectedly encountered a comet-tail of Venus (extending almost to the Earth), astronomers were more than a little puzzled. To put it bluntly, this highly structured plasma tail defies all conventional theory. What astonished scientist's about the now-invisible or remnant-tail of Venus was the apparent structure, which they called "stringy things." On the conventional model, there can be no such structure in a tail constituted from plasma simply "blowing in the (solar) wind." The discovered structure requires the flow of electricitya phenomenon astronomy has never even considered!and this single fact challenges mainstream theory at its foundations. The flow of electricity in a plasma produces Birkeland Currents in the form of twisting filaments--the "stringy things" encountered by the SOHO satellite. But long before the SOHO discovery, Wal Thornhill had discussed this principle of cometary "discharges"--while the twisting, "braided" hair of the Venus comet has for many years been part of David Talbott's reconstruction! Now to the punchline. Thanks to the exceptional interest generated by our recent activity in the northwest, we are launching a weekly one-hour cable program to be called "Electric Sky: The Age of Gods and Heroes." The program will focus on Velikovsky, the Saturn theory and the work of Wal Thornhill. (You will see a number of articles by Thornhill in future issues of AEON, while Talbott and Thornhill are now collaborating on a book, expected out within the year.) The program is being produced in Portland, Oregon, but we expect it to be available on other cable channels across the country as well. We're scheduled to produce 12 programs over 12 weeks, and we will continue the program if it works as hoped. We now have a complete production team contributing time as volunteers. This includes the director, producer, host, scriptwriter, cameramen, engineers, and assistants. (Please keep in mind that this is cable access. We are not promising Stephen Spielberg production values. But we are promising something higher than the familiar cable access quality --and a subject more interesting and with more dramatic implications than anything Spielberg himself has ever produced!) Over the past three years we've accumulated hundreds of visual images, computer graphics, and animation segments to illustrate the way the ancient sky once looked, highlighting the specific roles of planets. Only a small portion of the total material has been published in any forum. The cable series, we believe, gives us the best opportunity to present the principles of the reconstruction in simple language and with visual clarity, all in manageable pieces that can be easily assimilated, both by newcomers and by people who have followed the discussion over the years.. I cannot think of a greater opportunity to get the story out, to begin reaching a larger market, and to attract new scholarly and scientific participation. That is why we are asking for your contribution to any extent possible, from $20 to $200, or more if that is possible without inconvenience. I cannot overemphasize that every contribution will make a difference in our total impact. All contributors will receive a VHS tape of the first two programs in the series. (TOTAL: TWO HOURS) ADDRESS: Kronia Communications 8350 SW Greenway #24 Beaverton, OR 97008 Credit card transactions are possible by phone: PLEASE USE THIS TOLL FREE NUMBER: 1-800-2309347. The back-up number to call is 503-646-5257. Though we have scheduled studio time on the first twelve programs, the wealth of material now available is sufficient to keep the program going indefinitely. To succeed in the longer-term strategy, however, it will
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be necessary for us to develop a national network of cable producers with an interest in alternative science. We are now covered in the Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles areas, and are prepared to begin vigorous communications with producers in other regions. Perhaps this is an additional way in which you can help if you can direct us to anyone in your own area who is active in cable production and distribution, with a potential interest in the subject. Additionally, our series will include interviews with experts who are able to contribute significant insights on the physical and historical issues discussed. We would be pleased to receive any suggestions you may have as to credible authorities we should contact. I must emphasize as well that the aggressive production schedule to which we are now committed means that the timeliness of your help will be critical. Please accept our heartfelt thanks for your assistance. Sincerely, Paul E. Hillman, Kronia Communications.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: EDITORIAL VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (6) SCIENTISTS DISCOVER SOLAR JET STREAMS REMARKS ON SOLAR JET STREAMS
Michael Armstrong David Talbott NASA Release Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

It seems clear ... that we are faced with deep and radical fragmentation, as well as thoroughgoing confusion, if we try to think of what could be the reality that is treated by our physical laws. At present physicists tend to avoid this issue by adopting the attitude that our overall views concerning the nature of reality are of little or no importance. All that counts in physical theory is supposed to be the development of mathematical equations that permit us to predict and control the behaviour of large statistical aggregates of particles. Such a goal is not regarded as merely for its pragmatic and technical utility: rather, it has become a presupposition of most work in modern physics that prediction and control of this kind is all that human knowledge is about. ~David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980, P. xiii.
EDITORIAL
By Michael Armstrong MORE PHILOSOPHY CONCERNING TRUTH Why search for the truth if it isn't going to do you any good when you find it? Physical reality is dynamic, not static, and it is this dynamic essence that we experience and apprehend with our five senses. There is no experience of physical reality apart from some dynamic aspect, i.e., some movement or change, contrast, difference or discontinuity, or irreversibility. If there were only one color to physical reality, even the best conceivable eyes would see nothing. Or if there were only one changeless sound, even the best of ears would not hear anything. So is it also with the essence of spiritual or non-material realities. In order to understand the meaningful aspects of human experience and human nature it is necessary to see that which is the same and that which is different. As a functioning mechanical/biological system we can be compared to a computer -- we have Hardware (our biological body), Software (our psyche or soul, the composite of mind, instincts, propensities, aptitudes, etc.), and Input/Output (our ability to respond and communicate). This triune pattern seems to hold for Man's intellect, which under sound operation is rational, logical and reasonable. While being
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rational means being able to distinguish and apprehend the pertinent facts and information of a situation, being logical includes being rational and also means being able to see meaningful relationships between facts and information and to extrapolate to valid or correct conclusions. These two lower level intellectual capabilities are meaningless in and of themselves unless they form the foundation of what is ultimately meaningful, that which is being reasonable. This also includes but transcends being rational and logical by relating to and incorporating a defensible purpose and set of values which can be called human or humane. Being reasonable (ultimately meaning "correct") is so closely bound up with purpose that much of the time we use the word "reason" as a substitute for the word "purpose". Now, what is ultimately meaningful can ONLY be the search for truth. There is no other meaningful reason to study planetary history. But it is one thing to postulate the existence of truth; it is quite another to postulate a trustworthy way of accessing or apprehending that truth. How can we be assured that something is the truth? If the truth walked up to us and shook our hand, how would we recognize it? Truth without a way of accessing it will have no value. Truth without a TRUSTED way of accessing it will always remain tentative. Truth without an AGREED UPON means of accessing it will always leave one isolated: it will provide no basis for a common understanding of the world or our place in it. Many people have their sense of truth tethered to their culture, some to the majority, some to prior schooling, some to a set of "sacred writings", some to tradition, and some to "accredited" authorities. There is only one way to get past the resulting divisions in our collective perception of the world. And that is through a commitment to rational, logical, and reasonable inquiry, with nothing else standing between ourselves and the quest for truth.

THE GREAT COMET AND THE DEATH OF KINGS

We began this section with a note on the Aztec emperor Moctezuma's terror on the arrival of a comet. The focus of this fear is significant because it was shared by emperors and kings and tribal chiefs the world over. The comet means the death of great leaders. The idea appears to be as old as Babylonian astronomy, which associates a comet with the death of kings. The Roman poet Lucan offers a vivid description of cometary disaster, when the skies, "blazing fire," bring forth the "hair of the baleful star--the comet which portends changes to monarchs." So too did the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy connect the comet with the death of kings. The profound fears of royalty at the appearance of the comet continued well into the present era. The third century Christian theologian Origen cites the comet as heralding a change in dynasties. It was a common "belief that the comet of AD 336 had announced the death of the great emperor Constantine." In connection with the assassination of Julius Caesar, it was said, a comet had appeared in the sky. On learning of a comet Nero was seized with fear, and chroniclers assure us that a comet preceded the death of the Emperor Macrinus in A.D. 218, and of Attila in A.D. 451. According to Synesius, writing in the fourth century A.D., a comet means great disaster:
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And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings.
The Frankish bishop and historian Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, reports that the "flaming diadem" of a comet portends the death of kings. Geoffrey of Monmouth connected the death of Aurelius Ambrosius with the appearance of a spectacular comet whose political symbolism was said to have been explained by Merlin. Even the brilliant astronomer Tycho Brahe, several centuries later, was unable to free himself from the idea that the comet brought overwhelming pestilence, war, and the death of kings. When Halley's Comet appeared in April 1066, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gave this report: ...In this year King Harald came from York to Westminster at Easter, which was after the mid winter in which the king (Edward the Confessor) died. Then was seen over all England such a sign in the heaven as no man ever before saw; some say it was the star Cometa. Among the ancient Germanic peoples, according to Grimm, the belief persisted that a comet's "appearance betokens events fraught with peril, especially the death of a king." The memory of the comet is well preserved in the song of German schoolchildren in the time of Martin Luther-[These] things a comet brings ... Storm, plague, famine, death of kings, War, earthquake, flood, and upheaval. A drawing of a comet in the Chinese cometary atlas from the tomb at Mawangdui is accompanied by the simple statement: There will be deaths of kings. The Chinese Record of the World Changes, by Li Ch'un Feng, (602-667 AD) warns of dire consequences: When a comet travels into the Constellation Taurus... within three years the emperor dies and the country is in chaos. So, too, do the Luba of Africa say that comet means the death of a leader. And in the same way, natives of the Polynesian Islands, claimed that a comet signified the death of a chief. Here, then, is the universal mythical context in which we must understand Moctezuma's fears. In the global tradition it is as if the comet bore particularly ominous news for heads of state, and the Aztec world view was no exception. Aveni, noting the intense interest in cometary phenomena among Mesoamerican peoples, tells us that illustrations of comets are frequently accompanied by interpretations of these portents: These usually signify that a person of nobility will die. The paradox is accented in Shakespeare's famous lines-When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Of course kings knew very well the special perils of comets. When a comet in 837 drew the attention of King Louis the Pious of France:
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The king went into a veritable orgy of prayers and devotions, ordering churches and shrines built to appease the imagined wrath of God. The Carthaginian general Hannibal in 184 B.C. was warned that a "recently- discovered comet meant he would die soon." He answered the comet by committing suicide. Is there something to be explained in the comets threat to kings? When Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan encountered the "death of kings" idea, they offered the usual explanation, calling such ideas "the triumph of superstition" and assuming the fear arose from the random coincidence of certain kings dying at the time comets appeared. Velikovsky's critic Bob Forrest was even less impressed with the strange idea. While noting that the death of kings is "perhaps the commonest" theme of all, he adds-Certainly I see no pressing need to postulate cometary "collisions" on the basis of the "evil" reputation of comets any more than I need to invoke cometary/planetary exhalations to explain good wine years. But again the critic has drawn his conclusion prematurely, and we are left only with what amounts to a guess as to whether there is a connection with planetary upheaval. What happens, on the other hand, if instead of setting the fragments aside once gathered, we look for connecting links? In summarizing the curious theme of the comet and the death of kings, Mary Proctor adds a telling observation. The comet of A.D. 451 or A.D. 453 announced the death of Attila, and the comet of A.D. 455 that of the Emperor Valentinian. So widely spread was the belief in the connection between the death of the great and those menacing signs in the heavens that the chroniclers of old appear to have recorded comets which were never seen, such as the comet of A.D. 814, which was supposed to have presaged the death of Charlemagne. The note concerning the death of Charlemagne is significant. Can one really believe that localized, random, and disconnected events caused the same theme to arise on every continent--and with such oppressive influence that a comet would be invented when the expected visitor failed to materialize at the death of a powerful ruler? According to Peter Lancaster Brown: Every bright comet which appeared during the medieval period, the Middle Ages, and even the Renaissance had itself affixed to the death or misfortune of a prominent historical figure. These beliefs were so widespread that (according to Pingre) the chronicles recorded in good faith comets which were never actually seen. This suggests that the death of kings motif, rather than reflecting random local events, conditioned man's perception of local events for century upon century. For those familiar with the way core mythical ideas work their way down through history, this is a key indicator of a very ancient and well-rooted idea. The chroniclers would happily re-write history to bring it into accord with the great mythical traditions of kingship and the gods. To the modern reader it may appear as if the ideas dropped randomly out of the sky, but a closer look will eliminate that impression completely. The patterns are the key. One fascinating idea about comets, for example, provides a unifying thread, while directing our attention to earlier mythical sources. A comet was frequently claimed to be the soul of a great ruler rising in the sky (certainly a good reason for loyalists to find a comet on the death of a ruler, even if the sky is not cooperating). Consider the famous case of Julius Caesar. On the death of that ruler, according to the Latin poet Ovid and others, a great cometary spectacle occurred in the sky, as Caesar's soul itself rose as a comet. And from Ovid's reverent description it seems that it could not have been otherwise for a leader of such stature. Clearly, the mythically-rooted story--celebrating the cometary "soul" of a great leader--preceded Ovid's poetic license!
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Aristotle, not given to celebrate the mythical tradition, tells us that the Greek philosopher Democritus held that comets were the souls of men of renown. Among the Polynesian Islanders, according to Williams, a comet did not just signify the death of a king, a comet meant the flight of the soul. Similarly, the eminent student of comparative myth and religion, James Frazer, produced extensive proof that "a widespread superstition...associates meteors or falling stars with the souls of the dead. Often they are believed to be the spirits of the departed on their way to the other world." With respect to the departing cometary soul of Caesar, which I shall take up in a summary of the Greek and Roman material, I cannot resist passing on to the reader one fascinating detail. When Robert Schilling, perhaps the world's leading authority on the Latin goddess Venus, gathered the references to Caesar's apotheosis, he noticed a curious blend of two ideas: one that the soul rose as a comet, the other that the soul rose as the planet Venus. And the two ideas were actually joined as one, for the poet Ovid describes the soul as a flaming comet CARRIED ALOFT BY VENUS. In more than one instance the soul itself is celebrated as Venus. A curiosity indeed. "What general conspiracy," Schilling asks, "seems to have tacitly excluded the comet to the profit of the star [Venus]?" That the specialist did not discern the connection to a larger pattern (Venus = comet in a global tradition) is why the comparative study is so crucial.
SOUL OF THE CREATOR-KING

We are thus brought back to Moctezuma's terror. One "explanation" for his fear of the comet asks unidentified local experiences to account for it and asks coincidence to account for parallel comet fears around the world. But another explanation is possible, in terms of an ancient story known to every native of Mexico and reflected in the most powerful cosmic images of Aztec culture. I refer to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, whose soul rose as the comet-like Venus. If Quetzalcoatl's departing heart-soul provided a prototype of the comet myth, we do not need to look further for an explanation of the comet's relation to the "death of kings" . In this case, the relationship is self-evident: the comet means the death of the king because tradition proclaimed that on the death of GREAT KING (the god remembered as the PROTOTYPE of kings) his soul departed from him in a cosmic disaster. And the comet brings the end of the world because, in the death of the god-king and the departure of his heart-soul as a comet, a former world age ended catastrophically. Having raised the question rhetorically, I do not expect the critic to accept the suggested explanation of comet symbolism apart from the complete presentation of evidence in this series. Nevertheless, for the sake of saving time, it may be helpful to give the gist of the idea I intend to develop and substantiate with each future installment-Within human memory extraordinary changes have occurred in the solar system. Planets now remote from the Earth once moved in much, much closer proximity to our planet, appearing as gigantic powers looming over man. Hence, we cannot understand the mythical age of the gods without confronting the "gods" as visible forms in the sky, forms that are no longer present. In all mythical systems the gods rule for a time, then depart amid celestial upheaval. Mythically, there was once a founding king, a celestial model of the good king. But neither this charismatic figure, nor his celestial progeny will answer to familiar references in a now-settled sky. Nor will the mythical powers of darkness, in their monstrous dress, find any explanation in our experienced world. Inherent in the myths of the gods is the collective human experience of extraordinary trauma. An idyllic world, a paradisal condition, a Golden Age ruled by a former "great king" (the CREATOR-king, the Universal Monarch), came crashing down in a world-ending disaster: wars of the gods, earthquake, famine, wind and flood, the arrival of universal night. Of this world-ending catastrophe the Great Comet Venus--the departing heart-soul of the creator-king-was remembered as both symbol and agent.
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SCIENTISTS DISCOVER MASSIVE JET STREAMS FLOWING INSIDE THE SUN

RELEASE: 97-184 Donald Savage Headquarters, Washington, DC August 28, 1997 (Phone: 202/358-1547) Bill Steigerwald Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (Phone: 301/286-8955) Scientists using the joint European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft have discovered "jet streams" or "rivers" of hot, electrically charged gas called plasma flowing beneath the surface of the Sun. They also found features similar to trade winds that transport gas beneath the Sun's fiery surface. These new findings will help them understand the famous sunspot cycle and associated increases in solar activity that can affect the Earth with power and communications disruptions. The observations are the latest made by the Solar Oscillations Investigation (SOI) group at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and they build on discoveries by the SOHO science team over the past year. "We have detected motion similar to the weather patterns in the Earth's atmosphere," said Dr. Jesper Schou of Stanford. "Moreover, in what is a completely new discovery, we have found a jet-like flow near the poles. This flow is totally inside the Sun. It is completely unexpected, and cannot be seen at the surface." "These polar streams are on a small scale, compared to the whole Sun, but they are still immense compared to atmospheric jet streams on the Earth," added Dr. Philip Scherrer, the SOI principal investigator at Stanford. "Ringing the Sun at about 75 degrees latitude, they consist of flattened oval regions about 17,000 miles across where material moves about 10 percent (about 80 mph) faster than its surroundings. Although these are the smallest structures yet observed inside the Sun, each is still large enough to engulf two Earths." Additionally, there are features similar to the Earth's trade winds on the surface of the Sun. The Sun rotates much faster at the equator than at the poles. However, Stanford researchers Schou and Dr. Alexander G. Kosovichev have found that there are belts in the northern and southern hemispheres where currents flow at different speeds relative to each other. Six of these gaseous bands move slightly faster than the material surrounding them. The solar belts are more than 40 thousand miles across and they contain "winds" that move about ten miles per hour relative to their surroundings. The first evidence of these belts was found more than a decade ago by Dr. Robert Howard of the Mount Wilson Observatory. The Stanford researchers have now shown that, rather than being superficial surface motion, the belts extend down to a depth of at least 12,000 miles below the Sun's surface. "In one way, the Sun's zonal belts behave more like the colorful banding found on Jupiter than the region of tradewinds on the Earth," said Stanford's Dr. Craig DeForest. "Somewhat like stripes on a barber pole, they start in the mid-latitudes and gradually move toward the equator during the eleven-year solar cycle.
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They also appear to have a relationship to sunspot formation as sunspots tend to form at the edges of these zones. "We speculate that the differences in speed of the plasma at the edge of these bands may be connected with the generation of the solar magnetic cycle which, in turn, generates periodic increases in solar activity, but we'll need more observations to see if this is correct," said DeForest. Finally, the solar physicists have determined that the entire outer layer of the Sun, to a depth of at least 15,000 miles, is slowly but steadily flowing from the equator to the poles. The polar flow rate is relatively slow, about 50 miles per hour, compared to its rotation speed, about 4,000 miles per hour; however, this is fast enough to transport an object from the equator to the pole in a bit more than a year. "Oddly enough, the polar flow moves in the opposite direction from that of the sunspots and the zonal belts, which are moving from higher to lower latitudes," said DeForest. Evidence for polar flow previously had been observed at the Sun's surface, but scientists did not know how deep the motion extended. With a volume equal to about 4 percent of the total Sun, this feature probably has an important impact on the Sun's activity, argue Stanford researchers Scherrer, with Dr. Thomas L. Duvall Jr., Dr. Richard S. Bogart, and graduate student Peter M. Giles. For the last year, the SOHO spacecraft has been aiming its battery of 12 scientific instruments at the Sun from a position 930,000 miles sunward from the Earth. The Stanford research team has been viewing the Sun's surface with one of these instruments called a Michelson Doppler Imager that can measure the vertical motion of the Sun's surface at one million different points once per minute. The measurements show the effects of sound waves that permeate the interior. The researchers then apply techniques similar to Earth-based seismology and computer-aided tomography to infer and map the flow patterns and temperature beneath the Sun's roiling surface. "These techniques allow us to peer inside the Sun using sound waves, much like a doctor can look inside a pregnant woman with a sonogram," said Dr. Schou. Currently, the Stanford scientists have both identified new structures in the interior of the Sun and clarified the form of previously discovered ones. Understanding their relationship to solar activity will require more observations and time for analysis. "At this point, we do not know whether the plasma streams snake around like the jet stream on Earth, or whether it is a less dynamic feature," said Dr. Douglas Gough, of Cambridge University, UK. "It is intriguing to speculate that these streams may affect solar weather like the terrestrial jetstream impacts weather patterns on Earth, but this is completely unclear right now. The same speculation may apply to the other flows we've observed, or they may act in concert. It will be especially helpful to make observations as the Sun enters its next active cycle, expected to peak around the year 2001." Images to support this story can be found at the following Internet address: http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/newsroom/flash/flash.htm
REMARKS ON SOLAR JET STREAM WEATHER

By Wal Thornhill I've downloaded the images and text [of the above article] to find that it offers startling confirmation of the "Electric Universe" model, which sees the Sun being powered externally by plasma currents from the galaxy. Few, if any of the features on the Sun have any right being there if it is purely an isolated nuclear source of energy.
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For example, if the Sun is an isolated body in space radiating away its internal energy, then it should have no "weather". If the solar wind is carrying energy away from the Sun, slowing it down, then it's equator should be spinning more slowly than the higher latitudes, not faster. But if the Sun is being powered externally, like an electric motor, the equatorial plasma will be driven to rotate faster creating complex electromagnetic interactions in the conductive plasma of the Sun, interpreted in the attached article as "weather". Of particular note is the reference to the similarity of the solar jet streams to the banding on Jupiter. As I have written many times over recent years, I believe Jupiter's "weather" is largely driven externally by some of the electrical energy intercepted from the galactic plasma circuit centered on the Sun. Since the mechanism is the same in both cases, the discovery is not surprising. The fact that planetary winds are more ferocious the farther away from the Sun, may be explained also by electrical energy input. That the Earth participates in this electrical circuit, in its own small way, is shown by the direct correlation between earthly thunderstorm activity and the sunspot cycle. The Great Red Spot (GRS) and white spots on Jupiter may have something in common with sunspots. All are probably the point of connection of a Birkeland current rope from the plasmoid surrounding the planet/sun. The strong vertical magnetic field in sunspots suggests this is so in their case. (Birkeland currents flow along magnetic field lines in a force-free fashion). The long-lived GRS on Jupiter may be associated with some underlying electrical inhomogeneity in the planet resulting from the catastrophic breakup of the Saturnian system. The many reports of Jovian thunderbolts attest to the probability that the giant planet may bear hidden electrical scars. Of course, the standard picture of the structure of Jupiter does not allow for a solid surface under the clouds to bear scars. But it must be remembered that the Electrical Universe requires a completely new estimation of what a "gas giant" really is. Calculations of both the density, composition and the internal heat budget will need to be reassessed, with the good possibility that there is a solid surface under the clouds. If so, it would allow for the simplest electrical inhomogeneity -- a high point on the solid surface to act as a giant lightning conductor. It was actually calculated back in 1982 that a mountain only a few thousand feet high on Jupiter could create an effect like the GRS in Jupiter's atmosphere. There will be no understanding of the sunspot cycle until the true first cause of solar dynamics is recognized. I have theorized that it is caused by the passage of the Sun across giant Birkeland current filaments in the tenuous plasma of interstellar space, flowing along the galactic arm. That such currents exist is shown by the spiral magnetic fields wrapped around our arm of the Milky Way. It explains at once the variability of the cycle and the solar field reversal during each cycle.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: ANNOUNCEMENTS VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (7) HUBBLE FINDS A BARE BLACK HOLE POURING OUT LIGHT Space Telescope Science Institute Release COMMENTS ON BLACK HOLES "WHAT CANNOT BE SAID IN SCIENCE,"
Kronia Communications David Talbott
Wal Thornhill from the journal Nature comments by Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

The original emergence of life and consciousness in the universe is ... attributed to chance in modern cosmology. When scholastic theology encountered inexplicable elements of reality, it frequently deemed them mysteries. When science encounters such elements, it now tends to regard them as random chance events. ~B. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality
ANNOUNCEMENTS
ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION GROUP: 30-DAY FREE TRIAL A vigorous list-serve is sponsored by Kronia Communications, with numerous postings from key contributors involved with research periodically summarized in our THOTH newsletter. This includes David Talbott and Wal Thornhill, fellow researchers such as Ev Cochrane and Dwardu Cardona, and a group of explorers eager to learn more about the new science of Catastrophics. We are offering a 30-day trial subscription to the discussion group at no cost and no obligation. (Normal fee is $30 for a six-month subscription to the list.) To accept this offer write to: kronia@teleport.com The simple message, "I accept the 30-day free trial" will be sufficient. Please allow 48 hours for the trial subscription to be activated. POSTAL MAILING LIST To retain the "non-commercial" emphasis of this newsletter, Kronia Communications has developed a postal mailing program for disseminating general information on available materials--the journal AEON, video and cable program information, workshop and world conference announcements, and other significant items of interest.
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To be included on this mailing list, email to Kronia at the location above, giving your full name and address.

QUETZALCOATL AND THE FEARS OF KINGS

The apprehension of Moctezuma, mentioned in our previous submission, can be illuminated by a sweeping mythical tradition concerning the life and death of Quetzalcoatl, the celestial prototype of kings. Quetzalcoatl was called the "sun," but the mythical and ritual sources remind us that this does not mean the light we call Sun today. The most revered figure of Mexican myth, Quetzalcoatl ruled for a time, then disembarked for other realms. As the great "teacher," the exemplary ruler, his life and death defined the duties and expectations of kings. But as we will see, it also substantiated a pervasive fear, and this fear always rose to the surface on the appearance of a COMET. Moctezuma's fear of the comet, the fear of the neighboring king of Texcoco, and the fear of every emperor when a comet appeared must be understood in terms of a cosmic crisis at the center not just of the Quetzalcoatl myth but of a universal tradition. When the celestial king or prototype of kings died or departed, a world cycle ended catastrophically--AND THE "GREAT COMET" WAS SEEN RAGING IN THE SKY. To amplify this crucial point: it was not just the myth of Quetzalcoatl that reminded rulers of their tenuous hold on the kingdom and on life itself. Such is the message of universal myth, which affirms two intimately connected principles-1) AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. This theme couldn't be more clearly stated throughout Mesoamerica: the terrestrial king lives in the shadow of the former celestial king, the Great Example for later kings. The death of Quetzalcoatl and the collapse of his kingdom (or world age) contained signposts and warnings which no terrestrial king could ignore. 2) AS BEFORE, SO AGAIN. This is the key to all mythically-rooted fear. What happened before will happen in the future. Quite apart from their interesting mathematics, for example, the mythical context of the Mesoamerican calendar system was the periodic cataclysm. But that deeplyembedded fear reached far beyond the calendar and into every expression of culture from war, to sacrifice, to such seemingly mundane practices as ritual sweeping. The collective goal was to reckon with divine caprice, to bargain for a new lease on life, to avoid the recurring disaster. Though Immanuel Velikovsky did not give substantial attention to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, he did observe the relationship to Venus, and the catastrophic nature of the god's death and transformation. To which Bob Forrest replied with considerable skepticism, claiming that in the life and death of Quetzalcoatl he found-...no reference to the planets in a Velikovskian sense. True, Quetzalcoatl...was symbolically related to the Morning Star, but this is a far cry from being told that the planet Venus brought about the End of the World with a cosmic hurricane! Quetzalcoatl is here a Great Teacher, rather than a rampant supercomet." Notice the critic's reasoning: if Quetzalcoatl was a "great teacher," his story could not involve an account of Velikovsky's comet Venus. It seems that Forrest could not imagine a celestial form filling the role of exemplary model in the myths, nor could he imagine the "death" of this charismatic personality in terms of
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a sweeping natural catastrophe. But this is precisely where comparative study becomes so essential. Had he known that virtually all of the celestial, "founding kings" of myth suffer some variation on the fate of Quetzalcoatl, he might have noticed as well a recurring corollary: the god-king's "heart-soul"--the planet Venus--departs to join in a celestial conflagration. (On such a grand claim as this, I can only ask the reader's indulgence as the evidence unfolds.) Forrest's concluding exclamation mark only emphasizes the gap that separates conventional students of myth from the world of the earliest skywatchers. Coherent motives disappear before the eyes of the researcher, and the primary cultural symbols dissolve into dust under the specialist's microscope. Then it becomes possible to believe that it was merely a chaotic mixture of ambiguous and UNRELATED experiences came together as the doomsday anxiety, or gave rise to pervasive ritual sacrifice, or provided the impetus for relentless, fear-driven observations of Venus. This is where Velikovsky's comet will help to rescue ancient myth and ritual from a theoretical vacuum. It will do so by providing a coherent reference, sufficient to substantiate an entirely new approach to the subject matter. The comet Venus enters ancient myth as the celestial agent of disaster, and its emergence is synonymous with the DEATH OF THE CREATOR KING. In the story we will reconstruct, we will see the now-peaceful Venus again and again appearing in ancient times as the great god's heartsoul, departing from him (or removed violently, or flung into the ensuing holocaust) to become a cometlike flaming star, then presiding over the re-establishment of celestial order, the dawn of a new world age. It will take time to tell this story with sufficient color and detail, but I can assure every reader that we ARE dealing here with a coherent and universal theme--a theme completely ignored by specialist too preoccupied with their own narrow turf to discern the definitive patterns of human memory. To see Velikovsky's comet in its globally-defined and catastrophic role is to realize something overlooked by the specialists: that a planetary history we have forgotten will do more to explain the pervasive fears of ancient cultures than all of the more fashionable speculations combined. How are we to understand the unending ritual wars and sacrifices in which rulers remembered, honored and satisfied the gods, hoping to hold the heavens together? How do we interpret the complex calendars of world ages, anticipating the return of doomsday with every completion of a Venus cycle? Or the endless preoccupation with catastrophic omens and portents tied to the planet? For centuries the priest-astronomers reacted with terror to any natural phenomenon that might suggest the return to world chaos. In what experience did this fear arise? Surely one way of illuminating the symbols of celestial TERROR is to consider the possibility of TERRIFYING EVENTS. To make this point completely clear it will be useful to look at a few of the Mesoamerican symbols of the doomsday fear, asking the reader at each stage whether we are considering randomly-evolved absurdities, or the coherent reflections of a traumatic experience remembered around the world.
MESOAMERICAN ASTRONOMY
Velikovsky reminded us that to the natives of Mexico the planet Venus bore a very special significance. No celestial body loomed more centrally in their meticulous observations of the sky. To emphasize the point, Velikovsky noted the Augustinian friar Ramn Y Zamora's report that the Mexican tribes held Venus in great esteem and kept a precise record of its appearance. "So exact was the book-record of the day when it appeared and when it concealed itself, that they never made mistakes," stated Zamora. In Velikovsky's interpretation, the carefully recorded observations of Venus by the Mexicans, Babylonians, Chinese and other cultures arose in direct response to Venus' cometary past. And for many centuries after the cometary disaster, the astronomers perceived closer approaches of Venus as a grave potential threat.
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If Velikovsky was correct, astronomy arose in response to UNPREDICTABLE planetary powers, but could only flower as a science after planets achieved their present predictable orbits. Then the new observational science strove to bring the movements into a comprehensible system, enabling the priest to reckon with the gods and, by reading ancient signs properly, to ANTICIPATE divine behavior. The special place of astronomy in Mesoamerican myths and rites is acknowledged by the best authorities, though the origins of this culture-wide theme appear lost in a gray past. "It has been clear to all serious students of Mesoamerican culture," writes David Kelley, "that there was an intimate relationship between astronomical knowledge, the calendar, and religious beliefs and rituals." Or, as Anthony Aveni puts it: ...Quite unlike our modern astronomy, the raison d'tre of Mesoamerican, particularly Mayan astronomy, was ritualistic and divinatory in nature. But what were the roots of the religious motive, placing such an emphasis on astronomy? The intense interest Venus is noted by Burr Cartwright Brundage-The true role of the planet Venus in the development of the Mesoamerican cultures is not understood. It might not be far wrong to look upon the Mesoamerican's great skill in numeration as a child of that planet and to state that their intellectual life pulsed to its periods. Certainly a significant portion of their mythology involved that planet... To observers approaching the Mesoamerican cultures from an interdisciplinary vantage point, the cultural preoccupation with Venus immediately stands out. E. C. Krupp, a popularizer of modern archaeoastronomy, was impressed with the Venus profile in Mesoamerica, noting that the priestastronomers computed portentous moments "based upon their calendar and the behavior of Venus. They installed their kings, sacrificed prisoners and went to war by these omens." But why? Must we assume unhesitatingly that the anxiety over Venus' movements arose under a tranquil sky? This unquestioned presumption of cosmic regularity is surely the single greatest obstacle to our comprehension of ancient fears.
HUBBLE FINDS A BARE BLACK HOLE POURING OUT LIGHT

Probing the heart of the active galaxy NGC 6251, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided a never-before-seen view of a warped disk or ring of dust caught in a blazing torrent of ultraviolet light from a suspected massive black hole. This discovery, which is reported in the September 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that the environments around black holes may be more varied than thought previously, and may provide a new link in the evolution of black holes in the centers of galaxies. "This is a completely new phenomenon which has never before been seen. It blew my mind away," says Dr. Philippe Crane of the European Southern Observatory, in Garching, Germany. "Before Hubble you could never do this kind of research. We used a lightly exploited facility of Hubble: its extremely high resolution imaging capability in the near ultraviolet provided by the Faint Object Camera (FOC), built by the European Space Agency." Previously, black holes observed by Hubble have been largely hidden from view because they are embedded inside a torus, a donut-shaped distribution of dust that forms a partial cocoon around the black hole.
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In galaxies previously studied, the intense light from super hot gas entrapped by the black hole's powerful gravitational field shines out from inside the "donut hole" of the torus and is restricted to a narrow beam, like a searchlight. But this is the first clear example of an "exposed" black hole that illuminates the surrounding disk. Because Hubble sees ultraviolet light reflected on one side of the disk, astronomers conclude the disk must be warped like the brim of a hat. Such a warp could be due to gravitational perturbations in the galaxy's nucleus that keep the disk from being perfectly flat, or from precession of the rotation axis of the black hole relative to the rotation axis of the galaxy. Photos, captions and press release text are available via the World Wide Web at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/28.html
COMMENTS ON BLACK HOLES

Wal Thornhill There has been a barrage of publicity about black holes this week. A TV special, the latest New Scientist (which features the stars of the TV show), and the following report from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers seem more convinced than ever that these fictional objects exist, because they have found "objects that do what only black holes can do", as NS reports. But this statement is based on the very shaky premise that Nature is silly enough to use the weakest force in the universe to create the outpourings of radiation that are interpreted as coming from a black hole at the centre of galaxies. When we want to create x-rays or ultraviolet light we use electricity--why should natural processes be different? The blindness of otherwise highly intelligent astronomers to the simple plasma cosmological explanation for the goings-on in active galactic nuclei is quite a phenomenon in its own right and worthy of study by those in the human sciences. It is an object lesson in the failure in practice of The Scientific Method, which requires a constant re-examination of the assumptions which underpin a theory--especially when that theory is so bizarre as to predict Black Holes. (I sported a T-shirt some years ago which had in bold letters: "Black Holes Exist", with a tiny subtitle: "In astronomers' heads".) The features of the small disk (the plasmoid in plasma cosmology) and the jets emanating from the disk are precisely those found in the simple plasma focus device, and described in Eric Lerner's book "The Big Bang Never Happened".
What Cannot Be Said in Science

Under the title, "What cannot be said in science," from the Commentary section of the journal Nature of 14 August, pp. 619-620, is a very timely wake-up call for science, both in the way it is taught and the way it is practiced. It is a strong plea for generalists with an interdisciplinary outlook and training - something dear to our heart. Mott T. Greene writes:
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Scientists have an understandable modesty about publicly discussing areas of research other than their own. But this reticence has had the unforeseen consequence that generalization and synthesis, essential parts of the advance of science, are very much neglected. Scientists are trapped in their own specialisms, leaving others, often poorly qualified, to represent to the public the larger architecture and interconnections of modern scientific theories. Although the capacity to convey to society a compelling vision of the whole of science may not be necessary in the day-today progress of investigation, it is crucial in maintaining cultural, political and financial support for science. Scientific education has become so specialized that scientific literacy is little more advanced among scientists than it is among non-scientists. Undergraduates who have completed courses on cell biology and evolution are unable to discuss broad issues in evolutionary theory, let alone Earth history or cosmogony, in any greater depth than can their non-scientist peers. Physics students don't know how a protein differs from a nucleic acid; chemistry students don't know the age of the Earth; geology students cannot give a simple account of metabolism or say why the sky is blue. This is not to say that science students cannot understand several fields of science and their connections. But a generalized curiosity has not been encouraged or reinforced in basic science training for almost a century. The robust pride that one's knowledge of science is narrow and deep is almost universal among specialists...
NARROW DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE

First, there is no provision in undergraduate curricula for broad acquaintance with several sciences. The norm in the United States, as in many other places, is self-selection of a single science in the first year. Basic science education is like basic training in the military -directed to tactics rather than to strategy and designed to teach recruits as quickly as possible to use the latest weapons, so that they can be sent to the research front at the earliest opportunity. Second, there is the problem of the impenetrability of specialist discourse-not only to non-scientists, but to highly trained scientists in different specialisms. Journals such as Nature were created to provide rapid publication of results of such importance that they ought to be communicated beyond the boundaries of individual fields. This function will be frustrated if articles are written in language understood by no-one outside the authors' fields of expertise. Third, and perhaps more subtle, is the general and strong sense among scientists that. because the advance of science depends on the accumulation of knowledge rather than of opinion, they are not permitted to speak about scientific subjects in public other than those in which they are expert. When Erwin Schrodinger published What is Life? in 1944 (ref. l), he began with an apology: A scientist is supposed to have a complete and thorough knowledge, at first hand, of some subjects, and therefore is usually expected not to write on any topic of which he is not a master. Freeman Dyson extended this apology in Origins of Life (ref. 2) more than 40 years later, only to discover that many biologists had not yet forgiven Schrodinger and now were annoyed at him as well . At less exalted levels of discourse, the imperative to segregate oneself within one's specialism is strong enough to impede the development of interdisciplinary under-graduate science courses even at the first year level. Most doctoral level scientists think themselves unqualified to teach a first year undergraduate course even in a closely allied discipline. Specialization is not itself the problem. As the volume of knowledge increases, the proportion of the total comprehended by an individual must diminish. Yet specialization has had unanticipated and even paradoxical consequences. The paradox is that specialization, however necessary, is not all of science: generalization and synthesis are parts of it as well. Yet generalization and
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synthesis, even as long as 50 years ago, were well on their way to disappearing altogether from the careers of scientists. I am not referring to textbooks, review articles or the occasional popular lecture, but the deliberate attempt to summarize how the work of one's field fits into the larger framework of scientific advance. Scientists used to do this regularly. That they no longer see synthesis as even a remotely plausible activity is a measure of how completely 'what goes without saying' can pass within a generation or so into 'what cannot be said'.
[Wal comments:] I think specialization IS a major problem and partly a way of avoiding the fact that there is no generally accepted, coherent picture of science to be taught. Following Mott, it could be argued that a specialist is not qualified to debate with generalists. In fact, I think it goes deeper than that. The greatest generalist I know, Velikovsky, identified within his specialist critics "a desire not to know". This was usually manifest in knee-jerk responses to anything he uttered. One of his worst critics was the noted specialist Carl Sagan, whose arguments against Velikovsky wouldn't stand up to investigation by a college student. That is why I feel that it is futile to argue with specialists. By all means use their expertise as input to a general synthesis and then argue amongst others whose aim it is to see the big picture. The specialist's dislike of generalists or popularizers stems, I think, partly from the fact that we have to take ideas and information from them and place those ideas in a larger, maybe unfamiliar framework. This is a confronting thing for an expert's ego. And as Greene wrote: The robust pride that one's knowledge of science is narrow and deep is almost universal among specialists... What's that old saw about pride going before a fall?] Greene continues:
STIGMA OF POPULARIZATION
The loss of a view of the whole travels in harness with a contempt for generalization- invariably stigmatized as 'popularization' or 'speculation'--and with an irritation directed at those who claim that historically things were different, and even better. This problem is not resolved even if one takes the position that scientific work is 'self integrating'--that it is structured so it can function well even if no-one is in charge of the overall picture. There is still a need for some compelling vision of the whole of science and of its worth to animate those other 'necessary regulators of scientific advance': elected officials who vote on whether to support science, and their constituents. On the other hand, the unhappiness of many scientists with the picture of the whole presented by historians and others who study science could be simply a negative reaction to seeing the state of science as a whole when it is reasonably well represented, rather than a well-informed reaction to a supposed misrepresentation. One must wonder at the criteria by which scientists can determine the accuracy of any historical representation, given that most have declared themselves ineligible to comment on issues outside their own part of the research front. But I have never met a scientist, however specialized, who felt she or he could not discuss what science is, or the scientific viewpoint, or the scientific method, or the difference between science and superstition. So an interesting phenomenon has evolved in this century-people who freely admit not knowing much detail about matters beyond their own field of science, and who would never speak about any other aspect of science in particular, but are perfectly comfortable speaking about science in general... [Wal comments:] It is not surprising that scientists don't like to look at the history of science when it is reasonably well represented, because it is not a pretty picture and doesn't conform to the image projected of the "scientific method" and a kind of Darwinian progression toward some notion of perfection--a Theory of Everything, for example. But it is not just the history that looks bad, they probably don't want to acknowledge that
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nothing has changed. They would rather pontificate about their open-mindedness and rationality, but then go off and cut themselves on Occam's razor. Greene continues:
THE POINT OF GENERALIZATION

In the seventeenth century, people used all the science they knew to explain the operations of the world, and then 'plugged the remaining holes with God'. Now there is enough science for a worldview with widely placed small holes. Yet most people, including increasing numbers of natural scientists, have a world-view with large and rather closely placed holes that they are content to fill either with blithe ignorance or with super natural explanations for phenomena already well understood in physical terms. So today's scientists are in command of only a small part of what is known, and there are no educational or career structures that mandate, suggest or reward the synthesis of results into a unified world picture. If this trend continues, one can imagine a world dominated by the results and artifacts of natural science, but in which no-one has a scientific world-view. This outcome, not as bizarre or unlikely as it may appear at first, would be remarkable, not least for the danger it would pose to the continued survival of the scientific enterprise. Mott T. Greene is at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington 98416, USA. 1. Schrodinger, E. What is Life? (Cambridge Univ Press 1944). 2. Dyson, F Origins of Life (Cambridge Univ Press 1985). [Wal comments:] Sorry, science is mostly holes--covered with beautiful mathematical wallpaper, stuck there with the glue of mysticism.
Second hand copies of most of Velikovsky's books are available from: The Advanced Book Exchange Home Page http://www.abebooks.com Bibliofind http://www.bibliofind.com Submitted by Ian Tresman
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 24 (October 20, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (8) TODAY ON GALILEO BLOBS IN SPACE: THE LEGACY OF A NOVA PRESS RELEASE
David Talbott comments by Wal Thornhill comments by Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

O noble spirit! O beauty simple and true! Goddess whose worship is of reason and wisdom, whose temple is an eternal call to conscience and sincerity... ~Ernest Renan, Priere sur l'Acropole

VENUS AND COSMIC UPHEAVAL

Across Mesoamerica Venus was celebrated as the radiant heart and soul of the great cultural hero whom the Aztecs called Quetzalcoatl. Yet enigmatically, the appearances of the star after periods of absence stirred extraordinary fear. The noted archaeoastronomer, Anthony Aveni, observes: Evidently, the reappearance of Venus in different quarters after a prolonged absence carried various evil connotations for the people of Yucatan... Obviously, they were deeply concerned about where and when Venus might appear to reverse their fortunes. Expressions of this fear will be found at all levels of the culture. There is the general association with death, as noted by Thompson and others, but also the more specific association with the death of kings. Thus the Mayan date name of Venus, Hun Ahau was a day of "death" and "darkness." But more specifically, the same day among the Aztecs signified the death of Quetzalcoatl and the transformation of his "heart-soul" into Venus. "There seems to be no doubt that unlucky days were associated with the heliacal rise of Venus (its first appearance as morning star, after a period of absence), each to be regarded with appropriate ritual," Aveni writes.
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The fear engendered by the heliacal rising of Venus was noted centuries ago by one of the earliest European chroniclers, Sahagun: And when it (Venus) newly emerged, much fear came over them; all were frightened. Everywhere the outlets and openings of [houses] were closed up. It was said that perchance [the light] might bring a cause of sickness, something evil when it came to emerge. In response to the new and bright appearance of Venus, kings called for sacrifices of captives to please the gods, for it seems that the planet's appearance could invite great calamities--from the outbreak of war to famine and flood. Could this be a key to understanding the mysteries of Venus- portents? As will become clear, the perils of Venus are the perils of the COMET in the global lexicon. We have already noted that, throughout the ancient world, the comet portended the death of great kings. But interestingly, the heliacal rising of Venus conveyed the same celestial message, as reported by Brundage. It is curious that the Mesoamerican peoples thought of the morning star so consistently as malign. He was to them, whether they were Aztec or Mayan, the very father of calamity. The dates of his heliacal rising were forecast so that the dooms ahead could be adequately read and prepared for...Significantly, his malice could also be directed at rulers, for if he arose on the trecana opened by one-reed, then great lords sickened and died. Thus, the Anales de Quahtitlan, a chronicle from the Mexican highlands (colonial times), describes the perils of the "piercing rays" of Venus. On the day One Reed, (the day of Quetzalcoatl's birth, and the day of the same god-king's death), the rising of Venus is deadly: "It shoots the kings," the texts say. Notice here that an underlying logic is at work, running from the specific to the general, from the archetype to the symbol. Quetzalcoatl died at a critical moment in cosmic history, a moment signified by both the end and the beginning of the time-reckoning cycle, mythically the end of one world age and the beginning of another. In the calendar system and in the sacred rites, the cyclical principle established by the life and death of Quetzalcoatl is both repeated and generalized: as above, so below; as before, so again. Hence, kings will die on the day One Reed, the day that Quetzalcoatl's heart-soul departed to become the planet Venus. What, then, is the significance of the fact that the symbolism of Venus replicates so precisely the global symbolism of the comet? The new appearance of Venus as morning star is a moment of great peril for the kingdom (the "world"), as is the appearance of the comet. It harkens back to the death of the godking, as does the comet. It is the heart-soul of the god-king rising in the sky, as is the comet. Is this, then, just another "coincidence" to add to all of the others previously noted? The further one descends into the various cultural levels at which the fear was expressed, the more clear becomes the equation: the fear of Venus' rising was, in every way, identical to the fear instilled by the arrival of a COMET.
VENUS AND THE END OF THE WORLD

Immanuel Velikovsky, in developing the theme of cometary disaster, noticed that one ancient culture after another spoke of former catastrophes so devastating that the "world" came to an end. This collective memory, in turn, seems to have given rise to the general notion of recurring cycles, or world ages. While Velikovsky noticed surprising parallels among far-flung nations, including the Babylonians, Greeks, Hebrews, Chinese, and Polynesians, he was particularly fascinated with the Mexican ideas: An old tradition, and a very persistent one, of world ages that went down in cosmic catastrophes was found in the Americas among the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Mayas. A major part of stone inscriptions found in Yucatan refer to world catastrophes. "The most ancient of these fragments [katuns, or calendar stones of Yucatan] refer, in general, to great catastrophes which, at intervals and repeatedly, convulsed the American continent, and of which all nations of this continent have preserved a more or less distinct
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memory." Codices of Mexico and Indian authors who composed the annals of their past give a prominent place to the tradition of world catastrophes that decimated humankind and changed the face of the earth. In the chronicles of the Mexican kingdom it is said: The ancients knew that before the present sky and earth were formed, man was already created and life had manifested itself four times. To Velikovsky, this language sounded remarkably close to that of the Greeks and other ancient peoples, who similarly recounted the passing of former ages and destruction by water, fire, wind or flood. For some nations, he said, the transition from one age to another meant a new "sun" in the sky. An oft-repeated occurrence in the traditions of the world ages is the advent of a new sun in the sky at the beginnings of every age. The word "sun" is substituted for the word "age" in the cosmogonic traditions of many peoples all over the world. The Mayas counted their ages by the names of their consecutive suns. These were called Water Sun, Earthquake Sun, Hurricane Sun, Fire Sun. "These suns mark the epochs to which are attributed the various catastrophes the world has suffered." "The nations of Culhua or Mexico," Humboldt quoted Gmara, the Spanish writer of the sixteenth century, "believe according to their hieroglyphic paintings, that, previous to the sun which now enlightens them, four had already been successively extinguished. These four suns are as many ages, in which our species has been annihilated by inundations, by earthquakes, by a general conflagration, and by the effect of destroying tempests." ...Symbols of the successive suns are painted on the pre- Columbian literary documents of Mexico. "Cinco soles que son edades," or "five suns that are epochs," wrote Gmara in his description of the conquest of Mexico. To Velikovsky, the idea of former "world ages" or "suns" belonged to a collective memory of upheaval and world- changing shifts in the order of the solar system. The earth was disturbed in its rotation, its axis tilted, the path of its revolution around the sun changed, and vast nations were devastated. Then, from the ensuing chaos, the world was born anew under an altered celestial order.
CALENDAR
Sacred astronomy throughout Mesoamerica was particularly conscious of the heliacal rising of Venus, the planet's first annual pre-dawn appearance (beginning its phase of greatest brilliance due to its proximity to the Earth). According to Aveni, this first appearance as Morning Star "was probably the most important single event in Maya astronomy." One of the extraordinary "coincidences" of Venus' present behavior is the resonance of its observed cycle with our year of 365 1/4 days. Like clockwork, due to the synchronous movements of Venus and Earth we noted earlier, Venus first appears as morning star on the same calendar day every eight years, and during that span of time it rises heliacally a total of five times. This synchronous relationship of Earth and Venus is reflected in the Mesoamerican calendar rites. Many centuries ago, a sacred calendar system was perfected within a cultural environment that is not yet clear to archaeoastronomers. The original system is unknown. What we do know is that at the time of the Spanish invasion, all of the primary Mesoamerican cultures shared a common calendar structure, an outgrowth of the unidentified "original system," in which the Venus-cycle played a crucial role, but not one that appears fully comprehensible to the scholars seeking to understand it.
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The calendar combined two time-keeping systems: one based on the familiar solar year, which was divided into 18 "months" of 20 days, to which five "unlucky" days were added at the end of the year, rounding out a 365-day year. In their veintena festivals, the Aztecs celebrated the end of each 20-day cycle of the solar year, making sacrifices and offerings to the gods in the hope that the sun and stars would continue their orderly movement across the heavens. The other calendar was based on a 260-day cycle whose original meaning is still being debated. Enigmatically, this ritual calendar appears to have no self-evident logic in terms of the natural cycles one would expect to find reflected in calendar phases. And yet, for ritual reasons, the sacred 260-day calendar dominated the solar calendar. This, Robert and Peter Markman tell us, was "a sacred calendar tied directly to no single cycle observable in the world of nature." Rather: ...it embodied and celebrated the essence of cyclicity abstracted from its occurrence in natural phenomena. This was the calendar used for prophecy and divination since in its workings it allowed man his closest approach to the world of spirit. How, then, did it connect mankind with the world of the gods? The 260-day ritual calendar combined two different sequences, one a series of 20 days-signs, the other a sequence of 13 day-numbers, so that there were a total of 260 combinations of the two sequences to complete a sacred calendrical period. Since each day and each number had its own gods and associations, every day in the 260-day cycle had a different ritual significance. The Markmans write-Understanding calendrical lore allowed a special group of priests to understand the implications of the signs of the calendar and to divine the future... These periods could determine the augury of each of the days, since the essence of the day (kin among the Maya) was itself the prophecy (also kin). Possibly, the authors say, there was a connection of the 260-day cycle with Venus: The interval between the appearance of Venus as morning and evening star is close to 260 days. The mystery is heightened by another fact that rarely receives attention: in the Maya calendrical ritual the listed movements of Venus do not accord with the planet's observed movements today. The synodical revolution of Venus divides into four periods: 1) 2) 3) 4) after inferior conjunction Venus appears as Morning Star for an average of 263 days; during superior conjunction the planet disappears for an average of 50 days; the planet reappears as Evening Star for an average of 263 days; Venus then disappears again for 8 days during inferior conjunction; after which it reappears as Morning Star, to complete the synodical period.
But these are not the values in the Maya Venus cycles, which seem to follow an unfamiliar logic of their own. The considerable discrepancy is emphasized by Aveni-They assigned an eight day period to the disappearance at inferior conjunction, which is close to that observed today. But, peculiarly, their manuscripts recorded a disappearance interval of 90 days at superior conjunction, nearly double the true value. Furthermore, they assigned unequal values to the intervals as morning and evening star: 250 and 236 days, respectively. In fact, the true intervals are equivalent at approximately 263 days. Since we know that the Maya were careful and exacting timekeepers, there may have been ritualistic reasons for these changes which overrode the observations. It seems as if another anomaly rears its head: the ancient Mesoamerican astronomers, so admired for their accurate record keeping of Venus' motions, do not have Venus moving on its present course. Yet Aveni assures us that the Maya developed the observational precision and reasoning power to predict eclipses and to determine "the length of the Venus year and the lunar month to accuracies of less than a day in several centuries." Thus, the calendar discrepancy, to say the least, should draw one's attention!
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In considering this mystery, we well to remember Velikovsky's admonition on the subject of recurring anomalies--the true key to discovery. It is a fact that the recorded anomalous motions of Venus in the ritual calendar- a calendar originating in an undefined period preceding any of the known cultural variants-has a significant and more ancient Near Eastern parallel. As Velikovksy himself observed almost 45 years ago, the Babylonian astronomers, in the famous Venus tablets of Ammizaduga, recorded extensive observations of Venus' movements. Like their Mesoamerican counterparts, these founders of astronomy were revered for their observational skills and mathematical accuracy. Nevertheless, the Ammizaduga records of Venus' appearances and disappearances are filled with "errors" suggesting that (in the minds of the stargazers, at least) Venus did not move on its present visual path. And speaking of recurring anomalies, the seemingly preposterous 90-day disappearance of Venus at superior conjunction may prove to be more of a headache for orthodox archaeoastronomers than they have bargained for. In the "erroneous" Babylonian records of Venus, one encounters a 90-day disappearance as well! Aveni reports-It is curious that the Babylonians also counted a three- month disappearance interval, indicating that the planet would move approximately one-fourth of the way around its cycle in the tropical year. While an anomalous variance in the movement of Venus may frustrate mainstream investigators, for anyone believing that Velikovsky's comet participated in Earth-disturbing events as recently as a few thousand years ago, the troublesome records of Venus' motions are more likely to bring a bemused smile. Following the great cometary catastrophe recorded in the myths, nothing would seem more reasonable to the Velikovskian researcher than a transitional period-perhaps millennia--in which Venus did not move on its present path as seen from the earth. The larger issue, of course, is that posed by the very existence of the sacred 260-day calendar. How could it be that a calendar with no firm basis in an observed natural cycle could have had such a broad cultural influence? Even as late as 1940, the ethnologist J.S. Lincoln was able to confirm that the Ixil peoples of northwest Guatemala continued to use this calendar. Ethnologist J.A. Remington, living among the Quich and Cakchiquel peoples of the Guatemala highlands, found that the 260-day cycle was still practiced for purposes of forecasting, with this "unnatural" calendar still dominating the time-keeping rituals. When it comes to ancient calendars, one of the possibilities that should be considered--but never is considered--is that of a shifting length of the year. Velikovsky argued, for example, that in former times a calendar of 360 days prevailed throughout much of the ancient world, and that the five added days (called "nothing days" by the Aztecs) came only after a disruption of the earth's motions. Though I have some doubt about this, there is no reason in the world to exclude such possibilities in advance of serious consideration. But whether or not calendar changes are indicated, one can be certain that the 260-day ritual calendar bore an extremely significant relationship to the myth of collapsing world ages, as we shall see.
TODAY ON GALILEO
JPL NEWS RELEASE Wednesday, 17 September 1997 Galileo turns its attention to Jupiter today, the fifth calendar day of the encounter. The first set of encounter commands are completed and the second set, transmitted to the spacecraft on Monday, begins to execute today. A few residual observations of Callisto and observations of Io and Ganymede complete the observation schedule.
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The observation plans for Jupiter during this encounter period include a more or less standard set of observations: brightside and darkside maps, North-East-West-South maps, North-South strips, hot spot observations, regional and thermal maps. These observations are complimented by a set of observations that concentrate on the north polar region of Jupiter's atmosphere, including aurora and regions known as haze zones. These haze zones, as their name suggests, are regions of hazy clouds that are associated with and driven by the production of aurora on Jupiter. The observations of these regions will be coordinated among all of the remote sensing instruments for a complete understanding of the processes involved in the production of these hazy cloud regions. <snip> [Wal Thornhill comments]: My suggestion, made some years ago, that cloudiness and weather in general, was partly driven by electrical discharges INTO the ionosphere seems to be receiving confirmation from another planet. I wish them luck in their attempts for a "complete understanding of the processes involved" based on their electrically sterile solar system.
ABOUT THOSE "BLOBS IN SPACE"

Wal Thornhill I received the attached press release from the Space Telescope Science Office of Public Outreach. It is yet another nail in the coffin of conventional astronomy - note well the sub-heading "Back to the Drawing Board" - AGAIN! One of the basic premises of The Electric Universe was that the work of the late Dr CER Bruce of the UK Electrical Research Association, and his disciple Eric Crew, is correct and that a nova explosion is a stellar or planet-wide electric discharge resulting in the expulsion of matter from the parent body in a "blob", or series of blobs. The speed of the initial gaseous discharge (2,000 to 3,000 kilometers per second), falls in the middle of the range calculated by Bruce. The Hubble telescope has now confirmed the electric model of a nova and discredited the standard explosive model! You will notice the number of special conditions required of the exploding star under conventional theory. None apply to the electric discharge model. All that is required is a build-up of charge between two bodies, or a single body and its galactic environment, until breakdown of the plasma occurs. The periodicity of the recurrent nova T Pyxidis is evidence for two bodies being involved in recurring close approaches. It will be of particular interest to find out how the blobs are moving since expulsion. Remember as you read the last part of the release, which attempts to explain a nova, that there are no such things as neutron stars or black holes. Wal Thornhill
BLOBS IN SPACE: THE LEGACY OF A NOVA

PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR97-29 Nova eruptions by dying stars were thought to be simple, predictable acts of violence. Astronomers could point a telescope at the most recently exploded novae and see an expanding bubble of gaseous debris around each star. Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, however, were surprised to find that
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some nova outbursts may not produce smooth shells of gas, but thousands of gaseous blobs, each the size of our solar system. Astronomers acquired this new information by focusing the Hubble telescope's cameras on the recurrent nova T Pyxidis, which erupts about every 20 years. Images from ground-based telescopes show a smooth shell of gas surrounding the nova. But closer inspection by the Hubble telescope reveals that the shell is not smooth at all, but a collection of more than 2,000 gaseous blobs packed into an area that is one light-year across. Resembling shrapnel from a shotgun blast, the blobs may have been produced by the nova explosion, the subsequent expansion of gaseous debris, or collisions between fast- and slowmoving gas from several eruptions.
Back to the Drawing Board

This new evidence suggests that astronomers may have to rewrite their theory of nova eruptions and accompanying debris. "Based on these observations, our previously standard view of what nova shells should look like may be fundamentally wrong," says Michael M. Shara, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. "The view is that a nova explosion is the same in all directions, with debris traveling at the same speed, so that a fairly smooth cloud is formed. Instead, we've found this myriad of individual knots [blobs]. This observation suggests that shells of other novae do the same thing, as recently ejected material plows into older, fossil material from previous explosions."
Stellar Detectives
Shara and his colleagues collected this new information from four observations taken by the Hubble telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 during a 20-month period from 1994 to 1995. Their results appeared in the July issue of the Astronomical Journal. The scientists selected T Pyxidis because of its closeness to Earth and its long track record of outbursts. T Pyxidis is 6,000 light-years away in the dim southern constellation Pyxis, the Mariner's Compass. Within the last 110 years, T Pyxidis has been very active, erupting in 1966, 1944, 1920, 1902, and 1890. The nova's active record lured Shara to its debris trail more than a decade ago. His pre-Hubble spectral studies in 1985 using ground-based telescopes showed that the apparently smooth shell was expanding at the rate of 780,000 mph (350 kilometers per second). His recent Hubble observations, however, surprisingly reveal that the material has slowed down considerably since 1985. In fact, the debris is barely moving at all. Images taken months apart show no measurable expansion of the debris. Shara determined that the knots must be moving slower than 90,000 mph (40 kilometers per second). This may seem fast, but actually the gaseous debris was racing through space almost 100 times faster when it was first blown off the nova.
Waves of Violence
Ground-based and Hubble telescope observations have allowed Shara to reconstruct a sequence of a T Pyxidis blast. When the nova erupts, it flings waves of gaseous material at progressively slower speeds: the first wave of hot gas flies through space at 4.5 to 6.7 million mph (2,000 to 3,000 kilometers per second), the last at 446,000 to 670,000 mph (200 to 300 kilometers per second). About a few weeks after this eruption, the first waves of speedy debris collide with slow-moving fossil material from the previous outburst, possibly forming the gaseous blobs. Shara observed, for example, fast-moving gas from the 1966 eruption plowing into slow-moving material from the 1944 detonation. As
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the speedy, newly ejected material slams into the older, plodding debris, it heats up, glows brilliantly, and slows almost to a halt. (This explains the tremendous difference in the material's speed between the 1985 and the 1994-95 observations.) Eventually, the bright material fades as it cools down. This collision scenario is like cannonballs zipping through a furnace, heating up and glowing, then cooling and fading. Images of a few blobs brightening and fading over several months were captured by the Hubble telescope.
Stellar "Tree Rings"

The blobs are distributed in eight concentric circles around the exploding star, producing a pattern similar to tree rings. Just as tree rings furnish scientists with information about a tree's life, so the circles of debris around T Pyxidis provide astronomers with a history of this prolific nova. "We think that we're seeing the collision between pairs of eruptions all the way back to a successive pair generated in the early 1800's," Shara explains. "But we are seeing only the inner, brightest part of the ejected material; there are probably many more knots out there that are too faint for even the Hubble telescope to detect without the nova's future cooperation." Fortunately, the central star is due for another explosion. Shara is scheduled to take observations with the Hubble telescope within a few days of the next eruption so that he can map the faint, ancient outer debris field, which will be illuminated by the nova's next bright flash. The debris map will show if the recurrent nova has been regularly active for the past thousand years or more, or if its eruptions occur in cycles. It also might offer clues to explain why some novae produce no visible shells at all.
Vampire Star
Nova explosions are extremely powerful, equal to a blast of 100 billion billion tons of dynamite. All this punch comes from dying, faint, low-mass stars that have exhausted their hydrogen fuel. Called white dwarfs, these stars have puffed away most of their mass until only their cores are left. A nova erupts when a white dwarf has siphoned enough hydrogen off a companion star to trigger a thermonuclear runaway. As hydrogen builds up on the surface of a white dwarf, it becomes hotter and denser until it detonates like a colossal hydrogen bomb, leading to a million-fold increase in brightness in one day. This tremendous flash of light prompted astronomers to call these objects novae - Latin for "new" - because they abruptly appeared in the sky. A nova quickly begins to fade in several days or weeks as the hydrogen is exhausted and blown into space. Most novae spend 10,000 to 100,000 years collecting enough hydrogen from their companions to ignite an explosion. But T Pyxidis detonates several times a century. This nova has such a penchant for outbursts, astronomers believe, because its underlying star is about as massive as a white dwarf can get. A more massive white dwarf would collapse under the crushing force of gravity and become a neutron star or a black hole. Because of its high mass, T Pyxidis only needs to drain one part in 10 million of its companion's hydrogen (roughly the mass of our moon) to start an eruption. (The companion is a red dwarf, a small, cool, faint star.) This can be done in a mere 20 years or so, leading to the fascinating structure the Hubble telescope has now revealed. Research team members are: Robert Williams, Dave Zurek (Space Telescope Science Institute); Roberto Gilmozzi, (European Southern Observatory); and Dina Prialnik (Tel Aviv University). The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Photos, captions and press release text are available via the World Wide Web at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/29.html and via links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 25 (November 3, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (9) HERE WE GO AGAIN E-mail Conversations about Uranus and Neptune
David Talbott Wal Thornhill by Amy Acheson and Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Any pursuit of understanding and meaning requires faith, the acceptance of certain underlying assumptions that are necessary if one is to use a given mode of inquiry ...Proponents of religion emphasize the crucial role of faith, though it is unfortunately often presented in the form of uncritical belief ... Faith is also a prerequisite for philosophical inquiry; the philosopher needs the confidence that such inquiry actually pertains to truth, that reality can be thought about. In addition to faith, philosophizing also requires reason. If a theory is internally inconsistent, illogical, or inconsistent with experience, it is unlikely to be accepted as sound philosophy. Science also requires a type of faith, although it rarely goes under that label. Whereas religions normally make a clear statement of their articles of faith, science introduces its assumptions more surreptitiously. ~B. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality

52-YEAR CALENDAR ROUND

Across Mesoamerica, the combination of two calendars, the solar or seasonal calendar and the 260-day ritual calendar, produced an extended sequence of sacred time, in which the two calendars concluded on the same day only once every 52 solar years--a cosmic cycle of extreme import. This 52-year cycle the Maya called the Calendar Round and the Aztecs a "bundle of years" or "Perfect Circle" of years. Interestingly, to Sylvanus Morley observes that the Maya "never indicated dates in hieroglyphic texts or historical documents by the solar year designation alone. Most often the date was specified by its designation in the Calendar Round." Among the Aztecs this extended cycle was intimately tied to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, who was born on the day ce acatl ("One Reed") and departed on the day ce acatl 52 years later. He will return, the Aztecs
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claimed, on a future day ce acatl. It is only reasonable to assume, therefore, a close relationship between the symbolism of the Calendar Round and the symbolism of the founding god-king. Mesoamerican timekeepers show an extreme ambivalence about this extended calendar period. Its conclusion was both a renewal- the end of the old cycle and the beginning of a new cycle--and a potential moment of disaster, since the Aztecs believed that the entire world order was then in jeopardy. At that critical moment the astronomer priests anticipated world destruction by fire, wind, or water, repeating the great cataclysm that ended the golden age of Quetzalcoatl. The synchronous Earth-Venus movements appear to have figured prominently in the calendar, enabling priest astronomers to draw on the mathematics of Venus cycles to anticipate the recurrence of doomsday. For example, 65 Venus cycles were equivalent to 104 solar years, or two 52-year cycles, which the Aztecs called huehueliztli, an old age or "long-period." To Velikovsky, this role of Venus in calculations of world ages was, at the very least, evidence to be considered in assessing Venus' catastrophic role in the past. The works of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the early Mexican scholar (circa 1568-1648) who was able to read old Mexican texts, preserve the ancient tradition according to which the multiple of fifty-two-year periods played an important role in the recurrence of world catastrophes. He asserts also that only fiftytwo years elapsed between two great catastrophes, each of which terminated a world age. Now there exists a remarkable fact: the natives of pre- Columbian Mexico expected a new catastrophe at the end of every period of fifty-two years and congregated to await the event. "When the night of this ceremony arrived, all the people were seized with fear and waited in anxiety for what might take place." They were afraid that "it would be the end of the human race and that the darkness of the night may become permanent: the sun may not rise anymore." It happened that the end of a cycle occurred in mid-November, 1507, and available records give us a good sense of the collective fears embedded in the symbolic rites of renewal. It is said that five priests moved in procession with a captive warrior out of the city of Tenochtitlan to the great ceremonial center on the Hill of the Star. The occasion was proceeded by ritual extinction of fires across Mexico, the casting of statues and hearthstones into the water, and rites of sweeping- -all of these gestures bearing a significant symbolic tie to an ancient cultural memory of catastrophic transition. We are also told that on this frightening occasion women were locked in granaries to avoid being turned into man-eating monsters, pregnant women donned masks of maguey leaves, and children were kept awake to keep them from turning into mice while asleep. (That these fears trace to the cosmic night and the associated chaos hordes should become clear in the course of this series.) David Carrasco writes, For on this one night in the calendar round of 18,980 nights the Aztec fire priests celebrated "when the night was divided in half": the New Fire Ceremony that ensured the rebirth of the sun and the movement of the cosmos for another fifty-two years. This rebirth was achieved symbolically through the heart sacrifice of a brave, captured warrior specifically chosen by the king. We are told that when the procession arrived "in the deep night" at the Hill of the Star the populace climbed onto their roofs. With unwavering attention and necks craned toward the hill they became filled with dread that the sun would be destroyed forever. When the priest astronomers did confirm that the heavens were still in order, the country broke into celebration, the Sacred Fire was rekindled, houses, roads and walkways were swept clean and normal life resumed, the gods having granted man another 52-year cycle. As in the case of disaster portents, the fears implicit in the calendar symbolism flowed from a core idea of recurrence. In the same way that the appearance of a comet OR the rising of Venus recalled the worldending catastrophe, the calendar system (which undeniably related to observed Venus cycles) rested on a memory of former upheaval, when heaven fell into confusion. Could the terrestrial king, whose life
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always mirrored that of the founding god-king, escape the fate of the great predecessor, whose death ENDED a cosmic cycle? Would the world itself survive a full turn of time's wheel? It's too easy for archaeoastronomers, when chronicling the calendar symbolism, to slip into a state of enchantment over the system's mathematical symmetry, forgetting that there is a far more vital question: what were the experiential origins of the collective fear--the fear of a world falling out of control? And why did the planet Venus figure so prominently in the calculations of world ages? Perhaps the answer lies with the famous Calendar Stone, on which the time-keeping hieroglyphs are recorded. Enclosing the stone, and thus encompassing the entire cycle or world age is the two-fold form of the great serpent Xiuhcoatl, the mythical parent of comets, the great celestial torch launched against the rebel powers when the world was overrun by demons of chaos. That the archetypal comet should define the great cycle of time does not surprise us. For it seems that bringing one world age to an end and inaugurating another is, in the universal tradition, the comet's most distinctive role.
ONE FEAR, MANY EXPRESSIONS

Due to the progressive fragmentation of evidence over time, the experts have missed the most significant fact of all. Mesoamerican cultures as a whole expressed the doomsday anxiety in pervasive ritual practices which themselves offer vital keys to the nature of the original events: the rites of sweeping practiced in every sacred precinct; the great festivals reckoning with critical moments in the calendar and repeating memorable episodes in the age of the gods; the virtually endless rites of sacrifice, by which tens of thousands died in a culture-wide bargaining with celestial powers; and the ritually-ordained wars by which the city's bravest and strongest repeated the catastrophic interlude between two world ages. Together with the available information on disaster portents, these mythically-rooted themes provide a great reservoir of evidence as to the character of the remembered catastrophe. (See sections to follow.) The repeated ritual patterns re-enacted on every scale (from household sweeping rites to nation-wide celebrations of the 52- year cycle) a world falling into darkness; the death of the creator-king, whose heart-soul was torn from him to soar aloft as a comet-like "spark"; the end of the kingdom (symbol of the "world"); a sky filled with celestial dust and cometary debris- -the feared chaos-hordes; the gathering of great armies in the heavens to wage celestial combat; and overwhelming commotion: reverberating shouts and cries, the earthshaking moans of the great goddess, the shrieks of whistles, trumpets blaring, the beating of drums, and--in the very midst of this world-ending havoc--a smoking star (the prototypical comet of the Aztecs and Maya, the planet Venus) announcing the disaster in the most literal, causative sense, and presiding over the recovery of order, as if sweeping clear the darkened and cloud-filled sky. To see how these vivid memories of cometary disaster found expression in the local rites, we shall next turn to the role of the feared chaos hordes in the remembered events. Dave Talbott
HERE WE GO AGAIN
Wal Thornhill I quote from the latest report from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), concerning a massive crater discovered on the surface of the asteroid Vesta: The giant crater is 285 miles across, which is nearly equal to Vesta's 330 mile diameter. If Earth had a crater of proportional size, it would fill the Pacific Ocean basin.
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Another surprising finding is that such a large crater, relative to Vesta's size, might have been expected to cause more damage to the rest of the minor planet.
This is becoming a familiar refrain. As well as Vesta, we now have Phobos, the tiny moon of Mars with a 7 mile circular crater on one end of its 17 mile long body (it's peanut shaped) and Mimas, the moon of Saturn, with its 80 mile diameter circular crater on a 240 mile diameter body. I predict that the crater on Vesta, when photographed more closely, will be circular also. All 3 craters have central peaks. In the recent west coast workshops I showed a dramatic slide of Phobos' crater, named Stickney. Prominent along the surface of Phobos were near parallel grooves apparently streaming away from Stickney and in the floors of the grooves were small circular craters. As Juergens noted a quarter of a century ago, and I have elaborated on since, the cratered grooves are a result of electrical discharges streaming across the surface toward the main crater, which is the focus of a plasma discharge from a planetary body. The circular crater with a central peak is characteristic of an impinging, rotating electric arc. It is emphatically not a result of an impact and so does not threaten to disrupt the rest of the moon or asteroid. In the case of Vesta, at the low relative speeds of objects in the asteroid belt we should not expect to find neatly circular craters resulting from impacts. (High resolution images of asteroids Gaspra and Ida show that practically all craters on them are circular too). The report goes on: Because of the asteroid's small diameter and low gravity, the crater resembles smaller craters on the Moon that have a distinctive central peak. Towering eight miles, this cone-shaped feature formed when molten rock 'sloshed' back to the bull's-eye center after the impact. This notion that central peaks in craters are caused by "sloshing" rock is total nonsense. There is a profound incompatibility between the two major requirements of the impact theory. First it requires a hypervelocity impactor in order to create a circular blast crater for almost any angle of approach. Secondly, it needs to melt rock to allow subsequent "sloshing" to form a central peak. But a blast causes rock to move by plastic flow under the influence of the shock front. When the shock front passes it freezes right where it is. There is very little melting. Evidence that rebound peaks were never melted is provided by the strata still evident in the rocks forming the peaks of so- called impact craters on the Earth. Sure, the minerals show shock effects but we all know the kind of concussion that even puny earthly lightning can cause. The central peaks of lunar craters are quite distinct from the melted floors and appear to be physically similar to the undisturbed terrain surrounding the crater. In a few notable instances on the Moon, the peak is connected to the rim by a mountain ridge! This is possible if the arc is extinguished (pinched off) before completing a full circle, but is inexplicable from any impact theory. You will also notice that the central peak on Vesta is as high as the crater is deep. This seems also to be a general pattern and is expected from arc machining but is not necessary for sloshing rock. Next, we get the obligatory reference to "the early days of the solar system" which is one of the key justifications for NASA's existence: This suggests that more asteroids from the early days of the solar system may still be intact. Since the impact theory is wrong and the nebular hypothesis of the formation of the solar system is patently absurd, NASA has not even begun to ask the right questions - let alone find answers about our beginnings. In the Electric Universe, such cratering is likely at the time of the birth of an object as it departs its parent. It is, if you like, a birth-mark.
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Wal Thornhill
E-mail Conversations about Uranus and Neptune

Re: Saturn's Revolving Crescent
At 2:44 PM 9/2/97, Amy Acheson wrote: I want to bring in a related question here. We remember when the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were "first" discovered--since the invention of the telescope) and named after the gods of the ancients. Yet Uranus and Neptune show scars of catastrophe, too. Uranus with its entire moon system is lying on its back, nearly 90 degrees to the plane in which it circles the sun. Neptune's largest moon revolves backwards in an orbit that could remain stable only a short (astronomically speaking) time. Both of them have highly skewed magnetic fields. All of their moons are riddled with the same kinds of scars found on the hypothesized participants of the Saturnian scenario. And, as I understand it, Wal Thornhill has been toying with the possibility that spread-out solar systems are "captured" while electrically fissioned ones are closely-packed. Uranus and Neptune are definitely spread out." So the questions are these: 1) Did the outer planets (as well as the gods they were named after) also participate in this Saturn scenario? 2) Are catastrophic scenarios common enough to hypothesize more than one in the history of our solar system? or 3) Could the catastrophe we're talking about have been of a greater scale than solarsystem-wide? [I can't help thinking about the scale of disruption of galactic arms in Arp's peculiar galaxies. Whether the cause is electromagnetic discharge, quasar ejection or something gravitational, the effect is large enough to make the "Saturn Myth" a localized version of the story.] Amy [Wal Thornhill replies] Amy, 1) I can't answer your first question, except to note that it seems likely to me that the names Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were merely names transferred from mythology by astronomers to those practically invisible planets and have nothing to do with the planets themselves. 2) I definitely think that there have been repeated catastrophes. The layering of the surfaces of the Earth, Moon and Mars is not, in my opinion, to be explained purely by internal mechanisms and the present view of impacts is far too simplistic. 3) There doesn't seem to be anything untoward going on in our arm of the galaxy, nor in the galaxy itself, so I don't think the catastrophes were more than a local event. (I must read Arp's books). In fact, I think earlier catastrophes more likely occurred in the close-packed environment of the Saturnian system than in our current relatively empty solar system. The subject of the origin of Uranus and Neptune is intriguing and difficult to be definite about. You are correct that I've been toying with the idea that spread-out solar systems are generally "captured" while electrically fissioned ones are closely-packed. I haven't spent much time recently thinking about such issues because there has been plenty happening in the inner solar system to keep me busy. But I will toss in a few facts and ideas for you to think about.
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Uranus and Neptune seem to form a pair, in size and appearance of their blue atmospheres - believed to be due to red light absorption in methane. They both have oddly offset magnetic fields which may have something to tell us about their different electrical nature. Neptune is the only planet to show changes in brightness of up to 4 percent. Neptune (17.2 Earth masses) is both more massive and dense than Uranus (14.5 Earth masses). The outermost planet in the solar system, Neptune's orbit is more circular than most machine shops could reproduce. Neptune's major moon, Triton, has the same kinds of electrical furrows and lack of craters as Jupiter's moon, Europa. These two moons also have a bright, pinkish surface. Maybe they are twins? Triton has a little atmosphere, chiefly nitrogen. (Saturn's moon Titan has a largely nitrogen atmosphere as well). Triton orbits Neptune retrogradely, which argues for its capture by Neptune. Triton also has terrain reminiscent of Uranus' moon Ariel, Saturn's moon Enceladus, and Jupiter's moons Io and Ganymede. It also has many of the same characteristics and size as Pluto (now demoted from the status of a planet). Three of Neptune's inner moons are within the Roche limit for the planet and should not have been able to form there, according to standard accretion theory. Triton has small replicas of the geysers on Io, reaching a height of 8 km. (This is probably a very low estimate based on just a few images from Voyager 2. Further investigation of the plumes on Io found those reached much higher than first thought). Triton also has dark plumes of material, thought to be from the geysers. Given their great differences in environment and surface conditions, this is further evidence in favour of such geysers being electrical discharges to the surfaces of these moons. Neptune has a net heat flow from the planet, Uranus has none that has been detected. Once again, this may denote a difference in electrical characteristics, maybe due to recent disturbance. Neptune has a wide equatorial zone that rotates more slowly (18 hours) than the magnetic field (16 hours), while polar regions rotate more rapidly than the magnetic field. The differential rotation is more pronounced than any other body in the solar system. Near the GDS, the winds are blowing retrogradely at 1500 miles per hour, the strongest measured anywhere in the solar system. It is noteworthy that all planets from Venus to Neptune have roughly similar cloud-top wind speeds despite a solar energy input variation by a factor of 1000! This is the strongest argument in favour of electrical energy being the main motive power behind upper atmospheric circulation. The wind speeds, relative to Neptune's surface, may not be as great as they appear if the planet's magnetic field and periodic radio signal are being driven by an external plasma toroid, rather than being intrinsic to the planet. The "clumpy" nature of the planet's rings may be another manifestation of radial plasma discharges between the planet and the encircling plasma toroid, as seen in the "spokes" of Saturn's rings. Neptune has a Great Dark Spot (GDS) of the same relative dimensions and latitude as Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Neptune's atmospheric banding has more in common with Jupiter's than with Saturn or Uranus which implies that Neptune is more electrically active than Uranus. Further evidence that this may be so is in the excess heat radiated by Neptune, the changes in brightness, the precise circularity of its orbit and the geysers on Triton. For the planet Neptune, being the planet most weakly bound to the Sun, to have an almost perfectly circular orbit argues, according to Newtonian mechanics, 1) that no body greater than 1/10 solar mass has passed through the solar system; 2) no object greater than 3 Jupiter masses has passed within the orbit of the Earth; and 3) there are no large planets beyond Neptune (sorry Don Patten). In fact astronomers are wont to say that its orbit is primordial. Notice that none of these constraints placed by a purely gravitational model prohibits the entry of a Saturnian system into the Solar family. But it does look as though Neptune was already a part of the solar system at the time since I don't think it would have had time for many revolutions about the Sun (1 Neptune year = 165 Earth years) to achieve such a highly circular orbit if it was stripped from the Saturnian system. Uranus is so similar to Neptune that I expect they were born at the same time under almost identical conditions. The extreme tilt of Uranus' axis (98 degrees) may have been due to an encounter with the
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Saturnian system, on its way in toward the Sun. Uranus has a very large number of small moons (15) which could be a result of that encounter. Neptune could have been somewhere on the far side of the solar system at the time of Saturn's incursion and been relatively unscathed. (Remember that in an electrical solar system, energy can be lost by an intruding body or system of bodies such that they are readily captured without returning to the outer reaches of the solar system from whence they came). Similarities between the major moons of all four gas giants suggests that they were originally a part of the Saturnian entourage, with Uranus and Neptune picking up some of the stragglers. Pluto and its moon, Charon I believe were some of the first bodies to be lost to the Saturnian system as the Sun's influence grew and, I would predict, they have similar characteristics to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. In other words, they will exhibit the same kind of electrical scarring, composition and hemispherical differences as the Galilean satellites of Jupiter and the large moons of Saturn. Pluto occasionally behaves like a comet, which adds some weight to my suggestion. I look forward to your comments. Wal Thornhill
At 10:24 PM 9/7/97, Amy Acheson wrote: <snip>...something about the way Uranus and Triton seem so carelessly tossed about draws my attention. Dear Amy, Thanks again for your comments. I sent the last post off late at night because I wanted to let you know I hadn't ignored or forgotten your earlier questions. It was based largely on my file on Neptune. Straight after I sent it I came across a joint paper by our friend, Tom Van Flandern (with R S Harrington), on the subject of "The Satellites of Neptune and the Origin of Pluto" Icarus 39, 131-136 (1979). It made me realize that I had been bending over backwards to accommodate the standard gravitational arguments wherever possible, to the detriment of my own argument. So when your reply arrived this morning, asking "Can you get away with that? Arguing that Neptune is "primordial" because of its nearly perfect circular orbit...", the answer is no, I can't. That argument would have Venus being primordial too. In any case, I didn't mean that I agreed with astronomers that Uranus and Neptune were primordially associated with the Sun. But that's another topic. Tom's paper concludes from a series of numerical experiments that "Pluto and the chaotic satellite system of Neptune may have originated from a single encounter of Neptune with a massive solar system body". I was prompted by this to look at the plane of the orbit of Triton and compare it with Pluto's orbital tilt, which is 17.2 degrees to the ecliptic. Triton orbits in a plane tilted 160 degrees to Neptune's equator (in other words, retrograde) and Neptune's equator is tilted 1 degree 47 minutes to the ecliptic. Therefore, Triton and Pluto orbit at almost the same angle to the ecliptic. I think Tom's idea that a planet (his model argues for a 2 to 5 Earth mass trans-Neptunian planet in a slow pass by Neptune) disrupted a system of normally rotating satellites of Neptune is a good starting point. As he says: ...the 3- to 2-resonance between Neptune and Pluto is easy to get into in this way, and, once established, very difficult to get out of. However, as others have pointed out, now that we know that Pluto has a large satellite, Tom's model doesn't work quite as well to create or maintain a pair of close objects in Pluto's orbit from a pair of Neptunian satellites. It seems clear from all this that the entry of the Saturnian system into the solar system, comprising at that time Uranus, Neptune and Mercury (I include Mercury for the moment because it and the Sun share an
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inexplicable tilt to the plane of the ecliptic of 7 degrees) did have an effect upon Neptune. But rather than a single intruder disrupting a system of Neptunian satellites, I believe the answer to the dilemma of Pluto being a double system is that it and its satellite were torn from the weakening grip of Saturn as it passed Neptune, at the same time that Triton was captured in its retrograde orbit. In fact, the most likely situation was that Pluto, its moon Charon, and Triton were all closely associated before the encounter with Neptune. For what it's worth, Pluto and Triton are about the same density and close to that of Ganymede, Callisto and Titan. With its tectonic features, its criss-cross of channels, its mushrooms, its wind streaks, its haze, its evidence of condensing volatiles, Triton was beginning to look like Europa, Enceladus, Mars and Io rolled into one Cooper, New Yorker, June 18, 1990, p.84. Triton was one of the Saturnian family! Neptune's small moon, Nereid, appears to be an object that almost escaped capture during the flyby. As for the other inner satellites, Dr. S R Taylor has written: The strange Neptunian satellite system seems to be principally the result of the capture of Triton, whose arrival on the scene must have resembled that of a bull entering a china shop. It is interesting that Tom Van Flandern's model required a slow flyby. It adds weight to my suggestion that the Polar configuration was transient but lasted for a time measured in decades or more likely, centuries as the Saturnian system lazily spiraled in toward the Sun, encountering first Neptune, then Uranus on its way. I will look at Uranus shortly. Wal Thornhill
[Dave Talbott wrote, concerning the obscuration of the sun:] As a complement to this concept Wal Thornhill has shown how a group of planets moving into a new electrical environment will generate a "plasma sheath" that could do exactly the same thing as the gaseous envelope I earlier proposed. [A reply] He has theorized, and that is interesting. Where is the proof of the theory? [Wal answers:] If, by proof you mean "show me a planet with a glowing cometary coma", then there can be no proof until we can sample other stellar planetary systems or our own solar system goes haywire again (heaven forbid). However, I do consider it to be theoretically consistent and the most likely explanation for some of the reported characteristics of ancient daylight. We do know that planets and minor bodies have invisible comas around them today. We have proof that Venus has a cometary magnetosphere. The only difference between the invisible planetary magnetospheres and a visible comet's tail is the energy of the ions and electrons in the coma and tail. As for the size of a coma, cometary comas have been discovered by the Hubble Telescope in the Cartwheel galaxy with heads a few hundred light years across and tails more than 1000 light years long. I am not suggesting a Saturnian coma that size, but it would have been huge as it entered the solar environment - easily sufficient to envelop its entourage of planets. Looking at the Shoemaker-Levy comet breakup near Jupiter, upon its dismemberment each of the components assumed their own cometary comas and tails. By analogy, the Earth may have later had its own glowing, cometary sheath, after the shift to the polar configuration, to add to the diffusion of light.
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Lightning activity on the Earth at that time would have been spectacular and dangerous. As I have argued earlier in this forum, St. Elmo's fire would have been a common occurrence, as seems to be the case on Venus even today. I am reminded of the beautiful representation of that phenomenon on the high ridges of buildings, represented in the traditional architecture of Thailand. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 26 (November 15, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10) Mars Mission: NASA Mapping Info Dialogue on Comets Worms living on frozen methane hydrate URL Site Submitted by David Moshinsky
David Talbott submitted by Kevin Weinhold Amy Acheson
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand. ~Spinoza

DEMONS OF DARKNESS
Let us now consider the role of darkness in the myths of the Great Comet. Throughout Mesoamerica, the arrival of the cosmic night was a pervasive subject of ritual re-enactment, from macrocosm to microcosm; the darkness into which the world sank symbolically at the end of the 52year cycle was the same darkness remembered with each setting of the sun, as every household recalled the dangers of the greater darkness in primeval times. But the doomsday fears of Mesoamerican peoples do not just reflect the ancient experience of a darkened world. At the root of these fears is a memory of the "chaos-hordes" let loose, the great cometary cloud which overtook the world in the mother of all catastrophes. Numerous ritual celebrations represented this swarming cometary debris by crowds of warriors and other participants adding through their dress and gestures the elements of commotion, disarray, darkness, and mock combat--these frenzied crowds being as much a part of the ritual occasion as the officiating priests or sacrificial victims. The panoply of images involved here will provide countless details about an event far more terrifying than historians have dared imagine. The crucial principle is the connection between ritual symbols and remembered events: the local rites commemorated death and disaster on a COSMIC scale. Thus, all of the components of the "darkness" theme are significant--throngs of people shouting in confusion or running about; the feathered ornaments;
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paper streamers waving in the wind; a pervasive fear that their children will be turned into mice; the fear that monsters with disheveled hair (a global cometary motif) will rise out of the darkness to devour them. Indeed, such themes constitute a tapestry of ancient cometary myths and symbols. And the repeated fears and gestures are not fixed to a single rite or to just one symbolic occasion, but to every level at which the darkness theme occurs. Symbolically, for example, every setting of the sun contained an aspect of the former disaster. When dusk arrived it came as a reminder of the cosmic night--the twilight of the gods. Natives of pre-Columbian Mexico retired to their own dwellings and covered themselves. At night the chaos-demons were out, and children could be turned into mice (a mythical form of the swarming celestial debris with cometary tails, the "children" of the comet- goddess). And while the people slept, it was the priest astronomer's duty to monitor the heavens at dusk, midnight and dawn, to "divine the course of events." In the shadow of the remembered catastrophe, every form of darkness contained a seed of uncertainty and terror. Then, in the morning, the obligatory sweeping of patios and walkways occurred--symbolically, the sweeping away of the night. Not just the darkness, but the gathered dust and clutter filled a special role in Mesoamerican daily life and ritual, as symbols of the great dust-cloud which overtook the world in ancestral times. So in the sweeping rites, we see the dust as an analog of this cloud--the chaos hordes-together with the symbolism of the female head of the house as "sweeper," a role defined by the mother goddess Toci herself, whose "broom" is a prominent feature in the commemorative rites (see discussion of Toci and sweeping rites in discussion to follow; also later discussion of the "broom" as universal comet glyph; in the form of a "broom," "flail," "fan," or "whisk," the Great Comet itself "scatters" the chaos-cloud.) No doubt such symbolism at the daily, microcosmic level was diluted over time and progressively gave way to the growing complexities of culture and practical necessity, but the residue of an ancient and unrecognized experience was still there at the time of the Conquest. Of course, the recollection of the cosmic night appears in more dramatic forms when an UNUSUAL occurrence of darkness breaks the normal pattern. Consider Sahagun's description of the people's response to an eclipse-Then there were a tumult and disorder. All were disquieted, unnerved, frightened. Then there was weeping. The common folk raised a cup, lifting their voices, making a great din, calling out, shrieking. There was shouting everywhere. People of light complexion were slain [as sacrifices]; captives were killed. All offered their blood, they drew straws through the lobes of their ears, which had been pierced. And in all the temples there was the singing of fitting chants, there was an uproar, there were war cries. It was thus said: If the eclipse of the sun is complete, it will be dark forever! The demons of darkness will come down, they will eat men! In these fleeting moments of the eclipse, the people relived the unforgettable night, repeating the great din of the world-ending catastrophe and venting their fears of the devouring chaos hordes. Were these fears, in origin, different from the (tempered) fear of dusk, or different from the terror aroused by the conclusion of the 52-year cycle (noted in our previous submission)? An examination of the different contexts will show that the entire complex of "darkness" fears always recalls the same comet-like cloud descending upon the world. It should not surprise us, therefore, that the very same fear is seen in relation to the eclipse of the moon. When the moon was eclipsed, his face grew dark and sooty, blackness and darkness spread. When this came to pass, women with child feared evil; they thought it portentous; they were terrified [lest], perchance, their [unborn] children might be changed into mice; each of their children might turn into a mouse.
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Such fears are rooted in myths and memories the modern world has failed to comprehend. There is an ARCHETYPE of cosmic "darkness," with deeper and broader meaning than could be extracted from any single commemorative occasion. Alone, the symbols can only point ambiguously backwards to unrecognized trauma. But in combination, the symbols will provide a rich profile of the world-ending catastrophe, accessible to any researcher willing to break free from a methodology that sees only fragments and asks the fragments to explain themselves in isolation from the whole. Of course, the planet Venus would seem an unlikely source of sky-darkening clouds (or of sky-clearing "sweeping," for that matter). And yet the remarkable Mesoamerican association of Venus with the eclipse and darkness has been documented by the vigorous research of Ev Cochrane. "Like most ancient peoples, the Maya considered eclipses of the sun to be a time of dire peril," Cochrane writes. "It was commonly believed, in fact, that the world might end during a solar eclipse. In the eclipse tables contained within the Dresden Codex, an eclipse is symbolized by the figure of a dragon descending from the glyph of the sun." On the relationship of the "eclipse"-dragon to Venus, Cochrane gives us the verdict of the eminent Mayan scholar, Sir Eric Thompson: The head of the monster is hidden by a large glyph of the planet Venus. One is instantly reminded of the Aztec belief that during eclipses the monsters called Tzitzimime or Tzontemoc (head down) plunged earthwards from the sky. These monsters include Tlauizcalpanteculti, the god of Venus as morning star. It is therefore highly probable that the picture represents a Tzitzimitl plunging head down toward earth during the darkness of an eclipse. A glyph immediately above the picture appears to confirm this identification, for it shows the glyph of Venus with a prefix which is a picture of a person placed upside down. A remote star could darken the entire sky? Here we see, in a clear profile, the dilemma for conventional study. Under the standard approach to this subject, the images are far too incredible to have any foundation in natural experience. Hence, they must be entirely fanciful. And hence, any attempt to see natural experience in these hieroglyphs must be preposterous. That is the fundamental circular reasoning on which the modern understanding of myth and symbol has been constructed. As a result, the patterns suggesting deeper levels of coherence are not even noticed. What is unthinkable is of no interest. So we do not realize that the fear of darkness is not just the fear of being unable to see clearly. As concretely expressed in myths and rites, it speaks for a collective memory; and even the lesser expressions of this fear are but shadows cast by a far greater terror, when the whole sky became the theater for the twilight of the gods.
MARS MISSION: NASA Mapping Info

Over the four months after orbit insertion, aerobraking and thrusters will slowly convert the original elliptical capture orbit into a nearly circular 2 hour polar orbit with an average altitude of 378 km, ALLOWING COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE PLANET EVERY 7 DAYS. Preliminary mapping operations will begin in January, 1998, and the primary mapping mission begins 15 March, 1998. The spacecraft will be in a "sun- synchronous" orbit so that each image will be taken with the sun at the same mid-afternoon azimuth. DATA WILL BE ACQUIRED FOR ONE MARTIAN YEAR (APPROX. 2 EARTH YEARS). The spacecraft will also be used as a data relay for later U.S. and international missions over the following three years. Mars Global Surveyor is the first spacecraft to be launched in a decade-long exploration of Mars by NASA. Launches will be occurring every 26 months, in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2005, involving orbiters, landers, rovers, and probes to Mars. Orbiters launched in 1998 and 2003 will contain other instruments to
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recover the planned Mars Observer objectives. More detailed information on Mars Global Surveyor is available from the NSSDC Master Catalog. The Mars Global Surveyor will consist of six primary investigations: The Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) - Michael Malin, Malin Space Science Systems The Mars Orbital Camera will take high resolution images, on the order of a meter or so, of surface features. IT WILL ALSO TAKE LOWER RESOLUTION IMAGES OF THE ENTIRE PLANET over time to enable research into the temporal changes in the atmosphere and on the surface." From: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/marsurv.html Emphasis added.
KRONIA GROUP DISCUSSION: Dialogue on Comets

[Poster named Rob]: Since ALL comets start pretty far out from the sun (ones close up have been melted by now), ANY comet that swings into the inner solar system has a very eccentric elliptical orbit. [Amy Acheson ]: First of all, I don't agree with his statement that ALL comets start pretty far out from the sun. This is a deduction from the uniformitarian assumption that all the bodies in the solar system were formed 4 billion years ago. If they were all formed 'way back then, and they continue to disrupt at the rate we've observed them disrupting in the past few centuries, then all the close up comets would have disrupted by now. [Note that I'm describing a similar phenomenon but not using the term that Rob used--melted because by using that term Rob assumes two other mainstream astronomical concept that I disagree with: 1) that comet's tails are caused by solar winds melting their fragile icy structure, and 2) that comets are basically icy snowballs.] In order to explain the fact that some comets have actually survived for 4 billion years, conventional astronomy has had to invent an imaginary Oort cloud way out beyond Pluto where these fragile bodies live safely out of reach of the sun until they manage to perturb each others' orbits enough for an occasional one to fall into the inner solar system and circle (ellipse?) around for a while, growing and losing a tail with every orbit, before it, too, completely melts down. By the way, taking the rate of disruption of comets over the past couple of millennia (there were 57 comets recorded the year Julius Caesar died--all naked eye; they hadn't invented the telescope) points to either a recent (a few thousands of years ago) comet-making event or an impossibly large number of comets "in the beginning" 4 billion years ago. [Rob again]: There are lots of speculations as to why a comet starts falling in from way far out in the solar system to the inner system. Some of them just have very long period orbits and only show up every few thousand years. [Amy replies]: Hale Bopp is one of those. [Rob again]: Other ones may have had very circular orbits way out there, but were disturbed by passing very close to another body and have had their orbits changed so that they are newly eccentric. This
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body would have to pass pretty close to them, however, and would have to be pretty massive, compared to the comet.
[Amy replies]: None of these suggestions takes into account Bob Grubaugh's recent orbital analysis which showed that of the 15 brightest comets of this past century, most of them, regardless of the length and eccentricity of their orbits-- Haley's and Hale Bopp included--intersect the plane of the ecliptic in a relatively small sector of the solar system which includes the region of the asteroid belt. . This would tend to indicate that they weren't formed 'way out there in the Oort belt, but more likely originated in a fairly recent event that occurred within the general vicinity of the asteroid belt. [Probably the asteroid belt itself is also a result of that event.] [Rob again]: When a body has a very eccentric orbit, its velocity isn't constant over the course of an orbit. As it swings far out, it slows down considerably. As it passes close by the parent body, it's going its fastest. In the case of comets, this means that they are moving pretty fast when they get to the inner solar system. "Pretty fast", for our purposes here, means SEVERAL KILOMETERS PER SECOND faster than the planets that live in the inner solar system. It's worth mentioning here that a body in a given orbit can only move at a speed consistent with that orbit. In a given spot in a given orbit only ONE velocity is permissible. If the body is speeded up or slowed down somehow, then the orbit has to change to reflect the new speed. This means, for example, that the earth or Venus can only move at a certain rate in their path around the sun, any faster and their orbits would change. [Amy replies]: Perhaps oversimplified, but this is a fairly straightforward description of Newtonian Mechanics. What he's leaving out is that at certain points in these orbits, it's easier to change due to the influence of another body. That's why NASA is flying Cassini past Venus twice and Jupiter once to build up orbit changes that will take it to Saturn with a minimum of rocket fuel. The two-body problem (how two bodies interact gravitationally) is easy to solve. With three, it's much more difficult (a huge prize was awarded by the French Government to the astronomer who finally solved it in the late 1700's, I think.) The nine- body problem (nine planets) hasn't been solved yet. [Rob again] Another thing worth mentioning is that the planets, due to the way the solar system was formed, have pretty circular orbits. Pluto has the most eccentric orbit, so eccentric that it sometimes moves inside Neptune. It's eccentricity is 0.248. This is still FAR less eccentric than a comet's orbit that comes in close to the sun, but it's more eccentric than the other planets. [Amy replies] Again, he's assuming that if Venus was a comet, it must have come from the Oort cloud and had similar eccentricities to what scientists today define as a comet. Velikovsky's case for Venus being a comet depends on the definition given by the ancient observers, not modern astronomers, which is a star with a tail, and may or may not be associated with any amount of orbital eccentricity. By the way, Venus still has remnants of a tail, reaching almost to the earth's orbit. It was discovered just recently by the SOHO satellite. [Wal Thornhill suggests that it is the eccentricity of comets--not their fragile snowball make-up--that causes them to grow tails (as they cut across the changing potential of the solar magnetic field) and that, if you kicked an asteroid into an eccentric orbit, it would "become" a comet, and that Venus appeared to be a comet because of eccentricity, and that even the whole Saturnian system became a comet (that is, grew a tail) when it was captured by the sun. But he (Wal) never gave me and Mel an adequate explanation of (A) why Kahoutek didn't grow a spectacular tail and (b) why Velikovsky (at the MacMaster's
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Conference in '74) predicted that it wouldn't. But we're jumping way beyond the discussion of cometary Venus here.] [Rob again]: Here are eccentricities for all the planets: Mercury 0.206 Venus 0.007 <<-- !!! Earth 0.017 Mars 0.093 Jupiter 0.048 Saturn 0.056 Uranus 0.046 Neptune 0.010 Pluto 0.248 Interestingly, Venus has the most perfectly circular orbit of the planets. This orbit is so circular that it's farthest from the sun is about 67239000 miles, but it's closest is about 67237400 miles, a difference of only about 1600 miles--far less than the radius of the planet (in other words, DAMN circular). Earth, by comparison, varies about 13,500 miles from high point to low point. [Amy replies] The most circular orbits in the solar system are those of Uranus' 15 moons. And, funniest thing, these orbit Uranus' equator, which is tilted almost perpendicular to the ecliptic. How they got that way and why they're so circular is a mystery. But it's a mystery that says something to me: 1) They sure as hell didn't form gradually over millions of years out of a rotating solar disc in the plane of the ecliptic, and 2) Until you can explain, with current astronomical processes, how these moons got so circularized, you better not use those processes to deny what ancient observers claim to have seen. [By the way, are you aware that the same astronomical errors about the orbit of the planet Venus were made in both Babylon and ancient Mexico? They both claimed an invisibility of 90 days at superior conjunction, something completely impossible under the present-day orbits of earth and Venus.] [Rob again] By contrast, a comet which swings out by Pluto, then swings in through Venus' orbit will have a long axis about 40 astronomical units long, but a short axis about 1.5 to 2 a.u. long. If you put this through the equations, you find an eccentricity of greater than 0.9. [Amy replies] Again, Velikovsky never said that Venus came from out beyond Pluto--that's Rob's assumption from his modern definition of a comet. Velikovsky says Venus originated from Jupiter within human historical memory. In Grubaugh's model, Venus originated from Saturn in the vicinity of the present day asteroid belt. In Thornhill's model Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, bunches of moons and probably asteroids, too, did come from outside the solar system in one clump sometime in the recent past (over a similar range of time as since the dinosaurs). [Rob again] All of this goes to show that comets have MUCH more eccentric orbits than planets and are moving much faster than planets when they reach the inner solar system. Now, keeping all of this in mind (it's a lot, I know), we can reach an interesting conclusion. If a body is in an elliptical orbit that goes from the distant edge of the solar system down to the inner solar system (the orbit comets follow), then the body is going much faster than the planets when it reaches the inner solar system. If you want that body to STAY in the inner solar system (say if that body is to become the planet Venus) it must SLOW DOWN A HELL OF A LOT when it reaches the inner solar system. Somewhere, you have to come up with a force that will impart
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many kilometers per second of change of velocity to a body the size of Venus. Even worse, this acceleration has to happen WHILE IT'S IN THE ORBIT YOU WANT IT TO HAVE. In other words, the body can't come sailing in, hit some other body on the way, then find it's way into Venus's slot. If you want it to wind up where Venus is, you HAVE to correct its velocity as it reaches Venus's orbit.
[Amy replies] Again, he's taking into account only gravitational interactions, and simplifications of them at that. Astronomers don't understand why our solar system has a Bode's law configuration, but Wal Thornhill's plasma model indicates that the low eccentricities and orderly distances between planets is a function of the fact that interacting systems settle into non-interacting systems at a fairly hasty rate. He thinks that each of the planets makes a "home" for itself at the limit of the next inward planet's electrical influence. That interplanetary electrical discharges (recorded in the past as thunderbolts of the gods, but not seen in present day, thank the gods) will have exactly the effect Rob is calling impossible: circularizing orbits. [Another "by the way" here: when ancient artists picture the thunderbolts of Zeus, they show the football shape of a plasma discharge in a vacuum rather than the long jagged lightning bolts we're familiar with in thunderstorms. Where do you think they got that idea?] [Rob again] For example, I take it that Velikovsky claims Venus interacted with earth and may have gotten some delta-v from that interaction. That's fine, but it's not possible for ANY delta-v received in EARTH's orbit to lead to a body settling down in Venus' orbit. [Amy replies] A plasma interaction between closely approaching planets could have wielded so much delta-v and deltag (gravity changes) and delta-m (mass changes) that the orbital outcome of any interaction is mathematically unpredictable. {By the way, such interactions would have left fragmented magnetic anomalies like those discovered on the moon by the Apollos and last week on Mars by Surveyor.} [Rob again] At BEST, this might lead to an elliptical orbit that swings down to be tangent with Venus, then up to be tangent with earth. In this best-case scenario, Venus would have ample opportunity to hit earth again, have its orbit (AND the earth's) effected to become MORE elliptical and so on. This best case orbit still has MUCH more energy than Venus' Orbit today. [Amy replies] Here Rob's assuming that only Venus' orbit changed, and that the earth and other planets are still where they always were. Velikovsky never made any claims about previous solar system order, except for the minor mention that earth may have once (before the Venus thingy) been a satellite of Saturn, the statement from which Dave Talbott took his inspiration. [Rob again] Here's another datum for you. Jupiter has several satellites, but a few of them are thought to have been "captured" by Jupiter, not part of its original formation. These were probably asteroids which got to close to Jupiter and came under it's gravitational influence. All of these captured satellites have much more elliptical orbits than the Jupiter's proper satellites, they have more inclined orbits (relative to the others) and some of them even move in retrograde (that is they orbit in the opposite direction from the others). Things "captured" don't tend to have circular orbits, because there is no force to give them the push that will "circularize" their orbits as they are captured. [Amy replies] Jupiter's "captured satellites" are all distant ones--the equivalents of the outer planets to our solar system, which are the most eccentric of our planets. The inner planets move closer and faster, so their orbits will regularize more quickly. The British astronomer, Ovenden, showed by computer model that at the distance from the sun of earth's orbit, three hundred revolutions was enough to stabilize almost any random beginning configuration into a Bode's-law configuration. And he was using only gravitational
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interactions. Needless to say, lots more than three hundred years have passed since 1500 BCE, the time Velikovsky places the Venus episode. [Rob again] So, I return to my original question at long last: If Venus is a captured comet, what force imparted a many-kilometer- per-second change of velocity to put it into a very circular orbit? [Amy replies] And, to summarize my answer: Venus being a comet doesn't necessarily imply capture from outside the solar system, although it doesn't rule out the possibility. In either case, gravitational interactions alone are capable of circularizing its orbit. But both the ancient records and modern discoveries in cosmology suggest that electromagnetic interactions also played a significant role. --Amy Acheson
WORMS LIVING ON METHANE HYDRATE

An announcement with implications for life on other worlds. A team funded by National Oceanic Atmospheric Admin announced discovery of worms living on frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. http://angelfire.com/biz/russetpress/
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 27 (DECEMBER 10, 1997)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (11) L.A. Times: LIFE ON MARS? L.A. Times: MAGNETIC MARS SPECULATIONS ON MAR'S SPIN RATE SPECULATIONS ON POLAR CONFIGURATION
David Talbott submitted by Robert Dunlap submitted by Robert Dunlap Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Is it likely that any astonishing new developments are lying in wait for us? Is it possible that the cosmology of 500 years hence will extend as far beyond our present beliefs as our cosmology goes beyond that of Newton? ~Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe

RITES OF SACRIFICE
Both the Aztecs and Maya are known to have practiced sacrifice on a horrendous scale, in intimate correspondence with the gods. To honor the gods and heroes of former times, the priests performed rites ordained by these divine ancestors, with a meticulous reverence for the way things happened in ancestral times (the age of the gods). Critical events in the gods' own lives provided the ritual drama, and in these biographical rituals, sacrifice was usually the central episode. In the Mesoamerican world view, it was a sacrifice of cosmic proportions that preceded the dawning of the present world age. As noted by Carrasco, the role of cosmic sacrifice in regenerating the world "was at the basis of the extraordinary practice of bloodletting and sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica." The present age was created out of the sacrifice of a large number of deities in Teotihuacan, or elsewhere, depending on the tradition. It was believed that this age would end in earthquakes and famine. What is clear is that cosmic order is achieved in the Aztec universe out of conflict, sacrifice, and the death of humans and gods. In addition to the calendrically ordained sacrifices, there were many other occasions on which the gods themselves seemed to call for sacrifice. For minor challenges in the course of daily life, offerings of food
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or ornaments might be sufficient, but in times of greater common need, particularly when the kingdom was beset by drought, or hurricanes, or plagues of locusts, the gods called for human victims. It does not appear that scholars as a whole appreciate the reason for this, however. It is through sacrifice "that two realms of time, the time of the gods and the time of humans, are linked together and renewed," states Carrasco. But why did sacrifice fulfill the divine requirement? And why at strategic calendar moments, or on occasions of distress? Again, it is imperative that one distinguish between the archetype and the symbol. Numerous contexts in which we observe the ritual response will suggest that a drought was not seen as a thing in itself, but a SYMBOL of the greater ordeal in more ancient times, the archetypal "drought" which gave meaning to the symbols. In the same way, every hurricane became a symbol of the irresistible cosmic wind that once overcame the world; or a plague of locusts referred back to the devastating chaos hordes which had overtaken the world in the great cometary disaster. A symbol is a reflection of some aspect of a prior experience. As such it does not, on its own, disclose the full character of that experience. Thus the researcher, to gain any sense of the true reference, must draw upon patterns revealed through the CONJUNCTION of symbols. Under the conventional analysis, however, the regional drought or the regional hurricane is the worst thing the analyst can imagine, so there is no prior reference for the symbol, only the symbol itself. Students of the culture are left, therefore, with a madhouse of symbols and meaningless, unexplained, barbaric practices and superstitions. Here, the ritual sacrifice has no broader significance than an apparent "bargaining with the gods" because the researcher does not see a relationship between the sacrifice and the events (drought, plague, storm) "calling" for it. And yet, the mythical context of sacrifice leaves no question as to a connection. When the creator-king Quetzalcoatl died, his heart was removed from him. The primeval "sacrifice," in the various traditions, occurred at a time of cosmic upheaval, of great wind and drought, of darkness, earthquake and flood, with the god's own heart--the smoking star--presiding over the regeneration of the world. Mythically speaking, the rites of sacrifice CAME INTO BEING through the critical events in the life, the death, and the transformation of the god-king. Why, then, did a drought or plague call forth a sacrifice? Because the sacrificial rites replayed, on a microcosmic scale, the overarching celestial drama, honoring the gods through remembrance, not just repeating the divine ordeal, but repeating the RESOLUTION. The followers of Quetzalcoatl, as noted by Carrasco, insisted that "all ceremonies and rites, building temples and altars...imitated the ways of that holy man." That is what the Aztecs meant by the repeated statement that Quetzalcoatl was the exemplary king, the model upon which kingship arose. And more than one sacrificial rite served to mirror essential episodes in the god's life and death. Citing a native informant, Duran summarizes a commemorative ritual involving a mock king, a captured enemy warrior chosen for his beauty and physical perfection and dressed in the attire of the founding king himself. For 40 days this human symbol of Quetzalcoatl was honored in feasts and celebration. "This living man was bought to represent the god for forty days, and he was served and revered as such," Duran writes. At the conclusion of his "reign," and with great ceremony, the assistants to the officiating priest laid the mock king on the sacrificial stone. Then the priest, with a crude stone knife, tore his heart from his body. Removal of the heart was, in fact, the most common form of human sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica, a recurring pattern recalling a celestial power's own "sacrifice" in the age of the gods. Interestingly, the officiating priests at the Templo Mayor bore the name quequetzalcoa, after Quetzalcoatl himself --suggesting that priest and sacrificial victim were, in their respective capacities, representing one and the same cosmic power. In the common pattern of the sacrifice, when the priest tore the heart from the victim, he raised it, still steaming, before the sun--the sacred "steam" of the removed heart offering a poignant reminder of the
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COMET-LIKE, smoking "heart" of the great god himself "The high priest then opened the chest and with amazing swiftness tore out the heart, ripping it out with his own hands. Thus steaming, the heart was lifted toward the sun, and the fumes were offered up to the sun." Or again: ...they opened his chest and took out the heart, and holding it up, they presented it to the Sun until its steam had cooled. Then, as if to re-play the mythic flight of the heart-soul, the priest turned and flung the heart toward the image of the god. The "steam" of the removed heart thus stood in symbolic correspondence with the "plumes" of the transformed heart-soul as plumed star, and with the "smoke" of the heart-soul as smoking star. In illustrations of these events, we see the Aztec priest raising the removed heart of the victim, with the "steam" rising before the sun. But elsewhere it is rather the PLUMES that rise from the heart, while still other contexts involve a SMOKING HEART. In a widespread ritual counterpart to human sacrifice, the celebrants formed a model of the heart from copal or pom, a resin derived from the copal tree, and set it burning as incense. The dark smoke rising from the ritual "heart" thus provided a vivid reminder of Quetzalcoatl's burning heart-soul, the smoking star Venus, which we have recognized as the GREAT COMET. A conjunction of three symbols--steaming heart, plumed heart and smoking heart- meaningless in themselves, derives a self-evident and spectacular significance when referred to the celestial prototype, the ascending, comet-like heart-soul removed from the ancient sun god Quetzalcoatl. The relentless practice of human sacrifice in every well- documented Mesoamerican culture, a source of horror to the conquering Spaniards, can produce great ambivalence in the treatments by historians, archaeologists and ethnologists. But what is really missing is the sense of context. How did such a widespread practice come to rule an entire civilization? Seeing the role of collective apprehension will bring the dark and fearful motives into the light of day, for the ceaseless acts of "remembering" and bargaining with the gods do become intelligible when referred to a world-shattering catastrophe, symbolically recalled every time a priest raised the sacrificial knife. In sacrifice the practitioners remembered and "nourished" the gods, and the two aspects of the practice seemed to go hand in hand, fueled by the memory of the all-devouring, smoking star. Why were the Aztecs so "deeply concerned about where and when Venus might appear to reverse their fortunes" (Aveni's words)? Why was sacrifice so frequently regulated by the rising of Venus? Sahagun tells us that "Captives were slain when it emerged that it might be nourished. They sprinkled blood toward it, flipping the middle finger from the thumb, they cast the blood as an offering." Seen from one vantage point, there is only meaninglessness in these rampant practices, by which whole nations responded to uncertainties large and small. Seen from another, there is the long shadow of celestial terror, when planets moved out of control and affected the fate of mankind.
LIFE ON MARS
L.A. Times Thursday, October 9, 1997 Mars Keeps Looking More Like Earth Red Planet: Pathfinder adds weight to evidence of a warm, wet history capable of supporting life. By K.C. COLE, Times Science Writer So they waited to hear from the Pathfinder spacecraft unable to send data from Mars for the last 10 days scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Wednesday that the Red Planet is not "just a big ball of rock" but has a clearly layered internal structure, much like the Earth.
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Meanwhile, the rover Sojourner waits silently at some unknown location on Mars for instructions from its mother ship. The layered structure, along with new close-ups of pebbled and pockmarked rocks, adds weight to previous evidence that ancient Mars was a warm, wet planet capable of supporting life. "This is the first evidence that Mars has a core, mantle and crust," said project scientist Matthew Golombek. At the same time, the pebble-encrusted rocks suggest that "water was stable on the surface. As you know, that is the one requirement for life," he said. Both findings imply that early Mars was hotter and more geologically active than previously thought. The presence of a distinct core--probably of iron, like the Earth's--was deduced from subtle changes in the planet's spin picked up by shifting radio signals beamed between Mars and Earth. The way the planet spins changes depending on how the mass inside is distributed--just as an ice skater spins slower with outstretched arms. The unseen internal structure also affects the turning of the planet around its axis, said JPL scientist William Folkner. Further measurements should reveal whether any part of the core is molten, like Earth's. Only a spinning liquid metal core, scientists believe, can churn up the electric currents necessary to produce global magnetic fields. Meanwhile, close-ups taken by the rover's stereo cameras before the communications breakdown show clear signs that some rocks are conglomerates of smaller pebbles, fused over time. The roundish shapes of the pebbles suggest that they were carried by flowing water for long periods, losing their rough edges along the way. Pockmarks, or "sockets," in the rocks appear to be holes where pebbles have been dislodged, said rover scientist Henry Moore of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. However, the "problem of the pebbles," as Moore called it, is far from solved. They could have been rounded during a flood, he said, or formed from melted glass thrown into the air during a fiery meteor impact, cooling into globules as they hit the ground. They could even be splatters from ancient volcanoes. "It's going to take a long time to figure out what we've seen," he said. "[But] I think we're looking at conglomerates." Another Martian mystery--concerning the possible presence of sand--is a clear source of disagreement between Moore and another Pathfinder scientist, Wes Ward of the Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz. Ward said Pathfinder had solved a puzzle left over from Viking missions 20 years ago. Viking orbiters saw clear signs of sand dunes, but once the mission's landers reached the surface, they found only floury dust, too fine to form dunes. However, when Sojourner scrambled over a hill and looked down into a valley, it saw details of dunes that looked much like sand dunes on Earth, with rising slopes on the windward side, a sharp crest and a steep slope on the trailing edge. These dunes are "markedly different" from those Viking saw, Ward said, and are clear evidence of sand. Moore, however, is not convinced that the dunes are made of sand and thinks they might consist of small clods of finer dust, or "virtual sand." The size of the grains is significant, because sand-size particles probably would have required water to break them down from rocks. Finer dust particles tend to be created by other chemical processes. Pathfinder also reported the first signs that fall is approaching on Mars, and dust storms are expected within the next few weeks. "It's starting to get cold," Golombek said. Since Pathfinder's spectacular parachute landing July 4, the spacecraft has long outlived what was supposed to be a one- week mission for the rover and one month's service for the lander. Now into its third month, the mission is switching gears to a completely solar-powered mode. It appears that a waning
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battery on the lander is behind the communications problems, according to acting flight director Jennifer Harris. However, engineers have not yet pinned down the difficulty. "We still do not know what situation we're in," Harris said. Just before Pathfinder stopped transmitting scientific data, Sojourner had left a cluster of stones called the "rock garden" to move to a large rock named Chimp, about 30 feet from the lander. The rover was programmed to head back for Pathfinder if it didn't hear any commands for six days. "It's not known where she [Sojourner] is right now," Moore said. "If she behaved herself, she would be back at the lander... She's patiently waiting for Jennifer [Harris] and her crew to bring back the lander [into communication] so she can send back more information." Golombek expects that to happen soon. "[Pathfinder] is not dead in any way, shape or form," he said. "I hope to have this job for a year."
OF CORES AND SOCKETS

Scientists from the Mars Pathfinder project said Wednesday that: * The Red Planet has a layered structure, much like Earth. * Close-up photos taken by the rover before a recent communications breakdown show signs that some Martian rocks consist of smaller pebbles cemented together over time. The pebbles' roundish shapes suggest that they were carried by flowing water, and pockmarks, or sockets, in the rocks appear to be places where pebbles were dislodged. * Subtle changes in spin were picked up by shifting radio signals between Mars and Earth. Source: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.
New from Robert E. Dunlap on CD-ROM and Video "Dinosaur: The Arctic Expedition" * Four Part Video Series "Mass Extinctions" Visit URL (NOW With QT Movies) http://home.earthlink.net/~redprods http://www.redprods.com
MAGNETIC MARS
Friday, October 3, 1997-Spacecraft Finds a Magnetic Patchwork on Mars Space: Global Surveyor data--received six months early surprise scientists, who had expected a weak but uniform field around the whole planet. By K.C. COLE, Times Science Writer Future Boy Scouts on Mars won't be able to use compasses to get around, because the magnetic field of Earth's sister planet swings wildly from one spot to the next as if the Red Planet were littered with small but extremely powerful magnets.
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The finding, announced Thursday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, comes from the Mars Global Surveyor six months ahead of schedule, as the spacecraft coasts far out from the planet, slowly skidding into orbit on its solar-panel wings. Strong magnetic fields, which shield planets from intense space radiation, are essential to the evolution of life, according to some scientists. And because the concentrated magnetic splotches on Mars are 40 times stronger than similar areas on Earth, it is likely that Mars once had a substantial magnetic core. "They're surprisingly strong," said Jack Connerney, a magnetometer scientist with the NASA Goddard Space Center in Maryland. Planetary scientists had expected to find a magnetic field around Mars that was relatively uniform, similar to those encircling all the other planets except Venus, and weak. Mars is the only planet in the solar system with such a peculiar magnetic patchwork, Connerney said. Almost 70 miles above the Martian surface, Global Surveyor continues its long spiral toward the planet-and its eventual parking orbit--slowing down each time it dips into the atmosphere. Although the craft wasn't due to begin sending back scientific data until next year, it has already returned some "remarkable, interesting results," said project scientist Arden Albee, "just a foretaste of things to come." Foremost among these findings is the unusual magnetic character of the Red Planet. As Global Surveyor plowed through the layer of electrically charged particles surrounding Mars, electronic compasses on board recorded a sudden and surprising drop in magnetic field strength. "Mars no longer has a global magnetic field," Connerney concluded. While the magnetic fields surrounding other planets are generated by swirling electric currents deep within their cores, the pockets of magnetism on Mars appear to be entirely on the crust. Whatever planetwide field once encircled Mars "is gone but not forgotten," Connerney said. The patches are thought to be remnants of that ancient field, frozen into the rock as the planet cooled after a hotter, more turbulent past. "They are thumbprints of a now dead event," said JPL magnetometer scientist Daniel Winterhalt. "It's the first time we can say for sure that Mars once had a magnetic field. Now what's left are bar magnets scattered all over the surface." In some places, the field points straight up out of the planet; in other patches, straight down; in others, flat across the surface. As a result, a compass carried about on Mars would not point consistently in one direction, but swing completely around as one traveled across a patch, Connerney said. If geologists can piece together this patchwork, they should be able to reconstruct the geological history of Mars back to a time when the parched, airless planet was a lot more like Earth. And while the existence of a strong magnetic field on ancient Mars doesn't in itself mean life once existed there, the finding does make those speculations more plausible. The camera on Global Surveyor has sent back images of steep cliffs, rolling sand dunes, sharp ridges and what appear to be ancient, striated riverbeds. First tests of the laser altimeter--which measures ups and downs on the surface of the planet--revealed surprisingly flat plains, dropping off into canyons much smoother and at least three times steeper than the Grand Canyon. But even that is a small scale feature for Mars, which because of its weaker gravity has both higher mountains and deeper valleys than Earth.
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The large flat plains, however, were a surprise, said altimeter scientist David Smith of the Goddard Space Center. "We asked ourselves, 'Where on Earth do you find this flatness?' " The answer is either in a desert, like the Sahara, or on the ocean floor. Whether or not the flat surfaces on Mars were the bottoms of ancient seas will not be known for sure, however, until scientists piece together all the data gathered by Surveyor's six instruments over the next 2 1/2 years of its mission, Albee said. Infrared measurements have indicated that the planet's atmospheric temperatures can be extremely cold-about 150 degrees below zero Fahrenheit--and that the weather is clear, with no major dust storms on the horizon. That's good news for the spacecraft's flight directors: Dust warms the atmosphere, and a warm atmosphere rises like a cake, bringing denser air higher, where it can increase drag on the craft to dangerous levels. With its solar panels outspread like wings, Global Surveyor glides through the atmosphere, buffeted about like a light plane. The temperature measurements allow engineers to adjust the orbits so the craft brakes just enough to enter orbit in the right place at the right time. The purpose of the $250-million mission is to map the entire surface of the planet, pinpointing the distribution of minerals, ice and rocks, and analyzing the atmosphere and gravity field. Such a thorough assessment will help scout promising landing sites for future Mars missions. Surveyor carries many spare parts that had been built for its ill-fated predecessor, the nearly $1-billion Mars Observer, which was lost in space in 1993 as it prepared to enter Martian orbit. The only glitch thus far in the Surveyor mission is a solar panel's failure to completely unfold. The descent into the atmosphere over the last few weeks, however, has moved the panel into an almost flat position, Albee said. [This makes the work of Wal look like deja vu! Robert Dunlap]
SPECULATIONS ON MAR'S SPIN RATE

I would like to clarify ... by saying that it is most likely, given the near equality of the spin rates of Earth and Mars, that both planets occupied Lagrange points of the same orbit around Saturn and therefore had exactly equal spin rates. Some moons of the outer planets do that today. We know, also from observation, that tidal forces are all that is needed to eventually cause phase lock resulting in the one face of a satellite to turn always to the primary. I would therefore argue that the Earth and Mars acquired their spins in normal orbits during the "Golden Age" of Saturn's dominance and doubt very much that any significant modification of spin rate took place during the polar alignment. It is difficult to imagine what kind of spin coupling would take place in such an environment. To call upon electromagnetic coupling to do the job of equalizing the spins of Earth and Mars during the polar alignment would be largely an exercise in hand-waving. It is a little more plausible to suggest that the strong electrical interactions between Mars and the practically static Venus slowed the much smaller Mars so that its day is now 24.6 hours instead of 24. Notice also that the extremely slow spin of Venus is a good argument for it being a new planet. It was not in orbit around Saturn long enough for it to achieve phase lock, despite it being much closer to Saturn than both the Earth and Mars. Based on Eric Crew's work, the ejection of a fraction of a gas giant's core to form a hierarchy of objects from planet size down to meteors and dust will take the form of a spray of
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material, like a hose being swung around. This would impart a slight retrograde spin to that material. This may explain Venus' anomalous slow retrograde spin. Wal Thornhill
SPECULATIONS ON POLAR CONFIGURATION

I may be corrected here but I have not considered the polar Configuration to have lasted for thousands of years but maybe only a few centuries. The confusion probably stems from the fact that we have not been presented with the very early recollections of the appearance of the sky. This is probably due, in part, to the speculative nature of some of that material. Without drawing much from that earlier material, my reasoning goes like this: Saturn seems to have wandered in the sky before assuming a fixed polar station. This could mean either that the pre-existing polar configuration was disturbed or that Saturn's satellites were dislodged from their phase locked Saturnian equatorial orbits by the increasing influence of the Sun (both gravitationally and electrically) and moved into the polar configuration. I think the second option is more likely because of the paired spin rates of Earth and Mars, and the slow, retrograde spin of Venus (see above). The polar configuration requires that the planetary spin axes maintain a fixed orientation in space because it is not clear how or what force could be applied to a planetary gyroscope to cause the axis to rotate to follow Saturn in its orbit around the Sun. Of course, it may be that the electrostatic theory of gravity can provide a dynamical solution without introducing catastrophic effects on the Earth. However, in the meantime, Bob Grubaugh's co-linear model neatly gets around this problem by having the Saturnian line-up of planets rotating retrogradely once for each "year" of the system. That way, the planetary axes remain fixed in space. This does however raise a question about the resultant changing appearance of Saturn's crescent. Now if Bob's model is correct and I am right in assuming the entry of the Saturnian system into the solar system, then the Saturnian "year" would have undergone a steady decrease as the Saturnian system spiraled in toward the Sun. I don't think either Bob or Robert Bass considered that possibility and the effects it would have on the stability of the system. At the least it would mean that Saturn would appear to wobble once more from the polar position. There is obviously plenty of work to be done in this area. For a start, I intend to ask my friend Eric Crew in England to run his electric circularization of orbits model for the capture of Saturn to see what kind of timescales we are talking about. I will also ask Ralph Sansbury if he can consider the Saturn polar configuration from an electrostatic gravity point of view to see what gyroscopic effects might be involved. I think the weight of evidence is in favor of the capture model. The flaring and ejection of matter by Saturn would follow as a natural consequence. The dropping off from Saturn's menagerie of Pluto and Charon and Neptune's retrograde moon, Triton, in much the same plane as Saturn's ecliptic, as that system spiraled past seems plausible. A more severe interaction with Uranus may have tipped it on its side. And the axial tilt of Earth and Mars preserves a fairly similar angle (around the 20 degree mark) as that of Triton's and Pluto's orbital plane, and Saturn's old ecliptic. I am considering here only the magnitudes of tilts since precession will cause their vectors to vary. Note also that the Sun's equator is tilted at 7 degrees to the ecliptic which suggests that all of its planets (except maybe Mercury) were captured at some time. Maybe Uranus and Neptune were an old binary pair? I should emphasize that capture is highly unlikely under old Newtonian mechanics but is highly probable under the new electrostatic theory of gravity and a plasma cosmology.
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To sum up, I think the golden age would have required a more quiescent environment than that offered by the spectacular and memorable polar configuration. In other words it occurred during the proposed earlier indefinite period of a phase-locked relationship with Saturn. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 1 (January 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (12) IONIZING THE GALAXY URL's of Interest
David Talbott comments by Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Is man's knowledge now nearly complete? Are only a few more steps necessary to conquer the universe...? Here begins Homo Ignoramus. He does not know what life is or how it came to be and whether it originated from inorganic matter. He does not know whether other planets of this sun or of other suns have life on them, and if they have, whether the forms of life there are like those around us, ourselves included. He does not know how this solar system came into being, although he has built up a few hypotheses about it ... He does not know what this mysterious force of gravitation is that holds him and his fellow man on the other side of the planet with their feet on the ground, although he regards the phenomenon itself as "the law of laws." He does not know what the earth looks like five miles under his feet. He does not know...He does not know...He does not know... ~Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision

VENUS, THE GREAT COMET, AND THE WARS OF THE GODS

A powerful conjunction of Venus symbolism and comet symbolism will be seen in the vast tribal wars and conquests that fed the rise of empires in Mesoamerica--a conjunction that will only grow in significance as we find the same nexus of symbols in other major cultures as well. What is not sufficiently recognized by the experts is that, in mythical terms, the "first" sacrifice and "first" war occurred in the lives of the gods themselves. Ancient beliefs, symbols, and expectations concerning sacrifice and war were rooted in something REMEMBERED. Only the remembered, prototypal Great Comet will explain the recurring patterns of belief about comets in general, the planet Venus in particular, and the mythically-rooted "signs" heralding or calling for war and sacrifice.
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Around the world, comets were seen as harbingers of devastating invasion, war, and conquest. A comet, according to the Chinese, could mean that "there are uprisings and war continues for several years." "When a comet travels into the Constellation Taurus, in the middle of the double month, blood is shed...[and] dead bodies lie on the ground. Within three years the emperor dies and the country is in chaos." The Roman poet Tibullus cites the comet as "the evil sign of war." Pliny, treating comets in his Natural History, tells us they bring war and commotion, while the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy associates them with foreign invasion. The third century Christian writer Origen saw the comet as heralding war and the collapse of dynasties. Centuries later (1011), Byrhtferth's Manual lists war as one of the disastrous effects of a comet's appearance." The extraordinary power of the mythic tradition will explain why many of early history's most brutal wars had affixed to them the appearance of a comet, even in cases in which the actual arrival of a comet may be in doubt. A comet and shooting stars are said to have appeared before the battle of Pharsalus in central Greece, heralding Caesar's defeat of Pompey. Josephus mentions in his History of the Jews that a comet in the form of a "sword" hung over Jerusalem for a whole year, foretelling the destruction of the city in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. "The belief persisted into medieval and later ages," writes Theodor Gaster. "A comet heralded the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066. Disasters suffered by the Christians at the hands of the Turks in 1456 were popularly attributed to the appearance of a comet." In 1456 a comet described as having a "fan-shaped tail like that of a peacock" is said to have stretched across half the sky. With the Turkish army at the gates of Belgrade, Pope Calixtus III feared a domino effect from a Mohammedan victory. Thus a Vatican historian wrote: A hairy and fiery star...made [an] appearance for several days, [and] mathematicians declared that there would follow...great calamity. Calixtus [ordered] prayers, beseeching God that if this meant impending evils for mankind, God would turn them all upon the Turks, the enemies of Christendom. The Zulu of South Africa also say that a comet brings war. And the same portentous significance of the comet seems to have prevailed in the Americas. In 1835, the warrior-chief Osecola, leader of the Seminole tribe in Florida, ...saw an appearance of Halley's Comet as an omen, and called on his people to launch a war against white settlers. The Seminoles overwhelmed the army garrison at Fort King and killed every last soldier. Osecola personally scalped the fort's commander, General Wiley Thompson. In the light of the general tradition, the retrospective accounts of Mesoamerican chroniclers, remembering that a comet preceded the Spanish invasion, take on greater meaning for us. The motif is strikingly familiar in an Aztec poem-I foresaw, being a Mexican, that our rule began to be destroyed, I went forth weeping that it was to bow down and be destroyed. Let me not be angry that the grandeur of Mexico is to be destroyed. The smoking stars gather together against it. One of the principles I intend to establish in this series of articles is that, in the earlier expressions of comet imagery, the fiery star did not just "herald" war; it was itself an agent of celestial upheaval, an active participant in the remembered WARS OF CELESTIAL POWERS, whose battles produced deep archetypal images subsequently reflected in ALL war. The flaming sphere of the comet was hurled into the midst of a great conflagration in the sky. In the original system of thought, every war on earth was an echo of the primeval disturbance, involving both celestial upheaval and the sacrifice of gods and heroes.
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Thus every local war needed not just rites of sacrifice, but a COMET to ratify a symbolic accord between current event and ancient memory. Of course the peaceful celestial visitors of a later age would never achieve the violent and world-changing impact of the prototype, and over time this could only accentuate the distance between the archetype and the later symbols referring back to it. Originally, the comet shook heaven and earth, summoning celestial armies and inspiring a clash of opposing forces in the sky. Latin poets seemed to have remembered the tradition well when, on the death of Caesar, they sought to portray a recurrence of the world- threatening tempest. When Caesar died, Virgil recounted, the sun "veiled his shining face and an evil age dreaded eternal night." Then "Germany heard the clash of armor fill the sky; the Alps quaked with unwonted shocks. Moreover a voice was heard of many among silent groves, crying aloud, and phantoms pallid in wonderful wise were seen when night was dim... Never elsewhere did more lightnings fall from clear skies, or ghastly comets so often blaze." The poet is here asking history to accommodate a more ancient tradition, in which the clash of armor, the cries of heaven, the appearance of "phantoms" (as in the Mexican counterpart), and the bursts of "lightning" all accompanied the appearance of the Great Comet and its flaming retinue, the chaos hordes. As can be seen in the words of the poet Manilius, the memory of a destructive comet is inseparable from the idea of devastating WAR -Such are the disasters which the glowing comets oft proclaim. Death comes with these celestial torches, which threaten earth with the blaze of pyres unceasing, since heaven and nature's self are stricken and seem doomed to share men's tomb. Wars, too, the fires portend, and sudden insurrection, and arms uplifted in stealthy treachery. When, in their wars with "barbarous Germany," the enemy made away with the Roman commander Varus, the poet was quick to assert a COMET'S presence. Then "did menacing lights burn in every quarter of the skies; nature herself waged war with fire marshaling her forces against us and threatening our destruction." That the great wars of early civilizations had a ritual character and purpose is often stated, though the connection with REMEMBERED tumult in the sky is rarely confronted. One of the underlying attributes of ritual is its commemorative function--repeating the "exemplary" actions of gods and celestial heroes, with special emphasis on the catastrophic junctures in the biographies of the gods. The motive was announced repeatedly by warrior kings, who saw themselves as extending the "glory" of the ancestral gods, and repeating the devastation that the gods themselves had wrought upon the world. And the gods desired that their ancient deeds be remembered. Remembering through re-enactment was thus the essential nature of ritual combat. It is significant, therefore, that the great wars of early nations, in their ritualistic aspect, involved a deliberate repetition of earthshaking noise and havoc, endlessly blended with the motives of sacrifice. In the general mythic tradition, sacrifice and war belong to one and the same cosmic sequence. In Olmec times, according to Carrasco: ...war was the place 'where the jaguars roar,' where 'feathered war bonnets heave about like foam in the waves.' The original reference is not to a terrestrial engagement but to the contest of the gods, in which jaguar warriors (including Quetzalcoatl's jaguar form) engaged each other on the celestial battlefield. The great havoc of that conflagration meant nothing other than the cosmic night, the occasion of the god king's own
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death or sacrifice, when the god's heart-soul (Venus) was seen in the sky trailing fire and smoke, and the chaos-powers were set loose upon the world. The model for both the ritual war and the closely related sacrificial rites was the life of the great initiate Quetzalcoatl, as noted by Carrasco. "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was born into a world of war. According to many primary sources the gods were periodically at war with one another during the mythic eras...In the vivid creation story of the Historia de los Mexicanos por Sus Pinturas, the gods created the Chichimec people in order to gain sacrificial blood through human warfare and the ritual sacrifice of captive warriors." Ritual repetition honored and glorified the gods through REMEMBRANCE. There is an interesting battlefield account by the Spanish soldier Bernal Daz del Castillo, depicting a scene in the wake of a Spanish retreat near the Great Temple. A number of Spanish soldiers had been captured alive during the engagement, and the chronicler gazed back at the ensuing spectacle. There was sounded the dismal drum of Huichilobos and many other shells and horns and things like trumpets and the sound of them was terrifying, and we all looked toward the lofty Pyramid where they were being sounded, and saw that our comrades whom they had captured when they defeated Corts were being carried by force up the steps, and they were taking them to be sacrificed. Sacrifice and war here merge as overlapping symbols, together with the "terrifying" sounds of a more ancient holocaust. Through sacrifice and war the divine ordeals were re-lived and the nation brought into more intimate correspondence with the gods. According to Duran, the Aztec priests periodically "approached the rulers, telling them that the gods were famished and wished to be REMEMBERED." The rulers then consulted among themselves regarding the hunger of the gods, and told their neighbors, the Tlaxcalans, to prepare for war--clearly a ritual occasion with agreed groundrules and calendar. "When the men were placed in formation and the troops set in order, the squadrons departed toward the plains of Tepepulco, where the armies met. The whole contest, the entire battle, was a struggle whose aim it was to capture prisoners for sacrifice." At the risk of redundancy, we must emphasize again the crucial distinction between archetype and symbol. The challenge to the investigator is this: the gods demanded sacrifice and remembrance, but the prevailing theoretical frameworks cannot answer the most fundamental question. What is the nature of the events which the gods demanded mankind remember? It is the countless RE-ENACTMENTS that answer this question, and in these re-enactments, a collective finger is pointed directly at the planet Venus, the now-settled star of the Great Comet. According to Floyd Lounsbury, one of the most respected authorities on Maya religion, the warrior kings synchronized their wars to the movements of Venus. The point is stated more than once by Linda Schele: the appearance of Venus "after superior conjunction, when Venus passes behind the sun and disappears from view, was often the occasion of war between Maya cites." Thus the Maya kings "believed that Venus played a tremendous role in war, and it appears that they invoked its assistance," looking for the day "augured by Venus as appropriate for battle." But is this not the very role of the comet in the universal lexicon? Archaeoastronomers have come to call the bloody wars sanctioned by Venus the "Star War events," a very fitting title. Citing studies by leading Maya experts, Carlson notes that 'the Maya conducted certain battles, raids or martial contests timed for significant stations in the Venus cycle, such as first appearances as Morning Star and Evening Star." Thus the Star War events were "Venus regulated." What is there about the speck of light we call Venus that could account for this power over war and warriors? And is it only a coincidence that, as the herald of war, Venus here offers us one more convergence with the celebrated Great Comet? My intent in this series of articles will be not just to demonstrate the full alignment of cometary symbols with Venus symbols, but to expose that planet's
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original character AS the Great Comet. In truth, Venus was remembered around the world as the flaming tempest in the heavens--the very tempest to which all of the great warrior-kings looked back again and again.
IONIZING THE GALAXY

In the Sept 5 issue of the journal, Science, pp. 1446,7, there is an article on astrophysics titled "Ionizing the Galaxy", by Ronald J Reynolds. Following are excerpts from that article: Ionized hydrogen is found throughout interstellar space. This has been known for almost 30 years, since the discovery of pulsars and the dispersion of their radio pulses by the free electrons that have been stripped from the atomic hydrogen along the line of sight. The source of this ionization still remains a mystery, however, challenging conventional wisdom about the interstellar medium and the principal mechanisms of ionization and heating within the disk and halo of our galaxy. More recently, extensive ionization similar to that in the Milky Way has been found in other galaxies. Speculation about the source of this ionization has been wide ranging, including such traditionally accepted sources as hot stars as well as more exotic possibilities like galactic magnetic flares, intense cosmic-ray electrons, and the decay of dark-matter particles. The ultimate goal is to understand the nature of interstellar matter and its role in star formation and the evolution of the galaxy. The interstellar medium is composed primarily of neutral atomic and molecular hydrogen, which is spread throughout the galactic disk with an average density of about one atom per cubic centimeter. It is the material out of which new stars are created, and it is the material into which old stars deposit their remains as the galaxy evolves slowly turning the interstellar matter into ever more stars and planets. In a complex feedback loop that is not understood, the conditions in the interstellar medium that give rise to the next generation of stars are determined by the medium's interactions with the previous generation of stars. One of these interactions is the ionization of hydrogen by ultraviolet radiation from recently formed, massive stars called O stars. The O stars, with effective surface temperatures near 40,000 K, emit much of their light in photons having energies greater than 13.6 eV, the ionization potential of atomic hydrogen. The formation of this glowing zone of ionized hydrogen around an O star was first described by the astronomer Bengt Stromgren in a classic 1939 paper. A principal conclusion of Stromgren's paper was that ionized interstellar hydrogen "should be limited to certain rather sharply bounded regions in space surrounding O-type stars or clusters of O-type stars." This is because the mean free path length of a hydrogen ionizing photon in the neutral atomic regions of the interstellar medium is very short, much less than the typical 100-light year radius of one of these ionized regions, or "Stromgren Spheres," as they are commonly called. Therefore, any ionizing photon that finds itself beyond the Stromgren Sphere's outer boundary is absorbed almost immediately within the neutral gas. The many photographs of emission nebulae around O stars appear to provide observational evidence for Stromgren Spheres, and because O stars and clusters of O stars are very few and far between in the galaxy, the conclusion that ionized hydrogen can only exist in very limited regions of the interstellar medium is quite compelling. The presence of wide spread ionization in our galaxy and others therefore implies that something is seriously wrong, or at least very incomplete, with this picture. Wal Thornhill comments: This discovery is another nail in the coffin (if more were needed) for a cosmology driven by gravity alone. I have argued strongly in favor of the new plasma cosmology which proposes that galaxies are giant electrical circuits, for example, carrying power along the arms of our galaxy toward the galactic centre. In
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this model, it is not necessary to rely only upon ultraviolet radiation to ionize neutral hydrogen atoms. The energy is available in the pervasive galactic cosmic ray charge carriers. I have written earlier about the problem of how life was possible on the Earth in an earlier Saturncentered configuration, far distant from our present sun. Some of the energy which maintains the interstellar ionization would have been focused on Saturn and its entourage for conversion into heat and light. I suggested that the energy was sufficient (until usurped by the sun) to cause Saturn to glow as a dwarf star. By orbiting closely to Saturn, the Earth received enough energy to nourish life in great diversity. Also, the quite different electrostatic environment would have affected the Earth's gravity to a marked degree (according to the new classical theory of gravity), allowing megafauna to thrive. Another recent item I posted to this group on the discovery of "weather" systems on the sun is coherent with this model but makes little sense for the orthodox view of a star as an isolated thermonuclear engine. All stars and planets are recipients of this galactic energy, to varying degrees. This results in weather systems of increasing magnitude or violence, the larger or more highly charged the object. It also contributes today to the excess radiant energy from the gas giant planets, above that received from the sun and re- radiated. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 2 (January 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (13) HUBBLE CAPTURES A ONE-HIT WONDER THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED THE GREAT COMET CRASH URL's of Interest
David Talbott Robert S. Boyd, Knight-Ridder News Service comments by Wal Thornhill comments by Mel Acheson & Wal Thornhill Amy & Mel Acheson
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

If the cultivation of understanding consists in one thing more than another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one's own opinions. ~John Stuart Mill

SWEEPING AWAY THE NIGHT

Discerning the relationship of archetype and symbol is particularly crucial when the symbol, in its familiar associations in daily life, cannot convey the extraordinary power of the archetype. By "archetype" we mean the original experience or idea giving meaning to a symbol. Without that relationship in view, the symbol can only appear random and absurd, because there is nothing standing behind it. A recurring symbol among the Aztecs is that of the broom. In this case the symbol may seem so far removed from our subject as to have no place in this analysis. Yet since this very symbol does recur in ritual contexts of darkness and upheaval, it is only appropriate that we seek out the underlying idea. The broom plays a part, for example, in the myth of Cihuacoatl, or "Woman Snake," the chief advisor to the Aztec ruler. Cihuacoatl stands in close but enigmatic association with both the horrifying serpentine goddess Coatlicue and the revered mother goddess Toci. But strangely, Cihuacoatl's relationships and symbols suggest two extremes, with no apparent bridge between them. In her most familiar role, she speaks for "domestic" responsibilities (she holds a broom and was remembered in the daily sweeping of the household shrine); but she was equally "at home" in her Terrible Aspect, the man-eating mistress of chaos.
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We must remember what Mircea Eliade and other perceptive students of comparative religion have taught us about the motives of myth and ritual. Inherent in the idea of correspondence with the gods was the idea of sacred moments, sacred domains, and sacred gestures, distinguished from the insignificant and "profane" by their connection with the great events and deeds of the gods. The principle applied at all levels of activity, not just the publicly visible centers of collective ritual. Every household had its sacred aspect, as did the kingdom. "Women had care of the household shrines, and the presentation of the little broom at birth signaled their sacred responsibility to keep the home zone well swept, and so free from potentially dangerous contamination," writes Inga Clendinnen, in her book AZTECS. In this single statement lies the key--the relationship of macrocosm and microcosm. "Dangerous contamination" operates at all levels and the words take their meaning from the myths of gods and heroes. The sacred domestic role of the broom is defined by a "broom's" role in an earlier cosmic drama the modern world has failed to understand. It may be hard for many of us today to fully appreciate that the morning sweeping of the household shrine was a commemorative occasion, symbolically tied to the sweeping away of DARKNESS. Symbolically, the localized "disorder," the gathered dust and debris, referred back to the vastly greater disorder of the COSMIC night. And this elementary symbolic relationship is the bridge between microcosm and macrocosm--the "domestic" goddess, and the all-devouring, raging hag with disheveled hair, rushing across the sky when the world had fallen into chaos. With "broom" in hand, the raging goddess pursued the chaos hordes, "sweeping" away the celestial debris of the world-ending cataclysm. Every household was an extension of the sacred order defined in ancestral times. In each household was thus kept the sacred fire, symbol of the animating light of heaven, ritually extinguished at the end of every 52-year world cycle, then re-ignited with the dawn of the new cycle. Every 52 years, the household relived a cosmic disaster. Then, on the following morning, as a symbol of the same events, the rituallyordained sweeping occurred, to the sounds of a beating drum. This reverberating drumbeat meant nothing other than the voice of Ehecatl, the Dawn Bringer, avatar of Quetzalcoatl. In the words, of Jacques Soustelle: The morning star shines with the brilliance of a gem and to greet it the wooden gongs beat on the temple-tops and the conchs wail. The dawn was thus an echo of the COSMIC morning when the world was "set in order" after the great cataclysm. Ritual sweeping repeated the ancient event of cosmic renewal, the defeat of the fiends of darkness. For these "fiends" WERE the celestial debris or cometary cloud descending upon the world, symbolized in later rites by the gathered dust in shrines and on pathways. In ritual symbolism, matters of degree and scale cannot change original meanings. Goddess, broom, sweeping, drumbeat--the clearing of the cosmic night was remembered with each dawn of day. The holder of the household broom, therefore, fills the symbolic role of the goddess. And though broom and celestial conflagration may not seem compatible, the mythical memory does place them side by side. A hymn to the "broom"-goddess celebrates Cihuacoatl-plumed with eagle feathers, with the crest of eagles, painted with serpents blood with a broom in her hands...goddess of drum beating... She is our mother, a goddess of war, our mother a goddess of war, an example and a companion from the home of our ancestors... She comes forth, she appears when war is waged, she protects us in war that we shall not be destroyed... She comes adorned in the ancient manner with the eagle crest. The hymn makes our point for us. The goddess provides the EXEMPLARY figure to explain the later rites. The symbols of disaster, of war, and of drum beating combine with those of the broom and of protection. A goddess who "appears when war is waged" has a now-familiar sound. That is precisely the mythical role of the comet, as we have seen, and precisely the role of Venus in Mesoamerican astrology. It seems
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as if the commentators have failed to notice that a broom or whisk, be it constituted from straw or feathers, is a COMETARY symbol. (See our brief list supplementing the five major comet symbols noted earlier.) A bundle of straw is an old European symbol of the comet. As we will discover also in our discussion of the world-destroying hag, the famous flying broom of the European witch stands alongside the witch's disheveled, flaming hair and her serpent-dragon apotheosis as a cometary image. In China comets were remembered above all else as "brooms" sweeping away one kingdom (world age) and introducing a new order--the very function of the broom in Mesoamerican ritual. In fact, the broom plays a symbolically crucial role in more than one Aztec rite. A major celebration of the mother goddess Toci fell on the sixteenth of September, which was also a special day in the calendar of world ages. The name of the feast was Ochpaniztli, which means "Sweeping of the Roads." The chronicler Duran calls it "the Feast of Sweeping." The feast, as reported by Duran, was marked by human sacrifice, terrible commotion and feigned skirmishes in which the goddess Toci herself participated. In the ritual celebration, the goddess was personified by a warrior who, donning the skin of a sacrificed female victim and ARMED WITH A BROOM, pursued a chaotic mob of warriors. At her descent (i.e., the descent of the impersonator), and in response to the moans of Toci, "the earth moved and quaked at that moment." (The images are reminiscent of the moans in the air when Caesar died, his soul to rise as a COMET above the quaking earth.) Hearing this report Duran was highly incredulous-I tried to investigate this and attempted to laugh off and mock this absurd belief. But I was assured that this part, this area of the temple, trembled and shook at that moment. Imagination may have served them well in this case, and the devil, always present, undoubtedly aided the imagination. Such is the power of archetypes. The integrated motifs are: commotion in the sky, moaning heavens, quaking earth, goddess with a "broom" pursuing the hordes of darkness. In these rites, the sky-darkening armies themselves were personified by warriors "armed" with brooms and appareled with colored streamers and plumed ornaments. "A bloody fray then took place among them. With sticks and stones countless men came to the combat and fight, something awesome to see..." In such manner was the havoc of the cosmic night re-enacted every year. The harsh sounds, the great din of clashing arms, the comet-like brooms and streamers of the unleashed mobs--themselves a dramatic personification of the swarming chaos powers in the sky--all accented by hurled stones and debris. Could one concoct a more vivid portrait of the cosmic upheaval terminating a former world age? A cometary disaster, involving vast "armies" or clouds and debris in the vicinity of earth, pitted against the PARENT OF COMETS, the dragon-like Venus "sweeping away" the cosmic night, provides us with a Velikovskian scenario par excellence. Clendinnen has given us an intensely dramatic account of the "sweeping" festival and its key ritual components, noting again and again the role of darkness and terror, and emphasizing the paradox of the "domestic" goddess hurled into a fray with the best warriors of the city. "These men, who scorned to turn their back in battle, fled through the dark streets...as Toci and her followers pursued them with brooms, the' domestic' female symbol par excellence, speaking of the tireless cleansing of the human zone, but now sodden with human blood." It was Toci herself, "in her paper regalia and her great bannered headdress" and her symbolic broom, who inaugurated the ritual slaying of captives. Then she confronted the warrior-mob again, "driving them ahead of her with war cries" and her broom, the hordes scattering as she chased them, until Toci was alone and victorious, having swept away the warriors of darkness-"triumphant as the pitiless mistress of war, insatiable eater of men." The great sweeping festival, says Clendinnen, was "a brilliantly constructed horror event, in its abrupt changes of pace and its teasing of the imagination through the exploitation of darkness." Here we see "the image of the women's broom dipped into human blood and so become a weapon of terror, before which warriors famed for their courage were driven like leaves." A paradox indeed! The broom wielded as a "weapon of terror."
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But let us be clear on this: a broom on its own instills no fear. Only as a mirror of the COMETARY "broom," the terrifying "weapon" hurled against celestial armies of darkness, can the symbol make sense. And then the paradox dissolves before our eyes. Duran tells us that on the day of the feast to Toci, the people swept their houses and pathways, guided by some ancient belief he is unable to illuminate. Significantly, community roads and highways were also swept on this day, according to Duran, particularly the road passing by the shrine to the goddess Toci. The feast itself, as we have noted, was called "The Sweeping of the Roads," and this too is a key, for it enables us to complete the circle with respect to the sweeping rites. In Evon Vogt's book ZINACANTAN, the author gives a poetic tale from the Highlands of Chiapas concerning the planet Venus. It seems that the people remember Venus as a GIRL WITH A BROOM, for the folk tale "describes the Morning Star (Venus), who is believed to have been a Chamula girl transformed into a 'Sweeper of the Path' for the Sun." It is the astronomical association, then--the connection with celestial sweeping, the clearing of the way for the new "sun" or world age--that finds the planet Venus in the very guise we should expect. Even in the wake of vast cultural evolution and fragmentation, the nations of Mesoamerica kept alive the ancient link of the Great Comet to the planet Venus, in the symbolic form of the girl and her broom.
HUBBELL CAPTURES A ONE-HIT WONDER

Foreshadowing the Milky Way's fate, two nearby galaxies are shown in a dramatic head-on collision By ROBERT S. BOYD Knight-Ridder News Service WASHINGTON - The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed two nearby galaxies in a rare, spectacular collision, giving birth to millions of hot, blue baby stars and re-enacting events that shaped the universe when it was young. Astronomers say the cosmic smashup may foreshadow what will happen to our galaxy, the Milky Way, when it collides with our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, some 5 billion years from now. Andromeda is streaking toward Earth at 300,000 mph, but it still is more than 2 million light years (about 12,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) away. "These images show our own future," Bradley Whitmore, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, told a media briefing Tuesday. "But ,don't worry. You don't need to put it on your calendar." The new Hubble pictures show the brilliant fireworks ignited during a head-on wreck between the two Antennae galaxies about 63 million light years away in the southern constellation Corvus (the row). Judging by the time it took the light from the collision to reach Earth, the crash happened rather recently in cosmic terms--shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Some of the young stars it produced are barely 2 million years old, a blink-of-an-eye compared with the 5 billion years our sun has existed. Encounters rare today
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Such encounters between galaxies are rare nowadays, according to Ed Weiler, the chief Hubble telescope scientist. But they were common in the first few billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was much smaller and more compact. "These pictures are very exciting because they show us processes that were taking place in the early universe," Whitmore said. The Antennae galaxies--so-called because they have a pair of wispy star tails resembling an insect's antennae--began as two roughly equal spiral galaxies, shaped like the Milky Way. They contained few stars and were mostly composed of huge clouds of cold hydrogen gas. When they plowed into each other, the gas clouds were squeezed and heated and eventually collapsed under their own gravity. They formed more than 1,000 bright blue star clusters, each containing 100,000 to a million baby stars. Francois Schweizer, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, likened the process to dropping cold blobs of gas into a hot pressure cooker. "Like a string of firecrackers, these reservoirs of gas lit up in a great burst of star formation," he said. "The collision crunched the hydrogen gas, and new stars formed all over the place." As a result of the crash, the two spiral galaxies are merging into a single, irregularly shaped elliptical galaxy. The early universe contained mostly spirals, but ellipticals are becoming more common as mergers occur. About 30 percent of the galaxies in the universe today are ellipticals, according to Anne Kinney, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Ultimately, the shift from spiral to elliptical will happen to our own galaxy when it meets up with Andromeda. "After the merger, there will be no hint of a Milky Way," Whitmore said. "If we were alive, we'd be living in an elliptical galaxy." [Wal Thornhill comments]: This whole media beat-up is worthless. It is based on a string of simplistic assumptions about the internal dynamics of galaxies (which is not understood) and their mode of external interaction with other galaxies. It also mentions the ages of stars which in turn relies on an even longer list of ad-hoc assumptions, not the least of which is the notion that they are isolated thermonuclear entities. For example, based on an Electric Universe, the blueness of the stars indicates that they are under extreme electrical stress, which in turn predicts that the motion of the galactic arms containing them will be more violent than usual. It is highly likely that two close galaxies will be linked by Birkeland currents with ensuing highly complex non-gravitational interactions. Part of that may involve charge exchange which could explain the blue stars. The picture shows two helices, the signature of gigantic Birkeland currents, containing blue stars, emanating from the two galactic centres. It would be interesting to try to trace the electrical current flow between the galaxies by looking at magnetograms of the area, if they are available. Computer modeling using purely gravitational forces is totally inadequate to unravel intergalactic interactions and galactic evolution. So to attempt to predict the Milky Way's fate is complete nonsense. Wal Thornhill
THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED
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[Mel Acheson comments]: I have a couple of comments and questions intended primarily for Wal: I finally got a break in my work load and read Lerner's The Big Bang Never Happened. (I've put it off for several years because of the impression I got that it was largely a "fundamentalist atheist" tract.) The info on plasma physics was exciting, as were his ideas on cosmology and the three modes of evolution. Now I've got to read Prigogine's work on the second law of thermodynamics. (That takes me back to the question no one would discuss with me in college: How can the second law, defined only for closed systems, be assumed to govern open ones?) It was strange to read Lerner's off-hand dismissal of Velikovsky (and thereby V's historical method) on page 4, then later to read his (L's) extensive criticisms of modern physics for having rejected the historical. Apparently, some history (that supports his thesis) is okay but other history (that doesn't) is "fantasy". [Wal comments]: The obligatory back-hander to Velikovsky is a familiar ploy. Shows you're one of the good-ol-boys. Duncan Steele and Clube and Napier have all indulged in it. [Mel]: Certainly his economic and political "histories" are more fantasy than fact: For example, the chart on p. 407 showing declining "real wages" as support for his "society in crisis" scenario is entirely misleading and his conclusions from it are false (equating "wages" with "income"--"income" increased during the period charted). Although it's a popular book, the sloppy scholarship in economics and politics makes me uneasy about his presentation of plasma physics. [Wal]: I also felt that he lost the plot half-way through the book and I said so in my workshops. However, I have read professional journals on plasma physics concerning the plasma focus device and found that Lerner reports that work quite well. I also have some of Alfven's books and don't find any discrepancies. [Mel]: I notice he explains phenomena from the Large Scale Structure of the universe down to the structure of galaxies with principles of plasma filamentation, but he reverts to the orthodox nuclear-reaction-powered model for stellar structure and evolution. In order to produce the observed abundances of elements (primarily hydrogen, helium, carbon, and oxygen), he has to cultivate a succession of growths: plasma- induced shock waves raise an early crop of supernovae that produce the carbon and oxygen; followed by a bloom of common novae that shed helium; ending with today's climax community of dwarf stars and observed abundances. This stringing together of ad hoc possibilities imitates orthodox explanations with the resultant lowering of confidence in them. [Wal]: Once again, in my workshop notes I say that Eric Lerner's imagination seems to fail him when we come to look at our own star, the Sun. [Mel]: Your view, from Juergens, of a "plasma transformer" theory of stellar structure would be more consistent with a plasma universe--one step instead of 3 or 4 but can you get it to produce the observed abundances? Have you--can you calculate the element abundances that would result from surface nucleosynthesis at a rate consistent with observed neutrinos? [Wal]: The standard theory of stellar nucleosynthesis is so complex and so full of fudge factors that the theoreticians could match any observation that came up. That theory involves only random thermal energies which is a very inefficient way to cook up heavy elements. Electric discharges drive non-random
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high energy particles together in a much more efficient, but nonetheless complex, nucleo-synthetic process. The only way to begin to answer your question is in the plasma laboratory, as Alfven tried to tell us. [Mel]: My second question is perhaps less complicated: An order-of-magnitude calculation (with the small resources I have) comes up with the Sun radiating over 30 000 times the energy it gets from cosmic rays: Radiant output of Sun= 4x10exp26 Watts= 2x10exp45 ev/sec Cosmic ray density (at earth)= 1 per sec per sq cm Cosmic ray energy= 10exp18 ev (some kind of average; max= 10exp21) Surface area of Sun (at photosphere)= 6x10exp22 sq cm Cosmic ray input= 6x10exp22 x 10exp18= 6x10exp40 ev/sec < 2x10exp45 by a factor of 3x10exp4 Even taking the solar "surface" to be the edge of the corona (where electrons escape coronal fields in orthodox theory--at a height of 10exp6 km above the photosphere), the cosmic ray input is low by a factor of 7000. I suppose nuclear reactions from the cosmic ray influx would add something. I don't have the numbers to calculate the energy output of reactions in the quantity that would result in the observed numbers of neutrinos. Do you? Is this enough to make up the energy deficit? Or do you have another explanation? [Wal]: I have not had time to look up references to back up the idea that cosmic ray energy input is equivalent to the radiant energy output of the Sun. I must do so soon. Ralph Juergens noted "that the calculated energy density of cosmic rays in our galaxy is comparable to the total energy density of e-m radiation, including starlight", which amounts to the same thing (Pense II, Fall 1972, pp 11,12.). As you mention, the nuclear reactions taking place at the surfaces of ordinary stars will add to the energy. The problem in trying to work backwards from the observed number of neutrinos to arrive at the expected energy from this source is that we don't know what non-thermal nuclear reactions are occurring.
The Great Comet Crash

Book Review/Recommendation We recommend you look up the book, The Great Comet Crash, edited by John R. Spencer and Jacqueline Mitton. The article, "The String Of Pearls" by Weaver and Jewett, describes the appearance of SL9 from discovery to impact. There is a multiple photo on page 45 showing the tail development between March 27 '93 and Jun 7 '94. "At the time of discovery, in March 1993, the component fragments were embedded in a sheet of bright material that extended beyond the ends of the train." They attribute to radiation pressure the fact that "most of the dust sheet [was] on one side of the train. That was the side in the direction away from the sun at the time of break-up." As the pieces separated, each fragment had its own tail, also pointing away from the sun. In the final few weeks prior to impact, however, the comae became highly elongated along the comet-Jupiter line. [attributed to tidal forces] The comae took on a tadpole-like appearance, with the tail pointing toward Jupiter. Despite the stretching of their comae, the fragments generally maintained condensed, stable cores, at least until the last views about 10 hours before impact.
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Amy and Mel Acheson
News of interest to catastrophists:

Two new moons of Uranus have been discovered, bringing the total up to 17. Unlike the other 15, these moons move in large, eccentric retrograde orbits, inclined at a large angle to Uranus' equator. You can see one of them at NASA's Astronomy picture of the day website. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ Look in the archive for November 3 to see one of the new moons of Uranus. Then take a look at the photo for today (November 6) It's called "The Magnetic Carpet Of The Sun." In case any of you don't have access to the website, I'll copy the text here: The Sun has a Magnetic Carpet. Its visible surface appears to be carpeted with tens of thousands of magnetic north and south poles joined by looping field lines which extend outward into the solar corona. Recently, researchers have revealed maps of large numbers of these small magnetic concentrations produced using data and images from the space-based SOHO observatory ... The small magnetic regions emerge, fragment, drift, and disappear over periods of only 40 hours or so. Their origin is mystifying and their dynamic behavior is difficult to reconcile with present theories of rotationally driven large-scale Solar Magnetism. Is some unknown process at work? Possibly, but the source of this mystery may well be the solution to another -the long standing mystery of why the outer Solar Corona is over 100 times hotter than the sun's visible surface! The SOHO data reveal that energy released as these loops break apart and interact seems to be heating the coronal plasma. Maybe a big mystery for a purely mechanical solar system, but it looks to me like just what the astronomer ordered for an electrically driven one. Amy Acheson
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 3 (February 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (14) INTERSTELLAR "COMETS" WOODHENGE FIND RIVALS STONE CIRCLES AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL GALLERY CATALOGS ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY URL's OF INTEREST
David Talbott Amy Acheson comments by Wal Thornhill BY Nigel Hawkes, SCIENCE Editor comments by Allan Beggs & Wal Thornhill comments by Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence and to suspend judgement when we have not. ~John Lubbock

By David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: This concludes Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus in Mesoamerican thought.]
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT COMET

In these brief articles we have asked whether Immanuel Velikovsky's comet Venus finds support among Mesoamerican cultures. Our conclusion is that, to a stunning degree, the symbols or hieroglyphs of comets stand in an unexplained conjunction with the planet Venus in Mesoamerica. Not only the five most frequently-occurring hieroglyphs for the comet around the world, but virtually all of the variations on these symbols are attached to each other and to the planet Venus. On their own, the symbols do not provide any basis for the observed merging. But grant the proposed history of a COMET Venus, and all of the enigmas are removed in a single stroke. In support of this conjunction, we have also cross-referenced the Mesoamerican traditions with more general traditions about comets in other cultures, and found an underlying consistency far too broad to be explained by chance. Additionally, we have seen that the deepest fears of Mesoamerican culture turn out to be the specific fears which ancient astronomies associated SIMULTANEOUSLY with the arrival of a comet and the risings of Venus, as we should expect: the end of the world, death of kings, overwhelming wars, plague,
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pestilence, drought. Those who are familiar with our larger thesis will recognize that these fears are not random, but inseparably tied to a more fundamental story: that of the ancient god-king--the celestial "father" of kings--whose death or ordeal brought a former world age to a catastrophic end, and whose "heart-soul" took flight as a comet-like star. This prototypical, cometary heart-soul is nothing other than the planet Venus. One discovers this equivalence of Venus- and comet-fears in all of the symbolic and ritual contexts by which Mesoamerican cultures expressed their deepest anxieties: we see it in calendars of world ages, in superstitions associated with unexpected disruptions of natural cycles (eclipses, etc.), in massive ritual sacrifice, in relentless war, and in a never-ending stream of commemorative festivals and rites. Repeatedly, the stargazers looked to VENUS as the cause or sign of the very disorder that world myth ascribes to the feared GREAT COMET. It has long been assumed that the great civilizations of the past oriented themselves to a sky appearing almost exactly like our sky today. I have suggested, however, that an entirely new approach to ancient myth and religion is warranted. Early races were obsessed with a prior "age of the gods," a time unlike any period of human history to follow. It is the living memories of this epoch that reveal the true source of collective fear, as generation after generation anxiously followed the movements of PLANETS. Driven by fear and guilt, the starworshippers incessantly re-enacted the critical junctures in that prior age, when planets moved out of control. There is a reason why the myth of the comet Venus is so deeply entwined with a more general memory of planetary upheaval. In truth, the evidence for an UNFAMILIAR sky is massive. But to appreciate even the first levels of that evidence one must break the trance of prior teaching and beliefs Evidence must be seen AS evidence, rather than as witness to the absurdity and contradictions of the star worshippers. When clearly-defined patterns of memory are impossible to explain under prevailing assumptions, those assumptions must be re-evaluated. To comprehend the equation of comet symbols and Venus symbols, one need only ask what we should expect to find if Velikovsky's thesis was fundamentally correct. (I do not accept Velikovsky's Venus chronology or his detailed scenario.) If Venus formerly appeared as a world- threatening comet, but subsequently lost its cometary aspect, should we not find that later fears of comets attached themselves BOTH to the now-peaceful planet Venus and to the wisps of gas periodically coming into view? Wherever systematic, empirical astronomy kept alive the Great Comet's connection with Venus, we should EXPECT that the symbols of comets would pervade the culture's images of that planet. If the thesis is correct, it could not have been otherwise. So we can hardly be surprised to find that, in Mexico, the five universal glyphs of the comet are attached to the planet Venus! That a comet is the ONLY known astronomical reference for these symbols makes the point all the more emphatic. In terms of our larger thesis, it should not surprise us either that the planet Venus was, in a hundred different ways, the regulator of the fate of kings and kingdoms in Mexico. (The Great Comet DID "determine" the fate of the king's celestial prototype; see earlier discussion of the Saturn theory.) A compelling logic will thus be seen in Venus' definitive mythical role--in regulating the cosmic cycles, ordaining festivals pointing backward to the age of the gods, sending the kingdom's strongest men to war, and sending the victims of war to the sacrificial stone. Given the full story of the Great Comet, we should expect nothing else. And even in the more tempered rituals of daily life, the keeping of the sacred fire, the morning sweeping of the shrine, and other rites too numerous to mention here, one discerns the everpresent memory of a world falling into confusion, but subsequently renewed to the drumbeat of the Dawn Bringer. When Bob Forrest said that he could find "no direct historical reference" to the Venus-comet, I believe he spoke from conviction. But the language of the first civilizations was not "historical;" it was mythical, having its reference in events no longer occurring. Thus, no civilization could meet Forrest's test. There are no "direct historical references" to the age of the gods, because that age precedes earthbound, historical chronicles.
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Did the underlying events implied by the myths and by the ritual acts of remembering actually occur? Given the nature of the language involved, the sheer scale of evidence is stunning; and one might wonder how the Mexican star worshippers were supposed to have told us something more about the remembered catastrophes, without a crash course in the language of modern science. In taking up such issues, cross referencing is imperative. No approach that isolates each evidential fragment, "explaining" that fragment without explaining parallel evidence pointing to the same unusual conclusion, can diminish the case for a remembered Venus-comet. No self-respecting scholar will lack the imagination to conjure an "explanation" of a particular comet symbol attached to Venus: it is simply too easy to claim that an ancient tribe or race may have accidentally confused a comet tradition with a Venus tradition. But it is the CONSISTENCY of the comet images of Venus that makes the case, and in this sense Forrest's analysis breaks down completely with the very first instance cited. The comet Venus is a global myth, and the one credible explanation of the myth is that Venus DID look like a comet--that it did participate in literally earthshaking events, not that long ago. One only has to follow the evidence to know that this is so.
INTERSTELLAR "COMETS"
[Amy Acheson wrote]: Seems like every time I surf the astronomy pages on the WEB they have something that screams "electrical phenomena." So here's another example: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9711/orionprop_hst_big.jpg The picture is from Hubble of the Orion Nebula, in particular the Trapezium cluster. And the text mentions that many of the smaller stars have dust clouds that point away from the larger stars. (It's from the previous page, but they change that every day) For the text, try: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ and turn to Nov 18 in the archives. So I'd like to know, can these be "coma" in the same sense but much larger scale as cometary tails? They don't mention it, but it looks to me like some of the stars have tails that don't seem aligned with bigger stars. [Wal Thornhill responds]: Thanks for the information. You're right about the rate of confirmatory reports supporting the "Electric Universe". Like all paradigm shifts, once you have made it the whole thing seems so simple and blindingly obvious. We will have no difficulty teaching this stuff to primary school kids in the future. The astounding blindspot of the current astronomical paradigm is that we know that the universe is built of charged particles (even the neutron exhibits an internal charged structure) yet we do not allow charge accumulation and exchange or electrostatic effects except in a very minor way near the surface of the Earth. As to the "Proplyds" as they call those stars surrounded by "structures that seem to point away from the brighter stars", they are large scale cometary comas. The astronomers weren't so coy about the much larger cometary structures in the Cartwheel galaxy. There they actually pinned the cometary tail on the galactic donkey. The problem for astronomers is that their dogma requires that clouds of material surrounding a star must be associated with the formation of a planetary system, so it is a purely gravitational and mechanical phenomena. That requires some kind of "stellar wind" from a nearby bright
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star to blow the dust into a tail shape. But you and I know that a stellar wind ain't a wind at all, it's an electrical flow. I believe the star in each Propolyd is generating the surrounding cloud by spewing material into space in the same way that a comet does under the influence of electrical discharges at the nucleus. Your comment about the lack of alignment of some tails with the brighter stars seems to be so. This would be expected if the tail direction merely shows the local alignment of the Birkeland current thread in which the Propolyd is embedded. A Propolyd type of phenomena is precisely the way I envisage the Saturnian system behaving upon entering our Sun's electrical influence. Saturn is reported to have spewed material into space, which would have formed an obscuring coma, noted by Dave and Dwardu Cardona, just as we see with the Propolyds. So, it could be said that ancient testimony tends to confirm my statement that the Propolyd comas are formed by electrical discharge of stellar material and therefore shaped by ambient electrical stresses.
WOODHENGE FIND RIVALS STONE CIRCLES

BY NIGEL HAWKES, SCIENCE EDITOR Builders of the oak tree marvel; Bride eager to dance had devil to pay ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered traces of a huge and elaborate wooden temple dating back 5,000 years. Evidence shows that it was once one of the most important ceremonial sites in England, comparable in significance to Stonehenge. Nine concentric rings of oak pillars once stood on the site at Stanton Drew in Somerset, surrounded by an enormous ditch. Each upright would have been up to a metre across and probably stood eight metres above the ground. All that can be seen today is a later stone circle. Such wooden henges are unique to Britain, and this one is twice as large as any of the other seven known. The traces were found by archaeologists from English Heritage while they were carrying out a routine survey, using instruments that can detect small magnetic anomalies in the soil without disturbing the surface. "To our surprise and delight what emerged was a timber temple of about 3000 BC," said Geoffrey Wainwright, chief archaeologist at English Heritage. There is now no timber left? It would have decayed long ago. But the disturbance of the soil when the pits were dug to take the uprights shows clearly. Andrew David, head of archaeometry at English Heritage, estimates that there would have been between 400 and 500 oak uprights making up the nine rings. Each would have weighed five tons or so, nearly as much as the stones at Stonehenge. Some wooden henges had a roof, but Dr Wainwright said Stanton Drew was far too large to roof over. He sees it as a local centre where people would go ask the supernatural powers to provide them with plentiful crops, or healthy herds of animals. By this period, a social structure was developing, with distinct tribal areas. The temples were focal points for these tribes, where they gathered and held feasts. Other wooden henges contain masses of pig bones, along with decorated fragments of pottery. It looks as if the people deliberately broke the pots and scattered them around.
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At the time, the population of Britain may have been as great as one million, according to Dr Wainwright. It's a great mistake to think the people who built this place were rude, untutored, starving individuals. They were very sophisticated with successful agriculture and made beautiful items such as carved stone axes used for barter. The technique used to find the hidden rings makes use of the fact that any disturbance of soil tends to affect its magnetism. Until a few years ago, magnetometers sensitive enough to detect the anomalies at Stanton Drew did not exist. The existence of the post holes could have been found by conventional digging, but the site has not been dug in recent times. The ring shows no evidence of having been orientated with any astronomical purpose in mind. Nor is it known whether the uprights were carved or decorated, although Dr. Wainwright believes that they were. "It is very hard to think of a structure like this with nine concentric circles not being carved in some way," he said. He suspects that the carving might have been like that on contemporary pottery, which carries geometrical patterns and spiral motifs. The patterns are quite stylised and relate to tribal territories, we believe. It would be very surprising if these motifs were not replicated on the timber uprights. A complete excavation of the site is not planned, as it would be unlikely to provide much more information than the magnetic survey. A small dig may be conducted to confirm that the rings are indeed the remains of post holes, although there is little doubt that they are. Sir Jocelyn Stevens, chairman of English Heritage, said that Britain was apparently the only place in the ancient world where these extraordinary temples were built. They were expressing their power by building these great rings, just as we are celebrating the Millennium by building a huge dome. This is clearly a very British habit, and it is 5,000 years old. Builders of the oak tree marvel beat Great Pyramid by four centuries The Great Pyramid at Giza was not even on the drawing board when the wooden henge at Stanton Drew was built. The building of the henge dates from about 3000 BC, while Cheops did not build the pyramid until 2590 BC. The builders of the henge were near-contemporaries of those who invented the wheel in Mesopotamia, and the sail in Egypt, both in about 3500 BC. Bronze casting and the plough were known in the Middle East, but not in Britain. Writing had just been invented in Sumer. Stonehenge itself existed, but like the temple at Stanton Drew it was made of wood, not stone. The Stonehenge we know today did not assume its final form until 2000 BC. The henge was built in much the same way as Stonehenge. Pits up to four metres deep were dug, and ramps arranged alongside them. The oak pillars were dragged and pushed until they overbalanced into the pits, and were then pulled upright. The wooden henges would have lasted for up 400 years before needing replacement. Bride eager to dance had Devil to pay THE ancient mysteries of Stanton Drew are no secret to the landlord of the Druid's Arms. John Newcombe has three of the standing stones in his beer garden, the largest 12ft high.
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"The local legend is that they were the guests at a wedding party who were turned to stone," he said. "The ones in my back garden are the bride, bridegroom and best man." Every midsummer's eve, he says, a small group of strangely dressed people arrive to dance around the stones. "I don't know who they are but they aren't druids," he said. "They wear little capes and hats and carry things like Devil's forks. As long as they don't scare away my regulars I don't care what they get up to. They have these little candles like night-lights and I go out in the morning to clear them away but they never make any other mess. According to Robin Bush, the Somerset historian and member of Channel 4's Time Team, Stanton Drew means "Drew's town near the stones" and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. One of the stones has a hole in it and was once much larger. Mr Bush said: It was called Hautville's Quoit, after a medieval lord, Sir John Hautville, whose tomb is in a church near by. The local legend was that he had thrown it there. It once stood in the middle of the road but over the years has been chipped away at, partly to get stone to put on the road itself. The stones at Stanton Drew were considered to be the third most important prehistoric monument in Wessex after Stonehenge and Avebury. The 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey recorded the legend of the wedding party in 1664. According to Aubrey, the fiddler went home before midnight to avoid playing on the Sabbath and the bride announced that she would "go to hell for another fiddler". Another fiddler appeared and played until dawn, when he revealed himself as the Devil and turned the assembled throng to stone. No one believes that story any longer. Except, of course, on midsummer's eve. [Story submitted by Walter Radtke]
News of interest to catastrophists:

Albert Namatjira, an aboriginal watercolourist of the 40's and 50's...was an Arunda man from Hermannsberg in Central Australia. He trained under an European artist, Rex Batterbee, and created some beautiful watercolour landscape images of his country. His art form and style was purely European watercolour technique and expression. That's how he was trained, that's how he painted. And Australia acclaimed him. What we didn't know at the time, but we do now know, is that he painted, in European style, his sacred places. One of these paintings, in the Art Gallery of NSW, shows a magnificent TWO-peak mountain framed in the recumbent crescent formed by the end of a valley, with a pool in the foreground. Namatjira died in 1960 I believe. The Art Movement which gave rise to the paintings on the AAIA site did not begin until around 1971 in Papunya, Central Australia, not very far from Hermansberg, in fact. Some of the early Papunya Tula painters had worked with Namatjira and with the Hermansberg school of watercolour painters--which still exists and is still producing excellent paintings. However, the Papunya Tula artists did not copy or imitate European styles or forms as the Hermansberg school had done. This new Art Movement used the traditional imagery that they had always used in their ground paintings, in body decoration, and in tool and weapon decoration. What is new was that they are
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painting in Acrylic paints on canvas supplied by the community Art Advisors. So only the *medium* is new. The images were, and still are, their traditional imagery. Hence their work output--their Art--became very easily transportable across vast distances of desert and, in time, around the world. Before 1971, however, no-one outside of the Anthropology and Ethnology Departments of European institutions had ever seen *any* of this imagery. Before 1980 it was not considered even as art, much less as Art. It was seen as craft. In 1971-1979, David Talbott would never have found this Desert imagery unless he had access to some very specialist libraries. Sure, Arnhem Land imagery was known of and sold, but no-one had ever recognized the Desert imagery as Art before 1970. It was then for the first time (and only by a few) recognized as a New Art Form in World Art terms, which eventually and "suddenly" burst upon the world Art Market scene in 1987/1988. When I began my research in 1989 very little of it had yet been published. The international fame of Aboriginal Art began at around about the same time as David Talbott began publishing AEON, i.e. around 1988/1989. These days you can see some of the best contemporary work on the AAIA site: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hallpa/indexb.html Allan Beggs
Astronomy Picture of the day

I wish to alert Kronians to the Astronomy Picture of the Day for Feb 5 at: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html It is captioned "A Martian River Bed?" and shows a part of Nanedi Vallis, imaged by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). The high resolution image shows detail down to 40 feet. The text says that the canyon appears to have been carved by flowing water because of the terraces and channels visible, but the lack of smaller surface tributary channels and other features argue that the valley was formed by a surface collapse. Those are the main conundrums attending the conventional view for most of the channels on Mars. My view is that, once again, neither idea is correct because Nanedi Vallis shows most of the features of a sinuous rille. That is, it even clearly shows a portion of the canyon with the characteristic narrower channel in the floor. Other features are: the V-shape of the canyon, the transverse striations along the floor of the canyon, the parallelism of the walls along the tortuous channel, the terracing, the tendency to scalloping along the edges of the canyon and at the ends of short tributary canyons, and the presence of a "hanging valley" at the bottom of the picture with no sign of fluid flow into the main canyon. These are a scaled down version of many of the features seen in the giant Vallis Marineris. As the MGS descends to its mapping orbit we are going to witness a flood of similar images. I hope that before long the message will be clear to all, except geologists, that water did not create these features. I exclude geologists because they have been given a Lyellian, Earth-centred way of interpreting everything they see and it may not be possible for them to unlearn and see these pictures differently. Unfortunately, universities don't offer courses in how to unlearn what you've been taught. Paradoxically, therein lies the key to rapid scientific advancement.
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Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 4 (February 28, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: Catalyst For a Paradigm Shift A Hearty Welcome to Amy Europa Close-ups Electric Universe Predictions For Comet Probe A Geologist Looks at Valles Marineris
Amy Acheson David Talbott Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill Louis Hissink comments by Wal Thornhill
CATALYST FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT By Amy Acheson (with selected input from Kronia-list members) I don't get any feeling at all that astronomers and castrophysicists are in any mood for the granddaddy of all paradigm shifts. But it has to come. Wal Thornhill In fact, the new paradigm is waiting at the station for those who dare to climb aboard. The ride is exhilarating, the scenery incredible. The universe has never been so intriguing. As for the old paradigm, you need look only as far as the nearest popular science magazines to see it puffing back to the repair shop: Have you read 'How Stars Shine' by James Trefil in the Jan 1998 issue of Astronomy magazine? Quote: 'If it [the lack of neutrinos] isn't [explained], it will be back to the drawing board on this whole issue.' ~D.E. Scott, PhD THOTH can be one of those drawing boards on which we build a new model, deeply rooted in mythology and stretching to the infinity of the electric universe. And it's not limited to the extremes of prehistory and cosmology. This fundamental shift in perspective holds exciting new opportunities for every aspect of human knowledge and research. For example: ...if there have been very large changes in Earth's mag. field (or Earth's charge?) in previous epochs I'd be very surprised if life (and its chemistry) wasn't affected directly ~D.E. DAVIS As I assume the position of editor of THOTH, this is my goal: to make this magazine a catalyst for a paradigm shift and a forum for discussing and exploring the implications of ancient planetary catastrophe.. Submissions welcome. Amy Acheson
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thoth@Whidbey.com
A HEARTY WELCOME TO AMY

By David Talbott I would like to personally express my gratitude to Amy Acheson for taking on the editorial chores of THOTH. Over the past year, Amy's contributions to Kronia's electronic discussion group brought many important issues to light, and she has shown an excellent grasp of the "big picture" questions. As THOTH's circulation continues to grow, we will be adding new features to the newsletter, while developing a team of regular contributors. Since many new readers have signed on in recent months, I list below a few of the research-themes to be explored in THOTH-1. Planetary catastrophes have had a far greater impact on the evolution of the solar system, the history of our earth, and the evolution of human consciousness than science has acknowledged. 2. Modern science has failed to understand the role of electricity in organizing the physical world, from the molecular, to the global, to the intergalactic. 3. Astronomy took a wrong turn when scientists came to believe that planets have moved on their present courses for billions of years. This idea was possible because the theorists assumed that only gravity and inertia controlled the behavior of planets and moons. 4. A few thousand years ago, the Earth itself moved in a close congregation of planets. At times, these planets appeared as familiar, charitable, and kind sources of comfort. But at other times, these huge bodies loomed erratic and terrifying above ancient skyworshippers. 5. During episodes of instability, as planets moved on near-collision courses, electrical discharges (lightning bolts) flew between planets and moons, producing massive and still-visible scars on these bodies. 6. These events were experienced around the world as the most awesome and traumatic events in human history. 7. The first civilizations arose in the shadow of sweeping planetary upheaval, and in these violent events one discovers the experiential taproot beneath ancient myth, ritual, and symbolism. So too, these events will help to illuminate hidden urges and fears that still influence the human psyche today. 8. To face and finally embrace this human experience will precipitate nothing less than an intellectual revolution, affecting all of science, our educational institutions, the direction of space exploration, our religious institutions, our sense of connection to planets and stars, and our deepest understanding of human identity. David Talbott
EUROPA CLOSEUPS
By Wal Thornhill A few days ago, NASA released the closest ever images of Europa. See them at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/index.html The highest resolution one, catalog no. PIA01180 has a resolution down to 6 meters and shows a view from an angle as if looking out of an aircraft window. At the top of the picture are two prominent furrows with dark material lying at the foot of each central valley. The dark material appears to be largely comprised of a string of craters. The text accompanying the picture referring to the similar dark markings closer in at the foot of the image says:
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Smaller dark, circular features seen here are probably impact craters. Does that mean that the strings of them along the valley floors are impact craters? It cannot be so. What we are seeing are the crater strings associated with lightning tearing across the surface. On the Moon, astronauts were puzzled by the fact that all craters, down to a meter or less in diameter, had glazed floors. Impacts do not cause much melting, lightning does. The dark material on Europa is most likely melted surface material. That together with the crater circularity and the strings of them along the valley floors central to the furrows fit the electrical explanation alone. The walls of the valleys have a characteristic V-shape and in another of the images, PIA01178, there is a prominent furrow running from top to bottom of the image. In it can be seen the transverse striations expected from the blast effect of surface lightning. I have noted similar striations in recent closeups of channels on Mars. Some of the melted matter should, as on the Moon, have been scattered to either side of the furrows. There appears to be some down the right-hand margin of the furrow last mentioned. The NASA caption says: The brightness of the region suggests that frost covers much of Europa's surface. I think that would explain the patchy nature of the dark areas along the furrow margin where the frost for some reason has not covered the underlying material. The complexity of the furrowing in the image, PIA01178, should give serious pause to any geologist trying to explain Europa's features by tectonics. The parallelism and conformity of the cross-cutting ridges, the apparent disregard for topology by later furrows, the lack of evidence for any flow from later furrows into earlier ones (if we heed the notion that the ridges are formed by upwelling icy slush) do not have any counterpart on Earth. As if all of this weren't enough to kill off conventional explanations, we have similar furrowed scarring on Ganymede, Saturn's moons Enceladus, Tethys and Dione, Uranus' Miranda and Neptune's Triton - to name but a few. Some of these moons are tiny. Tectonics anyone? Slushy ice at Neptune? I don't think so. Wal Thornhill
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTIONS FOR SPACE PROBE

By Wal Thornhill Planned for launch in 2003, the Deep Space 4/Champollion spacecraft will rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 and spend several months orbiting the comet nucleus making highresolution maps of its surface. The spacecraft will deploy a lander with a 1-meter-long (3.3foot)drill to collect samples that will be analyzed on-site; an attempt will be made to return a sample to Earth in 2010. The project is part of the Deep Space mission series under the NASA/JPL New Millennium Program, designed to perform flight demonstrations of new spacecraft technologies for solar system and Earth-orbiting missions. I predict that unless NASA has begun to take notice of The Electric Universe before they perform this comet caper, they will be in for some nasty surprises.
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To begin with, it will be an interesting exercise to orbit an object that is firing plasma beams and modifying its apparent gravity in the process. Any object that tries to land on it will need lightning arrestors fitted to equalize the voltage differences before touchdown. But a more serious problem will occur after landing. Any metal object protruding from the surface of the comet will become a prime candidate for the focus of one of the comet's plasma discharges. In that case, even if the electronics survives, radio communications will be lost until the nucleus rotates the lander to the night side. Any lander should be rigorously tested in a plasma lab and allowance made for loss of communications due to plasma shielding. In other words, NASA would be well advised to use light signaling (like an infra-red remote control) between the lander and the orbiter. The orbiter will also suffer plasma shielding effects in its communications with Earth. If these precautions are not taken, I expect the mission to fail mysteriously just as the Pioneer Venus probes had mysterious sensor failures, all at the same level in Venus' atmosphere, and where a voltage inexplicably appeared between the ends of disconnected external electrical leads on the probes. This is an Electrical Universe! Wal Thornhill
A GEOLOGIST LOOKS AT VALLES MARINERIS

By Louis Hissink With comments by Wal Thornhill Ok, Ok, Wal, here is one geologist who is unabashedly not a Lyellian. Professionally having a catastrophic bent is not good, considering the tribality of the geological profession in Australia, but what the heck, genius has to pays its price. :-) [WT] Good to hear from a catastrophist outback beyond the Black Stump! Now I had, until this posting, assumed that the channels on Mars were related to the Saturnian explosion which caused a drenching of the solar system with water, (the flood stories ETC). (Louis Franks ice comets may be a hangover from that event). I now see that this interpretation needs revision in light of the latest data (above). [WT] I welcome input from the mythologists on Kronia, but I think that the very earliest references to Mars as a blue planet indicates that it had water then. I would expect that time to be when Mars shared an orbit with the Earth about Saturn's equator. (I've given my reasons for this conjecture in an earlier post). Mars lost its atmosphere and water in its later interactions with Venus and the Earth in the formation of the Polar Configuration. It was then reported to have developed its characteristic rusty red appearance. Mars may have been responsible for much of the water that came from the heavens and also the bloody, rusty appearance of the water at times. It was about the time of the breakup of the Polar Config that Mars copped massive interplanetary discharges, causing most of the scarring which appears so fresh on its surface today. If Wal's interpretation is correct, that some of the Martian channels are collapse structures, meaning that Mars has experienced expansion as a result of interaction with Venus/earth, then that seems to be OK. In this scenario electrical interaction between two cosmic bodies results in partial melting of the internal rocks/material of the body, causing a gross volumetric increase by lower density rocks caused by internal melting, ala Bowen's reaction series, and thus differential expansion. Cooling after this electro thermal event (Anfilov scenario) causes collapse structures, and earth quakes.
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[WT] Hang on, I'm arguing against collapse as a mechanism for the creation of VM etc. Collapse should take place along fault planes which could be at any angle to the vertical. The canyon walls are almost without exception near vertical. Of course, that doesn't rule out the interesting scenario you describe but when you look at the other odd characteristics of VM they match electrical scarring to a T. Mind you, one must also be aware of the stratigraphical implications. If the flood legend is older than the Martian event which I interpret as occurring at approx 750 BC, then the collapse structures will be younger than water caused channels. This implies that further imagery will be complex. [WT] That was roughly Velikovsky's dating of the Martian event. I agree with the Saturnist position that these things were "prehistoric", with echoes into historic times. As I am in Western Australia and have to rely on satellite email (at $2 per min), or GSM connections, looking at the images is a fiscal no-no, so until I get back into Wet season mode, I will soley rely on the THOTH e-news for further data. I'm glad you are keeping in touch. Regards, Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 5 (March 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart
CONTENTS: ECHOES PARADIGM AND PERCEPTION ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD AVAILABLE WATERY MOON ANTARCTIC MICROBES
Amy Acheson Mel Acheson Robert Dunlap Wal Thornhill NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center comments by DEDavis
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail I saw a blazing Comet drop down hail I saw a Cloud with Ivy circled round I saw a sturdy Oak creep on the ground I saw a Pismire swallow up a Whale I saw a raging Sea brim full of Ale I saw a Venice Glass sixteen foot deep I saw a Well full of men's tears that weep I saw their Eyes all in a flame of fire I saw a House as big as the Moon and higher I saw the Sun even in the midst of night I saw the Man that saw this wondrous sight ~Anon (17th century)
ECHOES
By Amy Acheson I found the above poem on a London subway. (Well, I wasn't actually in London, but I found the poem in the archives of an Internet site that's maintained by the folks who display poems on the London subways.) I couldn't help but be impressed that most of these "wondrous sights" listed by the anonymous poet seem strangely resonant with the mythical backdrop of the Saturn thesis. Not because a catastrophe of Saturnian dimensions occurred in the 17th century!--but because the poet was still immersed in the literary and symbolic echoes of more ancient events. Perhaps the true meanings were lost ages ago, and now the symbols can only appear unlikely and incomprehensible, twisted by time into mere hearsay. But, by Zeus, he couldn't have done more justice to ancient motifs if he'd read Symbols of an Alien Sky the day before he penned the poem.
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Echoes of the Saturnian epoch STILL surround us. For example, California's storms this winter were the result of "El Nio", linked to Christmas, with Santa and flying "chariots" and the north pole. Certainly there are countless instances in which deep mythical images have been projected onto terrestrial events, and perhaps it is this very process that helps to preserve these enigmatic images long after we have forgotten their original references. What about the Chicago fire? Or the legends of King Arthur? The blackmplague? The death of Caesar? We expect to find symbolic references to gods and planets and comets in all of these tales. And we do. But will we cultivate the necessary discipline to find the EVENT which first gave meaning to the symbols? Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
PARADIGM AND PERCEPTION

By Mel Acheson At the risk of repeating what everyone knows, I'll relate some thoughts upon re-reading Thomas Kuhn's 1962 essay, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. His thesis was an instance of itself. The prevalent opinion was that scientific knowledge accumulates incrementally toward ever more accurate approximations of "the truth", embodied in facts that are "out there". Kuhn's study of the history of science-plus some observations from the psychology of perceptionled him to conclude that incremental accumulation only occurs within the purview of a "paradigm": a set of general assumptions, common procedures, and preferred instrumentation. His contention that occasionally paradigms change in a revolutionary way that breaks the continuity of incremental accumulation was itself a revolution in epistemology. Contrary to that prevalent opinion, data and observations are not fixed and stable but dependent on the paradigm in which they occur. They "are not 'the given' of experience but rather 'the collected with difficulty'. [T]hey are selected for the fruitful elaboration of an accepted paradigm" (p. 126). When paradigms change, perceptions change, and the transition "is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals" (p. 85). Science becomes a whole new ball game. Kuhn describes a process in which intervals of "normal science" are separated by episodes of "extraordinary science". A science begins with more-or-less aimless fact-gathering. In the absence of a conceptual context, facts "seem equally relevant" and their gathering "produces a morass" (p. 15-16). A multiplicity of schools spend most of their time arguing over and reformulating fundamentals. At some point, a unifying idea persuades everyone to accept it as fundamental. That frees up researchers to explore its ramifications in depth and in detail. This begins the interval of "normal science", which Kuhn compares to "puzzle-solving". It's the articulation of the expected. Scientists try to make nature fit into the box. However, the detailed research guarantees the discovery of some puzzles that can't be solved. The pieces that won't fit into the box are usually set aside. But when the quality and/or quantity of these anomalies can no longer be ignored, a "crisis" occurs: The search begins for a bigger box that will convert the anomalous into the expected. Kuhn lists several characteristics of crisis: a proliferation of ad hoc explanations, a willingness to try anything, recourse to philosophy, expressions of discontent, a search for assumptions, the discovery of new phenomena, and the advent of new paradigms by newcomers to the field. All these characteristics can be identified in present-day science, but this doesn't compel the conclusion that a paradigm shift is at hand. The list is composed in hindsight and is, at best, only necessary. It's not sufficient. The most that can be said is that, as with earthquakes, a shift will happen "someday".
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The resolution of the crisis comes when most scientists accept a new paradigm and the few holdouts die or are simply ignored. It's a process of competition and persuasion. Kuhn calls it "conversion" (p. 151). He has been criticized for thus making science "extra-scientific", but I think it only recognizes the social aspect of scientific activity and the non-absolute quality of cognitive activity. Confirmation and falsificationthe criteria of "normal science"-have little relevance to conflicts of paradigms because they are largely defined by the paradigms they serve. This circularity results in opponents talking through each other. The proponents of different paradigms are separated by three incommensurabilities: their "definitions of science are not the same"; their "terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other", and they live "in different worlds" and "see different things". (p. 148-150) Communication can only occur on a more fundamental level: the level of competition and persuasion. The important factors are comparisons of problem-solving ability, appeals to suitability or simplicity, and-perhaps most important-the prospect of more interesting puzzles (predictions of new phenomena are especially convincing). In other words: utility, aesthetics, and promise. Kuhn gives few suggestions for facilitating paradigm shifts. He compares them to gestalt switches, in which one's perception of an object changes: You see a vase in the picture you previously saw as two faces. He then claims that, while the person experiencing the gestalt switch can alternate between the two visions, the scientist experiencing a paradigm shift can't. The alternation in gestalts is accomplished from the ground of a larger viewpoint that includes both visions (e.g., seeing the vase/face as lines that are interpreted two ways), but a paradigm is the ultimate viewpoint for science, being the vision that defines what science is. There is no "external standard with respect to which a switch of vision could be demonstrated . The scientist can have no recourse above or beyond what he sees." (p. 114) But even as he describes the problem he demonstrates the solution. His entire essay is an evaluation of paradigms from the larger viewpoint of history. He intimates that scientists will have difficulty with this because their belief in incremental accumulation of knowledge generates a "temptation to write history backward. The depreciation of historical fact is deeply ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession." (p. 138) But his essay shows a "recourse above" is possible. Another "external standard" is cognition-based epistemology (an understanding of the nature of understanding, or insight into insight, if you will). A paradigm, after all, is a product of that activity we call "knowing", and knowledge of knowing provides a ground for the evaluation of its products. There may be more grounds. They are similar to the metalanguage in logic, which is a language in which one can talk about the language in which propositions are formulated. It's a matter of nested viewpoints, or a hierarchy of levels of abstraction, each level of which includes all the ones within. The difficulty in communication between paradigms thus seems more the practical one of willingness to step away from one's emotional attachment to a particular paradigm. Or rather it's to transfer some of that "energy of belief" to other paradigms: to walk a mile in their moccasins, as the saying goes. Seeing several paradigms from this more inclusive viewpoint is to see them as constructs of human intelligence. The categories of "right" and "wrong", "correct" and "erroneous", cease to have meaning (at this level), and doubt and change are no longer threatening but exciting. Instead of right and wrong, the important values become just those Kuhn mentions: utility, aesthetics, future promise. Viewing this historical succession of paradigms makes one aware of what's been called the "Finder's Fallacy": the tendency to stop looking when you find a solution that's "good enough". For those who enjoy a good paradigm shift, the motto of Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies, is apropos: Good enough never is. You can always build a bigger box. Mel Acheson
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ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD AVAILABLE

By Robert Dunlap Wal Thornhill and Robert Dunlap are pleased to announce the completion of their first co-production of "The Electric Universe" available on CD-ROM. Version 1.0 has been completed and is ready for release. The CD will include the 'Workshop notebook' and several new additions. The CD-ROM formats include All Mac and Windows 3.1, Win95 and NT. CD-ROM allows the full colour and clarity of the slide presentation to be seen and facilitates searches for information. The cost is $44. The single most devastating argument against Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision has been that it defies the laws of physics. But following decades of further research by David Talbott, Ev Cochrane and Dwardu Cardona, the weight of evidence is now overwhelming that our skies were very different within the collective memory of the human race. So, can it really be true that in the historical blink of an eye, in the last few decades of the twentieth century, we know all about the laws of physics? The Electric Universe exposes the ignorance underlying modern cosmology. It shows that the key to a true understanding of our universe and the recent history of the solar system comes from acknowledging simple electrical interactions between all matter in the universe. The result is an astounding concordance between ancient testimony of planets battling in the sky with thunderbolts, and modern plasma physics. Proof of the thesis comes from the unique electrical scars of battle seen on the surfaces of those planets. The result is a glimpse of the exciting new science of the third millenium. *A Special QuickTime movie of Velikovsky at the 1974 McMasters Symposium has been added as a bonus. This two minute sync sound clip is worth the price of the CD. To order by email contact: robert@redprods.com
WATERY MOON
By Wal Thornhill The recent headlines from NASA about water being discovered on the Moon near the poles came with the lame explanation that it probably results from meteoric and cometary bombardment. It has been said that our Moon would not look out of place if it were orbiting one of the giant outer planets. But when it comes to the inner solar system, the well known cosmologist, Irwin Shapiro, has said of theories which try to explain the presence of the Moon orbiting the Earth that the best explanation was observational error - the Moon does not exist! Many of the moons in the outer solar system show evidence of water ice being present in far greater quantities on their surfaces than the Moon. Of course, according to the Saturnian theory our Moon would likely have been one of the minor "dwarves" in that system which got tangled up with the Earth at the time of the breakup of that system. And since there was reported to be a lot of water associated with the process of that breakup, it would be expected that the Moon would show some evidence of water ice having been on its surface very recently. Given the severe heating and cooling of the Moon's surface by the Sun, the only place surface water ice has a chance of surviving is at the lunar poles. The Moon itself is one of the driest bodies in the solar system, being depleted in all volatile elements and with water at the Apollo sites measuring in parts per billion! The likelihood of ice having survived at the lunar poles over a period measured in thousands of
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years is much greater than over the billions of years required by conventional cosmogony, when the Moon was thought to have had its last major influx of cometary impactors. Even a comet every million years or so is not going to leave much water behind, especially if it hits anywhere other than at the poles. And that also assumes that comets are merely dirty ice cubes - despite evidence to the contrary. On balance, the evidence of water on the Moon supports the Saturn theory of the genesis of the EarthMoon system. Wal Thornhill
ANTARCTIC MICROBES
Marshall Space Flight Center Press Release http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast12mar98_1.htm Exotic-Looking Microbes Turn Up In Ancient Antarctic Ice March 13, 1998: Two scientists exploring a microworld locked in ancient ice have found a wide range of lifeforms from fungi, algae, and bacteria to a few diatoms - and a few items with strange shapes. "We've found some really bizarre things - things that we've never seen before," said Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Hoover and Dr. S.S. Abyzov of the Russian Academy of Sciences have been examining deep ice core samples from the Vostok Station about 1,000 km (620 miles)from the South Pole. The objects have fanciful names - like Mickey Mouse and Klingon ... based on passing resemblances. Hoover expects that most will fall into known categories of microorganisms as he and Abyzov study the images... Th(e) "Mickey Mouse" shape is actually part of a colony of fluffy microbes buried for several thousand years in the Antarctic ice. What appears to be Swiss cheese (in the enlargements) is actually the filter through which the melted ice was drained. Electron beams drilled holes. [photos may be seen at website above] As might be expected, they have found a lot of atmospheric dust and debris, and possibly some cosmic dust. "There are some dust particles with unusual spectra," Hoover said. "Which may be cosmic dust particles." The ESEM allows the operator to designate a point on a specimen and then scan with X-rays to determine what elements are present. The ratios found in some of the dust particles do not match ratios expected in terrestrial dust grains. "Mickey Mouse" and other colonies of small microbes appear to be out of the ordinary. These are fluffy white objects, about 1 micron wide and resembling cotton balls. "Here's the shocker," said Hoover, pointing at the ESEM monitor, "these small coccoid bodies are covered with all this incredible fibrous structure." The filaments appear to be about 30 to 40 nanometers wide (that's about 1/10th a wavelength of visible light). "It's difficult for me to say what it is," Abyzov said, "but I tend to agree that this is biological," possibly a fungus.
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"There are all sorts of microorganisms in the ice. Some are readily recognizable as cyanobacteria, bacteria, fungi, spores, pollen grains, and diatoms, but some are not recognizable as anything we've ever seen before," Hoover said. Many will turn out to be known. It's just that they look different under the ESEM, which provides details that are not available through other microscopes... They have also found a number of large cyanobacteria with nanobacteria attached. "What is clearly going on is that when microorganisms freeze, they shut down and go into this anabiotic state," Hoover explained. Anabiotic means alive but inactive, like suspended animation. Russian scientists have been able to revive and culture bacteria, yeast, fungi, and other microbes found in ice cores. "One of the things that was really exciting was that many of the cyanobacteria from 1,243 meters down had lots of antimony," Hoover said. The X-ray spectrum showed carbon, oxygen, zinc, silicon, aluminum, and potassium - all chemicals common to life. But it also showed an abnormal amount of antimony, a toxic heavy metal. "It was not just one of these that had it," Hoover said, "but microorganism after microorganism." Gregory Jerman, the ESEM operator, noted that the metal content has varied with depth. At some levels the microorganisms show large quantities of antimony, while in others zinc rings the bell More unusual shapes found in the Vostok Station ice resemble a porpoise, Thanksgiving leftovers, and a sphere. These names will give way to proper scientific names as Hoover and Abyzov identify them in the coming months. With more than 150 ESEM images and almost as many spectra recorded, Hoover and Abyzov next go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. There, Dr. Ken Nealson will try to extract genetic material from the microorganisms...
COMMENTS by DEDavis: Wow! Exciting news... I've long been intrigued as to what could be lurking under the Antarctic ice. Just to pick up on something in that report: Aluminium is most definitely NOT a common biological metal: in fact, as far as I am aware there is not a single known organism on Earth which uses it... (Aluminium is all bound up in minerals and is not available to the biosphere... although man's global industrial waste and attendant acidification is doing its best to change that, and poison us all... Some organisms tend to accumulate it in their tissues [tea, for example] and in humans it has been linked to Alzheimer's disease). As for antimony... well, that's certainly very unusual as well. However, [until] some microbiologists & biochemists analyse some of the biomolecules from these organisms,(instead of giving them silly names from Star Trek), we won't know if this Al and Sb is actually part of their biochemistry or just ingested toxins. Who knows what else is down there? Some old news-reels from 5000BC ? ("Today the new millenium Tower on the plain of Shinar was demolished by terrorists from the sinister "Cult of Thoth" sect... governmental sources blame repressed homosexuality for these evil actions...") DAVE ;-) PS from later:
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it occurred to me last night, whilst far from a computer, that high concentrations of aluminium would indicate some sort of environmental pH drop (acidification). A likely culprit could be acid rain from atmospheric sulphur dioxide, caused by widespread volcanism or, indeed, extraterrestrial rains of fire & brimstone. That this Velikovskian scenario could have blitzed life on Antarctica just prior to the formation of an Ice Cap which put all the little microbes in suspended animation, is, of course, just pure speculation on my part...
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 6 (March 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SHAMELESS PROMOTION OF PET PARADIGMS Letter to the Editor ON THE RELIABILITY OF HUMAN WITNESSES FALLACIES OF GRAVITATION GEOMAGNETIC FIELD AND DAYS LENGTH
Mel Acheson Dave Talbott Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill Questions and Comments by Dwight Christensen Postscript from NASA
SHAMELESS PROMOTION OF PET PARADIGMS

By Mel Acheson The orthodox paradigms are not just shifting, they're falling off their pedestals. The faithful worshippers are headed for a crisis of belief of astronomical proportions. The big concepts of modern science are failing to explain the flood of new observations they have generatedas big as they are, they are proving to be too small. A switch to a new way of seeing is needed: not just a new paradigm for certain disciplines, but an interdisciplinary unifying paradigm. Like the "gestalt switch", where you see a duck in the lines you previously saw as a rabbit, a paradigm shift changes perception. But this time the requisite switch will result in the mass extinction of the big conceptual populations of the present universe and a re-population with entirely new species. For example, the domain of validity of the familiar universal gravitation (F=GMmr^-2) has shrunk to the confines of the solar system. Stars in the Milky Way more nearly obey F=GMmr^-1. And with the discovery of intrinsic redshifts, galaxies in clusters obey F=0. Gravity is going extinct! The universe is losing its "essential vertigo": Instead of falling apart in a Hubble recession, galaxies simply hang in space like some analogue of ball lightning. A truly universal theory is needed to replace the provincial and fundamentally occult idea of gravity. Perception, contrary to popular opinion, is not the opposite of conception, but a unity of concept and sensation. Without a concept, sensory impressions are meaningless, a stimulation of nerve cells. Together, concept and sensation form a meaningful perception. But change the concept and the meaning changes. The perception is different. Enlarge the concept, and the perceived universe gets bigger. The perceptual universe of modern science is both small and fragmented. We're becoming aware of a lot of sensations that are excluded from perception because existing paradigms provide no meaningful framework for understanding. Mythology has long been a morass, written off as superstition and fiction. Electric phenomena have simply gone unseen. The Saturn model provides the conceptual framework in which to perceive a global intelligibility. Myth becomes admissible as evidence. Our ancestors were not superstitious idiots but another generation of a
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species that has always used its intellectual capabilities to perceive order in the universe. Ancient and modern people become united in their common humanity under a sometimes-catastrophic sky. Compared to the ad hoc tumors bloating the body of established science, the electric universe model provides a simple framework in which to perceive order in physical phenomena from the atomic scale to the cosmological. The large-scale structure of the universe becomes intelligible. The dearth of neutrinos from the sun makes sense. The highly non-uniform features of planets and satellites are expected. And the two models intersect. Expected features of the electric universe become the objects of mythic descriptions otherwise lacking referents. Together, the two models enable the perception of a scheme of order that encompasses atoms, galaxies, and an enlarged history. It's the Electric Saturn Super Model! Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
ON THE RELIABILITY OF HUMAN WITNESSES

By David Talbott In THOTH II:5, Amy Acheson wrote: But will we cultivate the necessary discipline to find the EVENT which first gave meaning to the symbols? Finding the event behind archaic symbols is indeed the challenge. Could any lines of reasoning be dependable, when the "evidence" includes such enigmatic sources as myth, magical rites, and cultic symbols? Many specialists in the hard sciences will find abhorrent our claim that myth points to unusual natural events. And particularly objectionable to them will be our insistence that, under certain circumstances, human memories can give us considerable detail about events unknown to science (Of course the limitations of scientific knowledge come into the equation as well.) When reports by more than one person imply a shared experience, issues of logic and probability arise. We deal with such issues all the time in judicial proceedings--and in fact we do not hesitate to send someone to the electric chair based on the memories of three people. But the principles for assessing testimony are generally ignored when it comes to the patterns of ancient memory. Rules of evidence need to be clarified, and perhaps we can work upward from a couple of simple examples. The first question is whether the occurrence of contradictory versions of an underlying story excludes the possibility of a reliable reconstruction. On this issue, common opinion is almost never correct. There are rules for finding reliable testimony in a sea of contradictions. Imagine an experiment involving a dozen groups with a dozen members in each group and no communication permitted between the groups. From each group, one individual is allowed to witness a newly-written play, then asked to convey the story verbally to another individual in his group, recalling as much detail as possible. The second individual then reports to the third, and so on until the story reaches the last person in each group, who will then report the story to you. From this exercise you would likely receive many different ways of telling the story, with many contradictions between versions. But to come as close to the original as possible you would give greatest weight to those story elements retained in several accounts. And despite horrendous errors in transmission within various groups, if you follow this simple principle, your reconstruction will be generally reliable. Even if it lacks the full texture of the original, you can be confident in the basic structure.
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To see why comparison of accounts can produce a reliable reconstruction, you only have to recognize what a mistake in transmission will do to a remembered event or story It will introduce a contradiction to the way the story is told by others. It is typically much easier to make mistakes than to make the SAME mistakes others have made. So in the cross-referencing of stories, the first key is to follow the points of agreement. More significantly, there is a common paradox which even the experts in comparative study frequently ignore. One might think that when two groups share an improbable story element, it becomes more likely that the two groups made the same error of transmission. But actually the reverse is true. The more unusual or bizarre the points of agreement, the more likely it is that they speak for the original story. Here's why: it's much easier to make a mistake on matters of routine background, than on unexpected or startling detail. How many chairs were in the room when the protagonist died? Well, there were five, but who was counting? Here, not just mistakes, but similar mistakes would be predictable. Consider, however, that when the protagonist died, a dove leapt from his chest and flew away. The recurrence of that particular element in just three of the accounts will create a virtual certainty that the motif was part of the original story, even in the unlikely event that the nine other accounts failed to mention it. Short of cross contamination of our storytelling groups, it is simply too dramatic and too unusual to have been injected into the story by more than one storyteller, either through a mistake or through deliberate deception. Now these principles are extremely relevant to the cross-cultural comparison of human memories. But there is still much more to consider here. It is often noted that human witnesses are notoriously unreliable. In judicial proceedings this unreliability is properly noted--and demonstrated--all the time. But commonly overlooked is a further consideration. In certain circumstances the accounts of UNRELIABLE witness can produce ABSOLUTELY RELIABLE conclusions. To make this point I have concocted an episode called "The Unfortunate Peter Smith"-On Tuesday morning, a man robbed the bank down the street, escaping with about $12,000. When the police arrived they faced a dilemma. The man was seen rushing from the bank toward a blue Honda, jumping in, and speeding off. But the car was too far away for anyone to catch the license plate. Inside the bank, the police found only three witnesses, and as it turned out all were highly unreliable. One had a history of lying relentlessly. Another was a schizophrenic, often hallucinating. And the third was dyslexic. Immediately on their arrival, the police had separated the witnesses and interviewed them. There seemed to be general agreement that the robber was wearing a ski mask, a black leather jacket, and blue jeans. But there were more discrepancies than points of agreement. This was partly because the known liar freely made up details as he answered police questions, the schizophrenic described things seen by no one else, and the dyslexic could not even get the name of the bank right. Nevertheless, when the police compared notes they immediately sent out a bulletin, and it wasn't long before a fellow officer stopped a blue Honda, driven by a man named Peter Smith. When the officer looked inside the car, he did not see a ski mask, and he did not see any money. But the moment he observed the driver, he made an arrest. And he was certain he had nabbed the robber. How did he know? His confidence came from certain details the police had noted in their interviews with the witnesses. While much of what the congenital liar reported was self-serving and almost certainly invented, one thing he had said was most unusual, and was remembered by the police interviewer. He had laughed about the robber wearing two different running shoes. On his left foot he was wearing a Nike, and on his right foot he was wearing an Adidas, the man said. The second witness said nothing about the shoes, and seems to have heard strange voices and seen things reported by no one else. But he did mention that when the robber
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started to leave the bank, several bills fell from the paper bag, which the robber bent down to pick up. That was when the witness noticed that the tag on his tee-shirt was on the outside; his shirt was inside out. He could even read the label. The third witness, the dyslexic, also had noticed the tag up close, but said he couldn't read it. Additionally, he reported the robber wearing two different running shoes--a Kine and a Daddies. So the police drew a conclusion--formulated a "prediction," if you will--that the bank robber was driving a blue Honda, wearing two different running shoes and a shirt inside out. And when they found Peter Smith, they had every reason to be confident. Short of a conspiracy to deceive them, this WAS the robber, beyond a shadow of a doubt. THE WITNESSES DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO BE DEPENDABLE! In this example the confidence of the police relates directly to THINGS OUT OF PLACE. A liar, a schizophrenic, and a dyslexic may create havoc in their contradictory accounts, and yet the force of agreement on highly unusual details is far greater than the burden of contradictions. In fact, the convergence of testimony on the two cited details is simply inconceivable--astronomically improbable-unless Peter Smith was the robber. The police would not need DNA tests, lie detector tests, fingerprints, or any other wonders of modern science and technology to draw a reliable conclusion. So the moral of this story is that in certain situations a simple comparison of human testimony can achieve exceptional reliability, even though the witnesses are not inherently trustworthy. And how does all of this apply to the patterns of more ancient human memory--those distinctive, archetypal complexes referring us back to the mythical age of the gods? In this series of explorations we will illustrate the following principles-1) Cultures around the world, using quite different words and symbols, describe remarkably similar experiences; 2) These points of agreement consistently include unique, but well-defined forms in the sky; 3) The recurring forms have no relationship to things seen in our sky, or to any natural experience today; 4) Granting the presence of these extraordinary forms will make possible a unified explanation of myth, removing hundreds of contradictions and anomalies left unexplained by prior theories of myth. In seeking to reconstruct ancient memories through cross-cultural comparison, we will discover a substructure of remarkable depth and coherence. The power of human memory is incomparably greater than scholars have typically assumed.
FALLACIES OF GRAVITATION
By Wal Thornhill DEDavis asks Wal Thornhill: Here's some of Velikovskys' "empiric evidences of the fallacy of the law of gravitation"...Any thoughts on how these stand up today? No.12: Because of its swift rotation, the gaseous sun should have a latitudinal axis greater than the longitudinal, but it does not have it. The sun is 10^6 times greater than the Earth, and its day is 26 times longer than the terrestrial day; the swiftness of its rotation at its equator is over 125km per minute; at the poles its velocity approaches zero. Yet the solar disk is not oval but round: the majority of researchers even find a small excess in the longitudinal axis of the sun [Comp.Ch.L.Poor, Gravitation versus Relativity, 1922, p98]
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The planets act in the same manner as the rotation of the sun, imposing a latitudinal pull on the luminary. Gravitation that acts in all directions equally leaves unexplained the spherical shape of the Sun. As we saw in the preceding section, the gases of the solar atmosphere are not under a very strong pressure, but under a very weak one. Therefore, the computation, according to which the ellipsoidity of the sun, that is lacking, should be slight, is not correct either. Since the gases are under a very low gravitational pressure, the centrifugal force of rotation must have formed quite a flat sun. Near the polar regions of the sun, streamers of the corona are observed, which prolong still more the axial length of the sun. ... [WT] This fact remains a mystery for astronomers. If the Sun weren't spherical we would not be able to have total solar eclipses. However, if the Sun is defined in all of its important attributes by its electrical charge and electrical environment, then that includes its apparent mass and "gravitational" field. So, calculations about the degree of oblateness to be expected from Newton's laws and a universal constant, G, are meaningless. Importantly, the discovery that the Sun's magnetic field lines are not crowded together at the poles like a normal dipole magnet, but spaced out evenly, suggests that the Sun is the focus of a spherically symmetrical discharge (also to be expected from its appearance). In that case, the shape of the photosphere of the Sun will be defined and dominated by electrical forces far more powerful than gravity. No.20: Unaccounted for fluctuations in the lunar mean motion were calculated from the records of lunar eclipses of many centuries and from modern observations. These fluctuations were studied by S.Newcomb, who wrote: I regard these fluctuations as the most enigmatic phenomenon presented by the celestial motions, being so difficult to account for by the action of any known causes, that we cannot but suspect them to arise from some action in nature hitherto unknown [S.Newcomb, Monthly Notices, R.A.S., January 1909] They are not explainable by the forces of gravitation which emanate from the sun and the planets. [WT] The last statement is only true if the assumption that G is constant, is true. In the electric universe model it is not. Anything that transfers charge to or from the Moon or Earth, such as coronal mass ejections or the brushing past of the plasma tail of Venus, will change G from its mean value. In a fixed G cosmology, all such fluctuations will appear inexplicable. No.22 The tails of comets do not obey the principle of gravitation and are repelled by the sun. There is beyond question some profound secret and mystery of nature concerned in the phenomenon of their tails;enormous sweep which it [the tail] makes round the sun in perihelion, in the manner of a straight and rigid rod, is in defiance of the law of gravitation, nay, even of the recorded laws of motion [J.Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, p406] What has puzzled astronomers since the time of Newton, is the fact that while other bodies in the sidereal universe, as far as we are aware, obey the law of gravitation, comets' tails are clearly subject to some strong repulsive force, which drives them away from the matter composing them away from the sun with enormously high velocities [W.H.Pickering].
[WT] Cometary phenomena are subject to the laws of plasma physics associated with electrical discharge. It is the last four words of that sentence that cause astrophysicists to choke on their selfcongratulatory cigars and result in their inability to sensibly explain the non-gravitational forces plainly evident in the behavior of cometary tails. Sunward pointing ion tails have been seen and explained away
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as being an illusion (rather in the manner required to explain superluminal motion associated with some quasars). Not only the tails but also the nuclei of comets fail to obey Newton's laws. In that case we see some priceless ad-hocery where the jets emanating from the comet are called upon to act like rocket engines in any way necessary to save appearances. But the jets themselves are not explained by boiling away of surface material through ad-hoc vents. They are simply plasma beams which machine ions from the surface indiscriminately - as discovered recently when the ice required to blow off the dust seemed to be missing. As Prof. Emeritus R A Lyttleton so aptly described the state of play with respect to accepted comet theory: It is not realised by these would-be theorists that the need for special assumption after special assumption in order to 'save' the theory is simply nothing more than indication after indication that the original hypothesis is incorrect, whereas the long list of assumptions are perversely and proudly regarded by them as 'discoveries' of actual properties of comets. The resulting fairy-story theory provides a typical example of what [Irving] Langmuir has termed Pathological Science, or 'The science of things that aren't so.' (Speculations in Science & Technology, Vol 8, No 5, p. 346). Wal Thornhill
GEOMAGNETIC FIELD AND DAYS LENGTH

By Wal Thornhill Questions and comments by Dwight Christensen While I was searching for the references to Gentry's work on radiohalos, I came across an old news item from New Scientist of 31st March, 1977, titled "How the geomagnetic field mimics the day's length." It relates to an earlier thread on the subject of changes in the number of days in a year, which I proposed could be explained by a change in the electrical environment of the Earth. I have also proposed in The Electric Universe that the solar activity cycle is driven externally by the Sun's galactic environment. More specifically, it traces the Sun's passage across the giant Birkeland current threads which energise and define the arms of our spiral galaxy. This interesting report seems to support all of these interconnections: Two American workers have recently demonstrated that there is indeed a very remarkable link between the fluctuations in the length of the day taken from a sample over the years 1865 to 1961, and the small variations in the strength of the Earth's dipole between 1901 and 1960 (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 32, no 5, p.828). The fluctuations show the usual 11 and 22 year periodicities associated with solar activity. In fact the full spectrum shows harmonics stretching up to 66 years. "Surprisingly these exact values (of the harmonics) appear in the power spectral analysis for the variations in the length of the day. The two Florida researchers say that their result indicates that, '... either the cause of both phenomena is the same, or one is the cause of the other." It is hard to imagine how orthodox theories could tie these observations together. I would suggest that the cause of both phenomena is the same - a cyclic change in the electrical plasma environment of the solar system. It causes the sunspot cycle on the Sun, and by altering the charge on the Earth it changes both the geomagnetic field strength and day length in concert. I also predict that the value of the gravitational "constant", G, would be found to change in sync too, if sensitive enough measurements were taken over an extended period.

Wal Thornhill To Wal:
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Wow!!! Amazing information! This is something which I had been thinking about, and bingo--you send this email! So, it does appear logical that the intensity of the charge of the space plasma (Birkland Currents) does exhibit variations, and that these variations possibly cause solar flares and the actual spin velocity of Earth! As a result, earth's magnetic field strength and gravity would also be affected -- amazing! What do you think is the cause of this variation of intensity? Do you think the Gravity Probe B upcoming experiment by NASA ($600,000,000+) will be able to measure fluctuations in earth's magnetic field along with space plasma charge - it would be good if a solar flare just happens to occur while they are doing their "frame dragging/Lense-Thirring effect" measurements. (I suppose they will not extend another long t(eth)ered wire this time, right?!) Bye...Dwight Dwight, The change in the plasma environment of the solar system could come about because of the crosssectional variation in plasma density and the helical magnetic field of each giant Birkeland current "thread" along the axis of our arm of the Milky Way. If you imagine that the solar system cuts across a "thread", the current density will rise as you near the centre of the circle and the magnetic field will switch direction as you pass by the centre, or from one thread to another. The complexity of the Sun's plasma interactions at the heliopause with galactic currents is unknown. We are also ignorant of possible mechanisms for a stellar plasmoid doughnut to drive the photosphere rotation, the sunspot cycle, and provide the stored energy source for coronal mass ejections (CME's). It will take considerable laboratory experimentation to help unravel that. When that is done, the solar cycle and those of nearby stars, when combined with their relative motions, should help define the structure of the neighbourhood galactic Birkeland currents. I don't think any satellite is able to measure the "space plasma charge", as you put it. We have no means of detecting one more proton or electron (on average) per cubic metre. That's the kind of capability you would need. It would certainly be very interesting to see the results of gravity measurements if those figures encompassed a CME event which struck the Earth. Wal Thornhill
Postscript: more orbital variations
EL NINO SLOWS EARTH DOWN

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - El Nino, the phenomenon disrupting the weather in the Pacific and the Americas, has made the days longer than usual, the U.S. space agency said Wednesday. Feb. 5 was the longest day of all, about 0.6 milliseconds above normal, and the cumulative increase since El Nino began late last year amounts to about a tenth of a second -- the time it takes to blink. The extra day length has since slipped back to about 0.4 milliseconds and the Earth will eventually speed up again as El Nino dissipates, said a statement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 7 (April 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: QUOTE OF THE DAY LUNATIC FRINGE OR CUTTING EDGE? THE LOGIC OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE MORE THAN ONE TYPHON THE GREAT RED SPOT: COMMENTARY CYDONIA COMMENTS
Clark Whelton Amy Acheson David Talbott Dwardu Cardona Wal Thornhill various email listers
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

If Columbus had succumbed in mid-voyage, it's unlikely his crew -- a mutinous bunch -- would have carried on without him. Velikovsky's crew -- to whom the word "mutiny" is not unknown -has done pretty well in his absence, all things considered. We take turns clapping each other in irons, and we're all sailing in different directions, but perhaps it's just as well. There are new worlds and new collisions ahead, enough for all of us before the voyage ends. --from a review of VELIKOVSKY'S "THE DARK AGE OF GREECE" by Clark Whelton
LUNATIC FRINGE OR CUTTING EDGE?

By Amy Acheson How do you know if a new idea is from the lunatic fringe or the cutting edge of science? First of all, those terms are only defined in relation to an orthodox paradigm. And the final judgement can only be made after the fact: "the fact" being a paradigm shift. The fringe, the cutting edge, and orthodoxy are part of a process, and we need them all. The advantage of orthodoxy, defined as an accepted paradigm, is that it allows people to assume a "bigpicture" framework, so they can focus on developing details rather than arguing over fundamentals. The development of details is an efficient way to discover anomalies. Eventually, anomalies build up to a crisis, defined as the need to find a more explanatory paradigm. As the anomalies build, there are theorists who engage in fringe activities. They question assumptions, speculate, and resort to "anything goes" theorizing in the effort to make sense of the anomalies. At times of crisis, these fringe activities become the cutting edge: the resource base from which the new paradigm arises.
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After a new paradigm is accepted, the competing paradigms and the old orthodoxy become the new "fringe." If you leave out any step - orthodoxy, resistance, or fringes -- you lose the process. Over the centuries, people have become more comfortable with this learning process. Innovators are no longer heretics to be burned, but crackpots to be laughed at (and to be denied grants and publication.) Is it possible to make the process painless? Probably not. Struggle and competition are the essence of it. But we can make it more like sports than war. We can value our "enemies" and appreciate their part in the process. We can see paradigms, not as RIGHT or WRONG, but as intellectual tools in the search for understanding. Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE LOGIC OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

David Talbott In my previous article I noted that "in certain situations a simple comparison of human testimony can achieve exceptional reliability, even though the witnesses are not inherently trustworthy." Though the principle is not generally acknowledged, it can easily be verified through an example such as that of "The Unfortunate Peter Smith," presented in that article. With respect to the use of evidence based on human testimony, I recently received the following comment from Maurice Gilroy: I believe that if you want to claim that you are going to provide a scientific explanation of past events, your explanation must be a "bottom up" one, not "top down." Your explanation must be evolutionary in the sense that it must start with sound physics, and proceed up through whatever chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology is necessary to explain the mythic description. To make Greek rationalist judgments about Oriental myths, and then try to figure out some plausible chemistry and physics, is working "top down," (and backwards). This may be necessary in the very early "searching for some logical explanation" phase. However, if sound physics will not support some appealing vision of the past, then that vision is in some way flawed. This appears to be the status of Velikovsky's and Dave's visions of biblical and mythic events. This judgment may seem arrogant to someone with a humanistic background, but the foundation of science is the physics and planetary geology that make the carbon chemistry of biology possible. I am convinced that there is no sound physics that will support the Velikovskian of Saturnist vision of ancient catastrophes. To Mr. Gilroy's credit, his posture has been one of complete fairness and open-mindedness. So I am happy to include him in our "Critic's Corner", in the hope of stimulating constructive discussion. Also, in fairness to Mr. Gilroy, I must mention that he proceeds to outline several objections to the Saturnian model based on physical considerations. These objections are, in fact, those we most frequently encounter, and there is no likelihood of our gaining broad support from the scientific community unless the challenges are fully addressed. Though various parties working on physical models HAVE addressed Mr. Gilroy's objections at one time or another, a unified model has yet to be proposed. Certain vital principles, however, have been illuminated, including that of collinear equilibrium and tidal friction, balanced by the more far-reaching electrical considerations overlooked in conventional models of planetary history.
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It should go without saying that an immense amount of work on models is needed. And the compelling reason for proceeding is a vast field of evidence which science has ignored. Neither the recent history of our Earth, nor the geological history of our planetary neighbors, nor the cultural history of humankind will be comprehended until we confront the great celestial spectacles witnessed by our ancestors. And that investigation will require much more than the usual scant attention to methodology. Because these spectacles involved well-defined forms in the sky, it is essential that critical principles of reasoning be appreciated. Nothing is more fundamental to the reconsideration of planetary history than a rigorously-developed comparative approach to human testimony. For many years I have continually looked for the clearest ways to convey the reasoning process without which the extraordinary value of ancient testimony will not be recognized. But always I have found myself returning to a bedrock principle. In any theoretical exploration involving a new hypothesis, one question must be asked relentlessly.
IF THE HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT, WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?

That question is at the heart of the scientific method, whatever the field of inquiry. And the investigation must address the entire range of data bearing on the answer. When it comes to our own subject - ancient planetary catastrophe - excluding the value of human testimony would be a potentially fatal mistake, since, in advance of an investigation, it is impossible to know which sources of data will provide the most telling insights. To see why this is the case, just imagine how researchers might reconstruct ancient events if huge planetary forms DID once hang above the world, fueling veneration, terror, and an explosion of human imagination. If such planetary drama did occur, and included catastrophic interactions of the planets, how much do you think that the planets today could tell us about what the ancient SAW, or about the specific sequence of events? Whatever the nature of the catastrophes, we would certainly expect to find scars and telltale indicators of past upheaval on the planets. But it would be absurd to deny in advance the potential for vastly more specific details from those who witnessed the events. And we would quickly see the absolute necessity of honing our investigative skills and critical judgment in order to gain the full value of that testimony. It is not a matter of taking myths or symbols or ritual practices LITERALLY, of course. It is a matter of analyzing worldwide patterns, to see if they point to a coherent experience, one that could only be explained by the presence of certain external forms or globally-experienced events. For example, the flaming, long-haired or feathered celestial serpent is a global mythical image. Its power over human imagination was immense, but it was clearly a PRODUCT of human imagination as well. So the investigation must rely on principles of logic and probability. On every habitable continent stargazers celebrated a remarkably similar, biologically absurd monster. Is it reasonable to assume that imagination, even though working in a vacuum, continually hit upon the same highly specific idea, in flagrant contradiction of all natural experience? Or were the stargazers responding imaginatively to something APPEARING IN THE SKY and inspiring the great terror consistently evident in the ancient accounts? The key will be found in the symbolic language, the natural hieroglyphs (serpent, flowing hair, feathers, streams of fire). Once it is realized that, among all of the great cultures, the most common glyphs attached to the cosmic serpent - not to mention the serpent itself - were hieroglyphs for the COMET, the door is opened to stunning discovery. Suddenly one sees a vital principle almost uniformly ignored in comparative cultural studies. When an entire complex of symbols points to a singular celestial form, it is only reasonable to presume the presence of that form, and to look for corroborating references. If a unique form or celestial object WAS present, we should expect all manner of corroborating evidence; and if it was NOT present, it is inconceivable that one would consistently find widely varying words and symbols pointing to that very celestial form. But to this general and quite obvious point, Wayne Throop responded:
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Uh... no, not at all. You are saying "if the sky were so-and-so, then human myths would be thusand-such; human myths ARE thus-and-such, therefore the sky was so-and-so". This is the same syllogism as "if a being is a human, that being is a biped; my parrot is indeed a biped; therefore my parrot is a human". This reasoning is not correct. The issue has nothing to do with syllogisms. We are dealing with probabilities, in this case the kind of astronomical IMPROBABILITIES which we illustrated in "The Unfortunate Peter Smith" analogy. If Peter Smith had been dressed "normally", it would be astronomically improbable that the police would have received INDEPENDENT testimony suggesting the man wore two different running shoes and a shirt inside out. Therefore the reasoning of the police was virtually ironclad, despite the fact that the witnesses were not even dependable under the standard tests. Needless to say, this issue of probability is not affected by the dating of the memories, though it is amazing how little attention scholars have given to the principles involved here. When independent testimony points to the same HIGHLY SPECIFIC, BUT HIGHLY UNUSUAL EVENTS, that testimony is of huge evidential value.
MORE THAN ONE TYPHON

By Dwardu Cardona DEDavis asks: What is the current thinking on the Exodus story, then? CARDONA REPLIES: I'll answer this one cautiously. Most historians today will tell you thatthe Exodus never happened, and this includes many an Israeli historian. For reasons which I cannot quite go into here, I tend to disagree. However, that said, I must also report that in all the years since WORLDS IN COLLISION was written, AND DESPITE WHAT WAS SAID IN IT, I have not been able to discover one single bit of evidence that would tie the planet Venus to the event. All that can be said with SOME certainty, is: (1) that a comet does seem to have made its appearance in the sky during the Exodus; (2) that this comet was NOT the comet Venus; and (3) that an earthquake also occurred just before the Israelites left Egypt. At this point, I dare not say more. Dwardu. Kevin Weinhold wrote: Velikovsky wrote that he at one time was not sure if it was Venus or Jupiter that was the cause of the catastrophe. I suspect he connected Typhon-slain-by-Zeus via the confused connection in mythology: some reported that it was Zeus that fought and killed the monster with his lightning bolts; others reported that "Zeus" sent Venus (lightning bolts or whatnot) to kill the monster...is such a connection still not acceptable, considering that the ancients described the same event in two ways? CARDONA REPLIES: Well, here, the bottom line appears to be simply this: While the comet called Typhon (that is, Comet Set) and the GREEK Typhon were NOT one and the same object, it will turn out that the GREEK Typhon was also a comet. More than that, the GREEK Typhon will turn out to have been cometary Venus in disguise. The comet called Set, on the other hand, which the Greeks also alluded to as Typhon, was NOT Venus. This is why I said the matter is a little bit complicated. The complication, however, arose simply because the Greeks, for reasons of their own, referred to the Egyptian Set as Typhon.
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Dwardu
DEDavis wrote: If I read Worlds in Collision right (and it's easy to be dazzled by Velikovsky, and thus get confused as to what is evidence and what is reconstruction...) The chain of reasoning for linking the Exodus events with Venus is: 1. Venus = Athene = Pallas Athene = Typhon 2. Rockenbach said Typhon occurred at the time of the Exodus. Yes? CARDONA AGAIN: This is PRECISELY where Velikovsky went wrong. The comet CALLED Typhon and the Typhon of Greek mythology are NOT the same. The comet Typhon of Rockenbach ultimately traces to Pliny, although Hephaestion, Junctinus, Lydus, Servius, Campester, Petosiris, and Joannes Laurentius also wrote about it. What Pliny actually wrote concerning this comet was this: A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his name. As we all know (I hope) there was never a king of Egypt named Typhon, after whom this comet was named. What must be borne in mind here is that Typhon was what the Greeks called the Egyptian Set. Thus the Egyptian king called Typhon would have really been named Seti (of which Egypt knew more than one.) From this it follows that the comet called Typhon, named after King Typhon, would really have been named Set. It is therefore more accurate to refer to this comet as the Comet Set (although this, again, must not be confused with the original god Set.) Yes, I know, it's complicated. However, it should be seen from all this that the comet called Set/Typhon had nothing to do with the Greek demon called Typhon, with whom Athena was NOT at all associated. The Original Greek demon called Typhon was actually slain by Zeus. One other thing to keep in mind: It has never been ascertained on what evidence, if any, Rockenbach associated this comet with the Exodus. All those who also mentioned this connection, like Johann Hevel, got it from Rockenbach. Velikovsky himself was of the opinion that Rockenbach might have had access to ancient documents that might have contained quotations from the writings of Campester and Petosiris. This is doubtful in the case of Campester and purely conjectural in that of Petosiris. Lydus, who quoted Campester on Comet Typhon, would hardly have omitted this most interesting of items had the latter had anything to say about the subject. Fragments from the works of Petosiris have also been published but the information concerning the Exodus is not there contained. All we are left with, therefore, is a comet called Set which Rockenbach, for no reason we can discover, associated with the time of the Exodus. As I said before, there is absolutely no connection between this comet and the planet Venus. Dwardu Cardona
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THE GREAT RED SPOT: COMMENTARY

By Wal Thornhill The Economist runs some very good science stories. Here's one for April 4th:
Jupiter: The Great Red Hurricane

THE Great Red Spot of Jupiter has been a puzzle since 1664, when Robert Hooke first glimpsed it in his telescope. Those who have since contemplated its baleful stare have wondered, reasonably enough, why it is so great (its length is one-and-a-half times the diameter of the earth); why it is red; and why it has been there so long. Nowadays, these are questions not for astronomers but for meteorologists. Jupiter's weather is more exciting than earth's - with wind speeds up to 540kph (335mph), storms that last for decades and at least three sorts of rain - but its atmosphere is thought to work in basically the same way. Results presented this week by Fred Taylor of Oxford University, during a conference at the University of St. Andrews, support that view. The red spot is not so much a spot as a giant sprinkler, and hence not unlike an earthly hurricane. Dr Taylor and his colleagues have been analysing infra-red pictures taken by the spacecraft Galileo (owned by NASA, America's space agency), which is currently touring Jupiter and its moons. In the process they have made other intriguing discoveries. In 1995 Galileo dropped a probe into the Jovian clouds which beamed information about its environs back to the spacecraft. It found hardly any water clouds, raising the question whether Jupiter had been formed out of the same stuff as the sun and other planets. Dr Taylor's analysis lays this worry to rest. There is water on Jupiter but, as on earth, it is spread about unevenly. The probe simply hit a dry patch. The pictures also reveal that, as expected, Jupiter's main layer of cloud is composed of ammonia. But above it is a thick smog, made of organic compounds broken up by the sunlight. Below the ammonia is another devilish blanket, of ammonia combined with hydrogen sulphide, and there may be water clouds beneath that. Somehow this reeking cake of an atmosphere holds the key to Jupiter's ornate swirls, bands and spots. A planet's weather is driven by heat moving from one part of the atmosphere to another, among other things. On earth, a lot of the heat gets transported by water. In evaporating, water absorbs heat and carries it upwards; on condensing, into clouds and rain, it lets the heat out. On Jupiter, the fact that other substances can do this too leads to more layers of cloud and more complicated weather. Such as the red spot. The new infra-red images from Galileo show that it is not a deep vortex of cloud as previously thought. Instead its top is a tangle of spiral arms. The gaps in between them reveal a large, fairly clear area below. And the spot is slightly raised near the middle. Dr Taylor thinks this means that the red spot is actually a relatively narrow, spinning column of material rising from the depths and being sprayed out over the ammonia clouds. At its edges, the material falls back down. Besides that, however, the mysteries persist. More data remain to be analysed. Dr Taylor hopes they will give some clues as to what the substance is (i.e., why the spot is red) and why the column is not in the very centre of the spot. As for the spot's extraordinary lifetime, that is probably due to its size. But since Galileo cannot look into the past, the question of how a hurricane big enough to last for over three centuries got started will be harder to answer. Wal Thornhill comments:
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It is very interesting to note the structure in the Great Red Spot - "a tangle of spiral arms". A short time ago I posted the view that the GRS is the site of a continual diffuse discharge from the ionosphere into Jupiter's atmosphere. A tangle of spiral arms could have been predicted on this basis if the electric currents flowing into the vortex were made manifest by some electrical action on Jupiter's atmospheric gases. Once again, the red colouration could be partly due to low-energy nuclear transformations of gases in the spiral arms. Wal Thornhill (previous post): I would even hazard a guess that the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter is, for reasons as yet unknown, the continual focus of a powerful ionospheric discharge. I deduce this from an example of the same effect on a much smaller scale on Earth in the reported glow discharge seen from space above tornadic storms on Earth. It would be of interest to know if Jupiter's ionosphere is the site of diffuse electrical discharges above the GRS. In the recent issue of Earth, Moon and Planets 73: 1996, pp. 167-179, there is a paper titled "SolarPlanetary Cycles in Jupiter's Great Red Spot Darkness". The conclusion of the paper states: The jovian GRS darkness or visibility varies systematically in various modes. The main cycles of variation are approximately 33 years, 13-15 yr., 11 yr., 9 yr., and 3 yr ... The obtained cycles are the result of combined effects of several agents of varying intensity - the solar activity expressed by the sunspot numbers and flares, as well as solar-planetary interactions and internal jovian phenomena ... The effect of solar activity on darkness (of the GRS), for previous solar cycles, is also reinforced from earlier works on atmospheric activity and relative intensity of the GRS. Correlations of GRS darkness with solar activity and planetary alignments is the kind of effect I would expect if the GRS is an electrical discharge phenomenon. The work currently uses data up until 1976 and is being extended with later data which might have better resolution of short term changes in the GRS. I expect correlations with solar activity to be more striking when this is done. Wal Thornhill
CYDONIA COMMENTS
By assorted email listers Ted Holden: They're at: http://www.mcdanielreport.com/mgsface.htm While the face itself is obviously degraded much more than might have been thought from the Viking images, the headdress or helmet that the man is wearing is obvious enough to remove any remaining doubts. Ev Cochrane: Surely you jest, Ted? I mean, are we looking at the same images? Ted Holden:
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Unless NASA can come up with one hell of a good ad-hoc explanation for the headdress/helmet which the man is wearing, and all of the perfectly straight and curved lines which comprise it, then the thing is obviously artificial. Shane Mage: Tom VanFlandern spoke on the Robert Knight "Earthwatch" program on WBAI radio here in New York a week ago last Wednesday night. He claimed that the photos constitute complete confirmation of the artificial nature of these Martian features. Gunnar Reis: ...to me it is clearly a volcanic feature, especially if it is compared with the nearby volcanoes of the Tharsis region. But what do I see. It is a small mountain (compared with the other volcanoes in the same region) with a summit caldera, central to a north-south graben cutting through it. This is a situation you can find also within the earth-volcanoes. Amy Acheson: I see a fulgamite. Compare to photos of Olympus Mons for a larger example. (See Wal Thonhill's discussion: Notebook pp. 83-85; CD pp. 165-170). The helmet is "fluted, raised edges" and the nostrils are craters, typical of the high points on anodic scars. Wal Thornhill: I've just looked at the high definition picture and I think you are right [it's a fulgamite.] There is a pretty definite sinuous rille running from the top of the picture, down the right-hand side of the "face" and then broadening as it spirals up to a cratered peak. There seem to be a number of electrical erosion pits on the higher reaches, as if the arc had been travelling slightly as it created this particular fulgamite. There are many fulgamite mounds on Mars of about the same dimensions as the "face". This just seems to be a particularly odd-shaped version. Dave Talbott: Well, I don't see a face, but if you look closely down around what I think was supposed to be the "mouth" of the humanoid face, you will see that that the "mouth" actually forms the two ears and top of the head of the most incredible and perfectly formed picture of my daughter's pussycat. Duane Vorhees: In this case, I believe the proper expression is "I'll see it when I believe it."
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 8 (May 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: APPLIED CATASTROPHICS A BRIEF ORIENTATION COMMENTARY ON THE ELECTRIC SUN ELECTRICAL EFFECTS OF PASSING BODIES
Amy Acheson Dave Talbott Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Planetary catastrophes have had a far greater impact on the evolution of the solar system, the history of our earth, and the evolution of human consciousness than science has acknowledged. ~Dave Talbott (THOTH II-4, February 28)
APPLIED CATASTROPHICS
By Amy Acheson I want to turn Dave's statement (above) around and examine it from the other direction. How does awareness of recent catastrophe affect our everyday behavior? Without that awareness, would Dave laugh so much? Would Wal have taken anthropology as seriously as astrophysics? Would Ev drive 33 hours straight to attend a workshop? Would Mel and I let our children eat, sleep, potty train, wean and study on their own schedule? [Not an easy decision to keep when our teenage daughter finally decided to learn Spanish on her way to the airport for a two-week excursion in the Yucatan.] And there's the big questions of cultural prejudices, as expressed in a post from D E Davis: There will be an agenda behind any set of ideas you will come across. Deconstructing through such author power games as Zionism or homophobia is of paramount importance. When approaching the mythologies of ancient cultures, which provide invaluable information about physical events of the past, the need to understand the cultural context of their production is heightened even more. Once we become aware of the catastrophic etiology of cultural compulsions we are free to walk away from them.
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It's never easy. There are survival traits woven into the fabric of the compulsions. Simply dropping them could prove suicidal. But even if we meticulously separate the compulsions from the rational parts of culture, we still have to deal daily with people who aren't even aware that the compulsions exist. I personally see this dichotomy in action on every scale from the bristling energy surrounding e-mail haggling to student riots to war. And, while I don't enjoy having my ideas trampled in the mud by debunkers on the InterNet, that, too, is part of the process. After I've struggled so hard to avoid the compulsions, I need to respect the fact that others haven't yet experienced that insight (and stay aware of the fact that I may be uncovering more insights with tomorrow's dawn.) The historical record documents the terror of the past. We of the present have a choice: to pass on our guilt-ridden, fear-driven heritage or get on with the healing. Amy Acheson
A BRIEF ORIENTATION
David Talbott With the next issue of THOTH, I shall begin a series of articles focused on a single "snapshot" of the planetary configuration which we have claimed dominated human imagination in ancient times. As a prelude to that series, I am submitting the following introductory questions and answers for the benefit of the many new subscribers to this newsletter.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MYTH?

I think there's a very good reason to care about myth, even though myth as a whole may seem to speak a language too obscure for rational, feet-on-the-ground folk. Myth is, I believe, a window to early human history, a more intense period of history than we've realized. The myths have their roots in a time of celestial catastrophe, and more often than not the appearance of confusion results from viewing myth as something other than what it is. In the course of cultural evolution and scientific advance, we left behind the fabled "long ago," whose images seemed wholly out of touch with our own world. Yet my personal conviction is that ancient myth, when seen as a symbolic record of earth-shaking events in the sky, will permanently change man's view of his celestial environment.
BUT YOUR CONCLUSIONS ARE NOT THOSE OF OTHERS WHO DEVOTED LIFETIMES TO THE STUDY OF MYTH. HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO MYTH PRODUCE SUCH SURPRISING CONCLUSIONS?
For more than 25 years I've been working to solve a puzzle. Why do ancient chronicles of celestial gods and heroes tell such similar stories? Though the names differ, the various biographies of the gods reveal more parallels than I had ever believed possible. And the deeper I looked the more clear it became that ancient races around the world recorded many identical experiences, even when they used different symbols to tell their stories.
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Many common themes run through the folklore of diverse cultures. From ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Americas, from India to China, Scandinavia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, one finds surprisingly similar accounts: celestial temples and cities, a lost paradise or "Garden of Eden," a cosmic mountain, a flaming serpent or dragon in the sky--and surprisingly similar stories of global calamity ranging from wars of the gods, to a great flood or a devastating rain of fire and gravel. If we'll look at these collective memories carefully, it will change our understanding of the past. Many of the myths concern planets, but the accounts make no sense to us in terms of the movement of these remote bodies today. Why did the planets, these little pinpricks of light, play such a powerful role in the mythical "age of the gods"? Along with others working in this field, I've come to interpret the myths and drawings and ritual practices from a new vantage point. Here is the conclusion in a nutshell: A few thousand years ago, the sky did not look anything like it appears today! Planets hung as gigantic, sometimes terrifying bodies above the ancient stargazers. In periods of stability this involved incredible beauty, but there were also periods of mind-altering catastrophe--the most traumatic experiences in human history.
WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS?

The primary evidence comes from ancient pictures and chronicles, submitted to extensive crossreferencing. By comparing accounts from around the world, one can begin to reconstruct the way the sky looked in ancient times. Is it possible that the myths and pictographs recorded, in a language unique to the starworshippers, large-scale events we've forgotten? By keeping that possibility firmly in mind, the researcher will begin to identify crucial themes of myth--themes found on every continent, but pointing to an alien sky. As one begins to see the past differently, recent space age discoveries will take on a new significance. Our probes of other planets, such as the Mariner explorations of Mars, the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, and more recently the Magellan mapping of Venus, the Galileo probe of Jupiter, and the Mars Surveyor have produced many stunning images of the planets and their moons, together with undeniable evidence of large-scale catastrophe within the planetary system. Taken as a whole, these stark profiles of our neighbors challenge traditional theories claiming slow and uneventful planetary evolution. Moreover, a new possibility arises from a reconsideration of the historical material: the possibility that at least some of the horrendous scars on our planetary neighbors resulted from events witnessed by man not all that long ago.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE STATEMENT THAT THE PLANETS APPEARED AS "GIGANTIC BODIES IN THE SKY"?
At the core of the argument is the idea that several planets were once joined in a spectacular gathering of planets, together with gases and dust, smaller moons and cosmic debris. For prehistoric man--who witnessed all of this--the effect was a massive celestial display in the northern sky. I've called this celestial assembly "the polar configuration" because in its stable phases it was centered on the north celestial pole. In the beginning, the primary form was the planet Saturn, stationary but immense in the sky. Numerous lines of evidence suggest that Saturn once towered over man and inspired the most dramatic leaps in human imagination the world has ever known. Our work puts a new emphasis on the unusual celestial events reflected in the myths. When you first dive into world mythology, all of your prior training will tell you to dismiss the myth-makers as fabricators or victims of hallucination. But there's another way to see the myths. Ancient man experienced extraordinary events, then strove to remember and to reenact them in every way possible. The result was not only a
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global mythology, but entirely new forms of human expression. And the whole range of expressions-sacrifices to the gods, wars of conquest, monumental construction, pictographic representations, and endless celebrations of the lost age of the gods--left us a massive reservoir of evidence. These highly novel expressions are, in fact, the distinguishing characteristics of the first civilizations.
BUT WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE SKY HAS CHANGED SO DRASTICALLY?

The best I can ask for is a willingness to consider an argument. I could show you, for example, that certain celestial images preoccupied ancient man to the point of an obsession. A great cosmic wheel in the sky. The pyramid of the sun. The eye of heaven. Also the ship of heaven, a spiraling serpent, the raging goddess, and four luminous "winds" of the sky. The problem for conventional perspectives is that these images are far, far removed from anything we see in the heavens today. But that is only the beginning of the theoretical challenge. As soon as you realize that far-flung cultures, though employing different symbols, tell a unified story, all of the previous "explanations" of myth collapse. Of course the point will not be proven in a few sentences, and not in a few pages. But the more you learn on this subject, the more compelling the collective memory becomes.
SO YOU ARE CHALLENGING THE IDEA THAT THINGS HAVE NOT REALLY CHANGED THAT MUCH WITHIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
Yes, we are challenging an intellectual system as a whole. What is at stake here are the pillars of the modern world view. How could it be that the sky has completely changed in a few thousand years? Our textbooks do not talk about such a thing. When instructing us on the history of the solar system, the evolution of our planet, the birth of man, the origins of civilization, no one speaks of an unstable solar system, of interplanetary upheaval, or of wholesale changes in the celestial order. When the popular astronomer Carl Sagan presented his impressive exposition on the nature of things, called Cosmos, he didn't ask if we may have misunderstood our past. Rather, Sagan's expressed view-the official view of science for many years--fits comfortably within the textbooks on astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, and ancient history. When we launched the U.S. Space program in the late 50s, then devoted billions of dollars to exploring neighboring planets, no one thought to ask if the planets might have followed different courses in earlier times, whether recent disturbances of the planetary system might have left their tell-tale marks on these remote bodies. So when our cameras and measuring devices reached the planets Mars and Venus, and the Voyager probes provided spectacular glimpses of Jupiter and Saturn--well, we were left with a hundred enigmas and unanswered questions. And yes, there's a certain irony to this. The prevailing view of myth proclaims that, through science, man escaped the bonds of superstition and make believe. But now, in the twentieth century--the age of science and reason--it is myth and symbol that will provide the lost key to the past, the key to a new understanding of the solar system and of human origins. At the heart of this claim is a bedrock principle: the myth-making age arose from the human urge to REMEMBER; hence, the patterns of myth are the patterns of human memory. And if it can be rigorously demonstrated from cross cultural comparison that numerous DIFFERENT words and symbols and mythical themes actually point to the SAME HIGHLY
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UNUSUAL EVENTS, then the patterns of memory will carry more weight than science has ever considered.
HOW DO YOU DISTINGUISH THESE IDEAS ABOUT "PLANETARY" MYTH FROM THE IDEAS OF OTHER RESEARCHERS SUCH AS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, CARL JUNG AND MIRCEA ELIADE?
Each of these impressive scholars came to discern certain unified layers of myth, layers our traditional cynicism about myth never anticipated. Perhaps the greatest contribution of these pioneers is their acknowledgment that the common view--seeing myth as random absurdity--will not suffice to explain the subject. I think the late Joseph Campbell has done the most to awaken popular interest in myth, and he is one of my own favorites too. Following a comparative approach, Campbell brought to light quite a number of global themes. He noted, for example, the myths of the central sun, the world mountain, the flowering of creation through sacrifice, the birth of the hero, the terrible goddess, and so on. Any one of these themes, when explored in its full context, could open the door to incredible discovery. But Campbell, like so many others, stopped short of asking the most important question of all: if the celestial references of the myths are absent today, is it possible that they were present in a former time?
WHAT IS THE REAL MESSAGE OF MYTH, IN YOUR VIEW?

The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten the very thing they regarded as most vital--in fact, the source of all meaning to the first starworshippers. We've forgotten the age of the gods. We've assumed that as long as man has journeyed on our planet the world looked and behaved almost exactly as it does today. And that is the fundamental error of modern perception. The answer to that error is to re-envision the past. With the help of the ancient chroniclers, its time to bring the forgotten dramas--both the beauty, and the nightmare scenarios--into the light of day.
COMMENTS ON ELECTRIC STARS

By Wal Thornhill The possibility is that the sun is isothermal, or even that the standard model does apply somewhere deep inside. The problem for the theorists is that, if the photosphere is an anode phenomenon, the boundary conditions defined by the photospheric temperature and apparent radius of the sun is no longer applicable as it used in the standard solar model. So, yes, I am suggesting that the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere. Therefore we don't know the true volume of the sun, nor the surface temperature as required by the perfect gas theory. As for the calculations about the density of the sun - which is proportional to its mass - which in turn is determined by the measured gravitational attraction of the sun for the Earth, I believe we have a problem there too. As I mentioned in a more recent post: ...our physics is lacking in some crucial areas. To put it bluntly, I do not believe that Einstein's view of gravity as curved space is correct or even helpful. There is an alternative classical model which shows great promise and relates the inertial and
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gravitational mass to induced electrostatic dipoles in nucleons. That means that the gravitational "constant', G, is neither constant nor universal. If that is so, we do not know the mass of the sun either! Since we don't know the mass or volume of the sun, we cannot determine its density. It is clear then that we can say little about the solar interior conditions. And since the interpretation of helioseismology data is constrained to a large extent by the standard solar model, any conclusions from that source must be viewed with caution. It also seems to me that there is a lack in the perfect gas theory used in the standard solar model which may have profound consequences if the "neo-classical" theory of gravity is correct in principle. That is, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law does not deal with electrostatic polarization of atoms/molecules due to gravity. Such electrostatic polarization occurs in a strong gravitational field because the nucleus of each atom will be displaced within the atom, slightly toward the centre of the sun. Such radial atomic polarization would create an increasing electrostatic field as you move out from the centre of the sun. That field will be responded to by nucleons (according to the new theory of gravity) to give a much greater effective gravitational field than would be produced by the same matter if it were at the Earth's surface (for instance). As if the indeterminacy of mass and volume of the sun were not enough, such a polarization effect would render invalid calculations of density versus distance from the sun's centre, based on the perfect gas laws. It has also occurred to me that the radial electrostatic polarization of the sun may be responsible for focusing or initiating the cosmic discharge in the first place. Once begun, the energy density of incoming cosmic rays at the Earth's orbit, which equals the radiant energy output from the sun, shows that little input is required from nuclear reactions at the sun to explain the sun's radiant output. I have used the analogy of a power transformer, where the cross-country power lines carry electrical power at a lethal voltage but the transformer converts it to a lower, more useful household voltage. Likewise, stellar transformers convert the lethal power of galactic cosmic rays to a more benign level of radiation conducive to life. Naturally, at this early stage, many of the ideas expressed are speculative. But I am convinced that the sun exhibits all of the complex phenomena associated with a plasma discharge. Based on the standard solar theory, Fred Hoyle wrote in Frontiers of Astronomy, 1955, p.106: We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three thousand kilometers up. The standard solar model has nothing but adhocery to offer by way of explanation for the complex phenomena observed on and above the photosphere. So despite the clever mathematical virtuosity displayed, I suggest the standard model simply doesn't apply to our sun or any other star. The field is wide open for new ideas! Wal Thornhill
More responses to later questions on the same subject: What I tried to emphasize is that the Einstein model of gravity is wrong. In its place I favor a neo-classical physics approach which relates inertial and gravitational mass to nuclear electrostatic dipoles and the transmission of the electrostatic force at near infinite speed. In this model, the Newtonian gravitational constant, G, is neither constant nor universal. It depends to a great extent on the electric charge on the star or planet. That is the reason why G is the most ill-determined "constant" in physics. By assuming that G is the same for the Earth and the sun, conventional theory arrives at a mass of the sun which is fictional. Sure, gravity operates on and above the sun in the way we expect from present
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theory, so quantitatively the force works exactly according to Hoyle. But internally (below the photosphere) the gravitational field will deviate from our expectations of the standard solar model since we do not know the radial distribution of charge or the radially cumulative effects of gravitational electrostatic polarization of atoms and nuclei. Intuitively I would expect that the contribution to the gravitational field of the sun from the nuclei of atoms within the sun would rise much more rapidly in the outer layers than expected in the standard model, where all atoms of a particular element have the same mass regardless of where we find them. (Remember, the stronger the electrostatic polarization, the higher the apparent mass of an atom in the electrical model. It is precisely the same effect we see in particle accelerators). The result would be a quite different density profile from the standard model, with a much lower density at the centre of the sun. If you are curious about the electrostatic dipole model of gravity, I urge you to write to the Classical Physics Institute, 492 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, New York 10185. There is much more depth, complexity and detail in the theory than I am willing or able to repeat on this forum. For those who need quantitative arguments - it's there. Some of the ideas expressed above may not wholly conform to the ideas of others in this new and exciting field. I am happy to be corrected. Wal Thornhill
ELECTRICAL EFFECTS OF PASSING BODIES

By Wal Thornhill Clark Whelton asks: Velikovsky had to explain his claim that the Earth slowed and stopped, or that the axis tipped, by attributing these effects to standard gravitational interaction with passing bodies. In an electrical universe, couldn't spin rate and orientation of the axis be affected by electrical interaction with passing bodies, possibly even a comet? Yes Clark, but the important thing in all of this, and something which Velikovsky in his usual intuitive way presaged, is that gravity itself is linked to electrostatics. It is not some innate quality associated with matter, unrelated to its electrical structure. With hindsight this seems so bleeding obvious you wonder at the lack of common sense of "experts" - but that is the nature of paradigm shifts. The importance of this "discovery" cannot be overstated since at one stroke it overcomes the objection that electric forces can play no part in celestial dynamics because of the shielding quality of space plasma for electrical forces. Plasma does not act as a shield for gravity, so if you can change gravity by changing the electrostatic charge on a body the effects can be felt by other bodies in the solar system. Of course, the most dramatic changes in planetary charge occur when interplanetary discharges take place. A comet could have the effects you mention if it carried sufficient charge. Of course, all of this has profound implications for the doomsayers amongst the NEO researchers ... It is safe to assume that asteroids carry considerable electrical charge. As evidence, the presumed magnetic field detected during the Galileo spacecraft's flyby of asteroid Gaspra. It surprised investigators, not least because it seemed to be as strong as the Earth's. That interpretation was based on calculations of the presumed effect of an inert obstacle the size of Gaspra on the solar wind. The fact that the solar wind disturbance was much larger than expected is more easily explained as the extent of a Langmuir sheath (plasmasphere) which shields a charged object from the surrounding plasma. It is unnecessary to infer a magnetosphere. As I wrote some time early last year concerning Tunguska and the great Chicago fires, if such a body approached within the Earth's plasmasphere, electrical effects would begin to be noticed up to a day
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before "impact". Once it got close enough it would likely be destroyed by the Earth's own defense system - a cosmic discharge. I can guarantee that the "impact" would look nothing like all of the simplistic artists' renditions which don't even show so much as a spark of lightning.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 9 (May 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: DINNER WITH WAL & MICHAEL & MEL ON THE USE OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE CATASTROPHIC RESEARCH THARSIS THOLUS
Amy Acheson David Talbott David Davis Wal Thornhill
DINNER WITH WAL & MICHAEL & MEL

By Amy Acheson Menu: Red-shifted Paradigms spiced with Gamma-ray Bursts. Healthy portions of Catastrophics marinated in Philosophy. Side order of Personal Anecdotes Dessert: Inspiration a la mode We talked for hours, but I didn't take notes. As a result, you're getting a synthesis of my own warmed-over musings rather than bite-by-bite recitation. So chew on this: The old paradigm has been a useful one. It put men on the moon, telescopes in space, and a radio-controlled car on Mars. What does the new paradigm offer? To begin with, we have the excitement of discovery, the "eureka" when one observation fits another and opens up a whole new way of looking at the universe. This, in itself, is happiness for me and Mel. But there are also practical challenges and opportunities. Now that the paradigm is being defined, it's time to begin reaching out to other explorers. Recent years have seen a surge of international interest in catastrophics. Now, conferences, books, CD's, videos, Internet curricula and a TV documentary need to be developed. We're working on them. My dinner with the guys was an intermission in a three-day planning marathon on behalf of the Mind Exploration Corporation ("Mind Corporation", for short). This is a newly-formed company, bringing business and professional leaders together with catastrophist researchers to forge an ambitious communications program. More info on the program will be found at: www.youneedtoknow.com/mind/ For the majority of the world, the new paradigm will be judged by what it has to offer to each individual. And the expectations of my dinner companions are not just high but...well...cosmic. Michael dreams of a
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global culture seeking to recapture the sense of kinship and community traditionally linked to a Golden Age. Of course, Mel and Wal and I want to see a vehicle that will take us to the stars. And who knows? Perhaps even that will be possible as the new paradigm begins to fire human imagination. Dinner was fun, guys. Let's do it again. Amy Acheson
ON THE USE OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

David Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: For the next two or three weeks David Talbott will be tied up with travel and other activity of the Mind Corporation. In his absence, we are presenting a follow-up piece to the Q & A appearing in the previous issue of THOTH.]
YOU'RE SUGGESTING THAT EARLY MAN WITNESSED SPECTACULAR EVENTS IN THE SKY. BUT SKEPTICS WOULD CLAIM THAT ANCIENT RECORDS ARE A HOPELESSLY ELUSIVE SOURCE FOR "PROVING" SUCH A CLAIM.
Of course they would, and the response should not surprise us. The most common objection to the "Saturn theory" is that it rests on the words of storytellers who understood nothing about the world in which they lived. But we need to re-think these familiar responses. One reason ancient memories seem so absurd is that they speak for things that clearly do not exist - today. Our thinking is governed by an incredible amount of inertia, and only the rarest of investigators has ever asked: Do we really know what ancient starworshippers saw in the sky? Can we really be certain that the natural world our ancestors experienced several thousand years ago is a mirror of our world today?
SKEPTICS MIGHT SAY THAT YOU CAN "PROVE ANYTHING" BY RESORT TO MYTH.
Well, you certainly do hear that statement a lot, and the statement is obviously not intended to be taken literally. The skeptic is saying that all sorts of strange and exotic ideas have been proposed on the basis of myth, and he is saying you could argue for anything under the sun if all you have to do is select a few myths for support. The answer to this perfectly natural objection is to adopt investigative groundrules which exclude all selective use of historical testimony. In the approach I've proposed, the entire inquiry rests on wellestablished patterns of memory, patterns that have survived thousands of years of tribal mixing and still shine through despite the inherent tendency toward distortion over time. The value of limiting admissible evidence to RECURRING themes is that this approach will expose the substratum of human memory. And that is when the great surprises come: with astonishing consistency the substratum speaks for an alien sky.
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Additionally, this approach will place the highest emphasis on the oldest sources, those situated closest in time to the original experience, where there is the least opportunity for distortion. It is in the oldest sources that you find the most poignant and literal expressions of the universal themes, with minimal dilution of the celestial images involved.
AND YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN "PROVE" YOUR CASE ON THE BASIS OF MYTHICAL AND HISTORICAL EVIDENCE?
The "proof" begins with certain well-established celestial forms repeated in myths and pictographs and ritual reenactments around the world. Not one of these primary forms, when placed under the microscope, will reveal any relationship to things experienced today. There are "sun"-wheels, to be sure, but on examination they have nothing in common with the body we call sun. We find images of "stars" in great abundance, but they do not behave like any stars in our sky. One finds as well a distinctive crescent-form, recorded by all ancient cultures, but why do the particulars NEVER correspond to the crescent moon? The researcher's first impression will be of confusion - one astronomically absurd image after another. A star in the center of the "sun." A crescent holding in its hollow a central star. A crescent on the great sphere of the "sun". A sun standing motionless at the center of heaven. A "sun" occupying the summit of the world axis. A celestial column rising along the polar axis to support a great crescent "moon". A star with a spiraling tail. A star carrying inside itself an unexplained dark or reddish sphere. The theoretical problem is that, from one ancient nation to another, there is far more consistency to these "astronomical absurdities" than is rationally conceivable if they arose from imagination somehow driven to DENY natural experience. And that's the dilemma in a nutshell: random, irrational ideas could never produce global, coherent patterns at any level of detail; but there are demonstrable global patterns, and in greater detail than any comparative mythologist has previously recognized; therefore, the images cannot be random in the sense typically assumed. In truth, the dilemma has no answer until one finds a new vantage point for interpreting the coherent substratum of myth. But finding that vantage point will require us to stop projecting our own sky onto that of prehistoric man. The good news is that nothing else is necessary in order to open the door to discovery.
NEVERTHELESS, YOUR DEPENDENCE ON MYTHICAL IMAGES WILL SURELY INSPIRE SKEPTICISM.

Of course! On the face of it, myth is the most incoherent, confused and least credible source of information in the world! In common perception myth has, for centuries, meant fiction. And myth, in one obvious sense, IS fiction. It is make believe. It should be obvious we're not suggesting that things occurred in the manner implied by mythical language itself. We don't need to be told that fiery serpents and dragons, or heaven-sustaining giants, or ships in the sky, or witches on brooms do not exist in the sense understood by the mythmakers. The questions we're asking are: where did the myths come from? What are the celestial references? In what human experiences did the most powerful themes of myth originate? Nothing is more obvious than the myth-maker's relentless tendency to interpret events: monstrous creatures in the sky, celestial cities and kingdoms, sky pillars, rivers or fountains of life, celestial kings, heroes, and warriors, mother goddesses and divine princesses, heaven-embracing trees, crescenthorned bulls and crescent-ships, demons of chaos - there is no limit to the role of human imagination,
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whatever may have inspired these ideas. Ultimately, there is only one question here: is it even conceivable that the general patterns could have arisen without an external reference to prompt the ideas? What we are claiming is that these themes arose from a natural environment more dramatic and terrifying than anything known in modern times. Since there's virtually no limit to the field of evidence, there are logical groundrules for determining if the references are alien to our sky. Why not apply these reasonable groundrules and see where they lead? The first step toward understanding the myth-making epoch is to distinguish between the unusual and the imaginative. The events are unusual, while the interpretations are imaginative. I'm not asking you to agree that a shining temple or city of living "gods" once stood in the center of the sky; or believe that a great hero of flesh and blood once arose to rid the world of the chaos-monsters; or that this very same hero once consorted with a "mother goddess". I WILL ask you, however, to consider whether these unexplained and global themes may have roots in uncommon natural events. In our skepticism about such global themes we forgot the elementary distinction between event and interpretation, then tossed out the entire body of evidence. A new approach will simply let the dominant patterns of myth speak for themselves, suggesting the concrete forms behind the imaginative interpretations. If it can be seen that the diverse mythical images, in their earliest uses, point to the SAME underlying forms, it becomes rationally impossible to deny the presence of those forms. And in the same way, once the concrete forms have been identified, the concrete sequences of events will provide additional acid tests.
WHAT, THEN, IS THE HEART OF YOUR ARGUMENT?

For several years now I've been asking those with an interest in the subject to see if they can find a global mythical theme explicable by reference to known natural phenomena. I do not believe it will ever happen. Despite appearances at a superficial level (where the translators of various texts ASSUME a reference to the sun or moon, or some other readily accessible phenomenon), there is, in truth, no theme of myth answering, in its earliest expressions, to the world we know. Now if this assessment is correct, we're left with only two options theoretically. Either we must imagine that the ancients populated their mythical world with forms and events never experienced, denying natural experience at every turn (something no theorist has ever claimed); or we must assume that the world formerly presented to the mythmakers a range of sights and sounds unlike anything known in modern times. That's why I've urged an analytical approach concentrating on the universal themes of myth. Nothing will boost the researcher's confidence more than discovering, first, that there are authentic but unexplained patterns; then discovering that the patterns are all inseparably connected, as if joined to a single taproot. Just consider, for example, the collective memory repeated in myths the world over - of a former "age of the gods". It began with a period frequently termed the "Golden Age", but was punctuated by a collapse of the original order, sweeping catastrophe, wars of the gods and eventually a departure of these visible powers. Yes, there are a hundred variations on the theme, and countless contradictions in the localized versions, but at root we have the idea that the great gods were overwhelmed in a deadly catastrophe, wandered off, or flew away to become distant stars. We've never really reckoned with this collective memory - of a time when man himself lived close to the "gods". The general theme is both universal and remarkably persistent. From the dawn of history onward, that theme never gave way to a contrary idea - UNTIL the contradiction between the memory and the experienced world became so great that men stopped believing in the gods!
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By concentrating on the themes that have survived for thousands of years, in all major cultures, the investigative approach itself prevents you from slipping into subjective interpretation, or dwelling on aspects of myth that are clearly evolutionary and localized.
AND HOW DO THE PLANETS FIGURE INTO THIS?

In the most direct way. The great celestial powers first celebrated by man were planets and aspects of planets, all playing concrete roles that can be demonstrated through systematic analysis. When I started my own investigation in 1972 it was obvious that most mainstream scholars do not admit any meaningful relationship of early gods and later planets. It soon became clear why this is so. The gods are far more dominant, more active, and more violent than could possibly be explained, or illuminated in any way by the present fireflies of light we call planets. We know that the early priest astronomers upheld cosmic traditions dating back to the dawn of civilization. And when the first stargazers of ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica began recording the movements of settled (or nearly settled) planets, they insisted with one voice that these distant bodies once dominated the world as "the gods". The incredible discrepancy between the biographies of these gods and the present little specks in the sky presents a fascinating and unexplained global anomaly. I'm suggesting, in other words, that we pay serious attention to the profound shift in ancient ideas about gods and planets, a shift occurring some time in the first millennium B.C. Gradually, the "capriciousness" of the gods gave way to fixed and repeated cycles of planets. Whatever you may think of our reconstruction, it cannot be denied that the dramatic change in human perception IS consistent with the claimed transition - a shift from the active and dramatic presence of the gods to the remote, uniform and predictable planetary system we observe today. Until the establishment of stable cycles or patterns, of course, observational, mathematically-based planetary astronomy would be impossible. Now obviously, the unshakable opinion of astronomers is that the solar system of our ancestors looked very much like it does today. Yet surprisingly, though celestial "sun" and "star" symbols are everywhere, one searches in vain for evidence of PRESENT planetary movements. What we find is thus what we should EXPECT to find if the planetary system changed dramatically within human memory. David Talbott
CATASTROPHIC RESEARCH
By David Davis What does exasperate me no end is when I read catastrophist & chronologist literature, and an argument is being put forward which is totally incompatible with other work published in that journal (or other organs) ... yet the author makes no explicit reference to the fact. In some cases this is simply lack of knowledge on my part, since I'm not familiar with footnote 7 on page 21 of Kronos Volume 6 number 2, which showed conclusively that footnote 3 on page 5 of SIS Review Vol. 1 number 3 was in fact totally wrong and need never be considered in the catastrophist literature ever again. In other cases, authors just don't have a sufficient command of the literature, and the complex web of arguments that follow when B and C followed A (based on X), but then 6 years later X was shown to be false (due to the unearthing of P and Q) so B and C no longer stand, but we mustn't forget that this now means that original counterviews G and H to B and C are now in fact worthy of new consideration (albeit modified with respect to P and Q) (for A to X just substitute a few Third Intermediate Period Egyptian Pharaohs and who their pet rabbits were, and you'll begin to get the picture)
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All this is compounded still further when there is major disagreement on whether both P AND Q really DID allow X to refute B and C, or does just C hold, permitting G but not H? (Never mind that orthodox view never accepted any of them in the first place, holding to R, S and T) Yes, well, enough of this. Considering that most catastrophist researchers are not paid academics but simply ordinary folks trying to earn an honest wage in the modern world whilst rewriting all known fields of human knowledge in their spare time, I don't think they do too bad. However, on a point as fundamental as [someone] claiming to have a billion years positive proof of a 365 day year [tending towards 400 for those earliest few millions ;-) ], I really draw the line at saying "well, he's a scientist, I'll have to take his word for it until I can conclusively prove him wrong". Instead I'd say "excuse me, but conclusions from my discipline show that the length of the terrestrial year *has* changed sharply in the last billion years and so you better recheck your figures cos I don't think they can be as reliable as you assume them to be" Dave Davis
THARSIS THOLUS
By Wal Thornhill [I]t is possible to point to some features on Earth which look like the surface features on other bodies in the solar system. That was superficially true of the collapsed lava tube and sinuous rilles on the Moon. But the fact that confusion was rife for many decades about whether craters on the Moon were of volcanic or impact origin is an indication that we should be careful about attributing mechanisms based on incomplete knowledge of our own planet and its geological history. Professor V R Baker writes in The Channels of Mars, p.14: The new frontier of geomorphology lies in the comparative study of planetary surfaces. The comparison of planetary surfaces is mainly accomplished with orbital images or photographs. The interpreter of the landforms on those images relies on analogic reasoning to reconstruct the complex interaction of processes responsible for the observed features. Mutch (1979) has summarized the difficulties of this approach: (1) The method often assumes a unique correlation between the observed landforms and the responsible processes. Actually geomorphologists recognize that some landforms may be generated by different combinations of processes converging on the same result. This problem of "equifinality" is a continuing limitation on geomorphic analysis. (2) Photointerpreters are artificially constrained in their analyses by their range of familiarity with natural landscapes. For this reason the proposed analogs must be exhaustively pressed for their limitations as explanations for the phenomena under study. Mutch (1979) observed that the origins of landforms on other planets are established not so much by the individual study of analogs as by a consensus among the active investigators. After the photographs and images have been studied for many years, one explanation remains that explains the majority of terrain features and is not incompatible with the remaining ones. The decade that has elapsed since Mariner 9 has allowed consensus explanations to emerge for Mars, and these will be discussed in this chapter. However, controversial issues remain. [Mutch, T A, Planetary Surfaces: Rev. Geophys. & Space Phys., v. 17, no. 7, pp. 1694-1722].
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So, the origin of the features on Mars basically relies on a show of hands based on experience with features on Earth. However, Baker goes on to say: ...many Martian craters have a unique morphology, different from that observed elsewhere in the solar system. The ejecta surrounding the crater is layered, and each layer has an outer edge terminating in a low ridge or escarpment. The surfaces of well-preserved ejecta blankets typically display radial striae, ramparts, and concentric features. Even the notorious "face" on Mars exhibits some of these features. As I have shown in The Electric Universe, these features are all easily explained by the electric arc model. And that is the point of departure between my interpretation and that of geologists. Geologists are restricted in their models to tectonic, volcanic or impact forces. I have one more model in my repertoire which actually embodies some of the features of both volcanoes and impacts (in the form of anode melting at the top of an electric arc 'blister', and the explosive qualities of an arc). But there are additional features which provide the electric arc signature. My model has the virtue of being reproducible in the laboratory and it was there that I discovered the tendency for the arc to impinge like a corkscrew - giving rise in some craters to corkscrew terracing or incomplete formation of a circular crater. In my opinion, Tharsis Tholus on Mars shows classic signs of such an effect. Of course, the accusation is levelled by [skeptics] that I have not provided mathematical proof that electric arcs of sufficient power could create scars the size of Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris. And even if they could, you cannot scale up electrical scarring effects from lab to planet. There are many answers to that. To begin with, it was no less than Hannes Alfven, the pioneer plasma physicist, who pointed out the enormous scalability of plasma effects and exhorted theorists to get back in the lab to find out how things really work in space. (I plan to do that again as soon as possible). Also, if you read any recent research on arcs in plasmas you will find statements such as: While no single, complete theory covers all aspects of arc formation... [from the latest issue of the Vacuum Society of Australia, Summer 1998]. And if you read technical works on arc welding you find it is more an art than a science. Once again, the phenomenology of plasma arc scarring must be undertaken in the lab, not sitting in front of a computer fiddling with some unrealistic model. Then we have the evidence amassed by the Saturnists for prehistoric interplanetary discharges which reportedly took on the plasmoid shape, only recently rediscovered in plasma labs. Not only that, but a marked change in appearance of Mars ensued from one such strike. Back to Baker again: Concepts as basic as uniformitarianism must be seriously questioned ... The relatively recent discovery of alien landscapes poses many disturbing questions for a science grown complacent with the study of the familiar. Tharsis Tholus is classified as a Martian volcano, 150 kilometres across and 8 kilometres high. It is also dubbed a geological puzzle because it requires explosive and effusive eruption followed by collapse and faulting in an attempt to explain its weird features. Not only that but the faulting has to be almost vertical in every instance. Such a succession of ad-hoc requirements stretches credibility beyond any reasonable limit. I believe Tharsis Tholus was not formed by geological forces. It is not volcanic. Tharsis Tholus is an example of an electrical fulgamite scar, topped by a typical spiral or corkscrew crater, as we saw on the Moon. (Note that such a crater (King) on the Moon is given as a textbook example of an impact! This is testimony to the confusion between astronomers and geologists as to which craters are caused by volcanism and which by impact. The simple answer to the conundrum may be given by the electrical model - neither of the conventional explanations is correct in many cases).
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A fulgamite (lightning arrestor scar) has a characteristic raised mound. The 5 kilometre high gullies in the left side of the crater of Tharsis Tholus have the same scalloped form as those carved by a colossal arc from the walls of Valles Marineris. The complex mound has been machined by 3 or more consecutive discharges during its formation, giving rise to sharp differences in levels on its flanks and different radii of excavation depending on the current density of each stroke of the arc. You will note the beautiful arcuate walls at the bottom of the picture which are characteristic of arc machining. Interestingly, earthly lightning conductors often show 3 successive strokes in the one flash. The first stroke lifts and creates the mound, the later ones machine or distort the peak. The main corkscrew machining seems to have begun at the top right of the picture and proceeded in a counter-clockwise motion, producing the sloped terraces inside the crater. The acid test will be when we get to the Moon and Mars and find no central vent in the so-called volcanic mounds. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 10 (June 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: PUZZLES AND PARADIGMS THE MEANING OF MYTH THE GOLDEN AGE IMAGES OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE
Mel Acheson Ev Cochrane Dave Talbott and Dwardu Cardona Wal Thornhill
PUZZLES AND PARADIGMS

By Mel Acheson No one buys a jigsaw puzzle that's pre-assembled. The point of interest is the process of assembly more than the finally-assembled picture. And the motivation for buying is the promise of a challenging process. So it is with science: You buy a box of facts. The picture on the box is the paradigm. The challenge is to assemble the facts in such a way that the paradigm makes sense of them. It's a process of creating meaning. Once the puzzle's put together, once the questions are answered, it's no longer interesting (as science: it becomes a matter of engineering, of application). Thus paradigms are self-limiting and science is self-renewing. As a paradigm approaches the limits of its explanatory domain, as it begins to "know everything", it grows less interesting. Stephen Hawking may have discovered the mind of God, but only to find no one cares. Interest shifts to the unexplained and to the unknown. The demand grows for a new paradigm to show the way to new things in new places. It's time for science to shop for a new puzzle. So here's another pitch for my pet paradigm: The Electric Saturn Super Model promises a lot of fun. It can explain not only a shopping-cart-full of anomalies, but it can re-organize the clutter of ad-hoc explanations in the Establishment Store onto shelves of predictable phenomena. It replaces an empty, lifeless universe with a historical, lightning-filled one. There are things to do: The physics and astronomy of isolated, static particles need to be exchanged for a science of interconnected bodies adapting to a changing, energy-driven environment. (Gravity needs to be replaced.) A new mathematics will be needed to describe the new phenomena. The facts of geology need to be reassembled as ruins instead of as a record. New procedures, equipment, and experiments need to be invented. New applications-new toys-need to be engineered.
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The story of the past-not only mythology, but history, archeology, anthropology, psychologyneeds to be reconstructed and retold.
The Electric Saturn Super Model provides the big picture in which all these details can be put together. It promises to replace the determinism, fragmentation, alienation, and stasis of the traditional worldview with a connected, grounded, innovative, and dynamic worldview. Plug yourself in! --Mel Acheson
THE MEANING OF MYTH

Ev Cochrane Why should anyone care about the message of ancient myth? The most obvious reason, perhaps, is that myth served the role of history, science, literature, and entertainment for many centuries prior to the appearance of advanced civilizations and the development of writing. A study of ancient myth, consequently, will tell us a great deal about the intellectual life of early man. If for no other reason, this should ensure that modern scholars pay careful attention to the favorite myths of our forbears. There are many different approaches to the study of ancient myth-naturist, Freudian, Jungian, structuralist, etc. No doubt each of the various schools of thought has valid points to make. My own approach to myth attempts to make sense of the ancient traditions surrounding the various celestial bodies. It is well-known, in fact, that the earliest religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica were characterized by a preoccupation with celestial phenomena. Of the latter culture, David Kelley has observed: It has been clear to all serious students of Mesoamerican culture that there was an intimate relationship between astronomical knowledge, the calendar, and religious beliefs and rituals. Much the same point could be made with respect to all ancient cultures. Wherever one looks, one finds the same fascination with the heavenly bodies. Throughout the ancient world, for example, comets were looked upon as objects of terror and ominous portent, their appearance said to herald the downfall of kingdoms and the death of kings. The opinion of Synesius, an author of the fourth century A. D., may be taken as typical: And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings. Eclipses, similarly, were thought to signal the imminent end of the world, anxious skywatchers performing all sorts of bizarre rituals to appease and banish the evil spirits responsible for the all-encompassing darkness. How is it possible to understand such widespread beliefs? Modern astronomers, accustomed to seeing comets and eclipses come and go without catastrophic consequences-much less the end of the world!-quite naturally approach these ancient beliefs with a measure of incredulity, much as adults view a child's belief in the bogeyman or Santa Claus. Scholars of ancient myth, likewise, have typically understood such beliefs as the expression of ancient man's primitive mentality and prescientific understanding of the cosmos. Yet such a view overlooks the fact that similar beliefs were common well into the modern period-in this century, in fact-and were shared by the scientific elite of most ancient civilizations. Thus the possibility must be considered that the problem in understanding is not with the ancients, rather with the preconceptions of modern astronomers.
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There have been scant few scholars who took seriously the ancient reports of death-bringing comets and apocalyptic eclipses. Among the few who did-Whiston, Vico, Radlof, Donnelly, Beaumont, and Kugler-it was Immanuel Velikovsky who did the most to popularize (some would say discredit forever) the notion that the ancient reports are worthy of careful attention. In WORLDS IN COLLISION, Velikovsky set the stage for a revolution in comparative mythology by suggesting that universally recurring mythical imagessuch as the war-god, fire-breathing dragon, and witch-reflect ancient man's attempt to commemorate terrifying cataclysms associated with planetary agents. Nearly twenty years of research has convinced me that Velikovsky was on the right track and that the modern astronomer's refusal to acquaint himself with the message of ancient myth will prove to be a most glaring omission. Velikovsky posed the following question: Why would ancient peoples on both sides of the Atlantic describe the planet Venus in terms otherwise appropriate for a comet-hair-star, serpent-star, bearded star, smoking star, etc.-if its appearance had always remained the same? And why would ancient peoples around the globe associate this planet with destruction and ill omen if it had always behaved in its present peaceful fashion? This anomaly is made all the more difficult to understand given the fact that several of the cultures who preserved such traditions-the Babylonians and the Maya, for example-were justly renowned as careful observers of the celestial bodies in general and obsessed with the movements of Venus in particular. Despite the fact that nearly 50 years have elapsed since the publication of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky's question has yet to receive a satisfactory answer. A key to the proper understanding of ancient archaeoastronomical traditions is the comparative method. As long as one's focus is confined to this or that culture, it is always tempting to dismiss the bizarre reports surrounding the respective celestial bodies as the product of primitive understanding, creative imagination, projection of religious practices, displacement, etc. Yet should the same bizarre conceptions be discovered in a distant culture-much less in cultures around the world-it stands to reason that the ancient reports begin to take on a certain credibility and bear further investigation. An analogous situation, perhaps, surrounded the raging controversy in the nineteenth century over whether meteorites could fall to the earth from the sky. Ancient reports from around the world told of such meteoritic falls, yet astronomers of the past century dismissed them together with eyewitness reports of contemporary scientists because their worldview did not allow for the possibility that rocks might fall to the earth from heaven. As modern astronomy was eventually forced to accept the reality that meteorites did fall from heaven, so too, in our opinion, will it be forced to come to grips with Venus' cometary recent history. For in the final analysis it will be found that the mythology which came to surround comets had its origin in historical events associated with the planet Venus. Venus and comets share the same terminology and mythology for the simple reason that that planet once presented a comet-like appearance while participating in spectacular cataclysms witnessed around the world. A survey of Venus' role in ancient myth and archaeoastronomy reveals one anomaly after another. Why was Venus described as the "Great Star"? Why was the star of Venus superimposed upon the disc of the ancient sun-god in ancient iconography? Why was the star of Venus placed within the upturned cusps of a crescent? Why was Venus described as the "Great Eye"? Why was Venus described as shining from the "midst" or "heart" of heaven, a position it could never reach in today's skies? Why was Venus regarded as the "witch-star"? Why was Venus regarded as the lover of Mars? Why was Venus regarded as the mother of Mars? Equally baffling questions surround the planet Mars' role in ancient myth and archaeoastronomy. Throughout the ancient world, the appearance of Mars was said to portend war, destruction, and pestilence. Why this would be the case if Mars had always moved as it does now, in a perfectly regular, distant orbit, is not easy to understand. Babylonian astronomical texts report that the red planet was regarded as the "eclipse-agent" par excellence. Other cultures likewise associate Mars with eclipses. Yet Mars' current orbit never brings it into a position whereby it could be viewed as eclipsing the sun.
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The ancient reports surrounding Mars, like those surrounding Venus, can be shown to have historical precedents. Once grasp the truth of this statement, and the ancient reports suddenly take on an entirely new perspective and significance. The dignity of our forebears is restored in the process, as Hertha von Dechend was led to remark after a lifelong investigation of myth as astronomical allegory. As ancient myth informed the earliest efforts at understanding the movements of the respective heavenly bodies, so too will it inform the astronomy of the 21st century which will doubtless be firmly grounded in the reality of recent planetary catastrophism.
THE GOLDEN AGE: VARIATIONS ON A THEME

By Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: In response to questions from Mel and Amy about whether myth is exclusively celestial or both celestial and terrestrial, Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott posted these simultaneous and similar answers. They provide an insightful glimpse into the methodology of comparative mythology.]
DWARDU CARDONA RESPONDS:

Speaking for myself, and myself only, myth refers to both celestial and terrestrial events. It's just that not much has yet been published re the terrestrial events as they pertain to the Saturn scenario - and that is at should be, because we must first delineate the celestial events before we can delve into the terrestrial ones. AMY: And now we are hearing comments referring to the golden age as something that happened here on earth. CARDONA: But it did. After all, one cannot believe that the Saturnian events had no effects on Earth and its inhabitants. AMY: A rigorous consistency would require that Eden, the Golden Age, the eternal spring, and the timeless time would refer to events in the sky, not on earth. CARDONA: In my opinion, they refer to both. AMY: Drawing any conclusions regarding terrestrial conditions would be unfounded. CARDONA: Not necessarily. As but one example, think about this: The Deluge is said to have drowned Earth in its waters. "Earth," here, can be understood as the CELESTIAL earth. But what was there that was seen in the sky during this event that was interpreted as water. Why water? Fire (light mixed with darkness) would have been more appropriate had the event been strictly celestial. But if water DID descend on Earth during this particular event, then the celestial apparition could have been interpreted as a like-event. True - the Garden said to have been "east of Eden" - a mistranslation, incidentally - WAS a celestial apparition. But what was there in this celestial apparition that lent itself to the interpretation that this object
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was a "garden," and that this "garden" contained all the trees and fruits, etcetera, required for mankind's bliss? Was it not conditions on Earth during this period that lent the celestial apparition its imagery? The statement "as in heaven, so on Earth" has echoed down through the ages. I would like to rectify that to: As on Earth, so in heaven. After all the celestial cow, the celestial bull, the witch's broom, etcetera, were "named" after terrestrial animals and objects and not vice versa. There would have been no celestial cow had there not been a terrestrial one. And so forth. Dwardu
DAVE TALBOTT ALSO RESPONDS:

Here is my position in a nutshell: all of the players in archetypal myth are celestial; the theater itself is in the sky, not on our earth. Only in later storytelling are the archetypal figures brought down to earth, to occupy local regions as imagined "ancestors" of the nations telling the stories. To this principle I am aware of no exceptions. Saturn's timeless epoch means the absence of any discernible cosmic cycles. The ancestral paradise watered by the four rivers is, in truth, the land of the gods, and this means nothing other than the WHEEL of the "sun" god Saturn, as strange as the idea may sound. But you cannot separate the world of the observers from their unique mythical interpretations of cosmic events. For example: if observers perceived in Saturn's crescent a "bull of heaven", or a "great cow of heaven" that IS evidence that the myth-makers were familiar with the species! So yes, a "rigorous consistency would require that Eden, the Golden Age, the eternal spring, and the timeless time refer to events in the sky," but I'd remove the phrase, "not on earth," since the earth is immediately implicated if there were no discernible cosmic cycles. What imagination PERCEIVED in extraordinary cosmic events was a function both of human psychology and the full range of natural experience before, during, and after the events. Hence, there are two tiers of "terrestrial" experience that must be considered in any comprehensive explanation of myth. It is one thing to say that Saturn's rule began with a "timeless epoch." But the fact that races around the world regarded this as the ideal or standard, and strove relentlessly to re-capture that condition gives us more than a reconstruction of cosmic events. It tells us something about the mythmakers themselves. Similarly, when the mythmakers say that Saturn's epoch was "neither hot nor cold," the implication is that human experience is contributing to the interpretation. In the same way, the accounts of heavenshattering thunder, associated with the lightning of the gods, surely implies reverberating sounds on earth. And in all likelihood, the outpouring of cometary material associated with the "deluge" involved a descent of a horrendous cloud of ice on the Earth, helping to prompt the mythical interpretation. But the mythical figure who rides out the storm of the deluge is, beyond question, a celestial player in the original story. Lastly, I commend Mel for his cautionary note on the comparative method, suggesting that human psychology might tend to "extract common distortions." In fact, there would be no patterns of myths were there no 'common distortions." It is through distortion that the language of myth arises. If Saturn's crescent is just an abstract form in the sky there is no myth. It is the distorting lens of human perception that enables imagination to see the crescent as the horns of a cosmic bull. While certain pictographs may preserve literal images, myths generally do not. Hence, the methodology for reconstructing events from myth does not rely on literalism. Rather, it means finding the underlying
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form or event expressed by the distortion, and this process is aided by two key facts: 1) that certain abstract forms, having nothing to do with our sky today, are preserved in remarkably similar pictographs around the world, and 2) that widely divergent mythical themes, when traced to their roots, consistently converge on these underlying forms, providing the needed proof that the forms were there. The key to reconstructing events is thus provided by logic and probability, not by a "literal" interpretation of myth. And the reconstruction rests most fundamentally on recurring patterns that would not/could not have arisen under our sky but would be EXPECTED under the hypothesized conditions. Dave
IMAGES OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE

By Wal Thornhill
Amy remarks: Check out the astronomy picture of the day for June 2: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html It shows the butterfly nebula. Looks like an electric discharge to me - something that would be at home in a fluorescent light. In fact, it's such a good example of the magnetic pinch effect that you can almost make out the words "diet Coke" crumpled down the middle. :-) (see photo in Wal Thornhill's notebook, p 22, or his CD, p 47.) An exciting view from a new paradigm. Amy WAL COMMENTS: That nebula is precisely the shape that Dr Charles Bruce, in England, said would be found to form the classic Planetary Nebula if you were looking at it along the axis. His view of planetary nebulae was that they are an electric discharge phenomena, forming two opposing cones and not a spherical shell of material around a star. He was right. But that's not all! [Here's pictures]: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/5_27_98_agu_release/index.html from Viking Orbiter 2 of a 50 km wide crater in the southern hemisphere that is the subject of an even closer look by Mars Orbiter - look at the corkscrew central mound. There is a close-up ... which is supposed to show ponding and dunes. It looks to me more like melted rock with furrows tending to follow the corkscrew motion of the arc that created the crater. [Now]to the escaped planet. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980529.html The explanations for the luminous filament are as silly as ever. The one about a dust tube acting like a fiber-optic cable to channel the light from the stars, to explain the glow from the filament, floored me. Don't they understand that fiber-optic cables rely on total internal reflection? How does gas and dust achieve that?
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Anyway, the discovery, if confirmed, supports the electrical parturition model of the formation of smaller bodies from the larger. It also coincides with an earlier Hubble discovery of stars speeding out of a stellar nursery in Orion as if they had been shot out of a cosmic gun. The important thing to note about the close-ups of the Sun that are now pouring in, is the extent to which the filamentary structure of everything we see is carried on down to the limit of resolution. It occurs to me that the plasmoid that entwines the sun like a twisted rope must operate very closely to the photosphere to build those beautiful coronal loops and arches. That notion might account for the polarities of leading and trailing spots and the different polarities in opposite hemispheres if the extent of the plasmoid is such that it covers the lower latitudes of the Sun continuously. If its size changes during the solar cycle, it could account for the latitudinal drift of sunspots over the cycle. There is a very good picture in Kenneth Lang's book "Sun, Earth and Sky", p.115, of the corona in soft xrays, snaking about the Sun. The caption reads: This x-ray image shows bright loop-like emission, presumably from hot gas trapped by strong, dipolar magnetic fields within active regions, and fainter magnetic structures with contorted, twisted geometries that may be shaped by electric currents in the corona. Relatively faint and long magnetic loops also connect active regions to distant areas on the Sun, or emerge within quiet regions away from active ones. With regard to the "sunquake" caused by a solar flare http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9805/27/sun.quakes/ http://soi.stanford.edu/press/ssu05-98/ and the surprise at the depth to which it reaches from the corona, of course in the electric Sun model the photosphere is not the "surface" of the Sun but merely one level in the extremely complex plasma phenomena associated with an anode discharge in space. The shock is not purely mechanical and [is not] due to an "electromagnetic explosion" high in the corona. Like the newly discovered phenomena associated with Earthly lightning that extend from ground level into space, we are seeing in the Sun's corona merely the topmost level of a phenomenon which probably has its roots below the photosphere. So the fact that the waves in the photosphere were 10 times stronger than expected is not surprising if there was the equivalent of an almighty thunderclap from beneath the photosphere rather than above it. In comparison, the corona being extremely tenuous would not be expected to couple much, if any, mechanical energy from a shock wave to the photosphere. The acceleration of the shock wave may be due to continuing energy input from below from the extended duration of the discharges seen on and above the Sun. So long as scientists are hung up on shock waves, an internal "dynamo" and magnetic reconnection (a fanciful model without any experimental verification) to explain phenomena on the Sun there will be little hope of NASA's "commercial" coming true about predicting solar flares in the future. What is needed first is a better understanding of the coupling of the Earth's weather to its plasma environment. Then we may begin to understand the powerful weather and lightning storms recently discovered on the Sun. Lastly, there are some new images from Europa confirming (if that were needed) that the long lineaments are not due to cracks in ice. http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/ Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 11 (June 30, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: ASTRONOMY AS ART NOTES ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD VENUS AS THE DOVE CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS
Amy Acheson Ev Cochrane Robert Lugibihl comments by Dwardu Cardona Wal Thornhill
ASTRONOMY AS ART
By Amy Acheson Ptolemy's mathematical epicycles were an effort to explain the celestial order as he saw it in terms of the "divine perfect circles" of his mythical/religious heritage. Copernicus' new viewpoint was based on the same assumption that there is something sacred about "celestial spheres". He tossed out Ptolemy's math and painted a new picture using a concept he imagined would replace the cumbersome epicycles with perfectly circular orbits. See? If you put the Sun here, at the center, the planets fall into order according to the lengths of their periods. The Earth naturally fits between Venus and Mars, because its year is longer than Venus' cycle and shorter than Mars'. In addition, putting it there neatly explains the difference between the behavior of the inner planets, which never reach the zenith, and the outer ones, which do. The math came later. It actually eliminated the perfect circles Copernicus hoped to find. A similar process is happening with the electric universe/Saturn model. At this stage, much of it is visual, an artists' rendition that precedes the mathematical development. See? If you think of the galaxy as an electrical circuit, the images fall into place: they're echoed on every scale, from lightning scars on Earth to arachnoid webs on Venus to the icy patchwork of Europa. The phenomena found in plasma labs provide a visual connection between comet tails, coronal mass ejections, machined craters, planetary nebulae, and galactic jets. In the behavior of the comet Shoemaker-Levi-9 you can see a mini-version of the polar configuration and its break-up. The math is in progress. If history can be used to predict the future, I expect that the math will confirm some aspects of this interpretation, contradict some, and provide a foundation, an easel, for the creativity of future artists. As an added bonus, the tremendous scale of this model includes uncovering the source of both Ptolemy's and Copernicus' "celestial circles": the mythical vision of Saturn's reign over the beginnings of human civilization. Amy Acheson
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NOTES ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

By Ev Cochrane The science of mythology, as I've come to practice it, has three primary components, each entirely dependent upon the comparative method: (1) the demonstration of parallels between the myths and mythical characters of different cultures; (2) the identification of various mythical characters with the respective planetary bodies (or in some cases, as in that of the Babylonian Sin, with some property of this or that planet); and (3) a reconstruction of the celestial scenario behind the respective myths-specifically, an analysis of the unique behavior or visual phenomena associated with the planets which gave rise to the particular myths/characters in question. Although each of the three components should be considered necessary steps in a comprehensive analysis of myth, it is also true that each of the various stages of analysis may stand on their own. For example, our documentation of the numerous parallels which exist between Heracles, Nergal, and Indra remains valid whether or not one accepts our identification of these particular figures with the planet Mars. Similarly, even if one grants the possibility that Heracles and Indra are mythical twins, each modeled upon the planet Mars, it is always possible that some other explanation besides that of the polar configuration can be found to explain the red planet's peculiar mythical prominence (that of Velikovsky or de Santillana and von Dechend, for example). Although a satisfactory analysis of a particular myth necessarily involves completion of each of these three steps, in actual practice-as in psychoanalysis-one rarely achieves a complete or perfect analysis. As with all historical reconstructions, there are always pieces of the puzzle which remain elusive. There are several reasons for this situation, including the fragmentary nature of the myths themselves; the intrusion of foreign elements into a cult resulting in a modification or confusion of the original myth; problems caused by the faulty transmission and/or translation of a particular myth; gaps in our knowledge regarding the chronology of the events surrounding the formation, evolution, and eventual dissolution of the polar configuration, etc. Fortunately, most of these difficulties can be factored into the methodological equation or overcome/compensated for by the comparative method. For example, the fragmentary nature of the cult of Latin goddess Venus can be compensated for by comparative analysis of the extensive materials provided by the cult of Inanna. The possibility of foreign influence on the Latin cult of Mars, likewise, can be controlled to some extent by comparison with the cults of Babylonian Nergal and Aztec Tezcatlipoca. In actual practice one also finds that there is frequently a discrepancy in the degree of resolution of the respective steps of analysis. Typically step three lags far behind the other two steps as the details and chronology of the formation, evolution, and eventual dissolution of the polar configuration continue to be worked out. In a relatively new field of science this is only to be expected. Comparative mythology, in addition to being the proper starting point of any successful exegesis of myth, is also the most crucial step in the analytic process. It must always take precedence over actual planetary identifications, whether anciently attested or not. Planetary identification, although relatively reliable in the hands of an expert, remains a tricky business in light of the contradictory testimony of the ancients themselves. Not only are the planetary identifications necessarily later than the myths themselves, many cultures never attained proficiency in astronomy and thus their statements-frequently made to modernday anthropologists and folklorists themselves ignorant of astronomy and the comparative method-can often be misleading. Nor are the most ancient astronomies always to be trusted. Even at the outset of formal astronomy, as it is represented in ancient Babylon, for example, one finds an entirely artificial system whereby various gods are identified with this or that planet or constellation. It would be methodologically unsound to accept these statements at face value. Only by comparing the Babylonian identifications with those from cultures free of its sphere of influence, such as Mesoamerica, is it possible to arrive at reliable equations.
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A corollary to the first rule: One should never attempt to construct a theory on the basis of a planetary identification. Rather, a planetary identification should only be attempted upon concluding a thorough and detailed comparative analysis of a particular myth, hero, or god. This would appear to be an ironclad rule of mythological exegesis.
VENUS AS THE DOVE

By Robert Lugibihl Thinking about the following passages with the idea of the dove symbolizing Venus, they take on a whole new perspective... (D)oesn't Noah himself symbolize Saturn? If so, the line "he put forth his hand, and took her [the dove/Venus], and pulled her in unto him into the ark" is particularly interesting. And when the dove/Venus "returned not again unto him any more", it was then safe to venture out into the world again. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more. Comments by DWARDU CARDONA: Precisely. Venus left the ark (the Saturnian crescent) and descended toward Earth, then returned to the ark (the crescent) but, again, left and careened away on its own to cause a series of calamities before slowly moving on to its present orbit. Now, the above mini-scenario is NOT - repeat, NOT - based on the Noah story. It is actually based on a multitude of other records. BUT - and this is the beauty of the entire thing - it DOES fit the Noah story. The unfolding of the event, of course, and as always, is a little bit more complex than the above thumbnail bio. Dwardu
CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS

By Wal Thornhill Ed note: For an example, see: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/comets/C2_eruptive.jpg
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The following news item was sent to me by an astronomer friend. As I have mentioned before, one of the features of a powerful electrical discharge is its ability to accelerate matter from regions of high pressure to regions of low pressure. (Eric Crew, FRAS, some years ago proposed that the large chunks of ice that fall to Earth during a particularly violent electrical storm are a result of moist air from the troposphere being shot into the stratosphere as a jet. The material at the front of the jet freezes and slows allowing the vapour behind it to pile into it and build a sizable chunk of ice which then crashes back to Earth). What has this to do with the Sun coughing? Well, it seems to me that the Sun has a plasma doughnut, or plasmoid, surrounding it just as most of the planets do. Some decades ago, an experiment was performed with a magnetized, conducting sphere placed in a metal vacuum chamber with viewing portholes. The sphere, insulated from the chamber and connected to a high voltage source was found to form a stable plasma doughnut around its equator. Interestingly, the plasmoid discharged to the sphere at intervals. It appears plausible that this is the mechanism behind the Sun's cough, or Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The powerful solar discharge lofts matter from the lower corona out to where it is picked up at 6 solar radii and accelerated by the solar electric field. The laboratory plasmoid also exhibited multiple strikes after the stored energy built to some critical breakdown level. This too is observed with CME's. I quote from the article by Quinn & Fiorito in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 72, No. 5, March 1, 1967, pp. 1611-1630; "The arcs themselves fall into two categories. The first type, which appeared to be the most violent and rapid, is a bright white arc usually found between 70 latitude, lasting the order of hundreds of milliseconds and following a magnetic field line. The point of precipitation may be in either hemisphere or both for any given arc." In this context, note well the paragraph just before "the Solar Wind". Wal Thornhill
A NEW VIEW OF MASS EJECTIONS: WATCHING THE SUN COUGH

Royal Astronomical Society Press Notices Date: 27 March 1998 It seems that the behavior of the Sun in some ways resembles that of humans with a dry throat: the first spasm leads to a further series of coughs in a kind of chain reaction. In the case of the Sun, huge clouds of hot gas are ejected during each spasm in the form of Coronal Mass Ejections. This, and other new results from the LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph) instrument on board the European Space Agency/NASA spacecraft SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), will be presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting at the University of St Andrews by Dr Mark Lyons from the University of Birmingham.
What Are CMEs?

Astronomers have known since the early 1970s that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are regularly thrown out into space by the Sun. These huge clouds of gas consist of electrically charged particles (protons and electrons) and have a typical mass of hundreds of millions of tonnes. In some cases they are directed towards the Earth and they travel so rapidly that they usually cross the 150 million km gap within three days of their launch from the Sun. Scientists would very much like to be able to forecast these events since, on arrival, they interact with the Earth's magnetic field, producing geomagnetic disturbances which can disrupt electricity supplies and cause damage to satellites.
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In addition, understanding how CMEs are produced is crucial to understanding the overall workings of the Sun. They are a dominant feature of the solar corona (the white halo seen around the Sun during solar eclipses) and may play a major role in the behavior of the solar magnetic field.
LASCO
The latest tool being used to advance the research into CMEs is the LASCO instrument carried on board the SOHO satellite. LASCO is a joint project between the University of Birmingham, the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington DC), the Max-Planck-Institut fur Aeronomie (Germany) and the Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale (France). It consists of three telescopes (known as coronagraphs) which are capable of blocking out the bright disk of the Sun and allowing the fainter light from the corona to be observed. Combined, the three coronagraphs of LASCO give images of the solar corona from 1.1 to 30 solar radii (from just above the visible surface to a distance of about 20 million km from the Sun). This wide angle view and its high sensitivity give LASCO a tremendous advantage over previous instruments. In general, a CME is thought to occur when closed magnetic configurations in the solar corona are destabilised by some trigger. This destabilisation then leads to the expulsion of matter from the solar atmosphere. The latest research at Birmingham is revealing that the entire Sun can be affected by CMEs. This is displayed most strikingly by events observed by LASCO where an initial mass ejection is closely followed by a series of others. In some cases CMEs occur at widely separated points almost simultaneously. For the first time LASCO is showing us that the corona behaves as a single unit, capable of storing large amounts of magnetic energy which can be released from more than one point by some initial triggering mechanism. Further evidence for a global reaction of the corona was provided by an event observed on the 23rd February 1997. LASCO C1 images (covering a region from 1.1 to 3 solar radii) showed the expansion of a CME in the lower corona moving with a speed of 880 km/s from the north-east limb of the Sun. This quickly destabilised a sequence of much larger magnetic loop structures to the south which then became the dominant feature of the CME. This sequence of events implies that a higher magnetic loop system spans the solar equator to physically connect regions in opposite hemispheres.
The Solar Wind

For a long time the Sun has been known to produce a 'wind' of charged particles. Mass ejections from the Sun are known to contribute a significant fraction of the total material of solar wind. LASCO observations are now providing new information about the flow of the solar wind nearer to solar surface where its properties have not been closely studied. A study of CME events carried out by Professor George Simnett at Birmingham University has shown that they begin to undergo an acceleration at a distance of about 6 solar radii. So the LASCO observations indicate that this is probably where the solar wind begins. More information about the LASCO research carried out by the solar group at the University of Birmingham and about the SOHO project, including images of CMEs, can be found on the following Web sites. http://www/research/solar.html http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 12 (July 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: OPPORTUNITIES IN CATASROPHICS GROUND RULES FOR RECONSTRUCTING ANCIENT EVENTS (1) SATURNISTS PLAY MARBLES IMPACT: THE ELECTRICAL VERSION
Amy Acheson David Talbott the Kronia list Wal Thornhill
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THE "VACATION MONTHS" (JULY AND AUGUST) WILL SEE ONE ISSUE OF THOTH EACH MONTH. BI-MONTHLY PUBLICATION WILL RESUME IN SEPTEMBER.]
OPPORTUNITIES IN CATASTROPHICS
While reading about redshift anomalies, I came across a couple of comments by Halton Arp that would be of interest to catastrophists. The first is a re-telling of an old story: Picture yourself during the early 1920's inside the dome of the 60-inch telescope on Mount Wilson. Milton Humason (is) ... talking to the well-known Carnegie Institute astronomer, Harlow Shapley ... Humason is showing Shapley stars he had found in the Andromeda Nebula that appeared and disappeared on photographs of that object. The famous astronomer very patiently explains that these objects could not be stars because the Nebula was a nearby gaseous cloud within our own Milky Way system. Shapley takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the identifying marks off the back of the photographic plate. Of course, Hubble came along in 1924 and showed that it was just these Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Nebula which proved it was a separate galaxy system. Arp's second comment has to do with the nature of scientists: Some scientists have a strong interest in, and talent for research. Other scientists are more oriented toward the rewards and problems of interacting with people. The latter tend toward administration and science politics ... it is probably true that if rivalry arises between members of these groups, the researcher has little or no short-run protection. And who is to say that those who control the institutions should not hire the people who think as they do? But if institutions become too large or fashionable to tolerate research outside the mainstream, then the best research may come to be done by people not trained or working at these institutions. One of the examples Arp gave of this was when catastrophics' old "friend", Harlow Shapley, who singlehandedly squelched radio- astronomy in the USA, driving its best researchers to Australia, where radio astronomy and the researchers flourished.
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Both the "bigger than the Milky Way" universe and radio-astronomy survived and thrived in spite of the stumbling blocks Harlow Shapley tossed in their path. The discipline of Catastrophics has been debunked by Harlow Shapley and others in nearly every accepted avenue of research. This can mean only one thing: If there is anything of value in catastrophic research, it's going to be discovered by people working outside the accepted theoretical frameworks. Consider this an invitation. Amy Acheson
GROUNDRULES FOR RECONSTRUCTING ANCIENT EVENTS (1)

By David Talbott We must now take up the matter of cross-cultural comparison and the use of evidence drawn from the patterns of human memory. Ancient testimony is not credible unless it is supported by science. In one form or another, I've heard that remark again and again. But there is a telling fallacy hidden in that assertion. It ignores the possibility - however remote this possibility may seem - that our ancestors witnessed things unknown to science, events that could force a revision in scientific understanding. As a rule, mainstream science is unfamiliar with the more ancient patterns of memory, and almost all modern perspectives are conditioned by a profound distrust of the ancient world. For centuries, in fact, it has been the mission of science to overcome the "myth and superstition" with which it associates our remote past. But we are challenging this common supposition, and we have claimed that a quite different perspective on the past is possible. In an earlier submission, we addressed the principle of converging testimony. We noted that the more unusual and specific the points of agreement between independent witnesses, the more confident we can be in these discrete memories. The principle was illustrated in the story of "The Unfortunate Peter Smith". Here we used an extreme example, in which the witnesses were prone, respectively, to hallucination, lying, and dyslexia. In this case the convergence was so precise and so out of the ordinary that - despite the general unreliability of the witnesses - the conclusion could not be doubted. In fact, we affirm this principle in our judicial processes all the time, and do not hesitate to employ it even when the life of the accused is at stake and no other body of evidence is available. In relation to the proposed Saturnian reconstruction, here is a way you might approach the issue of evidence. Try an experiment. Just for the fun of it, simply grant the claims of the theory! No need to believe anything, not even to believe that the hypothesized planetary configuration is "possible". This is only an experiment, designed to throw light on the question, WHAT COUNTS AS EVIDENCE? If you are unfamiliar with the general details of the theory, I suggest you let a single "snapshot" of the Saturnian configuration suffice for now. You will find an example on the Kronia website: http://www.kronia.com Go to the Saturn Theory page (it's listed on the menu to the left), and note the image on the top of the page. Though a snapshot of this sort cannot convey the more dynamic components of the story -
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including both stable and unstable phases of an evolving configuration - it is a useful starting point for an illustration of methodology. Imagine those planetary forms towering above us; three celestial spheres of much different sizes, juxtaposed in the sky, very close to the Earth. The largest of the spheres is the planet Saturn prior to acquisition of any rings. Within that sphere (i.e., in front of Saturn) appears a much smaller, highly luminous orb, the planet Venus, from which brilliant streamers radiate visually across the face of Saturn. And within Venus rests a still smaller reddish body, the planet Mars. Now imagine human communities obsessed with this spectacle in the sky, responding with a mixture of veneration and terror. And observe how, in the wake of the configuration's devastating collapse, human imagination exploded as well, cultures around the world striving relentlessly to remember and to re-enact those events in pictures and words and ritual practices. In this envisioned condition many different "mythical" interpretations would arise. But these interpretations could not fail to reflect the natural drama which inspired them. So you ask the question. If such a world existed, what would be the value of ancient testimony - of all those cultural records celebrating the dominating forms in the sky, or re-enacting those terrifying events? And would you not expect to find a vast range of words and symbols consistently pointing to the SAME celestial forms, no longer present? Or let us put it another way. In evaluating a new theory, does it make any sense to exclude what would clearly be the most crucial source of evidence if the theory is either correct, or on the right track? I know it will be easy for some to hear these words as a dismissal of conventional science, though this is not my intent. One does not have to draw any conclusions in order to see the dangers of circular reasoning when new possibilities arise. I am only suggesting that historical evidence must be allowed to speak for itself. If the evidence is weak, then it will be easily overruled by contrary opinions of science. If the conclusions are well supported by the evidence cited, then there is a basis for re-considering contrary scientific opinion. And if some of the conclusions are INESCAPABLE, as I believe some are, then one can be confident that there will be no conflict with physical facts as the specialists comes to interpret the facts correctly. By all means, let the scientists among us express every doubt. As we've said many times, the remembered events could not have occurred without leaving a vast trail of physical evidence. (I intend to suggest several lines of inquiry in the present series.) But all true explorers, whatever their background, will welcome a rigorous investigation of cultural memories from a new vantage point. They do not need to be told that the scientific mainstream has not always gotten the picture right. (Next, we will begin identifying the principles of a new methodology.)
SATURNISTS PLAY MARBLES

Excerpted from the Kronia List AMY ACHESON STARTED IT: Remember the marble game ... if you reach, blindly, into a bag of marbles and every handful you pull out has new varieties, you can expect that you're still at the beginning of cataloging the types of marbles in the bag. But if every handful contains a mixture of well-known varieties, you suspect that you've already discovered most of what the bag contains. Applied to comparative mythology, are you guys still coming up with the same old marbles? Or do you sometimes come across something entirely new? If so, what?
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DWARDU CARDONA REPLIES: In my case, mostly the same old TYPE of marbles with only SLIGHT differences. BUT, now and then, an entirely new kind of marble - a real gem. As to what these gems are, I'll have to wait until I get more like them in order to be able to compare THEIR slight differences and what these might entail. ERIC DOUMA ASKS: Has all mythology been already considered in one way or another with regard to the Saturn theory, or is there still mythological and/or legendary material out there that has never been checked as to its relevancy or consistency with the Saturn theory? DWARDU REPLIES: I can only speak for myself. No - not "all mythology" has yet been considered in regard to the Saturn theory. Yes - in MY case, there is still an awful lot of mythological material that has not yet been checked (or not checked well enough). EV COCHRANE ADDS: I would agree with Dwardu here. While I am not aware of any major mythological themes that have not been "assimilated" to the Saturn theory--dragon combat, deluge, dying god, warrior hero, ancient sungod, clown, etc.--it stands to reason that there must be some. ERIC: I am assuming that if the answer is that most important mythological traditions have indeed been considered it is because those are regarded as the oldest and most reliable ones to testthe theory on. DWARDU: Correct. EV: Again I would agree with Dwardu with the caveat that myths first committed to writing in relatively recent times--such as the Irish traditions surrounding Cuchulainn--often preserve very old themes, while some traditions recorded very early on--the Enuma Elish, for example--appear very contaminated and are thus less reliable for reconstructing ancient history. ERIC: But, what can be done with the rest, if anything? DWARDU: More study, more analyses, AND A MORE OPEN MIND is required here. ERIC: IF the oldest and most reliable mythological traditions have indeed been completely analyzed with regard to the Saturn theory, what kind of work is there left to be done? DWARDU: For one thing, a chronological sequence of events THAT SATISFIES THE RECORD. Ev: Agreed. ERIC: Are there certain continents whose traditions have been neglected up to now and that still need such analytical work?
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DWARDU: In MY case - yes. Perhaps not quite NEGLECTED, and perhaps not necessarily CONTINENTS, but definitely myths from certain geographical areas not yet given serious attention. Again, in MY case, Australian aboriginal material comes immediately to mind; South America; huge areas in Africa; and elsewhere. ERIC: What parts of the Saturn theory are well worked out and what parts still need more work and confirmation from independent mythological sources? DWARDU: In MY opinion, what still needs to be worked out is the number and characteristics of the Martian and Venerian catastrophes; the aftermath to the break-up of the Saturnian configuration. What still needs to be ASCERTAINED are Talbott's claims that (a) Saturn wandered prior to settling down in the north celestial pole; (b) that Jupiter was hidden behind Saturn; and (c) that Jupiter was involved in the events FOLLOWING the break-up of the configuration. So that, as far as *I* am concerned, an awful lot of work still needs to be done. DAVE TALBOTT SAYS: [C]ertain broadly distributed themes have not yet been identified by proponents of the [Saturn] theory. That would seem to me to be a virtually certainty, since every year we've been able to add more themes to the list. I do not anticipate any likelihood that themes will be uncovered which stand in isolation from the general substratum of myth explained by the theory, however. It seems abundantly clear that there was a unique mythmaking epoch involving intensely experienced events - including the final collapse of the celestial order. In the immediate wake of those events, human imagination responded by formulating interpretations, the mythical archetypes; but this response quickly gave way to a relentless urge to HONOR the archetypes in a time when the events and celestial forms associated with them were no longer present. Of this collective urge, storytelling was only a small part. Of course, in the transmission of the stories over the centuries, there is not just a progressive degradation of the original integrity, but a natural psychological effect of distance and unfamiliarity. The gravity of the experience could only be diminished with time. And the meaning of the story elements would increasingly appear irrational or out of place, finding no explanation in natural experience. That is, of course, the reason why, with the rise of Greek rationalism, the mythical themes of tragedy became the themes of comedy as well. EV WROTE: One item which might be of interest ... in light of ... the Deluge myth is the possibility that the raven released by Noah might symbolize Mars, as the dove definitely symbolizes Venus. This possibility was first raised by Dave to me in a private conversation. At the time, it rang a familiar chord since I knew Nergal and Apollo were symbolized by ravens. Since that time I have found that virtually every Martian hero was given a raven form, the most obvious example being the American Indian hero Raven. DWARDU ADDS: And don't forget the Egyptian Horus. TIA ACHESON ASKS: Raven was Mars? I thought Raven was the creator, the ruler, the wisest one. Wouldn't that be Saturn? So tell me who was Saturn in the American Indian legends? DAVE T ANSWERS: Yes, in later accounts it is easy to mistake the trickster figure for the Saturnian creator, since the warriorhero was a builder or "maker" of things. I made that mistake more than once in writing The Saturn Myth. I
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had simply not realized how the more passive creator or universal sovereign faded into the background over the centuries. Ritual activity and storytelling naturally required a focus on ACTIVITY, and unlike the displaced sovereign, the planet Mars provided innumerable vivid episodes, perfect for storytelling. As a rule, once storytelling was dissociated from its earlier ritual contexts, becoming a pleasurable pastime around campfires, the background figure would simply disappear. This is one of many reasons why, to find original contexts, all recurring story elements must be referred to their earliest documented expressions. PAM HANNAH CHIMES IN: This is a conundrum. I ... can't find any [American Indian] reference to Saturn per se. There are numerous creator deities - Hopi spider woman (greater creator who created her), Iroquois Orenda power, Algonquin Manitou, Sioux Wakan Tanka - but as Dave T. pointed out, they all tend to recede into the background because they're great spirits and they don't DO anything to make stories out of. The only definite planetary deity is the Morning Star - Mars of the Pawnee in Nebraska. And incidentally, theirs is the only Indian culture of North America I know of that practiced human sacrifice - but not anywhere near on the scale of the Aztecs - and only when Mars rose in the East. Funny thing is that there are polar configuration pictographs and petroglyphs all over the place - circle within a circle within a circle with radiating spokes (the radiant Venus) as well as spirals and crescents, so Saturn was presumably depicted in this, but I don't know of any evidence that the planet itself was worshipped by itself. EV ADDS: Typically the ancient sun-god in American Indian legends is to be identified with Saturn. In the Tsimshian tradition quoted by me in a recent Aeon, the sun-god is said to live in a dwelling together with Venus: After reaching the sky, the visitor finds himself on a trail which leads to the house of the Sun chief. In this house the Sun lives with his daughter ... The Sun's daughter is the Evening Star. It is to this sacred dwelling that the warrior-hero (Mars) climbs along the celestial stairway. This said, the fact remains that the planet Saturn has yet to be securely identified in any extant native American sources, to the best of my knowledge. I have hopes that with the continuing decipherment of the Mesoamerican sources this situation will be rectified, but in the meantime this absence remains the most important "missing link" in the Saturnist's argument. PAM ASKS ANOTHER QUESTION: When Thor & Heracles & Indra were represented & depicted dressed up as women, did the various culture act it out? i.e., did they have ceremonies or whatever with someone representing the God dressed up as a woman, and if they did, wouldn't that have been cause for much hilarity? Wouldn't it have been just as funny in ancient times as it is now? I mean, it's basic schtick - like a pratfall. Wouldn't such ceremonies have evolved into fun festivals, like the boy king & the feast of fools in medieval times? Might also have mitigated the trauma of the Saturnian breakup & the time of terror. Just an idea. DAVE TALBOTT RESPONDS: Pam is to be congratulated for her insights on the comic element. Originally the archetypal warrior-hero is the servant of the central luminary and is highly active in the "creation". That role is fully documented globally. But it may be hard for some to imagine how such a celestial figure could emerge centuries later as a harlequin, jester, or fool. That is exactly what happened, however. Even the American Indian tricksters Coyote and Raven were remembered as having formerly been "great warriors". Their Pawnee counterpart is the ancestral warrior Morning Star, explicitly identified as the planet Mars. Though countless tales of these tricksters will sound as if they lived only a few generations in the past ("in the time of our grandfathers' grandfathers"), there are many instances in which the accounts preserved the original motif, recalling how Coyote or Raven had assisted the creator in his work, typically making a mess of things, but also facilitating the re-construction of the world.
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IMPACT: THE ELECTRICAL VERSION

Wal Thornhill [Ed note: the following compares Wal Thornhill's description of electrical interactions between colliding bodies (from The Electric Universe (pg 100 of the notebook, pg 210 of the CD) to eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska event, June 30, 1908 (taken from CCNet Special 30/06/98).] From Wal's Notebook: All of the glossy magazines depicting apocalyptic destruction from space show the same electrically sterile view of interactions between bodies in the solar system... In fact, long before physical contact can be achieved between two sizable bodies, their electrical imbalance will need to be dealt with. The two bodies will "feel" the presence of each other as soon as their plasma sheaths touch. In the case of a comet, its plasma sheath can measure millions of kilometers across. Travelling at 20 kilometers per second, a comet will cover one million kilometers in about 14 hours. So, for something of the order of a day, there will be odd electrical effects evident in weather, geomagnetism, auroras and possibly earthquakes. The electrical stress will finally build to the point where an electrical discharge will fly between the earth and the intruder with the strong likelihood that the intruder will be disrupted. This seems to have been the case for ... Tunguska where the bolide was destroyed before hitting the ground. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS: Curious Sun Effects at Night To the Editor of THE TIMES [3 July 1908] Sir, - Struck with the unusual brightness of the heavens, the band of golfers staying here strolled towards the links at 11 o'clock last evening in order that they might obtain an uninterrupted view of the phenomenon. Looking northwards across the sea they found that the sky had the appearance of a dying sunset of exquisite beauty. This not only lasted but actually grew both in extent and intensity till 2.30 this morning, when driving clouds from the east obliterated the gorgeous colouring. I myself was aroused from sleep at 1.15 a.m., and so strong was the light at this hour, that I could read a book by it in my chamber quite comfortably. At 1.45 a.m. the whole sky, N. and N.E., was a delicate salmon pink, and the birds began their matutinal song. No doubt others will have noticed this phenomenon, but as Brancaster holds an almost unique position in facing north to the sea, we who are staying here had the best possible view of it. Yours faithfully, Holcombe Ingleby, Dormy House Club, Brancaster, 1 July (1908) British Astronomical Association - At the monthly meeting held on Wednesday evening at Sion College, Victoria embankment, Mr G. J.Newbegin drew attention to the disturbed state of the solar atmosphere, showing a drawing and giving a description of a very large prominence that he had observed and measured in the morning of that day (1 July), and that showed unusual changes of form. Allusion was made by Mr E.W. Maunder and Mr H.P. Hollis (both of the Royal Observatory) of the long-lasting aurora of the previous evening. [from THE TIMES, 3 July 1908] In the North West, quite high above the horizon, the peasants saw a body shining very brightly (too bright for the naked eye) with a bluish-white light ... The sky was cloudless, except that low down on the horizon in the direction in which this glowing body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticed ...It was hot and dry and when the shining body approached the ground it seemed to be pulverized, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke was formed and a loud crash, not like thunder, but as if from the fall of large stones or from gunfire, was heard. All the buildings shook and, at the same time, a forked tongue of flame broke through the cloud. All the inhabitants of the village ran out into the street in panic. The old women wept and
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everyone thought the end of the world was approaching [from the Irkutsk newspaper SIBIR, 2 July 1908] The noise was considerable but no stone fell. All the details of the fall of a meteorite here should be ascribed to the over-active imagination of impressionable people [from the Irkutsk newspaper SIBIR, 4 July 1908] Before setting out, [Leonid Alexeivich] Kulik wanted to spend several days recording interviews with Tungus eyewitnesses of the explosion.Lyuchetkan said that he knew of several such people and agreed to bring Kulik to them. Some of the Tungus Kulik approached were reluctant to talk about the event. Others became angry and refused outright even to mention it. But many were willing to speak with him.. Kulik was fascinated by the mystical aura that sometimes seemed to cloud descriptions. An enraged Ogdy had visited them, the Tungus maintained, and the fire god had put a curse on the epicenter region. Anyone who dared enter it surely would be cursed likewise. There even were accounts of herds of reindeer being sacrificed to appease the angry and vindictive god." [Roy A Gallant: The Day the Sky Split Apart, 1995]
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 13 (August 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: IT'S STILL THE SAME ELEPHANT Mel and Amy Acheson RESPONSE TO A CRITIC Dave Talbott VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY kronia listers THE WORD ACCORDING TO PAM Pam Hannah THE HISTORIC ELEPHANT kronia listers THE ELECTRIC ELEPHANT: SHOCKING VIEWS FROM THE JOVIAN SYSTEM Wal Thornhill
IT'S STILL THE SAME ELEPHANT

One of the fundamental fables about human nature is the story of the 7 blind men and the elephant. Each blind man touched a different part of the elephant and came up with a different conception of the nature of the beast. Even more elementary than the different concepts--and something not directly addressed by the fable--is the matter of the blind men's different perceptions. The man rubbing the leg thought the elephant was like a tree because his rubbing gave him a sensation similar to the sensation he got from rubbing a tree. But it works the other way around, too: He perceived a tree-like sensation because he already had a concept of a tree. Centuries of philosophers have worried over the nature of perception. Thomas Kuhn, for example, noted the inextricable connection--one could almost say "con-fusion"--between perception and conception: No current attempt...has yet come close to a generally applicable language of pure percepts ... From the start they presuppose a paradigm... [1] Two popular aphorisms together provide a more intuitive depiction: "You'll believe it when you see it" and "You'll see it when you believe it." Prior knowledge, assumptions, attitudes, expectations, habits have their (generally unconscious) influences. Every individual has slightly (or more!) different perceptions and conceptions. If we call each perception/conception confusion a viewpoint, we can say everybody has a different viewpoint. A little introspection should reveal that viewpoints are constantly changing, usually a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes we can understand each other's viewpoints. Sometimes we can combine or be inspired by several viewpoints to create a more-inclusive one: We can view more of the elephant; we can conceive of a bigger (or different) critter. For THOTH's purpose, the "elephant" is the recent history of the solar system and its people. Modern science has done an excellent job of perceiving and conceptualizing the "leg" of modern times (the past 300 years or so). But when it extrapolates these concepts into the far past--or into the far distance of space--it makes the elephant all leg. The Saturn Thesis, using a comparative method to extract common patterns from ancient myths and symbols, adds perceptions from a different--historically removed--
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viewpoint. The combination is a greatly-enlarged viewpoint and a radically-changed concept of the elephant. Kuhn again: [T]he scientist after a revolution is still looking at the same world... [M]uch of his language and most of his laboratory instruments are still the same... [T]he change must lie either in their relation to the paradigm or in their concrete results. I now suggest...both... [2] It's still the same elephant. Mel and Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com 1. Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1996. P. 127. 2. Ibid., p. 129-30.
RESPONDING TO A CRITIC
By David Talbott Almost 25 years ago an article by James Pitton appeared in the first and only issue of a journal called CHIRON. In that article, Pitton critiqued Immanuel Velikovsky's use of sources in Worlds in Collision. Much more recently, a well-known critic resurrected the article, wondering why catastrophists had "ignored" Pitton's criticism of Velikovsky. Since we are discussing memory as evidence, perhaps this is an appropriate place to insert a review of Pitton's comments. [ALL INDENTED QUOTES ARE FROM PITTON]: It is surprising that, although Dr. Velikovsky's use of myths is one of the most important foundations of his work, it has received almost no attention from the experts. By contrast, the hostility of many members of the scientific community seems almost a healthy reaction. The purpose of this paper, then, is to make some preliminary criticisms of Velikovsky's methodology, and to indicate some approaches to specific issues, particularly in regards to Worlds in Collision (1950)... Ancient myth is, indeed, "one of the most important foundations" of Velikovsky's work. In truth, it is the global memories embedded in myth that made possible a coherent new way of seeing human history and planetary history. Of course, Velikovsky and all who have mined this field of evidence have faced a huge obstacle in the modern idea of myth as sheer fiction. How could anything as elusive or "untrustworthy" as myth count as evidence powerful enough to challenge science? At issue are two different ways of seeing myth. In one perception, myth is an outpouring of human imagination as humankind looked out at an ancient sky very much like our own. In the other perception, myth is an outpouring of imagination in response to extraordinary celestial events--earthshaking dramas unlike anything occurring in our sky today. The good news is that one can apply certain principles of reasoning to the patterns of human memory. Though these rules are employed all the time in judicial proceedings, the vast majority of scholars have ignored them, fostering a madhouse of competing interpretations and further discrediting myth as a source of evidence.
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When we come to exact historical material from the myths we find many difficulties. The stories appear in endless variations. Each writer has his own version. sometimes the names are different, sometimes the sequence of events, sometimes the actual events themselves. We are, moreover, at the mercy of the individual authors. One of our earliest sources for Greek myths is Pindar, who considered himself under no obligation to tell the story as he knew it. Like the modern government censor, Pindar defended his right to change any parts of the story he thought objectionable. The earlier, of course, the purer the tradition. Conversely, many later versions of individual myths show considerable embellishment...
Virtually everything Pitton says here is correct except the overstatement of Pindar's assumed "right to change any part of the story". There is an observable degradation of human memories over time, through localization, fragmentation, elaboration, and embellishment, including various forms of "political correctness" within the different cultures. But Pitton does not really address the implications of these evolutionary tendencies, or say how we might deal with them in a comparative approach. For example, amending a story or adding a detail will always create a contradiction between one version of a story and another. But there is more to it than this. In addition to observing the accumulation of contradictions, one must also confront the underlying points of agreement between broadly distributed cultures. Most significant are those points of agreement on details so SPECIFIC that the agreement could not be the result of accident or any suspected general tendencies of the human mind. But this principle, absolutely crucial to the comparative approach, is not even addressed by Pitton. The critic does, however, acknowledge one key which, on it own, can resolve many contradictions. The earlier the traditions, the more pure their content. This principle is of vast import, and it can be easily verified by simply observing the evolution of mythical themes and personalities over time within particular regions. One will note, for example, that countless figures originally worshipped as dominating forms in the sky are, in later times, described as LOCAL kings, queens and warriors. The Egyptian Ra was the creator-king, the central sun. But later myths depict him as an aged and venerable ruler of Heliopolis. The Greek Kronos (Latin Saturn) was also the creator and central luminary of the sky, though later traditions recalled the god as a former king, ruling for a time on earth before being forcibly removed from his throne. The Akkadian war-god Ninurta emerges in later myths as the terrestrial warrior Nimrod, and countless other celestial warriors show the same evolution. Greek chronicles describe Heracles wandering across a vast landscape, though his exploits are clearly those of the Egyptian Shu, Anhur, Sept, and Horus, with whom Heracles was, in fact, identified. The original celestial character of these Egyptian gods is beyond question, despite the fact that in later times chroniclers could point to the very places ON EARTH where the heroes' greatest exploits occurred. I mention this particular evolutionary principle because it is the single, most common basis of misunderstanding, first by ancient storytellers, then by modern-day critics. Every localization of a god in later chronicles involves a contradiction at two levels. It is a contradiction, first, because the earlier traditions do not depict a local figure, but a cosmic figure. And it is a contradiction also because each localization stands in opposition to all other localizations of the same figure, each forcing geographicallybased variations into a story that originally had no connection whatsoever to geography. The roots of this evolutionary tendency in COMMEMORATIVE practices need to be appreciated. It is a fact that numerous ritual celebrations or re-enactments had the effect, over time, of placing originally CELESTIAL gods on plots of earth. In commemoration of the gods and their attributes, ancient artists and architects fashioned thousands of terrestrial symbols-- temples, cities, and kingdoms patterned after, and NAMED after, the dwelling of the gods. They constructed artificial mounds, pillars, pyramids and towers, reflecting earlier memories of the world mountain or pillar of the sky. So too, they founded innumerable holy sites in the shadow of sacred hills, or above sacred springs, or in proximity to sacred rivers--all made "holy" through symbolic projection, all pointing back to the world mountain, or fountain of the sun, or nether river which had distinguished the age of the gods from all subsequent epochs of human history. So yes, Pitton is correct that there are "endless variations" to every theme. That's what localization does, and it is why it would be futile to try to reconcile isolated "pieces that don't fit". At the level of localized
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myth, NOTHING WILL FIT. Reconciliation occurs at the level of the substratum, defined by the shared patterns of human memory, not by localized variations and contradictions. You find the substratum by seeing past the effects of localization to the underlying, shared motifs, then tracing these defined motifs to their earliest expressions. All of the major cultures, for example, preserved a memory of the "navel of the world." And in virtually every case this mythical "place", originally fixed in the sky, was represented locally, so that natives could point to a particular stone, or a particular shrine, temple, city, or kingdom, or a particular island, or a particular mound of earth deemed "the navel", recounting stories as to how, in primeval times, a great god or hero had founded this very place. When treated superficially, such themes will easily be passed off as mere egocentricity of the people telling the stories. And this dismissal will, in turn, deflect attention from the deeper questions raised by a comparative approach. The deeper questions arise from unexplained patterns. Why was the "navel of the world" commonly associated not just with the center, but with the "SUMMIT" as well? Why was it identified with a GODDESS? Why was it represented by the so-called "sun" pictograph (a small circle or sphere inside a much larger circle or sphere, as in the hieroglyphic sign for Ra)? What was the relationship of the navel to the NAVE of the "sun" wheel? And why, around the world, did races remember an ancestral hero born from, or departing from, or leaping from the "navel" before undertaking his adventures? In truth, each of these patterns is connected to pervasive larger patterns, presenting a structure far too coherent to be explained by any prior approach to myth. These two stories [about the Spartan defense of Thermopylae and the capture and torture of the Roman general Regulus by the Carthaginians], taken from genuine historical events, not mythology, show the influence of ancient rhetoric. Rhetoric was taught at school; it was a part of every educated man's training. The ancient professors had the art of embellishment and elaboration mastered in a way that has no modern parallel. Of this school, which was at its peak during the Roman empire, a typical product was Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the tutor of the Emperor Nero. Seneca's plays abound in every mannerism and conceit imaginable. His version of the legend of Medea concludes with the heroine, having murdered her little children before he husband's eyes, escaping in a chariot drawn by dragons. Should we expect Seneca to preserve an accurate memory of early history? Apparently, for Velikovsky tells us that Seneca had a 'profound knowledge of natural phenomena.'... Since this statement about Seneca is the weakest point in Pitton's presentation, I will not labor through an extended response. The truth is that Seneca is the most respected naturalist of his day. But he was also a chronicler of myths, and I can assure the reader that Seneca did not invent the idea of a chariot drawn by dragons! The real question is: what was signified by that ancient idea, occurring from Europe to China? (If someone is truly curious, I'll offer the explanation provided by the Saturnian reconstruction.) Myths are obviously a very tricky source of historical information. But with proper care and judgment, much of value can be extracted from them. Does Velikovsky show such care and judgment? Unfortunately he often does not. In at least three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound. The first of these is his proclivity to treat all myths as having independent value; the second is the tendency to treat only such material as is consistent with his thesis; and the third is his very unsystematic method... These lines by Pitton are actually a lead-in to some interesting comments on the Iliad and on Velikovsky's identification of the goddess Athena with Venus. But discussion of the Iliad will require more background on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth, which I will reserve for follow-up next issue. For now I will simply register my own opinion with respect to the "three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound". There are instances in which Velikovsky does, indeed, build too much on particular myths--such as the presumed explosion of Venus from Jupiter, based substantially on the myth of Athena's birth from the head of Zeus. If theorists are permitted to build entire theses on such selective use of material, then every interpretation imaginable will be possible. Moreover, there is a much larger field of evidence one can draw
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from, since stories of this sort are are actually subheadings to the widespread myth of Venus as the departing eye-heart-soul of the sovereign god. The second objection, though containing much truth, can also be misleading. The fact is that Velikovsky detected certain patterns that cannot be denied and which, taken as a whole, speak emphatically for unusual phenomena--most notably the spectacular cometary history of Venus. There is nothing unreasonable in gathering from around the world the many instances reflecting this highly unusual idea, no matter how many other interesting ideas might be overlooked in the process. The fact is that Velikovsky did not address more than two to five percent of the recurring mythical themes. But by identifying certain themes and offering explanations, he opened the door to a new approach which DOES address the full range of themes in a unified way. And lastly, I would certainly not call Velikovsky's method "unsystematic". It is the systematic nature of his inquiry which establishes one of the key principles: when DIFFERENT words and symbols refer to the SAME celestial phenomena and imply the SAME sequence of events, they constitute legitimate evidence. Dave Talbott
VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY

Grinspoon's Venus
by Ev Cochrane This week, while doing research for my forthcoming book on the planet Venus, I was reading David Grinspoon's fascinating account of Venus discovery: Venus Revealed (New York, 1997). If there is one thing that stands out about modern scientific deduction with regards to Venus it is that astronomers somehow managed to get most everything wrong. Well into the 1950's, it was still commonly held that Venus was a relatively warm place distinguished by rich vegetation, swamps, and oceans teeming with various forms of life. The clouds, it was thought, were composed mostly of water. WRONG! The rotation rate of Venus was supposedly some 24 hours, just like Earth's. WRONG! Name a feature about which scientists speculated and you find one wrong answer after another. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the long history of bogus "observations" and scientific "findings", including supposed Venusian moons, canals on Venus, a 24-hour rotation rate (others reported they had "measured" a 225 day rotation rate), and so on. Mind you, these bogus claims weren't offered by writers of science fiction; they were offered by the leading astronomers of the day! Given this pathetic historical track record, one can't help but question whether we should give the current received opinion of Venus' recent history and geological nature any more credence. After all, the currently prevailing view of Venus' origins still relies upon the theory that that planet has orbited peacefully on its current orbit for billions of years. I, for one, predict that modern-day astronomers are destined to remain like the prisoners of Plato's cave as long as they refuse to consider the abundant testimony of our ancestors to the effect that Venus only recently experienced a series of spectacular catastrophes and changes in orbit. Ev Cochrane
Velikovsky's Originality
by Dave Talbott Velikovsky's originality involves numerous components brought together in a seminal and unified approach: ancient testimony as evidence for unusual natural events, cross-cultural comparison to extract
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underlying ideas, planets as the great gods of the skyworshippers, Venus as former "comet", Mars as celestial warrior and disturber of the Earth, Saturn as former dominant body in the sky, Jupiter as visible "successor" to Saturn, active role of electromagnetism in an unstable solar system, thunderbolts flying between planets, gravity as an aspect of electricity, catastrophic history of the earth, catastrophe as catalyst in evolution, the psychology of collective amnesia, fundamental challenges to the underpinnings of conventional historical chronologies. People will express opinions on all sides of the different questions raised, but the extremes to which various folks will go to deny "originality" to Velikovsky are a wonder to behold. Of course, it would be absurd to think that, when you break Velikovsky's original perspective into discrete pieces, you would not find precedents for many of the separate components. Taking his work as a whole, Velikovsky is doubtless one of the most original thinkers of this century. Dave Talbott
The Youthfulness of Venus:

from a paper by Wal Thornhill delivered to a conference in Cambridge, England Another puzzle is the "domes" on Venus. They average 25 km in diameter and 750 meters in height. Their near perfect circularity argues against their formation by purely volcanic means. Compare with an example of the normal, uneven lobate structure of a lava flow from a central orifice. A better explanation is that they are the result of a diffuse electrical discharge on a very thin crust. The surface responded to the gravitational tug of the nearby planetary body and the upward electrical forces, resulting in uplift with little or no melting, and retention of electric scars. This idea is supported by the observation that the domes seem to be prevalent on lava plains and are associated with sinuous rilles. The tops of the domes have a cobweb type pattern of discharge channels and often a small central crater which argue for the surface having remained solid during the uplift of the domes. Humboldt, a 200km diameter lunar crater shows a similar pattern of roughly concentric and radial channels. The central craters on the domes are small, which indicates a "burning-spot" form of discharge which occur at higher currents than that causing the diffuse discharge. The transition from one type of discharge to the other is sudden. The fact that secondary electrical cratering occurs preferentially on the rims of earlier crater walls might also explain the overlapping domes, where the centre of one dome often coincides fairly closely with a point on the circumference of another. In other words, it seems possible that some of the many variations of electric arc behaviour at an anode seen in the laboratory may explain these enigmatic objects. Juergens points out that such raised mounds may be planetary equivalents of "fulgamites" which are mounds of metal, melted and raised above the surface of metal caps placed over the ends of lightning rods. The sides of fulgamites are usually ridged with closely spaced concentric grooves and the bases flared like a bell. Wal Thornhill
THE WORD ACCORDING TO PAM

by Pam Hannah I've been pondering the Logos concept for some years now (in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God; the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us) and also pondering the dark necessity for the atonement (why is it never questioned that a sacrifice had to be made? What good does it do?) Working backward from the Christian Logos and Atonement, I believe the answer may be that there was a visible physical model of both in the Saturnian configuration.
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If there had been an ancient memory of the blood-red planet Mars driving the god-planets back to pinpoints of light in the sky during a cataclysm of cosmic proportions, the idea of the necessity of blood to restore peace and equilibrium may have been indelibly etched in human consciousness, and if the fiery ejecta of the gas giant Saturn was a detonation both seen and heard, that may have been a model for the Logos - the Word of God. Dwardu's marvelous paper "Darkness and the Deep" (which is still on Ted's website, is not that long, & has a tremendous bibliography) cites J.M. Allegro, who said, "The seed of God was the Word of God" and although Dwardu doesn't agree that this seed/word was fructifying rain, he believes that the philological connection - seed-word-logos is valid. Allegro said: The most forceful spurting of this 'seed' is accompanied by thunder and the shrieking wind. This is the 'voice' of God. Somewhere above the sky a mighty penis reaches an orgasm that shakes the heaven. As saliva can be seen mixed with breath during forceful human speech, so the 'speaking' of the divine penis is accompanied by a powerful blast of wind, the holy, creative spirit, bearing the 'spittle' of semen. Says Dwardu: The 'mighty penis' in the sky of which Allegro speaks ... is actually mentioned in the mythohistorical record as having been as visible as the 'seed' of the creator. It was that Saturnian appendage that went down in myth, inter alia, as the Axis Mundi. Dwardu offers proofs that in many languages, the words "to speak" and "to shine" are the same, i.e. the spoken word is also equated with light and that there is a connection between Saturn, the Word, and the light. More quotes: ...Talbott informs us that this 'outflow' of light was exhaled, emitted, or spat out by the creator 'in a noisy and tumultuous event.' The implication here is that Saturn's flare-up consisted not only in the shedding of a blinding light but also in the propagation of an explosive sound in effect a colossal detonation. The gases ejected by Saturn would have easily breached the relatively short distance and, coming in contact with the Earth's atmospheric envelope, would have been translated into an explosive reverberation. 'The unearthly sound associated with this eruption of material,' Talbott goes on, 'gave rise to a pervasive mythical idea that the fiery ejecta was itself the visible 'speech' of the creator. There's MUCH more, but enough to convince me that the Logos wasn't merely a Greek metaphorical construct. The WORD was seen, heard and experienced. Pam Hannah
INTERLUDE: THE HISTORIC ELEPHANT

JC Barkley wrote: [O]ver 90% of recorded History has been deliberately destroyed, as a result of War, Political and Religious Fanaticism. So, we are left with very small bits and pieces from which one attempts to discover a reasonable chronology, in the hope that at some point in time it will all make sense: the "Truth", at last.
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This formidable task may be likened to giving a blind man three hairs from the tail of an Elephant, and demanding of him that he describe accurately and in detail the Animal from which these hairs were taken and the Environment in which it lives. Dwardu Cardona comments: Not quite. It is more akin to giving a man who CAN see more pieces of an elephant than just three hairs from the tail. It is like giving such a person one complete tusk together with a fractured one; two pieces of a trunk; one complete ear; two and a half feet; one complete leg; the entire tuft of the tail; a backbone; and three quarters of a skull. Yes, we DO have that much despite all the book burning of the past.
THE ELECTRIC ELEPHANT: SHOCKING VIEWS FROM THE JOVIAN SYSTEM

by Wal Thornhill Have a look at the Galileo website <http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/ and the image PIA01610 with the title shown in the subject line. The accompanying text says that the chain of 13 craters probably formed by a comet which was pulled into pieces by Jupiter's gravity as it passed too close to the planet... To create a chain with anything like that alignment and with such overlaps would have required that the comet pieces all orbited each other in the same plane only a few kilometres apart. In other words, the comet was not pulled apart but may have been an assemblage of objects after the Van Flandern model. And the whole hypothetical assemblage must have hit head on as a tightly knit group, given the circularity and overlap of all of the craters in the image. But even given this most unlikely scenario, what about all of the other smaller crater chains which can be seen in abundance on Ganymede? It seems to me that Ganymede has surface electrical scarring with variations on those seen on Europa with its parallel lanes of grooved and furrowed surface, together with other scars like those seen on Mars and Venus. Image PIA01614 shows the kind of fretted terrain seen on Mars with the arcuate scarps and occasional terracing inside the walls. It is described as a volcanic feature but there are no signs of any outflow. Material seems to have been lost from the so-called calderas, and just like Mars - it is missing without trace. Image PIA01607 shows dark-floored "impact" crater with bright rims and central peaks. This fits the pattern of anode scarring where the floors of circular craters are melted. The dark floor is therefore presumably surface material modified by melting. The bright material of the rims and central peaks is likely exposed underlying strata of a different colour and composition from the surface deposits. The dark lines running around the rims are likely to be a Ganymede version of concentric rilles - like those seen on Mars, Venus and the Moon. Images PIA01615 and 1616 show the "braided" appearance of some of the swaths of grooved terrain on Ganymede. Similar effects were seen on Europa. It would indicate that Ganymede, like Europa, has taken on the role of a secondary electrode in a powerful interplanetary discharge from Jupiter. In that case, great ropes of writhing hot plasma will preferentially snake across the surface of the moon rather than through the near vacuum of space, as the current heads for its more distant target. A good idea of what it must have looked like can be had if you have seen those plasma ball novelties with the snaking discharges contained in the glass sphere. Only in the case of Ganymede and Europa the ropes would not terminate on the ball but snake around it.
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PIA01618 shows where two strands come together. In the lower half of the image one strand seems to touch down on the surface and where it meets another diagonal strand, it changes direction to run parallel - a characteristic of electric currents which exhibit long range attraction and short range repulsion.. PIA01619 should put to rest any notion that the grooved terrain is due to fracturing because we see one edge of a swath suddenly cutoff by an apparent transverse discharge which suddenly broadens at the point of intersection. It is evident that the motion and effects of these surface "Birkeland currents" can be incredibly complex. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 14 (September 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: DYING AND FLYING HEROES OF THE ILIAD RETHINKING GRAVITY ELECTRIFYING NEWS ABOUT IMPACT CRATERS
by Mel Acheson David Talbott comments by Wal Thornhill comments by Wal Thornhill
DYING AND FLYING

by Mel Acheson Changing your beliefs feels like dying. Whether it's religion, politics, or science, letting go of the complex of ideas that provides an orderly explanation for your life and your experiences seems like falling into chaos and oblivion. It seems suicidal even to loosen your grip on that branch of Truth suspended over the abyss of ignorance. But every day, with every new thing you learn, you're hopping to another, usually very close, branch. The Truth you believe in today is a little different from yesterday's. And sometimes the change is so big you find yourself clinging to the branch of a different tree: You change religions, or switch political parties, or experience a paradigm shift. After doing it several times, you realize that if you gave up believing altogether, you'd only have to die once. Then Truth ceases to be a branch you cling to but a forest of branches and the air between: You can spread your intellectual wings in this more inclusive Truth and fly from branch to branch, choosing truths and viewpoints according to their usefulness, appropriateness, esthetics, promise. The moralistic preoccupation with "correctness"--whether you're clinging to the "right" branch--is irrelevant. Salvation, in science as in politics and religion, is simply fear of flying. Camus addressed this matter four decades ago: Can you live without hope? Without belief? He concluded that not only can you, but you must--to become truly human and to avoid the homicidal presumption that you are a god. (Or, in today's terms, that you know the mind of God.) Only after you have died to beliefs do you discover real faith-- the confidence that the universe and your part in it will be what it is regardless of your belief. Your beliefs (and their opposite polarity, disbeliefs) are the sand in which your head is buried. They are a mirror, reflecting your own brilliance and blinding you to the unassuming light of reality. They are a log anchoring your feet, preventing you from soaring into the universe that is your natural home. --Mel Acheson
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Heroes of the Iliad

By David Talbott In the previous issue of this newsletter, we began a review of a 1974 article by James Fitton (I erroneously entered the name as "Pitton") occurring in the first and only issue of the journal CHIRON. We shall now continue that discourse, with a twofold purpose: first, to examine the logic of the comparative method; and second, to illustrate the ACID TESTS for verifying even the most extraordinary conclusions. Following this path will require us to go far beyond a mere "answer" to Fitton's contentions and to consider the groundrules of a more promising perspective on the entire field of study. Fitton wrote One of Velikovsky's most brilliant passages is that in which he cites the famous scene in the Iliad where Ares and Athene fight on the battleground before Troy. Athene, says Velikovsky, is the planet Venus, and Ares the planet Mars. Here is an allegory of a great cosmological drama of the eighth century B.C., when, as Velikovsky believes, these two planets nearly collided in space. The myth seems decisive evidence for his beliefs. But, on looking more closely at Homer, we see that this incident is one of several that occurred in a scene where various gods and goddesses were depicted as lining up against each other. In another part of this sequence Athene trounces Artemis, a goddess of the earth; in yet another Apollo, the sun god, contemplates a trial of strength with Poseidon, god of the sea. What great cosmological events are referred to in these lines of Homer? Velikovsky does not say; he does not refer to them... This paragraph reveals a deep misunderstanding of the Comparative method. The presence of isolated and unexplained images does not invalidate any conclusions with respect to images that ARE explicable through comparative analysis. Repeated similarities in the accounts of diverse cultures - similarities at the level of concrete detail, similarities that cannot be explained by coincidence - MUST refer to a common origin or common experience. And the more unusual or "out of the ordinary" the shared details, the more powerful the evidential value, as we have already noted. Moreover, as we will also see, a model based on recurring, global motifs will often throw surprising new light on more fragmentary images, even in cases where the fragments originally appeared to have no explanation whatsoever. When it comes to ancient memories of Mars and Venus (as we Previously observed), one faces a staggering volume of material. These are, in fact, the two most active figures in archetypal myth, while the Universal Monarch is a far more passive figure, often fading into the background in later transmissions. But the issues here are complicated by Velikovsky's own assumptions in his treatment of the Iliad. Velikovsky argued that Homer's narrative describes tribal conflicts on Earth at a time when the planets Venus and Mars moved on catastrophic courses, appearing to battle in the sky. At the outset of my own research, I was eager to consider this possibility. But soon a quite different possibility emerged. Here was my conclusion: there is no local history whatsoever in the poet's narrative! The entire story of the "Trojan War" is a localization of a much more ancient memory - the earthshaking celestial conflagration called the "wars of the gods". How can I assert this sweeping conclusion with such confidence? Theconfidence comes from the comparative study itself, which exposes the taproot of worldwide cultural traditions. It is this deeply-rooted cultural memory that fed all of the later accounts of heroes and warriors, as the chroniclers brought formerly celestial gods down to earth and presented them in mortal dress. First there was the story of a heavenshattering conflagration, in which celestial powers battled in the sky. Then, centuries later, there were the chronicles of "tribal" wars, of "nations" battling "nations", all highlighting the exploits of a great warrior, and all sounding as if the events occurred on a terrestrial landscape.
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But who were these heroes, whose feats and ordeals fill the pages of Homer's Iliad, or the Aeneid of Virgil, or the Mahabharata and Ramayana of the Hindus, or the Celtic Mabinogion (not to mention countless other native chronicles)? It is simply impossible to undertake a comparative study of such figures without confronting the ARCHETYPAL warrior-hero presented under a vast range of symbols what Joseph Campbell called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". In tracing various hero-motifs to the earliest strata of civilization, it became crystal clear to me that the later figures are nothing more than echoes of the great celestial warrior celebrated in the oldest written records of humankind.- Nergal, Ninurta, and Irra of the Akkadians; Shu, Horus, and Sept of the Egyptians, to mention the barest few examples. The archetypal warrior-hero moves in the sky. And yet centuries later this same personality is seen on a local landscape, and the entire texture has changed. (For example, he no longer stands in relationship to a central sun or Universal Monarch, but instead serves a TERRESTRIAL "great king", a literary echo of the central sun.) The principle of localization is almost certainly the most misunderstood tendency in the evolution of myth. And the Iliad would make an excellent case study. Homer's story is presented as an account of the tenth year of the "Trojan War", as a confederation of Greek tribes under the rule of Agamemnon and led by the hero Achilles, sought to avenge the abduction of Helen, wife of King Menelaus, by the warrior-hero Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam. On the face of it, the conflict is something like a feudalistic war, in which farflung communities are mobilized against a common enemy. In concept it is certainly believable, though the respective warriors appear (suspiciously) as mirrors of each other, and the abduction of a famous princess by an equally famous warrior-prince does have an eerily familiar ring to it. By comparing attributes and key episodes in the lives of the great heroes, one sees that the "best" or most illustrious tribal "ancestor" expresses archetypal images and storylines (flight of his mother, miraculous birth, abandonment at birth, exposure on a mountaintop, or fall into a river, ignorance of his father, spectacular growth and amazing feats as a child, possession of an astonishing weapon with which he is inseparably identified, servitude to a great king, murder of a great king, abduction of the daughter of a great king, torrid love affair with the daughter of a great king, confrontation with chaos powers (dragons and other monsters), defeat of chaos powers, and a good deal more, down to numerous remarkable or bizarre details ranging from intimate associations with a cosmic pillar to such potentially comic episodes as being dressed, or disguised as a woman. These unexplained but recurring motifs are, in fact, far too numerous to be detailed here, but must all be confronted under the rules of the comparative approach. On the cosmic origins of these motifs I no longer have any doubt. The hero was originally a god seen in the sky. Indeed, in the Iliad, the demarcation between "mortals" and celestial "gods" is incessantly blurred Throughout the story, gods and goddesses intervene in critical events, and historians would have us believe NONE of this. Nevertheless, many of the same historians DO ask us to believe that within Homer's narrative are embedded the accounts of actual historical personages, despite the fact that all efforts to find evidence for their historicity have failed. In the intricate web of genealogies, divine intrigue, and heroic combat we meet numerous great warriors on both sides of the confrontation. On the Trojan side, Paris, Hector, Troilus (all "sons" of Priam) and the hero Aeneas. On the Achaean side, Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Patroclus, Diomedes. (Numerous others flit in an out of the story, of course.) But these figures are virtually indistinguishable in underlying concepts from the heroes Heracles, Perseus, and Theseus, whom Greek literature treats as "mortals", but who are beyond question the echoes of older warrior-gods helping to organize kingdoms, not on earth, but in the sky..Heracles was a Greek name of the planet Mars. And it is of no small significance that Theseus, a virtual carbon copy of Heracles, was himself said to have abducted Helen - before the events recounted in the Iliad, of course. The birth of Paris and his feats as a child replicate the universal "birth of the hero" theme: abandonment at birth, exposure at birth on a mountaintop, super-human strength , defeat of "bandits", and rescuing of stolen "cattle" as a child (c.f., "cattle of the sun" rescued by the Hindu warrior-god Indra). Like so many heroes, he begins his life as a slave (servant motif), though he is actually a prince, wins contests of
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strength, speed and skill, is loved by goddesses, carries off and marries the daughter of a famous king, murders another famous king while on adventures in foreign lands, and so on. So too, his alter ego Achilles entered the world by a miraculous birth. The event was followed by the flight of his mother. He was dropped into a river, raised on a sacred mountaintop, performed extraordinary feats as a child; was disguised a girl, placed in the service of a great king, and consorted with the daughter of the king. (I might also mention that the armor of Achilles was fashioned by the god Hephaestus, the same god who fashioned the shield of Hercules, around which OCEANUS flowed.) As celestial gods and goddesses are localized, they shed their cosmic dimensions, becoming the farfamed "ancestors" of the tribes telling the stories - the great kings, queens, heroes, and princesses of a lost epoch. In the same way, the spectacular dwelling of the gods - the "wheel of the sun" (habitation of the Universal Monarch) - becomes a legendary town, or city, or kingdom which fell in the distant past, when vast armies were mobilized and the world shook from great battles. Of course, in epic literature, the memories of numerous tribes are woven into linear narratives, depicting one warrior after another fighting beside or against his own alter egos. That is, in fact, the primary artifice by which poets succeeded in honoring and integrating diverse tribal traditions. These heroes are not just "descendants" of the gods. They WERE the gods - once! Actually, even in Greek literature it is virtually impossible to separate the epic heroes from the domain of the gods. In the Iliad, the gods Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, and Poseidon are very much a part of the key episodes, conversing with heroes, standing beside them, falling in love with them, consorting with them. More than once, the gods themselves take part in the fighting, as when Apollo delivers the first blow to Patroclus, before the hero is struck by Euphorbus and then Hector. It was Apollo who guided the arrow that struck the "heel" of Achilles. Agamemnon is likened to Zeus in his upper part and Ares in his lower limbs. (Those familiar with the Saturn model will have no difficulty discerning the concrete origins of the idea.) Numerous ancestors or relatives -Tantalus, Niobe, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, among others - were closer in character to gods than to men. Helen was the daughter of Zeus. Her mother Leda was also the mother of the "heavenly twins", Castor and Pollux. (Indeed, more than one scholar has recognized Helen as a local transcript of Aphrodite, astronomically identified with Venus). It was said that the walls of Troy were built by Apollo and Poseidon. Cassandra, foretelling the destruction of Troy, is strangely reminiscent of the ancient lamenting goddess, roaming about with wildly disheveled hair and disturbing the land. In truth, there is not a shred of historical evidence that such personalities originated as flesh and blood figures. It is not my purpose here to merely suggest that there are archetypal themes and connections yet to be discerned by historians. Our claim must be much more explicit. There is an archetypal Universal Monarch or king of the world, an archetypal mother goddess, and an archetypal warrior hero. ALL OF THE RECURRING THEMES AROUND THESE ARCHETYPES AROSE IN RESPONSE TO SPECTACULAR FORMS IN THE SKY. THESE FORMS ARE NO LONGER PRESENT. But such a claim is surely preposterous! Well, the very outlandishness of this claim will provide a unique value under the comparative approach. It will make the acid tests both obvious and decisive. And it is these tests to which I will refer the reader in our next installment. Dave
RETHINKING GRAVITY
comments by Wal Thornhill Surely gravitation should be working! --Halton Arp, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies. p 114
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From a New Scientist article this week, available in full at: http://www.newscientist.co.uk/cgi-bin/pageserver.cgi?/ns/980912/ngravity.html If the force is with them ... By Charles Seife Gravity may not be working as advertised. Spacecraft hurtling through the Solar System have been behaving so bizarrely that some scientists wonder whether our theories of gravity are wrong. Enjoy, Ian Tresman
ANTI-GRAVITY FIND STUNS SCIENTISTS

Tim Radford, Science Editor, Guardian, Friday 27th Feb 98. An international team of astronomers is about to set the world of physics reeling. They have observed anti-gravity in action and say they have confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. 'My reaction is somewhere between amazement and horror', Brian Schmidt of the Mt Stromlo and Sliding Springs Observatory in Australia told the US journal Science published today.. Amazement because 'I just did not expect this result and horror knowing it will likely be disbelieved by a majority of astronomers". Adam Reiss. of the University of California at Berkeley said last night 'What we expected to find was that the universe would be expanding more slowly today than back then because gravity has this effect that it slows everything down. What we found was the opposite of that. The universe is expanding faster today than yesterday and it seems to be accelerating.' In Science, astronomers from California, Boston and Australia say they have direct observational evidence that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Since gravity is a brake on the expansion that began with the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago, then there must be some other countering force. They call it a repulsive force, or antigravity. On a scale of half the universe, it seems to be twice as strong as gravity. If so it will force cosmologists to dream up a new history of space and time. Light travels at a constant speed for all observers, but the way the starlight itself is 'stretched" is a clue to how fast the star is moving away from the observer. 'The astronomers expected distant stars to be moving more swiftly than recent ones. They were not. 'Statistically speaking, we are quite confident of this result', said Dr Rein. 'But we continue to be concerned that there is another explanation for what we are seeing, some other sneaky effect that is getting in there'. The scientists considered the possibility that supernovae in the past might be different from those today: that stars may have evolved, in the way creatures do. They do not think so. So they are left with anti-gravity. 'The problem with this force is that on a small scale it is very weak' said Dr Reiss. 'You have to get to these amazing scales like half way across the universe, where this force adds up, because it is inherent in every little piece of space. As you add up this space. it multiplies, and eventually becomes strong enough to detect" Wal Thornhill comments:
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I think this discovery will turn out to be another thorn in the side for cosmologists and may well vindicate Halton Arp's view of non-velocity related redshifts. It was he who pointed out that the Universe does not seem to be expanding. So we should not expect to see supernovae at great distance (theoretically closer to the hypothetical Big Bang) moving faster than those closer to us. The item reminds me of the ad-hocery involved some years ago in postulating a "fifth force" when it was found that gravity didn't behave as expected when measured down mines and at the top of towers. Another force? One possible answer is that physicists don't understand gravity; or light; or redshifts! Wal Thornhill
ELECTRIFYING NEWS ABOUT IMPACT CRATERS

comments by Wal Thornhill [The following] is the first statement I have seen that the complex craters we see on the Moon and elsewhere have never been created in the lab or with explosions! Strangely, the authors then go on to assume what they have yet to prove - that the craters on the solid bodies in the solar system are impacts and therefore can be used to determine "how various target and impactor properties affect complex crater formation." Wal Thornhill
Abstract
In recent years, morphometric data for Venus and several outer planet satellites have been collected, so we now have observational data of complex craters formed in a large range of target properties. We present general inversion techniques that can utilize the morphometric data to quantitatively test various models of complex crater formation. The morphometric data we use in this paper are depth of a complex crater, the diameter at which the depth-diameter ratio changes, and onset diameters for central peaks, terraces, and peak rings. We tested the roles of impactor velocities and hydrostatic pressure vs. crustal strength, and we tested the specific models of acoustic fluidization (Melosh, 1982) and nonproportional growth (Schultz, 1988). Neither the acoustic fluidization model nor the nonproportional growth in their published formulations are able to successfully reproduce the data. No dependence on impactor velocity is evident from our inversions. Most of the morphometric data is consistent with a linear dependence on the ratio of crustal strength to hydrostatic pressure on a planet, or the factor c/rg. The introduction is where the real meat is: Crater morphometry, the quantitative description of the shape of impact craters, has always played a key role in understanding the cratering process. One of the key arguments used to support the impact origin of lunar craters was that they were morphometrically similar to terrestrial explosion craters (Baldwin, 1949). Complex impact craters, craters with such features as a flat floor, a central peak, and wall terraces, have never been created in common geologic materials in the lab or with large explosions. At present, only the morphometry of impact craters on the solid bodies of the solar system can provide data on how various target and impactor properties affect complex crater formation. From: "Inversion of crater morphometric data to gain insight on the cratering process," Robert R. Herrick and Suzanne N. Lyons, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, 131-143 (1998)
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 15 (October 1, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: GRAVITATION AS FROG THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY" TWO MAORI MYTHS THE DOMES ON VENUS LICHTENBERG FIGURES
by Mel Acheson Dave Talbott submitted by Ken Dietiker comments by Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
GRAVITATION AS FROG
by Mel Acheson Ilya Prigogine, from a young age, was concerned that accepted physical theory had a couple of glaring discrepancies from observation: determinism and time symmetry. Most observations are of contingency and irreversibility. No one has yet seen an egg "un-fry" or an old woman rise from her grave and grow young. After years of effort, Prigogine has extended the basic laws of physics to account for irreversibility by incorporating recent discoveries in complexity theory and instability physics. As he relates in The End Of Certainty, the results place probability (or, better, possibility) at the core of physical processes. The traditional formulations of mechanistic determinism become a special case for isolated systems at equilibrium. The contrast between the isolated stable models and the interacting unstable ones is as striking as the difference between a dissected frog and its jumping counterpart. The pins of equilibrium and the scalpel of reductionism lay out the frog's mechanism to be described in great detail. But the frog doesn't move. Now consider gravitation: F = GMm/R^2 is well-pinned-down. As one of Piet Hein's grooks says: ...and who could doubt it, if you have no doubt about it. But when taken off the dissecting table of theory, it starts to quiver: Every measurement of the "constant" G comes up with a different value. Well, maybe someone bumped the table. But now various space probes around the solar system are showing anomalous deceleration. The frog is kicking. When the frog jumps into the galaxy, it behaves unexpectedly: It swims. Decades of observations of velocities and positions of stars have allowed astronomers to construct a diagram of how the galaxy is rotating. Surprisingly, the stars near the edge move about as fast as the stars near the center. In fact, all the stars are moving at about the same speed. Apparently, F = GMm/R. But not to worry: we can get the frog back on the table by catching it in a net of dark matter. Never mind that the net is more massive than the entire galaxy or that we can't see it. The important thing is to retrieve the frog -- and kill it!
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Now Halton Arp's discovery of the association of quasars with nearby galaxies combined with the discovery of the quantization of redshifts threatens to let the frog escape for good. Each cluster of galaxies and quasars has a slightly different "constant" of quantization. Within each cluster, the quantization spikes are so sharp, the dispersion so small, that when the quantization effect is removed, there is almost no redshift left to attribute to orbital velocities. Arp remarks on page 114 of Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies: Surely gravitation is still working! The galaxies and their associated quasars are just hanging in space, thumbing their noses at Newton: F = 0. The point of this -- getting back to Ilya Prigogine -- is that "live" systems are considerably more complex than "dead" ones. Every theory has its "domain of validity", as Leon Rosenfeld remarked. But the boundaries of that domain are almost never surveyed. It's easier to crank out the mathematics of a theory than to discover its limitations, and, human nature inclining as it does to the haughtiness of the gods, it's easier to assume universal validity than to mark out the provinces. But universality is merely an assumption standing in for the hard work of verification. Gravitation as we know it will be universal only when its relationships are actually verified throughout space and throughout history. Just as galactic rotation curves and quantized redshifts challenge the easy spatial extrapolation of the "dead" theory, so the detailed global structure of myth challenges the easy temporal extrapolation. The frog is swimming in an uncharted ocean where myth and redshifts proclaim: HERE BE DRAGONS. Universal Gravitation is beginning to look like a dead frog in a farm pond. --Mel Acheson
THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY"

by Dave Talbott On several occasions recently, in reference to the Saturn theory, David Davis raised the vexing question of physical plausibility. This is a first shot at putting the question into perspective, particularly for those such as David D who were not present as such questions were discussed over the years. The problem involves two radically different fields of evidence - human memories on the one hand, and physical observation on the other. But truth itself is unified, and one can be certain that when conflicts occur something is wrong on at least one side of the ledger. A false assumption, a false reading of evidence, a false analysis of probability, or an invalid deduction. So how do we deal with the situation when human memories speak convincingly for something which orthodox science, with equal persuasion, denies? The Saturn theory suggests events and natural forces contrary to almost everything believed by the scientific mainstream. Does this mean that science gets to tell us whether the theory is "valid", without showing that we have misstated or misused evidence, or applied reasoning to the evidence improperly? Mainstream theorists can certainly point out the disparity between the claims of the Saturn theory and the textbook history of the solar system. And we can, in turn, point out that things which science considers out of the question were consistently remembered around the world and with a degree of detail and coherence that is inconceivable under usual explanations. But the situation is a stalemate until a ground of reconciliation is reached. What is impossible could not have happened. What happened cannot be impossible. And this fact is, singularly, our basis for confidence that answers CAN be found. We have
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either misapplied principles of reasoning to the historical evidence, or science is misreading evidence to a profound degree. A quick background statement for more recent subscribers to this list. The Saturn theory involves a congregation of planets including at least two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and the planets Venus, Mars and Earth, all moving around the Sun, with the Earth close enough to these bodies that they present a spectacular and at times frightful presence in the sky. Four key contrasts with conventional theory are inherent in the construction: 1) dramatic changes in the planetary order in geologically recent times; 2) a period of collinear alignment within the hypothesized configuration (during this period, of indeterminate length, the planets stayed in line and were thus seen from the Earth as juxtaposed spheres); 3) a period of axial alignment between the Earth and the collinear configuration, so that Saturn and the other bodies appeared fixed at the pole; and 4) an indeterminate period in which a bright crescent on Saturn visually turned in the sky (due to light from the Sun and the effect of Earth's rotation), the positions of this revolving crescent around the pole reflecting the terrestrial cycle of day and night. Now perhaps you have wondered how I could have ever proposed such a thing, knowing full well that PLANETS DO NOT BEHAVE THIS WAY under the fundamental "rules" of celestial dynamics. Actually, it was easy. I was convinced that the weight of historical evidence is, when evaluated logically and dispassionately, more persuasive than present scientific beliefs about planetary behavior. And this conviction has only grown over the years. The scientific consensus is not a finished encyclopedia with an exclusive on truth, and in fact that consensus is proven wrong every day. Critics have often assumed that when I first proposed the idea of a "Polar Configuration", I simply didn't know that everyday science virtually FORBIDS the underlying concepts. But in fact I knew this very well, and from the beginning I had people repeating the obvious to me. So I said (in print, more than once) that the configuration is, in terms of present scientific understanding, "impossible", or (when I was feeling more charitable to the concept) "highly implausible". To which I would add (in so many words) that the "truth must be out there", even if we have missed it. Now step into this perspective for a moment. I am as certain that huge planetary forms were seen in the sky as I am of any rule of logic, or any natural experience known to man. This is because the universal memory is too explicit, too concrete and too unusual to be explained in any other way. This is now an unshakable conviction with me. Apart from the implied celestial references, the accord of human memories is simply not possible. And I do mean NOT POSSIBLE. I am not asking you to believe this, just to understand that this is the position I hold, which may also help you understand why I believe so strongly that our task is, above all else, to develop a clear and effective presentation of the historical argument. What must be developed is a presentation SO clear that those rare but uniquely capable and open-minded individuals within the sciences will be inspired to ASK THE QUESTION and to help us find the ground of reconciliation. I am not foolish enough to think that I will be the one to solve the challenge scientifically! I have to speak subjectively on this, but I believe that all who have worked to solve a mystery, or to understand a new idea, or to discover a new possibility will share in the confidence I am expressing on this point. It is BECAUSE truth is unified that the sense of a new possibility will always direct you to follow the implications of the idea through a maze of tests. At every step, this was the basis of my growing confidence in the historical reconstruction. As the planetary configuration came into focus, it began to suggest many hundreds of tests, always implying that if I would look in this direction, or that direction, I would find specific data (enigmatic meanings of words, drawings of things not seen in our sky, unexplained re-enactments of cosmic events) consistently speaking for the same underlying forms. And for this very reason, I shall continually urge true explorers in the sciences to follow the tests into their own domains as well. (Still speaking for myself now.) These things happened. That means the dynamical principles must be available to us. The physical evidence must still lie in the ground. It is just that, as Kuhn himself would put it, we are not seeing the evidence properly. To illustrate the way this confidence works, I want to give a few examples relating to the greatest conundrum in the first 21 years of the research - the principle of collinear alignment (planets staying in
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line while moving around the Sun). Even now, on the Kronia discussion group, we periodically see posters remarking on the "impossibility" of such a configuration. Here is what they are talking about: In any Newtonian system, planets move around a center of gravity. If the hypothesized Jupiter-Saturn system revolved around its own center of gravity as it moved around the Sun, one must deal with the principle of orbital equilibrium and Kepler's Third Law. The farther a planet is from the center of gravity, the slower will be its orbital velocity and the longer will be its orbital period. But planets staying in line would have to have the SAME orbital periods. Therefore, an in-line configuration is gravitationally impossible. Given the imposing momentum of planet-sized bodies, surely no "secondary" force could even come close to resolving the problem. The polar configuration is a blatant violation of Kepler's Third Law. Even various Velikovskians joined in that refrain. Leroy Ellenberger repeated it many times. Later, Tim Thompson, on the Internet discussion group, talk.origins, repeated it in a series of postings. So how could one claim, based entirely on human memory, that a physical principle MUST be available to support the concept? Well, here's what happened. Some 21 years after I had first proposed a collinear configuration (originally I did not even know that the name for such a thing existed), the dynamicist Robert Grubaugh contacted me with a bombshell revelation. In orbital mechanics, he said, there is something called collinear equilibrium. If you put planets in line around the Sun, close enough to each other that they are all within what is called the "sphere of influence" of the dominating planets (in this case, Jupiter and Saturn), there is for each of those planets an equilibrium position at which they will STAY IN LINE until disturbed. In the unique condition of collinear equilibrium, the usual implication of Kepler's Third Law does not apply! Suddenly, a 21-year objection based on "things KNOWN to science", collapsed. So here was a first demonstration of the maxim, "the truth is out there" - a startling convergence of the historical argument and physical principle. Not just an interesting and unique principle, but the very principle the historical argument DEMANDED. Was this the end of it? No, that began a series of revelations following the same pattern. First, there was the proclamation by critics that something was "impossible" (the favorite word in the lexicon of debunkers); then there was the subsequent revelation that a particular dynamic principle overlooked by the debunkers was the very principle the Saturnian reconstruction called for. I will enumerate a series of examples in submissions to follow, all coming under the same heading - CONVERGENCE. Dave
TWO MAORI MYTHS

submitted by K Ken Dietiker
Number One:
And from nothing came darkness, and then light, and finally the sky and the earth. And Rangi, the sky, and Papa, the earth, came together in love and had many children. But Rangi and Papa were joined inseparably, so that their children had no place to live but were squeezed into the tight darkness between them. At last their offspring crept together to confer about their fate. Tu, the god of man and war, said, "Let's kill Rangi and Papa so we'll be freed."
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But Tane, the god of the forest, said, "No, let's try to separate them. Maybe we won't have to kill them. If we try hard enough, we can push the sky away and keep Mother Earth to nurse us." So first Rongo, god of cultivated food, tried to force the heaven and earth apart. But he failed. Then Tangaroa, god of all the animals that lived in the sea, tried, but he too had no luck. Then Haumia, father of wild plants, also tried and failed. Warlike Tu then took his knife and hacked away the sinews that bound the earth and heaven, but he still could not separate them. At last, Tane, god of trees, placed his shoulders against the earth and his feet against the sky and pressed with all his might. He thrust the sky above him and held him there. Now at last all of the children of Rangi and Papa could stand up and see the light. Since there was room upon the earth, Tane decided to make some people. He went to the spot where Rangi's blood had fallen when Tu chopped on him and picked up some of the clay. Tane was a god, but he had a man's interest, so he made a woman. Soon she had a beautiful daughter whom he named Hine Titama. When Hine Titama grew up she was very beautiful, so Tane also married her and she bore him several children. But she did not know that Tane was her father. One day she asked Tane, "Who is my father?" For a long time Tane did not answer. At last he told her the truth. Hine Titama cried out in horror, "How could you make me commit such a dreadful crime! I can't bear to live with this shame!" So Hine Titama ran sorrowfully to her grandmother Papa in the deep, dark center of the earth. There she was comforted. And since that time all of mankind has followed her on the trail of death.' (Maori- New Zealand legend) Reminds me of some Greek myths...
Number Two:
When the world was created... Wulbari who was God lay so close upon Asase Ya, mother earth, that men could reach up and touch him. But men were not all respectful of Wulbari. They would cook their food over fires and smoke would blow right into Wulbari's eyes. Even worse, they would use Wulbari as a towel. Whenever their hands were dirty, they would reach up and wipe them off on Wulbari. One old woman would cut a piece off of him and put it into her soup every day. At last Wulbari became so annoyed at the way he was treated by men that he moved up higher in the sky. (Maori- New Zealand legend) Ken Dietiker DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS:
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These two myths belong to a universal cycle which can best be titled "The Marriage (and/or Separation) of Earth and Sky." This cycle will be covered in my slowly progressing book on the Saturnian events. All I will say at the moment is that these myths refer to the bisecting of the Saturnian band into two halves (or crescents, if you wish), one light, the other dark, as also described by Talbott in his book THE SATURN MYTH. However, there's more to all this than Talbott was able to divulge at the time he wrote that book. The sequence of events, on the other hand, is far too complex to narrate on this forum. Besides, were I to spell it all now, there wouldn't be much that is new in my book (and hardly any surprises). Dwardu. DAVID TALBOTT COMMENTS: While the Maori tales show the typical signs of fragmentation, dilution, and elaboration, the theme is archetypal and traces to the first mythical expressions in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Dwardu is correct that the appearance of a CRESCENT in the sky is a key to understanding the motif. The nature of this crescent is the subject of continuing exploration. While I originally placed the crescent on a torus-like cloud of material around Saturn (the thesis of The Saturn Myth), I subsequently concluded that the crescent was on the sphere of Saturn itself. Of this placement I am now quite confident. The celestial imagery involved is presented in the notebook, Symbols of an Alien Sky, pp. 159 ff. Key mythical themes converging on this imagery are: Division of the primal Unity into "above" and "below" The raising up of "Heaven" Birth and first activity of a heaven-supporting giant First appearance of a world pillar or world mountain First appearance of a heaven-spanning crescent Coming of the first dawn; the birth of "time"
Comparative investigation will show that these themes are inseparably connected, though in fact none of the connections are implied by natural experience today. What the Saturn theory offers is a concrete reference, suggesting an underlying integrity to the different mythical themes. Once these themes are discerned in proper perspective, it will be seen that they all relate to the fundamental role of Saturn as the Father of Time. Dave
THE DOMES ON VENUS

by Wal Thornhill Another puzzle is the "domes" on Venus. They average 25 km in diameter and 750 meters in height. Their near perfect circularity argues against their formation by purely volcanic means. Compare with an example of the normal, uneven lobate structure of a lava flow from a central orifice. A better explanation is that they are the result of a diffuse electrical discharge on a very thin crust. The surface responded to the gravitational tug of the nearby planetary body and the upward electrical forces, resulting in uplift with little or no melting, and retention of electric scars. This idea is supported by the observation that the domes seem to be prevalent on lava plains and are associated with sinuous rilles. The tops of the domes have a cobweb type pattern of discharge channels and often a small central crater which argue for the surface having remained solid during the uplift of the domes. Humboldt, a 200km diameter lunar crater shows a similar pattern of roughly concentric and radial channels. The central craters on the domes are small,
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which indicates a "burning-spot" form of discharge which occur at higher currents than that causing the diffuse discharge. The transition from one type of discharge to the other is sudden. The fact that secondary electrical cratering occurs preferentially on the rims of earlier crater walls might also explain the overlapping domes, where the centre of one dome often coincides fairly closely with a point on the circumference of another. In other words, it seems possible that some of the many variations of electric arc behaviour at an anode seen in the laboratory may explain these enigmatic objects. Juergens points out that such raised mounds may be planetary equivalents of "fulgamites" which are mounds of metal, melted and raised above the surface of metal caps placed over the ends of lightning rods. The sides of fulgamites are usually ridged with closely spaced concentric grooves and the bases flared like a bell. -- from a paper delivered to a conference in Cambridge, England, 1993, by Wal Thornhill, concerning the youthfulness of Venus:
LICHTENBERG FIGURES
Wal Thornhill Re: Lichtenberg figures, the engineer mentioned in the above excerpt, the late great Ralph Juergens, made a very cogent argument for the rayed craters on the Moon being Lichtenberg figures. It is obvious that the rays have nothing to do with impacts since the rays are generally tangent to the central crater, rather than radial. There are two possible ways of explaining the tangential effect, one is Ralph's - the other mine. Ralph conjectured that the Lichtenberg figure is caused by streamers of electrons leaving the Moon's surface and forming small chains of craters in the process and disturbing the surface to give the rayed appearance. The small craters are distinguishable and cannot have been formed by fall-back of debris from an impact since they do not have the characteristic butterfly shaped ejecta. It is radial. The streamers, just as in earthly lightning, setup an ionised path for the return stroke. Ralph's conjecture was that the return stroke does not necessarily strike dead centre where the streamers were densest a short moment before. My idea is based on the observation that circular craters are formed by a rotating arc (which sometimes leaves a central peak untouched). In this model, the electrical stresses will follow the rotating arc and consequently, electrons ripping across the Moon's surface to satisfy the discharge will arrive somewhat tangentially to the crater. Wal Thornhill
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STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: HERONS AND CORMORANTS THE COMET VENUS AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD ANCIENT FLYING MACHINES MORE ON INTRINSIC REDSHIFTS
Amy Acheson Dave Talbott excerpts from the kronia list Wal Thornhill
HERONS AND CORMORANTS

by Amy Acheson Herons stand in shallow water for hours, waiting for dinner to swim by. Cormorants perch on driftwood and pilings, hanging their wings out to dry like miniature Batman signals. Seagulls drop clams and crabs on the rocks to break open their shells. Each is displaying behavior that is part of both their day-to-day survival and their definition as a species. What behavior defines the human species? For one thing, humans fantasize. They make up stories -- fiction, if you will -- to explain the world around them. And they find ways; art, drama, books, universities, the internet; to preserve and communicate these fantasies to other humans. In recent centuries, scientists have fantasized that the world has been stable for much longer than the human species has existed. In order to accept this fantasy, they've also had to imagine that the myths of the ancients were not just fiction, but untrue, devoid of any meaning beyond symbolism. Because at face value, the myths tell a contradictory story: one of instability and catastrophe. But denying the myths wasn't a difficult step to take, because the myths are "fiction." They violate the common sense and mathematics which support the fantasy that everything is stable. Now Saturnists have a new fantasy. They imagine they can recreate the events which inspired the myriad myths by sifting these fictional tales for common elements. And the results are startling: Saturn is a monarch associated with time, carries a scythe or rides in a boat at the north pole. Venus has long hair or feathers or a tail, sometimes radiant, sometimes destructive. Mars grows large and shrinks, climbs a mountain or a ladder, is wounded in the face or thigh. Even in an era of reason and stability, it still makes one heck of a good tale for storytellers to share around the campfire/internet. --Amy Acheson
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THE COMET VENUS AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

by Dave Talbott Over the next few issues of THOTH, I'll be toggling between two threads - one on the methodology of the historical investigation and the other on the physical implications of the theory. We are now back to methodology, and once again James Fitton will provide the catalyst, this time for a look at the myths and symbols of the "comet" Venus. Among the representatives of Venus, according to Immanuel Velikovsky, was the Greek goddess Athena, a power born from the head of Zeus "like a blazing star which the lord of heaven shoots forth, bright and scattering sparks." Since the star trailing flame or sparks is a universal hieroglyph for the comet, various translators have rendered the expression in this line from the Iliad as just that - a "comet". But is this comet-like goddess properly identified as the planet Venus? Fitton wrote...Let me close my paper, however, by examining a cardinal point in Velikovsky's book-- his identification of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene with the planet Venus. All the substantial evidence that Velikovsky draws from the Greek myths vanishes if this identification fails. What is Velikovsky's proof? He begins by asserting that Pallas Athene was identified with the Babylonian Ishtar. Such a statement is hardly important. After Alexander's conquests the Greeks became aware of the religions of the ancient Near East, and frequently sought points of similarity with their own. Such similarities were often very superficial. Ishtar may have had something in common with Athene, but it would be very surprising if she resembled Athene in every respect. Velikovsky also says, 'Anaitis of the Iranians, too, is identified as Pallas Athene and as the planet Venus.' I checked Velikovsky's reference. The authority says that Anaitis was identified by the Romans with Minerva (Greek Athene) and with Venus (i.e., the goddess Venus, or Aphrodite of the Greeks)[fn. 27: F. Cumont, Les Mysteres de Mithra, 3rd ed. (1913), p. 111]. Since Velikovsky is at great pains to point out that the goddess Venus was not the planet of the same name, his statement here is quite misleading. Velikovsky then quotes Plutarch to show that Athene was identified with Isis, and he quotes Pliny to show that Isis was the planet Venus. It all seems mathematically very correct: Athene equals Isis equals planet Venus. But identifications of this type were common in the Roman empire, a time when Europe was literally flooded with oriental cults. Isis, for example, was identified with the goddess Demeter and with Aphrodite, as well as with Athene. Since identifications varied so much Velikovsky's formula is quite misleading. Moreover, even in the passage cited by Velikovsky, Pliny contradicts him. He says that the planet Venus was identified with Juno (i.e., the Greek Hera). He says nothing about Athene. In one paragraph, Fitton has combined several erroneous statements with some highly dubious reasoning. There is no one who has examined the astronomical associations of Venus with a more discerning eye than Ev Cochrane, publisher of the journal AEON. Here was his observation on the above paragraphOn virtually every issue raised here, Velikovsky is absolutely right and Fitton wrong. Athena *is* comparable to Ishtar in many respects [See Cochrane's article on Athena -AEON II:3- for numerous examples and further evidence that Athena is to be identified with Venus]. Athena *was* identified with Anaitis and the Iranian goddess *was* identified with the planet Venus by the ancient Iranians themselves as well as by numerous modern scholars ... Athena *was* identified with Isis, and the latter goddess was identified with the planet Venus by the authorities cited by Velikovsky. That Isis offers an Egyptian parallel to the Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar nearly everyone agrees. If Inanna/Ishtar are to be identified with the planet Venus, as all learned authorities agree, then it stands to reason that the same holds true of Isis.
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Moreover, the comparative approach will enable one to go far beyond explicit astronomical identifications, to confirm that ALL of the goddesses cited by Fitton - and hundreds of other goddesses as well - do fall under the Venus archetype. Planet lists and empirical astronomy came relatively late (as we should expect, since there WERE no planets moving on predictable orbits when the myths were born), and the fact is that most ancient tribes possessed no observational discipline for preserving the link of gods and planets. But are widespread cultures telling the SAME STORY in their myths and rites? If so, the Venus identifications affirmed by ancient cultures that DID develop the necessary disciplines are more than sufficient to make our case. But Fitton continuesThere is, to my knowledge, no evidence that the Greeks ever identified Pallas Athene with the planet Venus. It is in fact interesting to note that, of all the different Greek gods and goddesses associated, at different times, with this planet, the only one missing in one standard discussion is Athene Yet if the great cosmological catastrophes that Velikovsky describes did occur, and if, moreover, they were remembered, as he says, in the world's mythologies, it could hardly be that the Greeks would have entirely forgotten this important identification, which alone provided the clue to the interpretation of those myths. To this, Cochrane repliesFitton is right that the ancient Greeks apparently never identified Athena with Venus. So what? The Greeks also forgot the original celestial identification of Apollo (Mars). As I have documented in "The Birth of Athena," to be supplemented in large part by my forthcoming book "The Many Faces of Venus," there can be no doubt but that Athena is to be identified with the planet Venus. The fact that Velikovsky deduced this identification solely from a comparative analysis of the Greek myths--and with little help from the Greeks themselves--says a great deal about his insight into the origins of ancient myth. Precisely so. The comparative method does not demand that every culture identify gods and goddesses with planets, since that would require astronomical knowledge that did not exist among most ancient peoples. But the comparative approach does work, and with surprising dependability. Patterns which would otherwise be missed can be tracked from one culture to another around the world, then linked to reliable planetary identifications within those cultures which developed sophisticated knowledge of the planets. These astronomers, from Babylon to China, from India to the Americas proclaimed with one voice that the mother goddess was Venus and no other planet. But the Saturn theory offers something more - a highly concrete model, drawing our attention to welldefined forms in the sky. These forms are, in fact, so tangible, so specifically drawn, that disproof of the model will be incredibly easy if we are off the mark. Unexplained superstitions and symbols of comets provide a good example, and the interconnected images can be applied to ANY well-documented goddess-figure. Name the goddess, and a Saturn theory researcher can point you to the vividly-presented cometary aspect of that goddess. The Saturn theory claims-1) that ancient fears, images, and beliefs about comets were inspired by a "Great Comet" remembered around the world; 2) that the Great Comet was the PLANET Venus, prototype of the mother goddess; 3) that the story of the Great Comet is the worldwide story of the mother goddess in her "terrible aspect". We will claim, therefore, that global myths associated with VENUS account for the worldwide images of COMETS. In fact, none of the ancient comet-ideas can be explained by the familiar behavior of comets in
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our sky today, any more than ancient images of Venus could be explained by the present behavior of that planet. The focus of ancient memories is on an entirely different sky. In our reconstruction, the story has a beginning and an end, with many fascinating episodes in between. And it has a reference in something SEEN, a congregation of planets that can be reconstructed down to many remarkable details. Our reference for now will be the image on the Kronia Communications website, presently under construction by Steven Parsons. Go to the page on the "Saturn theory" atwww.kronia.com There you will find a single "snapshot" of the evolving configuration, enabling us to illuminate the ancient goddess, with stunning results. Since Athena is the figure cited by Fitton, we will let this goddess serve as our first example. [NOTE TO NEWCOMERS: The early evolution of the planetary assembly is presented in a series of "snapshots" in the notebook, Symbols of an Alien Sky. It is also the subject of the 90-minute documentary, Remembering the End of the World. Both the notebook and the documentary are available from Kronia Communications.] The story of the comet Venus begins with Venus as the great "star" depicted in the center of a vastly larger body, the gas giant Saturn. As seen from the Earth, luminous streamers of the central "star", spread across the face of the larger sphere. As we have already noted, the translators of the early religious and astronomical texts often render this larger body as "the sun". But the early astronomical identification of the "sun" with the planet Saturn is beyond dispute, even if the experts may disagree as to what to do with the anomaly. Equally enigmatic is the presence of a smaller dark or reddish sphere inside the central star. Comparative analysis will identify this sphere as the planet Mars. Ancient races called this the "Great Conjunction" of the golden age. That is not just a strange idea. Around the world, and to the point of obsession, sky-worshippers drew pictures of it. And the pictures they drew are very much like the pictures you yourself would draw if planets loomed in this fashion above YOU. Nothing in our sky is remotely similar to it. Yet the underlying form is universal and was a focal point of a vast lexicon of rites and symbols. (The fact that the known sizes of the depicted planets allow for this very image is no small matter either, considering the huge variation in actual planetary diameters! See "Symbols of an Alien Sky" pp. 71-94.) The comparative approach identifies a wide range of mythical images prompted by the appearance of Venus in this planetary configuration: Great Star, Great Comet Long-haired, fiery-haired goddess Radiant heart, soul, or "life" of the primeval sun god (Saturn) Visible glory, radiance, majesty, splendor, power, or strength of the primeval sun Nave (hub) and spokes of the "sun" wheel (Saturn's wheel) Radiant eye of the "sun"; eye with streaming tears Rayed crown worn by the warrior-hero (Mars) Feathered headdress worn by the warrior-hero Shield or protection of the warrior-hero
Cross-cultural investigation will show that these Venus- or goddess-images are among the dominant symbols of the ancient world. They are certainly not mere abstractions. To be sure, the mythical content involves a relentless use of metaphor, but from what human experience did the metaphors arise? The texts, pictographs, monuments, and ritual re-enactments make clear that the subject is a visual spectacle
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in the sky, involving prodigious forms and cosmic upheaval. The result was the most far-reaching explosion of human imagination the world has ever known. The "soul" of the ancient sun god, the god's "majesty" or "strength" was a tangible, highly visible, highly active FORM IN THE SKY, recorded in astonishingly similar terms around the world. If scholars as a whole have failed to see the coherent message it is only because, lacking a concrete reference, they did not pause to notice the distinctive patterns. The breakthrough comes from seeing, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the existence of these patterns REQUIRES an external reference. So too, once this reference is discerned, numerous additional patterns are impossible to miss. In the case of Athena, for example, I would challenge readers to put the model to a test through a little independent research. See if you can answer these questions: 1) 2) 3) 4) What are the commonly-cited attributes and associations of Athena? Do you find the conventional explanations of the goddess' attributes persuasive? How might our model explain these diverse aspects and symbols? Can you describe how ONE feature of our model - the appearance of Venus - will explain MORE THAN ONE attribute of the goddess?
By working with the model you will discover an ability to explain what cannot be explained by traditional approaches. And the more you descend to specific details, the more definitive the tests will be. I would like to hear from anyone who might invest in this little experiment. Perhaps I could then reproduce the results for THOTH readers, in connection with our next submission to this thread: "The Warring Goddess Athena"
ANCIENT FLYING MACHINES

excerpts from the kronia list J. CALVIN BARKELY ASKS: The question inevitably arises with regard to the Myths and Legends of people flying. How and where do such nonsensical concepts arise? In particular, those which include Men riding inside a mechanical flying machine? How can primitive peoples conceptualize "mechanical" prior to the advent of the mechanical age: is this not a daunting question, worthy of consideration while reflecting on these matters? ...several Ancient Indian Manuscripts mention in detail mechanical flying machines, and lest we forget, there was also the very well known account in the Bible of Ezekial, who saw the "wheel". Now, this wheel was a flying machine which carried Ezekial off yonder somewhere, as I recall, and it was also noted that "people" of some sort were riding in it. The Ancient Indian Texts are most interesting, with numerous accounts of people, or Gods, riding "in" them, waging War, making love, sipping Tea, etc. Legends of the Hopi Indians cite the "Gods" or people who came to visit them from the sky, riding in some kind of a mechanical flying device. So we have reference to flying machines which carry people from Egypt, India, North America and South America. J. Calvin Barkley EV COCHRANE CHALLENGES:
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As a first step towards a rational inquiry, why don't you cite one of these ancient myths describing a man flying "inside a mechanical flying machine?" I suspect that, upon examination, we will find nothing which can properly be described as "mechanical" or advanced in technology. DWARDU CARDONA PROVIDES REFERENCES: Whoa there, Ev. I think J.C. is here alluding to the MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA in which flying "machines," called "puspakas," are liberally mentioned. Check here also a book titled WARFARE IN ANCIENT INDIA by one Dikshittar, published by Macmillan in 1952. KIP FARR PROVIDES PICTURES: http://www.aas-ra.org/pictures/evdcdrom/ KAREN TACKETT COMMENTS: ...looking at those bird/planes instantly made me think "comet." I'm trying to learn the archetypal way of looking at things and that tail going in a vertical spread looked as if you put "wings" on a comet shape. Aren't some of the myth stories talking about fire birds? The "anatomy" of those bird/planes don't line up with real birds but it might make sense if we are talking about a mythical bird. DAVE TALBOTT WRITES: Yes, I've seen these references to flying "machines" myself in Hindu epic literature, and elsewhere. I never collected these instances, but my impression was that the translators used the word "machine" loosely, where the actual meaning may have been closer to our word "contraption". DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS: Actually, the translators did not use the word "machines," loosely or otherwise, which is why I placed the word "machines" between inverted commas. In the Hindu literature in question, various different terms are used, one of the most common being "car celestial." MORE FROM DAVE TALBOTT: A reading of this material from the vantage point of the Saturn theory: The "chariot of the gods" was, in later epochs, virtually incomprehensible to the storytellers because the original celestial references had disappeared long before their time. Progressively diluted and confused human concepts could not accurately represent the original "vehicles" of the gods. Hence, the only way to get to the roots of the traditions is to follow them backwards to their first occurrences, where you will meet the great wheel turning in the sky, the prototype for the later flying "wagons", "chariots" and "contraptions" of gods and heroes. EV COCHRANE ADDS: Dave is exactly right, here, so it seems to me. In my article "Indra's theft of the Sun-God's Wheel," I discussed various examples of wheel-riding heroes. Indra is perhaps the most obvious of these figures, but there are quite a few.
MORE ON INTRINSIC REDSHIFTS

Wal Thornhill
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Galaxy found with redshift 6.68!
A new record has been set for the highest spectroscopically determined redshift of a galaxy - and it is not likely to stand for long. The new STIS instrument of the Hubble Space Telescope is making that possible. [See full story at]: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/5599/mirror/104.html [Ed note: in light of the previous announcement of a new record for redshift of a galaxy, I'm printing this as a reminder that velocity has never has been proven the only interpretation of redshift. It has serious anomalies on galactic and quasar scales, and a few quirks on the stellar scale.] [The following passage] provides ever more confirmation for the Electric Universe model. It is ... from a joint paper of Halton Arp and ... Tom Van Flandern, published in Physics Letters A 164 (1992) pp. 268,9. If the younger age of a galaxy is the parameter which governs the higher intrinsic redshift of the object then we should look to see if stars also have intrinsic redshifts. As soon as we do this we see that there is massive unexplained evidence for the youngest stars having the highest redshifts in our own galaxy, in nearby galactic clusters, in nearby companion galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds and even in the youngest stars of more distant galaxies [24]. This evidence called the K effect (and later the Trumpler effect ) goes back to 1911 when the first stars in our galaxy were being measured spectroscopically. The initial discoverers of this effect wisely refrained from concluding that the youngest stars in our galaxy were expanding like a relativistically unstable big bang. But the effect has not been explained. It is possible the same effect observed in the extragalactic nebulae will now stimulate its study in stars? Nearby stars can be studied in great astrophysical detail. But whether or not this study will help to reveal the cause of the intrinsic redshift, that effect must be at least empirically corrected for in all studies of stars and galaxies in order to obtain true velocities. All the basic kinematics and dynamics of star systems, galaxies and aggregates of galaxies depends on having trustworthy velocities. Apparently many velocities are much less than they are commonly believed to be so that massive recomputation will have to take place throughout astronomy - from cosmology to stars. [24] H. Arp, Redshifts of high luminosity stars - The K effect, the Trumpler effect and mass loss corrections, submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. I don't get any feeling at all that astronomers and astrophysicists are in any mood for the grand-daddy of all paradigm shifts. But it has to come. Wal Thornhill
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STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: PEPPERONI AND THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE ON STABLE AND UNSTABLE WORLDS HALLOWEEN WITCHES AND GIANTS JUPITER'S RINGS
by Amy Acheson Dave Talbott kronia questions comments by Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane NASA Press Release comments by Wal Thornhill
PEPPERONI AND THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE

by Amy Acheson I've run into an analogy at work which shows why math can't always be "counted on" to explain the full picture. Our pizza franchise convinced our marketing manager to run a special sale this week. They cranked out the numbers, and decided that "the reduced gross will be more than made up for by the increased sales." But this is the fourth time they've used this particular sale, and I'm getting more cantankerous with my objections every time. The sale is this: $1 off any large pizza. What their numbers don't see is this: customer walks into store, planning to buy two medium pizzas of different varieties ... say, pepperoni/sausage and Canadian bacon/pineapple: $6.49 each, or $12.98 in all. He sees the sign, "$1 off on any large pizza". Now, a large two-topping pizza sells for $8.99, $7.99 at the "$1 off" price. And right away the customer sees how he can save $4.99 on supper. Instead of taking the two medium pizzas from the refrigerated display case, he asks me to make him a special order ... one large pizza; half pepperoni/sausage; half Canadian bacon/pineapple. After a dozen customers like this, we are so busy making "special orders" that the supply of regular pizzas in the display case dwindles and even customers who are too mathematically impaired to figure out what's cheaper have to ask for "special orders", too. Bottom line: Friday we made enough pizzas to bring in $850 on a non-sale week. What we actually grossed was $625. (minus 2 to 3 hours labor; another $100 lost). And what has this to do with the Saturn thesis? Just this: as long as astrophysicists ignore the electrical interactions taking place in the solar system, they're looking at the line-up of SL9, comet tails, Io's volcanoes and Europa's cracked surface as "$1 off." When the Saturnians add electrical interpretations to the equation, the historical orbital possibilities go up to "$4.99 off", and the math crunchers are going to have to work overtime inventing ad-hoc hypotheses to figure out where they lost that extra $3.99! ~Amy Acheson
ON STABLE AND UNSTABLE WORLDS

Dave Talbott
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We return now to the thread on physical issues facing the Saturn theory. The challenge under discussion is that of reconciliation - a rapprochement between the historical argument on the one hand and physical theory on the other. As we have seen, the unusual nature of the hypothesized events offers us a certain advantage. These events are so specifically defined that the tests are both clear and unequivocal. This principle, essential to the historical argument, also applies to all domains of physical evidence. Grant the extraordinary hypothesis, and you WILL NOT DOUBT that the events left a trail of distinct physical markers - evidence which the specialists have simply failed to recognize. We have described a congregation of planets close to the earth and dominating the ancient sky. If this extraordinary claim is true, then there is a vital line of discovery available to us. It is available to us whether or not we see this path for what it is On this path lies all of the critical evidence left by the events, all of the dynamical principles either known or yet to be discovered - everything that is needed to reconcile the historical argument and physical theory. The path is there because truth is unified. But will we see the evidence for what it is? In launching this review, we discussed the issue of Kepler's Third Law, which seems to exclude the very planetary alignment so fundamental to the theory. But then, as we saw, there is a unique principle of collinear equilibrium that radically alters the dynamic challenge. Put planets in line, and in sufficiently close proximity to each other, and there will be for each planet a mathematical equilibrium position along that line, at which each will have the same period as all the others. The planets stay in line until perturbed. But mathematical equilibrium does not mean that a collinear configuration would endure for more than a briefest moment, since equilibrium can be either stable or unstable. Once the collinear principle was acknowledged, it did not take 48 hours for the critics to retort that elimination of the Kepler objection doesn't make any difference. "The collinear positions are unstable", they said. Indeed, one critic even asserted that the equilibrium positions made the problems "worse". Confusion was aggravated by Robert Grubaugh's use of the word "stable" for collinear equilibrium, and it was his position that this stability could be demonstrated mathematically. What he actually demonstrated, I now believe, is that the mass ratios involved in the configuration work to the advantage of endurance, but not stability. His own computer simulation shows instability under the accepted definition. ANY perturbation begins an unraveling of the in-line condition, which is the definition of instability. Working with an archaic computer, he had simply not run the simulation long enough to watch unraveling happen under the influence of disturbance For those who have not followed these discussions, let me give my present understanding of the terminology (with the caveat that this is not my field of expertise!). Stability and instability can be visualized by simple analogies. If the object in question is a sphere, then instability is a round hill. There is a mathematical equilibrium point on the top of the hill, but in the real world the sphere will always roll off. The steeper the hill, the more explosive the instability. The "flatter" the top of the hill, the longer it will take for the ball to roll off. If I am understanding Grubaugh's position correctly, with two gas giants acting on much smaller planets in the collinear system, the mass ratios reduce the disruptive influence of a perturbation. But mass ratios cannot eliminate instability, only slow its effects. The collinear position is still a hill In contrast, stability is a valley or well. The deeper the well, the greater the force directing the sphere to the low point of the well, and the more energy it will take to remove the sphere from the well. Though mathematicians have debated the stability of collinear equilibrium positions into this century, I am satisfied that such positions are unstable under the accepted definition of the term. To the majority of critics there was nothing more one needed to know. "Collinear equilibrium is unstable, and the Saturnian configuration is impossible," they announced with one voice. "It's over!" shouted Professor Paul Gans,
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one of the best known debunkers on the Internet discussion group, talk.origins. During the several-week span of the discussion on talk.origins, I do not recall any skeptic allowing for a qualification of that pronouncement. It happened, however, that a fellow named Robert Bass had wandered by the talk group and he saw my name. I had known him from some 20 years earlier, when he wrote a couple of articles on solar system stability for the journal Pense, which I was had published from 1972 to 1974. He wrote me a friendly note and that re-kindled an old relationship. Dr. Bass is a Rhodes Scholar, a highly accomplished mathematician, and former chairman of the departments of mathematics and astronomy at Brigham Young University. I had the opportunity to discuss the stability question with Dr. Bass at length. Numerous critics had insisted that the way to determine stability of the claimed Saturnian system was to run a computer simulation. But there is a more appropriate test, Bass told me. He proposed to approach collinear equilibrium analytically, noting that the critics were making a mistake in simply writing off the equilibrium as unstable, since there can always be secondary forces coming into the equation in a critical way, and that requires one to understand the "configuration" of instability. So Bass developed what those in higher mathematics call a 20- dimensional matrix (something I'd prefer NOT to understand), and through a rigorous analysis determined what he called "the directions of stability and instability" in collinear equilibrium positions. The results were potentially far- reaching. What follows is my own best effort at describing the dynamic considerations by analogy. The collinear equilibrium position is not a hill, and it is not a valley or well. It is a "saddlepoint", a configuration which simultaneously acts like a well AND a hill, though the hill will win out and the sphere will, under even the most minute disturbance, roll off the saddle point. I came to see the saddle point in terms of intersecting stable and unstable configurations, a hill and valley. On one axis of the "saddle", you have the valley, and on the other you have the hill. Look at the shape of a saddle lengthwise and in profile, and you see a valley. But a cross-section at any point will reveal a hill. The low point of the valley is the high point of a hill. That is the "saddlepoint". So it can only be unstable, though the sphere placed at that point will only role off in one of two directions. That's a lot different dynamically than a round hill, as we'll see in a moment. But first it is crucial that one see the significance of equilibrium itself. Imagine a marble on a perfectly smooth and frictionless saddle point, and you will easily visualize why the equilibrium position is unstable. The existence of a mathematical zero point does not mean that, practically speaking, the marble will stay there.. But equally important is the energy factor - which may be a little easier to visualize if we increase the size of the sphere. Imagine a bowling ball placed on a saddle point. Ask yourself how much energy is needed to HOLD the ball at that equilibrium point. Then compare that to the amount of energy needed to STOP a bowling ball falling at hundreds of miles per hour. That is the significance of equilibrium. Of course, to appreciate the scale of forces at stake, you have to imagine, not bowling balls, but PLANETS in equilibrium versus PLANETS moving away from equilibrium at THOUSANDS of miles per hour. So long as the original objection to the in-line system (based on Kepler) dominated discussion, there was no answer to the momentum problem in terms acceptable to thoses accredited in the affected fields. But once collinear equilibrium entered the picture, the ground shifted dramatically. As Bass observed, it was no longer appropriate to ignore secondary forces. So Bass conducted a mathematical experiment analyzing the effect of "tidal friction", which arises from the tidal distortion of one body gravitationally by another body. Analytically, by determining the directions of stability and instability at the "saddle point", Dr. Bass was able to visualize the effect of tidal friction on collinear equilibrium. It was his conclusion that this secondary force operates in the direction of stability. If that is correct, then the system will only unravel when a perturbing force is greater than the effects of tidal friction.
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In other words, ANY force working in the direction of stability means that the system is stable, even if the valley or well of stability is exceedingly shallow. This will remain true until a greater force is introduced, acting in the direction of instability. Of course the scale of tidal friction will typically be extremely small, but in the hypothesized assembly of planets, these bodies were unusually close together. And this not only makes a large difference, it could support the idea of a collinear system going on virtually forever. (In fact, however, the Saturn model is NOT dependent on long duration of any phase in the dynamic evolution of the system.) The physicist Robert Driscoll, who has spent much of his life working with electromagnetic principles, also expressed interest in collinear equilibrium. Under Newton's laws, the force of gravity varies with the inverse square of the distance between two bodies. And interestingly, the lapse rate of magnetic force between the poles of two magnets follows the same inverse square principle. But when two objects, both possessing dipolar magnetic fields, talk to each other dynamically, there is something more.. With the interaction of two sets of DIPOLES, the resulting strength of the magnetic "push" or "pull" between the two bodies will vary at the inverse 4TH POWER of distance. This unique gradient, according to Driscoll, will operate in the direction of collinear stability. But such expert testimony does not provide us with any final solutions. Some of Driscoll's work has been published in the journal AEON, but it has only invited further exploration, and Dr. Bass' work relative to tidal friction was a preliminary study subject to review by others. These specialists have, however, given us one definitive answer on a crucial point. Those who simply asserted that the Saturnian system would be unstable - and therefore "impossible - were incorrect. That presumption ignored any and all forces which would act in the direction of stability. Of course all of this needs much more investigation, and I have little doubt that many of the most significant revelations still lie ahead of us . In this reveiw, we have not yet looked at the work of Wal Thornhill and others on the "electric universe". Tidal friction and magnetic interactions are within the parameters of conventional theory. Their effects on a LIVABLE Earth would necessarily be extremely small. But there is a common assumption - what might be called a sacred principle of science - which must ultimately be challenged. It is always assumed that "gravity" is a constant. In truth, NO ONE can claim to know this, and there is significant evidence to the contrary (and we will get to it shortly). The remembered Saturnian system was alive with electric effects, and if I am hearing Wal Thornhill correctly, these effects are a direct indication that there was no gravitational "constant" within the system. Is it possible, then, that there is a much larger theoretical arena for exploring collinear stability and collinear instability? Both stability and instability MUST be included in the hypothesis if one is to account for the planetary system's origins, its spectacular disruption, it's transient re- configuration, and its ultimate demise.
HALLOWEEN WITCHES AND GIANTS

kronia questions comments by Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane KAREN JOSEPHSON WROTE: All this talk about comets combined with thoughts of [Halloween] has reminded me of something I saw on PBS (Nova, I think)... They showed the mummies of Caucasian people who lived in what is now western China... One of the best preserved was a tall Indo-european-looking woman. The items found in the grave indicated that she was some kind of religious leader in the community.
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The item that made her particularly memorable to me was the hat she wore on her head ... It was a very high, pointed "witches hat" -- Another "old wive's tale (or bit of mythology turns out to have basis in FACT!!!!! KAJ DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS: The witch's pointed hat IS based on fact, but not re the mummy you mention above. The pointed hat was the conical-appearing axis mundi as it stretched above the Venerian orb in its descent from the Saturnian center. (Dave Talbott may have a slightly different take on this. Why not ask him?) Dwardu. J. CALVIN BARKLEY COMMENTS: [W]ith regard to the phrase; "There were Giants on the Earth in those days", "Were" is the past tense of "are", defined as "previously", which implies that something which is no longer present or in existence, was previously present or in existence ... this implies that they no longer exist, although they did exist previously. "There were Giants in those days": there are none now. Fortunately, it was not stated that "there will be Giants", because, obviously, that would have all kinds of possibilities for acceptable interpretation. JC EV COCHRONE RESPONDS: The belief that "there were giants in those days" is very widespread in nature. Consider the following tradition of the Pawnee Indians: The first men who lived on earth were very large Indians. They were giants; very big and very strong. ~George Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales," 1961, p. 354. According to Pawnee tradition, this race of giants was killed by the Flood. How are we to understand such traditions? In my opinion, the key is provided by the equally widespread tradition that in primeval times the planets used to live on earth. Here's a representative example of this theme from South America: In days long ago the sun and the moon and all their children lived on earth...In those days the sun and the moon and everyone were human beings and lived on this earth. Sun had a son who had sores all over his body; he was the morning star...He told his uncle to carry him on his shoulders because he could not walk; he was covered with sores and had to lie down all the time...One morning they finally arrived at his father's house...They greeted one another but then grabbed hold of one another as if to fight. Morning Star, growing larger than his father and brothers, won all the fights ... The next morning he bathed and turned into the handsomest man in the world. Those familiar with my writings on Mars will recognize here several archetypal themes: The Morning Star as Mars; the hero with sores all over his body (Batraz); the lame hero (Samson); the hero who suddenly assumes a gargantuan form (Batraz, Maui, Indra, Cuchulainn); the ugly hero who suddenly becomes transformed into a beautiful being (Batraz, Odysseus). Each of these widespread themes has clear celestial precedents, all involving the planet Mars and its escapades in relation to the other planets participating in the polar configuration. It stands to reason that the theme of the giants likewise traces to celestial events, subsequently localized and "euhemerized", so to speak.
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Ev Cochrane DAVE TALBOTT RESPONDS: It is my contention that the different "giant" themes can be traced backwards, and the path will always lead you to ancient images of CELESTIAL powers. The fabled age of giants will echo all of the images linked to the age of the gods. The remote land of the giants will be a faint recollection of the land of the gods. Huge edifices claimed to have been built by giants will have their earlier counterpart in the COSMIC temples, cities and kingdoms built by the gods. Wars of the giants will be seen as diluted versions of the wars of the gods, or Clash of the Titans. Internal consistency is one of the crucial tests of a theory, and any suggestion that the "age of giants" could refer to a period of unusually large human beings must be subject to the consistency test. It is certainly true that around the world, folk traditions associated various cultural remains with the activity of giants. They marveled at pyramids and towers and broken walls of former peoples. Popular Arabic tradition identifies "giants" as the builders of Middle Eastern megaliths. The Greeks proclaimed that a generation of giants had built the great fortifications at Tiryns and Mycenae. Scattered megaliths across Europe invited the same idea. Throughout Mesoamerica and South America it was claimed that the massive remains of earlier cultures had been constructed by giants. Similar ideas will be found in the South Pacific. Well, it is certainly true that if earlier generations were big enough, then building some of the larger monuments might have been easier. But if this explanation is entertained, should we not apply it also to those remarkably similar instances in which NATURAL features - mountains, gullies, ridges, canyons, and rivers were identified with the former activity of giants? In northern Ireland there is the famous CLOCHAN AN AIFIR, the "Giant's Causeway". It is constituted by huge hexagonal, basaltic columns, formed from the cooling of lava, and reaching as high as 200 feet or so. Native tradition claimed that these were built by a race of giants as a means of crossing the Irish Sea. In fact this kind of motif is quite common and was attached to the natural formation called the "Bridge of the Gods" on the Columbia River not all that far from here. So there was not just one natural "bridge" claimed to have been built by giants or gods. A good place to start in an exploration of the "giant" theme would be Greek myth, because it stands in an ambiguous zone between the more archaic world, in which the gods are celestial powers, and a later world in which the gods have been brought down to earth and localized as "great men". The Greek Gigantes are sons of the earth goddess Gaia. When the god Ouranos is "castrated" by his son and alter ego Kronos, the planet Saturn, it is from his blood that the Gigantes arise. They are not just "large" human-like creatures. They are towering forms capable of shaking heaven and earth. This birth of the Gigantes is virtually synchronous with birth of the goddess Aphrodite from the "foam" of the severed members of Ouranos. Aphrodite is, of course, the planet Venus. In Greek literature the Gigantes are directly involved in battles with the gods. Often they were depicted with serpent-tails. Their weapons were "mountains" (in truth, the world mountain itself). And yet, though numerous gods were drawn into the fray, and the earth reeled under the crashing of weaponry, it is fascinating to note that it was a so- called "mortal" warrior-hero, Heracles, who slew the two leaders of the revolt. But Heracles is, as we have seen, the echo of an explicitly cosmic figure in the earlier traditions. Indeed, the war with the giants is essentially an extension of the Clash of the Titans. The Greeks regarded the Titans as "ancestors" of humanity. Their prevalence was synchronous with the remarkable epoch of Kronos, the planet Saturn. Kronos himself was the chief of the Titans, all of whom were sons of Ouranos, as were the Gigantes. At the close of the Golden Age of Kronos, the Titans fell into discord and fought with the gods of Olympos. "...And the infinite great sea moaned terribly and the earth crashed aloud, and the wide sky resounded as it was shaken, and tall Olympos rocked on its bases ... Now Zeus no longer held in his strength, but here his heart filled deep with fury, and now he showed his violence entire and indiscriminately...Out of the sky and off Olympos he moved flashing his fires incessantly, and
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the thunderbolts ... while the flames went up to the bright sky unquenchably, and the blaze and the glare of the thunder and lightning blinded the eyes of the Titan gods, for all they were mighty. The wonderful conflagration crushed Chaos, and to the eyes' seeing and ears' hearing the clamor of it, it absolutely would have seemed as if Earth and the wide heaven above her had collided, for such would have been the crash arising as Earth wrecked and the sky came piling down on top of her, so vast was the crash heard as the gods collided in battle." Dave Talbott
JUPITER'S RINGS
NASA new release comments by Wal Thornhill FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- September 15, 1998
GALILEO FINDS JUPITER'S RINGS FORMED BY DUST BLASTED OFF SMALL MOONS
Jupiter's intricate, swirling ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four small inner moons, according to scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Images sent by Galileo also reveal that the outermost ring is actually two rings, one embedded within the other. The findings were announced today by scientists from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO), Tucson, AZ, at a news briefing held at Cornell. "We now know the source of Jupiter's ring system and how it works," said Cornell astronomer Dr. Joseph Burns, who reported on the first detailed analysis of a planet's ring system, along with Maureen Ockert-Bell and Dr. Joseph Veverka of Cornell, and Dr. Michael Belton of NOAO. "Rings are important dynamical laboratories to look at the processes that probably went on billions of years ago when the Solar System was forming from a flattened disk of dust and gas," Burns explained. Furthermore, similar faint rings probably are associated with many small moons of the Solar System's other giant planets. "I expect we will see similar processes at Saturn and the other giant planets," Burns said. In the late 1970s, NASA's two Voyager spacecraft first revealed the structure of Jupiter's rings: a flattened main ring and an inner, cloud-like ring, called the halo, both composed of small, dark particles. One Voyager image seemed to indicate a third, faint outer ring. New Galileo data reveal,that this third ring, known as the gossamer ring because of its transparency, consists of two rings. One is embedded within the other, and both are composed of microscopic debris from two small moons, Amalthea and Thebe. "For the first time we can see the gossamer-bound dust coming off Amalthea and Thebe, and we now believe it is likely that the main ring comes from Adrastea and Metis," Burns said. "The structure of the gossamer rings was totally unexpected," Belton added. "These images provide one of the most significant discoveries of the entire Galileo imaging experiment." Galileo took three dozen images of the rings and small moons during three orbits of Jupiter in 1996 and 1997. The four moons display "bizarre surfaces of undetermined composition that
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appear very dark, red and heavily cratered from meteoroid impacts," Veverka said. The rings contain very tiny particles resembling dark, reddish soot. Unlike Saturn's rings, there are no signs of ice in Jupiter's rings. Scientists believe that dust is kicked off the small moons when they are struck by interplanetary meteoroids, or fragments of comets and asteroids, at speeds greatly magnified by Jupiter's huge gravitational field, like the cloud of chalk dust that rises when two erasers are banged together. The small moons are particularly vulnerable targets because of their relative closeness to the giant planet. "In these impacts, the meteoroid is going so fast it buries itself deep in the moon, then vaporizes and explodes, causing debris to be thrown off at such high velocity that it escapes the satellite's gravitational field,"Burns said. If the moon is too big, dust particles will not have enough velocity to escape the moon's gravitational field. With a diameter of just eight kilometers (five miles) and an orbit that lies just at the periphery of the main ring, tiny Adrastea is "most perfectly suited for the job." As dust particles are blasted off the moons, they enter orbits much like those of their source satellites, both in their size and in their slight tilt relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane. A tilted orbit wobbles around a planet's equator, much like a hula hoop twirling around a person's waist. This close to Jupiter, orbits wobble back and forth in only a few months. Jupiter's diameter is approximately 143,000 kilometers (86,000 miles). The ring system begins about 92,000 kilometers (55,000 miles) from Jupiter's center and extends to about 250,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) from the planet. Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter and its moons for 2 1/2 years, and is currently in the midst of a two-year extension, known as the Galileo Europa Mission. JPL manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of Caltech, Pasadena, CA. The new images, and further information on this discovery and the Galileo mission, are available on the Internet at the following websites: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/sept98/jupiter_rings.html
Wal Thornhill comments: This is an interesting news item. But it makes all the usual bland assumptions of a non-electrical universe. Last Saturday, Robert and I filmed my friend Rod Browitt (who is sadly fighting cancer at present) here in Canberra while he repeated electric cratering experiments. You won't believe how good some of them look on broadcast quality video! One of the things we observed was how an "electric wind" over a simulated planetary surface can effectively blow the surface dust off without visibly discharging and causing scarring. It can do this in defiance of gravity and does not require high velocity impacts to provide the kinetic energy. It renders unnecessary the hypothesis of high velocity impacts to remove surface material. In any case, the visible removal of surface material from Io in electric discharges may be being repeated on a small, undetectable scale on the tiny moons of Jupiter. You may also note that the craters on the small moons of Jupiter are circular! Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 18 (November 15, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SEAGULLS AND SCIENTISTS THE WARRING GODDESS ATHENA PEER REVIEW AND CATASTROPHICS SPACECRAFT NEARS ASTEROID ORBIT
by Amy Acheson Dave Talbott from the Kronia-list and SIS Review by Paul Recer comments by Wal Thornhill discussion with the Kronia-list
SEAGULLS AND SCIENTISTS

by Amy Acheson On a beach, seagulls wade in tide pools. When they come across a crab or clam, they fly up twenty feet or so and drop it on the rocks. Then they dive down to claim the tender morsel inside the shattered shell. Half a mile inland, another flock of seagulls have gathered on a lawn. They peck in the grass beneath a crabapple tree (an appropriate label.) And when they come across a crabapple, they carry it into the air and drop it on the street, then dive down to claim the smashed apple. Watching them, I'm tempted to say, "Good grief! What a bunch of bird-brains." And yet, how is what the seagulls are doing different from what scientists do? They're applying what they know to a situation that is unfamiliar. A crab is small and hard and red. It breaks open into something tasty when they drop it. Maybe the small, hard, red apple will, too. People do the same when they apply the concepts they are familiar with to the objects beyond their reach. Thus they once thought of the sun as a campfire (and worried: will it run out of wood?) After they invented the wheel, they saw the sun as a fiery chariot (and wondered: who controls the horses?) [Or was it the other way 'round? They saw the gods' great wheel and invented the chariot?] Much more recently, we've learned a little about nuclear fusion, so the majority of astronomers support the hypothesis that the sun is a gravitating fusion factory, with a few magnetic anomalies that still need to be explained (new worries: where are those missing neutrinos?) The Electric Universe is no different. We're taking a concept that's become familiar (the behavior of electrical forces in a plasma lab) and testing how well they apply to those tiny specks of light in the sky, the moon, planets, stars, galaxies and beyond. This paradigm is exciting. It holds the promise of explaining hot coronas and missing neutrinos, craters and rilles, human mythology, and maybe even galactic redshift. It's worth exploring, even if its not the final answer but only another step along the way to understanding the universe.
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In my opinion, these Electric Apples are tastier than the crabs they're eating on Fusion Beach. It remains to be seen whether they're as nutritious. Amy Acheson
THE WARRING GODDESS ATHENA

By Dave Talbott As a follow-up to the previous discussion of James Fitton, I shall attempt to illustrate a principle of methodology.. How does one evaluate the explanatory power of the Saturn theory in the concrete terms we have suggested? Since Fitton criticized Velikovsky for claiming the Greek Athena was Venus, I will employ this goddess as our test case, though any well-documented goddess figure could be approached in the same way. Our reference for now is a "snapshot" of the Saturnian configuration on the Kronia Communications website. Go to the page on the "Saturn theory" atwww.kronia.com This snapshot resolves a more complex, evolving planetary configuration into a single glimpse, taken from our notebook, Symbols of an Alien Sky. Our subject is the central "star" of Venus, seen in the center of the gas giant Saturn, with luminous streamers radiating from Venus to spread visually across the much larger sphere of Saturn. In our previous discussion, I presented a list of mythical attributes attached to this unique form of Venus. It is my contention not only that these forms are essential to the Venus or goddess- archetype, but that no comprehension of the archetype is even possible apart from the explicit contexts suggested in this illustration. These contexts include: 1) CENTRALITY in relationship to another body remembered as the universal sovereign, 2) Comet-like STREAMERS exploding into light as the Sun set and the surrounding sky darkened, and 3) the appearance of a darker or reddish smaller body in front of (i.e., visually inside) the sphere of Venus, this body being identifiable through comparative analysis as the planet Mars, the archetypal warrior-hero. The primary mythical forms (among a larger list of secondary symbols) are: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) Great Star, Great Comet Long-haired, fiery-haired goddess Radiant heart, soul, or "life" of the primeval sun or universal sovereign god (Saturn) Visible glory, radiance, majesty, splendor, power, or strength of the primeval sun Nave (hub) and spokes of the "sun" wheel (Saturn's wheel) Radiant eye of the "sun"; eye with streaming "tears" Rayed crown worn by the warrior-hero (Mars) Feathered headdress worn by the warrior-hero Shield or protection of the warrior-hero
For the sake of focus in the limited space allowed here, we'll look at two motifs - number 7 and number 10 - to illustrate the comparative test. Then, in our next submission, we'll show the crucial connections to the other symbolic forms.
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THE EYE GODDESS.

It seems that around the world ancient races identified the planet Venus as "the Eye," or "Great Eye," though the speck of light we know as Venus today does not stand in relation to another body in any way that might suggest a central eye. (On considering our illustration of Venus in relation to Saturn, however, the most common statement we receive from people is, "That looks like an eye!") In fact, the Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar, both identified with Venus, are the commonly acknowledged prototypes of the famous "eye goddesses" whose influence reached as far as northern Europe. (A good introduction is OGS Crawford's classic work, THE EYE GODDESS.) On the other side of the world, the Maya knew Venus as Nohoch Ich "Great Eye." In the Hervey Islands of the Pacific, Venus was called Tamatanui, the "eye of Tane" (ancestral great king). The ancient Chinese term for Venus is connected with a root meaning "Eye of the Ancestor." (This information came to me from Eric Miller, who spent many years investigating Chinese imagery of Venus.) And the Ringa-Ringaroo of Australia remembered the planet Venus as Mimungoona, "The Big Eye". This widespread identity of Venus as the "eye" is surely the key to understanding why the Egyptian goddesses Isis, Hathor, Sekhmet, and others commonly identified with the Mediterranean Astarte/Aphrodite/ Venus were invoked throughout ancient Egypt as "the Eye of Ra". More specifically, as I have noted elsewhere, the Egyptian language implies a SMALLER orb appearing squarely in the center of a LARGER sphere. The texts describe the Eye shining "with splendors on the forehead of Ra". (The "splendors" of the Eye must be understood in substantive terms, as the streamers radiating from central orb; see #4 above.) It is also worth noting that the respected Egyptologist Rudolf Anthes investigated the Egyptian Eye-motif in great detail, concluding that the Eye goddess was the planet Venus. Of course, he drew this conclusion without the benefit of the global comparative analysis which secures the case beyond any reasonable doubt. Immanuel Velikovsky, in identifying Athena with Venus, never discussed the eye motif, but the very presence of such an unusual theme attached to Venus can hardly be ignored in an investigation of the Greek goddess. There are at least four epithets of Athena which are suggestive of the connection to the eye goddess. Athena is the "flashing-eyed", the "strong-eyed", the "owleyed" (or bright-eyed) and the "Gorgon-eyed", Are these epithets to be taken as loose metaphors, whose precise meaning has been lost over time? Or are they echoes of an ancient theme (EYE-goddess), which the experts on Athena have missed? In his DESCRIPTION OF GREECE (3.18.2), Pausanias gives a form of Athena as Ophthalmitis "Goddess of the Eye". That alone should give us a strong indication of the connection to the worldwide theme of Venus as central Eye. Obviously we cannot here pursue all of the leads, but let us simply take one, that of Athena as Glaukopis, the "owl-eyed" goddess. Will comparative analysis give us grounds for connecting this Athena epithet to the attributes of the more widespread Eye goddess? In "Symbols of an Alien Sky", I have noted that the general trend of symbolism over time was toward increasingly naturalistic representation. And thus, in the course of giving the central eye-star a human form (as goddess), the symbolists DUPLICATED it, since single eyes do not occur in nature. Put two pictographs of the Venus-eye together, and you have the beginnings of anthropomorphic representation, a trend which can be easily documented. But something else happens. The "head" of the goddess so represented takes on a strange resemblance to an "owl" ("Symbols", pages 90-91). As shown by Marija Gimbutas and others, the ancient eye goddess does, in fact, pass into the figure of an "owl" goddess. From eye goddess to owl goddess: nothing more is needed in order to explain the owleyed Athene, a goddess who was also REPRESENTED by, or as, an owl, One such representation of the
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"owl of Athena" is given on page 91. Note that the form of the owl-eyes is precisely that which we have given as the original eye- star of Venus. Of course, to the experts, this aspect of Athene seems to bear no connection to the other attributes of the goddess. If our hypothesis is correct, that will be because these specialists have yet to discern the connection between the later symbol and the celestial object originally symbolized. Such regional symbols DO NOT EXPLAIN THEMSELVES, but are explained in the most concrete way by the hypothesized celestial form, as it is reflected in evolving symbolic patterns.
THE SHIELD GODDESS

Of all the symbols of Athena, none is more prominent than the AEGIS, the famous "shield" on which artists frequently portrayed the head of the Gorgon Medusa, with which Athena herself is so intimately associated. Is it possible, then, that there is a simple, but unrecognized connection between the "owleyed" Athena and the "Gorgon-eyed" Athena? In the general tradition, the central star of Venus and its effusion of "radiance" was the protection of the warrior-hero (Mars), who is represented by the innermost orb in the pictographs under discussion. You see this, for example, in the role of Egyptian goddesses as "the Great Protectress". To stand inside the radiant eye (goddess) was to find the unassailable position. Thus, Egyptian texts proclaim: He is Horus encircled with the protection of his Eye. My refuge is my Eye, my protection is my Eye. But while Egyptologists acknowledge the identity of Eye and goddess, they have nothing to tell us about the meaning of this enigmatic language. What, then, was the "protection" enjoyed by the hero, when he occupied that desired position INSIDE the eye? It was nothing other than the jetting of luminous or "fiery" material outward, presenting the appearance of explosive, UNAPPROACHABLE streams. Of the Egyptian Eye goddess Sekhmet, the texts declare: It is a flame which drives away on its account ... No one at all can approach her, the streams behind her are flames of fire. (The streams stretch up the polar axis BEHIND Venus.) Similarly, The Sumerian "Exaltation of Inanna" speaks of those "who dare not proceed before [Inanna's] terrible countenance". The texts depict the goddess "clothed in radiance." And it was said that the world stood in "fear and trembling at [her] tempestuous radiance." In considering these images, I trust the reader will appreciate why translators, despite the power and explicitness of the images, do not take them seriously - they simply find NO REFERENCE FOR THEM in our sky today. On our earth, great warriors represented this protective function by duplicating the image on their shields. I have given an example on page 92, which shows all of the hypothesized components and precisely replicates both the Eye-goddess pictographs and the eye form of the "owl of Athena" on the previous page. The innermost orb will mean the warrior hero (Mars), protected by the blazing radiance of the central star or "comet". All that is needed in an investigation of this sort is that one uncover the underlying forms. No selectivity is required in order to take the tests in one direction (eye motif), or another direction (shield motif). One will
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either find the precise form predicted by the model, or one will find something else, thereby challenging the model as a unified theory. [As a footnote I should mention that Ev Cochrane has sent to me a few notes on the Athena-eye connection. Until I received these notes, I did not know that Athena was called Eriopis ("strong eyed") or Gorgopis ("Gorgon- eyed"). As it turns out, both epithets will figure crucially in our next installment, dealing with the eye as the power or "strength" of the primeval sun (#4 in our list of symbols above) and as the head of the feminine chaos monster (Gorgon/Medusa) in an unstable phase of the configuration.]
PEER REVIEW AND CATASTROPHICS

from the Kronia-list and SIS Review The last place to look for controversial experiments supporting a new paradigm is in peer reviewed scientific literature. Peer review is censorship by consensus. It is precisely because science is about consensus and not truth that we have scientific revolutions. So if you want to be a revolutionary you have to be prepared to lose sight of the shores of certainty and trust your own judgement and navigation. (For an antidote to scientific certainty, I recommend: The Golem: What Everyone should know about Science, by Harry Collins & Trevor Pinch). Wal Thornhill From the latest SIS Chronology & Catastrophism Review 1998:1, p.55 A member of the audience cited his personal experience when he sought to have a paper on the inaccuracies of radiocarbon dating published in that bastion of the establishment, Antiquity. After being turned down, he persisted and managed to obtain the two referees' reports. One said there was no evidence to say that radiocarbon dating was wrong, so he had not bothered to read the paper. The other obviously read as far as page 1, where a reference was made to James's Centuries of Darkness. He then criticised that because it did not treat any other civilisation, only Egypt. Clearly the referee had not even bothered to read Centuries of Darkness. You can draw your own conclusions. Ian Tresman
SPACECRAFT NEARS ASTEROID ORBIT

News item 9th November 1998: By PAUL RECER IN THE week before Christmas, some 262 million kilometres from Earth, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft will fire its rockets to begin a manoeuvre designed to make it the first man-made object to orbit an asteroid. Andy Cheng, project scientist for NEAR, said the craft would begin orbiting the Eros asteroid on January 10, 1999. In the following months it would be lowered to orbit just 34km above the asteroid to analyse its composition, magnetic field and mass. Eros is about the size of a mountain, 38km by 13km. Its orbit
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routinely carries it close to the orbit of Earth. Scientists don't know if the rock is solid or if it is a highly porous body with empty cavities or chunks of ice. Like most asteroids, said Cheng, Eros probably formed early in the history of the solar system, either as part of a bigger planet or as a lone object. After months in orbit, researchers may attempt to put the craft on to the surface of Eros. Cheng said the spacecraft was not designed to land, but that is one option the researchers are considering. The density of Eros is unknown, but the asteroid is so small that its gravity force will be only a fraction of Earth's, making landing there less violent. But it would still be tricky steering the craft to a touchdown because Eros is so far away that it takes 45 minutes for a radio signal to make a round trip journey between the Earth and NEAR. Associated Press Comments by WAL THORNHILL: The NEAR spacecraft is due to rendezvous with the 14km by 38km mountain of an asteroid, EROS, in January next year. The notion of "landing" on the asteroid is being considered. It is not known what to expect. Is it made of ice, rubble or green cheese? The nebular theory of the formation of solid objects in the solar system is absurd. It creates ten new problems for every "solution" it provides. I expect therefore that the composition of the asteroid will deviate from expectations based on assumed primordial isotopic ratios. Like the astronomer Tom Van Flandern, I believe it was once a part of a planet. It will be constituted like a planetary mountain. It may even show signs of igneous activity or sedimentary stratification. That would give the space geologists a headache! However, unlike Tom who believes that a former planet exploded, I predict that it will show signs of its electrical birth. That birth occurred as a normal effect of interplanetary discharges following a close approach of two planets. Most likely, it is a fragment of the 2 million cubic kilometres missing from the Valles Marineris on Mars. Mars was renowned of old for his entourage of flaming meteors. As part of the electrical birth process, the asteroid will have been struck by plasma discharges These produce characteristically neat, circular craters and a melted glassy deposit in the centre of many - unlike impacts but like those found by astronauts in small craters on the Moon. Also, like other asteroids, it may exhibit a somewhat "blackened and burnt in an oven" appearance. Its isotopic composition should have the signature of its parent planet, altered on the surface by ion implantation and nuclear transformations caused by powerful cosmic lightning. Attempts to determine the density and bulk composition of the asteroid from its apparent gravity will likely give results inconsistent with the surface composition. Maybe they will need to postulate a dense iron core to make up the difference in observed densities between the surface material and the entire object just as they do with planets and large moons! Any attempt to land the NEAR spacecraft on the asteroid runs the risk of electrical discharges on touchdown which could damage the craft's electronics unless precautions have been taken. Of course, the longer the spacecraft orbits the asteroid the less this danger will be because the solar wind plasma has a limited ability to slowly equalise the voltages of the two objects while in close proximity. As an aside: with the idea of landing a spacecraft on an asteroid and all of the recent worry about Near Earth Objects, or NEO's, possibly the best way of moving a NEO into a non-threatening orbit is to make it an artificial comet by charging or discharging the object. Some of NASA's new ion propulsion units modified to emit a charged beam and planted on the NEO surface might be good for the job. The thrust would be totally inadequate to change the asteroid's orbit appreciably. However, it would change the
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electrical charge on the NEO which in turn would alter its gravity and, as a consequence, shift its orbit. This is precisely what happens to comets as they emit jets of ions and change their orbits in a nonNewtonian manner. It is conventionally "explained" by poorly defined non-gravitational forces. Wal Thornhill Karen Tackett asks: Do you know if there is any plans to attempt an orbital diversion of an NEO (before we HAVE to do it)? It's disconcerting to think that "they" might let one of those slam into earth before admitting that the idea you expressed here might be worth a try. Wal says: So far as we know, no NEO's presently threaten the Earth. Anyway I'm not convinced that NEO's pose the threat to the Earth that astronomers think they do. I'm sure that one of the reasons for the NEAR mission is to get an idea of how easy it would be to disrupt an asteroid. Right now though, unless the military crazies have a plan, I don't know of any planned mission to blow up a NEO to show it can be done. On the CD [The Electric Universe by Wallace Thornhill, latest edition available soon] I mention the present millennial preoccupation with Doomsday due to the imagined threat of a NEO. I point out that the effects are quite different from those expected because electrical effects are ignored and misunderstood. In fact the Earth has its own "anti-ballistic" system built in so the perceived need for us to intervene may be a product of our faulty science. Mr. M. wrote: So you predict its <Eros'> isotopic composition should resemble Mars'? Wal replies: Yes, if its parent was Mars. The bulk isotopic composition will reflect that of its parent. This means that eventually we may be able to identify both the players and their rough positions in the solar system at the time of past catastrophes. We can do this by associating the asteroids in a given family (I believe there have been 4 distinct families of asteroids identified) with their parent planets. I feel that the asteroid belt indicates the general area where the final breakup of the Saturnian system took place. Since then Saturn has relaxed back to its distant orbit where it has established a new electrogravitic equilibrium. Wal wrote (previously): As part of the electrical birth process, the asteroid will have been struck by plasma discharges. These produce characteristically neat, circular craters and a melted glassy deposit in the centre of many - unlike impacts but like those found by astronauts in small craters on the Moon. Mr. M. asked: Are there any craters on earth that have melted glassy deposits in the centre? Wal replies: Ordinary lightning can create fulgurites (melted sand) in very dry soil. The detailed form of electrical scarring on a solid object's surface depends upon a myriad factors. For example, both the Earth and it seems, Europa, have a surface which is basically of highly conductive salty water. It will not crater but distribute charge globally in a very efficient manner. On Europa the current carrying channels have been preserved in a frozen state. On Earth, there may be little trace because the conductor is a liquid.
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I chose the Moon as an example because it has extreme dryness and no atmosphere - like an asteroid. Because the Earth is a wet planet, the heat generated in an electrical cratering episode tends to create an excavated, explosive crater with shock metamorphosis of the central cone and little melting of the floor. Note that the arc does not impinge on the centre of the crater but rather moves in a circle or tight, expanding spiral about the centre. [Note ... : since repeating the anode cratering experiments here and videotaping them, I have changed my opinion on the direction of the spiral action of the arc. I now can show that it is from the centre outwards. On reflection, that makes perfect sense]. On the dry Moon this creates a flat, melted floor with terraces on the very steep walls of the crater and melted floors on some terraces. In some notable instances it creates corkscrew shaped craters! My new CD, The Electric Universe, features video clips of experiments which help to graphically explain some of the differences in cratering effects. Of course, the work has not yet been attempted by professional geologists to look at this new interpretation of so-called impact craters. Unfortunately, they will first have to see it happening before they are likely to believe it possible. Jupiter's moon Io will someday provide the proof by example because it is happening there continually. Wal wrote: Also, like other asteroids, it may exhibit a somewhat "blackened and burnt in an oven" appearance. Its isotopic composition should have the signature of its parent planet, altered on the surface by ion implantation and nuclear transformations caused by powerful cosmic lightning. Mr. M. queried: So its isotopic composition *won't* resemble Mars'? Or we won't be able to tell its isotopic composition? Wal replies: The bulk isotopic composition of the asteroid should match precisely some scarred area of its parent body, be it Mars or another planet or moon. A difficulty may arise from the fact that the composition of the asteroid will be judged from its exposed surface. Now, chondritic meteorites exhibit anomalous isotopic composition on the surface of the melted chondrules. As I have explained in detail on the CD, this is likely to be due to ion implantation etc. So I expect the same effect to be evident on larger bodies that were born in the same event as the meteorites. Without taking a cored sample from the asteroid (not in the NEAR program) we won't know for sure. Mr. M. asks: How does lightning transmute elements? Dave Talbott wrote something about lightning turning oxygen into sulphur. He said it was your idea so I'll ask you about it: This process liberates a lot of energy, but requires temperatures on the order of billions of degrees. How does your model overcome the Coulomb Barrier? What happens to the excess energy? Wal replies: Cosmic lightning (quite distinct from the puny sparks in our atmosphere) is perfectly energetic enough to transmute elements. The problem comes about when physicists talk of the temperature required to initiate nuclear fusion, usually in the tens of millions degrees (not billions). Temperature is a measure of the energy of random motion of atoms. But the energy in an electric discharge is highly directional - in other words, non-random. The concept of temperature does not apply in this circumstance. That is why we routinely use powerful electric and magnetic fields in our nuclear laboratories to overcome the coulomb barrier and initiate nuclear reactions. (My CD also discusses low energy transmutation of elements). Astrophysicists have painted themselves into a theoretical corner because they ignore the possibility of electrical discharge phenomena in plasma. It is not even taught as part of the postgraduate astrophysics plasma physics course in leading universities. Instead they talk of energetic "magnetic reconnection events" in plasma. These are a magical theoretical construct to avoid recognising them for what they really are - sites of electric discharges. I use the word "magical" because there is no physical meaning to,
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or demonstration of the notion that magnetic field lines can perform the trick of breaking and reconnecting. The excess energy from the oxygen to sulphur "fritting" is released as radiant energy in the plasmoid, rather like (or probably the same as in) ball lightning. Notice that interplanetary lightning is in a form similar to ball lightning and travels between planets like "a coal spat from a fire", according to eyewitnesses. If the transmutation takes place on a surface then the energy would contribute to melting and blast effects. The reddish colouration of the levees on the larger channels on Europa I have attributed to conversion of oxygen from the water there to sulphur. It was created by the lightning which streaked across the surface, ripping giant furrows through the ice. Oxygenated compounds on the surface of Io are being converted continually to sulphur by Jovian electric arcs giving the pizza look to the electric moon. And Mars, which had much more water in the recent past, has a sulphur rich "duricrust" to its soil which is the result of conversion of oxygen from that water to sulphur by cosmic lightning. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 19 (November 30, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHY THE SATURN THESIS? VISUALIZING COLLINEAR SYSTEMS ELECTROMAGNETICALLY INDUCED LAMARCKISM SATURNISING TIDBITS
by Mel Acheson Dave Talbott Discussion: Dave Davis, Wal Thornhill, and Ev Cochrane by Harold Tresman Notes and comments by Dave Talbott, Dwardu Cardona, and Wal Thornhill
WHY THE SATURN THESIS?

by Mel Acheson Not only critics but proponents ask: Why waste time on an idea that's physically impossible, theoretically absurd, and socially outrageous? The space program achieves ever more impressive feats of Applied Orthodox Mechanics. Established theories explain libraries of facts and appear capable, with a bit of ad hoc tweaking, of explaining everything. Scientists seriously consider they know the Mind of God, at least in general outline if not in every detail. When the Big Theories can explain the general structure of all space for all time, why consider that a bit of research into the imaginative literature of a short era on a small planet could reveal an entirely different structure to the universe? One answer is the provocation of curiosity inflamed by the enticement of opportunity. A logical method applied to a relevant set of data has resulted in knowledge that doesn't fit--that even contradicts--previous knowledge. The comparison at the level of specific details of myths of globallydispersed cultures discloses identical characteristics and relationships. The evidence is massive and ubiquitous. The identities-- where one would expect randomness--beg for explanation. There would seem to be only three possibilities: 1) An event experienced by all cultures: An original story. 2) A common genesis of all cultures: An original story-teller. 3) A rigid structure to human imagination-- themes (but not narratives) "hardwired": An original storytelling. Difficulties with the second and third possibilities leave the first as the most likely. The many attempts to relate mythic themes to events of daily life have produced only a morass of inconsistencies. But reversing the process-- reconstructing events from the themes--produces a singular and consistent event. The only problem is: That event is totally unlike the events we know today.
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The only objection is: We assume (believe) that what we know today is valid for all time, space, and conditions. But theory is always trumped by events. A general law is merely an abstraction until the conditions for its occurrence are fulfilled. Confirmation or falsification must be carried out at the level of concrete events. (Or, better, concrete events determine the "domain of validity" of a theory.) And the universe is much larger and more complex than the simple provincial concepts human beings invent to explain their limited perceptions of it. The event reconstructed from mythic themes demarcates one boundary of validity for established theory. It presents an opportunity to cross a frontier to discover other general laws whose conditions are not presently fulfilled or of which we're unaware. Far from being a waste of time, the Saturn Thesis is pioneering the future of science. --Mel Acheson
VISUALIZING COLLINEAR SYSTEMS

By Dave Talbott Continuing our introductory review of physical issues facing the Saturn theory. We have noted two fundamental principles: 1) the existence of collinear equilibrium positions, and 2) the potential role of secondary forces in stabilizing collinear equilibrium. In both instances, as we saw, the initial pronouncements we received from scientific critics proved to be either incorrect, or highly misleading. That situation is significant not only because our mission is to reconcile the historical argument with VERIFIABLE physical data, but also because it never hurts to be reminded how frequently authoritative pronouncements on matters of physical plausability turn out to be incorrect. Now let's move to some other issues relating to collinear conditions. Perhaps the space program can help here. To study the Sun, the international SOHO satellite was placed in a collinear relationship to Earth and the Sun (actually, a "halo orbit" around the collinear equilibrium position called Lagrange 1), so that as the Earth revolves around the Sun, the satellite remains between the Sun and the Earth. Discounting the movement around L1, you have-
EARTH SOHO
EARTH
SOHO
SUN
SOHO EARTH
SOHO EARTH
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The SOHO satellite, therefore, gives us a good illustration of collinear equilibrium and why the usual implication of Kepler's Third Law doesn't apply when two or more bodies are acting on a third. If SOHO were moving independently around the Sun, then its orbital period at that distance would be LESS than that of the Earth, which would seem to make the above arrangement impossible. But in fact SOHO is not moving independently; it is also revolving around the Earth once for each orbit of the Earth around the Sun. (Again, bear in mind that I am oversimplifying here since SOHO is not AT the collinear equilibrium position, but circles around the position described, a matter to which we will return in discussing the role of Mars in the Saturn model.) Now this brings us to what was unquestionably the biggest mistake made by the dynamicist Robert Grubaugh in his initial presentation, a mistake which he alone seems to have recognized. In the journal AEON, Grubaugh proposed an ancient system of planets in collinear equilibrium as it moved around the Sun. And he visualized the configuration holding the same angle in relation to the Sun throughout its orbit, yielding a constant crescent on Saturn. For simplification here, I will include only Jupiter-Saturn-Earth through a quarter orbit Earth
Saturn Jupiter Earth
Saturn Jupiter SUN
As you can see, in inertial space - which is defined by the background stars - the system is not only moving around the primary (the Sun), but the Earth and Saturn are also moving synchronously around Jupiter. This is where the problem comes in, and ones definitions depend entirely on reference points. To illustrate the problem you need to see the contradiction between Grubaugh's mathematical calculation of collinear equilibrium and his visualization of the system. Grubaugh's mathematical analysis involved CO-ROTATIONAL references, in which RELATIVE motions are a key to the concept of "revolution". The revolution of the secondary system is defined by its motion in relation to a radius from the primary. Hence, the crucial question: within a co- rotational frame of reference, is the illustrated planetary system actually doing what Grubaugh described mathematically? To clarify the co-rotational principle, let's go back to the illustration of the SOHO satellite. Imagine a line from the Sun through SOHO to the Earth, with the Sun being the primary center of rotation, and the Earth being the secondary center of rotation. In a co- rotational frame, what is the rotation of the secondary system in relation to the primary? The answer is NONE. While the secondary system IS revolving in the inertial frame, it is not revolving in a co-rotational frame. To get rotation in a co-rotational sense, the line from Earth to SOHO would independently rotate around a point on the radius from the Sun FASTER than the planetary system moved around the Sun. To visualize the principle, imagine a bicycle wheel with a smaller wheel attached to its rim. If the small wheel is locked into place. the secondary wheel will still be turning once in inertial space with each revolution of the larger wheel. But it will NOT be rotating in terms of the co-rotational references. In fact, in
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co- rotational terms, to get the smaller wheel to revolve ONCE with each revolution of the larger wheel, it will have to revolve TWICE in inertial space. Now look at Grubaugh's first illustration of a synchronous system. His calculations, using co- rotational references, were for a full revolution of the secondary system with each revolution around the Sun. But what he illustrated shows NO revolution co- rotationally, since the angle from the Sun to Jupiter to the Earth is retained throughout. To illustrate the equilibrium conditions he had calculated co- rotationally, he would have had to show the system revolving twice against the background stars for each revolution of the system around the Sun. But to the contrary, his illustration showed a constant Sun- Jupiter-Saturn angle of 135 degrees. While numerous critics certainly noticed that the illustrated condition doesn't work dynamically, none seemed to realize the actual nature of the problem. Dr. Victor Slabinski, an accomplished celestial dynamicist, published in AEON a critique of Grubaugh's model, showing that the angle illustrated could not be maintained. But unless I am sorely mistaken, he did not realize that the illustration failed to represent Grubaugh's own co-rotational mathematics. It was Grubaugh himself who realized this, much to his embarrassment. In retrospect, the error is easy to recognize, though at the time of the initial presentation, the emotional intensity of Internet discussions seems to have prevented all participants from diagnosing the situation correctly. I recall, for example, one qualified expert taking figures from Grubaugh and running a computer simulation with the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn angle initially at 90 degrees-
Jupiter
Saturn
Sun
After a quarter turn of the system around the Sun, it looked like this-
Saturn
Jupiter
Sun
Is this a clue or what? Yet, searching through my archives of discussion on the Internet newsgroup talk.origins, I cannot find any indication that critics detected what has now become the obvious. In fact, the simulation showed exactly what Grubaugh had calculated co-rotationally, but not what he had illustrated visually. In the mathematical frame he was employing, the J-S system independently rotates 90 degrees as the entire system rotates 90 degrees around the Sun, so that in inertial space Jupiter and Saturn have revolved a total of 180 degrees. Revolution of J-S around the Sun = 90 degrees Independent rotation of J-S = 90 degrees Total J-S rotation in inertial space = 180 degrees
This means two full revolutions in inertial space for each revolution of the system around the Sun. In his first presentation of the idea, Grubaugh did not illustrate correctly what he had calculated mathematically!
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Well, it could have been a lot worse if any of the critics had picked up on the flaw! But instead, four years after Grubaugh's initial presentation, we still find the loudest of critics celebrating Dr. Slabinski's "refutation" of Grubaugh, completely unaware of the actual situation or the meaning of co-rotational references mathematically. In truth, there was no refutation of Grubaugh, only a refutation of the ILLUSTRATED condition, with no discernment of the underlying mistake. Of course, other issues immediately arise. What Grubaugh's first illustration suggested was the possibility of a LASTING crescent on Saturn, due to the enduring Sun-to-Saturn-to-Earth angle. But if, in fact, the planetary system revolved in relation to the radius from the Sun, a crescent on Saturn (as seen from the Earth) would only be temporary, though obviously it would last much longer than the crescent Moon in our sky today. While the Saturn model does not specify duration of the Saturnian crescent, certain constraints must be acknowledged. (I never found any evidence of a Saturn- crescent moving through cyclical "phases", for example, so the effect of these consideration may be to compress our sense of time in the more complex evolution of the system). We'll return to that issue later in this series. Additionally, we must confront the matter of the Earth's polar alignment to the collinear system, which surely requires a continual precession of the Earth's axis as the planets moved around the Sun. Or does it? That issue, too, became a hot topic in Internet discussions, as we shall see. Dave
ELECTROMAGNETICALLY INDUCED LAMARCKISM

kronia discussion DAVE DAVIS: Well... I think evolution/extinction of species needs a bit ofexplaining. We know there seems to be some sort of "punctuated process" going on... and people's credibility is frequently strained by the nature (ahem) of the evolutionary directions & just how it all works so neatly. I want to know what effects differing electrical environments can be expected to have on life, on life composed of biomolecules which nearly all carry high excess of electrical charge, whose tissues are flowing with electrolytes, whose transport processes & pumps are controlled by electrochemical gradients. I want to know what planet Earth's own present 200Vm^-1 does to them! (especially on Pentecost). Yes, it's electromagnetically induced Lamarckism! (or something...) Good gracious. WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: There is a very interesting book that has just been published here, called "Lamarck's Signature", by Steele, Lindley & Blanden. (It even gives good ol' Ev a mention). The subtitle is "How retrogenes are changing Darwin's natural selection paradigm". It got good coverage on TV at its launch in Canberra. Planetary catastrophe almost requires a Lamarckian mechanism to allow surviving life to rapidly adapt to the new conditions. The catastrophe is the punctuation and a new equilibrium has to be achieved quickly. I speculate on my CD about the role of the subatomic electrical interactions in "directing" biological activity in the sense of Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. EV COCHRANE ADDS: I agree with Wal (as usual). Indeed, I meant to mention Steele's book some time back as a good sign that experiments are afoot which appear to confirm the Lamarckian position that acquired characters may be inherited. In my Master's thesis/book on Lamarckian evolution, I argued that phenomena such as bird
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migration cannot be accounted for without Lamarckian processes for the very reasons cited by Wal--a catastrophic disturbance of the environment requires the birds to instantly change and adapt their migratory patterns in order to survive. Birds, like most living creatures, don't have thousands of years to sit around and wait for the random genetic changes which Neo-Darwinism claims will allow that hardearned knowledge to be passed on to their offspring. Indeed, the currently prevailing Neo-Darwinian paradigm denies altogether the possibility that the phenomenon of bird migration can have a basis in experience or learning. How, then, can they account for a bird being born with an innate knowledge of the sun/stars and the instinct to fly to South America come winter? The simple answer is that they can't. On the problem of innate knowledge, see my article "The Case of the Honeyguide" on the Aeon website.
SATURNISING
by Harold Tresman I have been Saturnising for more years than I care to admit and have yet to find even a little bit of common ground with anybody having the most superficial knowledge of science. There are many 'Velikovskians' who draw the line at dates preceding the events in W-in-C. Challenge them by asking how a planet could get so close to Earth without shattering and they mutter! Tell them that with an 'electric universe' it did happen and they will walk away making their excuses. We have to recognise, and accept, that the only way we can break through their barrier is by proving that all the events that we KNOW happened fit neatly in a scientific world based on gravity, mass, evolution and uniformity. We know that just cannot be done. All our debates on how to present our ideas within their sacred cows are futile. Our framework of ideas are completely unacceptable...no matter what format we devise. They have too much at stake to even consider the possibility that we might just possibly be right. Their expertise, their authority, their prestige and many other considerations are at risk !! Harlow Shapley was one hundred per cent correct when he said, without reading a word of W-in-C, '...if Velikovsky is right then we are wrong...' (paraphrased). He had vision, and what is more he was actually right. Harold Tresman, PRE-SATURNIAN
PRE-SATURNIAN TIDBITS
A Note by Dave Talbott For a little over ten years I've been developing notes on a motif (and explanation) bearing on the question: is there PREHSITORIC HUMAN evidence of the Saturnian configuration? I believe the evidence is provided by the prehistoric mother goddess figure. In the earliest-remembered phase of the configuration, as I've noted before, evidence suggests that Earth was EXTREMELY close to Saturn. Visually, there were no distinct cosmic cycles, and the terrestrial sky was filled with what appeared to human witness as a shimmering cosmic "sea". It is out of this ambient "ocean" above that Saturn emerged visually. The closer the Earth was to Saturn in the collinear system, the more likely it is that Mars would not be seen inside the sphere of Venus, but partially below Venus, since the closer Mars is to the Earth, the more the viewer will see over the smaller sphere of Mars. As you move the Earth closer to Saturn, you reach a point at which it is IMPOSSIBLE to get Mars visually inside the sphere of Venus. (Of course that's why, as Mars approached the Earth in the scenarios we've discussed, it dropped visually from the "womb"
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of the Venus-goddess.) And interestingly, even before Mars has dropped fully from Venus, it is at least as large visually as Venus, due to the substantial distance traveled for each degree it descends visually. In the prehistoric phase, i.e., in a phase for which written records do not exist, I've visualized a cloud of gases enveloping Venus and Mars in collinear alignment such that, to the observer on Earth, the resulting form of two planets appeared as a "double gourd" or violin-shape (a common goddess shape), with gases stretching toward the Earth from Mars to give the appearance of truncated lower limbs. Preliminary renderings of such a form do, in fact, look strikingly similar to various bulging figures of the prehistoric mother goddess. But you'll just have to trust me when I say there's a lot more to it than this. Lateral displacement of Venus and Mars gave a barbell appearance to the -the two orbs and the gases stretching between them - and this very form merges with what are called "eye-mask" pictographs, mirror-spirals, counter-spirals, and related forms, all tied closely to the prehistoric goddess and all easily replicated visually assuming little more than displacement from perfect alignment. All I shall say for now is that I'm confident that a persuasive case can be made. But I would not want to have to make that case before there was an audience familiar with the more fundamental - and much more richly documented reconstruction of the Saturn scenario. [As a footnote, this prehistoric phase offers one of several pieces of evidence that Mars did not originally appear as a reddish body, but acquired that color in connection with a specific phase in its history. The two planets appeared as one -a grayish, or blue-grayish color represented by the clay forms of the goddess.]
DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS: Well, for one thing, some clays are actually red. More than that, natural RED clay was considered of special, even sacred, significance, as I learned this past September when I visited Central Anatolia in Turkey. For another, why not consider the possibility that Venus and Mars appeared as one (or, actually, that Mars was at first invisible) because they were both RED in color. And, really, If Saturn's earliest remembered color was also red, Venus, too, would have been originally invisible.
DAVE TALBOTT ADDS: Yes, there is no question about the sacredness of red clay or red earth (or "red sulfur", for that matter) in numerous rites around the world. But the redness of Mars, I believe was an attribute acquired in connection with the evolution of the planetary configuration - including both the removal of atmosphere and water and stupendous electrical activity. As for the two planets appearing as one "body" in the sky, that is precisely my belief.
WAL THORNHILL ADDS: It should be remembered that as a part of a dwarf star system centred on Saturn, the closer planets would have effectively been ploughing through Saturn's corona. As a consequence, the colour of planets would have been determined more by fluorescence of the atoms in their ionospheres than by surface colouration. A strong planet-wide glow in the Earth's ionosphere may have been responsible for the apparent invisibility of stars during that epoch. It may have also been a source of life-sustaining energy during the phase-locked or polar configuration eras.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL II, No. 20 (December 31, 1998)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SOMETHING NEW UNDER A DIFFERENT SUN THE "TERRIFYING GLORY" OF VENUS CATASTROPHICS TESTIMONIALS ERUPTION OR CAPTURE? INTERPLANETARY ELECTRIC FUSION
Amy Acheson Dave Talbott Various Kronians Kronia Discussion Wal Thornhill
SOMETHING NEW UNDER A DIFFERENT SUN

by Amy Acheson A paradigm shift is like making a U-turn on a highway. You're still travelling the same road (life, learning), but everything you thought of as "left" becomes "right". You see the other side of buildings and trees along the way. Everything is the same, yet different. Under the Saturnian paradigm, even everyday expressions can have startlingly different meanings. Phrases like "in a different light", "something new under the sun", or "it dawned on me" evoke images of an alien sky with an entirely different sun than the one we're accustomed to. The new viewpoints can be exciting. They can be scary. They can take years to develop, or they can come into focus in the blink of an eye. But always, it seems, there is still another insight lurking around the next corner. For myself, being involved with the Kronia group over the past two years has brought a number of sudden personal paradigm shifts. The first was at the Portland Conference in '97 when, in answer to a question I don't remember, Dave Talbott, Dwardu Cardona, and Ev Cochrane all agreed: There were no stars visible from earth during the time of the polar configuration. The night sky I'd always taken for granted was obliterated with a shining nebulosity. The second came at the Seattle workshop when Wal Thornhill juxtaposed slides of the polar configuration and comet Shoemaker-Levi-9, illustrating that the polar configuration is not astronomically impossible. A third was when Dave Talbott shifted my vision of the flood myths in a post to the K-list: [I]n all likelihood, the outpouring of cometary material associated with the 'deluge' involved a descent of a horrendous cloud of ice on the Earth, helping to prompt the mythical interpretation. But the mythical figure who rides out the storm of the deluge is, beyond question, a celestial player in the original story. Today I can't even walk along the beach on a sunny day without noticing that the gravitating nuclear fusion factory that once warmed my back has become an electrical arc in the sky.
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It's more stimulating than espresso; it's more satisfying than sex; it's more challenging than Everest ... and I wonder what insights the New Year will bring? There is something new under the sun. Even the sun is new. Amy Acheson
THE "TERRIFYING GLORY" OF VENUS

By Dave Talbott In our prior installment on the Greek goddess Athena, we noted two relationships of the goddess under the tests of our planetary model: the connection to the ancient eye-goddess, and the connection to the "shield" in which the warrior-hero finds his protection. Our purpose was to illustrate how an independent researcher might follow the logical tests of the Saturn model in any direction. Given the specificity of the model itself, the tests leave little room for ambiguity or selective perception. They are also virtually limitless. And each poses the same question: would these deeply connected memories be possible if the claimed events never occurred? In this brief series, our reference has been a "snapshot" of the Saturnian configuration on the Kronia Communications website. You will find the illustration atwww.kronia.com/html/saturn_theory.html A more general background is provided by the notebook "Symbols of an Alien Sky", to which we have frequently referred in this series. Before moving on, I shall offer a few more observations concerning Athena's equation with the central "star" of Venus depicted in the illustration. In this phase of the evolving configuration, Venus stands visually in the center of the gas giant Saturn, discharging luminous streams of material in every direction. In reference to this phase, I listed these testable mythical forms of Venus-1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) Great Star, Great Comet Long-haired, fiery-haired goddess Radiant heart, soul, or "life" of the primeval sun or universal sovereign god (Saturn) Visible glory, radiance, majesty, splendor, power, or strength of the primeval sun Nave (hub) and spokes of the "sun" wheel (Saturn's wheel) Radiant eye of the "sun"; eye with streaming tears" Rayed crown worn by the warrior-hero (Mars) Feathered headdress worn by the warrior-hero Shield or protection of the warrior-hero
While conventional understanding would see only irreconcilable natural and man-made objects behind these symbolic forms, our model implies that, despite their seeming differences, each and every one refers us back to the SAME form in the sky. Of course this would be inconceivable were no external reference present to inspire the wide range of mythical interpretations. Hence, if it can be confirmed that all of listed symbols DO explicitly refer to the form we have illustrated, the logical case for its presence in the ancient sky is settled. For this reason, in discussion of the hypothesized configuration, I have continually emphasized the concreteness of the ancient images. Consider, for example, items three and four in our list. What was meant by the "life" of the ancient sun? And what was the "power" or "glory" of the sun, so often invoked in ancient sources?
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Lacking any concrete references, even the best scholars have failed to notice the libraries of evidence bearing directly on the question. The "life" - the "heart" and "soul" - of the ancient sun god is a GODDESS. And not a goddess in the abstract, but in the precise form of a radiant star drawn in the center of a larger circle or sphere. You can see this for yourself - and abundantly so - in the birthplace of astronomy. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who gave "life" to the gods (and symbolically to the ruling king), was the planet Venus. Her star was not located in an ambiguous "sky", but precisely in the center of the great wheel of Shamash, the "sun" god, identified by Babylonian astronomers as the planet Saturn. But what was meant by the "life"-giving attribute of the goddess? Allow ancient words and images to mean what they say, and its significance is clear. It means the luminous material steaming outward to visually animate the larger sphere of Saturn. ("Symbols of an Alien Sky," pp 81 ff. Here Wal Thornhill's model of the electrically discharging Venus is vital!). In the daily cycle, as the sky darkened, these streams exploded into light, "bringing to life" the sun god and the celestial theater as a whole. The effusive streamers WERE the "life" of the sun god, to whom the goddess was so intimately linked. Remove the central star and you are, in fact, looking at the mythical "death" of the sovereign power, when his heart and soul departed from him to take on a much different appearance. Indeed, this very idea - the departure of the heart-soul - emphasizes how quickly the acid tests expand the domain of evidence, no matter where one starts an investigation. We are not just dealing with static forms, but sequences of events as well. So we should expect to find the same critical sequence apparent in all of the images we have listed above. A considerable field of evidence will tell us what happened to the streamers of the discharging Venus when the planet was removed from its collinear position They became chaotic, undulating, or serpentine, presenting the terrifying countenance of Venus as the lamenting or violent goddess, raging in the sky with wildly disheveled hair. That is, in fact, the core identity of Venus in the period of cosmic upheaval, following the "death" of the universal sovereign. Of course volumes could, and have, been written on the raging goddess, but we must limit ourselves to just one example here, the one which would appear to be the LEAST tangible and most ambiguous of the listed images, I refer to item four: Visible glory, radiance, majesty, splendor, power, or strength of the primeval sun. What does that concept have to do with a GODDESS, or with the PLANET VENUS? Well, the answer is everything! And this is a particularly telling example because even the best experts have failed to explain why the visible "Glory" of a masculine power should so consistently appear in feminine form. Why was the feminine Glory of the ancient sun distinct from the sun god himself? More specifically, why the association with the planet Venus? And more specifically still, why did it depart from the god to become a monstrous, raging power in the heavens? Though we can only give the briefest summary here, there is no escaping the concrete meanings of the words. Sumerian texts celebrate the "terrifying glory" of Inanna (Venus), invoking the goddess as "the Light of the World", "the Amazement of the Lands", "the Radiant Star", "Great Light", and "Queen of Heaven". The texts depict the goddess "clothed in radiance". And it was said that the world stood in "fear and trembling at [her] tempestuous radiance". That is what I mean by concrete imagery attached to the "Glory" in early texts. The language is significant in more ways than one. The Sumerian word for the Glory or radiance in which Inanna clothed herself is melammu. The Akkadian term is sallammu and astronomical texts employ this very word for a COMET.
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Thus, the placement of the star of "Glory" is crucial under any reasonable test of our model. Both the texts and artistic renderings locate the star in the CENTER of "Heaven" - an absurdity in relation to the appearance of Venus in today's sky But the word translated as "Heaven" is the Sumerian An (Akkadian Anu), referring to the highest god in the pantheon. More specifically, An is the prototype of kings and founder of the Golden Age, the god we have identified (and more than one specialist has also identified) as the planet Saturn. In invoking the "terrifying glory in the center of An", the texts give us the very placement predicted by the model. Of equal significance are the artistic depictions of the star of Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus, showing the sphere of Venus placed squarely in the center of a much larger circle or sphere and radiating streams of light to the circumference of the larger body. That is the true meaning of the star of Glory in the ancient world, a meaning that can be confirmed by any researcher willing to investigate the subject with any seriousness. (The fact that the artists depicted Venus and other planets as SPHERES is no small matter either, since it is flatly impossible to detect the sphericity of a planet in today's sky.) A counterpart to the Mesopotamian image will be the Hebrew Shekinah, called the "indwelling," the feminine "Glory" of God. The Persian Zend Avesta speaks of the "awful Kingly Glory" (Kavaem Hvareno) which "clave unto the bright Yima" during the Golden Age. As we have noted elsewhere, Yima is to be identified with the planet Saturn. According to Avestan tradition, the Glory departed from Yima with the end of the Golden Age, That was when "the glory was seen to flee away from him". And strangely, on its departure, the Glory took the form of a female chaos monster, remembered as "that most powerful, fiendish Drug, that demon baleful". This turns out to be a key, for we are reminded that the goddess Inanna, the Sumerian star of terrifying glory, was also transformed into a world threatening dragon. "Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land... Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation...With a roaring storm you roar; with Thunder you continually thunder". The Hindus remembered the Face of Glory, called Kirttimukha, said to have been born from the EYE OF SHIVA. It was lion-headed and its "mane, disheveled, spread far and wide into space". Authorities have recognized the Face of Glory as the "terrible aspect" of the Supreme Goddess Devi. This, in turn, draws our attention to the Egyptian goddess Tefnut, the central Eye and "Majesty" of Ra. When the Eyegoddess departed from Ra, she took on a raging countenance, appearing as a giant LION HEAD, with FLAMING, SMOKING MANE. Virtually identical images are attached to the Egyptian Sekhmet, also called the Eye and Majesty of Ra. In her departure, Sekhmet is simultaneously depicted in leonine form and as a fiery tempest - "a circling star, which scatters its flame in fire". Though we are merely skimming the service here, perhaps the reader has already surmised the connection with the Greek goddess Athena, whose acknowledged alter ego is none other than the famous Gorgon Medusa. Indeed, the terrifying head of Medusa, with disheveled, undulating, serpentine hair is the commonly-cited counterpart to the Hindu Kirttimukha or Face of Glory. Where, then (harking back to our previous discussion of Athena), should we expect to find the head of Medusa, but exactly where Greek artists so frequently depicted it - squarely in the center of the aegis or warrior shield? We are, in other words, dealing with a coherence of symbolism entirely missed by the specialists. On the one hand, we have the Greek image of the shield noted previously, with its central sphere and radiating lines of force, and on the other hand we have the shield revealing in its very center the head of Medusa - terrible aspect of Athena - performing precisely the role we should expect of the angry goddess. (Readers are referred to our earlier discussion of Venus as shield-goddess and protectress.) Both the Hindu Kirttimukha and the Medusa-head possessed the power to ward off evil, reminding us of the more ancient role of the goddess' terrifying countenance in fending off the celestial powers of darkness. Of the raging goddess Sekhmet, Egyptian texts say: No one at all can approach her, the streams behind her are flames of fire.
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So too, the Sumerian Inanna, clothed in radiance: her enemies "dare not proceed before [her] terrible countenance". These prototypes will surely explain why, in more earthbound rituals, both the Kirttimukha and the Medusa head took the form of a gruesome "mask" placed as protection over the threshold. Symbolically, the frightful countenance of the angry goddess' "Glory" also means DEFENSE (= shield of the hero in his conjunction with the goddess.) The same concept will be seen in the Gorgon-like T'ao T'ieh of the Chinese, which the leading authority Ananda Commaraswamy identifies with both the Kirttimukha and the Gorgonian or Medusa head. Indeed, even in the Americas one encounters the same underlying concept in rites of such Aztec goddesses as Cihuacoatl and Toci. Of the goddess Cihuacoatl, the Aztecs sang "She is our mother, a goddess of war, our mother a goddess of war, an example and a companion from the home of our ancestors...She appears when war is waged, she protects us in war that we shall not be destroyed...She comes adorned in the ancient manner with the eagle crest." (Compare the familiar, comet-like "crest" of Athena.) In Aztec ritual, the flayed "skin" of the mother goddess (provided by specially-selected sacrificial victims) was donned by warriors, not unlike the head of Medusa on the shield or over the threshold, the wildly disheveled hair deliberately presented as an emblem of terror - a weapon- mask-shield against all enemies. That Cihuacoatl herself was the "example" - meaning the PROTOTYPE - is all we need to know to see the link between later commemorative or ritual practices and the ancient role of the goddess. By comparing such motifs as these one will discover coherent, cross-cultural memories never imagined by conventional theorists. Only in OUR world do a "shield" and a frightening "mask" play different practical and magical roles. In the archetypal realms of world mythology, the two concepts are indistinguishable both referring to the radiating "Glory" of the mother goddess Venus when, in the phase of cosmic upheaval and the wars of the gods, the goddess took on her terrifying, world-threatening, cometary aspect. Dave Talbott
CATASTROPHIC'S TESTIMONIALS
Various Kronians PAM HANNA: I've been on this forum for two years now. My friend in the office where I work (and who was privy to Kronia posts i thot would interest her) asked me once why i was so intensely interested in Catastrophics. Brought me up short. Why indeed? I didn't have a glib answer. Because... because... our past as a species is exciting. Because i am positive that if i had been born an orphan, adopted, and knew nothing of my parents...that i would not rest until i had dug out, dug up, ferreted forth, smelled out, burrowed in & traced - some mention of them. I would have had to do that. And it would be exciting and rewarding and it would take me to places i would never have gone otherwise. That's why. Catastrophics has taken me to places i would not have gone otherwise and it's all good. Painful sometimes, but good. What it all boils down to is that i'm looking for my mother and my father. Isn't everybody? KAREN TACKETT: Because... because... I just want to, OK? Why do other people dress up like civil war soldiers and aim blackpowder rifles at each other? Pardon me if this offends other people, but I've been bored for years by a family into ... sports.
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I was lucky that my civil war re-enactor uncle also happened to be into Velikovsky for awhile... didn't know all these years later I'd be spending my spare reading time digging into post- Veli thought (be trying to figure out with my cookie jar money how to pay for a book about dead mammoths.) Of course I was totally thrilled a few years ago when my dad bought me fossils for my birthday! (He Understands:) HAROLD TRESMAN: Mel's previous comment: (Parenthetical remark here: My radical/puritan tendencies push me to keep the theoretical apples separate from the theoretical cranberries altho I'm aware apple-cranberry cocktails can be tasty...) Harold: Been there, seen it, done it, suffered !! When it dawned on me that Velikovsky could actually be right, in principle even if not in detail, I certainly didn't expect my whole 'world' to be toppled and that I would spend the rest of my life reading, researching and [w]riting. You have no idea how many times I have regretted reading those damn books. I have often said, privately and publicly '...I have a tiger by the tail and I just cannot let go...'. ...I had, I assume, read all the right books, on Astronomy and been bewitched & convinced, on Geology and been overwhelmed, on archeology, on paleontology, on you name it !! They don't come any more brainwashed than this [then] young 30 year old. But on the second reading of w-in-c I was converted to the principles implied and inherent to catastrophism. It wasn't easy because I realised it was all or nothing. It just couldn't be an apple/cranberry mix...it had to be pure, neat, unadulterated bloody cranberry. And so it has turned out to be that, whichever field of science I read, the 'alternative' ideas were there waiting to be integrated into a catastrophic/electrical explanation of an observational/realistic paradigm that actually fitted the reality of today and of the past. What I think I am trying to say is that you just cannot mix the apples and cranberries. If you keep trying the mix you will deprive yourself by always doubting both.
ERUPTION or CAPTURE?
Kronia Discussion HAROLD TRESMAN STARTS THE ERUPTION SIDE: ...it is my belief that Jupiter was originally erupted from proto-Saturn, had a little 'wander' around ... then returned, and started the whole sequence of disruption. DWARDU CARDONA REPLIES: That is, more or less, the position taken by Alfred de Grazia and Earl Milton. What is hard for me to accept here is the physical eruption of the planet Jupiter from the planet Saturn. WAL THORNHILL ADDS: That has always been an interesting possibility because it adds weight to proto-Saturn having been a brown dwarf star. The more mass the better for that argument. It also overcomes the objection that Saturn was unlikely to have entered the solar system in practically the same plane as the orbits of the other giant planets (although there may be unexplored electrodynamical reasons for that).
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Earl Milton, in Solaria Binaria, thought that Saturn was left over after the split up of a much larger body. He called that body Super Uranus. Super Uranus was, in that scenario, a binary partner of the Sun formed from an earlier fissioning of the Sun. ... The electrical eruption of Jupiter would likely have been a fairly sedate affair compared with novas seen and associated with bright stars. Which is just as well or we wouldn't be here now. However, I think our only chance of surviving such an outburst, if we were satellites of proto-Saturn at the time, would have been if we were in the polar configuration. Matter would be ejected from proto-Saturn preferentially (in Crew's model) from low latitudes. That, of course, would give rise to a similar effect to Dave's scenario, with Jupiter appearing to come from behind Saturn for the first time. You also have the niggling question about whether you should then call Jupiter, instead of Saturn, the primeval sun. AMY ACHESON CHIMES IN: Wal's previous comment: It also overcomes the objection that Saturn was unlikely to have entered the solar system in practically the same plane as the orbits of the other giant planets Amy: It does seem quite a coincidence now, doesn't it? To preserve the Saturn/Mars/earth 23 degree polar angles, you have to have the Saturnian system's orbital plane tilted 23 degrees with respect to the plane of the sun's planets, yet it looks like the direction of motion of the encounter was in almost exactly the same plane as the sun's original planets. Add to that the fact that none of these planets today actually line up with the sun's equator and we have a whole hodgepodge of angles. Somehow I would have expected a capture scenario to produce something like the "Uranus" model -- with 15 nicely lined up "family" moons and two retrograde/way-off-equator interlopers. ERIC DOUMA ASKS: It is not clear to me what you mean with "the plane" of the orbiting bodies if not the ecliptic. Did you perhaps mean to say "the planes" (in the plural) to indicate their respective rotational planes, which indeed may not be the same as the ecliptic? AMY AND MEL ACHESON CLARIFY: WE ACTUALLY ARE SAYING that the plane in which Mars and the earth were orbiting Saturn before capture by the sun WAS NOT the ecliptic. That plane (around Saturn) was tilted at a 23 degree angle to the present ecliptic ... earth's and Mars' and Saturn's poles pointed the same direction; no inclination; no seasons. It was the total motion of this system (the tilted plane formed by the orbits of the planets around Saturn) which, although not yet orbiting the sun, was traveling in the plane with respect to the sun that we today call the ecliptic. That's why it seems such an unlikely coincidence, with 360 degrees to choose from, that the Saturn system should encounter the sun at such a good approximation to the same angle as the planets which were already a part of the solar system. Harold's hypothesis, that all the large planets were a part of proto Saturn, does explain this coincidence, plus the odd fact that the ecliptic and the seven planets which orbit close to it don't come especially near to orbiting the sun's equator. [Venus 3.4 degrees inclination to the ecliptic, earth 0, Mars 1.9, Jupiter 1.3, Saturn 2.4, Uranus .8, Neptune 1.8] Only Mercury, at 7.0 degrees, has the same orbital inclination as the sun's equator. So, to anticipate your next question -- how did the earth and Mars go from an equatorial orbit around Saturn to the present ecliptic orbits? The distances that the planets traveled above and below Saturn with respect to the ecliptic (actually the other way 'round -- the ecliptic is defined as the plane of the earth's
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orbit) are extremely small in comparison to the size of the solar system. So that when the sun captured the motion of earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn, they all continued to revolve in the plane defined by the angle at which the Saturnian system approached the sun (23 degrees from their orbits around Saturn.) This is why I think of the present angles to the ecliptic of these three planets (Saturn, Mars, earth) as "residual". Like their relative sizes, similar polar orientation, and similar earth/Mars rotation rates, these angles of inclination to the ecliptic fit into the physical evidence of the polar configuration. If they were stretched out along a polar shishkabob when the sun became dominant, I would expect Saturn to have a larger angle of inclination than Mars. It does. [We won't mention Venus here: it has a wilder history.] WAL THROWS IN A WORD FOR CAPTURE: I like to keep things as simple as possible and conforming to all of the available evidence. That leaves me favoring the entry of proto-Saturn (peace Harold) and its system of planets into the Sun's sphere of influence, rather than fissioning of a binary system. If the stars in this lane of the galaxy are all moving with roughly similar velocity vectors, then the merging of the two systems could take centuries, starting from the time of first contact of their plasmaspheres. From that moment on, things in the Saturnian system would begin to change. As we know from the Pioneer spacecraft, the Sun's plasmasphere stretches a very long way beyond the solar system. This scenario gives plausible reasons for the subsequent events and, I hope, fits with most of the fascinating things you have discovered, Dwardu. The idea of surviving a close-up-and- personal view of the birth of Jupiter from proto-Saturn seems to be stretching credibility beyond its elastic limit. It may be that by careful examination of axial tilts and spin rates, we can come up with some more ideas about the sequence of events. Remember too, that the asteroid belt gives evidence of at least four separate catastrophic events in that vicinity.
INTERPLANETARY ELECTRIC FUSION

By Wal Thornhill To give you some idea of my surprise that anyone would question the ability of an interplanetary electric discharge to cause nuclear fusion, I submit the following few paras from a much longer and very interesting article in the December issue of Analog. I was alerted to it by one of our THOTH readers, Wm. Hathaway (thank you!). The article by Tom Ligon is titled provocatively:
The World's Simplest Fusion Reactor: and how to make it work.

Fusion the Easy Way-Using Vacuum Tube Technology There are a variety of other potential fusion fuels for which the necessary temperatures for fusion are simply too high to be achieved by the thermonuclear technologies DOE is currently pursuing. How do we know about these reactions? We have been doing them since 1928, using extremely simple devices called linear accelerators. Charged particles can be made to accelerate to enormous velocities and energies by means of simple electric fields By charging a grid to a few hundred thousand volts, you can accelerate protons or other light nuclei fast enough to fuse with almost any element in the periodic table. True, it takes far more energy to run such a device than it produces, but the equipment is extremely simple, and the "temperatures" achieved are easily sufficient to produce most transmutation reactions between nuclei. Let's bury this "temperature" nonsense right here and now. While you may have heard a figure of something like fifty or a hundred million degrees being required to produce fusion, in fact few researchers use those numbers except to impress the public. The units of temperature they use are "electron volts," which are easily understood in terms of linear accelerator operation. For
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every electron's worth of charge on a particle, multiply by the volts on the accelerating grid to get electron volts of energy. For purposes of impressing your friends, for each electron volt, multiply by 11,604 to get degrees Kelvin. You may be amused to know the electrons hitting the screen of the typical television set are around 200 million degrees according to this scheme, and 50 million degrees is a paltry 4300 electron volts. Wal adds: It is simply dumbfounding to realise the doggedness with which scientists have allowed the mirage of generating nuclear fusion power by heating matter, "just like the sun does", to distort their vision. They are incapable of even acknowledging that the sun itself does not meet their theoretical expectations. Therefore, the intricate gadgetry constructed for the task of finding this unholy grail has become an enormously expensive set of monuments to our collective stupidity. So, the article by Ligon is a perfect example of the upstart crying out that the emperor has no clothes. He goes to considerable lengths to describe how to construct a device in your garage, which can produce verifiable fusion reactions, from a couple of thousand dollars worth of recycled parts. I expect he is probably correct. Why, in heaven's name, use inefficient heating to accelerate ions to overcome the Coulomb barrier between positively charged nuclei? And is the Coulomb barrier as simple as it is portrayed? In the realm of cold fusion at the biological level, it seems that the Coulomb barrier is not a simple electrostatic repulsion between two point positive charges. Instead, it is a complex dance between both positive and negative charges which make up the resonant electric particles we call the protons and neutrons in each nucleus. With this model it is conceivable that a "quantum" jump can be made from one resonant "unfused" state of two nuclei to another resonant "fused" state. The sheer delicacy of such a transition makes our attempts to smash nuclei together (whether by heat or electric fields) seem like the ultimate in brute force and ignorance. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 1 (January 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: STATE OF THE UNIVERSE: 1999 MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (1) MERCURY IN MYTHOLOGY SUPERFLARES DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT? ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTION CONFIRMED
by Mel Acheson by Ev Cochrane by Dave Talbott by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
STATE OF THE UNIVERSE: 1999

by Mel Acheson Uniformism is dead. It exhausted itself fighting Velikovsky. The Gould-Eldredge saltationism punctured holes in it. The Alvarez asteroid blew it away. In its vacant territory roam a multitude of catastrophist ideas: Clube and Napier's comet, to mention only one, which, significantly, accepts myths as evidence. And the worms of revisionist theories are digesting the corpse: for example, Prigogine's demonstration of the uncertainty at the heart of dynamics. On the larger, public stage, the image of authority long associated with uniformist theories has faded. Kuhn discovered that science progresses by way of a succession of paradigms. Foucault articulated the pervasiveness of politics which the Velikovsky affair, among others, revealed. And on the smaller stage of evidence, the flood of surprising, difficult-to-explain, or downright anomalous observations in recent decades is carving out a wider and deeper theoretical channel: Arp's quantised quasars and Thornhill's plasma-machined planets, to name only two. The uniformist paradigm has already shifted. A market in paradigms has developed. A multiplicity of meanings, each with its domain of validity, allows a choice of appropriate truths for particular conditions. The uniformist ideal was a Theory of Everything, which, in practice, would have been imposed on everything and on everyone. It has simply been overwhelmed by a huge and complex universe and by the organic connection of scientific truth to the human necessity for many viewpoints. Mel Acheson
MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (1)

By Ev Cochrane [ed note: this article was originally printed in AEON: Vol IV No 2, pg 57-73. Footnotes are available there.]
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On June 28th, 1911, the inhabitants of Nakhla, Egypt, were treated to a spectacular meteor shower. As it turns out, one of these rocks almost certainly came from the planet Mars, nearly 50 million miles away. The difficulty in dislodging a meteorite from the red planet, much less transporting one to Earth, has prompted several noted authorities to doubt their Martian origin. The meteorite's chemical imprint, however, not unlike the DNA- evidence in a murder trial, leaves little doubt about its place of origin. Nor did this rock alone make the journey. To date, ten Martian meteorites have been identified, half of them being observed falls. The recognition that these rocks hail from Mars has been called one of the most important findings of the space age. Meteorites have long aroused interest, being objects of worship in numerous ancient cultures, their heavenly origin no doubt contributing to their numinous appeal. That meteorites were extraterrestrial in nature was certainly known to the skywatchers of Mesopotamia, China, and Greece. At some point, however, this knowledge became lost. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was in the majority in rejecting the possibility that rocks could fall from the sky. Confronted with a report of a meteorite-fall in Connecticut, Jefferson is said to have quipped: It is easier to believe that Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven. And this was in 1807! Reviewing the history of meteoritics, Dodd commented upon this strange turn of events: That meteorites came from beyond the Earth is both a very old and a new ideaThe ancient Greeks and Chinese also regarded meteorites as objects from the heavens, but this perception, like so much else of value, was lost to Western culture during the long intellectual night that we call the Dark AgesAlthough several important meteorite falls were recovered and described during the second half of the eighteenth century, the few men who suggested that they came from beyond the Earth were either ridiculed or ignored. It is not surprising, perhaps, given this history, that disbelief and hostility originally greeted the proposal that meteorites could make their way to Earth from Mars. The idea that meteorites from Mars could impact Earth is not new. Several decades prior to these relatively recent and wholly unexpected developments, Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that rocks from Mars had only recently menaced the Earth. Velikovsky drew this conclusion upon the basis of ancient testimony, which described Mars as participating in spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth and various neighboring bodies. In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky described the events associated with the near passage of Venus and Mars as follows: When Mars clashed with Venus, asteroids, meteorites, and gases were torn from [Venus' cometlike tail], and began a semi- independent existence, some following the orbit of Mars, some other paths. These swarms of meteorites with their gaseous appendages were newborn comets; flying in bands and taking various shapes, they made an uncanny impression. Those which followed Mars closely looked like a troop following their leader. They also ran along different orbits, grew quickly from small to giant size, and terrorized the peoples of the earth. Velikovsky's thesis, needless to say, met with nearly unanimous hostility and disbelief among astronomers. A reappraisal of the evidence bearing on the question, however, suggests that Velikovsky deserves great credit for anticipating the Martian origin of certain meteorites. And if the author of Worlds in Collision was on the right track with regards to the spectacular circumstances behind the arrival of these meteorites, their significance for a proper understanding of the evolution of the solar system far surpasses anything imagined by conventional astronomers. In what follows, we will first review the evidence which suggests that these meteorites are actually from Mars. We will then summarize and briefly examine the various theories as to how the rocks came to be expelled from the red planet and make their way to the Earth. Then we will return to Velikovsky's thesis of
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planetary catastrophism, offering further support for the idea that Mars only recently moved in very close proximity to the Earth, raining forth extraterrestrial debris of one form or another, including fiery bolides.
THE SNC-METEORITES
The SNC-meteorites take their name from Shergotty, Nakhla and Chassigny, three different but closely related achondritic classes of igneous rock. The basaltic shergottites resemble eucrites in mineralogy and are regarded as the product of volcanic flows (lavas). Their name derives from Shergotty, India, the scene in 1865 of the fall of several meteorites. Included in this class are the following meteorites: Shergotty, Zagami, EET79001, ALH77005, and LEW88516, the latter two bodies being Lherzolites. The nakhlites, on the other hand, are pyroxenites consisting mainly of augite. They received their name from an Egyptian site-El Nakhla el Baharia-where over 40 stones fell in 1911. Included in this class are the following rocks: Nakhla, Lafayette, and Governador Valadares. The lone Chassigny meteorite is a dunite consisting mainly of iron-rich olivine. It fell in France in 1815. The tenth Martian rock, ALH84001, has only recently been identified as Martian in nature. It is a cataclastic, coarse-grained orthopyroxenite and is thought to have properties unique among these bodies. Although visually dissimilar, the three classes of meteorites share numerous features in common. Most of these rocks contain iron-rich silicates and iron oxides, clear evidence that they were created in a rather iron-rich environment. And all of the SNCs show very similar oxygen-isotope compositions, these abundances being distinct from those characteristic of the Earth or Moon. The SNCs are also similar in their relatively young ages. By measuring the decay products of various radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks, it is thought to be possible to determine how long ago the rocks solidifed. Known as the crystallization age, the measures obtained for the Nahklites and Chassigny were on the order of ~1.3 billion years, compared to the 4.4 to 4.6 Gyr typical of meteorites of the igneous variety. This age is unique among all meteorites-the youngest lunar meteorites are > 3.0 Gyr- and clearly marks these particular rocks as anomalous. Inasmuch as it is commonly believed that only planets could retain the high internal temperatures necessary to produce magmas billions of years after accretion, a planet was sought as the parent of these particular meteorites. According to Dodd, these crystallization age analyses have "shown beyond reasonable doubt that all of them [the SNCs] come from the same body, certainly a planet and probably Mars." The SNCs also share high volatile contents. This feature likewise supports the hypothesis that these bodies originated on a large body with a gravitational field great enough to retain volatiles. For various reasons, a body larger than the Moon is believed to be required. Rare earth element analysis can also be brought to bear on the question of the meteorites' place of origin. It indicates the presence of garnet materials in the source region of the shergottites, which suggests a source region pressure of >40 kbars, consistent with the view that the SNC parent body was likely larger than the Moon. Several other characteristics of these rocks are of interest. The individual minerals show some disturbance at ~180 million years in the U-Pb, Rb-Sr, and Ar-Ar clocks. This is thought by some to represent the date of impact which ejected the SNCs from their parent body. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, analysis of the noble gases trapped in some of the shergottites (EETA79001 and ALHA77005) has revealed the clear signature of Mars. According to McSween: ...the measured abundances and isotopic compositions of Ar, Kr, Xe, and N are unique among meteorites and closely resemble the composition of the Martian atmosphere analyzed by Viking.

Dodd likewise acknowledges the probable Martian character of these noble gases, adding:
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...the only plausible explanation for this observation is that the meteorite trapped these atmospheric gases during shock melting. In addition to the noble gases, one of the meteorites in question shows traces of nitrogen with an unusual isotopic composition consistent with a Martian origin. Here Pepin and Carr report: Subsequent laboratory work on EETA 79001 revealed a pronounced enrichment of 15N, consistent with the isotopically heavy nitrogen that distinguishes the atmosphere of Mars from virtually all other volatile reservoirs in the solar system. This last finding was deemed particularly significant by McSween. Several other characteristics of these meteorites are also consistent with a Martian origin. One of the SNCs-Nakhla-shows traces of water, for example (Mars is known to have once had large amounts of water, now apparently gone). Iron-bearing minerals in various shergottites, similarly, are just barely magnetized, implying that the parent body had a weak magnetic field (recent measurements of Mars' magnetic field suggest that it is most probably quite weak).
SCENARIOS OF EJECTION AND TRANSPORT

If it is generally agreed that the SNCs are indeed from Mars, the means of their ejection off our red neighbor and transport to Earth has been a subject of much speculation and controversy. As noted earlier, leading authorities question whether it is possible for an impact to dislodge appropriate-sized rocks with enough force to overcome the gravity of the planet. Here Wasson offered the following observation: The key unresolved question is whether an impact could eject >10-m blocks from Mars with velocities in excess of the escape velocity of 5 km times s^-1. McSween, similarly, with reference to the prevailing view that the SNCs originated from Mars, observes that "this particular consensus is not universally held, however, because of the serious (some would say insurmountable) problems in removing rocks of a suitable size from the Martian surface." McSween summarizes the problem as follows: It has generally been supposed that any smaller fragments that could be ejected from planets by impact mechanisms would have experienced such a high degree of shock that they would be pulverized, melted, or even vaporized. Yet no other natural means of meteoroid ejection seems possible. The energy of rapidly expanding gases during volcanic eruptions is too small to accelerate fragments to planetary escape velocities, and other geologic phenomena are even less capable launching mechanisms. The conventional view is that a meteorite impact released the rocks from Mars millions of years ago. Vickery and Melosh, for example, offered the following opinion: The dynamically most plausible explanation for the martian origin of the SNC meteorites is that they were ejected from Mars in a single, very large magnitude event ~200 Ma ago. Others, however, have criticized this view. Pointing to various discrepancies in the cosmic ray exposure ages of the respective meteorites [this measure is thought to represent the time spent as small bodies orbiting in space and exposed to cosmic radiation], McSween argues that it is unlikely that such data can be reconciled with a single impact scenario. Shergotty and ALHA 77005, for example, have exposure
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values of 2.6 million years, while that of EETA 79001 is only 0.5 m.y. The nakhlites and Chassigny, on the other hand, have exposure ages of 11 million years. How are we to explain these findings if the meteorites were all ejected in one impact-event 200 million years ago? Various scenarios have been advanced to account for the exposure- data. One possibility-discussed by Vickery and Melosh-is to assume that the various SNCs were originally part of a much larger body which subsequently became fragmented in space at times corresponding to their cosmic-ray exposure ages. Dissenting from the chronology of Vickery and Melosh, McSween elaborated upon this hypothesis as follows: [In the most likely scenario] one event at 11 m.y. ago could eject a number of small to moderately sized fragments from various locations around the crater perimeter. The smaller ones immediately recorded cosmic ray exposure, but the larger ones were unaffected until subsequent breakup in space at 2.5 and 0.5 m.y. ago. In this model, ejected fragments would be in the size range of approximately 1-20 m, and the major impact that caused shock metamorphism in the shergottites would not have been the ejection event. More recent attempts to accommodate the data from cosmic ray analyses have held that three different impact events were involved. A. Banin et al., for example, argue as follows: Using rare gas data for SNC meteorites, Ott (1988) argued that the introduction of the (Martian) atmosphere component by shock must have occurred rather recently and cannot be ascribed to a 180 Myr event. This contradicts the model originally proposed by Nyquist et al. (1979) according to which the SNC meteorites were ejected from the parent body in a single major impact event 180 Myr ago in fragments large enough to be shielded from cosmic-ray exposure since that time. The new evidence suggests that it is more likely that SNC meteorites were ejected from Mars in three considerably smaller impact events at times corresponding to the three groups of cosmic ray exposure ages, i.e., 0.5 Myr ejection of EETA 79001, 2.6 Myr ago ejection of Shergotty, Zagami and ALHA 77005, and 11-Myr ago ejection of the nakhlites and Chassigny (Bogard et al. 1984). It is noteworthy, however, that this scenario involving three separate events was discarded by Vickery and Melosh in no uncertain terms. Other problems arise from the fact that the various SNCs experienced different degrees of shock. The shergottites, for example, show clear evidence of intense shock, yet the nakhlites and Chassigny do not. This is hardly what would be expected if these rocks were dislodged from Mars as a result of a single major impact. Warren summarized this objection as follows: The main argument against a Mars-SNC connection has always been that ejection off a planet is expected to entail extremely high shock pressures. Yet these meteorites, which are up to 40 kg in mass, show only low to moderate degrees of shock. According to Dodd, the finding of lightly shocked lunar meteorites in Antarctica alleviates-but does not entirely remove- the objection that meteorites could make their way from Mars to Earth: The Antarctic finds indicate that recognizable meteoritic material can make its way from the moon to the Earth, but they do not prove that virtually unshocked samples could make a longer trip from a bigger body. The problem of delivering SNC meteorites remains a serious objection to a planetary source for such meteorites. How then did these meteorites come to be ejected and make their way to the Earth? One proposal suggested that oblique impacts- upon ricocheting-could eject large fragments and accelerate them to escape velocity. Another model held that impacts on Mars would vaporize permafrost thereby providing additional acceleration to the ejecting fragments. For various reasons, these models have since been abandoned.
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H. Melosh, an early critic of the idea that the SNCs could be Martian in origin, offered a model whereby it is possible for planetary impacts to eject a requisite amount of near-surface material without significant shocking through a process known as spallation. This hypothesis has since been supported by various experimental tests and is currently regarded as the most likely explanation for the ejection of the SNCs from Mars. Briefly, it is known that upon meteorite-impact the surface of a planetary body is subject to varying degrees of stress. At the site of the impact, the impacting body would be pulverized and/or vaporized, producing a wave of stress whose force drops off sharply with distance. Rocks close to the site of impact are melted or pulverized. At a certain distance, however, the various shock waves act so as to cancel out each other to some extent. McSween summarizes this phenomenon as follows: Rocks very near the ground surface experience several kinds of shock waves that partially cancel each other. This area of wave interference offers a shelter from the full force of the shock wave. Calculations indicate that some of this near-surface material will spall off as relatively unshocked fragments and can be accelerated to high speeds. Alas, there are problems with this theory as well. According to the spallation model, the size of the ejecta fragments is directly dependent on the size of the impact and thus on the size of the resulting crater. As we have seen, Melosh himself favored a single impact event at ~180 million years involving an ejection of all SNC bodies in pieces on the order of 6-7 meters, the latter constraint being required in order to account for the shielding from cosmic rays. In order to eject this much rock a fairly large impact is necessary, and thus Melosh sought a crater on the order of 100 km in diameter. Craters of this size, however, are exceedingly rare in areas of recent volcanic activity (datable to ~200 million years). If, on the other hand, one favors the ejection of modestly sized rocks (meter or submeter-sized) from much younger sites (10-12 million years old)-the view currently defended by McSween-the dynamical problems associated with large impacts are diminished, as is the necessity of finding craters 100 km in diameter (one 30 km in diameter would do, although this represents the largest crater known to be included in the "young" terrane of Mars). Here, however, one is presented with a question as to why SNCs resulting from such relatively minor impacts would be over- represented compared with those expected from major impacts observable elsewhere on Mars (i.e., if spallation is directly dependent upon the size of the impact, one would expect SNCs resulting from larger impacts in older terrane to predominate)? Stated another way, if most of the Martian terrane is known to be much older than ~180 million years, and it is known to be the site of the largest impacts, where are the SNCs from those regions? McSween admitted the theoretical difficulty presented by the predominance of younger rocks in a recent review: It is perplexing that all of the martian geological units from which we have samples are very youngbecause geological units of these ages constitute only a small portion of the surface of MarsThe problem of having so many young meteorites is especially acute, particularly if multiple impact events are postulated to explain the groupings of cosmic-ray exposure ages. Areas volcanically resurfaced during the Amazonian period (which is thought to encompass rocks of 1.3 Ga and younger) amount to only 16% of the martian surface, and late Amazonian (corresponding to 180-Ma old rocks) volcanic activity constitutes a mere 2%. In short, the currently favored theory as to the origin of the SNCs requires that three (or four) separate impacts somehow managed to strike a mere 16% of the Martian surface, all within a geologically short period of time (some eleven million years). Probability alone would appear to argue against this view. Other problems arise regarding the meteorites' means and time of transport to Earth. For example, if one is to believe the currently prevailing view that three separate impact events are required to explain the rocks' ejection from Mars, one is greeted with the remarkable coincidence that meteorites originating from events millions of years ago-and millions of years apart-managed to descend upon Earth within a period of about a century or so in order to be observed by man.
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It must be admitted, however, that very little is known about the amount of time required to get the SNCs to the Earth. According to McSween, who cites Wetherill's model, roughly one third of the ejected material would reach Earth within 10 million years. Granted the difficulties of accounting for the ejection and transport of these odd meteorites, Dodd, perhaps, summarized the opinion of many astronomers when he wrote as follows: Just how these meteorites escaped from Mars remains unclear, but most meteoriticists are now quite sure that they did. Ev Cochrane
MERCURY IN MYTHOLOGY
By Dave Talbott Harold Tresman asked: As a non-expert in mythology can somebody tell me the role of Mercury, 'Messenger of the Gods' was in all these events. DAVE TALBOTT replied: For years I tried to find the distinction between "Mercury" as messenger and the "warrior-hero" (Mars) as messenger. I could never find a basis for separating the two. Eventually, I concluded that the effort was misplaced, that there is no distinction between the stories. It's a bit like Sol and Saturn, or Helios and Kronos. They hold the same story and are in fact the same gods. But why is one story or identity attached to two different celestial bodies? It's simply the way symbolism evolved. When the ancient celestial order dissolved, every body seen in the sky was asked to play a role as SYMBOL of what was remembered but no longer present. Our Sun became the natural symbol of the former central luminary, Saturn, thus receiving Saturn's name as well. The Moon took its name from the primeval crescent on Saturn. The star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, took its name from the radiant Venus, the "prototype" of stars visible in the sky before any stars were seen (while the very words for "star" descended from the Venus-goddess as well). All of the constellations received their names from the gods (or attributes of gods) in the former epoch. While Heracles was a Greek name of Mars, it also became the name of a constellation. There was a Bull of Heaven (pillar and crescent) long before the Bull gave its name to the vaguely-defined star group now called Taurus. It was only natural that a little star eventually discovered as a companion to our Sun should be assigned those attributes of the warrior hero relating to the hero's role as tiny companion (messenger, scribe, servant, assistant) to the primeval sun, Saturn. As a general rule, in the progressive elaboration of symbolism, the attributes of the symbolic object will tend to scale down the original story. Aspects of the original story which cannot be meaningfully expressed by the familiar symbolic object will tend to be shed over time. The world mountain was also the "underworld" river and the luminous nether "wind". But once its name was attached to a sacred, commemorative, local mountain, the idea that THAT mountain could be a river or a wind would make no sense. Though the history of the warrior hero included much more than his role as "little companion" to the primeval sun, the unique position of Mercury tended to highlight that role in its relation to our Sun. The planet can be viewed as one of many natural symbols in our world pointing back to attributes of the warrior- hero in the myth-making epoch.
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SUPERFLARES
By Wal Thornhill
The following news item should be of interest. It supports the idea, first proposed by Velikovsky I think, that proto-Saturn as a minor star suffered a brilliant flare-up. [The usual meaningless magnetic model of the cause of a solar flare is invoked in the article: "magnetic fields between a star and a large planet, or another star, can wrap around each other until they snap, erupting in a superflare."] In the Electric Universe model, what we are seeing is simply a violent stellar electrical discharge. It is a normal response of a star (or a gas giant) to a strong gravitational disturbance and/or rapid change in the electrical environment. It is the usual birth notice of a new planet. In proto-Saturn's case, the entry into the solar plasmasphere would have required rapid adjustment to the new electrical environment where the Sun was the main focus of electrical activity. As I have mentioned before, this would have resulted in a massive cometary coma, centred on proto-Saturn. And in the same way that comets have material machined electrically from their nucleus in the form of "jets", so Saturn would have begun spewing matter into space like a spinning garden sprinkler. The article also mentions the expected powerful auroral effects. These too I would expect in the proto-Saturn system. In my opinion the massive flare-up that Velikovsky identified would more than likely have occurred when proto-Saturn encountered the plasmasphere of one of the gas giant planets in the Sun's entourage at the time. Like Dwardu, I think that the simplest and most likely candidate was Jupiter. Such an encounter would allow a cataclysmic charge exchange (superflare) followed by a drastic modification of orbits. If our own Sun had been observed by distant alien scientists when Saturn flared, would they too have attributed the outburst to the Sun because Saturn was too close to the Sun to be distinguished as a separate body? The following report is based on historical records of flare-ups and it has only been possible in the last few years to resolve a few objects the size of hypothesised proto-Saturn, close to a nearby star. If I'm not mistaken, the 9 superflares identified over the past 100 years suggest that the catastrophic recent history of our own planetary system is not unusual. So the complacency of scientists about our situation is based largely on ignorance. Wal Thornhill
Superflares Can Zap Planets - Astronomers Puzzle over Other Stars

By Kenneth Chang ABCNEWS. com 6 January 1999 AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 6-Why are we confident the sun will burn reliably for a few billion more years? Some sun-like stars have hiccuped, occasionally spewing out a burst of light so bright it would melt ice on the moons of Saturn. "They are very huge flares," says Yale University astronomer Bradley Schaefer. "I'm calling them superflares. You start looking at the underlying star and you find they are really disturbingly similar to our sun." While our sun seems a constant of light, it isn't. Huge magnetic fields pulse out of the surface and darken the regions we call sunspots. Arcs of superhot gas rise off its surface and race into space. There's no
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evidence that our sun has ever suffered a superflare, and if Schaefer and fellow Yale astronomer Eric Rubenstein are right about what creates them, we have nothing to worry about. Sifting through observations as far back as 1899, Schaefer found nine instances of superflares by sunlike stars. In each case, the star brightened by 10 percent to 1,000 percent for a period lasting about an hour. The smallest of the nine superflares was 100 times larger than the largest flare that's been seen shooting out of our sun. Extremely young stars, fast rotating ones or ones with close- orbiting companion stars can create such outpourings of energy, but in these instances, the stars were run-of-the-mill sun-like, single stars. "Our sun would fit right in," Schaefer says. He and Rubenstein presented their results today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. DELIGHTFUL TO DISASTROUS If the sun ever threw out a superflare, the results on Earth could range from pretty to devastating. The superflare would accelerate protons and other particles speeding toward Earth, brightening the auroras from a near-the-poles sight to one filling the world's night skies. On the downside, "Kiss our satellite fleet goodbye," Schaefer says. The high-speed particles, even from a small superflare, would fry the satellites' electronics. The surge of electricity from the charged particles would also likely blow out electrical power grids around the world. A midsize or large flare would prove deadly. Earth's upper atmosphere would prevent the flare radiation from reaching the ground, but it would trigger reactions that create compounds called nitrous oxides, which in turn would destroy the ozone layer that shields the planet from ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light would kill bacteria and plankton. If bacteria and plankton die, other animals up the food chain begin to die, too. "But," Schaefer says, '`all this isn't going to happen." OUR SUN REMAINS CALM Scientific measurements would have picked up any superflare that occurred in the past century and a half. Historical documents probably would have recorded the fantastic aurora caused by any superflare in the past millennium. And the moons of Saturn aren't covered with vast plains of melted, then refrozen ice. "We see nothing like that," Schaefer says. "Our sun does not have superflares as far as we can tell." According to Rubenstein, here's why: Mercury is not Jupiter. Some binary stars-pairs that revolve around a common center- routinely erupt much like superflares as their magnetic fields get wrapped around each other like rubber bands until they snap. In the superflaring stars, there's no companion star, but there could be a planet. A planet with a magnetic field as strong as Jupiter's or Saturn's in Mercury's orbit could be sufficient. Several of the extrasolar planets discovered in the past few years circle in such star-hugging orbits. The other necessary ingredient is for the star to have a strong magnetic field itself. Two of the superflare stars are known to have fields hundreds of times stronger than our sun's. Fortunately, Mercury is not Jupiter, so there's probably nothing to worry about.
DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?

By Wal Thornhill NASA on Galileo's current mission:
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The plasma sheet, which lies along Jupiter's magnetic equator, is an area that exhibits a high concentration of plasma, or ionized gases. This allows relatively strong electrical currents to flow, and creates dynamic interactions between the plasma and Jupiter's magnetic field. Wal Thornhill comments: Pay particular note to the last sentence where the usual suspect, the planet's magnetic field, is held responsible for any electrical effects and we can therefore ignore the possibility that Jupiter may be part of a larger electrical circuit. I would expect that when the results of Galileo's sweep through Jupiter's magnetotail are published we will find that it is not as neat as expected and depicted in the models of planetary magnetotails. They should detect a rapidly varying field as they cut through Birkeland current "ropes" trailing away from the planet in the magnetotail. That can then be added to the plasma ropes detected from Venus and in the tail of a comet as proof of the larger electrical circuitry in space.
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTION CONFIRMED

by Wal Thornhill
Last year in May I was embroiled in a defence of the electric sun model. I wrote: The problem for the theorists is that, if the photosphere is an anode phenomenon, the boundary conditions defined by the photospheric temperature and apparent radius of the sun is no longer applicable as used in the standard solar model. So, yes, I am suggesting that the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere. The following undated news item supports my argument and, if confirmed, throws yet another huge spanner in the works of the standard solar model. One of the key characteristics of an electric star, first noted by Ralph Juergens in relation to red giants, is that its apparent size is determined by its electrical environment. In fact, it was Ralph who identified the granulation seen in the solar photosphere as "anode tufting". Anode tufting occurs ABOVE an anode surface to effectively increase the surface area of the anode to meet the imposed current load. In other words: ...the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere. In the electric sun model, cyclic changes in the electrical stress on the Sun impinging from our arm of the galaxy are responsible for the sunspot cycle. So it is natural to expect that the apparent size of the sun will vary in step to match the changing current load. It is not necessary to look inside the sun for the "enormous" energy involved in such a phenomenon (according to the standard solar model). Wal Thornhill
A Baffling New Finding - Sun Shrinks, Then Puffs

By Kenneth Chang ABCNEWS.com
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You're not supposed to look at the sun, so you probably didn't notice. The yellow ball in the sky, that light of our lives, has apparently shrunk. The person who has been looking, through camera images taken at the San Fernando Observatory in California, can't believe his eyes. Since 1991, the sun has apparently shed about 400 miles off its 865,000-mile-wide girth. "I was both happily surprised," says San Fernando astronomer Gary Chapman, "and somewhat dismayed." Examining images taken between May 1986 and August 1997, Chapman plotted the sun's average diameter over that 11-year period. The line squiggles up and down on a yearly basis. That's expected, and has nothing to do with what's happening inside the sun. The Earth's elliptical orbit takes it closer to the sun in January and farther away in July. Closer objects look bigger, so the sun appears slightly bigger in winter. Changing temperatures also expand and contract the telescope itself, making it an unwanted zoom lens and further distorting the data. GETTING BUFFED However, underlying these annual variations was an 11-year-long undulation. The size grew as the sun emerged from its last quiet period, peaking around 1990, then shrunk as its activity mellowed out. "This is not what I was expecting," Chapman told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. last week. "I was hoping for nothing. To me, it's a fly in the ointment." The variation in the sun's size coincides with its sunspot cycle. Magnetic fields within the sun drive an 11year cycle of sunspots on its surface, first observed three centuries ago. The sun's brightness and number of solar flares also vary, last reaching a minimum in 1996. But most astronomers, including Chapman, believed the sun's size stayed the same. As the sun awakens from its quiet phase, the sunspots and solar flares will return-and, if Chapman's observations are correct, the sun will puff out again. "Very interesting, if true," comments Tim Brown, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. "Gary is a careful guy. I think you have to take the suggestion seriously." Brown tried similar measurements through a different technique a decade ago-and found no change. "The energy involved in increasing the sun's radius by (200 miles) is enormous," Brown says. "It's hard to understand where that would come from." SUN STILL A MYSTERY Brown acknowledges that it's not impossible: ...because we don't understand how the sun works as well as we might like to think. But I don't think anyone knows a mechanism by which that can be done. Roger Ulrich, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, reported results a couple of years (sic) that hinted at a change of size similar to what Chapman found. But Ulrich didn't believe the sun was actually changing size. "In my case, all I'm saying is the material is more or less where it was before," Ulrich says, "but it's hotter." And the brighter sun just looked bigger. Chapman says his technique tries to take into account the changes in brightness, and yet the 11-year puffing and slimming cycle remained. The sun remains slim, according to the latest data. But unless something really strange is going on, its diameter will grow as the sun's activity perks up toward its next peak early in the 21st century. "We can't confirm that yet," Chapman says. "Get back to us in a couple of years. One has to be patient in these sort of things.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 2 (January 31, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: CAPTIVES OF SIMPLIFYING ASSUMPTIONS MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (2) SACRIFICE AND AMNESIA PLUTO: A NEW CLASS OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP THE SOLAR GAS RECORD IN LUNAR SAMPLES AND METEORITES
Mel Acheson Ev Cochrane Dave Talbott comments by Eric Douma comments by Wal Thornhill
CAPTIVES OF SIMPLIFYING ASSUMPTIONS

By Mel Acheson Our choicest plans have fallen through, our airiest castles tumbled over, because of lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over. --Piet Hein, GROOKS I was checking out the dynamics describing the orbit of SOHO, the sun-watching satellite oscillating around a mathematical point in empty space (see www.geom.umn.edu/~megraw/MATH1/math1.html), when I stumbled over a few of Piet Hein's neatly drawn lines. In order to solve the equations of motion, a few simplifying assumptions had to be made: The Earth's orbit was made circular. SOHO was made massless. The coordinate system was put into rotation. These assumptions were stated, but others weren't: The Moon (and all the other planets) were ignored. The Earth and Sun were made dimensionless points. Those are the kind of "of course" assumptions that are easily recalled. But there are more subtle- and more pernicious-ones: That the underlying theory is a law that's universal and ahistorical. That there are no consequences to our unawareness of the vast ignorance we have of the complex real world frolicking just beyond the circle of our assumptions' illumination. An apt symbol of this stumbling over neatly drawn lines is Einstein's assertion that time is an illusion. The simplified equations are solved; the simplifying assumptions are forgotten; and people begin to believe nature is as simple as the math. Because the idealized deductions work "close enough" in certain carefully-selected situations, they're believed to be more real than reality. They break out of their domains of validity and hold us hostage to their degraded logic. Those simple, universal, time-symmetric laws have no place for chance, no place for choice, no place for the emergent, higher levels of order and intelligibility we see filling the real world. Outside its domain of validity, that simplified and reduced world of ideal equations has turned out to be a prison of determinism, an exile of impoverishment. We have become captives of our own simplifying assumptions.
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Ilya Prigogine and his associates have worked out a reformulation of the laws of physics that accounts for irreversible time (see his The End of Certainty). They incorporate insights from instability physics, resonant systems, and non-equilibrium states. In this reformulation, probability and uncertainty become essential, rather than begrudged concessions to ignorance. The old, deterministic physics becomes a special case within the new, more general formulation: When conditions of stability and equilibrium actually occur (usually in "dead" systems), the simplification of probabilities and the reduction to certainties describes the real. In all other cases--the majority of real conditions--probability and uncertainty lead to complex hierarchies of self-organizing systems. The simplifying assumptions can be put back in their properly- limited places. We can break free from their tyranny. We are observing the birth of a science that is no longer limited to idealized and simplified situations but reflects the complexity of the real world, a science that views us and our creativity as part of a fundamental trend present at all levels of nature. ~Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty, p. 7. Mel Acheson
MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE (2)

By Ev Cochrane [Ed note: this article was originally printed in AEON: Vol IV No 2, pg. 57-73.] The Ancient Testimony An entirely different explanation for the presence of Martian meteorites upon Earth emerges upon consideration of ancient literature. As I have documented elsewhere, the planet Mars was worshipped by most ancient peoples. It follows that the red planet was the subject of much attention by ancient skywatchers, who regarded it as an malevolent force to be feared and propitiated. Indeed, Mars was associated with spectacular disasters of one form or another, not the least of which was a great flood of water descending from the sky. Following Velikovsky's lead-but also modifying and elaborating upon his conclusions and chronology-I have confirmed that the ancients described Mars as being much closer in recent times, close enough, in fact, to dominate the skies. Various Babylonian omens, for example, associate Mars with prodigious eclipses of the Sun. Consider the following omen: If the Sun goes down (by a Darkness/Eclipse) and Mars stands in its place, there will be an Usurpator. As a result of such reports, Gossman concluded that "Mars [was] the star of the Darkness/Eclipse." Given Mars' current orbit, an association between that planet and eclipses is difficult to understand, the red planet never being in a position to be involved in eclipses of the sun. Yet if Mars only recently moved upon a different orbit, one much closer to the Earth, the Babylon reports become easier to understand. And the same is true with regards to the presence of Martian meteorites upon terrestrial landscape. Is there any ancient testimony associating Mars with meteorites, or with the hurling of stones from heaven? Indeed there is, and it is quite compelling. The most extensive analysis of the ancient traditions surrounding meteorites is that of Judith Bjorkman. Bjorkman showed that the ancient Babylonians, among others, held surprisingly sophisticated views about the nature of meteorites. Bjorkman summarized her findings as follows:
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The texts show that the peoples of the ancient Near East knew of and were able to describe shooting stars, meteors, fireballs, meteor showers, and comets. They were also aware of the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites, including iron meteorites. While there are many points of interest in these ancient texts, not the least of which is the association of meteorites with eclipses of the Sun, we are primarily interested here in reports concerning Mars. Suffice it to say that the ancient Babylonians specifically referred to meteorites falling from the planet Mars, making such objects the subject of various omens. Witness the following example: If in the sky a meteor (train) from a planet [Mustabarru mutanu=Mars] appears: destruction of cattle will occur in the land. Yet another text has the following passage: If a fireball [meteor] (coming from) Mars is seen... If such reports reflect reliable eye-witness testimony-the view defended by Bjorkman-and meteorites were indeed witnessed emanating from or circling Mars, it stands to reason that the various gods identified with the red planet might likewise be associated with the hurling of rocks, with celestial demons of one form or another, or with various other phenomena typically associated with the fall of meteorites. And such is indeed the case.
Nergal and Indra

The dreadful war-god Nergal-expressly identified with the planet Mars-is associated with a demonic entourage in various Babylonian texts. Thus, an early hymn to Nergal invokes him as the "leader and sender of evil demons." A hymn quoted by Velikovsky describes the cohorts of Nergal/Mars as follows: Great giants, raging demons, with awesome numbers, run at his right and at his left. If such hymns celebrate various celestial prodigies associated with the warrior-planet, as appears most probable, it is possible that meteoritic phenomena inspired a portion of their imagery. Nergal is elsewhere described as hurling great rocks from heaven. A hymn translated by Bollenrucher reads as follows: You hurl the towering stone, shattering all plants. You hurl the stone in fury, shattering the plants in rage. In the image of the planet Mars hurling great rocks from heaven it is possible to see a reference to the fall of meteorites. The Vedic counterpart to the Babylonian Nergal, as I have documented, was the war-god Indra. Like Nergal/Mars, Indra was intimately associated with eclipses of the "Sun" and various other extraordinary celestial disturbances. And like Nergal, Indra was described as hurling great bolides. Indra's celestial missiles were described as follows in one Vedic hymn: Thou hurlest forth from heaven the iron missile. A similar passage is the following:
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And men have faith in Indra, the resplendent one, what time he hurleth down his bolt, his dart of death.
Commenting on this passage, Griffith-the editor of the Rig Veda-notes that: In this verse Indra is represented as a terrible God, and in the following verse as sometimes sending 'affliction'. As is well-known, Indra's weapon of choice was the vajra, typically understood as a thunderbolt. Indra's heaven-hurled weapon, however, is elsewhere said to be composed of metal or stone. Here Gonda observes: Although Indra's weapon is usually explicitly designated by the term vajra, and vajra is generally described as metallic (ayasa), it is incidentally spoken of as a rock (parvata) or 'stone of, or: from, the heavens' (divo asmanam). In Vedic hymns the word vajra is frequently paired with the epithet adrivant, literally "possessing stones (rocks) or a stone (rock)." Here scholars have traditionally assumed that this was an allusion to Indra's hurling rocks, as with a sling. Yet, whether we regard Indra's sky-borne missile as being composed of iron or stone, it is obvious that by vajra no ordinary "lightning-stroke" is meant, as the fall of stones does not typically accompany the latter phenomenon. How then are we to interpret Indra's heaven-hurled "stone"? If we approach the matter from the standpoint of comparative religion, we find that many ancient peoples likewise described "thunderbolts" as stones thrown from heaven. Blinkenberg, for example, in his landmark study of the thunderweapon in ancient lore, summarized the ancient conception of lightning as follows: The lightning, then, is produced by a stone which shoots down from heaven to earth. Meteors, in accordance with this belief, were identified with thunderstones throughout the ancient world. G. Wainright, surveying the conceptions of the ancient Egyptians, concluded that: In religion the meteorite and the thunderbolt are the same thing. Virtually identical beliefs prevailed in aboriginal Mesoamerica. If the original reference for Indra's heaven-hurled bolt was to a meteor-like object, both descriptions of the vajra-rock and metallic rock-would be equally appropriate, many meteorites being composed of iron. The planet Mars, moreover, was regarded as the iron-planet par excellence by ancient skywatchers and medieval alchemists alike. Other hymns suggest that Indra was associated with a meteoritic phenomenon spanning the visible heavens. Thus, various passages in the Rig Veda relate that Indra's gargantuan form dominated the skies, extending from heaven to earth: The heaven itself attained not to thy greatness when with one hip of thine the earth was shadowed. Griffith compares this passage to another in which Indra announces: One side of me is in the sky, and I have drawn the other down. Gonda, similarly, cites I:103:1, which likewise places a part of Indra in heaven and the rest over earth. Here Gonda points out:
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...both parts combine so as to form a ketu (which may mean 'ensign', but also 'an unusual phenomenon such as a comet or meteor'). The unusual apparition associated with Indra's ketu, quite possibly, was a string of fiery meteorites hovering over the Earth like the proverbial sword of Damocles, thus uniting, as it were, heaven and earth. If Indra was the planet Mars, as the evidence seems to indicate, we have here an apparent reference to meteorites being strung out between Mars and the Earth. Also relevant here is Indra's intimate association with the Maruts, described in the Rig Veda as a celestial troop, as "men of heaven". It is with the aid of the Maruts that Indra accomplishes his greatest feats. Identifying Indra with Mars, Velikovsky speculated that the Maruts had some relation to meteoritic phenomena, perhaps being meteorites attending the red planet. Velikovsky's conjecture receives support from the fact that the Maruts are said to shine in heaven like blazing fires, or like brilliant snakes. They were also much feared for the terrible noise and commotion they wrought in heaven: At their coming heaven as it were roars with fear. Does this not recall the terrible noise which frequently accompanies meteorites as they enter the Earth's atmosphere? The Maruts are elsewhere said to hurl down rocks from heaven. A Vedic hymn quoted by Velikovsky reads as follows: You the powerful, who shine with your spears, shaking even what is unshakable by strength...Hurling the stone in the flight...All beings are afraid of the Maruts. May your march be brilliant, O Maruts...Shining like snakes. May that straightforward shaft of yours, O Maruts, bounteous givers, be far from us, and far the stone which you hurl! A similar passage is the following: This hymn will I make for the Marut host who bright in native splendor cast the mountains down...They gleam with lightning, Heroes, Casters of the Stone, wind-rapid Maruts, overthrowers of the hills, oft through desire to rain coming with storm of hail, roaring in onset, violent and exceedingly strong...O Bounteous radiant Maruts, Heroes of the sky...
Rudra
The Maruts are elsewhere associated with the war-god Rudra, the latter known to share numerous features in common with Indra, various authorities suspecting an original identity of the two gods. Rudra is repeatedly invoked as the father of the Maruts; the celestial host, in turn, was called variously rudrah or rudriyah, "Rudra's sons" or "Rudra's men". Rudra's archetypal role as a leader of a host of demonic beings earned him the name Bhutipati. The demonic beings, like Rudra himself, were described as riding the wind, roaring, and being of a brilliant red color. Ernst Arbman, upon observing that the Maruts represent an essential aspect of Rudra's cult, confesses that he is at a loss to explain their original significance. Various Vedic hymns speak of the evil associated with Rudra's "arrows" or missiles, which rain forth from heaven, slaying men and cattle. If the Maruts are to be understood as a meteoritic phenomenon, as Velikovsky proposed, the passages which associate Rudra with the fall of rocks from heaven become readily understandable. Consider the following Vedic hymn:
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Father of the Maruts...O Rudra, praised, be gracious to the singer: let thy hosts spare us and smite down another...May Rudra's missile turn aside and spare us, the great wrath of the impetuous One avoid us.
Here Rudra is described by the very same epithet as Indra and Nergal-impetuous-as indeed are Marsgods throughout the ancient world, a testament, in all likelihood, to the irascible and fickle nature typically accorded the red planet. A similar passage reads as follows: To Rudra we bring these songs, whose bow is firm and strong, the self-dependent God with swiftly-flying shafts...the Conqueror whom none may overcome, armed with sharp-pointed weapons: may he hear our call...May thy bright arrow which, shot down by thee from heaven, flieth upon the earth, pass us uninjured by...Slay us not, nor abandon us, O Rudra. Apparent here is the ominous specter of the god, dealing out death indiscriminately with his heavenhurled shafts or "arrows". Yet another passage from the Rig Veda: To the strong Rudra bring we these our songs of praise, to him the Lord of Heroes, ...Him with the braided hair we call with reverence down, the wild-boar of the sky, the red, the dazzling shape...To him the Marut's father...Far be thy dart that killeth men or cattle: thy bliss be with us, O thou Lord of Heroes. Throughout the Rig Veda and later Vedic tradition, Rudra's malefic nature is everywhere apparent. Macdonell summarizes this aspect of his cult as follows: Malevolence is frequently attributed to Rudra in the R.V.; for the hymns addressed to him chiefly express fear of his terrible shafts and deprecation of his wrath. He is implored not to slay or injure...to avert his great malevolence and his bolt from his worshippers...His ill will and anger are deprecated...He once even receives the epithet 'man-slaying' [as does Ares and many another Martian god]...Rudra's malevolence is still more prominent in the later Vedic texts...He is invoked not to assail his worshippers with celestial fire and to cause the lightning to descend elsewhere. He is even said to assail with fever, cough, and poison...Even the gods were afraid of the strung bow and the arrows of Rudra, lest he should destroy them. Under the name of Mahadeva he is said to slay cattle...His hosts, which attack man and beast with disease and death receive the bloody entrails of the victim...as their peculiar share of the sacrifice. Who or what, then, is Rudra? As the red boar of heaven, Rudra is to be identified with the planet Mars. His very name reflects his color-unique among the planets and relatively rare among prominent celestial bodies-the most likely etymology tracing it to an ancient word for "red" or "ruddy". As I have documented elsewhere, numerous ancient gods identified with Mars were named with a word signifying "red". Here the Celtic war-god Rudiobus offers a case in point, identified by the ancients with the Latin god Mars and sharing a root in common with Rudra. It is also noteworthy that Rudra's darts are specifically associated with the death of cattle, the very calamity associated with Martian meteorites in Babylonian omens. Indeed, Rudra's intimate association with the destruction of cattle was proverbial in Vedic and later Indian tradition. How are we to interpret Rudra's involvement with the death of cattle? Although it is probable that much of the bovine imagery associated with the escapades of Rudra/Mars is celestial in nature - witness the universality of the Bull of Heaven motive- it is not impossible that Martian meteorites actually discomfited terrestrial cattle. Support for this conjecture comes from the fact that one of the stones which fell at Shergotty is said to have killed a dog.
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It is also significant that Rudra is intimately associated with the onset of sickness and pestilence. As I have documented elsewhere, the planet Mars was associated with pestilence throughout the ancient world. Here the pestilence-bringing "arrows" of Rudra offer a striking parallel to those associated with other Martian gods-the Greek Apollo, for example. In light of the Vedic hymns crediting Rudra's bolides with the destruction of cattle and the onset of disease, the possibility presents itself that Martian meteorites brought unusual pathogens in their wake, afflicting cattle as well as man. Whether there is any truth to this conjecture is difficult to say apart from the finding of pathogens in future Mars explorations, but it is intriguing to find that the idea that meteorites could produce sickness or pestilence is surprisingly widespread. Thus, in his discussion of the folklore surrounding meteorites Frazer cites the Namaqua tribe of Africa, who "are greatly afraid of the meteor which is vulgarly called a falling star, for they consider it a sign that sickness is coming upon the cattle, and to escape it they will immediately drive them to some other parts of the country. They call out to the star how many cattle they have, and beg of it not to send sickness." This Namaquan prayer bears comparison with the Vedic prayers offered Rudra. And once again we recall the Babylonian omen associated with the planet Mars: If in the sky a meteor (train) from a planet [Mustabarru mutanu=Mars] appears: destruction of cattle will occur in the land.
Conclusion
In this essay we have reviewed two radically different theories in an attempt to explain the anomaly presented by the finding of Mars-rocks upon the Earth. The first, which we may term the conventional theory, speculates that one or several major meteoritic impacts upon Mars dislodged rocks from its surface-in the case of the nakhlites and Chassigny, without shocking the rocks to any significant extentwhereupon they began their long voyage towards Earth. These impacts are thought to have occurred many millions of years ago (two to two hundred, depending on various interpretations of the conflicting radiometric data presented by the meteorites in question). According to this scenario, the handful of SNCs witnessed to have fallen to Earth in the past century and a half arrived millions of years after their ejection off the red planet, these small rocks enduring the 50 million mile odyssey through space practically unscathed. A central tenet of the conventional theory, it goes without saying, holds that Mars has always moved upon its present orbit since it congealed from the primordial soup that was to become the solar system several billion years ago. A wholly different explanation for the finding of Martian meteorites on terrestrial landscape results from a catastrophist theory of the recent history of the solar system. According to Velikovsky, the planet Mars only recently moved in close proximity to the Earth, participating in several spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth and its planetary neighbors. During these cataclysmic events, Mars was seen to hurl great bolides towards Earth, the capture of which was presumably made easy by the near passage of the red planet. If Velikovsky's thesis is valid, the prospect of finding Mars-rocks upon the Earth is readily understandable-nay inevitable. Velikovsky's theory, as we have seen, rests upon ancient testimony from around the world. At the heart of the controversy surrounding his ideas lies the simple question: Can we, or can we not, take seriously the ancient reports surrounding the respective planets? As we have documented here and elsewhere, ancient testimony corroborates Velikovsky's general thesis of planetary-catastrophism again and again, often in more dramatic fashion than the pioneer himself ever realized. Thus, eyewitness reports of Martian meteorites falling to Earth-far from being confined to the last 150 years-actually go back several thousand years.
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SACRIFICE AND AMNESIA

By Dave Talbott A couple of comments recently concerning sacrifice and the phenomenon of amnesia have, I think, inverted the truth of the matter. Velikovsky spoke of amnesia in the wake of cosmic catastrophe. The memory of terrifying events, he suggested, was repressed because humankind could not deal with the depth of the trauma. Therefore, we could not recognize the true source of our own urge to act out cosmic violence. Here is an alternative way of viewing cosmic catastrophe and the role of amnesia. We did not forget the world falling out of control, but remembered these events to the point of obsession. The entire sweep of ritual activity at the dawn of civilization shows a preoccupation with the dramas of creation, destruction and renewal. Ritual practices were, in fact, a deliberate exercise in remembering. But this preoccupation, expressing a sense of universal rupture, could only foster a *forgetfulness* at the deepest level of human awareness - that level at which one recognizes the kinship of all life, the brotherhood of man, the unity of creation. From the dawn of civilization onward, ancient ritual is filled with mnemonic devices. It is filled with the symbols of catastrophe. Nowhere in the world can you find an early culture that did not look back to the age of the gods in wonder and terror. But fixation on the past is the one thing *certain* to obstruct human awareness at the level of spiritual connectedness. In one form or another, all of the early religions cultivated the principle of sacrifice. If sacrifice entails "the failure of amnesia," as has been suggested, then the failure was complete from the very beginning, and the amnesia concept is essentially irrelevant. But there is another sense in which one could say that sacrifice *means* amnesia. In the elaborated memories of the Golden Age or ancestral paradise, there is no sacrifice, no war, no sickness or death, no division of nation against nation, and no division of language between man and animal, or between man and man. And thus, no need for ritual cleansing or defense. Whatever the natural conditions may have been during this celebrated epoch, they were sufficient to plant in collective memory a root metaphor for benevolent creation, cosmic harmony, and the unity of life, a discernment of "*that* place," *that* time" now standing outside of human perception, but to which philosophy, mysticism, moral teaching and higher religion would seek to direct human attention. In the wake of catastrophe, the ancestral paradise is certainly not forgotten, since the yearning for paradise is an overarching motive. But the eruption of sacrificial rites speaks volumes for forgetfulness in its deepest spiritual sense. The direct human response to catastrophe is a rush to "renew" the world through ritual practices, but it is not the world of kinship that is achieved; it is the world of division and of combat, of relentless bargaining with the gods. In the fixation on catastrophe, we ratified a human perception of our relationship to creation. We saw huge and terrifying forces outside ourselves, and clouds of chaos. Cosmic catastrophe was the proof of rupture. The world was not a safe place, and the gods could not be trusted except in the most tentative sense, under conditions which must be re-created by rites of sacrifice. The emerging consciousness was driven toward ritual forms of cleansing, purifying, and renewing the world, whereas, under the analogy of the Golden Age, no such renewal was necessary. The principle of sacrifice must be considered against the collective contest with chaos. Wherever you look in the ancient world you will see the sense of threat, the shadow of catastrophe, the ever-present "fiends of darkness" (chaos clouds) whose invasion is always imminent. While many forms of sacrifice involved the slaughter of animal and human victims, the broader concept included a vast range of rites in which the practitioners deliberately "gave up" something to the gods, to purchase something in return. Offerings of food and
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possessions, various forms of abstinence and renunciation, scarification and bloodletting, circumcision, castration and shaving the head were all included in the bargain. I think the purpose is clear. It was to secure a truce with the gods, a new lease on life, to make the world whole again, however tentative the bargain . That is the fundamental meaning of sacrifice - "to make holy." Under this kind of contract with the gods, there can be no holiness without some form of loss, even if someone else, a "scapegoat," is preferred. That this sense of necessity attached itself to THINGS REMEMBERED should not be overlooked. If the Golden Age provided later philosophy with one analogy, cosmic catastrophe provided another - confirming a universal rupture - and in its ritualized repetition, it would continue to feed the most profound sense of conflict, insufficiency, and danger, inviting the deeper form of forgetfulness, without which the investment in sacrifice could not have arisen.
PLUTO: A NEW CLASS OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP

Comments by Eric Douma Clark Whelton posted from CCNet Digest: Just to make the debate a little more interesting, some people even argue that Pluto has actually shown itself to be an active comet. When it reached perihelion, sublimation for its surface gave rise to an extensive temporary atmosphere (a coma), which is recondensing as Pluto moves away from the Sun. If you really wanted to be difficult you could suggest that Pluto should be renamed C/1930 B1 (Thombaugh), or C/1930 B1 (Pluto) - it could not be a periodic comet unless the rule [is waived] stating that only objects of less than 200 years orbital period should be designated as a periodic comet. This was the solution adopted for Chiron which is now designated both (2060) Chiron (as an asteroid) and as 95P/Chiron (as a periodic comet observed now at three perihelion passages since 1895 and at no less than 29 oppositions). If the same rule were followed for Pluto, it would become 141P/Pluto, always supposing that the 200-year period rule could be waived. Such a solution would certainly maintain Pluto's name and give it a special status. The objection here is that comets and planets are clearly different type of object, whilst asteroids and planets are generically similar - to have an object classed as comet and planet would take us back to the days of Velikovsky. ERIC DOUMA comments: Well, well, wouldn't you know it!! Planets can definitely show cometary features. Mind you, the last sentence only means that the person in question does not even understand that for Velikovsky to be brought back into the limelight it is not required that they "class" the object both as comet and planet. With this very report Velikovsky is brought back into consideration because his theory does not require that what the ancients saw was in fact a comet as they are classed by modern science. So, here then is finally some acknowledged prove that Velikovsky's (and previous catastrophists') "planetary size 'comet' on highly errant path" scenario is possible, and is in fact still occurring in the solar system today. I find it a little disingenuous for this person to object to Velikovsky's theory based on the fact that the ancients (because they didn't know better) called the object a comet because that is what it looked like, in the very report about modern astronomy's uncertainty about how to classify an object that looks like a comet and is characteristically exactly the same as the object the ancients saw. Seems to me that it is fair to say that if modern astronomers can be 'fooled' into thinking about it as a comet, it is certainly at least as reasonable to suggest that ancient people with much less astronomical information could properly think of such an object as a comet. This implicates Velikovsky no matter how the Pluto is classed in the end.
THE SOLAR GAS RECORD IN LUNAR SAMPLES AND METEORITES

Comments by Wal Thornhill
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Thanks to Clark Whelton for posting the appended news item. Velikovsky claimed that the lunar surface would show evidence of implantation of gases from the atmosphere of Mars, in particular showing an enhancement of the so-called noble gases. The following report tends to support the idea that the Moon's environment was different in the past, whether due to ion implantation from gases from Mars' atmosphere and/or the Moon having existed elsewhere, independent of the present Sun. The problem for the solar nebular accretion theory for the formation of planets is that none of the terrestrial planets show evidence of a major component of primordial or captured solar- composition gases. This is not surprising if we have only recently become members of the Sun's family. We need to determine the isotopic ratios of the noble gases in the atmosphere of Saturn to possibly advance that proposal from the Saturnists. Even then, we have to recognise that in the process of the violent electrical disruption of proto-Saturn that nuclear transformations will take place, distorting the usual isotopic ratios. Chondritic meteorites show evidence of such anomalies, giving rise to implausible ad-hoc notions of a nearby supernova explosion happening just at the time the meteorites were condensing from gas and dust. It is far simpler to argue that meteorites are formed in powerful planetary discharges. As for the Moon, I have argued before that capture is much more likely in the Electric Universe model. And the Moon would look completely at home if it were placed among the large moons of the gas-giant planets. So my bet is that the Moon was most likely a part of the Saturnian wagon train, captured by the Earth after the breakup of that train. The evidence reported below seems concordant with that view. Wal Thornhill
THE SOLAR GAS RECORD IN LUNAR SAMPLES AND METEORITES

R. Wieler: The solar noble gas record in lunar samples and meteorites. SPACE SCIENCE REVIEWS, 1998, Vol.85, No.1-2, pp.303-314 ETH ZURICH, ISOTOPE GEOL, NO C61, CH-8092 ZURICH, SWITZERLAND Lunar soil and certain meteorites contain noble gases trapped from the solar wind at various times in the past. The progress in the last decade to decipher these precious archives of solar history is reviewed. The samples appear to contain two solar noble gas components with different isotopic composition. The solar wind component resides very close to grain surfaces and its isotopic composition is identical to that of present-day solar wind. Experimental evidence seems by now overwhelming that somewhat deeper inside the grains there exists a second, isotopically heavier component. To explain the origin of this component remains a challenge, because it is much too abundant to be readily reconciled with the known present day flux of solar particles with energies above those of the solar wind. The isotopic composition of solar wind noble gases may have changed slightly over the past few Ga, but such a change is not firmly established. The upper limit of similar to 5% per Ga for a secular increase of the He-3/He-4 ratio sets stringent limits on the amount of He that may have been brought from the solar interior to the surface (cf. Bochsler, 1992). Relative abundances of He, Ne, and Ar in present-day solar wind are the same as the long term average recorded in metallic Fe grains in meteorites within error limits of some 15-20%. Xe, and to a lesser extent Kr, are enriched in the solar wind similar to elements with a first ionisation potential < 10 eV, although Kr and Xe have higher FIPs. This can be explained if the ionisation time governs the FIP effect (Geiss and Bochsler, 1986). Copyright 1999, Institute for Scientific Information Inc.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 4 (February 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE BENEFITS OF CATASTROPHE ARE UNDERAPPRECIATED THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE POLAR CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION HISTORICAL ANALOGY ELECTRIC STAR COMMENTARY
by Mel Acheson by Wallace Thornhill reviewed by Amy Acheson from kroniatalk by Duane Vorhees by Wal Thornhill
THE BENEFITS OF CATASTROPHE ARE UNDERAPPRECIATED

By Mel Acheson People who have never sailed on anything but perfectly calm seas will think it ridiculous that their decks or their stomachs could heave. So it's to be expected that people today, having never seen anything but the calm sailing of the planets around the sun, should dismiss as impossible claims of a stormy solar system. It's easy to interpret the testimonies of ancient peoples as the ravings of a febrile imagination that peculiarly afflicted them. It's only a bit more difficult to shrug off or to explain away the ruins and the scars of the storm as we and our space probes pick our way through its aftermath. But the scars on our souls, passed down from parent to child, institutionalized, acculturated, perplex and plague us. The normal and the neurotic intertwine and become indistinguishable. The best intentions produce the worst consequences. Great evils are perpetrated by people who have good reasons. Catastrophics won't cure this. As Freud discovered and Reich explored, merely becoming aware of the primal trauma doesn't heal the wound. Healing comes from discharging the fixated energy, relaxing the muscular (and character and cultural) armoring. It takes time and effort. But catastrophics can provide a conceptual framework to facilitate healing. It can assuage the guilt: The primal trauma was no one's fault. It can liberate response-ability: We have the ability to respond with healing. It can calm the fear: Premonitions of millennial doom are projections of past instabilities. It can focus attention on the present: The success of uniformist theories in explaining present conditions reassures us that "its over". And it can elicit an unexpected insight: Not only did we survive, not only are we healing, but the artistic creativity natural to human beings has converted-is converting-the trauma and its scars into textures of meaning and truth transcending the accidents of nature. Literature, paintings, dramas, and music come easily to mind. The sciences-which were considered arts until recent times-must also be included. We are neither victims nor imitators of catastrophe but artisans creating aesthetic meaning from the chaotic and inchoate raw materials of matter and events. And underlying this is the implication that catastrophes may have driven, perhaps even generated, our creativity, our consciousness, our species. Whether born of catastrophe or matured by it, we can
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transcend the cramp of egocentrism that reduces us to whining and embrace the opportunities of creating lives that connect with a universe of vitality. The benefits of catastrophe are underappreciated. Mel Acheson
THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD

by Wallace Thornhill review by Amy Acheson Wallace Thornhill's CD offers a visual invitation to toss aside the straightjacket of paradigm paralysis and explore the universe from an electric point of view. He covers an enormous range of phenomena, from subatomic particles through stellar and galactic evolution, floodlighting our understanding of the universe with insights garnered from mythical symbols, space probes, and plasma lab experiments. As an illustration, let me compare the received explanation with Thornhill's electric explanation for the tail of Halley's Comet, both presented in light of photographs returned by the ESA spacecraft Giotto in March, 1986. The standard theory states that "Comets grow tails only when they get warm enough for ice and dust to boil off ... on the [sunward side], jets of gas and dust spurt from active holes in its [the comet's] surface and are illuminated by the sun." (THE GREAT COMET CRASH, Spencer and Mitton, pg. 2) Thornhill's electrical theory of the same data begins with "The fly-by of Comet Halley didn't show material being boiled away, instead it showed plasma beams centered on craters facing the sun. What we saw were circular craters being formed right in front of the Giotto cameras - producing the same kind of scarring seen on asteroids and moons. It was confirmed by the discovery of x-rays and high energy ions near the nucleus that the material was being electrically removed. " [THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE CD, pg. 43] Thornhill goes on to discuss non-gravitational orbital anomalies of comets, then challenges received opinion that a comet is defined by its size and composition. He claims instead that it is the eccentricity of the orbit of a celestial body, moving it into regions of increasing electrical stress, which creates the visible tail. "A planet on such an orbit would put on a spectacular cometary display." Thornhill was first motivated to leave the comfortable highway of orthodox astronomy and explore the lonely outback of a new paradigm by reading Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision. Thornhill accepted the challenge of integrating the cultural record of mythology and the experiments of the plasma lab and the advances of the space age into a coherent picture. He summarizes this synthesis admirably in a single picture which appears on page 146 of the CD. The photo shows an ancient statue of Zeus, thunderbolt poised in his up-raised hand. But the object called "thunderbolt" isn't the zigzag symbol a child might draw to symbolize lightning. Instead, it's a bundle of corkscrew filaments within a footballshaped envelope, a shape recognizable today as a plasmoid. The ancient artist, who presumably had no experience in plasma labs, sculpted a shape that has been meaningless for centuries until a replica was produced in modern times by connecting two concentric metal tubes to a high-voltage source. How could this be, unless the thunderbolts of Zeus actually were interplanetary electrical discharges? Thornhill recommends Eric J. Lerner's THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED as an introduction to the concepts of the electrical universe. I agree, but with a couple of reservations. The book should come with a warning: Lerner's political and religious opinions (including, but not limited to, barbs against catastrophism) may be offensive to some readers. Also, while describing the scalability of plasma phenomena, jumping from events in the lab to similar events in galaxies, his imagination fails him at the stellar scale. Inside the orbit of Pluto, Lerner drops the electric paradigm for the more conventional gravitational solar system and nuclear powered sun. This -- the solar system -- is the arena that most of Thornhill's CD covers. His electrical claims extend from the microstructure of meteorites to the energy source of the sun, and along the way provide an explanation for the surface features of planets and moons.
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Thornhill challenges us to drop the accepted view of the sun as an isolated fusion factory and think of it as a focal point of galactic electrical energy. He tells us that, although plasma is a good conductor, it is limited in its ability to carry current. So, if the rate of charge separation within the galaxy exceeds the capability of the plasma threading the spiral arms to carry it, the plasma will be under constant stress and current will flow continuously, powering the stars within it. In defense of this outrageous claim, Thornhill points out that stellar electrical discharges provide a simple explanation for solar phenomena that have baffled the atomic energy paradigm. Among these mysteries are: Where did all the neutrinos go if the sun is fusion-powered? Why is the corona so much hotter than the surface of the sun? Why do the outer layers of the sun rotate faster than the inner? Why does the solar wind accelerate as it gets farther from the sun? And what are sunspots, anyway? Thornhill's CD compares close-ups of sunspots to Birkeland currents -- the distinctive twisted filaments that plasmas form because of their long-range attraction and close-range repulsion. He speculates that sunspot activity, as well as the size and color of a star, is a function of the strength of the galactic plasma field it is embedded in. In this viewpoint, even gravity becomes a variable, dependent on the electrical field in which an object is orbiting. Of course, no new theory can stand without predictions against which to test it, and Thornhill's predictions are no less outrageous than the rest of his theory. "...there are no supermassive stars. The masses of close orbiting stars, where plasma sheaths are shared, are incorrectly deduced from gravitational forces alone ... there are no such things as neutron stars ... [and] we are left with none of the necessary precursors to the infamous black-hole ... they [black holes] are an unnecessary fiction required simply because astronomers consider gravity to be the only force driving the cosmos. An infinitely weak force requires an infinite concentration of mass to create the energetic events witnessed in deep space." [p 36] Packed into the section of Thornhill's CD called "Electricity in Space: How Do Stars Work?" are enough questions to inspire many volumes of research. But this is only one small segment of the Electric Universe CD. Thornhill shows how the electrical paradigm affects our understanding of the entire solar system. At every scale, on every planet, satellite, asteroid and comet, he finds evidence to support an electrically driven solar system, one involved in recent turmoil. On the terrestrial sphere, Thornhill compares discharges in the high-voltage lab to lightning scars on golf courses and videos taken of lava tubes in Australia to sinuous rilles on the moon. He finds that these enormous scars on the moon have more in common with lightning scars than with collapsed lava tubes, the conventional astronomical explanation. Thornhill takes us on a fast-paced tour of planets, moons, asteroids and comets. All show evidence of planetary-scale electrical scarring. He claims that Valles Marineris, the 4000 kilometer long canyon across the face of the planet Mars, is an example of a cathode discharge, a lightning scar. He interprets Olympus Mons, the biggest "volcano" in the solar system, as a giant "blister", comparable to fulgamites found on lightning conductors after a strike. On Venus, Thornhill displays the arachnoid, or spider web, patterns of craters and rilles, along with onchannel cratering and parallel channels terminating in craters. All are characteristic of electrical discharge. Astronomers haven't yet agreed with catastrophists that Venus is young, but they now refer to its pristine appearance as "recently resurfaced." Thornhill's theory replaces the impact model of crater formation with an electrical discharge model for a majority of the craters in the solar system. He shows examples of the process continuing even today on Jupiter's moon, Io, and Halley's comet. In defence of this viewpoint, he points out that most craters are round, whereas impact craters would more likely be elliptical. They appear in lines along the bottom of and parallel to sinuous rilles on many celestial bodies. Often, the craters on asteroids and the smaller moons (Mars' moon, Phobos, appears on the CD as an illustration of this point) are so large in proportion to the asteroid or moon that if they were formed by impact the entire body would have been destroyed. Yet these bodies with oversized craters are common in our solar system.
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The most exciting addition to this new version of The Electric Universe is the 21 video segments, including clips made of experiments conducted in a plasma lab. My personal favorite was the anode scarring ... where a miniature replica of the Martian volcano, Olympus Mons, was raised on a disc of red clay impregnated with graphite. Summing up, Thornhill says that "The Electric Universe introduces a far richer science which has no rigid disciplinary boundaries and encompasses all of human experience ... "That is the kind of science I would wish for my grand-children." (pg. 154) But Thornhill's not asking for followers, only objectivity. In the closing video, he asks us to "allow for the possibility."
POLAR CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION

From kroniatalk Dr Emilio Spedicato wrote: We are looking now at the dynamics of the polar configuration. There is one free parameter and it is impossible to explore numerically the behaviour for all values of the parameter. For some reasonable values it seems that the alignment is destroyed after a few months. However since the bodies are close one should take into account also the tidal forces and it seems that NO ONE has ever implemented these forces for a similar dynamical system. We hope to be able to do this in a next future. Dave Talbott added: Actually, Dr. Robert Bass did undertake a preliminary analysis of tidal friction, and he concluded that it worked in the direction of stability - a significant consideration if the planets were extremely close together, as we have hypothesized. Dr Spedicato: The equilibrium equations suggest anyway that the original diameter of Venus had to be greater, otherwise Mars would cover completely Venus. This implies in my view that Venus during the collapse of the configuration lost mass. A loss of mass could be explained if Venus had a catastrophic interaction with Jupiter (possibly a grazing impact), which I think should be considered also in terms of the births of Venus myths and the evidence that Venus for a time had a cometary aspect. Dave said: While the cometary aspect of Venus may indeed have caused it to look larger than it does today, it needs to be understood that what happens to Mars visually in relation to Venus depends on the position of the terrestrial observer. For an observer beneath the 45th parallel, as Mars moves toward the Earth it does not occlude Venus, but moves visually BELOW Venus. When it as large as Venus, it is almost or entirely below the sphere of Venus, depending on the precise location of the observer. In the past, several folks ... have made the error of assuming the observer to be squarely on the axis. But in fact the small size of Mars enables the observer beneath the 45th parallel to see "over" Mars as it approaches the Earth, thus causing it to descend visually. Of the participating planets, only Mars has a size enabling it to do what the myths claim of it ("descent of the hero"). Ev Cochrane adds: Like Dave, I found this statement most puzzling. In fact, as I have demonstrated using high tech computer simulations, Mars fits neatly within the visual outline of the much larger Venus when located in relative close proximity to Venus. Dr Spedicato: I am now rereading Worlds in Collision, after ten or more years. I am in awe of the scholarship of Velikovsky, despite the fact that he certainly mixed up events that had different timing. I think that a final picture on the past of the solar system will have elements from your theory and Patten and of course Velikovsky.
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Karen Josephson asks: Do you think it would be appropriate to suggest to [Dr Spedicato] that he make his analysis both ways <<gravitationally and electrically>> and see what happens ???? Amy Acheson responds: Aye, Karen ... that's the rub. The mathematics is not yet developed to analyze multiple electrical planetary interactions. In order to make the formulae simple enough to work the math, you have to make "simplifying assumptions" (see Mel's Jan 31 THOTH editorial), and still they only work for systems in relative equilibrium [interacting planets ARE NOT IN EQUILIBRIUM.] So here's where we all too often end up: the well-mathed gravity will allow us to get "this close" to replicating our interpretation of how the planets behaved according to mythology. If there's any leftover bits between the numbers and what the myths require, you wave the fudge-factor wand (electrical effects) and, bingo, you can do just about anything. In my estimation, there are two dangers in this approach. First, there's the one our friends, the debunkers, always bring up (unsupported, this is a fudge-factor itself): that electrical interactions might not be capable of what we're asking [facilitating capture, rounding orbits, digging 4000 km long gashes across the face of Mars, etc.] Second, there is the possibility that electrical interactions in such an inequilibrium situation as planetary interaction will so overwhelm the gravitational interactions that there is simply no point in even looking at the gravitational math. To borrow a concept from an earlier paradigm, what's the point of devising more and more complex formulae for determining the exact phlogiston content of various hardwoods now that we understand that burning involves chemical reactions with oxygen? Problems or no, I'm confident (as the visualization of an electrical universe becomes clear) that someone is going to develop the math needed to understand/explain/predict its behaviors. As Halton Arp put it (wrt finding a mechanism to explain how a nonvelocity redshift could act on an entire galaxy -- a vast assemblage of stars, gas and dust) "The advance in understanding required to explain these observations has been thereby considerably escalated and now represents a spectacularly exciting challenge. The stakes in the theory game have been sharply raised." Wal Thornhill adds: One way the mathematical modeling might be approached when planets are not embroiled in each other's magnetospheres is to treat the gravitational "constant" as a variable that depends on the charge transfer between a planet and its environment. Eric Crew did something similar in his computer modeling (only he did the simple thing of including the electrostatic force as if there were no shielding by plasma in space) and derived the rapid emplacement of Venus in its present orbit from one that originated out near Jupiter or Saturn. It is more difficult to model the charge exchange between bodies in the plasma column of the Saturnian configuration. But I can imagine there might have been differential effects involving radial distance from the axis of the polar column which might act in such a way as to stabilise the planetary alignment. Mars could have oscillated up and down the column, acting like an oscillating charge carrier, between Venus and the Earth.
HISTORICAL ANALOGY
By Duane Vorhees Knowing full well that historical analogy has NO evidentiary value, let me proceed anyway.
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According to traditional Japanese history, the present imperial dynasty came into being with the accession of the Divine first emperor in "660 BC". His descendants are carefully listed, with their regnal lengths and important events that occurred during their rule. There is an occasional miracle or supernatural occurrence, but in the main the sequence and stories seem credible. Eventually, these emperors and historic events reach a point at which they can be corroborated by Chinese, Korean, or other Japanese sources, at which time we have entered the historic period (as fragmentary and contradictory as the record may be in many particulars). However, archaeologists can't find any evidence of human habitation of the Japanese islands until around what they date to the 1st century BC/AD, and not much for another two or three centuries. And the evidence for an organized State under some sort of unified monarchy seems to indicate a founding by "horse riders" from elsewhere, most likely from the old Korean kingdom of Paekje, perhaps in the fourth or fifth century. It is only after this early period that some measure of contemporary written evidence appears and we start to gain firmer ground as to what really happened. On the other hand, in the late 19th/early 20th century, Japanese historians used the traditional account, which included stories of an early Japanese occupation of southern Korea, as justification for their successful efforts in conquering and colonizing the peninsula--though it seems more likely to us that it was the Koreans who were responsible for beginning Japanese civilization, not the other way round. It seems likely that, given the nature of early historical evidence anywhere, other explanations will be bruited about, some of which will seem to have more explanatory power than others but none of which can be demonstrated to any high degree of certainty. What seems most likely, though, is that the "traditional" accounts will be shown to have been erroneous, constructed either out of ignorance or out of willful distortion to achieve some purpose or other. To me, it is the same situation in regards to very early Egyptian, Jewish, Indian etc "history." There is a paucity of verifiable facts, even if we don't accept (on an operational basis) the philosophical extremism of a David Hume, who holds that we can't really be certain of anything. Part of the problem of claiming, as Henry has done, that in the main much of the Old Testament has been confirmed is the untestability of this statement; it is too nonspecific to have much value. What has been confirmed? Well, kinglists of the Assyrians and Babylonians have been unearthed and deciphered that seem to agree on the names of a few late kings of Israel and Judea and of neighboring states, and there is confirmation of the successful siege of Jerusalem for example. But even here there is not perfect agreement among the sources; so far they can't be precisely synchronized chronologically (how many campaigns did Tigleth Pileser lead, and how do they fit into his overall reign?), some events are mentioned in some documents and inexplicably ignored in others, and sometimes the details of what are obviously the same thing are contradictory among the various sources. So we may be rather sure that "something" happened without clearly knowing exactly what. And of course it is in this uncertainty that honest people may differ.
ELECTRIC STAR COMMENTARY

By Wal Thornhill ...magnetic activity is, without exception, seen by astronomers as the prime mover - the cause of electrical activity; electrical activity is always considered a side effect of mysteriously generated and maintained magnetic fields. The Electric Sun model views electric currents as the cause and magnetic fields as an effect. A major problem in having this alternate view taken seriously is the widespread and profound ignorance of electric discharge phenomena. It is certainly not taught to postgraduate astronomers. [One thing] most people don't realise is that lightning compresses, heats and accelerates air upwards. On the Sun that upwelling creates the tops of the bright "granules" that cover the sun. The Sun's "lightning bolts" are seen to
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advantage in the penumbrae of sunspots where they provide the fine filamentary structure. Those filaments have nothing to do with convection. I predict that higher resolution images of the filaments in the penumbrae will show the usual rope-like structure of Birkeland currents. No one has been able to explain the features of penumbrae of sunspots using the standard solar model. Yet, explaining those features is of paramount importance because sunspots are our only visible window to what lies beneath the photosphere. The electric star model is concordant with and extends the latest plasma cosmology which has a much better (albeit unacknowledged) track record than the standard model. The standard model requires invisible objects and hidden mechanisms to save the appearances. Invisible objects include Black Holes, neutron stars and Dark Matter. Hidden mechanisms include nuclear engines at the centre of stars, Black Holes at the centre of active galaxies, and internal dynamos to generate planetary and stellar magnetic fields. Unconstrained by direct observations, theorists have been allowed to go crazy. They have invented infinitely massive objects to provide the weakest force known, gravity, with enough punch to generate Xrays and gamma-rays. They have invented superconducting plasma (unknown in the laboratory) to allow magnetic fields to become trapped in them. They have accepted the fanciful notion that magnetic field lines can be broken and re- connected to other field lines. (Such "magnetic reconnection" is used to explain energetic solar flares. Meanwhile plasma physicists have churlishly pointed out that solar flares are purely electric discharges). So when confronted with the conclusions drawn from the standard solar model, which is central to modern cosmology, I agree with Gregg Easterbrook who wrote in The New Republic of last October 12: ...for sheer extravagant implausibility, nothing in theology or metaphysics can hold a candle to the [Big] Bang. Surely, if this description of the cosmic genesis came from the Bible or the Koran rather than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it would surely be treated as a preposterous myth. It is worthwhile pointing out that the form of the magnetic field of the Sun matches the expectations of an Electric Sun, with field lines being evenly spaced rather than bunched near the poles like a normal dipole magnet. The even spacing occurs because of electrical repulsion of a net excess of like charges streaming along magnetic field lines and carrying the current of the stellar discharge. It is in fact indirect evidence for the flow of electric current between the Sun and its surroundings. If the plasma were electrically neutral with equal numbers of positive and negative charges in bulk, as is assumed by astrophysicists, then there would be no tendency for even spacing of magnetic field lines near the poles of the Sun.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 5 (March 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE PARADIGM SHOPPE MORE TESTIMONIALS ELECTRICAL GRAVITY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ELECTRIC SUN GALACTIC CURRENTS AND THE OUTER PLANETS
by Mel Acheson by Barry Cornett and Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
THE PARADIGM SHOPPE

By Mel Acheson This issue of THOTH contains a compilation of comments on solar phenomena as understood from an electrical or plasma-physics viewpoint. They illustrate what has been called the "incommensurability" of paradigms, a scholarly term for what is actually a rather mundane occurrence: the difficulties-and benefits!-of communication when words have more than one meaning. The difficulties arise from the listener's assumption that the speaker means what the listener has always meant. What the listener hears will sound nonsensical. The benefits arise from the listener's assumption that the speaker has in mind a different meaning engendered by a different viewpoint. By making an effort to understand the meaning, the listener can discover the new viewpoint. From the viewpoint of established theory, the term "sun" refers to a set of observations understood as effects of the ideal gas law, gravity/radiation-pressure equilibrium, and thermonuclear reactions. Discrepancies between observations and the predictions of theory are accounted for by adjusting the theory to fit the facts (by more detailed articulation or by ad hoc amendment) or by discounting-even ignoring-facts that don't fit, that make no sense. From the viewpoint of plasma physics, the term "sun" refers to a set of observations (not quite the same set as for established theory, and certainly with different degrees of importance attached) understood as effects of Birkeland currents, anode discharge characteristics, and driven circuits. While not denying the existence of gravity and gasses and fusion, it dismisses them as being of secondary importance, as not being the center of attention (just as established theory dismisses plasma phenomena as secondary and uninteresting). Because the universe of facts is much larger and more complex than the universe of our imaginations and theories, this selection and valuation of facts is an inherent aspect of building theories. Furthermore, the process of building theories is itself a tool of intellect that is directed toward and constrained by purposiveness: survival, comfort, curiosity, play. This restores to science the evolutionary, developmental, or just plain learning aspect that orthodoxy tends to ossify. (Science works best when it avoids the pretense of righteousness about the ideas and facts held in human hands, when it develops possibilities rather than proclaiming impossibilities and certainties.) The cumulative growth of knowledge represented by the articulation of a theory is occasionally interrupted by a jump to a more inclusive or more
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appropriate viewpoint, much as plateaus in a learning curve are separated by episodes of sudden insight into a larger understanding. This trait of human cognition that erects the successive edifices of theory is a common ground underlying their linguistic incommensurability. Knowledge is not "just the facts" nor "just theory" but a judgement about the relationship between facts and theory. And theories compete on this level of judgement: The criterion is not "which theory best fits the facts" but "which combination of facts and theory is most appropriate and promising for which purposes, in contexts of available resources, level of understanding, focus of curiosity, etc." My favorite example is the use of geocentric theory by architects to place a building on a site and of heliocentric theory by astronauts to place a robot on Mars. And if you insist that heliocentrism is "the real truth", what will you tell the little green men who ask directions to cross the galaxy?) Nor are these aspects known in advance, but, as Hayek pointed out in the field of economics, the competition is itself a process of discovery. That the acceptance of a paradigm takes place in the extrascientific arena of politics is simply the manifestation on a statistical or population level of the judgements of the individuals involved with the issue: how many judge which paradigm to be most appropriate. Communication occurs not so much at the level of formal debates as at the level of "market share". With that in mind, enjoy shopping this issue of THOTH.
MORE TESTIMONIALS
by Barry Cornett and Wal Thornhill A light broke in upon my brain, 'twas the carol of a bird. It ceased and then it sang again the sweetest song ear ever heard. [From "The Prisoner of Chillon"] And this is how I feel now that I have gone back to a 1982 journal Kronos and read Ralph Juergens "Electric Discharge as the Source of Solar Radiant Energy." My thanks go to Wal Thornhill who finally straightened out my thinking by pointing out where that old article was. I remember seeing it many years ago. I hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to it then-I guess that shows how bright a scientist I am! I have had so much trouble getting a "feeling" for this new (to me) plasma physics business. I know that sounds silly, but I just have to have a "feeling" for scientific concepts. The same is true of mathematical concepts. I was having one hell of a time getting a "feeling" for Wal's Electric Universe. I just couldn't get past the plasma thing, and the electrical circuitry anomalies they seemed to present. I know what the problem was now. It's the magnitude of the whole damned thing! This whole thing is on a scale that is nearly incomprehensible. (In fact, maybe it is incomprehensible?) The Sun is an anode. A positively charged entity. Where's the other part of the electric circuit? The cathode? It is the baffling volume of space that surrounds the Sun called the Solar System. The current flowing into the Sun from the electrons and/or negative ions in that space constitute the cathode drop. This is not an easy scene to grasp! (In fact I may not have grasped it yet! But I have a "feeling" for it anyhow!) Now, granted there are not very many electrons, or negative ions (or protons and positive ions, for that matter) in interstellar space. It is estimated that there are only 50,000 electrons in a cubic meter. That is practically nothing. BUT, try to imagine the incredible number of such negative particles in a spherical volume with a radius the size of Pluto's orbit! That volume is conservatively 15 times 10 with 27 zeros
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behind it, cubic miles! Now, imagine all these little electrons drifting inward toward the positive Sun, gathering velocity along the way as well as saturation (electrons/M"), until near the Sun's surface there is not only a giant amperage, but the electrons have reached relativistic velocities! We are talking major energy proportions here! Just think of the electromagnetic fields! And think of the immense ionization going on near the surface, and the much more massive protons and positive ions being repelled by the anode, and you are visualizing the solar corona, and flares, and God knows what else! What a vision! Barry Cornett. Wal Thornhill adds: My thanks to Barry! You have expressed how I felt when I first read Ralph's articles back in the 70's. All the years since I have been waiting for someone else to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Ralph. When they do, I told myself, I'll support them to the hilt. It finally dawned on me after re-establishing a connection with Dave Talbott a few years ago that I could be a long time dead waiting for someone else. Also, I think there is a time for everything and my view of what I like to call "The Big Picture" didn't finally fall into place until a few years ago. It is a synthesis of ideas resulting from odd synchronicities in my life, Juergens being a major player. To see someone else grasp that picture is all the reward I could ask for. Wal Thornhill
ELECTRICAL GRAVITY
By Wal Thornhill [ed. note: This is the latest in a series of responses to the misunderstanding that electrically-driven gravity might somehow not follow the same physical laws as conventional gravity.] Juergens' model (which is what I'm discussing) was not dependent on tossing out the accepted view of gravity, although he did offer the opinion that it would be found to be an electrical effect, as had Velikovsky and others before him. Obviously any replacement theory of gravity must satisfy all of the measured physical aspects of gravity, including that manifest in the Sun. To claim to be a superior model it should also offer explanations for any anomalies, and there are several that I've mentioned before. Besides, the current theory of gravity is pure metaphysics and cries out for re-examination. Ralph Sansbury, in the latest copy I have of his work, 'GRAVITY AND LIGHT: charge polarization inside electrons & atomic nuclei', 1998, writes (p.60): The linkage between gravity and electrical forces as formulated here is related to the linkage formulated differently in other theories including Einstein's general relativity. Before discussing general relativity and other ways of interpreting the data confirming it, I think it is interesting to note the historical interest in such a linkage which culminated to some degree, before Einstein's general relativity, in the work of Mossotti, Zollner and Debye on polar molecules and the attraction thereby of neutral particles suggesting that the gravitational force between neutral particles might be ultimately due to electrical causes. In his 1882 book, Explanation of Universal Gravitation through the Static Action of Electricity and The General Importance of Weber's Laws, Fredrich Zollner writes, in the introduction, '...we are to conclude that a pair of electrical particles of opposite signs, i.e. two Weberian molecular pairs
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attract each other. This attraction is Gravity; it is proportional to the total number of molecular pairs.' ...Ralph's work has a distinguished pedigree. And all of those people knew well the difference between a simple dipolar interaction and gravity. Before Einstein muddied the water, it was an obvious idea to look for the origin of the gravitational force in the fundamental electrical nature of matter. Note that we are NOT talking about the bulk separation of charge. We are dealing with dipoles the size of electrons, protons and neutrons. In Ralph's model, it is their ability to influence one another at a speed far in excess of c, and cooperate in massive bodies that gives the resultant which we term gravity.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ELECTRIC SUN

by Wal Thornhill A reader asks: Why does the sun exhibit a spectrum like that of a blackbody? Wal Thornhill responds: Please explain why the source of heating should make any difference to the spectrum of the Sun? Does a hot-plate on a stove radiate any differently if it is heated electrically rather than by gas? Based on the work of Dr C E R Bruce of the Electrical Research Association in England and Eric Crew, FRAS, the solar granulation (where most of the visible photospheric radiation is emitted) is the upwelling of glowing gas, heated and accelerated from below by 1,000's of kilometres long lightning bolts. Those thread-like lightning bolts can be seen to advantage in the penumbrae of sunspots. They have no conventional explanation. Juergens gave a very detailed discussion of the role of solar granulation in the anode phenomenon we call the Sun in Kronos IV No. 4. When it comes to the Fraunhofer lines (dark lines caused by absorption of specific wavelengths by neutral atoms and ions in the solar atmosphere) in the solar spectrum, Juergens quotes H Zirin in 'The Solar Atmosphere', p. 295; "The problem of the production of the Fraunhofer lines is so complicated ... that attempts to predict the profiles from model atmospheres have ended in total failure." Juergens proceeds to show how the electrical model may explain the many anomalies. More questions: What does the galactic plasma look like? How can you know it's getting more negative? How do you measure it? How much is there? So why don't other isolated objects, like the Earth, also glow? Wal responds: It is the most reasonable answer I can think of and it fits with the work of plasma cosmologists. The plasma cosmologists have drawn the configuration of galactic plasma in an electrified cosmos. (See "The Big Bang Never Happened" by Lerner). It takes the form of twisted current ropes following the spiral arms of our galaxy. The evidence for their existence and their magnitude comes from maps of the galactic magnetic field. Some indirect evidence for progressive galactic electrification also comes from an extension of mine to the work of Halton Arp on quasar red shifts and the formation of plasmoids at the centre of active galactic nuclei (AGN's). Other objects do glow. The night side of Venus for example has a glow that can be photographed, yet its night is so long that it should have no ionosphere to speak of on the dark side. The dark side of the Moon is bathed in x-rays. The outer planets all radiate more energy than they receive from the Sun. There is however a fundamental difference between the light from the Sun and that from the planets.
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It is also known that a DC corona discharge from very small wires requires very high current before a luminous discharge appears from positive wires. This suggests that in a given galactic environment a certain size must be reached before a stellar type discharge can begin. A reader objects: GPS satellites must calculate the pressure on them due to solar radiation in order to determine their orbits. No calculations are made for any pressure in the opposite direction (towards the sun) because there is no pressure in the opposite direction ... The electrical model, as far as I can work out, relies on an equal amount of energy heading towards the sun as away. These relativistic electrons should, by Wal's model, charge up the satellite and push it towards the sun... Wal answers: Solar radiation pressure has nothing to do with pressure from the solar plasma. GPS satellites don't orbit outside the Earth's magnetosphere so they are not subject to the solar wind or cosmic electrons. Anyway, the incoming energy is partitioned differently to that leaving the Sun so it is meaningless to talk of opposing "pressures". Charging of a satellite is a transient affair unless it is travelling on a cometary orbit with a large heliocentric radial component. Measurement of the characteristics of a plasma by a probe immersed in that plasma is fraught with difficulty and relies on the correctness of assumptions about the nature of the plasma. Since all physicists assume a neutral plasma surrounding the Sun as their starting point, it is very likely that none of the experiments performed so far were either capable of providing a definitive answer to the Electric Sun hypothesis, or if they were the results may have been misinterpreted using an incorrect physical model, or in the worst case the instruments may have been deemed to be malfunctioning and the data discarded.
GALACTIC CURRENTS AND THE OUTER PLANETS

By Wal Thornhill The planets do intercept some of the galactic energy on its way to the Sun. (But not much on the outward journey from the Sun). Neptune exhibits strange variations in albedo, inversely related to the solar cycle. Whether that is a direct electrical glow in the ionosphere or some other albedo effect in the atmosphere is not clear. In the Electric Universe, the most tangible evidence of electrical energy input to the planets is in their weather systems. Neptune for example has wind speeds up to almost 1500 mph! It also exhibits spots which I think are sudden releases of energy from the encircling plasmoid (radiation belt) via plasma discharges into the ionosphere. I would expect therefore that changes in albedo would be tied to the solar cycle since that, in turn, reflects the passage of the solar system across the cosmic power conduits: the galactic Birkeland current threads. Neptune's moon exhibits "geyser" activity which indicates electric discharges are impinging on that moon, just like Jupiter's moon, Io. (Would you believe it? - the greenhouse effect was invoked to explain Triton's geyser activity!) It is also covered with double-ridges, like Europa. The next closest outer planet, Uranus, exhibits a phenomenon termed "electroglow" in its upper atmosphere. No one could explain where the electrons got their energy from. "Hot" protons with energies up to 500MeV were found. Also, the warmest point on the planet was its north pole which had been in darkness for 40 years when Voyager 2 shot past. This offers a clue as to how the Earth might have had a uniform global climate during the Saturnian era, since most of the energy appearing in the atmospheres of these outer planets is toward the infra-red and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. Dwardu has written on the subject of the purple light of that era.
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It is the plasmoid that fundamentally drives planetary weather systems. It is evident that the weather models used on Earth are missing something important since they don't work for any other planet. Even the Sun has weather! - which strengthens my conviction that it is a common electrical phenomena.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 6 (March 31, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: STEREOSCOPIC VIEWPOINT OF CATASTROPHICS THE BIG BANG AS A RELIGIOUS WORK SHOEMAKER-LEVI SPECULATIONS SUMMARY OF RALPH JUERGEN'S ELECTRIC SUN MODEL
by Amy Acheson by Dwardu Cardona by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
STEREOSCOPIC VIEWPOINT OF CATASTROPHICS

By Amy Acheson Titus FitzImeter Said, "The planimeter Agoragraphs a vicinity." Herein he was right, But he scarcely shed light On the Circular Points at Infinity. ~The Space Child's Mother Goose While the Discipline of Catastrophics may not illuminate infinity any more than Titus FitzImmeter's planimeter, its tremendous scope gives it an advantage over traditional science and religion as a tool for understanding the recent history of the solar system. And this is why: Science, in its quest to explain every detail of a stable system, closes an eye to mythology. It assumes that the ancients didn't understand creation, evolution, astronomy, geology, etc., in the same way that modern science does. Therefore, everything they said, every observation they preserved was wrong. A myth is a myth, a story made up to explain a world too complex for a primitive mind to comprehend. Religion, in its quest to preserve the authority of a turbulent past, closes the other eye. It assumes that the more ancient the source, the closer to reality, with divine revelation the ultimate source of human understanding. Science, at best, becomes pitiful guesses by unworthy humans and, at worst, evil corruption. The Discipline of Catastrophics concentrates on a limited time and space [thousands of years, one tiny solar system], but because it observes these events with both the analytic eye of science and the mythical eye of religion, it has a stronger sense of depth. Catastrophists experience a stereoscopic perception by comparing the stability of today's solar system with the unstable alien sky which so troubled our ancestors. Let's look at, for example, the concept of creation. Both science and mythology picture it as an explosion one of matter, the other of light. Mythology has it affecting the universe in specific ways, but the known universe was smaller then. For science, the universe is older and larger, so the explosion from which it began must to be larger and more ancient, as well.
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Through the stereoscopic viewpoint of Catastrophics, we can place creation/BIG BANG into perspective. We can conclude that the explosion occurred within human memory, but before recorded history. We can deduce from mythological correspondences what it was that exploded and from astronomical details where the explosion took place. The scope of creation was "universal" to our ancestors, but tiny compared to our present understanding of the concept "universal". Observed in this perspective, the BIG BANG is reduced to a local, recent event, but the universe regains its status as infinite and eternal, or at least a lot bigger and older than we currently imagine. Amy Acheson
THE BIG BANG AS A RELIGIOUS WORK

By Dwardu Cardona Wal Thornhill wrote: ...when confronted with the conclusions drawn from the standard solar model, which is central to modern cosmology, I agree with Gregg Easterbrook who wrote in The New Republic of last October 12; "... for sheer extravagant implausibility, nothing in theology or metaphysics can hold a candle to the [Big] Bang. Surely, if this description of the cosmic genesis came from the Bible or the Koran rather than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it would surely be treated as a preposterous myth." CARDONA OFFERS: But the theory DID come from a religious work. Here's a short selection from [not yet published] Chapter 1 of GOD STAR by Dwardu Cardona: In fact, even that so-called pillar of astrophysics, the Big Bang Theory, had been much earlier posited in a RELIGIOUS work. In the Book of Genesis, Elohim, usually translated into English as "God," begins the creation with the words: Let there be light. And, it is there written, "there was light." There have been many who have seen a similarity between this description of beginnings and the Big Bang Theory. The following, one of several such, comes from a popular work devoted to the mysteries of the Bible: Prevailing scientific theory proposes that the universe was created in a flash of light. This 'big bang,' or cosmic explosion, is believed to have occurred some 16 billion years ago. Some see parallels between this modern, scientific theory and the biblical account which opens with God's command, 'Let there be light'. Granted, on its own, this similarity is not enough for one to claim that the theory in question had already been posited in a religious work. The Book of Genesis is not, however, the religious work I have in mind. So bear with me for a while. George Gamow is the acclaimed father of the Big Bang Theory. But before Gamow there was Georges Lemaitre who, in 1927, was the first to propose that a hot, dense, primeval "atom" had exploded, flinging its contents outward to create the universe. With the advent of the theory in question, Pope Pius XII himself had it stated that "scientists are beginning to find the finger of god in the creation of the universe." Lemaitre, who was a Catholic priest besides being a physicist, was later decorated by the Vatican for his scientific achievements.
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To be quite fair, in developing his theory of the expanding universe, Lemaitre had relied on the principles of general relativity. But, since he was also well versed in the discipline of theology, could he not also have come across that great medieval commentary on Biblical Scripture known as the Ramban? In 1990, in a book titled GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG, the Israeli nuclear physicist Gerald Schroeder argued in detail that there is no contradiction to be found between the account of creation as described in Genesis and the current scientific dictum. Moreover, as Schroeder noted, "the Ramban ... had the remarkably modern insight that at the moment after creation, all the matter in the universe must have been concentrated in a tiny speck." Tell me that this insight is not identical to that reached by Lemaitre? Dwardu.
SHOEMAKER-LEVI SPECULATIONS
By Wal Thornhill Jim Bowles wrote: Shumacher-Levy, of course, blew up. CARDONA BUTTS IN: Shoemaker-Levy did not blow up. It broke apart. Dwardu. WAL THORNHILL ADDS: The comet may never have been a single object. Tom Van Flandern has proposed that asteroids and comets may be comprised of several closely orbiting pieces that are separated when the more powerful gravitational influence of a planet or the Sun overwhelms the weak gravitational binding force between them. Tom was partly vindicated by the unexpected and serendipitous discovery that asteroid Ida has a tiny "moon". He proposes that such objects were created by a "recently" exploded planet, possibly in a novalike outburst. But there is no good conventional explanation for such stellar explosions. In the electrical model of the formation of asteroids and comets, they have a common origin in a stream of gas and matter removed from a planet by a powerful electric discharge. The solids cover a wide range of sizes from dust to planetessimals. The opportunity for gravitational and electrostatic "clumping together" is very high under these circumstances but far less for a simple mechanical explosion. Clumping is a phenomenon evidenced in chondritic meteorites where the meteorite has been formed from gas, dust, aspheric molten droplets and splintered pieces of pre- existing solids. The lack of sphericity of the glassy droplets is a great puzzle to astronomers since the weightlessness and vacuum of space is the ideal environment for liquids acting under surface tension to form perfect spheres. The droplets were frozen as they were being accelerated, either by electrical forces or by the gaseous blast of the cosmic "thunderclap". Strong evidence for the electrical model is found in the chondrules within such meteorites. They all show evidence of complex surface effects which I believe could be easily replicated in a plasma oven. (Refer to my CD for a much fuller explanation). It all points very strongly to a form of "lightning" having been responsible for some of the features found in meteorites. Several astronomers have subscribed to that view but placed the event in a pre-planetary nebula. The problem with that scenario is that the minerals in most meteorites show that they have come from a pre-existing planet.
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Back to the argument: there is the likelihood that the break up of comets like Shoemaker-Levy 9 is also affected by electrical forces when plasma discharges impinge preferentially on one component of the comet or another. That could create impulsive electrostatic forces between the components and will change the gravitational force between them as well. Many comets have been seen to break up during their bright, electrically active phase. Wal Thornhill
SUMMARY OF RALPH JUERGEN'S ELECTRIC SUN MODEL

By Wal Thornhill I have attempted to paraphrase Ralph Juergen's argument several times in the past but because it is so important I'll do it again. At the outset let me acknowledge the fine work done by Dr Earl Milton in publishing Ralph's work "Electric Discharge as the Source of Solar Radiant Energy" (KRONOS VIII Nos. 1 and 2), after the author's untimely death in 1979. The standard model of a star assumes that the physical isolation of a star in space is total. Therefore all of its radiant energy must be generated internally. This model was developed chiefly by Sir Arthur Eddington in his classic work "The Internal Constitution of Stars", first printed in 1926. He wrote, in Chapter 1, "Survey of the Problem": The problem of the source of a star's energy will be considered; by a process of exhaustion we are driven to conclude that the only possible source of a star's energy is subatomic; yet it must be confessed that the hypothesis shows little disposition to accommodate itself to the detailed requirements of observation, and a critic might count up a large number of 'fatal ' objections. Almost all of the efforts by theorists since then has been to gloss over the 'fatal' objections (note that the use of quotes in the original seems to imply that the objections are not fatal) . The worst fatality is that the neutrinos that we should expect, if the sun's engine is ticking over as advertised, do not exist in anywhere near the numbers required. Of course, since Eddington's work early this century, space has been found to be surprisingly populated with charged particles which provide high electrical conductivity. But, as Juergens notes, astronomers prefer an invisible source of energy inside the sun to an invisible source of energy that surrounds the solar system and is connected subtly to the Sun. Electricity or more appropriately, electric discharge, since we are concerned with a phenomenon occurring in a gaseous medium- seems to offer precisely the qualities of "subtle radiation" that we are looking for. Electric discharge is a known and observable phenomenon, yet we might live immersed in a cosmic discharge and know nothing of its existence. Without understanding its ultimate nature any more than we understand the nature of the gravitational field, we know that the electric field is potentially one of the greatest storehouses of energy in the universe. Electric discharge offers phenomena so numerous and so diverse that we have little trouble finding analogs for every observable feature of the Sun. ~Juergens, Kronos VIII, No. 1, pp. 5-6. Juergens makes the interesting observation that Alfven, the father of cosmic plasma physics, considered the anode region of a discharge as "rather unimportant" and has led everyone since to believe that is so. Electrons, by virtue of their lesser mass and higher mobility compared with positive ions, usually initiate discharges and ordinarily carry a disproportionate share of the current. On this basis, apparently, it is assumed that the source of the electrons is more essential, and hence inherently
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more interesting, than the anode. The shortsightedness of such reasoning may be demonstrated simply by pointing out that cathodeless discharges are not unknown... Transmission lines carrying high-voltage direct current electric trolley wires, for example discharge almost continuously to the surrounding air. In the case of a positive (anode) wire electrons ever present in the Earth's atmosphere drift toward the wire, attracted by its positive charge. As they penetrate the increasingly intense electric field close to the wire, the electrons gain energy from the field and are accelerated to energies great enough to initiate electron avalanches as they collide with and ionize air molecules. The avalanching electrons, in turn, intensify the ionization immediately surrounding the wire. Positive ions, formed in the process, drift away from the wire in the electric field. In this way, a more or less steady discharge is maintained, although there is no tangible object other than the surrounding air that can be considered a cathode. Such a discharge is classed as a corona discharge. The region of intense activity close to the wire is referred to as the coronal envelope. And since so few "cathode" electrons are involved, and since they move so quickly through the outer region of the discharge, most of the current in this outer region is carried by the positive ions. (ibid., p. 7).
The Electric Sun model provides a cathodeless discharge centred on the Sun (as the anode) with two key observed characteristics of the Sun: the solar corona (what irony in using the same term, although a corona usually means a discharge at atmospheric pressure!) and the solar wind. To understand more about the Electric Sun we need to look at laboratory low-pressure glow discharges. Most people will remember seeing a demonstration at school of a long glass evacuated tube with metal disc electrodes at each end connected to a source of high voltage DC. You may recall the resulting glows emanating from the discs, at various places along the tube, and from the glass walls. For those who had a vacuum pump, you will have seen the glows move and disappear as the pressure was reduced. A neon sign is a conspicuous application of a low-pressure glow discharge. However, don't confuse the light from a neon tube with the mechanism that lights up the Sun. The glow from the neon tube is produced in the "positive column" of the discharge. The positive column is a typical plasma having equal concentrations of positive ions and of electrons, with the electron temperature very high - sufficient to maintain the degree of ionization required to carry the electric current. The glowing positive column is formed only in thin tubes because in an extended plasma a much lower degree of ionization is sufficient to carry the current. Also there is no continual loss of ions to the tube walls to be compensated for. Bear in mind that the Sun operates in a very extended spherical plasma, most of it of much lower density than that used in neon tubes. In that case the positive column will not appear. Why don't we see a stream of energetic charged particles heading toward the Sun if it is truly electrically powered? The bulk of a glow discharge is comprised of a "cool" plasma, that is an equal number of positive ions and electrons moving randomly, or thermally. Superimposed on that random motion is a drift of electrons toward the anode and positive ions toward the cathode. It is the cool plasma that behaves very much like a metal conductor (except that it has two charge carriers instead of just electrons). In a copper wire the entire current is carried by electrons drifting very slowly from one end to the other. The total current carried in the cool plasma by the two opposite drifts constitutes the discharge current. The electric field gradient in that cool plasma is very low. In such an environment we would be hard-pressed to detect that we were inside a glow discharge. The field strength is high only in the cathode and anode "sheaths" where the imbalance in positive and negative charges is marked. Juergens has identified most of the space from the solar corona out to the heliopause as devoted to the negative glow region of a glow
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discharge. The chromosphere forms the limit of that region on the anode side. The photosphere is identified as the first anode phenomenon. So, what might we expect to find in space near the Earth if we occupy the negative glow region? James Cobine writes in his textbook "Gaseous Conductors" in section 8.5 Cathode Phenomena and Negative Glow: "...an appreciable fraction if not nearly all of the electrons entering the negative glow from the Crookes dark space have a range [of energies] corresponding to the entire cathode drop." In other words, if we accept the estimate from Juergens, electrons will be accelerated toward the Sun with a range of energies up to almost the full potential difference between the Sun and the surrounding plasma, 10 billion volts. As Dr Earl Milton pointed out in his editorial of Juergens' KRONOS article, such relativistic electrons cause "effects not seen in more mundane discharges". It tends to cause the discharge current to become self-limiting allowing the observed range of stellar luminosities. But back to the question: it is a simple matter to equate the observed energy output of the Sun with the energy of incoming relativistic electrons (they must be responsible for the solar energy in this model since ions are emitted with low energies from the Sun). It requires 3,000 relativistic electrons per cubic metre at the Earth's orbital distance, streaming toward the Sun. Measurements in the Earth's vicinity give a range of 9 to 11 million electrons per cubic metre (mostly thermal secondaries generated by ionization of solar gases). Juergens writes: Thus it would appear that, if but one in every 3,000 electrons near the Earth turned out to be a current carrier moving at almost the speed of light toward the Sun, the power delivered would be enough to keep the Sun 'burning' at its present rate. This seems a rather subtle stream but it would suffice to power the Sun. Why haven't we seen these relativistic electrons? Juergens says: Detection may be made difficult ... by the fact that such fast electrons quickly charge up the detecting instruments to the point where they repel electron currents. Probes of presently feasible proportions may be unable to carry apparatus sufficient to maintain suitable potentials on electron detecting devices ... I mentioned that the light from the Sun does not come from a positive column effect. It comes from the bright granules that form the photosphere. They are an anode phenomenon occurring when the anode is small in relation to the discharge current. As Cobine writes in section 8.12 Anode Phenomena: The presence of impurities and the evolution of gas may cause local points of high activity which appear as luminous regions. Stars are well constructed to provide gas to the anode discharge. In fact, the chromosphere of the Sun exhibits the same sheath of negative hydrogen ions observed in Earth-based anodes fed with the gas. So the bright granulations are the result of cool neutral gas from below the photosphere (at the temperature seen in the umbrae of sunspots) being injected into the anode glow region, or chromosphere of the Sun by solar lightning, which magnetically compresses and heats the gas to incandescence, ionizes some of it and accelerates it vertically - giving a superficial appearance of convection. It is actually a means to provide more electrons to carry the current load at the anode. The relatively quiet, orderly behaviour of the photospheric granulations as they grow, fade, split and combine is characteristic of anode "tufting" but has no sensible explanation in terms of convection. Because anode tufting occurs above the true anode surface we do not know the actual size of the Sun. It explains why the photosphere is almost perfectly spherical despite the Sun's rotation (sometimes it is actually prolate!) - its shape is constrained by electrical forces far more powerful than centrifugal rotation effects. It provides an answer to how the diameter of the Sun can change over short intervals of time in
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response to changes in its electrical environment. Also, if the Sun's differential rotation is driven electrically from outside, it explains how that rotation rate can vary quite markedly and why sunspots seem to plough through the photosphere as if they were evidence of invisible magnetic stirrers, dipping into the Sun. Juergens felt that the solar wind is an electric wind created by collisions of ions accelerated in the chromospheric plasma sheath, with neutral hydrogen. The chromosphere is where we have the lowest "temperature" and most rapid heating found on the Sun. Actually, the concept of temperature in a plasma sheath is meaningless. The filamentary structures in the chromosphere and corona, seen down to the limit of resolution, are diagnostic of predominantly radial electric currents in these regions. I would take issue with the use of the word "wind". The solar wind is structured in a way that suggests it is a spiral of Birkeland currents feeding a plasmoid shaped like a twisted doughnut that encircles the Sun very closely. As shown in laboratory experiments, such a plasmoid can store considerable energy. That energy is released at intervals by discharging to the surface of the Sun. Solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejection events result from particularly violent discharges. The glow discharge model predicts that at the boundary of the Sun's influence (termed the heliopause and considered conventionally to be a purely mechanical shock phenomenon) the ion (proton) current from the Sun will be accelerated through almost the full potential difference between the Sun and the surrounding plasma - estimated by Juergens at around 10 billion volts. Here is a possible answer to the puzzle of the origin of cosmic rays. As Juergens pointed out, most are likely the "spent" ions from other stars. Their range of energies gives a measure of the driving potentials suffered by other stars. It also provides a check on the reasonableness of Juergens' estimate for the Sun. Interestingly, there is a gap in the energy spectrum of cosmic rays. The most highly energetic are probably released from the plasma focus activities at the centre of active galaxies. I have briefly covered some of the most obvious phenomena associated with the Sun and shown how they may be coherently and simply explained by the glow discharge model. However, some people have objected that such a star could not form in the first place. I will attempt to answer that next. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 7 (April 30, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE GRAVITY/ELECTRIC DISCUSSION WHAT TO DO! MARS' NORTHERN ICECAP THE OUTER PLANETS PLASMA QUESTIONS SATURNIAN BIOSPHERE
by Amy Acheson Bob Grubaugh, Dave Davis, and Wal Thornhill by Bob Grubaugh, Wal Thornhill by Kip Farr, Wal Thornhill, James Conway by Wal Thornhill, Karen Josephson by Wal Thornhill, Barry Cornett by Dave Davis, Wal Thornhill
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

By Amy Acheson In the popular movie/television/book series, The Highlander, a handful of immortals exist in the midst of normal humans. When one immortal meets another, he (sometimes she) whips out a sword and engages the other in "immortal" combat. The winner cuts off his opponent's head and inherits (via spectacular "electrical universe" effects) the life-forces of the loser. For, in the end: There can be only one! Most of us think of scientific theories in similar terms. When one theory is accepted, its rivals, old or new, are cast aside, decapitated, the vital forces (respect, journal acceptance, government funding) drained from the defeated idea and inherited by the victor. In both cases, in fact, it's not true that there can be only one. When The Highlander runs out of immortal rivals, the story is over, the series ends, the actors collect their final paycheck and go home. The same is true for theories; when the last theory triumphs over its rivals, the story of discovery is over and the pioneers of science collect their final insight and go home. Luckily for those of us who enjoy the thrill of discovery, that day is nowhere in sight. The finite limits of human imagination can never encompass a universe of infinite complexity. The gulf between the largest concept a human can imagine and infinity is still as great as the gulf between one and infinity. By the rules of elementary logic, you can't make a universal generalization from the small handful of facts and ideas that we have collected in the short history of human consciousness. You can only define the domain of validity for a specific theory, then watch how the observations behave when the theory is extrapolated beyond that domain (observe, theorize, predict, verify, repeat, repeat, repeat.) The first article in this issue of THOTH is an excellent illustration of this principle in action: two theories, each attempting to explain overlapping sets of data from two different viewpoints. Part of the discovery process is finding the limits of each theory's domain of validity. Bob Grubaugh's question "What to do?" leads to further questions and to the promise of discovery tomorrow.
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Amy Acheson
GRAVITY/ELECTRIC DISCUSSION
By Bob Grubaugh, Dave Davis, and Wal Thornhill Bob Grubaugh starts with: Talbott, following Velikovsky, has produced a body of evidence that the Earth was once threatened by a near collision with the planet Venus, and he suggests that this terrifying experience was the result of the breakup of the polar configuration, his model of the ancient solar system. To investigate this "near miss" possibility by orbital dynamics, I have developed several analytical models of Earth and Venus orbiting the Sun in potentially conflicting or intersecting paths using Newtonian gravitational equations only. In one model I placed Venus and Earth in the same orbit at 1AU distance from the Sun in the "unstable" position only a few degrees apart expecting the two planets to have their orbits change substantially as the result of their mutual attraction. Instead the model predicted the two planets to "dance", where they would periodically approach each other, drift to slightly different orbital distances from the Sun, the move apart only to move toward each other again. This condition continued indefinitely with period and amplitude of the vibrations varying with the nearness to each other given by the selected initial conditions. This behavior pattern resembles the observed motions of the Asteroids. (coalescence anyone?). In a second model, I placed Venus in an elliptical orbit about the Sun with an eccentricity of .0285 and a perihelion the same as its present-day circular orbital radius. This orbit causes Venus to cross Earth's orbit at about 165 and 195 degrees from Venus' perihelion as a starting point. I then positioned Earth at several points relative to the intersections including one degree in front of, one degree behind , and even with the Venus in its orbit expecting some substantial alteration of their two orbits. Instead they passed each other near enough for Venus to appear twice the size of a full moon to an observer on Earth, and the aphelion of Venus was shortened only slightly and Earth's orbit was reduced insignificantly. I had hoped that the "close encounter" would cause a substantial reduction of the eccentricity of Venus' orbit so that the near circular condition observed today could be at least partially explained by gravitation. No such luck! If anyone has a possible scenario that I might run, please let me know and I'll give it a shot. Dave Davis says: Well, I was very pleased to see this post from Bob Grubaugh - someone on the list having a real go at physically modeling elements of the Saturnian Scenario. "But..." Bob: To investigate this 'near miss' possibility by orbital dynamics, I have developed several analytical models of Earth and Venus orbiting the Sun in potentially conflicting or intersecting paths using Newtonian gravitational equations only. [Emphasis added] DaveD: At the end of the day, is there any point doing things this way? [I *really* don't want to sound flippant here - please take this constructively... :( ] Rose & Vaughan tried, Bob Bass tried... but the bottom line is that, right from 1940 when V. first had the brainwave that planetary catastrophism had shaken our solar system within human memory, he was adamant that the behaviour the planets displayed defied
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Newtonian celestial mechanics and required an Electric Universe. [see the 1942 Affidavit in the Archive, the last minute Epilogue re-write to WinC [Worlds in Collision] notwithstanding, and of course C w/o G [Cosmos without Gravitation]] What's changed in the last 59 years? [ ;-) ] Surely a more holistic approach is demanded: because it's not just a case of "well, we may at least see if we can get to required orbits to work under gravity-only, before we go inventing ad-hoc electro-magnetic magic"- there are other things to be explained beyond dry old orbital trajectories: - take Venus *appearance* for instance: can all that streaming radiance and swastika fireworks be explained using gravity only? (and lets not forget those megafauna, eh Ted Holden?...) Bob: Instead they passed each other near enough for Venus to appear twice the size of a full moon to an observer on Earth, DaveD: Bob, was the Moon in your model? Surely it would need to be for the model to be valid. Even in gravityonly it would enter the equations at this point... Somewhere between de Grazia's "V. Affair" book and all the Penses, there's a bit where V's claim that the Earth had a magnetosphere extending beyond the moon was shown to be verified... since Venus has a similar size magnetosphere to Earth ... close approach, the two magnetospheres would be in contact! BAMMO! Could such a situation *possibly* be described by gravity alone? How does Bob Grubaugh's work connect with Eric Crew's Electric-Circularization-of-an-electric-Venus work (as published by the SIS)? Questions, questions. Wal adds: All very good questions, DaveD. It seems to me that Bob's work doesn't have any connection with Eric Crew's. Eric's simple assumption of an electrical component to the measured force of gravity between a planet and the Sun can't work in practice because of the electrically insulating nature of a plasma. That simple fact renders worthless all past attempts to introduce electromagnetism into celestial dynamics. However, if Sansbury's electrical theory of gravity is right then Eric's model will still work. That's because the exchange of charge by a planet with its surroundings will effectively modify the gravitational force between the planet and the Sun. Therefore it will cause the planet to spiral in or out until electrical equilibrium is achieved. Bob Grubaugh said: ...It seems that nearly all orbital phenomena can be explained by gravitation only, but others require "something else". My problem is what equations to use for the "something else". Electrostatic charge has an effect similar to gravitation, but the lapse rate for the interbody force is the same as for gravitation, hence inclusion of this effect leads only to a linear modification of the gravity constant and does not essentially alter the orbital equations. What to do???
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WHAT TO DO!
By Bob Grubaugh, Wal Thornhill BOB G said: Have some interesting numbers. My simple little model of a single planet orbiting the Sun is derived in polar coordinates. One of the principal parameters of the model is the angle between the velocity vector of the planet and the perpendicular to the radial line from the planet to the Sun. If this angle is positive the planet is moving outward from the Sun, and if negative it is moving inward toward the Sun on its elliptical path. The magnitude of this angle determines the rate at which the planet is moving through the Sun's charge field. (distance rate not time rate). For calculation I assumed that this change causes a change in the electrostatic charge of the planet which in turn causes a change in the gravity constant, G. I further assumed this change to be linear in the form G = G0 x (1 + GAMMA ) Where G0 = Gravity constant 6.7E-08 and GAMMA = Angle between velocity vector of planet and a line perpendicular to radius from planet to the Sun. To test this assumption in the model, I assumed the planet to attempt to orbit in an elliptical path from a perihelion of 1 AU, 1.5E+13 cm, to an aphelion of 1.8416E+13 cm. This would be the orbit with no modification of gravity by the electrostatic charge. I then calculated the orbit with the above modification to gravity. Here's what happened: Beginning at perihelion where GAMMA is zero the planet orbited outward in its elliptical path and reached aphelion at 203 degrees, which is 23 degrees beyond the point of orbital symmetry, and where the distance was 1.683E+13 cm from the Sun, which is a considerable reduction from the 1.8416E+13 nominal. The planet then returned to perihelion at 412 degrees from beginning and a distance of 1.649E+13 cm. It then orbited outward to aphelion at 620 degrees and 1.654E+13 cm, and in turn to perihelion at 823 degrees and at 1.653E+13 cm, where it went into circular orbit. What do you think? Dear Bob, Well done! You have cleverly and simply demonstrated the effect I expected. It is interesting to see how quickly the orbit circularizes with the "GAMMA" effect. In reality there would be some [presumably constant for small orbital eccentricities] multiplier of GAMMA that would modify the rate of circularization. Of course, the rapidity of achieving a new, stable orbit would have been crucial to survival of higher life forms on the Earth after the breakup of the proto-Saturnian system. The onset of ice caps and ice ages can then be seen as the extremes of cold the Earth must have suffered over a period measured in tens or at most maybe a hundred years of relaxation from an initially eccentric orbit with a perihelion out in the asteroid belt. Can you experiment using the present orbit of the Earth and an initial aphelion distance in the realm of the asteroids to work out an initial perihelion distance? It would be interesting to see how closely we might have approached Venus' present orbit.

Wal Thornhill
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MARS' NORTHERN ICECAP

Kronia discussion Kip Farr wrote: I was rereading the December 12 issue of Science News, where it talks about Mars' northern icecap. App, the cap is much larger than the southern, though smaller than expected. In addition to wondering where the oceans went, scientists are confused as to how water from the poles could have traveled to the equator as evidenced by the channels "crisscrossing" the equator. Is this possible evidence of Mars' position in the ancient alignment, that is, larger northern icecap (water ice) and water running towards the equator? Any thoughts? Wal Thornhill responds: Most of the channels crisscrossing the equator were not formed by the action of water. They are almost without exception electrical plasma arc scars of one form or another. James Conway asks: What is the minimum mass of an object needed to produce such scars if the bodies have a near miss. Wal Thornhill replies: It would have to be a large body to have sufficient charge available to cause the damage seen on Mars. Juergens made some rough order of magnitude calculations of the charge transferred to the Moon from Mars to cause craters like Aristarchus. Whatever hit Mars was orders of magnitude greater. Some scholars have proposed a general formula relating charge to mass ratio for cosmic bodies. Guesstimating the energy required to remove million cubic kilometres of Mars surface would give you the charge transferred from the marauding object. Then you would have to make assumptions about the proportion of the total charge transferred from that object which in turn would give you the mass. A bit of a pointless exercise in my opinion given the number of guesses involved. Still, it's a whole lot better than stellar evolution theory! The concept of a "near-miss" has to be looked at carefully in the context of an electrical solar system. The distance required to do electrical damage is determined by the sizes of the respective plasma sheaths (magnetospheres in conventional speak). They may be 10's of times the radius of the planets involved.
THE OUTER PLANETS

by Wal Thornhill, Karen Josephson The planets do intercept some of the galactic energy on its way to the Sun. (But not much on the outward journey from the Sun). Neptune exhibits strange variations in albedo, inversely related to the solar cycle. Whether that is a direct electrical glow in the ionosphere or some other albedo effect in the atmosphere is not clear. In the Electric Universe, the most tangible evidence of electrical energy input to the planets is in their weather systems. Neptune for example has wind speeds up to almost 1500 mph! It also exhibits spots which I think are sudden releases of energy from the encircling plasmoid (radiation belt) via plasma discharges into the ionosphere. I would expect therefore that changes in albedo would be tied to the solar cycle since that, in turn, reflects the passage of the solar system across the cosmic power conduits: the galactic Birkeland current threads.
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Neptune's moon exhibits "geyser" activity which indicates electric discharges are impinging on that moon, just like Jupiter's moon, Io. (Would you believe it? - the greenhouse effect was invoked to explain Triton's geyser activity!) It is also covered with double-ridges, like Europa. The next closest outer planet, Uranus, exhibits a phenomenon termed "electroglow" in its upper atmosphere. No one could explain where the electrons got their energy from. "Hot" protons with energies up to 500MeV were found. Also, the warmest point on the planet was its north pole which had been in darkness for 40 years when Voyager 2 shot past. This offers a clue as to how the Earth might have had a uniform global climate during the Saturnian era, since most of the energy appearing in the atmospheres of these outer planets is toward the infra-red and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. Dwardu has written on the subject of the purple light of that era. It is the plasmoid that fundamentally drives planetary weather systems. It is evident that the weather models used on Earth are missing something important since they don't work for any other planet. Even the Sun has weather! - which strengthens my conviction that it is a common electrical phenomena. Karen Josephson asks: A recent reply by Wal to Harold included the following: It is the plasmoid that fundamentally drives planetary weather systems. It is evident that the weather models used on Earth are missing something important since they don't work for any other planet. Even the Sun has weather! - which strengthens my conviction that it is a common electrical phenomena. By this passage I infer that meteorologists are missing the electromagnetic effects in their weather models... Wal replies: Not so much electromagnetic effects, but pure electric current effects. The evidence for such electric currents is in auroral displays and the diffuse glow discharges high above lightning storms and cyclones. Karen wrote: I was wondering if surface color could be influencing the reflectivity of these planets. I remember reading that we on Earth were lucky that the darker (color-wise) side of the moon was facing toward us, rather than the much lighter colored opposite side, because our nights would be much brighter, even on nights when the moon wasn't full. Wal replies: The outer planets, being gas giants, the probability is that changes in clouds or dark spots will alter their albedo. However, Uranus and Neptune have had changes in brightness of up to 20% measured! ... That seems more likely to be an electrical phenomena caused by changes in their ionospheres - which in turn relates to electrical input to those planets. Karen continues: The same source claimed that the night would be bright enough to read a book in if there wasn't so much dust blacking out the glow from the center of our galaxy. Is this true?? Would that dust change any of the effects of the of the electric universe?? Wal: Yes it does. Dust tends to remove electrons from a plasma. Juergens observed that the difference between Population I and II stars in the galaxy could be explained by the deficiency of electrons where dust is prevalent.
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PLASMA QUESTIONS
Wal Thornhill, Barry Cornett Barry Cornett says: Wal makes comments that on the surface sound like contradictions. They are paradoxical in the nature of the statement. Here is a very good example of such a statement made in his notebook on the Electric Universe: ...although it is true that a plasma is a good conductor, it is very limited in its ability to carry current. Now the comment, "good conductor" contradicts the statement, "very limited in its ability to carry current." That sentence hung me up so badly it was nearly two weeks before I could go ahead with the book. A "good conductor" carries current easily. Copper is a good conductor. Glass is a very poor conductor. But, what I finally pulled out of this (right or wrong?) was he probably meant that plasma (which by definition is a gas-like entity where the gasses are all ions, protons, or electrons) is nothing but charged particles and they are obviously good conductors. The current handling capacity, however, is dependent on how many charged particulates exist in that particular plasma. Wal replies: Correct, Barry. A thin fuse-wire is an excellent conductor but it has a very limited current carrying ability. Barry again: I hope Wal will not take this badly when I say that he sounds contradictory. Wal: I am always happy to receive feedback like yours. It helps me present the ideas better next time around. Barry: The next thing I note is Wal speaks of "neutral plasma" as if plasma needn't be a mass of charged particulates. Does this mean that plasma is simply gasses in space? And, am I understanding the nature of plasma conductivity in my comment above? Wal: No, a plasma is not simply neutral gas in space. A neutral plasma is one in which there are on average in a given volume, the same number of positive charges on ions as there are free electrons. A non-neutral plasma is one in which the positive and negative charges do not balance. It is a practically universal assumption by astronomers that bulk plasma in space is neutral. As you say, the current carrying ability of a plasma is closely related to the density of charged particles it contains. Wal Thornhill
SATURNIAN BIOSPHERE
By Dave Davis, Wal Thornhill Dave Davis wrote: Actually, I'd tend to regard this as one of the most important unanswered questions about the Saturn Theory.
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SIS big wig Prof Trevor Palmer has expressed his incredulity that the Polar Configuration could have existed, broken up and arrived at the present order without wholly destroying the biosphere. At the SIS silver jubilee later this year, I think his paper will be surveying the physical evidence for what can been seen to have or have not happened over the time period in question. It would be nice to have even a rough scheme proposed by Saturnists to correlate changes in the Earth's biosphere/fossil record with events in their scenario. Wal replies: The electrical energy input to the Earth during the proto- Saturnian epoch must have formed a substantial part of the Earth's energy budget - sufficient to give the Earth a globally equable climate. I believe that the Earth, along with Mars, was orbiting inside proto-Saturn's corona, where the energy density would have been relatively high. That would account for the reported inability to see any stars - the glow from the Earth's ionosphere would have been like a million auroras. As Saturn's electrical energy source was usurped by the Sun, the auroral display would have flickered out and the whole phantasmagoria born of proto-Saturn's desperate attempts to stabilise in the new electrical environment would have become apparent. It was at that time that proto-Saturn's entourage began to string out in the polar configuration because the changed electrical environment also modified the gravitational field of all of the bodies in that system and the Sun's sphere of gravitational influence began to peel off the more distant of them. In effect the Sun did to proto-Saturn what Jupiter did to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. In an electrical solar system, modelling by my friend and one of your countrymen, Eric Crew, has shown that an object like the Earth or Venus can achieve a stable orbit in the inner solar system in the space of decades. While that is happening, the planet is exchanging orbital energy for electrical energy and the result would be further heating to help offset the cold of deep space. The oceans would have had a considerable ameliorating effect. Nonetheless, descriptions abound of a terrible winter that followed the collapse of the polar configuration.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 8 (May 31, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: ENTERTAINING CONTRADICTORY THEORIES DESERT GEMS SATURN CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION ANOMOLOUS OUTBURSTS ELECTRIC UNIVERSE IN THE NEWS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING
by Amy Acheson by Walter Radtke Wal Thornhill, Robert Lugibihl, Dwardu Cardona Ev Cochrane, Amy Acheson, Wal Thornhill Canberra Times article by Paul Davies Response by Wal Thornhill
ENTERTAINING CONTRADICTORY THEORIES

By Amy Acheson In the early stages of solving a jigsaw puzzle, you need to sort the pieces into general categories - blue ones here, green there, yellow flowers there, black lines down here, and so on. It helps to be aware of how general these categories are (lack of appropriate generality incorporates assumptions that are - and may remain - unconscious.) Until you become more familiar with the puzzle, you need to think of one category of pieces as "blue", not "sky". Otherwise, you're going to have trouble when you look for pieces that fit into, say, the lake. Halton Arp describes this with respect to galactic redshifts in astronomy: What every astronomer measures in the spectrum of a galaxy is the percentage by which a line is shifted from its laboratory wavelength. Astronomers habitually say they measure a velocity. That is incorrect. What they measure is a redshift, what they infer is a velocity. The only astronomer I ever knew who was meticulously accurate about this was Fritz Zwicky, who always used the term 'indicative' recession velocity. Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, 1987, pg. 115 How do we apply this to the discipline of Catastrophics? Science at its best is meticulous in its research, and should also be meticulous in acknowledging the degree of confidence of any given statement. Is this evidence? Is it a conclusion? Is it a speculation? If it's taken from someone else's work, then whose? Dwardu Cardona's note from the Saturn Configuration Discussion (below) is an excellent example: (NOTE: The above constitute MY opinions. My Saturnist colleagues should not be burdened with them unless it is definitely known that they agree with them.) Stating the level of generality allows the speaker to propose ideas which may be speculative and beyond the scope of the body of confirmed research, maybe even wrong. At the same time, exploring several ideas which may be contradictory can open the way to new insights. (NOTE: the above editorial is MY opinion ... )
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Amy Acheson
DESERT GEMS
by Walter Radtke This just orbited across my monitor & I thought I'd pass it on. An Italian geologist has taken a close look at the beautiful translucent scarab in a pectoral, or necklace, found by Howard Carter among the treasures of Tutankhamen. Carter thought the scarab was carved of greenish-yellow chalcedony. However, measuring its refraction revealed to Vincenzo De Michele that the gem consists of Libyan desert glass. This is a fused natural glass, formed by cooling molten sand. It results from the impact of a meteorite or comet or a low-altitude explosion in the atmosphere. What makes the scarab even more astonishing is that the nearest source of Libyan desert glass is 500 miles west of the Nile, in the Western desert. Half of this distance lies beyond any known oasis. The glass is scattered over an area 15 miles in diameter. However, no meteor crater has been found, and the event responsible for the glass remains mysterious. Best wishes, Walter That is very interesting indeed, Walter. Thanks for passing it on. I don't think the mechanism of formation of the natural glass is likely to be such a mystery. :-) Wal Thornhill
SATURN CONFIGURATION DISCUSSION

Wal Thornhill, Robert Lugibihl, Dwardu Cardona Robert & Dwardu, I just wanted to express my appreciation of the questions and answers in this thread. Dwardu's caveat about whether Saturn was captured by the Sun is important. In my opinion, stories about the primordial darkness, "purple dawn", Saturn's appearance, and first appearance of the stars are the places to look for clues. It seems to me that the Sun must either have been at great distance from the Saturnian system or else there was an obscuring cloud of dust preventing the Sun from having much effect on the light in the sky at an early epoch. From the perspective of the Electric Universe, the capture scenario is more coherent. I have been writing an explanation of how stars are formed in an Electric Universe. Originally it was intended for the THOTH newsletter but it has grown to the point where I am offering it to Dwardu for inclusion in Aeon. I plan to speculate there about the implications of the model for the earlier environment on Earth, as a satellite of Saturn. Wal Thornhill
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The last exchange is worth repeating: Robert Lugibihl wrote: Is it your opinion then that the timeless era occurred when Earth was a satellite of Saturn CARDONA REPLIES: Yes. ROBERT: and that the advent of day and night occurred when this Saturnian configuration (Saturn, Earth, Mars, Venus) was captured by the Sun? CARDONA: IF the Saturnian system was captured by the Sun (and please note the emphasis). This IS a possibility but NOT a certainty. If the Saturnian system was NOT captured by the Sun, the advent of day and night would have commenced at the clearing of the Saturnian nebular cloud within which the Saturnian system was enshrouded. In any case, whether the Saturnian system was, or was not, captured by the Sun, the Saturnian nebular, or placental, cloud would still have shielded the Sun from view until after Saturn's flareup which, among other things, blew the placental cloud out of existence. ROBERT: And did the Golden Age begin with this capture? CARDONA: It is difficult to say WHEN the Golden Age COMMENCED. How does one calculate that? All I can say is that the Golden Age stretched over that period during which the Saturnian configuration was complete that is with Venus and Mars in place at the centre of the Saturnian orb, but BEFORE the first visible descent of Venus and Mars. ROBERT: Also, is it your opinion that the Golden Age never experienced a true night as we experience today due to the close proximity of Saturn? CARDONA: That is correct. ROBERT: So day and night began when the Saturnian configuration was captured by the Sun, right? CARDONA: Again, IF the Saturnian system was captured by the Sun. But still, as stated above, day and night were instituted when Saturn's nebular cloud was blown away by Saturn's flare-up. ROBERT PREVIOUSLY: At what point does massive flooding come into the scenario? ... Do you believe that great quantities of water fell from the sky and/or world pillar in conjunction with the break-up? CARDONA: From the world pillar during the break-up, definitely - despite Ted Holden's objection of many moons ago. ROBERT PREVIOUSLY: How long do you estimate the breakup took to occur, from the first disturbances at the twilight of the Golden Age to the relatively settled configuration we see today? CARDONA (ALSO PREVIOUSLY):
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That's anybody's guess.
ROBERT: Would you consider throwing out a ballpark figure? 15,000 years? More? CARDONA: Heavens, no! A much shorter time than that. Not even a century. ROBERT PREVIOUSLY: At what point did Saturn's rings become visible...during the Golden Age, during the breakup or after the breakup? CARDONA (ALSO PREVIOUSLY): Depends WHICH ring(s) you are alluding to. Saturn "grew" and "lost" more than one set of rings. ROBERT: Did Saturn possess rings during the timeless era? CARDONA: No. ROBERT: During the Golden Age? CARDONA: Yes. (NOTE: The above constitute MY opinions. My Saturnist colleagues should not be burdened with them unless it is definitely known that they agree with them.)
ANOMOLOUS OUTBURSTS
Ev Cochrane, Amy Acheson, Wal Thornhill Ev Cochrane says: An item that might be of interest in light of our recent discussion with respect to the "nova" of 1054 and the difficulty of distinguishing a comet from a "new star." As is well-known, a brilliant comet appeared in the skies during the funeral games celebrated shortly after the death of Julius Caesar. We know it to have been a comet since Chinese sources from the same year clearly describe a comet. Yet it not without interest that various Latin writers called it a "new star". Part of the confusion, perhaps, stems from the propensity of comets to undergo anomalous outbursts. Here's a quote from a recent book devoted to Caesar's comet: The July sighting in 44 was of an extremely bright, star-like object, surrounded by a slight radial coma, that maintained its high luminosity for at most seven days. This almost certainly the signature of an 'anomalous outburst'. Despite the name, anomalous outbursts are not particularly rare. Vsekhsvyatskii estimates that out of 79 recent comets, 59 have had outbursts. Even Comet 1P/Halley underwent a 9 magnitude increase in luminosity, on 15 February 1991, when it was some 14 A.U. out from the Sun. ~J. Ramsey & A. Licht, "The Comet of 44 BC and Caesar's Funeral Games," 1997, p. 72. Astronomers attribute such "outbursts" to a violent explosion of gases.
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Amy adds: Astronomer Tom Van Flandern states that such outbursts commonly occur in long-term comets as they pass through the asteroid belt. He attributes this to the "sphere of influence" effect and claims it as evidence of an exploded planet (or other catastrophic event?) in the asteroid belt 3 million years ago. The reasoning goes like this: The "sphere of influence" (the ability to hold satellites) is a function of the diameter of an object and varies with the distance of that object to the next larger object (in most cases, the sun). If a planet exploded, the objects moving away from the sun in the initial explosion would clump together around the objects with the biggest sphere of influence, but when they returned to their place of origin for the first time, that sphere would be reduced to the smallest it has ever been, and even smaller, so the pieces would burst apart in "sudden brightening" when they reach the distance from the sun at which they originated. Wal Thornhill adds: Hmm, maybe. I agree with Tom about the breakup but that is probably not the whole answer. Some comets have flared on their outward journey, beyond Jupiter. On my CD I reproduce an illustration of a meteor fragmenting in the Earth's upper atmosphere. The fragments are connected by lightning. A long period comet as it swings toward the Sun will suffer increasing electric stress to the point where material is electrically machined from the surface and accelerated into space. Large fragments will be connected by "bridges" of light created by plasma discharge effects. It would be seen as a flare-up. The notion of volatiles "boiling off" a comet was dealt a blow by comet Hale-Bopp when it was found that much more dust was coming off than could be accounted for by volatiles like water ice.
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE IN THE NEWS

Simon Grose, Canberra Times, 12 April 1999. [Circulation 40,000]. Last Thursday in the S&T [Science & Technology] page we published a story about Echidna Technologies which operates from a small room in the recycling centre at Hume. Echidna's Dr George Fischer was pictured beside what looked like a huge vacuum flask. This was his first "triaxial testing apparatus" which produces immense pressures and temperatures and was described as "an earthquake in a bottle". It had been sold to the Chinese Government to be used to "get some sort of clue as to what the rocks do just before an earthquake happens so they can predict an earthquake a few weeks ahead", Dr Fischer said. In this week's S&T page we will publish a story describing how "crazy ants" are killing the red land crabs of Christmas Island "threatening to fundamentally alter the nature of the rainforest". The story will quote Dr Dennis O'Dowd, "director of Monash University's new Centre for the Analysis and Management of Biological Invasions". "This could be catastrophic," he says. "I can think of no impact as large as this by a single invader in such a short period of time." Like the Echidna story, this one has a Canberra connection in ANU research fellow Peter Green, one of O'Dowd's team. Both stories would be also be prime furphy suspects if published on April I with arousing headlines: World-first quake predictor triggers export bonanza for Canberra or Crazy ants massacre land crabs in tropical paradise eco-catastrophe. Both are very real, 100-percent genuine stories. Published in April, not on the 1st, they arouse no suspicion. But they show how close to the threshold of disbelief comes the weird and wonderful world of science and technology. The work of for other Canberra men of science also challenges that threshold.
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Wally Anfiloff of Spence, the author of the only genuine S&T article we published on April 1, has a sweeping alternative theory about the Earth's geology. A physics and geology graduate with 20 years government service, Wally says he is "the world's top tectonics expert" and ASIO has been trying to entice him to Russia "to conceal the collapse of the science, and to give the USA a free hand dumping nuclear waste in Australia". Wal Thornhill, of Chapman, is also a physics graduate. His Electric Universe theory strongly opposes mainstream astrophysics. Thornhill, who sells a CD ROM describing his theory, claims more than 90 per cent of the craters on planets and moons in the solar system were caused by huge lightning bolts, that the Sun's heat is not generated by nuclear fusion, and eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io are plasma discharges, not volcanoes. (His theory is outlined at www.kronia.com.) BRIAN SCHMIDT, from Mount Stromlo Observatory, leads one of two teams which announced last year that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Schmidt is highly regarded in mainstream astrophysics, but he admits that the findings are astounding. He found them so hard to believe that he tried every possible way to disprove them before publishing. Almost 18 months later, they still stand. Bob Blanden, head of the division of Immunology and Cell Biology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, is also a highly regarded figure in his area of science. When Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel won a Nobel Prize for Medicine for work done at the Curtin School under Blanden's supervision, many insiders felt that Blanden should have shared the award. Last year Blanden co-wrote a book, Lamarck's Signature, which proposes that acquired characteristics can be inherited. This defies Darwinian evolutionary principles, evoking jaded eyeball- rolling and headshaking whenever senior molecular biologists gather together. Despite its radical nature, the work of Blanden and Schmidt is at the cutting edge of recognised scientific discovery, earning prominent positions on the safe side (just) of the threshold of disbelief The work of Anfiloff and Thornhill is more radical, but not much more. Enough, however, to tip them over the threshold into the outsider zone, from where they strive to deliver themselves by broaching the threshold or shifting it behind them. All men and women of science have to consider the threshold of disbelief and their relation to it. As Wal Thornhill notes on his CD: If I have had an underlying purpose in my life it has been to watch for intellectual explorers who have been marginalised by their peers. They are often those who have the audacity to use their imagination, uncommon-sense and courage to challenge the paradigm paralysis institutionalised in western science. We must not let the reputation of even an Einstein stand in our way when seeking better paradigms. We must simply allow for the possibility that he was wrong. Hopefully, the truth will eventually out, justice be done, and courage be rewarded. But don't expect any mercy on April 1.
THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING

BY PAUL DAVIES Response by Wal Thornhill
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Is it conceivable that the answers to life, the universe and everything are within our grasp? After all, science as we know it is barely three centuries old. Some leading scientists clearly think so. In Washington this week top physicists, cosmologists and philosophers will deliberate on how the Universe came to exist, our place in it, and a selection of cosmic destinies. Nobody will claim to know the answers to these Big Questions yet but discussing them is now almost commonplace in scientific circles. Cosmologists are convinced that the universe began with a big bang, and think they know more or less how it happened. They are pretty sure of the fine details after the first trillionth of a second or so. For the moment, physicists believe they are on the verge of a "theory of everything" linking all fundamental forces and particles of nature in a mathematical frame-work. Some key topics are still deeply mysterious. The origin of life and the nature of consciousness remain problematic. Nor can the experts agree on whether we are the only beings reflecting on the meaning of it all or whether the universe is teeming with sentient life forces asking the same questions, but the outline of a grand cosmic scheme is discernible, and those at the cutting edge of research are unashamedly exhilarated. Recent dramatic events, such as the discovery of planets orbiting other star systems, have given a sense of immediacy to the quest. Beneath these heady developments lies a profound philosophical puzzle. How are we able to make such progress? Why can humble Homo sapiens, a chance product of blind evolution, unravel the secrets of nature so spectacularly well? Most people take the success of science for granted. They assume that as long as the budget is big enough it can answer all questions but science is a very strange activity. Had it not been for some historical accidents, humans might never have stumbled across it at all. The founding tenet of science is that nature is ordered and intelligible, but the order isn't readily apparent. Revealing the underlying laws demands arcane procedures such as mathematical analysis and contrived experimentation. Why must the world be this way? Early scientists such as Galileo and Newton, steeped in Christianity, believed that God ordered the physical world according to a rational plan. By studying nature, the scientist might unveil the creator's handiwork. Since man was made in God's image, and therefore shared His rationality, humans could glimpse the mind of God in the mathematical architecture of the cosmos. Today few scientists would describe their work in such stark theological terms, but they all share, perhaps unwittingly, a belief that the universe conforms to a coherent rational scheme. Even if the rational order is accepted, we are left with the riddle of its intelligibility. Evolution has equipped us to solve certain practical problems, like spotting patterns and catching falling apples. Some philosophers argue that science is just an extension of these skills, but the mathematical order in the fundamental laws of physics is in a highly abstract and subtle form. The laws are uncovered only by intense intellectual and investigative effort. The order in the subatomic realm, for example, bears no relation to the patterns found in daily experience. When you catch a falling apple you don't apply the laws of Newtonian mechanics to compute a trajectory but compare the situation with experience and make a best-fit prediction. The fact that we can come to know the physical world not only phenomenologically (as in perceiving falling apples) but also theoretically (by understanding the laws of motion), suggests that our minds are tuned to the deep structure of nature unreasonably effectively. How far can this "cosmic resonance' take us? Do we have the power to grasp the answers to all the big questions of existence? Physicist Steven Weinberg called his most recent book Dreams of
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a Final Theory. He is one of many theoreticians who hope fervently that physics, at least, is a program that can be completed. Like Stephen Hawking, Weinberg envisages a mathematical formula encompassing everything at the subatomic level. It would predict in principle all the properties of matter, force, space and time and tell us also what happened at the beginning of the universe, the fate of an object that falls into a black hole and much else. The prospect of deducing such a formula is spurring much of the euphoria behind meetings like that in Washington, but could the triumphalism turn out to be little more than a touch of millennium madness? Perhaps physicists simply got lucky in the 20th century and cleaned up a lot of problems that were unusually easy for the human mind to handle. There is no guarantee that this trend will continue. When the next level of structure in the atom is probed we might encounter principles at work that are utterly beyond our ken. Phenomena such as consciousness might lie forever beyond human scope. It would be depressing if fundamental science just petered out in a fog of incomprehensibility. Nevertheless, there is no known reason why our minds should be built for the task of answering the big questions. We might be deluding ourselves to suppose that humans can be privy to the basic rules by which the universe runs. Einstein said once that God was subtle but not malicious. He meant that we could expect to work hard to quarry nuggets of truth using science, but the laws of nature would never prove to be so obscure or fiendishly complex that we couldn't discern them eventually. It is an inspiring belief and one that drives the engine of science in its restless search for truth, but it remains an article of pure faith. -The Guardian
Paul Davies is Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, and author of The Mind of God. His latest book is The Fifth Miracle: The search for the Origin of Life. "Cosmic Questions" is the title of a conference at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, which opens on Wednesday.
Letter to the editor of the Canberra Times.

You made an interesting editorial choice in the CT of 12/4. On page 12 was Simon Grose's column which mentioned four Canberra men challenging the threshold of science. I was one of them, arguing for a new astrophysics based on the powerful electrical force. Then on page 14 we find the antithesis of Simon's article in "The answer to everything" by Paul Davies. He writes: ...the outline of a grand cosmic scheme is discernible, and those at the cutting edge of research are unashamedly exhilarated. I, along with a growing number of physicists, remain unashamedly skeptical of astrophysical theories that appeal to unseen matter, invisible black holes and the weakest force known, gravity, to explain the amazing universe. As the Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Cornell University wrote on the subject: ...never judge the strength of foundation by size of building. Professor Harry Collins, co-author of The Golem: What everyone should know about science; says that "the odd thing is that among the confused consumers of scientific myths are scientists themselves, who base their expectations of themselves on a past populated with heroes capable of creating decisive proofs and certainties that approach the status of mystical revelation." Professor Davies is evidently one such scientist busily and profitably perpetuating that mythology in his copious writing. The sad thing for the rest of us is that scientific progress may be held up for decades or centuries while scientists play these consensual games.
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You may notice that Davies waxes lyrical about the mathematics that forms the basis of much of modern cosmology. One dissenting physicist observes that it is like programming a computer to tell how much force is required to stretch a certain elastic band a given distance. The computer will keep on churning out unreal answers long after the elastic has snapped. It only requires one elastic band to snap in the cosmological engine the astrophysicists have constructed for the whole thing to not work. The exhilaration Davies feels is that of running with the mob. He should try doing it alone. Wal Thornhill Wal adds: Yesterday I got an email from the Science & Technology editor of the Canberra Times, Simon Grose, in reply to that one I sent you containing my letter to the editor. He wrote: Thanks for your comments. I agree 100% re Davies. he is a boring hypster/spiv who has very successfully clothed himself in an invisible garment that he has convinced most of the world is the raiment of a wise and groovy S&T commentator. Spivs, naked emperors, and visionaries called Wallace will always be with us. regards SDMG
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 9 (June 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: LOOKING UP SATURNIAN STUDIES Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science ELECTRIC UNIVERSE QUESTIONS ARE WE GETTING THERE? EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO Seeing Red: Quasars, Cosmologies and Academic Science
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott and Kronians by Halton Arp book review by Wal Thornhill. Wal Thornhill and the Kronians Dwardu Cardona and Wal Thornhill by Halton Arp
LOOKING UP
by Mel Acheson At NEW SCENARIOS ON EVOLUTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, the recent conference held in Italy, a paper by Franco Ricci-Lucchi parsed the decline in prestige of geology since the time of Lyell. Geology is considered by many people as a minor or ancillary science, or even a non-science, under the influence of thinkers such as Karl Popper (what is not amenable to experiment is not falsifiable; therefore it is not science ...) and of a restricted notion of science ... according to which the book of the universe is written in mathematical languages... Geology deals with a) past events, which are not reproducible; b) individual or unique objects and phenomena; c) dynamic, mostly non-linear and chaotic systems; d) complex systems observable in nature, hardly so in the laboratory. Ricci-Lucchi mentioned but didn't elaborate an interesting similarity: Geology has much in common with Astronomy. The objects in the sky are fossils, too, and their light talks about past events. But Astronomy is more appealing to the layman. Maybe he has more respect or fear for the skies than for Mother Earth! And maybe the stars don't disagree as forcefully as stones when astronomers foist reductionist theories from mathematical physics onto them. (Until now: quantised redshifts among undeniably- connected quasars and galaxies speak an indefeasible "NO" to the Big Bang.) Astronomy would have done better to follow Geology in recognizing the fossil stars as "dynamic, mostly non-linear and chaotic systems." It should have paid more heed to the complexity of the lights in the sky instead of brushing aside the anomalies which have come to constitute the bulk of available evidence. In pursuing the prestige of being an exact science dominated by mathematically precise models, it lost touch with the objects of its study. A wag has asked:

Q: How can you tell a professional astronomer from an amateur? A: When they go outside at night, the amateur looks up. Ricci-Lucchi began the paper by noting:
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The end of this century is marked by a crisis of reason... Uncertainty and indetermination are recognized as essential elements of physical reality... The paper ended with this thought: It is enough, Popper may forgive, to accept as science every intellectual activity based on reason and aimed at understanding... Mel Acheson
SATURNIAN STUDIES
by Dave Talbott and Kronians Clark Whelton writes: Well, I'm curious. Has any Saturnist said that there HAVE been global disasters of celestial origin -- or changes in the celestial order -- in the last 3,000 years? Dave, may I ask your opinion on this subject? Dave Talbott responds: Though this question is outside my own expertise, I'd like to see the issue investigated from all vantage points, including retrocalculations, archaeology, climatology, geology, and direct ancient testimony. All I can say with certainty is that I've never found a symbolic or mythological theme whose origins could be fixed within the last 3,000 years (unless conventional chronologies are off to an earth-shaking extent). All identifiable themes appear to point back to the origins of civilization and beyond. How long was the transitional period between the mythical age of (highly capricious) planetary gods and the later epoch of predictable planetary motions? My wild guess would be that sometime between 1500 B.C and 1,000 BC the planetary system settled into its present highly stable arrangement. But this transitional period may well have been characterized by a series of terrestrial disturbances, some of them global. In this regard, I'm open to considering any possibility backed by a systematic presentation of evidence. One certainty is that the mythological evidence Velikovsky drew upon to support the Venus and Mars events in Worlds and Collision belongs to a period of history prior to the development of writing, kingship, temple-building, and other ritual practices associated with the rise of civilization. We can know this with certainty because the stories and images of Venus and Mars are deeply embedded in all such practices. And they are woven into the collective memories of Saturn's reign. Dave Talbott Karen Josephson joins in: I'm not a great historian, but it seems that the historic calendar changes (and related historic statements), as well as the "angular chronology" I previously mentioned, would infer a very impressive incident. And all the reading I've done indicates that this occurred about 700 BC -- which would definitely be within the 3000 year BP timeframe.. kaj Ted Bond adds:
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Kaj, I'm so glad to hear somebody say this. I've been waiting to say it myself but still hadn't worked up the courage! Dave Talbott answers: But keep in mind that the original question related to unstable planets causing terrestrial disturbances within the past 3,000 years. A near approach of planets in the past 3,000 years would have generated a large volume of eyewitness accounts identifying the body, since early astronomy did preserve the link of gods and planets. I think that Ev, Dwardu and I would all agree that such evidence is lacking, and we came to our respective conclusions independently. [Caveat: if it turns out that retrocalculations do not match "6th century" observations of planetary motions, I will happily reconsider my own tentative conclusions.] This does not take anything away from legitimate evidence of later terrestrial disturbances, which should be systematically explored. And certainly the electric universe allows residual effects long after the era of profound planetary instability, which WAS remembered around the world and left us with a massive body of evidence that CAN be systematically investigated. Dave Talbott
SEEING RED: REDSHIFTS, COSMOLOGY AND ACADEMIC SCIENCE

By Halton Arp Book Review by Wal Thornhill. The book comes about 10 years after Arp's earlier challenge to cosmologists in his book, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies. Since that time, Arp had moved to the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich, Germany - having been effectively excluded from his research in the USA. In Germany he was able to extend his earlier telescopic work by having access to x-ray images of many of the deep-space objects that were crucial to his argument that the cosmological redshift was related more to the age of an object since its birth than to its velocity away from us. With this new book, the Big Bang theory is seen at best to be theoretical flatulence, at worst it is an indictment of academic behaviour and the way science is done these days. "Sometimes I think that Astronomy is not so much a science as a series of scandals." [Seeing Red, p. 64]. However, some comfort can be taken by members of this list from Arp's opening remark: I started getting letters from scientists in small colleges, in different disciplines, from amateurs, students and lay people. The amateurs in particular amazed and delighted me, because it quickly became clear that they really looked at pictures, knew various objects and reasoned for themselves while maintaining a healthy skepticism toward official interpretations. At the heart of Arp's argument is the discovery that faint, high red-shift quasars seem to be physically associated with active galaxies of normal red-shift. It appears that quasars are occasionally shot from the nucleus of an active galaxy in opposite directions along the spin axis. The youngest quasars are the faintest and have the highest redshift. Older quasars are brighter, have lower redshifts, and finally become new companion galaxies with more normal redshift. The whole family are flung out like drops of water from a double-armed sprinkler with the parent galaxy spinning in the middle, its axis pointing along the sprinkler arms. The most amazing discovery of all was that the quasar redshifts are quantised! It is as if something happens in the quasars to make matter more massive, stepwise, with time and so increase the energy of emitted spectral lines (reduce the redshift). At least that is Arp's challenging conclusion. From this paradigm shattering data, Arp proposes that the Universe we see is much smaller than advertised because high redshift has little to do with distance. With no primeval bang to work back to, the
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Universe becomes indefinitely large and old. Arp suggests that matter is created in cascading episodes from existing galaxies. (Unfortunately that merely smears out the matter "creation" story of the Big Bang without providing any more insight into this miraculous effect). He traces events in our region of the universe and constructs a convincing family tree for our own galaxy, with the interesting result that our "twin" is identifiable because it seems that galaxies are born in pairs on opposite sides of the parent galaxy. Arp's book exposes many of the creaking underpinnings of modern physics. Quantum theory has nothing to offer by way of a physical model to explain the redshift jumps across entire galaxies. And since there is no real model of how gravity works, there is no sensible explanation of how inertial mass can increase with time, nor of its link with gravitational mass. It is not surprising that the consequences of the total destruction of all their present smug certainties is too horrible for astronomers to contemplate. They react to the evidence "... like people viewing a grisly automobile accident ...", Arp writes. To complete the ruination, Arp then demonstrates that some stars also exhibit redshift anomalies. So we don't understand stars as well as we thought either. Concerning the birth of stars, the standard model requires the collision of clouds of dust and gas. "Now my co-author, Jack Sulentic, and I were disrespectful enough to suggest that smashing two lumps of gas together was the worst possible way to make stars. It just heated up the gas and generally caused condensations to dissipate." [Seeing Red, p. 105]. Arp's discoveries are the most important in astronomy since the invention of the telescope. He has developed a map of the visible universe that makes good sense and shows once again the penchant for Nature to repeat patterns. This is a feature also of the Electric Universe model, where electrical discharges in plasma exhibit an organizing principle that shapes galaxies. When combined with the plasma focus phenomenon we have an explanation for active galactic nuclei and the birth of quasars. Quantised galactic and stellar redshift is simply explained by Sansbury's new classical physics model of gravity as a near instantaneous electrostatic dipolar force. In fact, it would have been embarrassing if quantum redshifts had not been found. Matter creation is unnecessary when the effective scavenging ability of intergalactic Birkeland currents is added to the electrical causation of increasing inertial mass. Arp's work forms a major piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is The Electric Universe. Just as the Electric Universe does away with the fanciful notion of black holes, Arp reserves some wry comments about this mythical beast that is supposed to lurk at the centres of galaxies and suck stars in: The greatly publicised theory is black holes where everything falls in. But the observations show everything is falling out! (Can we count on conventional science always choosing the incorrect alternative between two possibilities? I would vote yes, because the important problems usually require a change in paradigm which is forbidden to conventional science.) Seeing Red, p. 228] The last chapter of Seeing Red is devoted to Academia. Those who have followed the "Velikovsky Affair" will recognise the bad behaviour patterns. Arp brings an insider's perspective as an outstanding researcher who followed the rules of experiment and publication only to be met with ostracism and denial. Those who find it hard to credit stories of church officials refusing to look through Galileo's telescope will have difficulty when reading Arp's book to find that the same thing happens in this so-called scientific age. "... influential people in the field know what the observations portend, but they are too deeply committed to go back. The result will surely be to inexorably push academic science toward a position akin to that of the medieval church. But if that is the evolutionarily necessary solution, then perhaps we should hasten the process of replacing the present system with a more effective mode of doing science." [Seeing Red, p. 23]. One important mode is scientific communication. Arp is of the opinion that it has almost completely broken down through the accepted journals. I believe that the Internet provides the new scientific protestants with the communication tool to advance science without requiring the participation of academics. We don't have to waste our time - Seeing Red. Wal Thornhill
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ELECTRIC UNIVERSE QUESTIONS

Wal Thornhill and the Kronians Amy wrote: I think I asked this once, but it was before you'd read Arp, Wal. So I'll ask again: I can't read about quantum redshifts in galaxies without being aware that the Milky Way is also a galaxy, and one which appears not to have reached it's "normal" potential yet (at least that's how I interpret your interpretation of Arp wrt the observation that M31 (the Milky Way's parent)is blueshifted by one redshift quanta) (Yes? No? Maybe?) Wal replies: It seems so from Arp's model and reconstruction of events in the local cluster of galaxies. Amy: So the question becomes, what happens to our local solar system when the entire galaxy instantly jumps up one electrostatic gravity quantum? Are the dinosaurs testimony to the last time that happened? And would such a jump result in a sudden change in planetary orbits? Say, set into motion the events of the recent history of the solar system? I would assume that there are also local events going on at all scales (stellar jets, SL9, etc.), but what happens locally when the big change occurs? Wal: I have thought a lot about that. I think the biggest changes occur early in the history of a proto-galaxy where the brightness is increasing most rapidly. That is, the electric stress on stars is rising from the red anode glow to the bright tufting stage. Yes, planetary orbits would be affected but I doubt that it would be sufficient to set in motion the events of the recent history of the solar system. If the effects were that drastic I would expect to see a galaxy somewhere in deep space with a lot of nova/supernova activity in evidence, caused by sudden gravitational disturbances in binary star systems. We need to get a handle on what the redshift quantum represents in terms of mass increase of atoms. Arp gives a change of the electrons inertial mass of about .024% (if my arithmetic is right) for a 72km/sec change in redshift. If this is applied to all subatomic particles then it would not cause drastic effects. I believe that the reconstructed events surrounding the Saturnian era are best explained by a catastrophic change in proto-Saturn's electrical environment upon entering the Sun's sphere of influence. To cause a change in the Earth's gravity by 10's of percent required that the electrical connection between protoSaturn and the Earth was very intimate indeed. I will elaborate in my planned Aeon article. Amy: Question stimulated by this week's announcement that the black hole in the Milky Way's core has been "cannibalizing" a galaxy for the past billion years. In Arp viewpoint, the galaxy is being born.] Wal: I think he is right. Barry Cornett asks Wal Thornhill Looking back now at a March correspondence I forget the context in which Wal mentioned "neutral plasma." But, it is interesting to note the strange electrical phenomenon that would, theoretically, occur if a large enough potential were placed across a neutral plasma: One would have an equal current flowing in both directions. Wal responds:
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That's true but what you have described is a glow discharge. The complicated phenomena that occur in a glow discharge can fill a text book. Ralph Juergens gave a good idea of those complexities when he described his model of an electric star. Barry again: Assuming that the Right Hand Rule for the flow of electrons has an equivalent magnetic reaction for the flow of protons, then we would have a Left Hand Rule for a positive current flow! I have never heard of this (or I don't remember) in my physics classes since protons don't flow in wires but they can sure flow in plasmas! Is this valid? Is there any evidence of this? Wal: Without being pedantic, what you say is basically correct. The current in a plasma is carried by both ions and electrons, moving in opposite directions. Barry: What we see with two electron current flows in the same direction is they magnetically attract each other with the magnetic field circling in the direction of the right hand's curled fingers. Wal: This is where things start getting complicated, when you introduce magnetic fields. Electrons and ions don't like crossing magnetic field lines, they tend to spiral along them. Because the ions are 1000's of times heavier than electrons they form large spirals while electrons form tight spirals. Barry: If the assumption of the Left Hand Rule for proton flow is true then positive & negative currents flowing together within the same potential will also attract each other, because the circular magnetic fields will be the same since the currents will be in opposite directions. Wal: Without reproducing a textbook, the only force-free movement of electric current through a plasma takes the form of Birkeland currents which are twisted filaments of electric current that organise themselves into twisted rope-like structures along magnetic field lines. The current filaments retain their integrity because of long range attraction of parallel currents and short range repulsion of anti-parallel azimuthal current effects. Barry: So, the electrical flow of ALL currents in a plasma will, in fact, attract one another and squeeze, or pinch, together - not just the electrons. Wal: Most of the current is carried in a plasma by the much more mobile electrons. The "pinch" effect is created by a number of filaments coalescing by long-range attraction to form a larger current "rope". Have a look in your library for Sky & Telescope, May 1985, where you will find a diagrammatic explanation. Barry: Wal, you state the following: It is known that the night side [of Venus'] atmosphere is bombarded by fast electrons and that there is an unexplained large, fast drift of plasma (up to 10km/sec or 23,000 mph) from day to night hemisphere. The Electric Universe, pg. 49
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I'm having trouble interpreting this sentence. The plasma that is "drifting," is that actually coming from the day side of the planet in some kind of solar-flare-like arc to the night side? And, is that the source of the high velocity electrons that are bombarding the night side? Barry.
Wal answers: As far as I remember, the argument was that most of the electrons would be moving through the Venusian ionosphere in much the same way that we have ionospheric ring currents about the Earth. However, my contention is that the unusual "flux ropes" entwined through Venus' ionosphere are evidence of a direct electrical connection with the solar plasma and that the origin of the fast electrons is from those Birkeland current ropes. Wal Thornhill
ARE WE GETTING THERE?

Dwardu Cardona and Wal Thornhill Dwardu Cardona wrote: The orthodox discipline of physics is bending, if not yet breaking. Check the article - "Faster Than a Speeding Photon" - by David H. Freedman, in the August 1998 issue of DISCOVER, pp. 71 ff. <snip> The best of the lot, however, is Bernard Haisch who has declared that "twentieth-century physics is as silly as Ptolemaic cosmology - and as wrong." Haisch is on record for stating that "general relativity and quantum mechanics are both entirely erroneous theories. No matter that they both have a long history of stunning agreement between prediction and experiment. The Ptolemaic system had great agreement with observation, too. But it was silly." Wal sez: I agree with that assessment. Dwardu continues: And here's something for Thornhill: According to Haisch, ...photons are just particles of electromagnetic energy. Wal opines: I disagree. Photons are not particles nor are they comprised of electromagnetic energy. Dwardu again: Granted, Haisch's model of the Universe is not yet quite in agreement with Thornhill's version. Wal: You said it. Most other versions are from physicists who have a lot to unlearn before they can make any real headway. Me, I'm a slow learner - so now I've got a head start. Dwardu: But, as anyone can see on reading this article, physicists seem to be growing weary, if not wary, of the orthodox model. Haisch's ideas have also struck a chord with NASA officials. In fact, he has landed a contract from NASA which is providing partial funding for his continuing research. Wal asks:

How can I get some? Dwardu asks: Are we actually getting there? Is this a step FORWARD? Or merely a SIDEWAYS swipe?
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Wal replies: I believe we must slowly get there but we will we be tempted down a lot of blind alleys marked on old maps of scientific "truth". However, it is a good sign when more physicists begin to express Their doubts instead of merely giggling nervously in lectures when their peers spout the most outrageous nonsense. Wal Thornhill
EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO Seeing Red, Quasars, Cosmologies and Academic Science
by Halton Arp I believe the observational evidence has become overwhelming, and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need to communicate the new observations, the connections between objects and the new insights into the workings of the universe- all the primary obligations of academic science, which has generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident information. The present book is sure to outrage many academic scientists. Many of my professional friends will be greatly pained. Why then do I write it? First, everyone has to tell the truth as they see it, especially about important things. The fact that the majority of professionals are intolerant of even opinions which are discordant makes change a necessity. Those friends of mine who also struggle to get the mainstream of astronomy back on track mostly feel that presenting evidence and championing new theories is sufficient to cause change, and that it is improper to criticize an enterprise to which they belong and value highly. I disagree, in that I think if we do not understand why science is failing to self-correct, it will not be possible to fix it. This, then, is the crisis for the reasonable members of the profession. With so many alternative, contradictory theories, many of them fitting the evidence very badly, abandoning the accepted theory is a frightening step into chaos. At this point, I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and interdisciplinary thinkers-those who form judgments on the general thrust of the evidence, those who are skeptical about any explanation, particularly official ones, and above all are tolerant of other people's theories. The only hope I see is for the more ethical professionals and the more attentive, open-minded non professionals to combine their efforts to form a more democratic science with better judgment, and slowly transform the subject into an enlightened, more useful activity of society. This is the deeper reason I wrote this book and, although it will cause distress, I believe a painfully honest debate is the only exercise capable of galvanizing meaningful change. Halton Arp Reprinted by permission
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 10 (July 30, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: PLAYING THE JOKERS SATURN AND VENUS SEEING PINK SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION - I SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION - II
by Mel Acheson Ted Bond, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott by Michael Armstrong, Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
PLAYING THE JOKERS

By Mel Acheson The house of cards which is modern astronomy contains two jokers. Both lie in the foundation; both are being played; and the house is doomed to collapse. The first joker is the assumption that redshift is entirely a doppler effect. Upon this card is founded the idea of the expanding universe and the theory of the Big Bang. Halton Arp's observations of physical connections among objects with different redshifts knocks this joker over. The further discovery that redshifts are quantised in cluster-specific sequences tosses it onto the discard pile. The second joker is the assumption that electrical phenomena are insignificant on an astronomical scale, that gravitation alone shapes the structure of the universe. Hannes Alfvn tilted that card with his observations that plasmas are not neutral superconductors: they propagate charge separation, current flow, and electrical forces over large distances. Other researchers are flattening this joker by amassing evidence of plasma activity in a multiplicity of forms throughout the universe, at every scale. A common characteristic connects these jokers: The currently- popular theories are built on the assumption of isolation. A galaxy is an "island universe", wrapped in its own gravitational field, idly spinning in nothingness. A star is a ball of gas balanced between the pull of its own gravity and the push of its own radiation. The revolutionary aspect of the joker-flattening evidence is that stars and galaxies are connected and interacting. Galaxies eject clouds, jets, and quasars that evolve into companion galaxies and clusters. Many of these remain connected to the parent galaxy with fingers of radio and x-ray radiation. Stars form in pinched segments of galaxy-wide lightning discharges and resonate to the variations in current and potential. Instead of a universe of individual particles that can be described in isolation, there is a universe of populations of mutual influences and of evolving correlations. Levels of statistical and historical ordering emerge beyond and above the individual level. The deterministic equations of establishment theories are valid only insofar as conditions of isolation are approximated. They require closing one's eyes to aggregates and to connections and to bigger pictures. Ultimately, one must close one's eyes to the universe or else watch the house of cards fall. Mel Acheson
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SATURN AND VENUS

By Ted Bond, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott TED BOND SAYS: The Jewish religion, in its origins, aimed to put an end to planet-worship, especially of Saturn and Venus, who were worshipped together, and with it the universal practice of human sacrifice, e.g. the practice of putting the first-born through the fire, strictly forbidden in Deuteronomy. The Jews were thus the first people to introduce the notion of an invisible god, something new, strange, and to many incomprehensible. Sacrifice did continue, however, as a religious practice, but of beasts rather than humans. In a passage in Exodus, God still demands the firstborn of all animals as his, but the firstborn of humans are redeemed. (This was presumably the firstborn of the female, since it was tied to the opening of the womb. Note that Isaac, whose hand was stayed, was the firstborn not of Abraham but of Sarah.) It seems that this Semitic people had been worshippers of Saturn, as their very name, 'people of Israel' shows, as well as the use of the word 'Elohim' (plural of El[=Saturn]) for the divinity in passages in the Torah. And what other explanation is there of the fact that the Jewish day begins at sundown? For the Jews the disappearance of Saturn as the Sun of Night, and eventually of the altered Venus-Ishtar-InannaAstarte (&c.), earlier the benign mother goddess, as a fiery light in the sky and an agent of destruction, were of supreme importance. These were two very bright 'stars' that had disappeared from the sky. Isaiah (14: 1-13), apparently alluding to Babylon, says: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God... Now in the Isaiah passage what is presumably the Hebrew name 'Shahar' is translated into Greek as 'Phosphorus' and into Latin and hence into English as 'Lucifer', which were the Greek and Latin names, respectively, for the morning star. DAVE TALBOTT SAYS: This is correct, and it's an obvious source of much later confusion. It was Babylonian priest-astronomers who later clarified planetary identifications for the Greeks, so that the planets acquired new names with direct links to the earlier, and much more reliable, traditions of Mesopotamia. Ted Bond was correct in noting the inherent contradiction in identifying Venus with the source of "devil" imagery (Lucifer). Venus is the archetypal feminine figure, but this root identity could hold only insofar as wandering tribes retained the link of gods and planets. Many peoples--including the Egyptians and Greeks--did not; they preserved only the stories of extraordinary powers and forms dominating the sky in a prior epoch. Preserving the stories did not require clear skies and observational disciplines under conditions of a shifting celestial order. But maintaining planetary identifications certainly did require such disciplines. Insofar as nations did not preserve the link of god and planet, their imagination was permitted to attach any mythical name whatever to planets and stars in later times--in the same way that, still later, we attached mythical names to Uranus, Neptune and Pluto as these planets were observed with telescopes. Similarly, all of the major stars and constellations, named long after the mythical age of the gods, achieved their symbolic identifications by the same process of projection, just as local mountains and rivers acquired their sacred names from mythical powers, inviting horrendous later confusion between archetype and symbol. The original planetary SOURCE of the myths is a much different matter, and the extraordinary discipline of the Babylonians was crucial to our ability to connect the mythical archetypes to the roles of named planets.
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TED: Was this a mistranslation, or was Isaiah mistakenly compounding Venus and Saturn, the two fallen lightgiving gods? For in English Lucifer is standardly identified with the fallen angel who became Satan or the Devil and, to the best of my knowledge, this Lucifer has never been identified with Venus.
EV COCHRANE ADDS: Venus was, in fact, depicted as "horned". Cultures from around the ancient world compared Venus to a long-horned cow. Even the much later Babylonian astronomical texts speak of the horns of Venus, a fact which has led many astronomers to consider the possibility that the ancients viewed the phases of Venus. Venus was also called Lucifer by numerous Biblical commentators and scholars. Even so, I believe that the passage in Isaiah properly refers to the planet Mars, not Venus. TED: Finally, the pre-Christian religion of Europe, which survived, vilified as witchcraft, well into the Christian era, had two divinities, the Horned Man and the Queen of Heaven--who but Saturn and Venus? And this Horned Man, worshipped by the 'witches', became the Devil of medieval Christianity! DAVE: Yes indeed. That the Queen of Heaven was Venus can be established beyond dispute. The consistency and reliability of the identification is also a basis of our confidence in the comparative approach. By drawing our attention to the substratum of human memory, it helps us to avoid being misled by localized contradictions. TED: Neither do I myself have any doubt that the golden heifers inscribed with the tetragrammaton, set up by Jeroboam at Dan and Beth-El with the proclamation "Behold thy gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt," symbolized the same planetary god represented by the Egyptians as a celestial heifer- -Hathor, who all agree was the planet Venus. DAVE: Yes again. The equation, celestial heifer = Venus, is highly reliable. It belongs to the root mythical identity of the mother goddess, and no other planet competes with Venus for this role in early astronomy. It is the comparative approach which enables one to work through local elaborations and contradictions to find dependable patterns of this sort. Under this approach it will be seen that there is a highly coherent original story of the mother goddess, always leading us to the planet Venus--despite the numerous, more random, projections of goddess-attributes onto other celestial and terrestrial objects in later times. TED: Was Baal Venus or Saturn or both? Should the breakup of the polar configuration and all the planetary activity connected with it be brought forward in time, so as to be in living memory of the early Jews and confused in legend by the later prophets? EV: The identification of Baal is a very thorny problem. The difficulty arises from the fact that Baal is simply a name meaning "Lord" and that there were many different Baals in the ancient Near East. None of them, to the best of my knowledge, were identified with the planet Venus. Rather, the latter was identified with Baal's consort, Baalit. Some Baals, such as Baal Hadad, would appear to be identified with the planet Mars. As for your last question, I don't see any reason to bring the breakup of the polar configuration forward in time.
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SEEING PINK
By Michael Armstrong, Wal Thornhill MICHAEL ARMSTRONG WROTE: Wal, Now, what have you done to those poor Australian astronomers? Not only have they convinced themselves that they are seeing black holes, but they are seeing them as bright pink! AND they're only "pretty certain" that black isn't pink! See article below: WAL THORNHILL ANSWERS: Michael, I think it must be the "Priscilla syndrome", - it comes from being too long on mountain tops in the Australian outback. :-> Seriously though, BLACK HOLES DO NOT EXIST! So it is quite possible that what they are looking at is the plasmoid that gives rise to the phenomena attributed to a black hole. It will radiate across the entire electromagnetic spectrum so the perceived colour will depend on many factors that we can only guess at. Of course, experiments with plasma focus devices and study of the "black hole" spectrum will give us some clues. Note that the distance of the BH seems wildly overstated and was therefore presumably calculated using its apparent redshift. Halton Arp has annihilated that simplistic notion. So, estimates of the luminosity of the black hole will also be exaggerated by many orders of magnitude. For example if the "black hole" is 1000 times closer than the astronomers say (a figure used by Arp in a recent discovery) then the luminosity can be a million times less to give the effects seen. Wal Thornhill
THE ARTICLE:
The Oregonian May 19, 1999 An unexplained pink shade found near the void of some black holes. Australian astronomers have found that some black holes look bright pink. They reported that the "pink holes" are more than a billion light-years away. "These pink things were quite easy to find, said Paul Francis of Australian National University. "The hard bit was proving that they are black holes. It took the combined power of four of Australia's best telescopes to identify what they were." How could black holes, which have such intense gravity fields that they suck in light, be pink? "We really don't have the foggiest idea." Francis said. "We're pretty certain that it isn't the black holes themselves that are pink." Instead, the pink light may be coming from gas "just outside the black holes." Black holes, which act like cosmic vacuum cleaners, are the remnants of massive stars, or even galaxies, that have exhausted all their nuclear fuel and collapsed into themselves.
SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION -- I

Comments by Wal Thornhill
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The following item was sent to me by a friend and member of the Canberra Astronomical Society. Of particular interest are the "abrupt" climate changes that are attributed to that arm waving catch-all beloved of climatologists, the unquantifiable "feedback" mechanisms in our weather systems. The suggested change of about 0.5 degree in the Earth's axial tilt seems ludicrously small to bring about the changes noted. The switch from precipitation and moderate temperatures to aridity and high temperatures sounds very much like an episode of Earth's relocation in the solar system to an orbit closer to the Sun. That is a simple cause and effect relationship. Unfortunately for the climatologists, the rules of their game don't allow it at present. I would like to know where all of the sand came from too. Wal Thornhill
Sahara's abrupt desertification started by changes in Earth's orbit, accelerated by atmospheric and vegetation feedbacks
(For Immediate Release: July 7, 1999) American Geophysical Union Public Information Office 2000 Florida Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20009 WASHINGTON -- One of the most striking climate changes of the past 11,000 years caused the abrupt desertification of the Saharan and Arabia regions midway through that period. The resulting loss of the Sahara to agricultural pursuits may be an important reason that civilizations were founded along the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. German scientists, employing a new climate system model, have concluded that this desertification was initiated by subtle changes in the Earth's orbit and strongly amplified by resulting atmospheric and vegetation feedbacks in the subtropics. The timing of this transition was, they report, mainly governed by a global interplay among atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and vegetation. Their research is published in the July 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The researchers, headed by Martin Claussen of the Potsdam- Institut Fuer Klimafolgenforschung (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) employed a model of intermediate complexity to analyze climate feedbacks during the past several thousand years of the current, or Holocene, era. Called CLIMBER-2 (for CLIMate and BiosphERe, version 2.1), the model led to the conclusion that the desertification of North Africa began abruptly 5,440 years ago (+/- 30 years). Before that time, the Sahara was covered by annual grasses and low shrubs, as evidenced by fossilized pollen. The transition to today's arid climate was not gradual, but occurred in two specific episodes. The first, which was less severe, occurred between 6,700 and 5,500 years ago. The second, which was brutal, lasted from 4,000 to 3,600 years ago. Summer temperatures increased sharply, and precipitation decreased, according to carbon-14 dating. This event devastated ancient civilizations and their socioeconomic systems. The change from the mid-Holocene climate to that of today was Initiated by changes in the Earth's orbit and the tilt of Earth's axis. Some 9,000 years ago, Earth's tilt was 24.14 degrees, as compared with the current 23.45 degrees, and perihelion, the point in the Earth's orbit that is closest to the Sun, occurred at the end of July, as compared with early January now. At that time, the Northern Hemisphere received more summer sunlight, which amplified the African and Indian summer monsoon.
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The changes in Earth's orbit occurred gradually, however, whereas the evolution of North Africa's climate and vegetation were abrupt. Claussen and his colleagues believe that various feedback mechanisms within Earth's climate system amplified and modified the effects touched off by the orbital changes. By modeling the impact of climate, oceans, and vegetation both separately and in various combinations, the researchers concluded that oceans played only a minor role in the Sahara's desertification.
SAHARA'S ABRUPT DESERTIFICATION -- II

By Wal Thornhill On 12 July I wrote: ...I would like to know where all of the sand [in the Sahara] came from too. As if in answer to my rhetorical question, on the 16th I saw a featured article in New Scientist of 10 July titled "The riddle of the Sands." The subtext reads: Deep in the Sahara lie vast deposits of incredibly pure glass. Nothing on Earth could have created them. It mentions the green glass forming the heart of a scarab found in Tutankhamen's tomb that is made of such glass. Walter Alter had written about this subject on 7 April and it was reprinted in THOTH III-8: ...An Italian geologist has taken a close look at the beautiful translucent scarab in a pectoral, or necklace, found by Howard Carter among the treasures of Tutankhamen. Carter thought the scarab was carved of greenish-yellow chalcedony. However, measuring its refraction revealed to Vincenzo De Michele that the gem consists of Libyan desert glass. This is a fused natural glass, formed by cooling molten sand. It results from the impact of a meteorite or comet or a low-altitude explosion in the atmosphere. What makes the scarab even more astonishing is that the nearest source of Libyan desert glass is 500 miles west of the Nile, in the Western desert. Half of this distance lies beyond any known oasis. The glass is scattered over an area 15 miles in diameter. However, no meteor crater has been found, and the event responsible for the glass remains mysterious. In March this year, I wrote: ...When I look at exposed strata on Earth, with the sharp physical and colour (often implying chemical) differences we see, I am more disposed to the extraterrestrial origin theory. That is particularly the case when a distinctive sequence appears globally. When we find stratification on the Moon and smaller, tectonically inert and unweathered objects we should be highly sceptical of geological models of their formation... On 2 June this year, a NASA report said: ...Hammergren found that very elongated asteroids are never seen to be rotating faster than once every four hours. In contrast, more spherical asteroids can rotate as fast as once every 2.3 hours. Such evidence, Hammergren said, provides strong support for the theory that most asteroids are not tightly-bonded solid chunks of rock, but rather are loose aggregates of material, sometimes called "rubble piles." On 24 June I replied to a query from Dick Gagel: ...In an Electric Universe scenario a comet will be destroyed before it hits the Earth by a discharge between the two. That is what I believe happened in Tunguska. That is not to say that the electric discharge itself would not be catastrophic - and we could cop a lot of glass fragments (tektites) and sand from the disrupted comet.
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When the two June items are combined, and the distinction between comets and asteroids acknowledged to be purely one of ellipticity of orbits, then the probability of disruption by an electrical discharge becomes much greater. The melting of incoming material may then be explained by the action of an electric arc in space rather than ballistic heating in the Earth's atmosphere. The New Scientist report is very interesting in this regard: ...The story that has begun to emerge since is both astonishing and mysterious. These glittering shards are the purest natural silica glass any one has ever found. And there may be more than 1400 tonnes of the stuff spread across a vast area of the desert. Some pieces contain tiny bubbles, wispy white deposits and swirling black patterns that hint at a tumultuous origin. Where on earth did this it [sic] from? Tiny pieces of silica glass are fairly common in nature. When volcanic lava cools suddenly-as redhot magma pours into the sea, for instance-molecules of silica in the lava freeze at random, creating an amorphous mass that resembles broken glass. But these materials are about 75 per cent amorphous silica at most. The rest is made up of crystals of quartz and oxides such as aluminium and iron. The desert glass is totally different: "It's the purest natural glass in the world," says Vincenzo de Michele, keeper of minerals at Milan's Museum of Natural History, "with a silica content of 98 per cent. This purity gives the desert glass some remarkable properties ... you can heat the material to 1700 sC before it begins to melt - over 500 sC higher than other natural glasses ... It can be dropped into cold water even when it is red hot and it doesn't disintegrate ... Stroll across the desert site and you'll come across great big chunks of glass- some are larger than bowling balls and weigh as much as 26 kilograms. These massive pieces of [sic] dwarf lumps of natural glass found elsewhere. Also scattered about the site are clusters of sharp glass chips-the debris of prehistoric workshops-and ancient glass tools such as knives and hatchets, evidence of early interest in the silica glass ... Geologists have dreamt up some pretty bizarre theories to explain the origins of this remarkable material. One suggestion is that the glass may have formed at the bottom of a warm volcanic lake. But there were no hydroxide ions usually found in such glass and "geologists dated the glass at 28.5 million years old [while] the dried-up remains of the ancient lakes ... near the site turned out to be far too young-just 9000 years old." Another idea is that it may be volcanic but the whitish inclusions are minerals that form at much higher temperatures than are present in a volcano. And to cap it all, the dark samples are rich in iridium, typical of meteorites. So the only explanation seems to be that the glass was formed upon impact of a meteorite into the desert. Certainly, some of the silica contains shocked quartz crystals which bolsters the impact theory but it does not explain the purity of the glass. Also, it must be remembered that impacts cause little melting and there is no impact crater in the vicinity. Any heating of the meteorite itself in the atmosphere causes mere superficial melting. I believe the best explanation, given the purity of the glass, the size of some of the melts, and the presence of meteoritic elements - is heating in a plasma arc in space. Crystals embedded in a melt are a feature of chondritic meteorites and the shocked crystals would have retained the memory of their violent history - torn from the surface of a planet or moon by an interplanetary thunderbolt. In this connection then it is noteworthy that the Apollo 15 astronauts found clear green glass at Hadley's rille on the Moon. And from Apollo 11: All of the silicate minerals are unusually transparent and clear, because of the complete absence of hydrothermal alteration or weakening. ~Science Vol 167, No. 3918, 30 Jan 1970, p. 449.
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From the same issue (p.742) comes the estimate that each kg of moon dust contains no less than 40,000 glass spherules ranging in size from .03 mm to .75 mm. Many of the spherules have been impacted by tiny "micrometeorites". The report states: It is not known why the impacted particles resemble in color and appearance the kind of material from which so many spherules appear to have originated. But I detail on my CD the mechanisms that can create this effect in a plasma arc in space to produce chondritic meteorites. The stratification found in the lunar soil indicates many episodes of deposition to form the regolith. The interplanetary discharge model has material electrically excavated from one body (the anode) and accelerated toward another body (the cathode) in the form of a self-contained plasmoid, rather like balllightning. The matter trapped therein will suffer extremely complex interactions. One effect is the melting, vapourization and ionization of matter nearest the axis of the arc. Electromagnetic sorting of ions by mass is then possible, yielding some regions of high purity. Other regions will not be heated to the same extent so that the final result may be a chaotic and violent mixing of solids, liquids and gases to form the matter that finally lands on the cathode or remains in space as meteors, asteroids and comets. Juergens went so far as to suggest that the lunar highlands were implanted in such a manner! I would merely say that it is not necessary to resort to problematic melting by impacts to produce the glass discovered on both the Moon and the Earth. Of course, geological dating of the glass is meaningless if this scenario is correct. And the drying up of the lakes in the Sahara 9000 years ago may give some measure of how old the Saturnian stories may be. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 11 (August 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: JUMPING FOR JOY COSMIC SYMBOLS RITUAL BALL GAMES IO's AURORAL LIGHTS CIRCULAR ORBITS DEFINING PLASMA
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott Dave Davis, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott NASA: Comments by Wal Thornhill by Donald Scott and Wal Thornhill by Mel Acheson and Wal Thornhill
JUMPING FOR JOY

When our son was 2 and 3 and 4, he liked to climb up on high objects-the table, the refrigerator, the roofand jump into our arms. When we weren't available to "play catch", he would climb up on the chest of drawers and jump onto the bed. He had practiced the bureau-to-bed jump quite a lot when a couple of his friends visited. He persuaded them to climb up on the bureau with him. Firmly taking each one by the hand, he jumped. We took a photo of all three in midair: Our son looked exuberant; one friend looked startled; the other friend looked horrified. What brings this to mind is Halton Arp's mention of telling friends about his discovery of the connected universe: Some were "horrified"; one was "angry." Arp had jumped, and his friends suddenly found themselves falling. Paradigm shifts do that. But talking about paradigms shifting is a cop-out. What's really happening is learning: not the brainwashing that established pedagogy calls learning, but a primal, emotionally-charged, creative process. You experience something you've never felt before. You wrack your brain trying to make sense of it. As you develop each successive idea, you decide it doesn't work. You go back to wracking. It's all highly emotional: You feel sad and glad and mad. In Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies, Arp showed that some quasars were connected to certain active galaxies. In Seeing Red, he adds evidence, more evidence, and much more evidence until nearly every object in the sky is connected, forming two extensive spiral structures. What once were clusters of galaxies and quasars sprinkled into the distance have become the interacting parts of a couple of cosmic swirls in our backyard. The Expanding Universe is cancelled. The Hubble Constant is trashed. The redshift- distance relationship is divorced. The Big Bang is blown away. And clusters of galaxies are illusions spawned by a failure of imagination. ("What else but a Doppler effect," the blind astronomer said, "could redshift be?")
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It's understandable this could cause surprise or horror or anger. But it can also cause exhilaration, zest, joy. Learning- especially on the level of paradigms-can be fun. All you need do is stand at the edge of all you know and believe. Then jump. ~Mel Acheson
COSMIC SYMBOLS
By Dave Talbott [Exerpted comments from Kronia discussion group] RITES OF KINGSHIP Saturnians didn't invent the "rites of Kings." In their earliest expressions, kingship rites are overwhelmingly COMMEMORATIVE. Same goes for the ritual aspects of war and sacrifice in their earliest documented expressions. The question isn't whether certain motives found in kingship rites (power, cooperation, allegiance, fear, whatever) may have existed among earlier human tribes--that would only require them to have been human. The question is: in the distinctive, heavily documented rituals of kingship, what is being commemorated? You don't have to believe a word of the "Saturnian" explanation to see that there are a hundred recurring patterns focusing on clearly presented cosmic images, including these most obvious motifs-1) Celebration of the king as part of a blood-line tracing back to the rule of the central luminary himself, in a golden age; 2) The role of the king as the source of natural abundance (the duty to restore the golden age, or a semblance thereof); 3) The king's symbolic marriage to a mother goddess, identified as the eye-heart-soul of the central luminary; 4) The goddess in her terrible aspect as flaming serpent or dragon, raging in the sky; 5) The role of the king as the warrior-son, born in the eye- heart-soul of the central luminary; 6) The role of the warrior-son in defeating or pacifying the raging serpent-dragon; 7) Assimilation of kingship rites to memories of sweeping cosmic catastrophe, involving the death or ordeal of a primeval, celestial king, whose rejuvenation was synchronous with the regeneration of nature following the catastrophe; 8) Symbolic assimilation of neighboring tribes to the chaos hordes or retinue of the serpent-dragon. These cosmological images, constituting a vast complex of kingship rites, are not present in the prior phases of human history. And the images do not answer to anything in our sky today. Therefore, the verifiable coherence of the images, each inseparably connected to the others, is an issue that cannot be swept aside.
THE SPIRAL:
The spiral form depicted in the Egyptian eye-glyph is also a part of many other sacred symbols, including glyphs of the White Crown and Red Crown. Nothing in our sky today can begin to represent the power of the idea. The depicted spiral is the vehicle by which the creator-king fashions his dwelling in heaven, the polar enclosure. In the Egyptian system, the spiral means "to fashion or create", in specific reference to the fashioning of the cosmic dwelling. The subject is the spiraling Venus comet, also depicted by the Sumerian pictograph for the goddess Inanna (Venus). The spiraling "tail" (enclosing serpent-dragon) comes to form the enclosure or boundary of the land of the gods.
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HEAVENLY TWINS IN EGYPT:

Shu and Tefnut are two of my favorite mythical figures, and are intimately tied to the differentiation of the unified Atum (something we've discussed at some length in earlier threads). "From one god, I became three," Atum declares. That declaration signifies the birth of Shu and Tefnut, as the unified Atum is transformed into Ra, Shu, and Tefnut. For newcomers unfamiliar with the general thesis, Ra = Saturn, the primeval sun god and creator-king; Tefnut = mother goddess Venus, the central eye- heart-soul of Atum; and Shu = Mars, warrior-hero and unborn child in the womb (i.e., pupil of the eye). In his birth, Shu descends to become the world pillar supporting Atum-Ra. The eye goddess, in turn, spirals out as the uraeus serpent, ultimately coming to form the polar enclosure. The different motifs are summarized in the notebook, Symbols of an Alien Sky, which presents a series of "snapshots" of the polar configuration, supplemented by numerous ancient drawings and explanatory text. Ancient symbolism was multi-layered. The great mythical motifs were projected onto every available form in nature, be it a local mountain (symbol of the world mountain), or a prominent star group. Most of the diverse figures of the mother goddess and warrior hero are paired in various ways, to represent the cosmic twins in later art. The good and evil brothers, dark and light, male and female, above and below, two faces looking in opposite directions, right and left - all are included in the mix. As I've suggested previously, these motifs are explicable by the concrete play of light and shadow off the polar configuration as the Earth turned on its axis. Hence, I would say that Gemini has a global myth behind it, tying the constellation symbolically to the memory of creation.
RITUAL BALL GAMES

Dave Davis, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott
DAVE DAVIS: Stecchini claimed that ball games were derived from the idea that the zodiacal band in the sky, 7o on either side of the ecliptic, in which the sun & planets moved, was a celestial ball game, the planets bouncing off the "walls" which bounded the band. He particularly cites the Mayan Chichan Itza arena as based on this idea... any thoughts on this? DWARDU CARDONA: Ball games, especially those once played in Mesoamerica, were definitely celestially inspired. However, I do not accept Stecchini's interpretation. Rather, I assume that these ball games derived from the once shifting planets within the Saturnian configuration. DAVE TALBOTT: Yes indeed, and not to forget that any interpretation of ritual ball games identifying the ricocheting "balls" with planets (Stecchini), is faced with the enigma that in our sky today, planets and stars to not look like spheres. The naked eye simply cannot make out their spherical shape. That planets were, in fact, anciently represented as spheres, is one of the more fundamental levels of evidence that the planets were formerly seen up close and personal.
IO's AURORAL LIGHTS

NASA: Comments by Wal Thornhill
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Auroral lights on Io reveal secrets of jovian moon's atmosphere

August 5, 1999 An astronaut landing on the Jovian moon Io would have a harsh environment to deal with, but would be rewarded with the most dazzling auroral light show in the solar system. A current study reveals new information about the moon's red, green and blue auroral lights and how they relate to Io's tenuous atmosphere. Last October, a team of American and Taiwanese space scientists reported their discovery in images taken by the Galileo spacecraft of colorful auroral emissions from Io during eclipse by Jupiter. In tomorrow's issue (Aug. 6) of Science, they publish results from an in-depth study of those images. The tenuous atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Io partially collapses in the darkness of the giant planet's shadow, they now find. At the same time, bright blue glows emanating from stealthy volcanic plumes grow even brighter. "This is our first detailed look at visible aurorae on a solar system satellite", said Paul Geissler of the University of Arizona, lead author of the report. "The pictures help us to understand Io's atmosphere and the processes that generate the emissions." Co-authors of the Science article are Alfred S. McEwen, also with the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Wing Ip of the Taiwan National Central University, Michael J. Belton of National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Torrence V. Johnson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, William H. Smyth of Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Cambridge, Mass., and Andy Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology. Io's aurorae, like those on Earth, are caused by the impact of electrons on atmospheric gasses. Io is bathed by a swarm of charged particles that are trapped by Jupiter's magnetic field, similar to the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding our own planet. In addition, a powerful electric current flows from Io to the poles of Jupiter, caused by an enormous electrical potential some 400,000 volts generated by the motion of the jovian magnetic field past Io. When these electrons collide with the gasses in Io's atmosphere, they set off a dazzling light show of red, green and blue emissions bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. The red and green glows may be caused by neutral oxygen and sodium atoms, respectively, Geissler said. The bright blue emissions are probably due to sulfur dioxide vented from volcanoes on the moon's surface. Some of these plumes are invisible in daylight, owing to a lack of entrained dust particles, and can only be seen during eclipse, he added. The currents cause the gasses to light up, much the same as the glows from florescent lamps. Io's eerie glow dims noticeably with time as the satellite lingers in Jupiter's shadow. The likely explanation, concludes the international team of scientists that analyzed the pictures, is a partial collapse of the moon's atmosphere during eclipse. Some of Io's patchy atmosphere is derived from sulfur dioxide ice on the surface of the satellite that is warmed by the Sun and sublimes (evaporates). This component probably begins to recondense in the absence of sunlight during eclipse. More surprisingly, the blue glows associated with volcanic plumes appear to intensify while Io is in darkness. This may indicate that some of the current flow between Io and Jupiter is conducted through the interior of Io, particularly during periods when the atmospheric conductivity is low. Images and further information are available at URL: http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/hiips/Science
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COMMENTS BY WAL THORNHILL: The last paragraph is particularly revealing of paradigm paralysis: More surprisingly, the blue glows associated with volcanic plumes appear to intensify while Io is in darkness. This may indicate that some of the current flow between Io and Jupiter is conducted through the interior of Io, particularly during periods when the atmospheric conductivity is low. The Io volcanic plume paradigm requires that the volcano can only brighten if fed with more energy beneath the surface of the moon. There would be a considerable delay associated with such a mechanism, probably exceeding the duration of the brief eclipse of Jupiter's swiftest moon. The electric arc model is much simpler and would have a response time perfectly in step with the reduction in atmospheric pressure during eclipse. The reason for that deduction is that with decreasing pressure the effective surface area of the Io electrode would diminish. As a consequence the arcs at the hot spots on Io would intensify to carry the same current load. The same phenomenon was observed in the experiment recorded on my CD that modeled the situation on Io (and Europa in the past). As the gas pressure fell the discharge became less diffuse and the bright spots intensified. Note too the insistence that the observed electrical activity between Io and Jupiter forms a closed system. The energy is attributed entirely to conversion of orbital energy through magnetic induction into electrical energy. That is merely an assumption. It is the same assumption that led to the loss of the tethered satellite through unexpected electrical arcing. Obviously no lesson has been learnt from that expensive experiment. Has anyone calculated how long it will take Io to crash into Jupiter if it continues to lose orbital energy at that rate? It makes you wonder how long it can have been a moon of Jupiter according to standard theory. Wal Thornhill
CIRCULAR ORBITS
by Donald Scott and Wal Thornhill DONALD SCOTT WROTE: It also appears that Jupiter's plasma sheath extends almost all the way to Saturn (much as Venus' does toward Earth). I'm wondering if any more of the planets have plasma sheaths that extend to just short of their next outward neighbor's orbit. If that were the case, it certainly seems consistent with the idea that the electric charge on each planet (together with the electrical potential of the solar plasma at that orbital distance) determines the length of the planet's sheath - and this, in turn, causes circularization and the spacing between the orbits of adjacent planets. WAL SAYS: You have the argument for orbit spacing precisely, but I consider it to be a secondary effect. There would also seem to be a primary mechanism at work where the annual charge exchange with the solar plasma sheet is smoothed out. Comets are an extreme example of varying charge exchange throughout an orbit and we know that they exhibit so-called non-gravitational accelerations. I have suggested that those accelerations *are* due to gravity but that it is gravity itself that is changing as a result of strong charge exchange with the solar plasma. Such an orbit circularising mechanism would be more powerful since it operates continually and not just when planets are in line with the Sun. It would explain the near circular orbit of Jupiter since any effect from Mars would be negligible. Also the number of oppositions of the outer gas giants since the proposed
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Saturnian system breakup, ca. 10,000 years ago, would be quite small. So you might expect their orbital eccentricities to be much higher if they were involved and the mechanism you mentioned was the only one to cause circularisation of orbits.
DEFINING PLASMA
By Mel Acheson and Wal Thornhill MEL SAID: ...the taken-for-granted textbook definition of a plasma as an ionized gas. Some semanticist (or politician) once said: He who controls the definitions of words controls the culture. There's something to that, at least as far as paradigm shifts go. So why accept the established definition, especially in view of the dichotomy that's developed between magnetohydrodynamics (MHD = ionized gas behavior in magnetic fields) and Alfven's repudiation of his own discovery that started all that? It seems to me the most important aspects of a plasma are the electrical structures and dynamics, the properties of pinching, filamentation, characteristic velocities, sheaths, etc. The ionized gas is the medium or maybe the by-product. If you start with the gas, you end up with-MHD. Taking a cue from Reich, who replaced the ideational focus of psychoanalysis with a focus on bodily energetics, plasma might be better explained by focussing on the structure and dynamics of the energy and regarding the ionized gas as incidental. WAL RESPONDS: Absolutely. Plasma physics papers are sprinkled with phrases like "we don't fully understand ..." so I believe the way ahead for plasma cosmology is on the basis of pattern matching between effects seen in the lab and in the atmosphere and out there in deep space. Alfven made a special point about the enormous scalability of plasma phenomena. No one seems to have been paying attention. It raises an interesting possibility that plasma effects are repeated in some sense at the subatomic level. Mel: For one thing, it opens the question of whether there can be such a thing as a "solid-state" plasma, or "cold" plasma, or "non- ionized" plasma. In the late 1800s (I think), Birkeland traveled to the Arctic and measured the electric field under auroral streamers. He found "stringy things" (modern technical term) impinging on the ground--Birkeland currents from aurora to ground. WAL: I would like to see a reference to this info please. MEL gives references: It was in The Big Bang Never Happened, pg. 178. The story starts, however, on pg. 177: Quote: In 1903, in order to raise funds for his planned expedition, he [Birkeland] organized a public demonstration of his biggest gun. In a large hall he pointed the gun at a three-inch-thick plank of wood and explained its operation to the assembled crowd... He later described what followed: "'Ladies and Gentlemen,' I said, 'you may be seated. When I pull that switch, you will not see or hear anything except that slam of the projectile against the target.' With this I pulled the switch. There was a flash, a deafening and hissing noise, a bright arc of light due to three thousand amperes being short-circuited and a flame shot out of the cannon. Some of the ladies shrieked and a moment later there was panic. It was the most
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dramatic moment of my life. With this shot, I shot my stock from 300 to zero. But the projectile hit the bull's eye." In the next year, Birkeland collaborated with Sam Eyde to build giant sparking machines to produce fertilizer. He used the profits to pay for expeditions to study auroras. Birkeland's measurements showed that the magnetic fields generated by the aurora are so localized on the ground that they can only have been produced by nearly vertical currents--aligned along the magnetic field of the earth. By studying the correlation of magnetic storms on earth with the rotation of sunspot groups on the sun, he also confirmed the source of the charged particles, and estimated quite accurately their speed--around 1,000 km/sec. In the succeeding decade Birkeland generalized his theory of the aurora to other astronomical phenomena, asserting that sunspots, Saturn's rings, and even the formation of galaxies can be explained by electrical currents and magnetic fields moving through the tenuous conducting gasses of space. In 1904 he wrote that 'space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds.' For the first time, he had glimpsed the plasma universe. (p. 178)
MEL AGAIN: An epistemological/psychological note here: Notice that Birkeland measured magnetic field strengths, reasoned that they were produced by "vertical currents", then adds the unwarranted "aligned along the magnetic field of the earth." The (unasked) question: Do the currents produce the magnetism, or does the magnetism produce (align) the currents? is co-opted by the inserted assumption of the primacy of magnetism. And to this day astronomers talk about magnetism but mention currents as occurring only in small, localized patches that are induced by the magnetism. Perhaps it's because we can easily detect magnetic fields, but electric fields are practically invisible, especially if you're inside them (like a bird on a wire). Anyway, this business of assuming (unconsciously) the primacy of magnetism when we know "it's electro-magnetism, stupid" is paradigm paralysis at work: The good part is that you can get up in the morning without having to invent a new way to tie your shoes. The bad part is that you will never invent a new way to tie your shoes. So where do you want to go today?!
MEL has more questions: What happened to them (Birkeland currents) in the ground? How does this connect with Tesla's measurements of earth currents? The energy must form a circuit, so the earth currents must connect back somehow with the upper end of the auroral streamers. WAL has answers: Not necessarily. Juergens struck the same question regarding electric stars. What happens when the bucket is full? He proposed that the galaxy is becoming more electrified continuously. That fits neatly with Arp's discovery of quantised redshift jumps by galaxies as they evolve and my interpretation of that as the addition of electrons via Birkeland current strings between the parent galaxy and its offspring. If such a model is correct, planets will also need to continuously adjust by accepting charge too. All of this, of course, raises interesting questions about the ultimate fate of galaxies. MEL: The nature of plasma energy is to form filaments, so the currents in the earth must be filamentary, like the Lichtenberg patterns left after a lightning stroke. (See the excavated fulgurites in Plates XLII to XLIV of The Lightning Book by Viemeister.) The conventional assumption is that the energy diffuses into the earth, but there's evidence to the contrary: Mountain climbers are warned
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to avoid hiding from storms not only under tall trees but under rock overhangs (lightning striking the peak has been known to appear quite some distance away between an overhang and the rock below). And a local telephone company had to dig a trench through one town and bury a conductor because the ground wouldn't carry a return current from one side of town to the other. The principle is that the orderliness is in the energy, not in the matter. This would have to be verified by experiment. But on the most general level, if matter is one form of ordering of energy, the assumption of materialism is in the untenable position of trying to explain all other forms of ordering of energy in terms of the one--explaining a universal in terms of one instantiation--sort of like explaining trees and animals and air in terms of rocks. One footnote to this idea of changing focus is the mention (further on in The Electric Universe) that thunderstorms provide convenient paths to ground for ionospheric discharges, resulting in the elves and sprites recently discovered above the storms. What if it's the other way around? In the process of establishing a path to ground, the discharge generates a thunderstorm? WAL: Of course, it is quite possible that an increased atmospheric electric field predisposes toward cloud formation and subsequent storm activity. A high atmospheric electric field can create an upward "electric wind" from high points on the Earth's surface. It is interesting that most electrical storms occur over land rather than the oceans, despite the fact that salt water is a great electrical conductor. The relative flatness of water surfaces may have a lot to do with that. It seems to me that the fact that storms preferentially form over certain land areas may have as much to do with the electrical characteristics of the bedrock as with micro-climatic effects. You mention one example concerning a telephone company. Some areas (like here in Canberra) are notoriously bad for propagating radio signals. That is another manifestation of the same kind of thing. Electrical discharges initiate from high points on a surface so increasing the height, roughness and conductivity of a surface will predispose toward lightning storms. Another influence comes from the shape of the current streams circling through the ionosphere which gives rise to some of the latitudinal preferences of storms.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 12 (August 31, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: PARADIGMS AND IDEOLOGIES BY JOVE ASTROBIOLOGY CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR IO
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott Ev Cochrane, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott by Wal Thornhill
PARADIGMS AND IDEOLOGIES

By Mel Acheson I get newsletters from several think tanks. A recent one contained an article analyzing the effects of "ignorant masses" and "expert elites" on public policy. One paragraph described a political dynamic which, with the substitution of only two words, also occurs in science. In the following quote, I've substituted the appropriate sense of [science] for the author's use of "politics" and [paradigm] for "ideology'. [A paradigm] "constrains" [scientific] attitudes-imposing conceptual consistency on them, but at the cost of screening out information that would undermine doctrinaire conclusions. This is unavoidable if [paradigms] are to accomplish their cognitive purpose: making sense of the otherwise incomprehensible world of [science]. The [believer in a paradigm] is able to absorb more [scientific] information because his preset convictions allow him to better organize data-convenient data, at least-than can members of the [scientifically] innocent mass public. But part and parcel of the [paradigm believer's] ability to assimilate self-confirming data is the ability, and the need, to dismiss conflicting data-and to condemn their purveyors as stupid or evil. If one's [paradigmatic] opponents were merely mistaken, one would be obliged to study and rebut their erroneous ideas, and that would undermine the time-saving convenience of one's own [paradigm]. Opponents must be written off entirely if their ideas are to be safely ignored. Thus, animating the most sophisticated of [paradigm believers] is usually the unquestioned assumption that no decent, caring person would oppose [statements derived from the paradigm]... ("Public Ignorance and Democracy" by Jeffrey Friedman. CATO Policy Report, July/August 1999, V. XXI, No. 4, p. 11.) But this need to write off opponents is not a necessity inherent in the nature of paradigms. It's an invasive need, carried unconsciously into the competition of paradigms under the character armor (chronic personality rigidities) of the participants. Tolerating other paradigms carries just as much (or as little) logical necessity. But the frequent choice of intolerant attitudes reveals something about the nature of scientists. Paradigms in science and ideologies in politics are expressions of the underlying nature of human cognition: the ability to recognize patterns of intelligibility. In a complex world about which we have limited experience, there can be more than one way to make sense of it. The history of ideas provides a long list of paradigms and ideologies proposed and imposed, adopted and abandoned, revived, revised, and ignored.
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Some ways of making sense work better than others for accomplishing the goals we want. But that is an evaluation from utility. The political dynamic described above is an evaluation from righteousness. The switch from "does it work?" to "are you right?" is also the expression of an underlying nature, but one not of cognition but of anxiety. The (cognitive) values of "right" or "correct" are largely defined by and limited to the paradigms themselves, but they are applied to other paradigms with the non-rational necessity of a primal fear and guilt. What began as a purely intellectual activity is transformed under the heat and pressure of a deep-seated terror into a moralistic and religiose caricature of religious activity. "[M]aking sense of the otherwise incomprehensible world" is an activity quite different from being right. There are more paradigms than a person has time to study, and there's no inherent necessity to write them off or even to rebut them in order to pursue a chosen one. Writing them off is surrendering to the invasion of fear and abandoning your responsibility, freedom, and power to make what you can of your own paradigm. Mel Acheson
BY JOVE
By Dave Talbott [The following comments are excerpted from the Kronia electronic discussion group and should be read in conjunction with other published articles.] "Saturn" (the Universal Monarch) has both elder and younger aspects. I think it may have been Macrobius who said that the younger Saturn is Jupiter and the elder Jupiter is Saturn. (Be that as it may, I didn't invent the idea!) :>). The principle is inherent in Greek approaches to the two gods. Though Kronos and Zeus were clearly two different planets in Greek times, their biographies nevertheless overlap. Zeus is acknowledged to be the younger form of Kronos, of course. However, the two aspects are impossible to miss: Kronos is never portrayed as a victor over world-threatening dragons of darkness. You see the same thing in the relationship of Osiris to Ra. Osiris is inseparably connected to Ra as the son of Ra, and the "second Ra", but he is certainly not IDENTICAL to Ra. The Egyptians remembered Atum-Ra as the central sun presiding over the creation and the First Time; and they gave detailed accounts of the god's first appearance. No such story is told of Osiris. Conversely, Ra has virtually disappeared in connection with the Osiris story, as recounted in the Sed Festival ritual and numerous other accounts. This is a story of cosmic transition - death, dismemberment, resurrection, and transfiguration. For all intents and purposes Atum-Ra is not even around at the more critical junctures, any more than Anu or Shamash are involved in the cosmic ordeal confronting Marduk (Jupiter) in the Babylonian Akitu festival. (Anu has already fled the scene when Marduk confronts the dragon Tiamat.) Nor do any of the great "sun" gods - with whom the planet Saturn was identified - figure directly in this "second half of the story". It is always the younger form of the Universal Monarch that we see emerging victorious from the period of cosmic darkness. At some point you have to reckon with the underlying pattern here, for which there MUST be an explanation. It is interesting to note that the Babylonian priests of Marduk/Jupiter, in listing various tribal names of the god, include the name Asar, which happens to be the name of the Egyptian Osiris. Taken alone, I would not make a point of this, nor of the fact that various Egyptologists (among them, E.A.W. Budge) HAVE linked Osiris to Jupiter. The line of reasoning is really much more fundamental and based on world patterns which do not seem to allow for any other identification. Who could deny that the best-known Jupiter figures are "born" from Saturn- figures, and are seen as the younger and triumphant forms of the father. Possible physical explanations for the sequence may vary, but I do not see how the fundamental paternal relationship could be denied. And in ancient myth, the idea "to be born from" is a very literal idea, one certainly not suggestive of a personality arriving from elsewhere in the sky.
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The seeming paradox is actually the key. Are we dealing with one sovereign power, or two? The fact that both answers are correct is a direct pointer to the solution. One mythical figure progressively separates into two aspects precisely because these two aspects became two separate planets. It was no doubt easy for the Greeks to see Kronos and Jupiter as separate, even warring powers, despite their paternity. It was easy to identify Kronos, the displaced form, with the powers of cosmic rebellion, because the very existence of two different planets worked against the idea of one underlying personality. But the Egyptian material, of course, preceded all observational astronomy and all ideas of separate "planets". So the emphasis is naturally on the manifestation of the elder in the new form of the younger. Nevertheless, you will still find in Greek sources many indications of the original idea - one sovereign power manifesting himself in a succession of "forms". In Orphic cosmology Dionysos will be seen as the supreme power finding form in successive personalities or "bodies" of the primary gods. Before the dismemberment of Dionysos at the hands of the Titans: ...he became a youthful Zeus, an aged Kronos, a babe, a youth. In the pairing of Kronos and Zeus you will never find the "elder" and "youthful" roles reversed, despite the fact that Zeus was often presented as a sovereign power encompassing all of the creative roles elsewhere reserved for Kronos (including even the "castration" of his own father, a story element in the bios of BOTH gods). An interesting comparison would be the Hindu Brahma, though the Hindus achieved a far more elevated philosophical concept. In the course of creation, Brahma manifest himself in a succession of forms, DISCARDING PREVIOUS BODIES in the juncture between world ages. That is one very natural interpretation in the sequence we are dealing with. Because the story clearly arose before astronomy and was told without reference to remote planets on predictable orbits, it can help to illuminate those traditions which WERE influenced by later planetary identities. The new form of the god displaced in the worldchanging crisis is always Jupiter. And that is the fundamental character of the Egyptian god Osiris, I believe. DWARDU CARDONA ASKS: If Cochrane is correct in that Indra was Mars (with which you agree), then so must have been the Greek Zeus. Their mythological profile is identical. Who, then, in your scenario, would stand for the planet Jupiter in Greek mythology? TALBOTT RESPONDS: There is no question in my mind about the equation of Indra and Mars. In the case of Indra, there are so many documented Martian attributes and episodes as to make the case airtight. Indra is a more authentic, more obviously cosmic version of Heracles, the latter's cosmic stature being progressively diminished over time (as was Indra's in many later traditions). For several years I tentatively accepted the conventional scholarly identification of Indra with Zeus. It was in the early eighties that Ev suggested an identity with Mars, and that made me curious enough to investigate. The result was a hands-down victory for the Martian identity. Moreover, the entire basis for any equation with Zeus collapsed. Oversimplifying, it is the difference between a sovereign god (Jupiter) who HURLS lightning as a weapon against chaos, and a god (Mars) who IS or PERSONIFIES the lightning-weapon itself- this "lightning" being represented in the form of an arrow, dart, sword, spear, trident, phallus, etc. Mars is the vertical, electrically active, piercing weapon in service of the sovereign power. Such a statement cannot be made about Zeus, who IS the sovereign power, allowing for not even a hint of another master. Zeus, of course, was the Greek name of the planet Jupiter.
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While numerous warrior-hero figures were progressively brought down to earth, or humanized and diminished over time, there was also a tendency for the sovereign power to fall into the background, due to his more passive role. (Contrast the incredibly active role of the warrior-hero, which provided endless story content for the myth-makers.) This growing vacuum was often filled by the most revered hero-figure. You will see these tendencies clearly in the case of Indra. While his worshippers sought to elevate his stature above all other gods, the less devout chroniclers progressively reduced his stature to a more human, or even demonic form. But from start to finish the STORY is the story of Mars. Dave Talbott
ASTROBIOLOGY
by Ev Cochrane, Dwardu Cardona, and Dave Talbott EV COCHRANE WROTE: I have long argued for the possibility that microorganisms migrated between Mars and Earth. Such a cross-seeding is much easier to imagine, needless to say, if the two planets were close neighbors only a few thousand years ago, as per the Saturn theory. DWARDU CARDONA OBJECTS: What I would like to know is how such cross-seeding between Earth and Mars could have taken place during Saturnian configuration times when, according to Talbott, Mars was raining red-hot debris on Earth in that continuous stream that was the polar column. DAVE TALBOTT REPLIES: Dwardu, I think I may have misled you with something I said about the "redness" of Mars. I believe that removal of Martian atmosphere and oceans preceded its acquisition of the reddish hue with which so many Martian figures are associated. The very first forms of the warrior-hero do not seem to suggest this redness, but in the case of the more active phases of the figure, including his terrible aspect (Set, Typhon), redness is a dominant feature. Rather than speak of "red-hot" material streaming toward the Earth, I've expressed the suspicion that lower levels of Arctic or Antarctic ice include water and dust pulled from Mars. More than one rock identified as Martian has been removed form Antarctic ice, but that does not take into account any of the much larger volume of Martian rock that would have been removed from deeper levels by an electrical discharge capable of creating the stupendous Valles Marineris (the deeper material would lack the chemical signature of surface material identified by the Viking probes of the soil). From what Wal has described dynamically in electrical interactions, I can imagine active transport of atmosphere and dust without necessarily killing off all microorganisms. Dave Talbott
CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR IO

by Wal Thornhill I am forwarding the appended important report from the Galileo team, along with my comments. But first, here is a copy of an answer I sent to Dave Davis and Dwardu on the 5th of April this year: To Dave and Dwardu,
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...you will no doubt be interested to know that, according to Louis Kervran's nuclear cookery book, salt (sodium chloride) has as its main ingredient - nitrogen! Both sodium and chlorine are formed in the correct one to one ratio by a series of low energy nuclear transformations, beginning with N2. So, the ingredients for sulfur and salt deposits are present in our own atmosphere! Velikovsky believed that Saturn was a source of chlorine, presumably because there is not enough chlorine in terrestrial rocks to account for the enormous quantity present as sodium chloride in our oceans. Also, he mentioned that there are legends concerning precipitation of salty water. That would be direct confirmation of the extraterrestrial or atmospheric source of sodium chloride since it is impossible to evaporate NaCl along with water in the usual weather cycle. With Kervran's new insight, Saturn need not be the direct origin of chlorine. The fact that Saturn's large moon, Titan, has a nitrogen atmosphere may indicate that Saturn is a source of nitrogen instead. In fact, Saturn is known to have an atmosphere of hydrogen, ammonia and methane which provides all of the raw materials necessary, along with oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere, to produce the salty water, hydrocarbons and sulphur mentioned in association with the activities of the Saturnian Configuration. That is, if we accept Prof. Kervran's nuclear cook book. And, as I've said before, his work fits quite well with Sansbury's new physics. Wal Thornhill
From the NASA article:
CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR JUPITER MOON HINTS AT SALT PRESENCE ON SURFACE

The recent discovery of chlorine above Io, a moon of Jupiter, indicates the odd object may hold common table salt, according to two University of Colorado at Boulder scientists. THORNHILL COMMENTS: This discovery is important because of the unsolved mystery of how our seas became salty. Velikovsky noted that there is not enough chlorine in terrestrial rocks to account for its abundance in sea salt. NASA: Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Nick Schneider and former post- doctoral researcher Michael Kueppers of CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. They believe the presence of chlorine -- an ingredient of sodium chloride, or common table salt -- is related to the violent volcanic activity. THORNHILL: Now, as I have argued in an earlier post we may safely discard NASA's description of the jets on Io as "volcanoes". They are plasma jets caused by powerful electrical discharges between Jupiter and Io, impinging on Io's surface. The material being electrically "machined" from Io's surface will also undergo nuclear transformations since the plasma jets are like scaled up particle accelerators. As I have said before, the Gallilean satellites of Jupiter seem to be characterised by an abundance of water ice in their makeup, so we may safely assume that Io is no exception. The nuclear reaction that converts 2 atoms of oxygen into one atom of sulphur is a trick that the lowly thiobacillus can perform on Earth. So that simple nuclear fusion is sure to be the source of the red and yellow global sulphur deposits that surface Io. (Notice that the ridges on Europa are also a reddish colour which I attribute to localised sulphur production by interplanetary lightning travelling across the surface of that moon in the recent past).

NASA:
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"In fact, Io seems to have a higher proportion of chlorine in its atmosphere than any other object in the solar system," said Schneider. THORNHILL: Chlorine is highly chemically reactive and so would not be expected in atmospheres unless it is being replenished (like the ozone layer on Earth). NASA: The huge volcanoes on Io are similar to giant geysers, spewing material hundreds of miles into the atmosphere, said Schneider. The two researchers used a telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to make their findings, including the discovery of chlorine emissions in the doughnut-shaped ring of charged particles surrounding Jupiter known as the Io torus. THORNHILL: The volcano story is ... required only because electrical discharge effects are denied by astronomers. What kind of volcano has a vent that glows at the temperature of a lightning arc? It was described as the hottest spot in the solar system apart from the solar photosphere! NASA: The Io torus, which is five times larger than Jupiter, glows with a power greater than all the electricity generated on Earth, he said. THORNHILL: The problem for astronomers is to explain where the power is coming from and why it is manifest in this way. In the Electric Universe model the power comes from the galaxy and is often delivered in tori that encircle stars, planets and moons. The energy intercepted by Jupiter and its moons is a small fraction of the galactic energy on its way to light up the Sun. The same energy source creates the 1500 mph winds on Neptune and creates similar electric geysers on its frozen moon, Triton. NASA: Prior to the discovery of chlorine, the only elements observed escaping from Io's atmosphere were sulfur, oxygen, sodium and potassium. THORNHILL: Sulphur and chlorine are next door neighbours in the periodic table. Based on the pioneering work of Prof. Louis Kervran, each of the low atomic weight elements listed are strongly involved in biological nuclear transmutations so it is reasonable to assume that chlorine, like the abundant and obvious sulphur deposits on Io, will be created in the energetic environment of a plasma arc impinging on water ice. NASA: The most common inorganic compounds of chlorine are sodium chloride, which is ordinary table salt, and hydrogen chloride, a colorless gas that is emitted from the volcanoes, said Schneider. "It's not yet clear how salt would form on Io," said Schneider. "Unlike Earth, Io has no oceans that could evaporate and leave behind salt deposits. But it is possible that underground rivers or aquifers fuel Io's volcanoes and may carry dissolved salt. Salt also could be made by chemical reactions in Io's atmosphere." THORNHILL: The sodium and chlorine would be created from other lighter elements in Io's arcs and most would combine and fall back to the surface as salt. NASA:
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The recently discovered chlorine may be emitted by Io's volcanoes or may come from the breakup of salt on Io's surface by charged particles in the torus that constantly bombard the surface of the moon.
THORNHILL: In the electrical model there is no need for a source of chlorine intrinsic to Io. The discovery is very important from Velikovsky's point of view. He said that the water of The Flood, following the breakup of the Saturnian system, was salty. The most probable origin of the bulk of the salt in our oceans is from the nuclear reactions that took place in the powerful cosmic electrical discharges involving the atmosphere of proto-Saturn. I will be interested to see the isotopic makeup of the chlorine at Io. On earth the ratio is Cl37:Cl35 = 1:3 NASA: The discovery also has implications for the chemistry of Io's atmosphere, he said. On Earth, relatively small amounts of chlorine from human-made CFC's play a major role in breaking down fragile molecules like ozone in the atmosphere. "My guess is that we won't find any ozone on Io," said Schneider, noting the proportion of chlorine in Io's atmosphere is a billion times greater than that on Earth. THORNHILL: We are not just talking lab chemistry here. Just as you get ozone from a photocopier because of the high electrostatic fields employed in the xerox process, you will get ozone on Io because of the presence of oxygen and powerful electrostatic effects in its thin atmosphere. NASA: "Chemical reactions may actually produce salt in the atmosphere," he said. "The study of chlorine on Io is sure to benefit from the extensive research on Earth's ozone hole, which in turn benefited from the study of chlorine in the atmospheres of other planets." THORNHILL: This has all of the hallmarks of a paid political announcement - an attempt to relate the faulty science NASA does in deep space to the flawed science back home on Earth. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 13 (October 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: QUOTE OF THE DAY GRAVITY VS. PLASMA STAR WORDS STATE OF THE UNIVERSE ACTION AT A DISTANCE SULFURIC ACID ON EUROPA
by Trevor Palmer by Mel Acheson by Ted Bond, Roger Wescott, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott by Amy Acheson by Simon Tressman, Wal Thornhill NASA report, comments by Wal Thornhill
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Whilst scientists will agree about certain key principles, they will, inevitably, have honest disagreements amongst themselves about matters of detail. In consequence, clever lawyers ... can easily make it appear that 'the scientists' are in disarray. Yet, to those who care to think about it, that is one of science's greatest strengths. Only those who are not trying to learn from the evidence but to use it indiscriminately in support of a preconceived position can avoid such disagreements. Trevor Palmer, C&C Review, 1997:1
GRAVITY VS. PLASMA

By Mel Acheson Kuhn's 1962 essay (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) exploring the nature of changes in scientific theories, and a plethora of commentaries since, have made it out to be a Big Deal and to be also somewhat mysterious: "revolution", "incommensurability of paradigms", "new world", etc. It seems to me the essence of it is simply different viewpoints. Just as the landscape looks different when viewed from different locations, the facts and theories of the sciences appear different when understood from different conceptual locations in the intellectual landscape. Ptolemy drew a picture of what the universe looked like from the Earth. Copernicus described how it looked from the Sun. Newton depicted the view from gravity. Notice that the terms "Earth", "Sun", and "gravity" are not "something out there" but are concepts that make sense of or create meaning from a selection of observations. Gravity, for example, made sense of falling apples and revolving planets. The other viewpoints "saw" no connection between apples and planets. Definitions changed: The observations once considered important in the term "planet" were replaced with other observations. New mathematical techniques were developed which would have seemed nonsensical to people occupying the old viewpoints. The resulting view of the "gravity universe" was that of isolated "billiard balls" occasionally perturbing each other. This replaced the old views of a system of nested spheres or an assembly of epicycles.
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Now the "Electric Universe" is a different viewpoint. Notice, for example, that its definition of "plasma" is not the conventional one of "ionized gas". That latter definition jumps to the conclusion that you can understand something about plasma by falling back on what you know about ideal gasses and thermal ionization. The ideal gas law is an important insight in the conventional view, but it becomes a blindfold in the electric view, preventing you from seeing what's before your eyes. Rather, "plasma" is an emergent (i.e., higher-level or statistical-level) orderliness of complex electrical forces: such properties as filamentation, long-range attraction and short-range repulsion, braiding, characteristic velocities, formation and decay of plasmoids, and identity of properties at different scales. The mathematical shorthand that was developed for articulating the gravity view and for using the technologies based on it doesn't work for the plasma view. A new mathematics-and new technologies-will need to be invented. The view of the universe from a plasma vantage point is one of persistently interacting aggregates with wide-spread resonance effects: a "driven" universe rather than one rolling to a stop. So the definitions are different, the facts are different, the math is different, the theories are different: The universe looks different because the plasma physicist is standing in a different conceptual location from the gravity physicist. And although the content of each paradigm can't be compared with the other, the respective viewpoints can be compared. B. J. F. Lonergan's 1957 work (Insight) on the nature of understanding provides one ground upon which different viewpoints can be compared. Theories come and go, but the underlying function, purpose, and construction of theories arise from the nature of cognition. As one of the ways in which people relate to the universe, cognition fashions intellectual tools-theories- to accomplish particular goals. Hence, from a selection of theories, one can be preferred on the basis of its utility value- the one which seems most likely to achieve the goal with the greatest efficiency and least effort. One criterion for the efficient achievement of the goal of understanding the universe is comprehensiveness. Again comparing the intellectual landscape with the physical, the higher the viewpoint the greater the purview. In this sense, Kuhn's process of periods of cumulation of knowledge within a paradigm separated by episodes of paradigm shifts can be understood as the progressive achievement of higher viewpoints affording greater purviews. Notice that from this understanding the often-used (and abused when applied outside a paradigm) judgements of "right/wrong", "correct/incorrect", even "true/false", are meaningless. Upon this ground for comparing viewpoints, the case can be made that the plasma paradigm is "higher" than the gravity one in that it encompasses a larger domain of evidence. Not only does it explain more phenomena, it explains those phenomena with a comprehensive and unitary theory. It "sees" more landscape, more features of that landscape, and more relationships among those features. Gravity, in contrast, "sees" fewer features and "sees" them as disparate events, each requiring a separate ad hoc explanation. For example, every feature on every planet has its own theory: impact craters, volcanoes, tidal cracks, floods of disappearing water, lava that runs uphill, runaway greenhouses, etc. The generality of gravity is obscured with ad hoc inventions, and those inventions fail to account for details intrinsic in the plasma view. Gravity fails to account for entire new observations, extrapolating itself beyond reality and into denial: Super-massive stars spinning super-fast, exploding stars whose shockwaves create intricate structures, cannibalistic galaxies, dark matter that overwhelms observed matter, photos cropped between galaxies and connected quasars, silence in the face of the quantization of redshifts, etc. More and more evidence is being ignored. Newton was unaware of plasma. Today his disciples spend years in training learning when and how to shut their eyes to it. It's not just the Big Bang, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics that are in trouble but the foundation of them all: Gravity is an exhausted and bankrupt concept. A higher, more
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comprehensive foundation is needed. The technologies of gravity have lifted us to a viewpoint that's bigger than gravity, and we need new ideas and new tools to make sense of the new vistas. Mel Acheson
STAR WORDS
A Kronia discussion TED BOND says: I have just discovered that throughout the whole range of the Indo-European language group, the words for star are cognate, starting (!) with the Sanskrit 'star' (yes!). It is clear that these words are also cognate with many of the names (Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Ashteroth) of the goddess identified with the planet Venus. The radiant Venus may have been at one time the only star-shaped light visible in the sky, and the star-words may be derived from the proper name rather than vice versa. A most extraordinary thing however, is that the word 'disaster' said to derive, via French from the Italian disastro derived in turn from the Latin 'astrum', a star OR planet. But 'dis-' is a Latin prefix signifying deviation. Is there no attestation for a Latin 'disastrum' (deviating star or planet)? (The suggestion here should be obvious.) The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (based on the O.E.D.) does not mention an Italian origin for the French, but goes directly from the French to Latin 'astrum' and Greek 'astron'. In fact, according to this dictionary, until 1669, 'disaster' had the sense 'an obnoxious planet'! ROGER WESCOTT jumps in: Ted Bond rightly perceives a connection between Indo-European nouns cognate with English "star" and Semitic names like Akkadian Ishtar. Most historical linguists, adhering to conventional chronology, either descry lexical coincidence here or derive the I.E. from the Sem. forms. I am inclined, rather, to regard the Sem. forms as borrowings from I.E., for 4 reasons: (1) these forms are wide-spread in I.E. but not in Sem.; (2)revised chronology no longer requires us to regard written Akkadian as older than Hittite; (3) I.E., unlike Sem., permits an internal etymology for "star", relating it to English "stare" and other verbs expressing strength and persistence; and (4) Afrasian language families related to Sem., such as Cushitic and Ancient Egyptian, fail to exhibit forms with this shape and meaning (as they should if the form were primarily Afrasian). EV COCHRANE adds: As a matter of fact, I was just researching this particular issue this past month. According to Wilhelm Eilers' book on planet- names, there is no connection between the IE word "star" and the Semitic words Ishtar/Astarte/etc. As is well-known, such a derivation has been proposed on several occasions in this century but has long since been abandoned. So far as I'm aware, there is no agreed upon root for Ishtar/Astarte. According to Eilers and the other authorities I've consulted, the English word "star" is derived from the same root as "strewn", although I don't have the root in front of me at the moment. Thus I would be most interested to learn how Dr. Wescott relates "star" to the word "stare" (which root?) and which Semitic root he would offer as a source for Ishtar/Astarte. ROGER clarifies: All etymologies are probabilistic at best. Besides "strew", the English forms most likely to be cognate with "star" are "strong" and "steady", to either or both of which "stare" may be related. EV says: It goes without saying, of course (but I'll go ahead and say it just the same), that the Saturn theory would expect a relation between early words for "star" and Venus, since Venus presented the appearance of a giant star against the backdrop of Saturn. In this sense, Venus was the original prototype for "star" and
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could serve as the "star" par excellence in ancient nomenclature. As I have documented elsewhere, in various languages--such as Mayan and Polynesian-- the word for "star" also means "Venus." Thus I would love to see Dr. Wescott (or anyone else) prove that the IE word "star" is cognate with Ishtar/Astarte. DAVE TALBOTT adds: Here is a personal opinion concerning S-T-R roots in the Indo- European languages. Virtually ALL are related, but in many cases the relationships will not be evident to the experts because these experts remain unaware of the archetype around which entire complexes of meanings arose. The source of the archetype was in the sky, but it is not there now, and the experts have not even suspected that a celestial reference might have existed--once- which could unify the picture completely. So they search about "down here," wrestling with concepts that cannot (on their own, in the absence of the celestial reference) be reconciled. They do not believe that "cataSTRophe" has anything to do with "STaR" because it is known that the former derives from the Greek STRophe, meaning a turning or twisting motion with specific references to the turning motions of dancers in Greek choral odes. They cannot imagine any linkage between this meaning and the root concept "STRength," to which the word STaR does appear to be clearly related. Nor does the "turning" motion of dancers suggest any connection to the concept "to STaRe," with which the word STaR is also connected. The Saturn theory, on the other hand, reconstructs an archetype which can account for the full range of STR-meanings. The subject is Venus and Mars in conjunction, together constituting the Great Star, the prototypical star depicted in the center of the archaic "sun" god (Saturn). The radiant STReams or STRahlen [German "rays"] of this StaR are the life and "STRength" of the sun. This star can be said to "STaRe" only because it is the sun god's central eye. When considering the origins of the word "catastrophe" and the meaning of the Greek strophe, it is inappropriate for the experts to ignore the connection of sacred dances to celestial phenomena, since all such ritual performances repeated critical junctures in the lives of GODS. The turning, twisting motion (strophe) of the prototypical star is legendary and is the basis of the global connection of this star, Venus, to the simple curl, spiral, and whorl. And speaking of the turning motion of Venus, if cataSTRophe is in fact connected to the same root as STaR, then so must the word apoSTRophe, since it expresses the same Greek root. The expected connection is definitely there. Aphrodite (Venus) was CALLED Apostrophia. A loose counterpart would be the Latin Venus as Verticordia--the turning or whirling heart. Our apostrophe is a mark or STRoke made with a STRophe or turning motion. Its form is virtually identical to the more elementary forms of the ancient Sumerian Venus-sign. And of course it has the same form as our COMMA which is surely linked to the "cometary" COMA of the Great Star. The archetypal Great Star is strictly synonymous with the archetypal Great Comet, But what is unified at the level of archetypes is too easily fragmented with the specialization and fragmentation of language in the ABSENCE of the original celestial references. To sort through the maze of modern words expressing the S-T-R root I would STaRt :) with these most fundamental associations of the Great Star: 1) It is the life, power, glory, strength, and majesty of the archaic sun god: the god's central, radiant eye, heart, and soul. In rites and symbols of kingship it will be represented as the feminine anima of kings, the very force which Jung himself identified with the goddess Venus. The radiant streamers of the central star, the "Queen of heaven", ANIMATE the sun god. In the waxing and waning of these streamers in the daily cycle, the ancient symbolists saw the nuances of "life"--of being and non- being. I cannot see how the Latin exsiSTeRe from which our word "existence" is derived, could have its root in any concept other than the "appearance" or "coming out" of the STaR that was the life of the sun god. It also seems abundantly clear that our word "is", Latin est, Greek esti, Sanskrit asti related to the life-giving "presence" of the central star.
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2) The definitive motion of Venus is represented pictographically by the curl, spiral, and whorl. That is the motion to which to the Greek STRophe must be referred. Hence, the STRophe cannot be legitimately separated from the language of the Great Star. 3) The dominant activity of the Great Star includes scattering and clearing. The explosion of radiating material is a STRewing of luminous ejecta into surrounding space, but in the subsequent clearing of the sky, the Great Star is the "broom" (comet) sweeping away the clouds of chaos. The broom is a clump of STRaw, German STRoh, an acknowledged hieroglyph for the COMET. (The hieroglyphic twisted STRoh or STRaw of the "comet" will be the STRahlen, or STReaming radiance.) 4) The coming into existence (Latin exsiSTeRe) of the Great Star is the first "activity" in the history of the gods. The first form of "divinity" in Mesopotamia is the Sumerian sign of An. It is the 8pointed star, signifying the "life" and "radiance" in the center of An. The "tears" shed by the central, solitary "Eye" of Atum in the opening event of the Egyptian creation legend will denote the same celestial form. The event means (in the words of the Egyptians themselves) "the beginning of coming into existence".) In calling this central star the "GREAT star" we refer specifically to its role as the "first", the primeval model, the prototype. Invariably, cosmic history will STaRt with this effusion of radiant STReamers or STRahlen. Most fundamentally, our word "STaRt" means the beginning of motion or activity, and that is a core concept in the Great Star imagery.
STATE OF THE UNIVERSE

by Amy Acheson THE BIG BANG is dead. It's a theory based on a theory based on an assumption made nearly 75 years ago, that THE ONLY CAUSE OF REDSHIFT IS RECESSIONAL VELOCITY. And that assumption was wrong. Observations in 1911 of intrinsic redshift in young stars crippled the recessional redshift of galaxies before it was imagined. Halton Arp's identification of physical connections between high-redshift quasars and low-redshift active galaxies in the late 60's dealt the mortal blow. The discovery of quantization of redshifts signed the death certificate. Still the Big Bang rises, vampire-like, to haunt the night, sapping the vitality and the integrity of astronomy. Photos are cropped between active galaxies and their ejected quasars. Dark matter spawns dark energy. Unquestioned superstitions and ritual mathematics adorn a conceptual graveyard into which are interred billions of dollars of public funds. The time has come to look at the universe from an entirely different paradigm. An intrinsic interpretation of the redshift will imply a much different universe. For example, in the middle of the constellation of Virgo, the brightest galaxies, the brightest quasars and brightest clusters of galaxies are connected by the strongest radio and x-ray fields in the sky. The expanding universe assumption -- that redshift equals velocity equals distance -- separates these objects by billions of light-years, and assumes their side-byside position is a coincidental. But it's not coincidence. These objects belong together. They make up an evolving galactic family whose genealogy can be traced through four generations. We'll never "see" this universe as long as we remain captive in the coffin of the Big Bang viewpoint. The assumption that redshift can only be caused by recessional velocity predetermines a distorted understanding of the shape, age, size, and physical characteristics of most of the extragalactic universe. A different - intrinsic - interpretation of the redshift will imply a much different universe. Even the meaning of the terms we use to describe that universe will have to change. Take, for example, the term, "galactic cluster." That term is currently defined by the yardstick of Big Bang expansion: at least 30 galaxies (in addition to the brightest two) within a range of 2 magnitudes and approximately the same redshift. According to this definition, there are 4,073 clusters (listed in the revised northern and southern Abell Catalogue.)
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Now let's look at a galactic cluster in the non-Big Bang universe. Let's assume (as Halton Arp's observations seem to suggest) that a galactic cluster is a family of galaxies and quasars and gaseous clouds of varying redshifts. At the center, we find a dominant galaxy - it's usually the largest galaxy, and the galaxy with the lowest redshift of the cluster. This dominant galaxy is surrounded by low-to-medium redshift galaxies, and toward the edges of the cluster we find the highest redshift galaxies, HII regions, BL Lac objects and quasars. If we try to force this configuration into a redshift-equals- velocity-equals-distance relationship, as Big Bang cosmologists do, the cluster will be distorted. What was once a sphere becomes an elongated bubble. The central dominant galaxy drops to the front of the bubble, followed by a spike of low-tomedium redshift galaxies stretching away from the earth (see illustrations). Every cluster in the sky does this, like starfish arms pointed away from the earth in every direction. Because we used redshift distance as the criteria for determining which galaxies belong in the cluster, we then draw an arbitrary line where the redshift gets higher than a predetermined level and, voile, everything beyond that line becomes BO: background objects. The Big Bang vampire has amputated the majority of galaxies from our original cluster. Now compare this to an actual plot of Virgo Cluster members set at their assumed velocity-redshift distance. There's a spike of galaxies (in fact, there are two of them, associated with two generations of the galactic family), pointing directly at the earth. You can see the front end of the bubble spreading out. Even as long ago as Copernicus we knew the Earth wasn't the center of anything. But this diagram, based on Big Bang assumptions, says it's the center of the universe! What you don't see in the Virgo Cluster plot, because of the arbitrary assumption that higher redshift objects are too far away to belong to the cluster, are the sides and the back of the bubble, where young groups of galaxies are artificially clumped into background clusters on the basis of their redshifts. The highest-redshift objects, the quasars, are also stretched out of this picture. Yet, when observed through our earth-based telescopes, they are "coincidentally" embedded in nearby hydrogen clouds, at the exact centers of x-ray fields and lined up in pairs across the spin axes of active foreground galaxies. The Big Bang universe will be restructured by intrinsic redshift into an entirely different form. Instead of a finite 12 billion light-year radius sphere centered on the earth, the limits of the intrinsic redshift universe are undefined, possibly infinite. But the extent of what we have observed is smaller, probably organized into two superclusters a few hundred megaparsecs across. Beyond that lie unknown amounts of extragalactica incognito. In this new paradigm, the collapsing concepts of the Big Bang fall into entirely different places. Here's a sample glossary from the Intrinsic Redshift Universe: 1) When speaking of extragalactic objects, the term "high redshift" means "young". It does not imply "far away", "high velocity" or "expanding universe." 2) Background objects probably aren't. 3) Our local cluster of galaxies has more members than presently believed. Before Arp, only objects with redshifts below 300 km/sec were admitted to the local cluster. From Arp's observations, higher-redshift dwarf galaxies and galaxies interacting with local-group nebulosity are also part of the local group. Even quasar-like 3C 120, with its superluminal (faster-than-light) ejections, becomes a local group member. Corollary of 3) The superluminal expansion of 3C 120 no longer needs an ad hoc explanation. If it is a member of the local cluster, then it is nearby, not at the edge of the universe, and its ejections become normal sub-lightspeed ejections. 4) The oft-invoked concept "colliding galaxies" (or "merging galaxies") is a fake. It's especially misleading when called upon to explain a priori assumptions, for example "quasar activity is induced in host galaxies by galactic collisions." In most cases, it is accurate to replace the randomly occurring "colliding galaxy" with the evolutionary process "ejecting galaxy." 5) The concept of black holes, mass so tightly packed that everything falls in, is a poor explanation for an active galactic nucleus, where observations show that everything appears to be falling out.
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6) Cannibalistic black holes ambushing passing galaxies are Big Bang fantasies. When we see galaxies tangled together in a high- energy mass, we're witnessing the birth of a new generation of quasars, galactic groups and companion galaxies. 7) The unobservable and undetectable "missing mass" that Big Bang theory claims makes up 90% of the universe isn't "missing". It simply isn't there. 8) The age of the universe can no longer be counted by retrocalculating an expanding universe back to a singularity. 9) Distances, masses and luminosities of high-redshift quasars, galaxies and clusters need to be recomputed as a function of something other than their redshift. Corollaries of 9) Quasars are not the "brightest objects in the universe" - their magnitude is brighter than stars, but not as bright as most galaxies. Gamma Ray Bursters don't "release more energy than the Big Bang". When placed at their proper close-by distance, their energy output becomes more reasonable. 10) So-called "gravitational lensing" of background quasars and galaxies becomes ejection phenomena. This is especially true in the most notorious case of gravitational lensing, the "Einstein cross": Supposedly, four images of the same quasar wrap around the nucleus of a lowredshift galaxy. However, a bridge of high redshift hydrogen connects two of the "quasar images" and crosses in front of a lobe of the low-redshift galaxy. This proves conclusively that these images are not the same quasar, nor are they background objects.
THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE -- 1999: The universe as we understand it is badly in need of repair and re-evaluation. Observations do not support the theoretical constructs and mathematical ad hocery of expanding universe/Big Bang cosmology. The time has come to take off our doppler-colored glasses and reexamine the pin-points of light beyond the Milky Way.
ACTION AT A DISTANCE
Simon Tressman, Wal Thornhill SIMON TRESSMAN asks: I'm not sure if they're still looking for it but the Higgs particle was supposed to explain action at a distance in the quantum world. At least it was after reading 'The God Particle' by Leon Lederman. This involves a very small particle shooting off from a source...to a destination and back again to somehow cause attraction between a-toms. Yuk! (I think!..not that its yuk but that's how it works) Tom Van Flandern's Meta Universe model has very small particle whizzing around and hitting everything else (except themselves...very often) causing 'attraction' by the shielding of one body by another from the particles. A neater idea. (I like the concept of infinite scale in the model). I read some of the reciprocity theory that Jan talks about and that makes a little sense. No action at a distance. (I can't describe it as I can't remember it but it made sense) What is the mechanism in the 'Electric Universe'? WAL THORNHILL replies: The model used in the Electric Universe is that proposed by Ralph Sansbury. The reason for that is that it offers a simple classical model of the atom with only two additions: 1. The electron has structure. (There is experimental evidence for this now). 2. The electrostatic force operating between the sub-particles (quarks?) that make up nucleons and electrons acts near instantaneously.
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This simple model offers an explanation for magnetism, electromagnetism, gravity, quantum theory, etc., and provides a mechanism for the stabilisation of the solar system after an episode of chaos. ( Very important given the wealth of evidence for recent electrical scarring of planetary bodies). It also offers a simple mechanism to explain Halton Arp's epochal discovery of quantised red shifts of quasars. Of course that doesn't explain how action at a distance, mediated by something we call the electrostatic force, actually occurs. It is a postulate that fits the observations - including the "spooky" instantaneous connection between fundamental particles discovered in recent years. It has not been found necessary in Sansbury's model to make any further complicating assumptions about action at a distance to save the model. That is not to say that it may not be found necessary in future. He is currently organising a repeat of his pulsed laser experiment (as shown on my CD) but this time including the inverse of the experiment where the shutter is open during the instantaneous excitation but closed when the pulse of light is expected to arrive at the shutter. Wal Thornhill
SULFURIC ACID ON EUROPA

NASA report, comments by Wal Thornhill The following NASA Science news report lends considerable support to my suggestion, published in November 1997 as workshop notes for my slide presentation of The Electric Universe, that: Interplanetary discharges are energetic enough to cause transmutation of elements. A common possibility is the production of sulphur from two atoms of oxygen. It seems a distinct possibility that the red colouration of the ice is due to the formation of elemental sulphur from oxygen in the ice. Jupiter's innermost moon Io is covered in sulphur by the same mechanism and it is still happening, unrecognised, under the gaze of the Galileo cameras. Wal Thornhill
BATTERY ACID CHEMICAL FOUND ON JUPITER'S MOON EUROPA

Sulfuric acid -- a corrosive chemical found on Earth in car batteries -- exists on the frozen surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. "This demonstrates once again that Europa is a really bizarre place," said Dr. Robert Carlson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. "Sulfuric acid occurs in nature, but it isn't plentiful. You're not likely to find sulfuric acid on Earth's beaches, but on Europa, it covers large portions of the surface." The new findings from NASA's Galileo spacecraft are reported in the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Science. Carlson, the principal investigator for the near-infrared mapping spectrometer aboard Galileo, is the lead author of the paper.
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Although there is no evidence of life on Europa, pictures and other scientific information gathered by the Galileo spacecraft indicate a liquid ocean may lie beneath Europa's icy crust. Water is one key ingredient essential for life. At first, Carlson thought the spectrometer's findings of sulfuric acid on Europa would quash any talk that life might exist there. "After all, even though we know there are acid- loving bacteria on Earth, sulfuric acid is a nasty chemical," he said. Those thoughts were quickly negated by a colleague, Dr. Kenneth Nealson, head of JPL's astrobiology unit, who was excited by the findings. "Although sulfur may seem like a harsh chemical, its presence on Europa doesn't in any way rule out the possibility of life," Nealson said. "In fact, to make energy, which is essential to life, you need fuel and something with which to burn it. Sulfur and sulfuric acid are known oxidants, or energy sources, for living things on Earth. These new findings encourage us to hunt for any possible links between the sulfur oxidants on Europa's surface, and natural fuels produced from Europa's hot interior." "These findings have helped solve a puzzle that has been nagging at me for a long time," Carlson said. "Data gathered by the spectrometer during observations of Europa had shown a chemical that we couldn't identify. I kept wondering, 'What the heck is this stuff?' Lab measurements now tell us that it is sulfuric acid, and we can start investigating where it comes from and what other materials might be there." For example, some reddish-brown areas on Europa might be caused by sulfur that co- exists with the sulfuric acid. One theory proposed by Carlson is that the sulfur atoms originate with the volcanoes on Jupiter's fiery moon Io, with the material being ejected into the magnetic environment around Jupiter and eventually whirled toward Europa. Another idea is that the sulfuric acid comes from Europa's interior, beneath the moon's icy crust, ejected by sulfuric acid geysers or oozing up through cracks in the ice. Another theory comes from Carlson's co-author, Professor Robert Johnson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who noted that sodium and magnesium sulfates may have leached onto Europa's surface from underground oceans and then were altered by the intense radiation field. This would produce the frozen sulfuric acid and other sulfur compounds. The new finding is also consistent with earlier Galileo spectrometer data analyses reported by Thomas McCord of the University of Hawaii and other members of the instrument team, who suggested that sulfate salts of this type were present on Europa. Carlson, Johnson and co-author Mark Anderson, a chemist in JPL's Analytical Chemistry Laboratory, plan to study Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, to see if it also contains sulfuric acid. The near-infrared mapping spectrometer works like a prism to break up infrared light not visible to the naked eye. Scientists can study the resulting light patterns to determine what chemicals are present, since different chemicals absorb infrared light differently. Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter and its moons for nearly four years. More information on the Galileo mission is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo An image depicting sulfuric acid on Europa is available on the World Wide Web at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 14 (November 1, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: MOVING BEYOND FALLING by Mel Acheson THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE by Dave Talbott IS IT RIGHT? or DOES IT WORK? by Jan Sammer, Dave Davis WEBSITES OF NOTE Ian Tresman, Ev Cochrane, Don Scott, Wal Thornhill ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTS GALILEO AT RISK by Wal Thornhill
MOVING BEYOND FALLING

By Mel Acheson It's exciting to discover a new idea that explains more facts with more unity than previous ideas. It's exhilarating to discover two such new ideas that interact to reveal opportunities previously unimaginable. That's what happened with heliocentrism and gravity. Copernicus' idea that the planets moved around the sun instead of around the earth was a breakthrough. It explained the growing number of observations of planetary motions that Ptolemy's geocentric idea was failing to account for. The proliferation of ad hoc adjustments to Ptolemy's system of epicycles had become self- contradictory, and the heliocentric viewpoint fit the new observations together as neatly as epicycles did the old observations. Newton's idea of gravity also explained more observations better than had Aristotle's idea of "it's the nature of things to fall." Aristotle never measured falling objects, but if he had, he would have measured the distance to the ground. It's unlikely he would have discovered any pattern, any scheme of recurrence, in the data. But from the viewpoint of gravity, the important measurement is the distance from the beginning of the fall. There's a readily-discoverable relationship in that data, easily summarized in a mathematical equation. But the ideas of gravity and heliocentrism together were more powerful than the sum of their separate explanatory powers. From the combined viewpoint, the planets didn't just move around the sum, they "fell" around the sun. The mathematics of falling could be developed into equations of motion for orbits. And those equations could not only describe the motions of the planets but could invent additional motions. Suddenly, people could build spaceships that would "follow the math" and take them to the planets. Now it's happening again. The Saturn Theory and the Electric Universe each explain larger bodies of data with greater unity than previously-accepted ideas in their fields. The Electric Universe provides an integrated explanation for the growing mass of astronomical observations that are becoming a morass of contradictory ad hoc confusions. Craters, rilles, parallel grooves, domes, arachnoids, neutrino fluxes, sunspot characteristics, coronal heat, nebulous filaments, pulsars, galactic jets, quantized redshifts ... each has its separate and ill-fitting conventional excuse. But all can be explained as aspects of the single phenomenon of plasma.
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The Saturn Theory extracts a coherent intelligibility from the recurring plots, characters, and forms of globally-dispersed stories, artifacts, and symbols. Dragons, cosmic thunderbolts, radiant goddesses, lightning-scarred warriors, sacred enclosures, world mountains, revolving crescents, universal floods ... each has failed to conform with commonplace interpretations. But all fit into a logical unity of the polar configuration. Both the Saturn Theory and the Electric Universe are exciting ideas. But together they establish a viewpoint that replaces the idea of gravitational free-fall with the bigger idea of electrically driven motion. The previously-unimaginable possibility arises that there could be other "modes" of motion than falling. The Saturn Theory provides evidence for a second mode: an axial alignment of planets. A third mode may explain, rather than explain away, the enigmatic motions-or lack of motion-of globular clusters, companion galaxies, quasars, and ball lightning: These all exhibit a kind of "suspended" motion, seeming to hang in space in defiance of gravity. And a fourth mode could be the "flat" rotation profiles of galaxies. These various modes are present in the force-free filaments Alfven described in the 1963 reedition of Cosmic Electrodynamics: Charges at the center of a filament move along the axis, generating a spiral magnetic field at the outside. Charges on the outside, following that field, "orbit" around the center, creating the linear field along which the core charges flow. Charges intermediate in the filament follow proportionately- stretched helixes. Scaling up a lab-sized filament to the dimensions of a galactic spiral arm would suggest similar motions could occur with charged planets. Gravity and heliocentrism together provided the viewpoint that empowered travel around the solar system. The Saturn Theory and the Electric Universe together may provide the viewpoint that empowers travel around the galaxy. Mel Acheson
THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE

Dave Talbott [Excerpted from a discussion of etymology onthe Kronia electronic discussion group] Language points back to its source, and the source is unified. The first systematic, written languages are rooted in the urge of ancient peoples to restore and to re-live the original "wholeness" of the world. Language arose as an integral component of sacred activity. Our word "sacred" itself comes from the Latin sacer, "holy", the core idea of which is "wholeness". To honor the wholeness of the First Time is to "remember". Written language emerged from ritual practices, as an instrument of remembering--of this principle I am highly confident. The common assumption, however, is that the early languages reflect little more than separate fragments of human experience. And this is where we must confront the fundamental mistake of conventional etymology, I believe. The experts will see a thousand discrete objects and rudimentary human experiences associated with them. And they will assume that, from the primitive sounds linked to these experiential fragments, ancient cultures gradually forged the first systematic languages. Though this may be a reasonable assumption, given other assumptions about the nature of human origins, the Saturn model offers a radically different possibility--that the ancient languages arose with remarkable suddenness, as an effect of intensely experienced events, and with unified references in the sky. Unified references can only mean a unified substratum of language, no less significant than the unified substratum of the rites, myths, and celestial symbols to which language is so indebted. Moreover, the myths, rites, and symbols preserve countless nuances of the original experience, and together they offer a useful guide for exposing the underpinnings of language itself. A range of seemingly DIFFERENT meanings, connected to similar or identical roots, will reflect the things which human imagination saw in
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celestial forms no longer present and events no longer occurring. In the cosmic pillar imagination will see a mountain AND a river, though in our world a mountain does not look like a river. In the spiraling Venus it will see a serpent AND the spiraling sidelock worn by the warrior-hero, though a serpent "down here" does not look like a lock of hair. In the polar enclosure it will see a circular serpent (uroborus) AND a cosmic city. In the four-fold "radiance" of Venus it will see four pillars of the sky AND four luminous "winds". But remove the celestial references, and the similar or identical words they inspired will have little or no common link, and attempts to relate them will appear far-fetched at best. It is a fundamental mistake, I believe, to separate the study of language origins from the study of myth. The first languages speak for the "defining" events in the mythical age of the gods-- the archetypes. But the true unity of these first expressions will remain unnoticed until the celestial references are fully acknowledged. The origins of written language take us back to the Golden Age of Saturn--the forms and aspects of the primeval Unity--and the more complex episodes which followed the Saturnian epoch. To remember does not just mean to recall; it means symbolically to re-live or recreate the organic whole, which was lost through catastrophe. In its original ritual contexts, this is a very "Saturnian" concept--to "reMEMBER", to re-constitute symbolically the "limbs" or distinct aspects of the original Unity. But wait! What is the basis for this not-so-subtle suggestion of an archaic linkage of words which, as far as I am aware, no self- respecting etymologist would countenance? Is there any ground for suspecting a connection between the Latin membrum, the limbs or constituents of a whole, and memor, remembering? I do not mean to insult the experts. But the question deserves to be investigated from a new vantage point, one outside all familiar boundaries. A conceptual relationship is not only intimated by the root meaning of sacred activity, but by the earliest language relating to "words" (the instrument of remembering) and "limbs". Egyptian religious texts, for example, celebrate the VISIBLE words spoken by the creator-god, identifying these "words" with the forms and aspects of creation itself. This identity is embedded in both the Egyptian language and in the declarations of the religious texts. The "words" shouted by the creator, the Unity, meant nothing else than the god's radiant "limbs". Once such connections are noted, is it appropriate to treat the ideas (words/memory and limbs) as wholly disconnected? And if the ideas ARE clearly connected in the earliest expressions of language, is it reasonable to ignore the possibility that these very connections might have echoed into more recent languages as identical or similar roots, the nature of the original connections (celestial references) having been lost? I am convinced that we are surrounded by the echoes of myth- making imagination, and that language (even modern English, despite the millennia separating our time from the roots of myth) offers unlimited opportunity to explore the connections. But to discuss this possibility one must suspend certain "rules" of etymology. Specifically, one must suspend any assumption which could not be correct if the hypothesized age of Saturn and the planetary gods actually occurred. Though giving this benefit of the doubt to the Saturn model asks a lot from the specialists, a new idea cannot be properly assessed without confronting its logical implications. Ev Cochrane says: I would offer the following thoughts from a trained linguist- Rens van der Slujis. Dr. van der Slujis is from the Netherlands and wrote to me from out of nowhere about how much he had benefited from his chance stumbling across the Saturn theory on my web site. Here are his comments: Dr. van der Slujis: You seem quite convinced that the Saturn theory will influence linguistic theory greatly. It is not altogether clear to me what you're pointing at with these words. In my view, language must already have arisen long before the celestial events began to happen, so that the impact of the Saturn theory on our speculations with respect to the origin of language might be negligible. Dave Talbott responds: I do not believe that the languages familiar to us can be traced back to, or will point back to, any systematic language prior to the polar configuration. Myth, rites, pictographs, sacred architecture, and
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written language appear to have emerged simultaneously, and they appear to be so fully entwined as to preclude a primitive formulation of one in isolation from the others. This doesn't mean that certain building blocks of language couldn't have existed previously, but even on that question I suspect that we're in for some surprises. In the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, for example, one finds numerous connections of rudimentary building blocks to aspects of the polar configuration, and I now believe that this includes the full range of hieroglyphs themselves. There are no terrestrial references. Though most (but not all) of the SYMBOLS are drawn from nature and from human activity, the THING SYMBOLIZED, when investigated, always turns out to be an attribute of the configuration, standing in a defined relationship to other aspects of the configuration. And in a sense, this shouldn't surprise us, considering that the entire focus of the earliest sources is religious. The sources celebrate only two things: 1) the forms and activities of the gods 2) a human connection to the gods, particularly through the person of the king, who is seen as the priest or servant of the universal sovereign. The royal and priestly function of the sacred written language is, however, progressively extended, democratized, and specialized, and that appears to be part of a rapid process of fragmentation in the absence of the original celestial references. In fact, it is in the very nature of language that it will evolve more rapidly toward localization and specialization than the myths and symbols. And this is why the nuances of specific word roots did not contribute significantly to the development of the Saturn model. Recurring myths and symbols retained a more complete sense of context than would be easily noted in the anatomy of words. But once the larger patterns and the model accounting for them are clear, however, the anatomy of words always seemed to provide the specific link that was asked for (though in fact we have not explored one percent of the potential here). It needs to be emphasized that if the model is correct, the groundrules for the investigation of language will need to change also. It has always been assumed that the original references in the development of language will be found "down here". And when two or more nuances of a word are present, the specialist will always look for the "true root" in a singular thing or quality, assuming that the additional nuances linked to the root came later. And if there is no reasonable way to account for different meanings attached to the same word, it is assumed that two DIFFERENT lineages are involved. They are not actually the same root at all. That two different meanings are expressed by the same word then becomes an accident. The Saturn theory, however, permits us to believe that the most ancient core of language is unified because the original references are unified. Numerous, seemingly incompatible meanings will gather around the same root because the reference is a single thing or event in the sky, onto which human imagination projected a wide range of interpretations. Venus, the feminine "heart" of the sun, is also the radiant "soul", but also the eye, the nave of the sun wheel, the navel, the "breast" of the sky and much, much more. When we see ancient word-roots reflecting a range of meanings, in correspondence with the diverse mythical interpretations attached to a single form in the sky, we do not believe we are looking at an accidental convergence. (The other side of this point is that, if the Saturn theory is correct, a systematic investigation should reveal hundreds of examples of this principle within the Indo-European languages alone, and the same kinds of convergence should be present in all other major language groups. But it will be essential that the investigator know the Saturn model like the back of his hand, or more actual connections will be missed than are identified) Dr. van der Slujis continues: The only linguistic traces certainly left by the Saturn phenomenon are the so called homonyms: identical roots with apparently different meanings. In many cases, it will appear that both meanings stem from one original meaning, which became fragmented after the polar configuration had been distorted, i.e., in like way as all divine epithets and stories became fragmented. Different phenomena which had formerly been seen as an organic unity from the
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vantage-point of the polar configuration now missed an obvious link, so that the formal identity was now felt as a mere coincidence. From Pokorny's etymological dictionary I collected a number of examples to illustrate this: The root *g(w)er means 'mountain', while another root *g(w)er means 'heavy, mill' and still another root *g(w)er-u means 'rod, spear'. A palatalised velar is reconstructed in *gwer 'be hot, lighten up'. The latter form can in an earlier stage of Proto- Indo-European easily be connected with the former ones, for the difference between plain velars and palatalised velars seems a secondary innovation, perhaps involving the phonematisation of the labialisation [Do you agree with this Dave?]. My point is clear: whereas no single natural object or phenomenon comprises the notions of 'mill, spear, enlightenment' and 'mountain' all in one, the polar configuration is exactly what we are looking for. It is stated elsewhere that the celestial pillar, supporting Saturn's heaven, was variously interpreted as a mountain, a sword and a glowing stream. The combination of pillar and wheel led in broad cycles to the metamorphic mill. [other examples provided] Further examples can easily be collected from the respective dictionaries.
Dave Talbott adds: This is a good summary of the reasoning process, using one of the equations we have mentioned frequently. I would add that there are probably more symbolic identities attached to the cosmic column than Dr. van der Slujis is aware (e.g., path of souls, bridge, phallus, erect serpent, wind of the below, boar, tusk, single leg, upraised arm, stem of the plant of life, trunk of the tree of life.) Also, the good doctor's point below may be answered quite convincingly as he is able to consider the larger imagery of the configuration to which the column was inseparably connected. Dr. van der Slujis: Nevertheless, one must be aware that the argument only goes insofar as homonymous roots are restricted to ones that can be connected with help of the Saturn thesis. Consider a case of ten homonymous roots, three of which can be associated as shown above. The point is not convincing in such a case, because seven homonyms are not adequately explained. Talbott: I think we can all accept this point with respect to homonyms, and I would imagine that with the full flowering of language in our own time, virtually all homonyms would represent accidental convergences. But the Saturn theory would predict that the farther back you look, the more a unified complex of meanings will be seen around the homonyms. (Also, many variations which would appear to involve separate distinct word-roots should turn out to reflect the different mythical nuances of the same celestial form.) In fact, certain unique and highly "incongruous" equations should be found more than once within the SAME language, but around DIFFERENT roots. The same "absurdity" evident in one root should also appear in connection with other roots. The Egyptian system will provide excellent examples of this, I believe. Here is just one: The model says that the sidelock of the warrior-hero is the spiraling serpent, and that both are an explicit form of the mother goddess. At least a half dozen instances could be given of this "absurd" equation in Egypt-where one word, such as shen, means "hair", but is the name of a serpent as well. (Some time back I posted a listing, and could dig it up if anyone is interested.) It is the global imagery of the "hairy" serpent that will account for the seemingly ludicrous juxtaposition of words and symbols. Dr. van der Slujis: On the other hand, the argument can be strengthened with the help of other language families. When a like nucleus of virtually unconnected homonyms can be shown to occur not only in the Indo- European area, but elsewhere, structural typology demands an explanation in terms of historical-genetic relationship. If that can be shown--and we have good reasons to assume that it can- linguistics has contributed its part to the establishment of the Saturn theory. Lots of work remains to be done here." Talbott:
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No doubt about it. And we need some well-trained linguists to help us sift through the material. The windwater-pillar- mountain would be a good principle to explore around the world, precisely because it's so incongruous in the absence of the celestial reference. Egyptian Shu is the nether wind (the wind below the central sun Re), the pillar supporting Re, the world mountain or primeval hill, and the "waterway." As Shu-Anhur, he is represented by the spear. (And that is only the beginning.) Sumerian Enlil is the "wind" but also the Great Mountain. Greek Boreas is the "North wind", the erect serpent (impregnating the goddess), and the primeval bor or mountain. (We also find around Boreas the boreal path of souls and other symbols of the column, perhaps even the boar, if the word doctors will permit it; that the boar is identified symbolically with Mars and the polar mountain is well established.) Hindu Indra is the wind or smoke rising along the world axis, but also a shining pillar. The same pillar is called the phallus of Shiva, but elsewhere it becomes the polar mountain of Meru. Aztec Ce Acatl is a heaven- supporting pillar, but also the "wind". To be continued ...
IS IT RIGHT? or DOES IT WORK?

By Jan Sammer and Dave Davis Jan Sammer says: What Larson is doing is he's dumping the whole model. In conformity with his purpose he concentrates his firepower on the hidden unwarranted assumptions of the model, not on its detailed workings. You point out that the model works. Of course it does--it has to otherwise it would be useless. Larson is not saying that the model does not work, he's saying that the model is wrong. Dave Davis responds: Jan, what you have to bear in mind is that chemists are very pragmatic [and pedantic ;-] types... If you pick up most degree level inorganic textbooks, you'll usually find a load of rhetoric in the introduction along the lines of "theories come & go - but facts are constant" blah blah blah... The fact that a model WORKS is, to most chemists, all that matters, because it will allow them to rationalise & classify the chemistry they see happening in front of them in the lab - whether or not it is metaphysically "Wrong" or "Right" is not of much importance. (For how can we really "know" what an atom is anyway?)... I was taught several different models, pretty much all incompatible & conflicting! We didn't have a problem with that. Honestly. Want to explain bonding in sodium chloride? - use the Ionic Model of Bonding! Want to explain 1st series transition metal complexes? Well, try ligand/crystal field theory! Or prefer doing a bit more maths? Well, use Quantum Molecular Orbital theory, then! What about a boring old main group non-metal? - well, the covalent bonding model with VSEPR bells on should do the trick. One of the flash hard-drinking synthetic organic guys, and need to elucidate the transition state of your latest carbonyl addition? well, you're probably are best arguing the case with MO theory again... Now, this might seem a farcical state of affairs to some people - ("what, you mean chemists fully acknowledge that their theoretical models are hopelessly inadequate, and just pick and choose the one which gives the right results in the situation at hand!?!? Cut their funding now!!") - but really, this is only a problem if you are seeking an ultimately "true" metaphysical explanation of chemical behaviour (and as Michael reminded us the other day, "objective" scientific theories must of necessity have underlying metaphysics) - most are just interested in making their reactions work.
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I'm not especially interested in ultimate true metaphysical absolutes (in fact I don't really believe in them at all)... so if I have a model (like the nuclear atom) that WORKS, then I'm not really that interested in finding a "truer" one. (whether electrons are little billiard balls running round on hoops, or whether they're pointy up & down arrows paired up in little orbital diagrams, or whether they're a bunch of integrals describing a wave function. I'm never, as a human, going to Really "know" what it's Truly like to Be an electron) Now that we're in the space age, we can see that epicycles don't work once you leave earth. NASA couldn't use them to get the Huygens probe to Saturn, so it's not really a good example. But the nuclear atom seems to be working fine - I guess the only way you'd really sell me Larson's idea is to show me examples where it can explain & rationalise things where the nuclear model doesn't have anything to offer. Then, like a good chemist, I'll quite happily use it for those situations. DAVE Davis
WEBSITES OF NOTE
Ian Tresman, Ev Cochrane, Don Scott, Wal Thornhill [ed. note: the catastrophics community has been particularly active on the internet in recent months. Here are a few of the latest webpages, introduced with excerpts from the sites themselves. Check the webpages themselves for lots more, and pictures, too.]: Ian Tresman says about his Catastrophism CD: It is to be expected that cosmically-induced global catastrophes should be a running theme through the disciplines. Hence, this work is interdisciplinary in its very nature. And if disciplines conflict in their interpretation, does the interpretation of the evidence or the discipline require revision? This work is a compilation of thousands of articles, books and Web sites, covering a wide range of viewpoints. Some are quite convincing, some speculative, and others apparently preposterous. http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm [ed. note: Here's another website hosted by Ian Tresman. It features summaries of the papers presented at the SIS Silver Jubilee, at which several Saturn Theories were featured.] From Harold Tresmans's opening address: Just forty to fifty years ago there was virtually no challenge to the conventional overview of science that could easily be found, studied or used as a comparison, in fact, everything was so certain that there was no need to search for alternatives. At that time everything scientific was read and admired...we knew and understood every single process. With the publication of Worlds in Collision, followed by Earth in Upheaval, this cozy, uncritical acceptance changed. In my own case these publications struck the chord that had been niggling at me since my school day and changed my life. http://knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/ [ed. note: The next website contains the full text of Ev Cochrane's SIS paper, THE SATURN THEORY, with illustrations.] Ev Cochrane says: If the truth be known, the Saturn theory suffers from an embarrassment of riches with respect to evidence which supports the central tenets of the theory. Early descriptions of the "sun" and various planets from Mesopotamia and elsewhere describe them as occupying "impossible" positions and moving in a manner
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which defies astronomical reality (as currently understood, that is). The ancient sun god, for example, is said to "rise" and "set" upon the same sacred mountain. The planet Venus is described as standing at the "heart of heaven" or within the crescent of Sin. Mars is pointed to as a principle agent behind "eclipses" of the ancient sun god.2 While not one of these scenarios is possible given the current order of the solar system, each is perfectly consistent with the history of the respective planets in the polar configuration as reconstructed by the Saturnists. http://www.ames.net/cochrane/SIS/sis.html [ed. note: the next three sites are maintained by Don Scott, who's put his retirement time into studying the electric universe and the intrinsic redshift.] Don Scott discusses the electric sun: The certainty that the Sun generates its prodigious outpourings of energy through thermonuclear reactions deep in its interior has been with us for about half a century. [Juergens 1979]. But, there are many reasons to doubt this presently accepted theory of how our Sun (and every other star) generates its radiant energy. In almost every article written for the popular press, the very first sentence usually contains some reference to the "fact" that the Sun is, at its core, a thermonuclear fusion reactor. The heat (energy) produced in this core then "rises to the Sun's surface by convection (a laminar fluid flow) and is there radiated out into space". http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Sun.htm Don Scott talks about Halton Arp and Wal Thornhill: There is a revolution coming in the "sciences" of astronomy and cosmology that will rival the one set off by Galileo. I hope I can live long enough to see at least the beginning of it. Here is a brief description of the battle I see brewing, and my reasons for being on one side of that fight. http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm Don Scott presents Amy Acheson's articles on Halton Arp: Arp's meticulous examination of each galaxy and its environment led him to an exciting new discovery - that these galaxies are not isolated island universes, but are vitally connected. His systematic observations showed that active galaxies and quasars, large and small spirals, quasar jets and x-ray clouds are all interacting dynamically with each other. http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Amy.htm [ed. note: Wal Thornhill's website is devoted to the electric universe and its implications for science. It includes a regularly up-dated news section which discusses the latest discoveries of the space age and their implications for catastrophics and the electric universe, plus lots of pictures.] From Wal Thornhill's website preface: The Electric Universe opens up science again to the individual. Science will blossom in the new millennium as a cultural activity more integrated with history, the arts and the human condition. http://www.holoscience.com
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTS GALILEO AT RISK

By Wal Thornhill
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RECENT NEWS
[ed. note: this article was posted on Wal Thornhill's website before Galileo went into "safing mode" due to problems in one of its memory banks as it approached Io, October 11, 1999.] 8 October 1999 NASA risks Galileo spacecraft by FLYING A "KITE" AT IO! JPL News wrote: Galileo makes two daring passes less than 620 km above Io on October 11 and November 25, 1999. In November Galileo might even pass through the plume of Pillan Patera, making it the first spacecraft ever to fly through an alien volcano. NASA scientists are upholding a long tradition of misinterpreting observations from their space probes. This time they are jeopardising one of their most successful missions. Long ago in 1979, when the socalled volcanoes of Io were first discovered, Professor Thomas Gold of Cornell University wrote that they are actually the site of powerful electric discharges. NASA geologists paid no attention. Jupiter is still capable of hurling a few thunderbolts! "The biggest mystery about Io's volcanoes is why they're so hot," says Bill Smythe, a co-investigator on JPL's NIMS team. "At 1800 K, the vents are about 1/3 the temperature of the surface of the sun!" The temperature measured by Galileo is an average based on the sharpest resolution of its instruments. If scientists are having difficulty explaining 1800 K, they are in for a shock when they get closer... I predict that when seen close up the temperature of those hot spots will approach that of the Sun as they are both electric arcs. (Electric arcs create intensely hot spots.) The plan to fly the Galileo spacecraft through the plume of an Io volcano in November is therefore as foolhardy as flying a kite in an electrical storm. It is to be hoped that NASA will recognise the dangers in time to change their plan for November. That is, if Galileo survives the October flyby. "Another thing we'll be going for with these close-up flybys are high resolution pictures of the lava flows", continued Smythe. "We really want to know what the shapes and edges of the flows look like because that can tell us a lot about the properties of the lava. On Earth lava flows form little side lobes, or extrusions that look like arms, feet and toes." On the contrary, most of the dark patterns seen radiating from the crater in this image of the Marduk "volcano" are not lava flows. They have the shape of lightning scars on Earth and are caused by powerful currents streaking across the surface to satisfy the arc's hunger for electric charge. They rip huge sinuous furrows in the soil and hurl it to either side to form levee banks and side lobes. The stubby side channels will be found to have rounded ends like those seen on Martian "rivers".
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 15 (November 15, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: GOING IN CIRCLES MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (2) LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN UPDATED GALILEO PREDICTIONS CLOSEST EVER PICTURE OF IO
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Pam Hanna, Ted Bond, and Dave Davis by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
GOING IN CIRCLES
By Mel Acheson The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is as wrong as was the idea that the Sun goes around the Earth. Oh, sure, heliocentrism works for certain limited purposes-for putting a robot on Mars or for sending a probe around Jupiter. But geocentrism works, too-for siting a house on a lot or for calculating solar exposure during the course of a day. Both are simplifications of a more complex phenomenon. In reducing that larger phenomenon to elements usable for immediate purposes, a lot of information is lost. A lot of the phenomenon is overlooked. Really, the planets don't go around the Sun. Orbits are figments of an underactive imagination, a failure to imagine reality. The Sun and planets are spiraling around the galaxy, each causing minor perturbations in the motions of the others. By analogy, the Moon doesn't really go around the Earth. That's an idea left over from geocentric thinking. From a heliocentric view, Moon and Earth merely perturb each other a little as they go around the Sun on almost identical orbits. So the planets follow helix-shaped paths, not closed ellipses. Another image of it is a corkscrew path. That image connects with several other elements of a bigger picture: Hannes Alfven discovered that electrons corkscrew around the axis of plasma filaments. Wal Thornhill has described the corkscrew motion of industrial machining arcs and has related that characteristic to the shapes of planetary craters. Recently, some atmospheric researchers discovered the zigzags of lightning strokes are, in three dimensions, corkscrewed. What do these corkscrew images have in common besides their common shape? Perhaps they're all aspects of plasma behavior. But certainly they each encompass a bigger picture than previous ideas. They have both spatial and historical depth. Now epicycles did a fair job of describing what was "really" happening geocentrically. But they missed a lot: You could never come up with a workable theory of dynamics by studying epicycles. Orbits do pretty well describing what's "really" happening heliocentrically. But they, too, are missing a lot: The stars don't follow gravitational orbits around the galaxy. You can never come up with a workable theory of plasma behavior by studying the inverse-square forces of central point-masses. Conceptually, geocentrism is one-dimensional: It's a kinetic viewpoint with the dimension of motion. Heliocentrism and gravity are two-dimensional concepts: They provide a dynamic viewpoint with
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dimensions of motion and force. But the understanding of plasma requires a viewpoint that accounts for persistently-interacting assemblages, adding the dimensions of instability and historicity. The collapse of geocentrism was foreshadowed by the proliferation of preposterous epicycles. As more epicycles were added to explain some new observations, the less they explained other observations. Today there is a proliferation of preposterous gravitational conceits. Each handful of new observations is given its own ad hoc "theory". Really, these are not theories but excuses for lack of generality. Both the problem and its solution are suggested in this irony: The universe is observed to be 99% composed of plasma, whose properties are unrecognized. But modern gravitational theory postulates a 99% composition of unobservable "dark matter" to explain observations. The problem is no longer with limitations on seeing what's "out there" but with limitations on seeing what's "in here". It's the conceptual sclerosis that's keeping us from really seeing 99% of reality. Mel Acheson
MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (2)

By Dave Talbott Roger Wescott says: The word "comma" has a root "kop" ("to strike or mark"). So there is a semantic connection with "apostrophe" et al., even though that connection isn't morphological. Dave Talbott responds: The meaning of the root kop to strike, brings the comma into alignment symbolically with the Great Star/Great Comet Venus, though I would add the sense of the "break" in a linear sequence, which is the effect of both the comma and the coma (comet). The "punctuation" of a sentence is analogous to the "punctuation" of history. You can see this in the dual meanings of the word "period" (Greek (periodos), for example. In Greek thought a full circuit or cycle of time is the "period". A period also denotes the completion of a sentence. Similarly, in a sentence, the "break" of the comma is curiously analogous to the function of the archetypal coma/comet, whose most active and dramatic history signifies the break between two phases (phrases?) of history. Though the great star/great comet is the primary reference in symbols of beauty or "comeliness" (more Venus-comet language), it is invariably associated with endings and beginnings, presiding over the end of one age and the beginning of another. (Thus, the two most dramatic symbols of the comet in its terrible aspect are the raging or lamenting goddess and the raging serpent, always appearing in the sky with the collapse of a former epoch.) This does not mean that the similar functions of the coma and comma were consciously recognized by the Greeks, though I wouldn't discount that possibility. Of course most etymologists would fall off their chair in seeing the "coma/comma" connection implied in my note above. But I suspect that a search through more archaic roots would reveal some surprising parallels between the Greek kome (hair, hair star, comet) and kop ("strike"). I would look for a complex of K-M and K-P roots with a range of meanings roughly paralleling the complex of meanings around the S-TR root. One parallel would be that between kop and the S-T-R word "strike", including the related words "stroke" and "streak". In seeking out a specific bridge between kome and kop I'd consider the full complex of Great Star/Great comet motifs, but perhaps concentrate first on word roots around the concepts of the cap, cape, cloak, head, and hair. While I could give several reasons for this suggestion, much of the logic comes down to this: the kome, "hair", of Venus is the "cap" of the warrior-hero, and the cap does seem to be connected to "comma", i.e., the root kop. The warrior-king dons the radiance or "hair" of the Great Star as his crown of glory (see, e.g., the Egyptian king's "wig" or "headdress", which turns out to be a form of the great goddess) Symbolically, the cap IS the radiance, the streaming hair of the goddess. Thus, among numerous cultures, the warrior's helmet or cap is inseparable from its "crest", a tuft of streaming hair or some symbolic variant thereof. The sacred sidelock or topknot of the warrior pertains to the same
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imagery, in which the hair of the head, or cap, IS the coma, the "radiance" of the goddess. (The spiraling sidelock of the warrior-king Horus is Hensektet a name of Isis and Hathor, for example.) Verifiable symbolic connections can lead to a recognition of numerous morphological connections where the roots would otherwise be treated as unrelated. With respect to the subject at hand, I believe that the conjunction of symbols will trace back to the beginnings of language--and specifically to the conjunction of Mars and Venus in the model we have presented. The role of Venus as headdress or cap cannot be understood apart from the relationship of Venus to the ONE WHO WEARS IT, the warrior-king. So I would expect to find a complex of meanings around the K-P root which will suggest SIMIULTANEOUSLY the cap, the top, the head, the crown or crown of the head, and hair (coma), as in the German Kopf It is by donning the radiance, the crown or cometary "hair" of Venus, that Mars becomes the king of the world, the legitimate "head", the cap-tain. One connection I would explore is that to "copper" (German Kupfer, Latin cuprum, the metal of Cyprus, Greek Kypros), since the "radiance" of the Great Star took the color of copper ore, i.e., brilliant turquoise. Copper ore (such as malachite) was used to produce the turquoise color of the Venus-eye-goddess symbols in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. And Aphrodite was called the "copper" goddess, the Cyprian. Hence, that would be a connection of the Venus-coma to a K-P root worth considering. Also, it's hard for me to imagine that root meanings around the word "comma" would not be related to its spiraling form, which IS the form of the Venus goddess as the spiraling lifebreath (exhaled heart-soul, displaced eye) The same form is represented by the apostrophe. Thus Aphrodite, the planet Venus, is called Apostrophia. But she is also called Comaetho--the "long haired" (star), an epithet resonating with the global symbolism of the comet as the "long-haired star." Thus we find both the spiraling comma-form and the coma attached to one and the same planet goddess.
THE ACID TEST

We've noted on numerous occasions that one of the advantages of the Saturn model is that it can be subjected to numerous tests. Under many such tests, the implications of the model will be so far from anything anticipated under conventional assumptions that they can be regarded as ACID tests. And the most compelling acid tests will be those so specific and unusual that no false theory could consistently pass them. When it comes to word associations, one could spend a lifetime applying various tests to the model. We've discussed the imagery of the polar column and the word associations predicted by that feature of the Saturn model. But there are many others. And why not look for the most extraordinary tests first, those in which the model would predict associations so unique one would not even dream of them in the absence of the hypothesized events? (Again, the force of the logic involved here will be lost on those who are not familiar with the details of the model. I will use as a reference the notebook "Symbols of an Alien Sky.") Consider, for example, the remarkable image of Mars in relation to the discharging Venus. Here we have the small planet directly in front of a blast of light (Venus discharge), putting the Martian hemisphere facing the earth into a dark shadow. As we have illustrated this condition, Mars appears as a dark reddish brown object against the brilliant sphere of Venus and its discharge streamers. Add to this unique condition the centrality of the juxtaposed spheres in relation to the much larger sphere of Saturn and you have a highly unique set of relationships-and literally nothing in common with observed phenomena in our sky today. Yet around the world we find ancient pictographs corresponding precisely to this condition-including the enigmatic small dark circle or sphere inside the central star and radiant streamers. (Symbols, pp. 73ff.) Conventional experts will call these images "sun" pictographs, though it is simply inconceivable that people, in both the Old World and the New, would draw the Sun in our sky that way. On the other hand, if
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you yourself were to represent this aspect of the Saturn model in line drawings, these are surely typical of the pictures you would draw. Moreover, if ancient language arose as a direct reflection of these extraordinary events, how likely is it that words relating to the unique role of Mars would fail to provide us with some explicit confirmation of the implied associations, including the shadow-effect on Mars? A few weeks ago we talked briefly about ancient imagery of the Greek omphalos or navel, which neatly represents the conjunction of Mars and Venus in the model. The raised boss or knob of the omphalos will be the sphere of Mars, and the golden band around this boss will be the planet Venus (gold typically representing "brilliance" in the ancient world). The juxtaposed spheres of Venus and Mars do indeed look like the "navel" of Saturn--as many people viewing the illustration have observed. (Of course it takes the huge sphere of Saturn to create the "navel" affect. The concept of centrality, which is crucial to all such images, is meaningless apart from this relationship.) The Greek omphalos is the Latin umbilicus, meaning navel, middle, center. In honor of this numinous "middle"-point, a central district in Italy was named "Umbria". As we've noted previously, the umbilicus is presented on numerous ancient shields, and the depicted central boss or hemispheric protuberance of the shield can only represent the warrior-hero himself, the "navel-born" god, the celebrated axle of the Saturnian wheel (Symbols, p. 92). Thus, it is not surprising at all to find that the Latins called this central boss on the shield the umbo. And our own language has retained the connection to the darkly shadowed appearance of Mars: our word "umber", from the Latin umbra, means "dark dusky brown or dark reddish brown". But where is the natural basis for the connection of a central hemisphere or boss to "dark reddish brown"? While nature today offers no connection, the Saturn model certainly does! Indeed, the Latin umbra means "shadow" or "shade", which can hardly come as a surprise, since it is the distinctive shadow which produces the dark reddish "umber" of Mars. And of course, the language of astronomy has preserved the original idea intact: umbra means "the complete or perfect shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the direct light from the source of illumination is completely cut off". That is exactly the role of Mars in the model. We might note also that archaically, our word "umbrage" (a very Martian expression), meant a "shadowy appearance". The archaic word "umbrose" meant "full of shade", and our word "umbrella", identical to the shade in ancient symbolism, comes from the same root. Also, since the umbilicus was frequently presented as the center of flower, it is significant that this center of inflorescence is called umbella, a word equivalent to umbra the shadow. We thus find a complex of words around an ancient root, in which a navel, or a central boss, or the center of flower reveals an enigmatic relationship to the concept of a "shadow" and "dark reddish brown". Though this qualifies as a unique prediction of the Saturn model it would hardly qualify as an EXPECTED connection under the common assumptions of etymologists. It thus exemplifies the kind of testing which the specialists must be challenged to conduct on their own, to determine if similar associations are present in other languages.
LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN

By Pam Hanna, Ted Bond, and Dave Davis PAM: Our society is VERY masculine and the REASON that Amy & Karen & I have minds that are more masculine than your usual cross-section of the female species is that we HAVE to have masculine minds to even TALK to you dudes. Dig .. TED:
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On you and Shlain's view of the matter, I got more of a female mind than most males ... I think of you, Amy and Kaj as the triple-goddess of the Kronialist, and I'm happy for all your left-brain activity! No sooner had I dispatched this, than I realized one of you had to be the irresistible female lure (e.g. Helen of Troy, La Belle Dame sans Merci), another the nurturing Mother, and the third the destructive, death-dealing Crone (Kali &c.)! PAM replies: heh heh, I'd configure it a little differently since la belle dame sans merci & Kali cover pretty much the same ground. What you're leaving out are the wisdom goddesses, Sekmet, Maat, Sophia, Shekinah, Athena. Actually, I think the Greeks had it sewn up pretty well - Aphrodite, the bait, Hera, the mother/nurturer and Athena, wisdom (unfortunately war comes into the equation with the latter). Aphrodite ALWAYS gets the apple & that's what pissed off the L- brain, image-hating iconoclastic God so mightily. Desire - that makes la belle dame sans merci of women and slaves of men - or so they say - so they WRITE! That's the one thing that men don't have all sewn up - that wild card - their desire for women & that's a bitter pill to swallow for a dominant, controlling, L- brained man. Must be HER fault - the bitch! That she devil MADE me do it! TED: But then I started thinking (the old left-brain went to work while keeping in touch with the adorable rightbrain) about a certain recurring archetypal theme and its possible relation via the polar configuration to the origins of Puritanism (a special interest of mine), something that seems to have begun with the Jewish rejection of planet-worship (in particular the worship of Ishtar and its accompanying human sacrifice) and the introduction of an invisible god. PAM replies: The ban on images is a ban on R-brain pattern recognition. Those damn women were getting away with a kind of gestalt communication OUTSIDE MALE control! MUST be bad. MUST be stopped. MUST be forbidden. TED continues: The recurring archetypal theme is of the irresistible female lure, who later either simply abandons her male lover, leaving him in a severely debilitated state (La Belle Dame, the Czech Vilja,) or else drowns him or mutilates and devours him or throws the corpse into the river or the sea (the Lorelei, Tamara [Lermontov], the Sirens, the Maenads), the irresistibly alluring virgin Diana who commands the death of any man who gazes upon her bathing naked, and many others. PAM replies: Give those women an inch & they'll take a mile, hey? The curious thing is that if you examine history, the actual misogyny is heavily weighted on the side of men hating - and punishing - women. Man-hating women are mostly legendary myths & archetypes (like the Bacchantes, Maenads, etc) whereas in actual fact, there were no societies of women who systematically subjugated, tortured and murdered men as men did to women in the notorious gender wars & witch hunts of the middle ages. There were places and times in human history when it was simply a crime to be female. Nowhere, nowhen, was it a crime to be male. Shlain made an interesting point that boys, in order to become men, MUST separate themselves from their mamas & follow their fathers. Girls don't have to separate themselves from or reject either sex to become women. Ptah masturbated the gods into existence without a consort. The Goddess HAD to be dethroned. It was inevitable in the development of our species (this isn't Shlain - this is my own little pet theory). Tiamat had to be done in to make the world out of her body. It's just that when the L brain of the species got too active too fast, that it swung over into misogyny. That's Shlain and that's his central thesis - that patriarchy parallels the introduction of the alphabet (a L-brain activity) and with it L-brain dominance, which crowded out R-brain values & activities.
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TED continues: Now, the worship of Ishtar-Astarte-Ashtoreth-Inanna-Aphrodite (&c.) seemed, so the best research tells us, to include temple 'prostitution' (so called), the girls assuming the role of the goddess--a delightful practice only recently abolished in India due to the preachings of the puritan Gandhi. Jewish religion attempts (with difficulty) to abolish worship of Ishtar-Baal along with its accompanying temple-'prostitution', and women, except in marriage, are to be chaste and pure. (The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah [2, 32] rail against women wearing jewelry especially [see Isaiah 3, 16-25] tinkling bells on their-presumably bare--feet.) (God's gonna fix them real good!) Ezekiel 15, dealing with the 'abominations' of Jerusalem seems to clinch the matter, for backsliding into Venus-worship which includes 'sacrificing one's children to be devoured' and 'passing them through the fire' is clearly linked to the wearing of jewelry and to sexual looseness ('whoredom'). PAM: If you've read THE SACRED EXECUTIONER by Hyam Maccoby, you know that females didn't have a corner on human sacrifice even though it's true that it started with goddess worship. To be sure, there was a downside to the ancient goddess religion - namely the ritual sacrifice of Tammuz, Damuzi, Attis, Osiris, Adonis - all consorts of the goddess. That's what got Ezekiel et al. so bent outta shape. Hebrew women were making cakes for the Queen of Heaven and "weeping for Tammuz" (whom they ritually sacrificed). But comparing sheer numbers, this doesn't hold a candle to sacrifices perpetrated by the patriarchal gods or the ancient Hebrews before the levitical laws were established. The really alarming downside of the goddess cult was when the priests of Cybele voluntarily castrated themselves. Now THAT's the R brain gone mad IMHO - but again, the numbers can't compare to the slaughter of all men, women and children & "everything living" that the Hebrews perpetrated on the cities & towns that worshipped the goddess. But you can bet they kept the non-living things, to wit - the gold, silver, bronze, copper - whatever they could haul away for the coffers of the Levites. Which brings me to what was REALLY going on. All that rap about how licentious the women were, adorning themselves and enticing men - was a COVER STORY. What was really going on is that matrilineal descent affected PROPERTY OWNERSHIP!! In the goddess-religion cities, women owned their own property, were endowed with a legal identity & were free to relate sexually with various men. Paternity was not a particular concern. Being unsure of paternity, they couldn't take her property - which is what they wanted. Hence the characterization of the holy temple women as "prostitutes" rather than "qadishtu" or priestesses of a cult that celebrated life and sexuality as holy. (Sounds a lot more fun than "priests in black gowns are making their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires". Can't remember whether that's Black or Swineburne). Shlain made the point that it's the L brain mindset that gives rise to prudery. It's the dudes who are the prudes every time! All that stuff in the Mosaic creation myth about how the Lord will put enmity between the serpent and the woman and between "your seed and her seed" was about stamping out the goddess. TED: The Old Testament and, in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, constantly rail against 'whoredom' as perhaps the greatest sin of all, a sin associated furthermore, with the earlier and constantly revived worship of Ishtar-Baal (hence, no doubt, its wickedness). You will recall that, according the Book of Revelation, the only people saved in the last days will be 144,000 male Jewish virgins (undefiled by women). No women at all will be saved... All of this is, I feel sure, the origin of the 'virgin or whore' complex, and the Puritanism of many forms of Christianity. PAM:
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I disagree. The issue was property. The rejection of the female principle as you call it wasn't about "female attractiveness" & those naughty loose women - it was about matrilineal descent and property rights. The only way men could take over the property of all these rich & well-respected women was to characterize them as "temple prostitutes"... TED: Now the turning away from sex--to continue this speculation--was as strong as it was because of the manifestation of Ishtar- Astarte-Venus in her destructive aspect as the wanton hag- destroyer of humans and their habitation. We weren't going to get the old world back, regardless of the number of sacrifices, so Jehovah became the invisible substitute for the once visible original deity, and we would reject everything associated with that nasty Venus who obviously could not be trusted! And all this can also account for the special importance assigned over the last several millennia to female chastity and purity. PAM replies: It's a wise child that knows his own father. When women became property, men had to protect that property from other males who might plant their own seeds therein. I think you're on the right track but with a bit of a red herring slant. I guess my point is that it all reflects what's in the minds of men about the nature of women - not the ACTUAL nature of women. The fact that we - men and women - can even talk about this now as adults is proof that we're starting to wake up & smell the pheromones and realize what's actually going on here. TED: Thanks for this Pam. As you are no doubt well aware I am not a misogynist, and I think domination (by anybody of anybody) is an abomination. Contemporary society is really into the domination- submission thing and its results are deeply destructive. Apart from the heavier stuff, look what it's done to sex! One of my deeper insights (if you'll pardon the immodesty) is that the current view of sex as wicked and nasty-'nasty' has come to mean 'sexually exciting' and 'dirty' the same--is a form of inverse Puritanism. The Jehovah religion turned against sex which was associated with Ishtar &c. This was the origin of Puritanism, and those who see sex as hot stuff but nasty, wicked (impure) and dirty are actually buying into the Puritan view of things. That is why I call it 'inverse Puritanism'. A lot of misogyny originates with the idea that sexy women are 'defilers of men', as The Bible constantly proclaims! This, together with the memory of Ishtar in her destructive phase, is the source of the many (male) legends about destructive women which I talked about. Notice that all these babes (Diana excepted) give their men a really good time before the axe falls! You're wrong about Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci being Kali; she was a ravishing beauty with whom the knight fell deeply in love before she abandoned him. PAM: ...have to tell you that I'm well aware of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (without mercy she is) & of the poem & what I meant by saying that la belle & Kali covered the same ground is merely that that aspect of the female archetype is covered by both - both destructive to men. (Of course Kali is pure destruction - to women as well as men) but my point was that the 3 personas of womankind are the mother/nurturer, the destroyer (in whatever aspect - beautiful or horrible but always ultimately deadly) but there's a third Sophia, wisdom- which I think is an aspect of the female persona that integrates L & R brain & therefore is the wisdom goddess because only such an integration can produce wisdom - wisdom is more than intellect & it's more than intuition. It embodies both word & image. TED: Yes, wisdom of course, which I had quite forgotten (an aspect of Athena/Minerva). Sophia was even, in some tradition or other, seen as the spouse of Jehovah! (Jung blamed God for failing to consult her.) But Sophia does not appear to be related to the polar configuration, and is probably a later addition, and possibly based on the military Athena figure who figures prominently in the beginnings of patriarchy (Aeschylus's Eumenides).
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PAM: How about related to the polar configuration as the radiant Venus? She's the shining glory of the God. Get Dave Talbott on this one some time. The shekinah glory is the glory of transcendent wisdom. TED NOW: This is just part of current male stereotyping. Boys do not have to, nor do they generally, reject their mothers. Of course they have to assert their independence from their parents, but so, absolutely equally, do girls. Pam: Not so. Boys don't have to dump on or hate their mothers & they generally don't but they DO have to separate themselves from their mothers & stop emulating their mothers--acting like their mothers - or else they're dubbed pussies among their fellow males. When I said "rejecting in some way or other", I meant taking on the whole male persona & differentiating it from their mother's persona. It's not absolutely equally the same for girls. DAVE DAVIS SEZ: Right, I must butt in here :) What are these words "boys", "men", "mothers", "girls", etc etc etc? They are getting used as if they were "biological determinatives" - but they are NOT, NO NO NO NO! They are *cultural performatives" (this terminology comes from theorist Judith Butler) Pam, I don't want to hear this "boys have to x...", "girls have to y..." Why do they *have* to? Because their knees swell up if they don't? Because they get lung cancer if they don't? Because all their teeth fall out? Of course not - there's no *physiological* reason behind any of these gender roles - nothing's gonna actually happen except the rest of society will be cross. (John Lennon sang it best ... "There's nothing you can do that can't be done; Nothing you can sing that can't be sung, nothing you can say ... it's easy!") PAM says: Absolutely Because "the rest of society will be cross." ... But the rest of society being cross is quite a powerful deterrent of so-called aberrant behavior. If boys don't want to be called pussies, candyasses, etc. they have to at some point stop being Mama's boys and emulate big hairy masculine men. If they don't really give a shit - of course they don't HAVE to. They can wear makeup & dress up like drag queens if they WANT to & they're not going to get lung cancer or anything. They MIGHT get the shit kicked outta them by a bunch of homophobic apes & Visigoths tho. DAVE D: Unless you can historically document that society at any time in question was *actually* organised like that, then it's no good appealing to the essentialist natures of men/women/boys/girls to rationalise that it *must* have been like that. (At least not when I'm in the room and you want an easy life ;-) PAM: Hey, I'm not here for the easy life or I wouldn't be hanging out with all these Krazy Kronians ;~}. I can historically document that cultural norms for a massive number of cultures (including American Indians) had all kinds of coming-of-age ceremonies where the boy is taken away from his mother & he has to live in the kiva (picking one) with the men for two years & isn't allowed to even look at any women. In Western Culture, that translates thus: it's kinda cute to be considered "daddy's girl", but it's not a compliment to be called a "momma's boy."
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UPDATED GALILEO PREDICTIONS

By Wal Thornhill The Galileo craft has reasonable odds of surviving the closest flyby later this month [Nov 25, 1999]. First, the craft has to actually fly through one of the plumes and at 300 km above the surface of Io the discharge is likely to be fairly diffuse. Also, the spacecraft is small so that it would very quickly charge up, possibly avoiding a catastrophic discharge. So, if it does fly through a plume I would expect sudden swings of the magnetometer delineating the complexity of Birkeland currents rather than neutral gas following a ballistic trajectory. It should also find sudden changes in charged particle energy spectra.
CLOSEST EVER PICTURE OF IO

By Wal Thornhill From NASA News of 24 October 1999 The highest resolution image ever of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, ... was taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on Oct. 11, 1999, from an altitude of 617 kilometers (417 miles). It shows an area about 7.2 kilometers (4.5 miles) long and 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) wide. Features as small as 9 meters (30 feet) can be discerned, providing a resolution which is 50 times better than the image taken by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979. The box drawn in the center image, a Galileo image of Io taken earlier in the mission, shows the area displayed in the new image at top. The three color images below show the volcanic region from a much higher altitude than the other images and follow a volcanic eruption. This new image targeted lava flows that erupted from the volcano Pillan. A complex mix of smooth and rough areas can be seen with clusters of pits and domes, many of which are the size of houses. The volcanic features are similar to those found on Earth and Mars. However, this combination of different types of lava flows has not been seen before in such a small area, demonstrating the variety of volcanic processes that continue to change the surface of Io. ...In the electrical model, the clusters of pits and domes are not volcanic. As expected in an Electric Universe, chains of circular craters show that an electric discharge has moved across the surface of Io. Such crater chains are characteristically found on cathode surfaces as the arc jumps from the neat, circular crater it has just burnt to the nearest high point - often the rim of the same crater. The mounds also are most likely "fulgamites" - the kind of raised blisters found on lightning arrestors after a lightning strike. The movement of Io's so- called volcanoes of over 100km in a few years is also more easily understood as a travelling arc. Features on Mars are similar because they too were caused by interplanetary discharges in the recent past. Galileo's camera and near-infrared mapping spectrometer measured the temperatures of the lavas during the eruption and found that they were hotter than any known eruption on Earth in the last two billion years. ...It was the temperature of the cathode arcs that was being measured, averaged over a large area. Better resolution will show that Io's hot spots are far too hot to be volcanic. They will be found to be made up of multiple smaller spots at temperatures of many thousands of degrees - temperatures found in an electric arc. Photos for this article and much more information about The Electric Universe can be found at Wal Thornhill's website:
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http://www.holoscience.com
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL III, No. 16 (December 1, 1999)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: CLOSING THE GAP MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (3) CATASTROPHIC WORD ORIGINS THE ABSURDITY OF NEUTRON STARS
by Amy Acheson by Dave Talbott Kroniatalk Discussion by Wal Thornhill
CLOSING THE GAP

By Amy Acheson When Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision was published, in 1950, the mention of catastrophism in any form was anathema to science. Ideas have changed rapidly since then. Plate tectonics and the Spokane floods have crept into geology. Punctuated equilibrium and mass extinctions by asteroid impact have become fashionable. It's no longer beyond the scope of science to see the destruction of Atlantis in a Mediterranean volcano or Noah's deluge in the sudden filling of the Black Sea. A fast-growing contingent of astronomers are concerned with the perils of Earth- crossing asteroids. Galactic collisions and pole flips, albeit billions-of-years-ago, are common threads in modern science. But the gap between Velikovsky and orthodox science still looks formidable. After all, Velikovsky said that planets moved in different orbits within the memory of humanity. Surely orthodox science will never reconsider a hypothesis that absurd. Let's not be so hasty. Here's part of a press release dated Nov. 19, 1999: Jupiter's fiery moon Io is providing scientists with a window on volcanic activity and colossal lava flows similar to those that raged on Earth eons ago, thanks to new pictures and data gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft... ...Dr. Torrence Johnson, Galileo project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA [said]: Io is the next best thing to traveling back in time to Earth's earlier years. It gives us an opportunity to watch, in action, phenomena long dead in the rest of the solar system. By conventional dating, the press release defined the term "eons ago" with this phrase: The last comparable lava eruption on Earth occurred 15 million years ago. Any catastrophic event of global proportions could drastically shorten that date. They're talking about very recent history in terms of planet Earth, about lava flows in which North American rhinoceroses were trapped.
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The activity on Jupiter's fiery moon Io is due to its unusual orbit, in close proximity to the electrical and gravitational fields of the gas giant, Jupiter. The convergent mythical record of human cultures around the world remembers the gas giants Saturn as dominating the Earth's sky before it fled or was driven away. Has the time come to consider the possibility that there is a connection between these two statements, one the latest scientific observation and the other the oldest story known? Amy Acheson
MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE (3)

By Dave Talbott More than once I've expressed the belief that the echoes of an original unity pervade our language. The patterns, however, will not be recognized until one sees the true source of the unity in a planetary configuration. My contention has been that this configuration was an obsessive focus of human attention in the crucial phase of language formulation. To illustrate the point it may be useful to go back to the "first condition", the earliest-remembered time and the concepts which it inspired. These integrated concepts were reflected in written language at its inception and, as a whole, they cannot be understood apart from the Saturn model. Prior assumptions of historians, anthropologists, and etymologists cannot account for the complex of meanings attached to those ancient words describing the primeval condition, the age of Saturn. Keeping to the most fundamental concepts, here are some of the archetypal themes one might explore in relation to the language of the First Time: Chaos, Water, Seed, Sky, Formlessness, One, All, Unity, Conjunction, Rest, Peace, Whole, Holy, Universe, Wheel, Cycle, Becoming, Turning, Time, Heaven, High, Hollow, Void, Chasm, Yawning. This may look like a rather long list, and yet the underlying principles are both simple and unified. The age of Saturn means the transition from primeval chaos to order, from non-differentiation to diversity, from formlessness to form, from inactivity to activity, from no-time to time, from a pre-dawn glow to a cycle of day and night. That is what the archetypal "creation" myth is about, and Saturn is the creator- king. But the meanings of the ancient words need to be clarified. What does "formless" mean, for example? What does "chaos", or its "yawning" aspect, mean? Present experience offers no basis for visualizing any of these concepts in terms of the archaic STORY itself. As interpreted by the Saturn model, these concepts are vitally connected, and it is only to be expected that the concepts would be embedded in the meanings of ancient words--even the building blocks of language itself--and carried forward to retain at least some of the archaic nuances even into modern times. Where this has occurred the observed patterns will appear anomalous. That doesn't mean that you can decipher the connections by simply tracking down the roots of the English words. In fact, some of the root meanings behind the English words listed here would immediately mislead you. Our words "heaven" and "high", for example, will trace to more archaic words relating to the "heaping up" of a "hill" or "mountain", and that could be confusing if you are not already quite familiar with the model. So too, our word "sky" will trace to ancient concepts of a watery "cloud" which is extremely significant to the model but can leave one confused if the model is not clear. Instead of taking on the whole list in one shot, I'll start with a few of the basics.
CHAOS AND THE RISE OF NEGATIVES.
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The earliest-remembered condition is the state of "not". That is the most fundamental meaning behind the words that are translated as "chaos", and it provides the first tier in an evolving ancient language of negatives. It means the condition out of which an exemplary order, the model for all sacred order, arose. The negative state of chaos must be interpreted specifically in terms of the contrast between that state and what followed. It is the condition before motion, activity, differentiation, time, order, form. The Saturn model defines this as an EXPERIENCED condition of the world, not a primitive speculation on "how it all began". Hence, if language arose from these experiences in the direct and literal sense we are claiming, the root meanings of negatives should reveal the remarkable nuances of this earliest condition- though we certainly would not expect these embedded meanings under the normal theories of language formation. There is no malice, evil, or suffering implied by this original state of chaos, just an "absence of", in contrast to the distinct attributes of the revered order emerging from chaos. In the Egyptian creation accounts, this negative condition is applied to both the creator and the primeval "waters" of chaos. The god emerges from the waters, and the waters from which he appears are his own essence. The creator (Atum, Re, Khepera) recalls his original "state of inactivity" and the "inert watery mass" of his "father" Nu (with which he himself was closely identified). He was "alone" in these cosmic waters. He "had no companion" to work with him. And in this state of "not" he had "no resting place". There is a great deal of meaning in these images of the cosmic waters, and perhaps we can return to certain details later. The relationship of Atum to this original state of "not" is emphasized by the fact that the hieroglyphs used for his name, tem mean (among other things) "not". You see this relationship most prominently in the use of the n- sound (secondarily, the m-sound) in the hieroglyphic system. The essence of the formless god is "water", which appears in both a singular and a plural sense. The waters are the undifferentiated "plurality" of the unified state, the primeval condition of "not". These are, in fact, the core meanings of the hieroglyph for the n-sound, which is a simple wavy line. The meanings are expressed explicitly through all of the common n-roots in the hieroglyphic system-n, ni, an, nu, nun, na, enen, nini, and a large number of variants: primeval waters, undifferentiated plurality, negative state prior to "creation"..
PRIMAL UNITY: THE "ONE" AND THE "ALL".

The creator-god personifies the state of undifferentiated "chaos", but emerges from that state in an event called "creation". Originally, he appears as a solitary god, called "the god One" in the Egyptian texts. He is the "all-containing" god, though other powers are clearly present within him as latent potential. "I came into being of myself in the midst of the Primeval Waters", states the god in the Book of the Dead. More than once the Coffin Texts recall the time when Atum "was alone, before he had repeated himself" (referring to the process of subsequent differentiation). He "was alone in the Primeval Waters", the texts say. "I was the Primeval Waters, he who had no companion when my name came into existence". (As I will note in a subsequent post, the "name" coming into existence is nothing else than the gods created "form", and only this celebrated form will make sense of the statement that the god was previously "without form" and without a visible "name".) Atum can thus be translated (and IS often translated) as "the All" in the fundamental sense of the original Unity holding all that was later differentiated in the creation. The Greek Ouranos is "all-containing heaven", as is his counterpart, the Hindu Varuna. The name of the Sumerian creator An (Akkadian Anu) is translated "heaven", but An contains within himself the divine male and female powers which are subsequently highly active as independent powers. It would be absurd, therefore, to separate the Egyptian concept of the "god One" from the related idea of "the All", and we should expect any language tracing to these concepts to reflect the underlying equation. The original condition of "heaven" (when "heaven was close to the earth") means literally the visible sphere of the universal sovereign in the beginning. The Saturn model interprets this as the gas giant looming huge in the sky, extremely close to the Earth. The planetary system moved through a gaseous,
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highly electrified environment, viewed imaginatively as cosmic "waters". Insofar as this environment reflected ambient light of the Sun, it was experienced only as a diffuse and benign glow--a shimmering, water-like cloud from which the gas giant appeared to emerge.
CREATION.
All myths relating to what arose from chaos are "creation" myths, perhaps the most misunderstood concept in all of world mythology. It is the creation that produces the First Time or "beginning" of time, form, and motion--events which occur in direct relationship to the emergence of secondary powers from the unified god. Atum, the All, spits out or exhales the female power Tefnut and the masculine power Shu--"and from one god I became three", he says. (This is the specific meaning of the reference above to when the god "repeated himself".) The "three" are Atum-Re (the archaic "sun" god, whom we now know to be Saturn), the god Shu (first form of the warrior-hero, identifiable astronomically with Mars) and the goddess Tefnut (first form of the divine mother, the planet Venus). For the concepts listed above to begin to make sense, we only need to understand the idea which underlies Saturn's identity as the primeval "Unity"--
CONJUNCTION.
Here again we have a fundamental concept that is either misunderstood or completely overlooked in common treatments of the creation legend. The "unity" of the creator- king cannot be separated from the principle of conjunction. In his original unified state Atum has a single, central eye, which means the goddess prior to differentiation. The eye has a "pupil" which is the unborn warrior hero. But the experts have not considered the principle of conjunction because they are seeing neither the ancient concepts nor the language in the concrete terms explicitly given by the ancient texts themselves. [For an illustration of the planetary conjunction in one of its most prominent phases, go to: www.kronia.com and click on the "Saturn theory" on the left menu.] The primeval conjunction means first and foremost the visible alignment of celestial powers (Saturn, Venus, Mars, extremely close to the earth) producing the image of a unified, "all- containing" power in the sky, a god standing "alone" in the cosmic waters. Even after differentiation of these powers, they continue to stand in conjunction, though the alignment is then more dynamic, the activity of goddess and hero revealing a marked contrast to the more passive, "resting" quality of the sovereign himself. The primary powers, together with a company of lesser lights, "gather" or stand "together" in the sky--a "congregation" of gods, or divine "assembly". As such they are attributes or aspects of the unified creator-king, remembered as his own radiant "limbs". Apart from the principle of conjunction or "standing together", the concepts are entirely meaningless. Since there are so many lines of potential linguistic inquiry we might pursue, I'll limit my initial comments to the five core ideas listed below, which I believe are still evident in our language today: Before we take up some of the related words, it will be helpful to be sure that the archaic concepts we claim to be still reflected in modern language are clear: 1. ONE. Original relationship of the number one to the concept "the whole" rather than to the counting of separate items or units of anything. 2. ALL. Relationship of the root concept "all" to "one" and "unity". 3. NO, NOT. Foundation of the negative in the original unity.
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4. CONJUNCTION. Relationship of the original unity to "gathered" or "joined" powers, subsequently differentiated. (Again, the mythical "Great Conjunction" of Saturn's golden age IS the unity of the sovereign god.) 5. PRIMEVAL CONDITION. The subject is a former world. The universally-remembered condition no longer exists. We also need to put an exclamation point to the contrast between the principles suggested here and all conventional suppositions. It is commonly assumed, for example, that one of the primary catalysts for language development was the act of counting. In contrast, I will suggest that the language of numbers possesses such a direct relationship to imagery of an evolving planetary configuration as to entirely discredit the common view. Moreover, once discerned, the original pattern will leap out from our own language today, despite the millennia of evolution and fragmentation which preceded it. Consider these English words and roots, and the five-fold pattern suggested above should become quite obvious to you-The English indefinite article a is a phonetic variant of an derived from the Old English an meaning "one", German ein, Latin unus, Greek oine Our word unity comes from the Latin un(us), "one", "together", "joined". As a general rule the language of the number "one" appears to be derived from the language of "the all" or the whole, not from the counting of separate "things". Our word unit is said to be a back formation from unity; integer comes from the Latin word meaning "whole" (as seen in our word integral, "belonging to the whole"). I am also quite confident that our words single and number both trace back to concepts relating to the undifferentiated "all" rather than to any primitive idea of counting--"one of this and two of that", etc. The word alone is derived from Middle English al one, "all (whole) one". (I'll take up our word "sole" shortly and suggest a similar relationship. The archaic reference, I believe, will be the primeval, unified power who "stands alone".) The English prefix an- is borrowed from Latin and means "not", "without", "lacking". Our prefix un, is akin to Latin in Greek an meaning "not". Un is also a prefix meaning to reverse, remove, or deprive, akin to the Old English and, Latin ante, Greek anti, and Sanskrit anti, "opposite of", "against". Thus, the meanings include both a negative condition and a "return" to a negative condition from something that is "ordered", as in "un-do" (As I said above, the original state of formlessness, prior to the emergence of the created "order", is negative, but with no sense of violence or catastrophe. The undoing of creation, the "return to chaos", is invariably catastrophic. But we'll get to that.) The roots anti and ante also mean "before", "prior". The word conjunction, Latin conjunctus, from the root jungere, means "to unite", "to be joined or yoked as one". We use the Latin word ana for information placed "together", items constituting a coherent whole (as in Americana), i.e., the "conjunction" principle. Our word and is the German und, the Sanskrit anti. We call the word a "conjunction", and the word itself MEANS "together with", or the conjunction of two or more parts of a whole. (Other words called "conjunctions"--but, or, nor, for, so, yet, while-- do indeed join thoughts in a sentence, but the words themselves do not MEAN a joining in the more direct sense of "and".) For the time being, at least, I do not propose to follow the various lineages backward to establish a more complete and definitive profile. It should be sufficient to note that there is simply no way to separate the meanings of these words and roots from the listed five principles relating to the "original condition". Obviously this fact does not require one to believe that the roots are all connected (though some of the connections would be beyond dispute, such as the kinship of our words one and unity). What about the relationship of our word one to the Latin roots an and in, with the meaning "not"? Of the original kinship I
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am highly confident, but if anyone knows of verifiable facts which would discredit the proposed relationship I'd like to hear from them. The fact that the Sanskrit anti mean "and", but also the negative, certainly provides a clue, The relationship to the Latin anti, ante, in reference to PRIOR conditions or events, or an undoing to return to a prior condition, should also be investigated. The point here is that patterns which will appear meaningless in the absence of the Saturn model may become highly meaningful as one explores the implications of the model. And if exploration lends support to common lineages, two crucial questions arise: 1) can you see anything in the familiar natural world which might have prompted the full complex of relationships? 2) if you grant the Saturn model, would you EXPECT such relationships?
CATASTROPHIC WORD ORIGINS

A Kroniatalk Discussion Roger Wescott said (previously): ...The word "comma" has a root "kop" ("to strike or mark"). So there is a semantic connection with "apostrophe" et al., even though that connection isn't morphological. All best! --Roger To which Mark Newbrook responded: WHY ARE SEMANTIC CONNECTIONS IMPORTANT IF WORDS ARE NOT COGNATE OR OTHERWISE MORPHOLOGICALLY CONNECTED? I SUPPOSE RW MEANS MERELY THAT THESE WORDS WERE AT SOME TIME IN THE SAME SEMANTIC FIELD (WHEN USED MORE 'LITERALLY'?) - WHICH IS NOT WITHOUT INTEREST. DAVE TALBOTT: From the vantage point of the Saturn model, I suspect that semantic relationships were originally much broader and more complex than generally supposed, but progressively narrowed due to distance from the original celestial references. It was these original references which made the complexity meaningful. The respective fields would include a broad range of meanings linked to identifiable celestial forms and events which are no longer visible. This is a point that needs to be illustrated concretely, and a few days ago I offered an example with respect to the "omphalos/umbilicus" and the shadow effect on Mars. Here the integrated meanings include the center, navel, nave, knob or boss, shadow, dark, red. The connections as a whole are not prompted by natural experience familiar to us today, but they would be expected under the Saturn theory. Dave Talbott (previously): The meaning of the root kop to strike, brings the comma into alignment symbolically with the Great Star/Great Comet Venus, though I would add the sense of the "break" in a linear sequence, which is the effect of both the comma and the coma (comet). Mark Newbrook: IS THIS MEANT SERIOUSLY? A DOUBLE MEANING FOR comma (ON WHAT EVIDENCE) AND AN ETYMOLOGICAL LINK WITH coma/comet (DITTO)? Not a "double" meaning. A triple meaning (for starters), which I interpret as a reflection of broader semantic relationships than generally imagined. If my underlying assumption is correct we should find many instances in which, enigmatically, quite different roots carry forward the SAME complex of nuances. Here, the nuances would be: 1) to strike, 2) a break in a sequence,

3) a spiraling or turning stroke or mark.
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In the symbolism of the Great Star/Great Comet these concepts are inseparably connected. I find it significant, therefore, that both the comet and comma reflect the same complex of ideas or functions, despite the fact that natural experience today seems to offer little or no support for the integrated meanings. I also SUSPECT an etymological connection of kop(comma) and kom (coma, comet). I've suggested privately to others that we should look for the possibility of an archaic feminine and masculine relationship between the two roots, reflecting the relationship between the masculine and feminine aspects of the Great Star. Remember that the archetypal "star" represents the conjunction of Mars and Venus--the masculine is lodged within the feminine, then separates to become an independent power. Since both conjunction and separation (the famous "birth of the hero", for example) are so prominent in the symbolism of the hero and goddess, I simply cannot believe that language would fail to reflect this relationship in very fundamental ways. On this question I'll have a lot more to say and am prepared to voice a hundred "suspicions" that may or may not prove fruitful. Roger Wescott (private note): Dave, linguists who recognize consonantal apophony accept kop- and kom- as related, like pa/ma or skip/skim in English. DAVE This revelation accords so well with my original suspicions that I would like to pursue the connection further, with specific reference to the feminine and masculine nuances of the Great Star. The radiating "splendor" of the Great Star is the kom, generally a feminine principle. Is it possible that the goddess' counterpart, the warrior-hero, might reveal an archaic relationship to kop as the head, the one who wears the kom as hair, headdress, or crown, and wields the kom as a weapon or emblem of power and authority? When you think about it, it's hard not to notice that the p- and m- sounds do seem to carry respective masculine and feminine associations (as in pa and ma for that matter). So my first guess would be that the principle of apophany Roger noted did indeed have its reference in the conjunction of male and female aspects in the Great Star. From Pam Hanna: One small comment on Dave T's article which I wanted to mention - about the word "sacred" - not to contradict "holy" & "wholeness" but to insert that 'sacer' (from my Partridge 'Word Origins') has 3 important full compounds: 'sacerdos' a priest; 'sacrificium,' an offering to a god; 'sacrilegus,' a stealer of sacred things. Sacerdotal, sacristy, sacrament, - all relate to sacrifice, i.e. sacred does mean 'holy' and may mean 'wholeness,' but i believe the wholeness would derive from sacrifice. The priest is sacrificer, and he sacrifices in the sacristy which is holy because that's where he sacrifices. "Sacramentus" is "...a deposit made to the Gods, hence, from the accompanying oath..." Hyam Maccoby stressed this ... in *The Sacred Executioner.* And i believe it relates directly to Catastrophic word origins. We've already established that one of the human reactions to the polar configuration was to initiate blood sacrifice. They couldn't feel holy and whole without blood sacrifice, que no? Dave Talbott said: More than once I've expressed the belief that the echoes of an original unity pervade our language. The patterns, however, will not be recognized until one sees the true source of the unity in a planetary configuration. My contention has been that this configuration was an obsessive focus of human attention in the crucial phase of language formulation. Dave said previously: So you have to ask yourself two crucial questions: 1) can you see anything in the familiar natural world which might have prompted the full complex of relationships? 2) if you grant the Saturn model, would you EXPECT such relationships? Amy again: The answer to the first question, "can you see anything ... ?" depends on the viewpoint (paradigm again) from which you're looking. From a uniformist paradigm, the definition of evolution precludes the possibility
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of sudden change. Although that viewpoint is changing, even from within the walls of mainstream academia. Concepts like Stephen J Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" and Forese Carlo Wezel's "anastrophic speciation" are eroding the "gradualist" paradigm. These concepts may be a stone's away throw from the catastrophist viewpoint, but they don't actually throw the stone. They say "sudden evolutionary changes", they say "following catastrophic extinctions", they say "species appear fully-formed and there is very little change once the species stabilize". But what they mean is that the same almost-unnoticed gradual changes took place "remarkably fast", over hundreds of years, rather than millions. Many catastrophists use more radical concepts. Ev Cochrane feels that only something as immediate as "Larmarckian" would be able to cope with catastrophic change. Charles Ginenthal suggests metamorphosis. I am willing to settle for "parallel mutation" (it's been demonstrated in fruit flies under laboratory conditions), which means speciation in a single generation under catastrophic conditions. Or a combination of the above (life is polymorphous, after all.) So let's go on to Dave's second question, "if you grant the Saturn model," what would I expect to find in the biological sphere? Spoken language is an intricate part of Homo sapiens. It involves several complex phenomena, including a "hard-wired" grammar function and a unique placement of the human larynx, plus probably more things I'm not aware of. All of the above, or one crucial component, could have appeared at once in many members of the Homo sapiens predecessor. If I grant the Saturn model, I would expect to find clusters of Homo sapiens inventing language for the first time under the most dreadful of situations -- the world has changed around them, and they are desperate to find out why, remember the way it was before, deal with the new conditions, keep it from happening again. I would expect to find what Dave suggests; that most, maybe all, of human language would be connected to the event which also triggered the ability to speak. Michael Armstrong adds: ...the above paragraph mirrors my conception of what happened. The evidence suggests that oral language arose suddenly, not from a previous "mother" or proto-language but from radically new conditions, needs and context, and arose in the context of a crucially dramatic shared experience.
THE ABSURDITY OF NEUTRON STARS

By Wal Thornhill Nowhere is the gravitational paradigm of cosmology shown to exhibit more strangeness than in compact high energy phenomena in deep space. A report in the journal Nature of 15 November proposes that a recently discovered star "is made of an exotic stuff called 'strange matter', never yet seen on Earth". In other words, it may be a "strange star". This bizarre suggestion comes out of the mathematics describing stars that generate rapid pulses of radiation, commonly called "pulsars". The x-ray pulses are thought to be due to a rotating beam of x-rays that flashes toward the Earth once per revolution like a cosmic lighthouse. See picture at: http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_strange.htm This seemingly simple model began to show signs of strain many years ago when the first millisecond pulsar was discovered. In order to flash (rotate) several times a second a pulsar would need to be very compact indeed, only a few kilometres in diameter. But to generate x-rays gravitationally requires an extreme concentration of matter to accelerate particles to a sufficiently high energy so that when they strike the star x-rays are produced. The only objects that theoretically meet that requirement are neutron stars and black holes. Both kinds of object are well outside our experience.
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The discovery now of an x-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 (J1808 for short), located in the constellation of Sagittarius, that flashes every 2.5 thousandths of a second (that is 24,000 RPM!) goes way beyond the red-line even for a neutron star. So another ad hoc requirement is added to the already long list - this pulsar must be composed of something even more dense than packed neutrons - strange matter! When astrophysicists are having difficulty with their models they traditionally turn for rescue to the nuclear physicists. (They were called in to explain away the missing solar neutrinos). The news report goes on: The most fundamental building blocks of nuclear matter are thought to be particles called quarks. The 'regular' nuclear particles or 'nucleons' - protons and neutrons - are composed of 'up' and 'down' quarks: two up quarks and a down quark make one proton, while a neutron consists of two downs and an up. But there are at least four other, more exotic, kinds of quark, amongst them the so-called 'strange' quark. In nucleons, quarks are supposed to exist in inseparable groups of three, which is why no one has ever seen an isolated quark. But at extremely high densities of matter, quarks may become uncoupled or 'deconfined'. 'Strange matter' is a melange of deconfined up, down and strange quarks. Physicists are hoping that the new particle colliders currently under construction, such as the Larger Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, will create conditions extreme enough to break quarks free. But the Universe may have got there first. X.-D. Li of Nanjing University, China, and colleagues' suggestion that J1808 is a strange star follows a small number of similar proposals for other astrophysical objects that emit bursts of X-rays. The X-ray bursts from these objects are signs of violent activity of a sort that becomes possible only when matter is pushed to extremes.
Wal Thornhill comments: I think J R Saul highlighted the language problem we are seeing here when he wrote: Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each other's errors. If they have a private dialect in which to do this, it becomes impossible for outsiders to disagree with them. Only a sailor can set them straight. The last person they want to meet is someone who, freed from the constraints of expertise, has sailed around the world. ~J R Saul, Voltaire's Bastards. The Nobel Laureate, Irving Langmuir, coined the term "pathological science" for "the science of things that aren't so". Two key symptoms of such science are: (1) the resort to fantastic theories contrary to our experience, and (2) the use of ad-hoc requirements to save the appearances. If we apply these criteria, two disciplines that share line honours for pathological or strange science are cosmology and particle physics. They both deal with unseen objects - neutron stars, black holes, quarks, etc. They both produce fantastic ad- hoc requirements to explain new discoveries - dark matter, superheavy objects and exotic particles. They cross-infect each other with their theoretical requirements both to save appearances and convince governments to spend large sums of research money for super-colliders to replay bits of a hypothetical Big Bang, or to build gravity-wave telescopes when we have no proof such waves exist. The above report brings such strange science sharply into focus. It is not ordinary matter, but scientific models that are being pushed to extremes. Einstein warned: Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for reality.
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Neutron stars and quarks have never been seen. They are derived from mathematical symbols. Let's take quarks first. There is little to suggest that any of the shrapnel from high energy colliders exists in normal matter. If enormous energy is spent in shattering a proton to unlock the hypothetical quarks then the energy itself may manifest as particles that don't play any part in ordinary matter. Flying a 747 into a mountainside and picking over the ruins is not the best way of finding out how an aircraft works. Suggesting that a star can be composed stably of unobserved particles simply because a theory of invisible, superheavy objects demands it is asking too much! Here are some of the many unstated assumptions underpinning the X-ray pulsar model: 1. It is assumed that the physics of neutral matter and ideal gases on Earth can be used to explain the operation of the glowing balls of plasma we call stars. Wal: 99.999% of the universe is made of plasma. It is not necessarily electrically neutral and does not behave like an ideal gas. 2. It is assumed that all interstellar plasma is mostly an ionized, uncharged, superconducting gas that can trap and carry magnetic fields. Wal: Plasma is not a superconductor so magnetic fields cannot be trapped in it. The origin of the magnetic fields is not clear from standard theory. The Electric Universe proposes that magnetic fields and plasma filaments in space are formed by electrical currents in charged plasma. (No book on astronomy mentions electrical effects). 3. It is assumed that we understand how our Sun and other stars shine, evolve, and someday die or form neutron stars. Wal: We do not understand the Sun's magnetic field, the hot corona, solar wind, solar cycle, x-ray variability, coronal mass ejections, sunspots, low neutrino count, etc., etc. 4. It is assumed that we understand what causes a supernova explosion. Wal: The number of ad hoc assumptions required for a mechanical explosion following a sudden stellar implosion results in a highly unlikely explanation. SN1987A showed that such explosions are not spherically symmetrical. 5. It is assumed that a supernova can "squeeze" stellar protons and electrons together to form neutrons. Wal: A first-order wild conjecture. The model incorporates many unproven assumptions about the unseen internal structure of stars. If the implosion is not spherically symmetrical there may be insufficient "squeeze" to force protons and electrons to merge, even if that were possible. No account is taken of electrical effects. Our own Sun with a mean density only slightly above that of pure hydrogen shows that electrostatic forces are at work within stars to offset compression forces. 6. It is assumed that it is possible to form a stable neutron star. Wal: When not associated with protons in a nucleus, neutrons decay into protons and electrons in a few minutes. Atomic nuclei with too many neutrons are unstable. If it were possible to form a neutron star, why should it be stable? 7. It is assumed that a supernova can further squeeze neutrons until they "pop their quarks". Wal: A second-order wild conjecture. 8. It is assumed that it is possible to have a stable massive object composed of quarks.
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Wal: A third-order wild conjecture based on the pathologies of both astrophysics and nuclear physics. It is an unseen object composed of unseen matter. 9. It is assumed that a neutron star can convert the energy of infalling matter into tightly collimated, pulsed x-ray beams. Wal: It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely way of achieving this effect. 10. It is assumed that a spinning object is required to cause the pulsations. Wal: Only required in a purely mechanical model. 11. It is assumed that Nature overlooks the normal (and infinitely easier) method of creating x-rays by accelerating electrons in an electric field. 12. It is assumed that Nature overlooks the simplest way of creating pulsed radiation by a chargedischarge relaxation oscillator cycle (where electric charge builds up slowly until a threshold is reached and a sudden discharge occurs). 13. It is assumed that Nature ignores the simplest way of creating a highly collimated x-ray beam and particle jet (if one is required from the observations) by the use of the plasma focus effect. The Electric Universe model assumes that Nature knows best. It does not require strange matter or a strange star. The x-ray pulses are caused by regular electric discharges between two or more orbiting, normally constituted, electrically charged bodies. It is a manifestation of a periodic arc instead of a spinning star. If beaming of the radiation is occurring then that should be verifiable here on Earth in the lab by studying the plasma focus device. For diagram of the plasma focus device, go to: http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_strange.htm The Electric Universe model lets go of the Newtonian dogma that gravity is the driving force in the cosmos. It allows for the possibility that the fundamental characteristic of normal matter - its electric charge - plays the most significant role. So if gravity wave telescopes detect anything at all, it won't be gravity waves from super-heavy objects. And particle physicists who are trying to work out how the universe was constructed from strange matter early in the Big Bang are wasting their time. The astronomer Halton Arp, author of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, has conclusively disproven the theory of an expanding universe and so knocked out the foundation of the Big Bang theory. Meanwhile the plasma physicists and electrical engineers are waiting in the wings for those astro-and nuclear-physicists parading their strange science in public to get off the stage. It would be entertaining if it weren't so serious. But it is costing us dearly and holding up real progress.
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STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHAT SCIENCE SAYS DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY PROGRESS OF "PROGRESS" IT HAS TO BE MOONGLOW!
by Mel Acheson excerpts from Dwardu Cardona by Karen Josephson and Ted Bond by Wal Thornhill
WHAT SCIENCE SAYS

By Mel Acheson It's common to hear people refer to "what science says." The usual assumption is that "what science says" is said indefeasibly. But the term 'science' has two conflicting senses: science as currentlyaccepted theory (CAT) and science as method. To conclude that method inevitably leads to CAT and, furthermore, that CAT is the end of science is to wallow in hubris. Both the history of science and the nature of cognition contradict such arrogance. The universe is large, and data both accumulate and can be arranged and valued in different ways. The discernment of orderly patterns in these mutable fields of data can result not only in refinements of a theory but in the wholesale replacement of a theory. In pursuing the questions raised by CAT, method is likely to overturn CAT. In the competition between a CAT and its potential replacement, the two senses of science apply opposite standards of evaluation. From the viewpoint of science as CAT, the standard is conformity with the fundamental principles of the discipline. Any fundamentally-different theory will be seen as a "crackpot" idea: Half a century ago, fitting continents together like a jigsaw puzzle was ridiculous. From the viewpoint of science as method, the standard is systematic exercise of cognitive skill: the discernment of orderly patterns in domains of experience. The distinction between fundamental and superficial differences is irrelevant: That continents can be fit together like a jigsaw puzzle was a clue to a new theory and recognition of a new phenomenon. In the sense of method, particular theories are just tools, something with which to build a technology, to be replaced when experience and curiosity move on. All theories are "working hypotheses", not Ultimate Truths. I'll use the Saturn Theory for an example. In the standards of CAT, it's ridiculous. Four or five planets stacked one above the other on a common axis is, if not impossible, so far from the familiar and the expected that it's laughable. Gravitational theory has come up with the orbit of SOHO, revolving around an empty spot in space. And Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 stretched out in a line that might have mimicked the Saturnian polar configuration from one of its components. But if gravitational theory alone can't quite say it's impossible, the many interlocking connections with other disciplines makes it extremely unlikely.
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In the standards of method, however, this is all merely argument from authority. Method is concerned more with process than with product. In the following, I'll compare the method of the Saturn Theory with a list of standards developed by B. J. F. Lonergan in his book, Insight. The Canon of Selection requires a theory to involve sensible, observable consequences. In accord with this, the data of the Saturn Theory are the words, written and spoken, of the myths of all cultures, their ritual and cultural contexts, linguistic associations and etymologies, and the associated artistic expressions such as pictographs, ceramics, and architecture. The Canon of Operations involves an accumulation of insights from observations, applications, and experiments. The Saturn Theory verifies the existence of expected themes from one myth and culture to the next. It modifies the generalization of those themes by the comparative removal of local embellishments and addition of common elements. The Canon of Relevance is concerned with the intelligibility immanent in the data. The Saturn Theory derives its model of the polar configuration from the structure of the common themes. The Canon of Parsimony (called Ockham's Razor in its simplistic form) requires that nothing be added to the data except the laws verified in the data. The Saturn Theory is limited to only the structure of common themes in the data. Note here that modifying the theory to make it compatible with theories of other disciplines would be a violation of this canon. Contrary to one's first impulse that Ockham's Razor requires cutting off those parts of the theory that are "added assumptions" to CAT, it instead requires strict independence from CAT. The Canon of Completeness requires a theory to account for all the data. It's precisely the Saturn Theory's method of comparing all the myths of all cultures that reveals the common themes and their interdependent structure. The conclusion is that science says two things. As CAT, it says the Saturn Theory is next to impossible. But as method, it says the Saturn Theory is a viable and valuable insight that presents the opportunity of enlarging the insights of other disciplines. Mel Acheson
THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY

Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson
INTRODUCTION
I will make no apologies here for the fact that this theory was constructed on the basis of the mythohistorical record rather than through astrophysical considerations. I will only say in passing that, other than its mythological content, the mytho- historical record also incorporates the world-wide astronomical beliefs of our ancient forefathers, and that these beliefs coincide with their mytho-religious convictions. Ancient astronomical beliefs can therefore be considered together with mythology as a unified whole regardless of the fact that what comes to light in an in-depth research of such subjects ends up describing a Solar System that was entirely alien to the one we now inhabit. Be that as it may, the outlandishness of what my research was uncovering made me disbelieve the entire thing and I must honestly say that it was not until I had read Hamlet's Mill that I finally accepted all that I had unearthed. If, as I reasoned at the time, scholars of the caliber of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha
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von Dechend, the authors of Hamlet's Mill, had been able to unearth the same set of bizarre situations, I could not be that far off the mark myself. Amy adds: The full introduction can be found at the following SIS Silver Jubilee website, and the full paper is scheduled to be published early next year by the SIS Review. http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/ CARDONA: What do I mean by 'demands'? Theories do not stand, if they are to stand at all, in isolation. They raise certain demands. For instance, the theory concerning the nuclear fueling of the Sun demands that the Sun shed a vast amount of neutrinos. To date, only about one third of the predicted amount have been detected. The theory concerning the Big Bang demands a vast amount of matter that should be there. To date, this so-called dark matter is still being looked for. These two theories should not be allowed to stand, but because science is optimistic in that it will eventually detect both the missing neutrinos and the missing dark matter, they are allowed to stand. Personally, I shall not use similar optimism as a crutch. ... On the contrary, I aim to present a series of demands which this theory raises, both within itself as also through hard science, and how these can be met. The list is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should suffice to illustrate the significance and consequence of the evidence ... I neither have the space nor the time to deal with all the planets that once constituted the Saturnian configuration. I have therefore decided to concentrate on the two most important bodies of the alignment - namely Saturn and the earth itself...
THE AGE OF DARKNESS

My version of the Saturnian scenario posits that man's earliest memory of the sky above him was one in which the planet Saturn was the only visible celestial body which was seen looming large in the sky in an all-pervading darkness -- an endless night. One of the most persistent of beliefs among the civilizations of the ancient nations ... is that during a time usually remembered as 'the beginning' Earth had been engulfed in darkness. Time and again ... we are told that 'in the beginning' there was no Sun, no Moon, no stars. Amy: Here Cardona supplies a sampling of the enormous number of myths from every continent on earth which support this thesis of a common beginning to all creation stories. He adds that this darkness was primarily in the sky, but that it also affected the earth below, with Saturn radiating feebly above, in the words of the Linga Purana, 'like a glow-worm.' CARDONA: ...keep in mind now that the Saturn theory posits that Saturn and Earth shared the same axis of rotation, so that Saturn, at this time the only luminary visible in the sky, was not seen to rise and set, but remained ever visible, fixed to one spot in Earth's north celestial sphere. Add to this the perpetual night ... and mankind would have been kept from being able to tell the passage of time. This, then, becomes one of the theory's first demands, because, if mankind was not able to tell the passage of time during this period, the mytho-historical record itself should tell us as much. Does it?
THE TIMELESS ERA

Amy: Cardona recounts many myths which not only explicitly claim that time once did not exist, but others which refer to an era when there was no time, and several in which the terms 'time' and 'year' and 'day'
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are strangely equivalent. He ends up recounting the Chinese record of an age in which 'the day and night had not yet been divided.' CARDONA: ... the first demand raised by our interpretation of the mytho- historical record is actually met by that same record ... [and] the demand we have just seen being met raises another -- because, since the record does treat of an era during which time did not exist, it should also treat of a following era during which time was recognized as having begun. Do we find such records among the beliefs of the ancients?
THE BEGINNING OF TIME

Not only do such records exist, but quite a few of them connect the beginning of time directly with Saturn. Amy: Here Cardona reveals a sampling of myths which both make connections between Saturn and time and reveal Saturn as the originator of time. He points out that conventional mythologists have also noticed this connection, and have taken great pains to explain it away. CARDONA: ... as far back as 1875, attempts were being made to justify the phenomenon by appealing to the planet's present lagging orbital pace. ... However, slow as Saturn might move, it moves, and, in that respect, it is no different than the other planets. Besides, why would the beginning of time be associated with the planets solely because of its slow pace? Or, better still, why would Saturn's sluggish amble have led to the belief that time must have had a beginning -- that, at one period of the ages, time did not exist? Or why would Saturn have been chosen to represent the year? If any celestial body can presently claim the right to represent the year, it surely would have been the Sun. ... our ancient forebears ... would hardly have even noticed the planet Saturn if it appeared , like now, as nothing but a pin point of light in the night sky, let alone have noticed its slow advance across the night sky.
THE SATURNIAN SUN

CARDONA: One of the themes I wish to touch upon concerns the model's prediction that Saturn had once shone as a virtual sun. More than that, the model also posits that what past mythologists have identified as a bevy of sun-gods - such as the Assyro-Babylonian Shamash, the Egyptian Ra, the Indic Surya, the Greek Helios are actually misidentified Saturnian suns. In the case of Shamash, of course, the issue is at once settled by appealing to those very ancients who venerated the god ... despite the objection of most modern mythologists, the case is really closed since the Assyro-Babylonians themselves vouched for the identity of Shamash as a name of the planet we call Saturn. Amy: Cardona then discusses the identification of the Egyptian Ra with the sun, an identification he personally found more difficult to accept. CARDONA: And yet, here is precisely where the method I have been expounding proved itself - because, if the theory demanded that Ra was really a personification of Saturn rather than the Sun, it should also demand that the characteristics and motions ascribed to Ra will not be found to fit those of the Sun. Amy:
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Quoting from Jastrow, Boll, Budge, and the Pyramid texts, CARDONA describes the characteristics and motions of Ra, as a deity that reigned within the Circles, then further identifies this Circle as the "Duat" the "underworld", which, according to Budge, was located "away beyond the earth, probably in the sky." CARDONA: It is thus obvious that, whatever Ra once signified, it was a celestial body that resided within a circle or band or ring - nay, within a nest of concentric circles or bands or rings. As we all know, the Sun does not send forth its rays into a circle; it does not reside in a ring or nest of rings. The planet Saturn, however, does. ...under certain conditions, the Sun is seen to be surrounded by ... atmospheric refraction which lends a halo to the solar orb. But not only is this too rare an apparition to have earned Ra his title of 'Governor of the Circle,' it is also a phenomenon which is restricted to the northern regions and hardly, if ever, seen at the latitude of Egypt. But there is more. Amy: Cardona recounts the widespread and unusual belief by many ancient cultures that Saturn was the "night sun" or the "sun of night." Saturn was also remembered as a 'radiant green disk' and Cardona quotes an Egyptian hymn which refer to Saturn's 'beams of emerald light.' CARDONA: Consider further the motions of the celestial object called Ra. In a statement found in one of the Coffin Texts, the deity is addressed with these words: 'You shall go up upon the great West side of the sky and go down upon the great East side of the earth.' Is this not contrary to what the Sun does? Does the Sun 'go up' in the west? Does it 'go down' in the east? Thus Faulkner, who translated this passage, could not help stating that this 'unexpected reversal of the points of the compass is incomprehensible' - and ended up by blaming what to him was an inconsistency on 'a blunder in an early copy which no one has noticed or at least attempted to correct.' This explanation, however, presupposes that there must be other texts which give the rising and setting of Ra correctly. But, as David Talbott has indicated, 'wherever the direction of the [sun] ship's movement is explicitly connected with the phases of morning and evening, the texts always reverse the direction expected by the solar interpretation. More than that, when sailing in his ship, or boat, Ra is said to move down at dawn, and 'upstream' at night contrary to what we see the Sun doing in our sky. How, then, can mythologists continue to perpetuate the lie that the Egyptian Ra was a personification of the Sun? To be continued ...
PROGRESS OF "PROGRESS"
By Karen Josephson and Ted Bond
Karen Josephson says: I'm taking a class on ancient Judaism taught by a local Jewish scholar. This week something that he said struck me as especially relevant to this thread. He said that the language anciently was the same as symbolism and that every word had more than one meaning. For example, tikkun means both "salvation" and "restitution". In ancient times the word always meant both things, whereas now they are separated. Torah means "way of life", not "the first five books of the Bible" -- because it's exactly that -- about a way of life. That's partly why there is so much misunderstanding of writings in the Bible, I guess!! Also, their idea of "progress" was quite different from the modern concept. Anciently, progress, to the people, meant that you/we were getting closer to a restoration of what had been in their past. To return to
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the ways, etc., of the past, is to return/ recall the "truth" (which for them would have been the time of paradise which had been lost and everything connected to it). The change in this philosophy occurred as a part of the "Era of Enlightenment". Since then progress has meant that what's older is less desirable, lower in quality/ value/ technology/ more primitive, etc., etc., and that the present and future are better and better still (respectively) than any thing that ever came before. One is progress toward restoring the past and the other is progress away from the past ... He said this philosophy was strengthened by the success of the modern sciences and the Industrial Revolution, and led to the belief that you could combine scientific knowledge and social knowledge. Both of the ideas (ancient and modern) have "heaven on Earth" as their goal, but the ancients were trying to recover what had been, while the modern approach is to throw out the old and make (through science and technology) heaven on Earth yourself. The old outlook was more spiritual, while the modern outlook is more materialistic. Philosophy/ beliefs appear to strongly influence language, and the changes in beliefs over time as we've gotten farther and farther from the causes of/ reasons for the older beliefs, the languages have been altered (as shown by Hebrew) at the same time. Ted Bond adds: Bernard Williams called Cartesian philosophy "the project of pure enquiry". Descartes' method was to doubt everything that could be doubted and to accept, bit by bit, only what was "clear to the light of nature". The only thing we can be certain of (that cannot be doubted) initially is our own existence as a 'thinking thing', and we have to take it from there, beginning with a proof of the existence of God. Anything learned through the senses can be doubted at the beginning of enquiry, for the sensible world could all be an illusion, perhaps a dream! Kant was much more interested in the limitations of reason, than in its powers. He argued strongly that in matters of God, freedom and immortality, reason had nothing to say, and would have to yield to faith. His Critique of Pure Reason was in fact on the Roman Catholic Index of Forbidden books because in it Kant denied that God's existence could be proven by reason alone, which is a Catholic dogma of faith. Neither Descartes nor Kant made any contribution to the modern notion of progress, which, as a concept, belongs to the later 19th century, not to the 18th (Kant) or the 17th (Descartes), although the Industrial Revolution did take place in the 18th century, and it was 'progress' in science and industry that produced the materialism and the misguided optimism about the future that has got us into the mess we are in today. Really interesting, though, about ancient Hebrew, although the planet worshippers and human sacrificers, including the Jewish backsliders that the prophets were constantly railing against, were also trying to get back to the days before the Saturn catastrophe! It is just that the Jewish prophets thought that Moses' way was better!
IT HAS TO BE MOONGLOW!
By Wal Thornhill The region around the crater Aristarchus ... has been a focus for observers searching for transient lunar phenomena. See pictures at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/moonglow.htm This past week 700 planetary scientists from around the world gathered in Abano Terme, Italy, to present their latest observations from ground- and space-based instruments. Sky & Telescope's Senior Editor J. Kelly Beatty filed this report from the conference. The week-long meeting [of the American Astronomical Society] featured the first unambiguous confirmation of a spontaneous change in a feature on the Moon. Amateur observers have claimed to witness dozens of transient lunar phenomenon (TLPs) for decades,
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but most professionals found the reports unconvincing because the events were almost always seen only visually. Now, however, a group led by Bonnie Buratti (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) has found "before" and "after" images from the Clementine spacecraft for an TLP reported last April 23rd. The area in question, the "cobra head" at the beginning of Schrter's Valley near the crater Aristarchus, is covered by relatively young volcanic flows, and it has often been the location of TLP sightings. Buratti says two bright spots along the valley's western wall are distinctly redder in the Clementine "after" images from April 27th, a clear indication that some kind of change took place subsequent to the "before" images taken March 3rd. So now it's official - TLP's are real! Just as astronomers would not believe that stones could fall from the sky, most have baulked at the idea that our long-dead Moon could show signs of life. Yet there have been many reports in the last century from reputable observers of glowing patches, point- like flashes and obscurations on the Moon. Now the Clementine lunar orbiter has confirmed a transient change in redness in a lunar crater. Explanations have involved outgassing, volcanism, raising of moondust, and rock fluorescence under bombardment from solar wind particles. However, the emission of visible light is poorly understood. In this case, remnant vulcanism is thought to be most likely. Rilles are thought to be collapsed lava tubes. But Schrter's Valley is not volcanic. That brilliant engineer, the late Ralph Juergens, showed in the early 1970's that it is a typical scar caused by a massive lightning bolt. If it were volcanic, where is the lava outflow? Where is the collapsed roof of a lava tube? Where do we find lava tubes 7 km wide? How could a flowing liquid of any sort form the tortuous inner channel on the valley floor? Why does that channel become narrower toward its "outflow" end? How do some rilles cross mountains? The Electric Universe model has a simple explanation. All bodies in the solar system are embedded in an electric glow discharge, centred on the Sun. The Moon is subject to some of the electrical input that produces planetary aurorae, lightning on Earth and Venus, planet-wide dust-storms and huge dust-devils on Mars, and "volcanoes" on Io. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, electric discharges are diffuse creating glows over large areas. Flashes are due to sudden concentration of the discharge at high points, known on Earth as St. Elmo's fire, and the occasional true lightning. Obscuration by dust is due to electrostatic levitation. Whatever made Schrter's Valley a target for lightning in the past is likely to make it a prime target now and well worth watching for further TLP's. Lunar explorers in future should take lightning conductors with them!
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STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: BLINDNESS, STUPIDITY, AND SPECULATION by Mel Acheson DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (2) excerpts from Dwardu Cardona SATURN 101 by Amy Acheson, Bob Johnson, Michael Arstrong, Ev Cochrane CLOSEST FLYBY OF IO by Wal Thornhill THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER! by Wal Thornhill
BLINDNESS, STUPIDITY, AND SPECULATION

By Mel Acheson In discussing the question of progress in scientific revolutions, Kuhn noted: "There are losses as well as gains [in a paradigm shift]..., and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former." In a footnote, he elaborates: Because science students 'know the right answers,' it is particularly difficult to make them analyze an older science in its own terms. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Ed., University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 167. Noting that in his broadest use of 'paradigm' Kuhn included instrumentation with theory, I would apply his footnote to data: Because scientists know the right procedures, it is particularly difficult to make them attend to evidence outside the sensitivities of their instruments. Chapman refused to look at (or even to discuss) Alfven's experiments that contradicted the "perfect insulator" theory of space. Modern astronomers refuse to look at Arp's display of connections among objects of different redshifts. Now Thomas Gold presents a most clear-cut example of scientific blindness and loss of data in his recent book, The Deep Hot Biosphere [New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999]: The invention of the seismograph meant that it was no longer necessary to experience an earthquake directly, or to interview someone who had, in order to assemble data on the event... [Eyewitness reports] were no longer believed to hold any value for the scientific venture. [p. 145] Gold proceeds to describe many eyewitness reports from ancient times to modern. A constellation of recurring phenomena becomes apparent: "Eruptions, flames, noises, odors, asphyxiation, fountains of water and mud..." often occur before the quake. Gold concludes on page 147:
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The accumulated observations maintained in folklore and contemplated by the intelligentsia of the time meant that the ancients recognized a variety of phenomena that seemed to serve well as warnings of an impending quake. In some ways, folklore is of more practical value to residents of earthquake-prone regions than is our modern science.
He describes several incidents where people were able to evacuate their villages and towns a few hours before an earthquake because they were alerted by odors, fogs, or unusual animal behavior. Folklore has saved many lives; seismographs and stress meters have yet to achieve one correct prediction-probably because they're measuring only effects, not causes. Gold adduces this evidence-and several chapters more-to support his theory of upwelling primordial gas from deep within the earth. He also mentions the near-impossibility of attracting any attention to the theory or even to the observations that call into question the prevailing assumptions. Thus many scientists...seem to have fallen into the rut of the nearest convenient theory. They explore the terrain of this rut very effectively, down to the minutest feature within the walls, yet they will not climb out for another look. [p. 103] This fear of "another look" is more than mere scientific blindness. It's a deliberate squeezing shut of one's intellectual eyes, a rejection of insight, a refusal to learn. It's directly connected to belief, to the assumption that one possesses the only possible right answer, which therefore obviates one's considering further questions or "other looks." Ignorance can be overcome with persistence and study. Ignorance, indeed, is the beginning of learning. But the refusal to learn is stupidity, and for it there is no remedy. Scientists have limited time, as do we all. It's understandable that they should ignore many things not immediately pertinent to their current work. Sometimes even the pertinent must be ignored. But that's merely ignore-ance. The mark of stupidity, and of the belief behind it, is the use of the term 'impossible' and the accompanying rejection of speculation. Thomas Gold again [p. 208]: The history of science offers example after example of apparently inexplicable features for which perfectly rational explanations were finally found. In nearly all such cases, assumptions that were universally believed obscured the truth so effectively that no progress toward a solution seemed possible. Yet it is to just such apparently inexplicable features that we must hope to find clues that will show us how to unburden ourselves of false beliefs. Speculation is a vital step in this process. It was once speculated that the earth revolved around the sun. Without this speculation, I do not think that any systematic avenue of research would have produced the evidence that clinched this theory. At a time when proposed solutions are still speculative, they are the driving force for the researches that will prove them right or wrong and will thereby put our thinking on a new and better track. Mel Acheson
THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (2)

Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson [ed. note: the text of the introduction to this paper is available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm and the full text of the paper is scheduled for

publishing in an up-coming issue of Chronology and http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.] Catastrophism Review -
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see
AMY ACHESON: Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho- historical records from all over the world. Among these were Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as the sun of night. This section of the paper concluded with these phrases concerning another unusual behavior of Saturn:
DWARDU CARDONA WROTE: Consider further the motions of the celestial object called Ra. In a statement found in one of the Coffin Texts, the deity is addressed with these words: 'You shall go up upon the great West side of the sky and go down upon the great East side of the earth.' Is this not contrary to what the Sun does? Does the Sun 'go up' in the west? Does it 'go down' in the east? Thus Faulkner, who translated this passage, could not help stating that this 'unexpected reversal of the points of the compass is incomprehensible' - and ended up by blaming what to him was an inconsistency or 'a blunder in an early copy which no one has noticed or at least attempted to correct.' This explanation, however, presupposes that there must be other texts which give the rising and setting of Ra correctly. But, as David Talbott has indicated, 'wherever the direction of the [sun] ship's movement is explicitly connected with the phases of morning and evening, the texts always reverse the direction expected by the solar interpretation. More than that, when sailing in his ship, or boat, Ra is said to move down at dawn, and 'upstream' at night contrary to what we see the Sun doing in our sky. How, then, can mythologists continue to perpetuate the lie that the Egyptian Ra was a personification of the Sun? CARDONA CONTINUES:
THE POLAR STATION

But hold on - someone may have already noticed. If, as the model assumes, Saturn appeared motionless in the earth's north celestial sphere, how could it have been seen to rise and set, even if contrary to the way the Sun does? This is a point that troubled me for some time until, with Dave Talbott, I came to realize that the fault lay with mythologists and not mythology. Or, to state it more correctly, the fault lay with those who had translated the ancient myths. Not that I blame them because, after all, they only had the arrangement of the present sky to work with. In short, when it comes to the Egyptian Ra, the terms 'rising' and 'setting' were actually mistranslations. If we were to translate the Egyptian texts concerning Ra literally, and forget about what the Sun is supposed to do, we find that the light of the god is simply said to 'come forth' and 'recede'. The god himself 'comes out' and 'goes in.' Egyptologists, of course, will claim that this was the way in which the Egyptians alluded to the rising and setting of the Sun - and, as I said, one cannot really blame them. But, as Talbott noted, when we say today that the moon comes out at night, we do not really mean that it rises, but that it grows bright. And so, also, with Ra - the god did not rise and set; he simply grew bright and dimmed. And this is vindicated by the additional fact that the god was said to come forth and recede while remaining em hetep, that is, 'at rest' or 'in one spot.' And, in fact, it was this immobility of Saturn, stated of the god and of the planet, that made me realize very early in my research, together with Talbott, but independent of him, that Saturn once occupied a stable position in Earth's north celestial sphere. AMY:
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Cardona then quotes Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, and Egyptian sources which translate the meaning of local names for Saturn as 'the steady planet' and 'the resting planet'. He speaks of rituals in which Saturn is referred to as 'without motion' and 'without movement.' He quotes the Makiritare Indians of Venezuela, 'Wanadi is like a sun that never sets.' CARDONA: ...If Ra was the Sun, as mythologists would have us believe, why was it said to have been without movement? Unless I am mistaken, there are only two ways in which the planet Saturn could have appeared suspended motionless in the sky without rising and setting. The first, and most believable, is to assume, as Lynn Rose has done, that Earth orbited Saturn in phase-lock, very much as the Moon does in relation to Earth, thus always pointing the same hemisphere toward Saturn. AMY: The second way in which Saturn could have appeared suspended motionless in the sky is if it were stationed at the celestial pole. Cardona quotes from Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Iranian, and Celtic myths, a few of the many hundreds of traditions which place Saturn in the north. He quotes Lynn Rose in Lynn's belief that after the phase-lock era of Saturn came to a close, the ancients knew of no other "immovable station of the sky" in which to place Saturn, so universally revised their myths to locate Saturn at the pole. Cardona also mentioned as a possibility David Talbott's suggestion that Saturn may have moved from phase-lock to polar station. Either way, Cardona says that the polar position of Saturn is an integral part of global mythology. CARDONA: What is of additional importance, however, is the fact that the record of the ancients does not describe this strange situation always in the same manner, but, on the contrary, in a hundred different ways which speaks against a diffusionist borrowing of the belief. To be continued Editor's Note: The Saturn Theory is one which relies on information from many fields, each adding a few ounces to the weight of evidence. In the first two parts of this paper, Cardona has presented a small fraction of the mytho-historical evidence. In the next sections, he will discuss some of the physical evidence. For some of the symbolic evidence, see Ev Cochrane's article at: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Rock_Art/rock_art.html For more about the linguistic evidence, see Dave Talbott's articles, "How Catastrophic Events Generate Language," and "The Mythic Roots of Language" in THOTH III-14, III-15, and III-16.
SATURN 101
By Amy Acheson Discussion by Bob Johnson, Michael Armstrong, Ev Cochrane First of all, the Saturn Theory is an absurd theory, "bizarre in the extreme" according to Dwardu Cardona, one of its main researchers. It's not something you want to believe (or dismiss) with a single reading. Furthermore, the entire story hasn't been told yet, although there are at least four books in the works that will hopefully remedy that. Velikovsky first pointed the way to Saturn in one short section of an article titled On Saturn and the Flood in the Fall, 1979, issue of Kronos. It read:
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This memory of the seven days of light preceding the Deluge(10) is a most important indication of the physical cause of the catastrophe. The intense light, filling the sky, points to a source in a nova within the solar system. If, as all evidence indicates, the nova was in fact Saturn, we may obtain an estimate of the Earth's distance from the source of the illumination in the following way: The light from Saturn's explosion probably reached the Earth in a matter of minutes, practically simultaneously with the beginning of its nova phase; but the waters followed seven days later. Though ejected in the same catastrophic disruption, the Saturnian gases or filaments took a week to reach the Earth. If we can estimate the initial ejection speed of this material(11) and fix with some approximation the length of the day at that time, it may be possible to get an idea of how far removed the Earth was from the focus of the cataclysm. It is conceivable that the Earth was, at that time, a satellite of Saturn, afterwards possibly becoming a satellite of Jupiter. In the same issue of Kronos, Lynn Rose expanded on Velikovsky's comments in an article titled "Variations on a Theme of Philolaos," suggesting that earth was once a satellite of Saturn in phase-lock orbit with Saturn stationary over the Arabian Peninsula. Harold Tresman, co-founder of the British catastrophist group, the SIS, independently arrived at a similar conclusion to that of Lynn Rose. Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott (and later Ev Cochrane) delved deeper into the mythology and discovered that the coherent substratum of myth required altering the theory from earth as a phase-lock satellite of Saturn to the Polar Configuration model. Here are some websites where you can learn more: You can find a simple introductory slide show here: http://www.kronia.com Here you'll find an abstract of a paper by Dave Talbott prepared for a world conference in Italy in June, 1999: http://www.unibg.it/convegni/NEW_SCENARIOS/Abstracts/Talbott.htm Here you'll find an autobiographical essay by Dwardu Cardona: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Road_to_Saturn/road_to_saturn.html Here you'll find introductions to papers given by Dwardu Cardona, Wal Thornhill and Ev Cochrane. http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/ More of Ev on Saturn Symbolism can be found here: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Rock_Art/rock_art.html The Electric Universe compliments the Saturn Theory. Although each is a groundbreaking theory in its own field, the two together support each other and open new vistas of understanding. That's why we include it in THOTH. You can find out more on Wal Thornhill's website: http://www.holoscience.com From an astronomical point of view, I think that NASA's press release last week (Nov 19, 1999) presents the most amazing piece of evidence I've seen yet in favor of the Saturn Theory. They state simply that the processes happening on Io today are the same as the processes which formed the major features of the earth as recently as 15 million years ago (non-catastrophic dating.) To me, it's obvious that the processes happening on Io are the result of its proximity to the gas giant Jupiter (tidal or, more likely, electrical.) If the same processes were happening so recently on earth, then is it absurd to imagine that earth was then in close proximity to a gas giant, either (phase-lock or polar)? Exactly as remembered in our mythological heritage! Bob Johnson says:
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I am ... prepared to accept that the earth was probably a satellite of Saturn ... one simple hypothesis explains a great deal of observations and myths. What I am not so sure about is the further need to restrict the earth's relationship to Saturn to a polar model. This is what I mean by using Ockham's razor - cut away the unnecessary elements and see what's left. It seems to me that the reliance on interpretation of myth alone is poor grounds for postulating a physical model that may have existed but which raises more questions than it answers. Where, for example, are the inconsistencies in the simple Saturn satellite theory that need further explanations as provided by the polar model? Is it inevitable that, given the electrical relationships between the bodies, the earth would necessarily adopt a polar configuration orbit? I have seen nothing yet to suggest that this is the case. My query could have been phrased 'what other evidence is there (apart from interpretation of myth) that only a polar model explains?' Michael Armstrong suggests: One of the geo-physical (and therefore strongest?) pieces of evidence for the PC is that the earth is eggshaped with the Northern radius of the earth being significantly longer than the Southern-prolate to the north. This indicates that the earth still hasn't "relaxed" from having been stretched in the northern directions. Couple that with the arctic region generally being flat and scoured down to bedrock with up to 400 feet of "muck" (silt, sand, gravel, chewed up pieces of wood and bones, even frozen animal carcasses) and you have a simple case for there having been a vortex comparable to the axis mundi of the PC model that collapsed at some point. Ev Cochrane: This is a very good question, needless to say. Michael has already provided a good answer. Dwardu's recent address at the SISR symposium ... goes into this question in some depth. Yet the fact remains that the mythical-historical record does provide very solid evidence in support of a previous axial alignment of the respective planets. Dave's article "The Ship of Heaven" from 1988 presents the most complete discussion of this question from a logical standpoint.
CLOSEST FLYBY OF IO
by Wal Thornhill NASA have released the first images from their Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1999, closest flyby of Io. See them at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/io. My earlier prediction that the so-called volcanoes would be much hotter than the estimates made at lower resolution has been hinted at by NASA. They say that the "lava" might be hotter than 1600K. This scenario sounds like a replay of the surface temperature of Venus! The picture caption reads: The active lava was hot enough to cause what the camera team describes as 'bleeding in Galileo's camera, caused when the camera's detector is so overloaded by the brightness of the target that electrons spill down across the detector. This shows up as a white blur in the image. But 1600K is only red-hot. What lava on Earth, even when photographed at night, would cause bleeding of a solid-state camera image? It usually occurs only if such a camera is pointed at a very bright light. I think that is precisely what occurred at Io. The Galileo camera was looking at a number of arc-lights in the form of cathode spots. Their temperature could range as high as 5 or 6000K over very small areas approaching that of the surface of the Sun. The descriptions of the burnt-out white smears in the picture as lava fountains are a classic example of seeing what you want to see. To see detail in the bright light would have required a neutral density filter which would have darkened the rest of the picture to obscurity. But NASA knows that it is a volcano (just
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as they knew Venus wasn't all that hot) so that didn't enter into their plans. However, it is the remainder of the image that confirms the electric arc model. The picture caption reads: Also of great interest is the flat-topped mesa on the right. The scalloped margins are typical of a process geologists call 'sapping,' which occurs when erosion is caused by a fluid escaping from the base of a cliff. On Earth, such sapping features are caused by springs of groundwater. Similar features on Mars are one of the key pieces of evidence for past water on the Martian surface. However, on Io, the liquid is presumed to be pressurized sulfur dioxide. The liquid sulfur dioxide should change to a gas almost instantaneously upon reaching the near- vacuum of Io's surface, blasting away material at the base of the cliff. The sulfur dioxide gas eventually freezes out on the surface of Io in the form of a frost. As the frost is buried by later deposits, it can be heated and pressurized until it becomes a liquid. This liquid then flows out of the ground, completing Io's version of the 'water cycle.' NASA scientists have had to introduce the ad hoc requirement of different liquids flowing beneath the surface of both Mars and Io to drive the hypothetical surface sapping. The process of sapping has not been well studied on Earth and the photographs given as examples in Prof. Baker's book, The Channels of Mars, do not look much like that seen on Mars and Io. Sapping requires a replenishable source of liquid and the surface material to be harder than that beneath. Neither Mars nor Io shows any sign of liquids on the surface. So the 'water cycle' on Io is a desperate analogy considering that the erosion on Io is an order of magnitude or more greater than any examples of sapping seen on the Earth - which has an abundance of liquid water. Once again, the Io close-up shows a surface that bears all of the classic features of a spark-machined surface - the flat crater floors and steep scalloped walls to the machined area. It is ironic that in comparing it to the Martian "fretted" terrain, NASA has chosen another superb example of cathodic erosion. Wal Thornhill
THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER!

By Wal Thornhill The accepted model of how the Sun works has the energy that forms sunspots, heats the corona to a million-degrees and accelerates the solar wind to a million miles per hour all being generated in a nuclear furnace deep inside the Sun. That energy is calculated to take something like 100,000 years to percolate to the surface. So NASA's press release of December 13 titled "The Day the Solar Wind Disappeared", is quite a shock. It reported that the solar wind that blows constantly from the Sun practically disappeared between May 10 to 12, 1999. NASA put a brave spin on this baffling surprise by emphasizing the trivial fact that it allowed scientists to see the Sun's corona directly. NASA scientist, Dr. Keith Ogilvie, said "The May event provides unique conditions to test ideas about solar-terrestrial interactions. It also strengthens our belief that we're beginning to understand how the Sun-Earth connection works." It may have strengthened the beliefs of some scientists in their models. But such illogical reinforcement has been seen before in astrophysics. For example, when the expected flood of neutrinos from the nuclear-powered Sun did not materialize, belief in the theory was restated and the fault declared to be with the neutrinos. Certainty in these cases seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of supporting data. It may have something to do with the very human need to view our Sun as a reliable and therefore constant source of energy. Certainly that need is exemplified in the term "solar constant", used as a measure of solar energy reaching the Earth.
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The point that NASA avoided mentioning is that the thermonuclear model of the Sun has no way of easing off the accelerator pedal for the solar wind. In fact it is not clear why there should be a solar "wind" at all if the Sun is merely a self-gravitating ball radiating energy into space. As Fred Hoyle wrote in Frontiers of Astronomy in 1955 under the title, The Mystery of the Solar Atmosphere; "We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three thousand kilometers up." Since 1955, a complex of magnetic fields has been discovered on the Sun. They have been assumed to come from within the Sun, somehow bypassing the highly-conducting photosphere to release energy in the corona. But theory has been unable to explain or predict many of the detailed features discovered on the Sun. In particular, it does not explain why the solar wind should accelerate beyond the hot corona. Prof. Kenneth Lang in his book Sun, Earth and Sky, has a chapter titled (somewhat ironically given this latest discovery) - "The Eternal Solar Wind". He writes; "...we still do not know exactly what heats the corona or what gives the solar wind an extra boost to 700 kilometers per second. The heating of the solar corona presents one of the most fundamental, unsolved problems of contemporary solar physics." The problem was solved 30 years ago by the outstanding engineer, the late Ralph Juergens, in his pioneering work on electric stars. That model is built directly upon observations of the Sun. It does not begin with a priori assumptions about constancy of output, internal constitution of a star or unseen behavior beneath the photosphere. He shows that all of the features and behavior of the Sun (and all other stars) can be explained if the Sun is an anode in a galactic glow-discharge. It is a simple model that can be confirmed in the laboratory. That is not possible for the thermonuclear model of stars where the conditions at the center of a star are not reproducible on Earth. The only requirement for stars to continue shining for long periods in an Electric Universe is for the galaxy to continually receive charge from deep space. This requirement is met by recent advances in plasma cosmology models. I believe it is confirmed by the amazing quantized redshifts of quasars discovered by the astronomer, Halton Arp. So the Sun shines by courtesy of its electrical environment in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Its size, color and energy output are all determined by its environment. Electric current in a plasma flows along magnetic field lines in "ropes", known as Birkeland currents. Each "filament" of the rope exhibits long-range attraction and short-range repulsion for other parallel filaments. The result is that they twist together to form ropes. It is the (usually invisible) plasma equivalent of multistranded copper wire. That the Sun is the focus for a plasma discharge can be seen in the filamentary phenomena at every scale above the photosphere and the even spread of magnetic field lines from the Sun's pole to equator. The discovery by the solar polar spacecraft that the Sun's field is not a dipole was a great surprise. So, the electric sun model has no difficulty with short-term changes in the solar wind. The solar wind with its flux of charged particles forms part of the galactic circuit. The sudden shutdown merely reflects an inhomogeneity in the small-scale Birkeland currents delivering power to the Sun. A galactic arm scale rotation of Birkeland current may result in the variability of the sunspot cycle, including the switch in magnetic polarity. It does not require the ad-hoc invention of invisible complex goings-on inside the Sun. Applying the principle of Ockham's Razor, the electric sun model is superior to the standard model. Applying B. J. F. Lonergan's Canon of Completeness which requires a theory to account for all the data, the electric sun model is superior to the standard model. For example, a correlation between the neutrino count and the solar wind particle flux is expected in the electric model but is inexplicable in the thermonuclear model. Nuclear cookery takes place in the photosphere, not in the center of the Sun. THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER! Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No. 1 (January 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SLIP STICKS AND WRONG THEORIES DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (3) TEKTITE QUESTION OTHER STARS, OTHER WORLDS, OTHER LIFE
by Mel Acheson excerpts from Dwardu Cardona by Michel Tavir and Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
SLIP STICKS AND WRONG THEORIES

By Mel Acheson A slide rule hangs on the wall of my office, a dual-base vector hyperbolic log-log slide rule. A mere 40 years ago it was a state-of-the-art calculating machine. It reminds me that technology progresses not only by incremental improvements but by extinction and speciation: My aluminum slip-stick was an improvement over the wood one I had before, but the scientific calculator I now use is an entirely different animal. As with technologies, so with theories. The understanding of nature that a theory provides is improved incrementally as the theory is articulated, tested, and revised. The theory's domain of validity-the set of data it can explain-is explored and the details filled in. But the very activity of exploration discovers data outside the theory's domain. These unexpected facts (for every theory starts out expecting to explain everything) become anomalies that eventually undermine the theory. A theory is an intellectual tool with the amazing property that as it's perfected it destroys itself. In analogy with natural selection, the cognitive niche that selects a theory for fitness is itself altered by the theory such that, after a time, a new and different theory is selected. Thus, a theory's domain of validity has temporal as well as factual limits. The power of an idea whose time has come is counterpoised by the debility of the idea whose time has gone. I never use my slide rule, but now and then I take it out of its case simply to admire the beauty of how it works. In much the same fashion, I admire the beauty of Ptolemy's epicycles and of Copernicus' helioconcentric circles and of Einstein's rubberized space-time. I appreciate how each theory worked for its time and its data. I esteem the talent and effort of the people who developed each theory. My friends chide me for the ensuing reluctance to call old theories "wrong". I plead that the term is relatively meaningless: On its own terms-within its domain of validity-no theory is "wrong". And from a historical perspective, every theory sooner or later will be replaced; hence, every theory is "wrong". But I must accede to my friends' pragmatism: We don't live in the past or in the future. We live in this present time, and this time is the domain of right and wrong. It would be wrong to insist on using a slide rule to direct Galileo around Jupiter's moons. Just so, it's wrong for Established Science to refuse to look at Arp's findings of quantized intrinsic redshifts. Just so, it's wrong to overlook Juergen's insights into the electrical nature of the sun. It's wrong to ignore Alfven's
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admonition that plasmas don't behave the way theoreticians believe and that there are large-scale currents in space. It's wrong to dismiss the Saturn Theory as "merely myth" in blind defiance of the intelligibility in the data. Turning a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a closed mind to this astronomical mass of evidence is intellectually irresponsible. The domain of data has expanded immensely since Established Theories first became established. The early flakes of mysterious data have become an avalanche of anomalies. There are many facts that don't fit Established Theory; there are many facts that contradict Established Theory. Established Theory is increasingly fragmented. It's losing coherence and generality in a proliferation of ad hoc adjustments for every new situation. It's straying into fantasy lands of big bangs and little black holes. It denies the existence of 90% of the universe then fills the void with invisible matter and ion winds. It slaps a smug hand to its back and overlooks its own history. It disdains its own mortality. The intellectual niche that Established Theory so comfortably fit has already changed, leaving only a residual feeling of comfort. But the feeling is false, and both the "fit" AND the theory are wrong. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (3

Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson [ed. note: the text of the introduction to this paper is available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.] AMY ACHESON: Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho- historical records from all over the world. Among these were Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as the sun of night. Part II concerned the postulate that the mytho-historical record places Saturn at the Earth's north pole. Cardona stresses that this information is not taken from a single story, but is expressed in hundreds of different ways in hundreds of different stories told over the world. In part III, Cardona explores the nature of this northern configuration from both a mythical and physical perspective: DWARDU CARDONA: But what of the demands which this postulate raises? Can they, too, be met? The postulate concerning the former polar station of the planet Saturn raises more than one demand, but I will only touch upon one-and it will serve to show that physical requirements, as well as those which the mytho-historical record itself answers, can be met.
THE LITHIC BULGE

We all know how terrestrial tides are raised; they are caused by the attraction of the Sun and Moon on Earth's oceanic waters ... Now consider: With the massive Saturn in proximity to Earth, the tides that
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would have been raised should have exceeded those at present. And since Earth's tides are aggravated when the attractive force of the Moon is added to that of the Sun, it stands to reason that the additional pull of Venus and Mars, which the theory dictates to have been in direct line with Saturn and Earth, should have raised the northern tide even more. More than that, with Saturn having been positioned in Earth's north celestial sphere, terrestrial tides should have accumulated at Earth's north polar region. The hydrosphere, moreover, would not have been the only terrestrial element to respond to Saturn's attractive force. The atmosphere should also have piled up at Earth's northern areas. And so, also, should have Earth's crust. This, then is what the Saturnian thesis demands. Do we find it so? Well, let's be fair now. What was, no longer is, so that we cannot now take a trip up north to see if the water of the world is actually piled up in a tide around the north pole. Earth's crust, however, is a different mater. Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere would have easily-although not necessarily suddenly- have rebounded to settle in a more uniform shell around the world Earth's crust, on the other hand, would have taken a much longer period to re-adjust to the new conditions. And since the scenario we have been positing is theorized to have played its drama just prior to the rise of civilization, we should expect this northern lithic bulge not to have yet subsided. AMY: Cardona discusses how this lithic bulge fits into several theories of planetary catastrophism, including phase-lock theories and theories involving planets other than Saturn. CARDONA: Is there any evidence of a remnant of such a tidal bulge in Earth's north polar region? Of course there is ... The real shape of Earth ... is better described as a triaxial spheroid rather than an oblate one, with the bulge of its pearshape measured in meters rather than kilometers. But as a residue, or remnant, of a former greater uplift of land even meters are of significance. As Frederick Hall asked: What pulled Earth out of shape from above its north pole? The small dimensions of this shift indicate the pull was short term (as in centuries to millennia) rather than eons. Furthermore the effect is relaxing, and in geological terms the distorting influence must have been remarkably recent. ...Now it is true that Earth's present pear-shape could be explained through different causes than that proposed by the Saturnian configuration theory. But that is not the issue now, is it? What rightly concerns us here is that the theory demands such a state of affairs, and the demand is met.
THE AXIS MUNDI

One of the most mysterious of elements that can he retrieved from the mytho-historical record concerning the Saturnian configuration is what seems to have appeared, at least at first, as a tapered swath of light which stretched all the way down from the configuration to touch Earth at its northern horizon. Having received the generic name of axis mundi, this appendage is also recognized as the polar column and cosmic tree. It was even known as the world mountain which ... is not to he confused with the lithic bulge we have just discussed. This tapering appendage has been explained in various ways. Rose compared it to the so-called flux tube which stretches between Jupiter and its satellite, Io. In his own Martian, as opposed to a Saturnian, model, Jueneman sees the axis as a colossal Rankine vortex. David Talbott, on the other hand, had originally explained the polar column as a stream of debris stretching between Saturn and Earth, but later amended this to a stream of debris attracted from Mars toward Earth Additionally, Wallace Thornhill believes he has recognized this ethereal pillar as a sustained plasma discharge in the form of Birkeland current.
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AMY: Here Cardona disagrees with Talbott's interpretation on the basis that such an occurrence would have depleted Mars of its rubble and that Martian meteorites have not yet been found in the northern regions of the Earth. CARDONA: What Thornhill's explanation has going for it...is the fact that galaxies exhibit what Thornhill terms plasma focus characteristics at their centre during their active, or quasar, phase by emitting beams of particles in the form of twisted vortices.' These vortices bear a remarkable similarity to the posited axis mundi deduced from the mytho-historical record Moreover, such a beam in the form of a filament of light has now not only been detected ... but even photographed. And, together with the beam, we now have the first actual photograph of an extra-solar planet, a member of a double-star system known as TMR-1. What the photograph shows is what appears to be a runaway planet, jettisoned by the double stars together with what has been described as 'a thin filament of gas' extending all the way from the planet to its primaries. Anyone living on that planet ... would see a swath of light stretching all the way from the horizon to the double sun very much like our ancestors would have seen a similar swath of light stretching .. from Earth's northern horizon to the Saturnian configuration. Those who used to tell us that such a phenomenon is not physically possible can now be silenced. One other aspect of Thornhill's postulate that fits well with the mytho-historical record is that magnetic fields tend to twist Birkeland currents into 'ropes,' making the structure appear like entwined snakes. As I will indicate below, this structure is important because, during its fina1 phase, the Saturnian axis developed exactly that form. AMY: Cardona then expresses his opinion that, although Thornhill's Birkeland currents fit most of the criteria of the polar column, they would not be able to suck material up from the earth, which he believes the myths describe. Cardona prefers Fred Jueneman's proposed Rankine vortex, an interplanetary tornado, as an explanation for the axis mundi. CARDONA:
THE WHIRLING COLUMN

Once again, I cannot here present the entire string of evidential sources which attest to the whirling motion of the cosmic pillar. Instead I will merely present the opinion of four authorities on the subject... DC Santillana and von Dechend are two of many who came to the conclusion that the axis did twist and turn--although they seemed somewhat unsure of whether it did so slowly or rapidly-even if to them the axis was anything but an actual physical entity. So, incidentally, did Elmer Suhr when he speaks of the 'whirling cosmic column' and 'the whirling column of the cosmos.' In fact, Suhr goes on to stress: 'It is especially important to think of the cosmic column not as a static post but as a constantly whirling crucible...' Talbott, of course, also recognized this fact when he wrote that 'the cosmic mountain in many creation epics is presented as a churning, serpentine column rising along the world axis...' ...it is more than obvious from descriptions of the Saturnian axis, as well as prehistoric Petroglyphs, that the polar column was a visible entity rather than a deduced abstraction. This was so much so that, in some cases, the axis was even pictured as a ladder reaching to the Saturnian sun. Amy: Cardona mentioned that he finds it difficult to reconcile a the whirling motion of the axis with Suhr's interpretation of the cosmic pillar as the cone-shaped shadow which the moon sends to the Earth during a solar eclipse.

CARDONA:
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THE ENTWINED SERPENTS

...the cosmic pillar was often described as having had the form of a serpent or celestial dragon... And, as [Talbott] continues to inform us: ...in several lands the word for 'mountain' is the same as the word for 'serpent' or 'dragon,' though our natural world offers no basis for the equivalence.' For examples, Talbott offers the following: 'In Mexico, Nahuatl can means 'serpent' but also 'mountain'... and [the] Egyptian Set is the primordial serpent or dragon, but set also means 'mountain,' and '[the] ancient Sumerian dragon ... was the Kur...but kur also possessed the meaning 'mountain'...[The Greek] Boreas is the primeval serpent... but etymologists connect the serpent- dragon's name with a primitive bora, 'mountain'. As Suhr tells us: Among primitive peoples there are signs of the column in the form of a python or dragon rising from the level of the earth to the clouds.' In fact, Suhr adds that, among the Murngin people of northern Australia, the great python 'is the most impressive representative of the column.' In China '[a] dragon ascending from the earth to the clouds can serve as the whirling column--which no doubt accounts for so many dragons on pillars. A serpent, or dragon, on the other hand, is not exactly the same thing as a pair of entwined serpents. So, if we are going to keep to the motif of Thornhill's Birkeland current, where do we look to find the cosmic pillar described as a pair of entwined serpents or, at least, a serpent entwined around a vertical prominence? In this respect, we only have to turn our attention to that object which the Greeks referred to as the caduceus--two serpents entwined around a central shaft--which Suhr also recognized as representative of the cosmic axis. Nor must we think of the caduceus as a uniquely Greek invention since the symbol was also popular in the east, including Mesopotamia. A fourth century BC relief from Greece depicts a cylindrical altar with a snake coiled around it ... the word 'altar,' although derived from Latin, has its phonetic equivalent in the Arabic Al-Tur which means 'The Mountain' This connection did not escape Talbott who has provided some intriguing insights concerning the associations shared between the altar, the world mountain, the cosmic pillar, and other Saturnian elements. Other examples of this motif are encountered in depictions of Mithras, shown with a serpent coiled around him in spiral fashion, and in that of the Mithraic Kronos, or Aion, who is likewise shown within the coils of a spiraling snake. A variant of the same motif is to be found in the serpent-footed Yahweh on coins of the Hellenistic period ... Yahweh originated as a personification of Saturn ... As Heidel tells us: 'That Yahweh and Saturn were identical was a belief widely accepted in antiquity...' This can be verified through Tacitus who had it recorded that the Jews worshipped the planet Saturn as their god. I mention all this, here, because the image of Yahweh reproduced on the coins mentioned above do not merely show him as serpent- footed, but with both serpentine legs entwined together, thus conforming to the demands of our model. ... Since we have opted for Jueneman's Rankine vortex in lieu of Thornhill's Birkeland current--sat least temporarily--how do we account for the image of the serpentine nature under this scheme? The answer is easy enough. As Jueneman himself explained: Terrestrial tornadoes occasionally exhibit smaller counter- rotating vortices in close ... proximity to the primary whirlwind. 0n a much vaster scale, similar counter-rotating catenulate bolus flows
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would have snaked around the polar column in filamentary fashion, first in a counterclockwise, then in a clockwise direction in a slow oscillation.
It is, therefore, this bolus flow that would have given the planetary tornado, or Rankine vortex, its serpentine quality.
THE WATERY VORTEX

AMY: Cardona proposes, if the polar column were actually a colossal tornado, that the Saturn theory demands that this, too, should be part of the mytho-historical record. That is, the tornado would have sucked large amounts of waters from the Earth and ancient man should have been aware of this, if not from observing the column itself, then at least from observing what happened when the column was severed. CARDONA: ...among the Australian Aborigines, the great python is the most impressive representative of the polar column. It is therefore significant that this python is not only believed to tower up to the level of the clouds, but that he also 'brings about rain and flood.' The Efe pygmies of the Ituri forest tell of a deluge of water which gushed forth as a mighty river when their version of the Cosmic Tree, which was the polar column, was felled. Similarly, the Arawak Indians of the Guinas tell of a wondrous tree which Sigu cut down. From its stump, water gushed out in such quantity as to cause a deluge. This tale is also found among the traditions of the Cuna, who tell of their mischief-maker, the Tapir, chopping down the Saltwater Tree from which salt water gushed out to form the oceans of the world. Thus, Velikovsky was correct when he surmised that the water of the Deluge would have been salty, but not, as he believed, because the salt, or at least its chlorine content, originated from Saturn. The water was salty because it came from the same oceanic water the vortex had sucked up in the first place.
THE FLOOD FROM THE NORTH

AMY: Cardona moves on to the next demand of the Saturn Theory. If the Deluge was the result of the collapse of a colossal tornado situated in the north, then the mytho-historical record must also contain this information. And it does. Among others, three American Indian tribes, the Wintus, the Wichita, and the Pawnee, tell different legends of the flood, but in each case the deluge arrives from the north. CARDONA: But what of the hard sciences? Is the evidence there? Once again, I can only mention a few items here, but that an enormous flood had once swept down from the north to scour the land surface of North America has been suggested by J. Harlan Bretz. So, similarly, with C. Warren Hunt who speaks of evidence pointing to a flood from the north, excavating the land as it went before it emptied into Lake Bonneville. That Lake Bonneville itself also burst its bounds to cause a secondary flood has been documented by Robert Jarred and Harold Malde. What is of additional interest here is that the area once covered by this lake constitutes a vast salt deposit 100 square miles in extent. Similar signs of a vast scouring flood from the north have also been discovered in Siberia. It is, of course, theorized that this flood was due to the catastrophic melting of the northern ice cap at the end of the Ice Age. I, on the other hand, claim that, at this time, the northern ice cap had not yet been formed
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THE CHURNING OF THE OCEAN

One of the most dramatic images of the concept under discussion, and one which brings various of our motifs together in one place, is invoked by the Indic myth, from the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana, concerning the production of amrita (or ambrosia). In brief the myth is this: In an effort to produce this divine nectar, both gods and demons used Mount Mandara as a churning stick. Winding the serpent Vasuki, also known as Ananta, around Mount Mandara, the gods (at one end) and the demons (at the other) grasped hold of Vasuki by the head and tail and, pulling him back and forth, were able to rotate Mount Mandara fast enough to whisk the sea into an ocean of milk from which amrita was produced. Now, to be sure, in most visual representations of the myth in question, Mount Mara is depicted not in the form of a mountain, but in that of a pillar, thus validating our conviction that the mythic World Mountain and the Axis Mundi were one and the same. In fact, it has long been known to Indologists that Mount Mandara stood for the axis of the world. The second thing we notice is hardly worth mentioning, and that is that this cosmic pillar did twist and churn. In Vasuki we recognize the bolus flow wrapped around the central vortex -- and here it is interesting to note that this entity was 'associated with the north,' thus locating the entire action in that locality. Finally, in the divinities' churning by pulling at the coiled Vasuki this way and that way, an echo is retained of the clockwise/counterclockwise rotation of the bolus flow as described by Jueneman. The elements contained in the myth of the churning of the ocean must not be thought of as uniquely Hindu in origin. In the Hindu myth, for instance, we see that Mandara was placed on the back of a tortoise. In Chinese mythology, it is Shang-ti who is depicted as standing on the celestial tortoise, while the serpent was said to have encircled the tortoise. Shang-ti's title was The Holy and Propitious Prince of the North Pole, who is usually represented as surrounded by a halo, both of which have special meaning to this study. It is also noteworthy that the symbolism of the tortoise and serpent goes at least as far back as the Han dynasty and was used as an emblem for the northern region of the world. More than that, as Lord of the Centre, Shang-ti was also revered as Huang-ti, who is perhaps better known as the Yellow Lord or Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor has long been acknowledged to be an avatar of Saturn. And in the Japanese Kojiki we learn of the Heavenly Jeweled Spear which joined heaven to Earth and which acted as the churning stick responsible for the surfacing of the mythical -- one might as well say celestial -- island of Onogoro. To be continued...
TEKTITE QUESTION
By Michel Tavir and Wal Thornhill Michel Tavir asks: In WiC Velikovsky mentions the lake of Bolsena in Tuscany as a crater which could look volcanic, but is the actual result of an electric discharge between a celestial object, most likely Mars, and the Earth. However, nothing in the literature or in the mineralogical business indicates that there are tektites to be found in that area (nor in the whole of Italy, for that matter). If tektites are the consequence of electric discharges, why do some of the latter not produce tektites? All the tektite localities I have on record have one thing in common: they are conspicuously outside of areas of high tectonic (no pun...)or volcanic activity. Any correlation? Italy hosts numerous volcanoes and is reputedly prone to earthquakes...
Wal Thornhill replies:
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Tektites are identifiable by their aerodynamic shaping during entry (or re-entry) into the Earth's atmosphere. So they will not necessarily be found anywhere near their point of origin. Concerning origins, geologists are satisfied that their composition is earthly. However, if the surface stratification we see on Earth, the Moon and Mars is due to deposition from space - which I think is a far better model - then such satisfaction may be unwarranted. It seems to me that material that is glassified in a cosmic electric discharge will be near the center of the discharge channel and will suffer the most violent acceleration spacewards. So it would not be surprising if tektites are rare at the site of the planetary electrical scar. (See the section on meteorites on my CD). Wal Thornhill
OTHER STARS, OTHER WORLDS, OTHER LIFE

By Wal Thornhill Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Dr. S. Ross Taylor has concluded after a lifetime's work on the formation of the solar system: When the remote chances of developing a habitable planet are added to the chances of developing both high intelligence and a technically advanced civilization, the odds of finding 'little green men' elsewhere in the universe decline to zero. The bleak suggestion that we are freaks of chance and probably all the intelligence there is in this immense universe is intuitively unsatisfactory. The problem with all predictions about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that it assumes we have defied history and reached a pinnacle of understanding at the close of the 20th century. History teaches that the peak we have climbed may be atop a house of cards. We might accept Dr. Taylor's conclusion based on the current model but it could be like pronouncing intelligent life to be highly unlikely in the ruins following the crash of a jumbo-jet. The solar system could be the result of a cosmic traffic accident. Possibly it is not the most hospitable environment for life. So using it as a benchmark must lead to pessimistic forecasts. Let's examine a key assumption underlying such speculation - that we understand what constitutes a star. The first presumption appears in the following statement from the Encyclopedia Britannica: The most basic property of stars is that their radiant energy must derive from internal sources. Given the great length of time that stars endure (some 10,000,000,000 years in the case of the Sun), it can be shown that neither chemical nor gravitational effects could possibly yield the required energies. Instead, the cause must be nuclear events wherein lighter nuclei are fused to create heavier nuclei... Astrophysicists have never considered the simpler alternative - that stars are powered externally. All their genius has been directed at modelling how a giant ball of hydrogen could be coaxed into slowly releasing pent up atomic energy in the most difficult way imaginable -- heating it to tens of millions of degrees. With one notable exception, no one has bothered to look for an alternative despite the fact that none of the observed features of the Sun have any business being there in the thermonuclear model. The exception is the work of a remarkable engineer from Flagstaff Arizona, the late Ralph Juergens. In his model, stars simply form a positive electrode (anode) in a galactic glow discharge. The Sun and all stars are lit up by the electrical energy that shapes and flows along the arms of the galaxy. The Sun is a giant ball of lightning! This surprisingly simple model fits all of the observations about our Sun and forms
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one of the key ideas in the Electric Universe. A star's size, brightness and color are then largely determined by its electrical environment. That explains the puzzling lack of neutrinos expected from nuclear reactions in the Sun's core, and how some stars are able to vary their output far more quickly than the thermonuclear model allows. Stellar lightning bolts are effective particle accelerators that can synthesize heavy elements in nuclear reactions at the surface of a star. The heavy elements seen in the Sun's spectrum are created at the surface of the Sun, along with the few neutrinos we observe. That neutrino numbers seem to follow surface and external effects like sunspots and the solar wind is to be expected in an electric star. It is inexplicable in the thermonuclear model. In the last few years a new class of faint stars has been discovered. They are called L-Type Brown Dwarfs because the element lithium appears in their spectra. They are the most numerous stellar objects in the galaxy and bridge the gap between stars and Jupiter-sized planets. They are too small to be shining from internal thermonuclear power. A further puzzle is that they radiate blue and ultraviolet light even though they are cool at a temperature around 950K. Water molecules dominate their spectra. All of these puzzles are simply explained by an electric star. There is no lower limit to the size of a body that can accept electric power from the galaxy so the temperatures of smaller dwarfs will range down to levels conducive to life. The light of a red star is due to the distended anode glow of an electrically lowstressed star. The blue and ultraviolet light come from a low-energy corona. (Our Sun's more compact red anode glow is seen briefly as the chromosphere during total solar eclipses. And the Sun is electrically stressed to the extent that bright anode "tufting" covers its surface with granulations and the corona emits higher energy ultraviolet light and x-rays as relativistic electrons strike it). At the other extremity of size, Red Giants are a more visible and scaled-up example of what an L-type Brown Dwarf star might look like close-up. The Red Giant Betelgeuse is so huge that if it were to replace our Sun then Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter would be engulfed by it. Astronomers recognize that such stars could swallow planets yet their plasma envelope is so tenuous that it would not impede the planetary orbits within the star's atmosphere. However, astronomers believe that any planet it swallowed would be gradually vaporized by intense heat from the star's core. But the standard stellar model has to be seriously fudged to explain Red Giants, their central temperature turns out to be so low that no known nuclear process can possibly supply the observed energy output. The electric model, on the other hand, works seamlessly from Supergiant star to a planet- sized Brown Dwarf. Since an electric star is heated externally a planet need not be destroyed by orbiting beneath its anode glow. In fact life is not only possible inside the glow of a small brown dwarf, it seems far more likely than on a planet orbiting outside a star! This is because the radiant energy arriving on a planet orbiting inside a glowing sphere is evenly distributed over the entire surface of the planet. There are no seasons, no tropics and no ice-caps. A planet does not have to rotate, its axis can point in any direction and its orbit can be eccentric. The radiant energy received by the planet will be strongest at the blue and red ends of the spectrum. Photosynthesis relies on red light. Sky light would be a pale purple (the classical "purple dawn of creation"). L-type Brown Dwarfs have water as a dominant molecule in their spectra, along with many other biologically important molecules and elements. Its "children" would accumulate atmospheres and water would mist down. It is therefore of particular interest that most of the extra-solar planets discovered are gas giants, several times the size of Jupiter, orbiting their star extremely closely. It is our system of distantly orbiting planets that seems the odd one out. In fact it argues in favor of a galactic traffic accident between the Sun and a sub-Brown Dwarf like Jupiter or Saturn. So let's examine a second major plank of standard theory - that we understand where planets come from. The nebula theory of the origin of planets is so problematic that it only survives because no one has been able to come up with a better idea. A many-body system controlled by a single force, gravity, is inherently unstable and should fly to pieces. In an Electric Universe the model is simple. Planets are "born" from stars in a descending hierarchy of size by the highly efficient expedient of electrical splitting of an
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unstable positively charged core. That is why the majority of stars have partners. It explains why many of the extra-solar planets orbit their star extremely closely - that is where they were created. It is why Jupiter and Saturn have a large number of close-orbiting moons. Close orbits are normal. Distant or highly eccentric orbits are more likely to be a result of capture. An exchange between orbital and electrical energy quickly stabilizes orbits. It can be seen that the Electric Universe model provides a superior environment for the establishment of life than a planet relying on a distant star and having to be self-sufficient for its atmosphere and surface deposits. Such a planet needs to rotate fairly quickly to even out the energy received and must have a small axial tilt for the same reason. It has only a limited range of orbits and eccentricity for life to survive. It also requires that the star maintains a steady radiance over millions of years. This is the Earth's present situation and I believe Prof. Taylor is right in considering the chances for life to have begun and to have survived here are close to zero. If the following sounds like science fiction, so be it. Science fiction writers are far better than experts at predicting future knowledge. What then might be the Earth's history? The distant orbits from the Sun suggest that we were captured along with our Brown Dwarf parent. In the process, the electric power that drove our parent star was usurped by the Sun. As well as turning out the primordial light, the Sun stripped the Earth from its mother's womb along with the Moon. Night fell for the first time and stars appeared. Ice ages began suddenly. The polar caps formed. High latitudes became uninhabitable. It is worth adding that many of the moons, or remaining offspring, of the gas giants have surprisingly icy surfaces and some have atmospheres. Life may have existed once on Mars and some of those moons. The Electric Universe model has almost biological overtones that favor life. In the process of growing in a galactic electromagnetic pinch, stars are prevented from becoming too massive by "budding off" other stars and gas giant planets. Some progeny remain to form binary or multiple star families. Others escape from their parent. All receive their share of energy from the galaxy. The most common stars in the galaxy are also the dimmest, the L-Type Brown Dwarfs. These stars have the "food" required for life present in their atmospheres. Such a dwarf star/gas giant may undergo a nova outburst to eject part of its core to form dense Earth-like planets and moons. If they remain close to the parent they may be enveloped within the "womb" of the stellar anode glow where it seems the principal conditions for life are present. Our search for intelligent life should therefore focus on the faintest close stars in the sky. But there is a problem in relying on radio signals because they cannot pass through the hot plasma of an anode glow. (That could account for the lack of success of SETI so far). It would limit the ability of intelligent creatures living in that environment to know anything about the wider universe since they would not see stars. There would be no incentive for space travel which, in any case, might be a problem through the anode glow region. Maybe we on Earth are almost a "one off", as Dr. Taylor says, to have survived an escape from our stellar cocoon to see the wider universe. If so, I hope we learn to use our privileged position wisely. The most disturbing idea I have left to last: the words used by ancient civilizations that are interpreted today as "the Sun" - like the Egyptian "Ra", the Greek "Helios", and the Roman "Sol" - all originally referred to the gas giant Saturn! Was that planet our primordial parent? Was Saturn until recently a much larger brown dwarf? (The apparent size and color of an electric star is an electrical phenomenon. If Jupiter's magnetosphere were lit up it would appear the size of the full Moon). Was ancient man around to see it as a sun? If not, why would anyone call a faint yellowish speck in the night sky - the Sun? Just how recently did Saturn get its icy ring? Does the discovery that the human race seems to have spread from a handful of survivors in the not so distant past have anything to do with this story? Oddly enough, an interdisciplinary approach can answer many of these questions in surprising detail. But it requires letting go of a lot of "things we know ain't so". The present model of isolated self-powered stars with a family of relatively distant planets gives infinitesimally small windows of opportunity for life to gain a foothold, let alone sustain it for millions of years. An Electric Universe where energy is available to objects throughout the entire volume of a galaxy is an infinitely better environment for life. Faint, dwarf electric stars may be crucial to a radical
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reassessment of the likelihood of other intelligent life in the universe. Who knows, the Cassini mission to Saturn may be a kind of homecoming? It will return some surprises. Full story with photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_other.htm Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No. 2 (January 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: TRUTH OR FASHION by Mel Acheson THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY (4) excerpts from Dwardu Cardona KRONIATALK QUESTIONS Ted Bond, Karen Josephson, Julie Dyer responses by Wal Thornhill SHOCKS FROM ETA CARINA by Wal Thornhill
TRUTH OR FASHION
By Mel Acheson If currently fashionable theories are Ultimate Truth (or at least smart ideas) and myth was stupid superstition, where is the dividing line? Was Ptolemy stupid and Newton smart? But General Relativity is not just an improved version of Newton's theory, it's different: Einstein's stretchable space-time is not compatible with Newton's rock-solid frame of reference. Newton was wrong. Either he was stupid or his theory, after all, was adequate for his time and for the data set he was aware of. If the latter is true, then Ptolemy wasn't stupid, either, and epicycles were appropriate for Ptolemy's time and data set. Therefore, on the principle that intelligence and theory-making are cognitive structures inherent in the human species, the myth-makers weren't stupid. They were trying to make sense of their data just as we are trying to make sense of ours. Astronomy is an old endeavor. Despite changing theories and the expansion of awareness of the universe, the tradition of trying to explain that universe is continuous from present-day astronomers to early-historical astrologers to prehistorical myth-makers. Here's the catch: The data has changed. The data set of the myth-makers was not just smaller than the data set of fashionable theory, it is unrecognizable in comparison. Nothing in today's domain of planetary motions resembles the images recorded by the myth-makers. Their planets were up close, personal, and axially aligned. Their planets turned, like wheels, in the air. Their planets swelled and shrank. Their planets raged in the sky, hurled thunderbolts, and destroyed cities. Our planets are tiny and sedate specks of light that we have to be trained to recognize. Were our ancestors hallucinating? Were they insane? Or are we? "Nothing in today's domain" is not quite true. The newly- discovered planets circling other stars are mostly close- orbiting. If we had to live in those systems, where a "year" passes in just a few days, we might better appreciate our ancestors' descriptions. And certain stellar and galactic jets are ejecting blobs of material along their axes, apparently highly charged, judging by the synchrotron radiation. There might be lightning bolts arcing among them. The domain of the myth-makers' data has reappeared at larger scales, and the explanatory power of fashionable theories is inadequate to deal with it.
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As long as we continue gathering data, the theories that are fashionable today will become tomorrow's superstitions. Our descendants will wonder how we could be so stupid as to believe our few observations over a couple of centuries could provide a picture of the universe for all time. And our perverse refusal to pay attention to contrary data and to the testimony of our own ancestors must surely be a sign of insanity. Stupid. Insane. It could be us. Mel Acheson
THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: (4)

Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson [ed. note: the text of the introduction to this paper is available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.] AMY ACHESON: Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho- historical records from all over the world. Among these were Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as the sun of night. Part II concerned the postulate that the mytho-historical record places Saturn at the Earth's north pole. Cardona stresses that this information is not taken from a single story, but is expressed in hundreds of different ways in hundreds of different stories told over the world. Part III discussed the lithic bulge as a physical remnant of a recent, short-term force acting in the direction of Earth's north pole. Cardona presented mytho-historical evidence for a polar column at Earth's north pole and discussed the theoretical interpretations of several catastrophists. He expressed his personal preference of interpreting the polar column as a Rankine vortex. Part IV concludes this paper. CARDONA:
THE ARCTIC CARNAGE

Meanwhile, does not this scenario, involving a tornado of planetary proportions, raise even more demands? ... we are all acquainted with the destructive force that tornadoes exhibit. Should not Saturn's Rankine vortex, therefore, have left signs of an even greater destruction? This would have been especially so since this titanic maelstrom would have wrought its devastation while laterally standing still. A full exposition concerning the history of the axis mundi requires a volume [by itself] ... I point to ... the Arctic muck, or frozen soil, which 'covers no less than one seventh of the land surface of earth,' all of which encircles the Arctic Ocean and lies within the Arctic Circle. Composed mainly of silt, sand, pebbles, and boulders, it is often accompanied by 'preserved, semi-decayed, or fully decayed vegetable and animal matter.' Its depth, in some places, 'has always caused even the most open-minded geologists to boggle.' The Russians, who have conducted prolonged studies on this muck, have in some places drilled down to more than 4000 feet without reaching rock bottom. Entire forests have been found buried in this area, including plum trees complete with their leaves and fruits, to say nothing of palm trees and huge
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exotic ferns ... animals [have been] found buried in this muck, the most noteworthy and famous of which, needless to say, is the mammoth. Let's face it, as George Gaylord Simpson was astute enough to realize, catastrophic events at the end of the Pleistocene were not only much more severe in North than in South America, they also affected a much larger proportion of animals. AMY: Cardona quotes various researchers defining the puzzle of how so much surface material could have been transported so far and piled so deep, with no apparent highland source or sufficient drainage. CARDONA: ...But consider now the model being discussed and tested. Would not such a colossal vortex as posited above have scoured the land, year-in year-out, uprooting ... trees ... sizable chunks of rock, [and] boulders, which would have swirled around, grinding relentlessly against each other; breaking apart into ever smaller pieces, and smaller still until ground into sand and silt? And what is the area that is now filled with the Arctic Ocean if not an immense basin scoured out of the living rock? AMY: Cardona describes the Arctic muck of Siberia, Alaska and the Arctic islands, emphasizing the "vast remains of torn and broken mammoths" as "evidence of an atmospheric tempest of unprecedented dimensions." CARDONA: ...Entire forests in an uprooted condition, bituminous trunks and fossilized charcoal, are everywhere intermingled with petrified ash, and veins of ice, and sand that has turned into sandstone. Among this colossal devastation are found the skeletons of mammoths, rhinoceroses, bison, and horses. AMY: Cardona compares his own thesis to other catastrophic theories, and especially to the non-polar theories, concluding that: CARDONA: ...on this topic, I have the additional evidence of the mytho-historical record on my side-as the theory, in fact, continues to demand. What is this evidence? Does it, for instance, have anything to say re the catastrophic demise of the mammoths in the north? ...Are elephants [mammoths] ... mentioned in the record in connection with the polar vortex? In the Mahabharata we read that Mandara, that churning mountain, was 'crowded with tusked animals.' Moreover, when the churning began, ... great trees spun off, were crushed against one another, lightning flashed forth, a fire blazed burning the elephants and other beasts, 'and all the various creatures there lost their life's breath.' The water pouring from above eventually dowsed the fire and flowed into the ocean. Thus we can see that we have here the entire spectrum of the devastation -- the whirlwind, the uprooted forest, the carnage, the fire, and the ensuing flood. Does this not tally with is found in Earth's northern regions? AMY: Cardona quotes mytho-historical records which caution that man cannot approach the vortex, this golden mountain, and he suspects that, at first, the animals didn't approach it, either. CARDONA: ...But in the end, when the planets were displaced from their polar alignment, the funnel of the polar column was dislodged from its axial locus. Swirling now in corkscrew fashion, writhing like a serpent in travail, it went berserk and overstepped the bounds within which it had been contained for ages. Taken unawares, beasts fell prone to it. Man, apparently, was just that much smarter.
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THE ONSLAUGHT OF ICE

The penultimate question I wish to raise concerns the freezing of the ... Arctic muck or permafrost. How did it all freeze? Where did the ice come from? ... Is it traceable to the planet Saturn or Earth's primeval position in relation to Saturn? Can this demand also be met? This is an easy question to answer. The Greeks, for instance, had long associated ... Saturn, with snow and hail. In fact, Saturn was renowned for being 'cold' and 'moist.' This seemingly-odd belief is not met only among the Greeks. Abu Ma'sar also had it stated that Saturn's nature is cold ... Alcabitius likewise recorded that 'he [Saturn] is bad, masculine, in daytime cold...' Epigenes of Byzantium classified Saturn as 'cold and windy.' Dorotheus also talks of 'cold Saturn.' Pliny wrote that 'Saturn is of a cold and frozen nature,' while Virgil spoke of 'Saturn's cold star.' We can thus be close to certain that when the Zunis of New Mexico refer to Awonawilona as having also been associated with cold, they were reiterating an archaic testimonial concerning the planet Saturn's affiliation with snow and ice. This is all the more made clear since Awonawilona means All- Father Father, an epithet which elsewhere was reserved for the Saturnian deity. Thus Kronos/Saturn was referred to as First Father, while Odin was known as All-father, the very same name of the Zuni Awonawilona.
Mythologists have never been able to supply a convincing theory to explain why the planet Saturn and its deity should be associated with cold, snow, and ice. A telling clue comes from William of Conches who tells us that 'Saturn is called cold not because he is inherently cold himself but because he causes cold.' AMY: Cardona discusses this connection between Saturn and cold with respect to the Greek and Persian mytho-historical record, and then adds this story told by the Modoc Indians of southern Oregon and northern California: CARDONA: ...the Chief of the Sky Spirits drilled a hole in the sky with a rotating stone through which he pushed snow and ice to form a mound which almost touched the sky ... the drilling of the sky with a rotating stone is too similar to the churning of the ocean by Mount Madara to escape our notice. Destruction of the world by cold is also met with among the marginal, forest, and southern Andean peoples. As Dolph Hooker informs us: ...we cannot find evidence that Earth's climate grew cold before the advent of an ice age; ... on the contrary, climate grew colder only after the ice arrived and only to the extent that the ice itself refrigerated the Earth... ...As Hooker also tells us: 'Obviously the perma-frost accumulated from the bottom upward--not by freezing from the top downward.' What this means is that the detritus which forms the permafrost was frozen as it was being laid down. Am I here advocating that the ice which caused the so-called Ice Age came from the planet Saturn? Not really. What I am claiming is that the snow, ice, and sleet came from the axial vortex when it was severed for the last time because that is where a vast quantity of terrestrial moisture had been stored. But why, and how, then did it freeze to fall as snow, and ice, and sleet? As mentioned earlier, this all transpired during the break-up of the Saturnian configuration. Saturn, Venus, and Mars were thrown out of axial alignment. And so was Earth. Its axis shifted to take up the alignment it now possesses. Do we find this also contained in the mytho-historical record? Is this demand also met?
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EARTH'S SHIFTING AXIS

...The Muria, a tribe of the Bastar State in the Central Provinces of India ... tell without ambiguity how Mahapurub turned the world topsy-turvy ... [the record] of the Hopi ... is one of the best to illustrate the subject under discussion. As these Indians narrate: '...the world, with no one to control it, teetered off balance, spun around crazily, then rolled over twice. Mountains plunged into seas with a great splash, seas and lakes sloshed over the land; and as the world spun through cold and lifeless space it froze into solid ice..' How would these Indians have known that the teetering of the world would cause seas and lakes to slosh over the land? How would they have known that a shifting of earth's axis could freeze it into solid ice? Actually, had I any faith in the accuracy of counting the annual layers of ice retrieved in cores drilled out of Greenland's ice fields, I would even be able to date the event for you.
SATURN'S DEPARTURE
...I do not need to tell that Saturn is no longer in Earth's proximity. The theory then demands that somewhere in the record Saturn's removal from Earth's proximity should be encountered. And so we find as, for example, with the tale of Quetzelcoatl, whose 'paladins' died from the cold through the snow that fell upon them just before the god took off on his serpent raft to be seen no more. I mention this one myth because, as one can see, it ties in nicely with Saturn's removal at the very time when Earth, teetering off balance, was deluged with the onslaught of ice that ushered in the so-called Ice Age. ...having said so much about the Egyptian Ra toward the beginning of this treatise, it should perhaps be fitting for me to end with him. Thus, in an Egyptian myth, Ra is made to say: 'Weary indeed are my limbs and they fail me. I shall go forth... Henceforth my dwelling place must be in the heavens. No longer will I reign upon the earth.' And: 'I have determined to cause myself to be uplifted into the sky, to join the blessed gods and to renounce rule of the world' ...Then Ra raised himself from the back of the goddess Nut into the sky. So here I must ask: if Ra was truly the Sun, where had it been prior to its ascent into the sky? And if, as mythologists tell us, Nut was the goddess of the sky, what would it mean that the Sun rose from the back of the sky (i.e. Nut) into the sky? What does it mean that, before ascending into the sky, the Sun had reigned upon Earth? What does it mean that the Sun once ruled the world? Do we not, in fact, find it stated in an Orphic fragment that 'Saturn dwelt openly on earth among men'? So, also, Dionysus of Halicarnassus who declared that 'Kronos ruled on this very earth.' Besides, as it was written, when Ra removed himself into the sky, 'darkness came on' and 'Ra was borne through darkness.' Does this make sense if Ra was the Sun? Do we see darkness coming on when the Sun rises into the sky? The answer to this mystery is that the sun of night, which had ruled Earth due to its proximity, had now removed itself into the blackness of space. True night, as we now know it, finally descended upon the world. And the stars, which could not have been seen as long as the Saturnian sun of night was shining down on Earth, appeared in all their brilliance for the first time. Do we find this stated in the mytho-historical record? Can this last demand be met? As it is written: '[When Ra left Earth he] went on his way through the realms which are above, and these he divided and set in order. He spake creating words, and called into existence the field of Aalu, and there he caused to assemble a multitude of beings which are beheld in heaven, even the stars...' Dwardu Cardona
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KRONIATALK QUESTIONS
Ted Bond, Karen Josephson, Julie Dyer Responses by Wal Thornhill
Ted Bond asks: I have never seen an explanation of ball lightning that makes any sense. Orthodoxy denies its possibility, obeying the rule "Reject anomalous data", but my ex-wife and I once watched it skittering around our house so I know it exists. Wal Thornhill responds: there is a photograph on the wall of the high voltage lab in Melbourne where some of the experiments appearing on my CD were videotaped. It is a photograph of ball lightning. Dr C E R Bruce of the Electrical research Association was of the opinion that ball lightning was formed at severe kinks in a lightning channel. Plasma physicists are aware that plasma does the counter-intuitive thing at sharp bends in a magnetic field and will actually leave the usual path along the field lines and veer off in the opposite direction. It is at those points that a knot of hot ionized gas (or plasmoid) seems to be formed. Ball lightning seems to be a self-contained electrically resonant form of plasma which may hold the key to many astrophysical problems. For example, Bruce expected on the basis of his theory that balls of hot gas would be found at the ends of the bars in some barred spiral galaxies. That was confirmed. (Actually, Arp has shown that they are a site of companion galaxy formation). Subsequent experiments using a Boys camera in the lab confirmed that ball lightning is formed at sharp bends in the discharge channel. Karen Josephson asks: In the latest THOTH you describe the Earth as having probably been within the "anode glow" of an L-type Brown Dwarf star. This sounds like a good theory to me. I was wondering, though, how such a location would affect the planet if it went nova, as was mentioned as a possibility recently. Would a planet so positioned be protected from the worst effects by either the Earth's atmosphere, its location within Saturn's "atmosphere", both, or??? Wal replies: it depends on whether the nova was due to the birth of a planetesimal from proto-Saturn. If so, the answer has to be conjectural based on analogies with novae of brighter stars. L-type brown dwarfs detected so far are nearby yet they are near the limit of visibility of our best telescopes. So a nova outburst of such a star would increase the radiant output but not, I think, to lethal levels. My view, stated before, is that the light increase is like a star-wide lightning flash with a suitably scaled up duration. When I say star-wide, I mean the corona and photosphere is involved. So, if we were orbiting within the photosphere, we would have been protected to a large degree by our and Saturn's atmosphere. It would depend, of course, on the trajectory of the ejected material from protoSaturn. There is another possibility that I think played a part. That is the kind of electrical outbursts we see from comets and which enable those tiny objects to be seen with the naked eye. The effects would be similar in the Saturnian configuration, with jets from the more electrically active bodies, like Venus, within a brightening coma or photosphere. Certainly, as Velikovsky mentioned, the light outburst was memorable. Julie M. Dyer says:
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A little follow-up on the Spanish ice chunk fall. from: Oceanspace Issue 206 Thursday 27 January 2000
SPANISH ICE BLAMED ON WEIRD WEATHER

Remember the story of huge chunks of ice dropping on Spain? Preliminary results of studies by scientists led by Jesus Martinez Frias reveal that most were practical jokes but some were the result of a freak weather phenomenon miles above the Earth. At a packed press conference, he said at least some of the ice pieces had probably been formed through sudden temperature drops in the stratosphere, which begins about seven miles above Earth and extends to about 30 miles. He explained that similar cases had been reported in China and Brazil in 1995. The researchers say that while this was the most likely explanation, they were still unsure and would continue their study. An Associated Press report explains that "questions remained. Fernando Lopez, a professor at Madrid's Autonomous University questioned how ice could form in the stratosphere because that layer has very little moisture. And, he added, once a piece starts forming, how does it remain suspended long enough to grow to weigh nearly 9 pounds, as some of the Spanish chunks did?" Wal responds: Eric Crew proposed a model for such falls of large chunks of ice. They are the result of warm moist air being jetted upwards into the stratosphere by exceptionally powerful lightning. As the front material turns to ice, the following moisture freezes to it until you have a layered ice ball weighing maybe a few kilos. It then plummets to Earth, often some distance from the storm. So the question is whether there were any electrical storms reported in the area at that time. It also occurs to me that under freak conditions of a "bolt from the blue" where the usual path to ground through a cloud is not available, the ice could fall from a clear blue (or at least not stormy) sky. In that case we should look for reports of a thunderclap without any storm.
SHOCKS FROM ETA CARINA

By Wal Thornhill Excerpt from Space Science News (12 October 1999): Just three years ago the Hubble Space Telescope provided a dazzling image of a star that was blowing off massive quantities of material in a blast that looked like a supernova yet, mysteriously, wasn't one. Now the Chandra X-ray Observatory has looked at Eta Carina and showed details that are, well, shocking. See photos on Thornhill's website at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/eta_carina.htm A Hubble Space Telescope image of Eta Carina is shown scaled to fit within the much larger X-ray nebula discovered by Chandra. The lobes are as wide as our solar system and expanding in opposite directions away from a central bright disk at speeds in excess of 1 million km/h (600,000 mph). The odd shape is believed to be partly due to the star's intense magnetic field channeling plasma. "It is not what I expected," said Dr. Fred Seward of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The new X-ray observation shows three distinct structures: an outer, horseshoe-shaped ring about 2 light years in diameter, a hot inner core about 3 light- months in diameter, and a hot central source less than 1 light- month in diameter which may contain the superstar that drives the whole show. The outer ring provides evidence of another large explosion that occurred over 1,000 years ago.
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All three structures are thought to represent shock waves produced by matter rushing away from the superstar at supersonic speeds. The temperature of the shock-heated gas ranges from 60 million deg. Kelvin in the central regions to 3 million K (108 million deg. F to 5.4 million deg. F) on the outer structure. Since it looked like a supernova, one naturally would assume that was the end of the star. All that should be left are beautiful nebula and, perhaps, a neutron star or black hole where the original star once stood. Instead, Eta Carinae is still there (in a subtle bit of grammar, astronomers refer to the star as Eta Carinae and the nebula as Eta Carina).
FOR THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE THERE ARE NO SURPRISES

As long ago as 1968 Dr Charles Bruce of the UK Electrical Research Association identified planetary nebulae as bipolar electrical discharges from a central star. Eta Carina obviously belongs in that category. Unfortunately, astronomers have very limited options in their toolkit to explain 3 million degree temperatures and x-rays from gas more than a light-year from the central star. However, it is simple to explain if it is a plasma heated by electric current being fed into Eta Carinae. Just as with our own sun, the highest "temperatures" are then encountered outside the star. That would explain why there is relatively little radiation from the star at the centre. Most of the power focussed on the hapless star is being intercepted by distant gas and dust and radiated energetically into space. Dr. Fred Seward said: I expected to see a strong point source with a little diffuse emission cloud around it. Instead we see just the opposite- a bright cloud of diffuse emission, and much less radiation from the centre. A star is merely a focus of a galactic electric discharge and does not have to provide internal energy to power objects like the Eta Carina nebula. A good sense of the desperate ideas required to save the old model can be gauged from the following post-script to the NASA report: As if its huffing and puffing behavior weren't weird enough, Eta Carina also appears to be a Death Star powerful enough to make Darth Vader turn in his light saber. Sveneric Johansson, a specialist in atomic spectroscopy at the University of Lund in Sweden, has proposed that Eta Carinae also is acting as a massive ultraviolet laser. Johansson, using Hubble observations made with the Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph, reported in 1996 that his interpretation is not yet proven, but that it appears to be the most plausible explanation of the data. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 3 (February 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHAT IF CONJUNCTION THEMES THE NEUTRINO QUESTION PARADIGM PORTRAITS ALIEN SKIES
by Amy Acheson by Dave Talbott by Dwardu Cardona by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill
WHAT IF
By Amy Acheson In SEEING RED (pp. 58-59), Halton Arp tells this story: In about 1951 I was choosing a Ph.D. thesis topic. I had been captivated by the early reports of Karl Seyfert's discovery of galaxies with brilliant compact cores. I was particularly intrigued with the fact that these cores were rich in ultraviolet light. I guess I sensed this was where there was some action, some mystery. For a thesis, I proposed to photograph these galaxies in ultraviolet light, and see what connection the nucleus had to the galaxy, and whether there were any other ultraviolet objects around. Arp's proposal was vetoed: ...a terrible thesis that would yield nothing. Arp adds: Twenty years later, I was finding quasars around active galaxies by photographing them in ultraviolet and blue light and taking spectra of those candidates with ultraviolet excess. Occasionally, I would think on those nights: If I had done that thesis, maybe I would have discovered quasars ten years before they were discovered from radio positions. What difference would it have made to the course of cosmology? What difference would it have made to the course of cosmology? Quasars might have been discovered a decade earlier, before it was as strongly accepted that the Big Bang/Expanding Universe was the only cosmology worth studying. They would have been discovered "in situ", obviously associated with and ejected from active parent galaxies. Furthermore, their existence would have been connected to Halton Arp (would they be called "Arp objects" rather than quasars?) One might imagine that it would be easier to accept a cosmology argument from the man who discovered quasars than from a bright young astronomer from Palomar.
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Then, again, maybe not. Quasars aren't all that impressive when you place them in their natural surroundings. Many had already been photographed and dismissed as nearby (within the Milky Way) stars. It took the redshift/velocity relationship to distort them into magnificent beacons, violent energy sources, at the very edge of the expanding universe. And it was this distortion which captured the imagination of the astronomical world. Possibly, if Arp's doctoral thesis had identified quasars as faint companions of nearby galaxies, astronomers would have dismissed their high redshift as an unimportant anomaly and continued to theorize about an expanding universe that began with a Big Bang. Or maybe, as they actually did a decade later, they would have doubted the connections, expelling and magnifying the quasars to today's accepted concept. In the real world, Arp was hurt, but not defeated by the refusal of colleagues and professional journals to take seriously his observational contradiction to accepted theory. So, in our "what if" world, I would imagine that even if quasars were dismissed as minor anomalies, and Arp's ideas ignored, Arp would have had the strength to continue his research and wait for the rest of the world to catch up. That's the kind of astronomer he was. When urged by a well-respected astronomer to "give up my radical ideas and once again participate in the privilege of doing mainstream astronomy, [Arp] thanked him and answered him with a quote from [his] wife [astronomer Marie-Helene Ulrich]: If you are wrong it doesn't make any difference, if you are right it is enormously important. ~Halton Arp, SEEING RED pg. 91 That's the same spirit that motivates researchers in the discipline of Catastrophics. The dismissals and ridicule are painful, but the promise of learning something new about our universe is worth the risk. In addition, it's gratifying to see how closely our Electric Universe/Saturn Theory meshes with the Arp's radical ideas on the cutting edge of astronomy. Amy Acheson
CONJUNCTION THEMES
By Dave Talbott More than one post recently has raised questions about the ancient planetary "conjunction" of Saturn's epoch. Though this subject deserves a more visual treatment than is possible in an email forum, I will register a few observations. I noticed on the videotape of the SIS conference last fall that Professor Lynn Rose made a memorable statement to the effect that one can search through world mythology without confronting the "god-kabob", his phrase for the claimed collinear system. I, on the other hand, do not hesitate to claim that world mythology is nothing else than the story of the "Great Conjunction" of Saturn's epoch and what happened to it. Of hundreds of recurring mythical and symbolic motifs we have identified, not one can be isolated from the conjunction principle. I found Lynn's statement particularly curious since, as one of the more dedicated Velikovskians, he would be among the first to agree that ancient peoples worshipped the planets as the great gods of former times. If so, on what ground could he deny that the images of Venus in the center of the ancient sun god (Saturn), which Ev presented at the very conference in question, imply a principle of "conjunction"? Or how could he deny that the far-famed liaison or "marriage" of the warrior Mars and the Venus-goddess similarly implies a planetary "conjunction"? Grant the identity of god and planet; and you cannot escape the ancient memory of planets juxtaposed in the sky close to the earth.
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No doubt my suggestion that EVERY recurring theme involves a joining of planets will appear excessive. But the statement is literally true and would be easily challenged if false. Examine any theme in its earliest contexts and you will come face-to-face with the conjunction principle. An example: One might wish to suggest that the myth of the world mountain, a recent subject of discussion, does not really require a conjunction principle, just a cosmic hill and a god on the mountaintop. But there is no world mountain if you take away conjunction. As we have documented, the mountain is the pillar- form of Mars, the warrior-hero, whose first form the Egyptians called Shu (a god identified as "the Primeval Hill") and the Sumerians knew as Enlil (called "Great Mountain"). The reference is to the COSMIC mountain, presenting the appearance of a great pillar supporting the central sun, who is Saturn. It is this pillar-god who, in Atlas fashion, "raises up heaven", and here too the reference is to the huge sphere of Saturn ("all-containing heaven") resting visually above the cosmic column. Nor can the planet Venus be removed from the theme of the world mountain, for the goddess is the celebrated "consort" of the mountain; the "spouse upon the mountain"; the feminine enclosure upon the summit of a masculine column. This radiant "womb" of the goddess signifies the temple, city, or kingdom of heaven, always linked to the peak of the world mountain. Thus the great column is the Mount of Assembly, or Mount of Congregation, the place where the planetary gods dwell, as we see them gathered on Zion (=Tsaphon) and Olympus; conjunction and the gathering of the gods mean the same thing in ancient symbolism. So too, we have the Martian mountain as the single "leg" or lower limbs of the ancient sun; the column as a stream of aether or "air" brought by the warrior-hero to vivify the sun god; or the luminous path of the hero-messenger traveling between worlds. Apart from the conjunction principle, therefore, virtually nothing would be left of the world mountain! Even the lost paradise on the mountaintop would dissolve before us, since (as we've noted on prior occasions) "Paradise" means nothing else than "the Great Conjunction of the Golden Age". But again, one need only look closely to see that ALL mythical themes involve conjunction--Saturn as primeval Unity (he holds within himself the undifferentiated male and female powers); the goddess as the spouse and "indwelling glory" of Saturn; goddess as womb of the hero's birth; hero on the "lap" or "throne" of the goddess; goddess as eye of Saturn and hero as pupil of the eye; goddess as feminine "heart" of Saturn and hero as masculine "heart of the heart"; goddess as animating "soul" of Saturn and hero born from this soul; goddess as plant of life and hero born from the shining blossom; goddess as the hero's crown and hero "born from the crown"; goddess as vase, and hero "born from the jar"; goddess as radiate shield protecting the hero; goddess as omphalos or navel, and hero as "navel-born" god or "husband" of the navel; goddess as nave or hub of the "sun"-wheel, and hero as axle. Once the conjunction principle is fully appreciated, it becomes easy to see that the same principle will account for Jupiter's presence at the summit of the world axis following the displacement of Saturn. Jupiter was there all along, hidden behind Saturn. This will also explain why, in later astrology, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was called a "Great Conjunction", and with it the seers anticipated the return of the Golden Age. But remember that the Golden Age did not stand alone in human memory. Two seemingly contradictory tendencies pervaded all of the ancient civilizations: the first was the yearning for a return of paradise; the second was the fear of another Doomsday. The two tendencies are interwoven, for the Doomsday catastrophe means nothing else than the violent end of the Golden Age. Thus, thousands of years after these events, you still see the two motives entwined around the conjunction principle. Let the visible planets gather in the sky and what do the astrologers anticipate? "The Golden Age returns!" and, "Beware, for Doomsday approaches!" It needs to be emphasized that the Saturn model offers a direct correlation between the mythical themes and the primary pictographic and symbolic themes. Just as ALL mythical themes refer back to conjunction, so do the pictographs. Take, for example, the well-known "sun"-signs we have illustrated in the notebook, Symbols of an Alien Sky.
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Supposedly, these are just unusual ways of drawing our Sun! But by tracing these images back to the earliest Mesopotamian and Egyptian prototypes it can be seen that these are pictures of THREE ORBS IN CONJUNCTION. The identities of the NAMED planets in the Babylonian system is equally clear, as is the remarkable fact that the artists got the relative sizes correct. (Of this there can be no dispute, whatever you may wish to make of the situation.) These pictures, therefore, offer crucial information on the nature of the planetary conjunction to which the myths refer. In modern times when two or more planets merely enter the same zodiacal sign it is called a "conjunction". That allows a full 30 degrees of leeway--60 times the diameter of the Moon. In fact, three planets literally superimposed upon each other have NEVER been seen since the birth of empirical astronomy. And yet that is, beyond question, the ancient idea displayed pictographically and implied by countless ritual, symbolic and mythical traditions. It is also the condition inherent in the Saturn model (AND it is the principle implied by collinear equilibrium). The planets were aligned such that, in the stable phase, a single line would run through the center of each planet. In this regard, here is an interesting quote concerning the third century Babylonian priest-astronomer Berossus and the relationship of planets to world-ending catastrophe. Though the quote is weakened by the constellational associations, which have no part in the earlier imagery, the persistence of ancient memory is really quite remarkable. Berossus, interpreter of Belus, affirms that the whole issue is brought about by the course of the planets. So positive is he on the point that he assigns a definite date both for the conflagration and the deluge. All that the earth inherits will, he assures us, be consigned to flame when the planets which now move in different orbits, all assemble in Cancer, so arranged in one row that a straight line may pass through their spheres. When the same gathering takes place in Capricorn, then we are in danger of the deluge. In this single paragraph we see a series of beliefs expressed, all of them ludicrous by modern standards. 1) The planets once moved on different courses than they do now. 2) The great catastrophes recalled by ancient cultures related directly to the movements of planets. 3) Despite their flickering, seemingly formless appearance now, the planets are spheres. [As we've noted before: planets do not look like spheres today; modern theory cannot account for this ancient knowledge] 4) In a former time, the planets stood in conjunction. 5) An overwhelming catastrophe followed this conjunction. 6) Unlike the "conjunctions" familiar to astrologers in later times, the archetypal conjunction (the one affecting the fate of the world) was so perfect as to allow a single line to pass through the planetary spheres. I trust all readers will recognize that memories such as these, impossible to explain within any conventional framework, need no further explanation under the Saturn model. TED BOND asks: How could the Great Conjunction have caused or brought about the destruction of Saturn, ... given that it was stable for a considerable period of time? DAVE TALBOTT: In a nutshell, much of the later anxiety involves nothing else than the POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC FALLACY: .after it, therefore on account of it. Or, in terms closer to the language of ancient beliefs: As above so below; as before so again. What followed the ancient condition will be repeated whenever that condition is observed in the sky.
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There really is no LENGTH associated with the Golden Age tradition, and the planetary conjunction was so fundamental to the images of Doomsday as to make it impossible for ancient astronomers to observe planets approaching each other without fearing the worst. For example, it is known that in the ancient world, when planets came into "conjunction", astronomers would begin to look for the Doomsday comet. This fascinating fear continued into the Middle Ages. All collective fears and aspirations in ancient times point to a prior condition (but never to anything occurring in our familiar world, of course). The explanation for cometary fear in relation to planetary conjunction is simply that the remembered "Doomsday comet" was born from the remembered "Great Conjunction". That the Great Conjunction also defined the Golden Age will explain why BOTH a pervasive fear and a yearning for a return to Paradise are so fully entwined with the conjunction principles in later astrology. Dave Talbott
THE NEUTRINO QUESTION

By Dwardu Cardona In the Introduction to the paper I read at the SIS Silver Jubilee Conference held in England on September 19, 1999, I had reason to state that no solar neutrinos have been detected. This raised objections from various parties who sought to correct me in that "some" neutrinos HAVE been detected. Not wishing to get embroiled in an argument, I then wrote to Ian Tresman, who had already published my Introduction on one of his web sites, asking him to change my statement to reflect that about two-thirds of the neutrinos predicted have so far been detected. Later, Amy Acheson, the editor of THOTH, wrote to tell me that I had gone from one extreme to the other since the real amount of detected neutrinos was only one-third. Since she, also, wanted to publish my Introduction in THOTH, I asked her to change my "two- thirds" to "one-third" if she so wished - which I believe she did. Then came accusations that "Cardona is rather wishy-washy" about all this and that "he does not know whether he is coming or going." I was also told by several "authorities" that current theory can actually accommodate the missing neutrinos and that my statement was therefore meaningless. Hog wash! The truth of the matter is that the Introduction in question was lifted from a longer work of mine. Here, then, in an effort to silence all critics, are the pertinent passages (not meant to be exhaustive) as they appear in Chapter 11 of my still progressing book - GOD STAR. Theories do not stand, if they are to stand at all, in isolation. They raise certain demands. For instance, the theory concerning the nuclear fueling of the Sun demands that the Sun shed a vast amount of neutrinos. Well, in the first place, physicists are not even sure whether neutrinos have mass or not. On this matter, the claims in the pertinent literature keep flip-flopping, back and forth. Some authorities claim neutrinos have mass, others claim they don't. It all seems to depend on who is conducting the experiments and/or who is responsible for reporting on them. But let that be. What is at issue here is the fact that, despite untold sums of money spent in constructing complex instruments to register them,(1) not enough neutrinos, if any, have so far been detected. Raymond Davis, who has been "trapping" neutrinos for decades, "has consistently detected about one-third FEWER neutrinos than predicted by theories of the solar interior"(2)-which means only TWO-THIRDS the amount predicted. Most other experimenters, however, can only vouch for about ONE-THIRD of the predicted amount.(3) As John Bahcall stated, no matter what the true
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figure is, "some flaw seems to exist either in the current models of the sun or in our present understanding of the laws of physics."(4) Also: The only DIRECT signal of the stellar nuclear reactions predicted by the standard model is the neutrino flux from the sun. The problem is, the prediction seems to be wrong.(5) Nor is the lack of neutrinos an illusory state of affairs brought about by imperfect detectors. As Bahcall stated: ...a REAL deficit of solar neutrinos exists.(6) Danylo Hawaleshka went one step further: One possible explanation [for this lack of neutrinos] is that prevailing theories of how the sun works are wrong-which, if true, would turn astrophysics upside down.(7) It is not that astrophysicists have not attempted to explain the mystery of the missing neutrinos, but only by pre-supposing solar elements which are themselves undetected--such as assuming that the interior of the Sun is cooler than otherwise believed, or through the invocation of interaction with undetected particles nick-named wimps,(8) or that "the sun is undergoing a temporary lull in activity."(9) But, as Bahcall stated: None of these models has proved to be consistent with all the observed characteristics of the sun.(10) And: None of the modified models is fully consistent with the well-established physics, and each involves ad hoc assumptions designed primarily to accommodate the observed neutrino fluxes.(11) Coming from a physicist of Bahcall's standing, these words carry much weight. But worse was to come. At the Neutrino '90 conference held at CERN near Geneva, it was revealed that the latest experiment (known as SAGE) carried out by a joint team from the then Soviet Union and the United States detected no solar neutrinos at all - nothing - zilch!(12) It can therefore be seen that all three figures I supplied - zero, two-thirds, and one-third - have actually been forwarded by the scientific literature itself, and that if anybody is being wishy- washy about all this, it is definitely not I. Dwardu Cardona
REFERENCES:
(1) The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory alone was estimated to cost $70-million, with the cost of the heavy water needed costing as much as $300-million. See, D. Hawaleshka, "Probing the deep for Cosmic Clues," MACLEAN'S (September 2, 1996), pp. 48, 49. (2) C. Sutton, "Where Have All the Solar Neutrinos Gone?" NEW SCIENTIST (August 18, 1990), p. 24 (emphasis added). (3) Anonymous, "Neutrinos Have Mass" ASTRONOMY (September 1988), p. 26; S. L. Glashow, "Closing the Circle," DISCOVER (October 1989), p. 68. (4) J. N. Bahcall, "The Solar-Neutrino Problem," SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (May 1990), p. 54.
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(5) (6) (7) (8)

Ibid., p. 56 (emphasis added). Ibid., p. 58 (emphasis added). D. Hawaleshka, op. cit., p. 48. See here, for example, NEW SCIENTIST (June 23, 1983), p. 856; S. Boxer, "A Wimpy Solution?" DISCOVER (November 1985), pp. 16-17; S. L. Glashow, loc. cit.; M. Bartusiak, "Wanted: Dark Matter," DISCOVER (December 1988), pp. 64, 66. (9) J. N. Bahcall, loc. cit. (10)Ibid., p. 57. (11)Ibid., p. 60. (12)C. Sutton, loc. cit.
PARADIGM PORTRAITS
By Amy Acheson When you step into a new paradigm, it's like going to a different country. Customs are different; the rules have changed. People drive on the other side of the street. Coffee's served in a different way. It can be upsetting and exciting at the same time. The same is true when you enter a new paradigm. Familiar ideas no longer work. Predicted outcomes are transformed into unexpected discoveries. Take, for example, the galaxies M81 and M82, shown here at NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day." Website: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000209.html The discussion presented with the picture explains that: These two mammoth galaxies have been locked in gravitational combat for the past billion years. It concludes with the prediction that: In a few billion years only one galaxy will remain. From Halton Arp's viewpoint, a paradigm based on his observations of connections between high and low-redshift galaxies and quasars, this prediction is wrong. M81 is a parent to M82, not a warring sibling. And there is much more to M82 than the loser of a cosmic wrestling match. M82 is a disturbed galaxy with a dark notch on its side. And in a narrow cone with its point at the center of M82, bordered by this notch and a little more than one galaxy diameter in length, you will find four quasars and a high-energy radio cloud. This grouping of galaxies and quasars is unique. Nowhere else can we see such a tightly packed group of quasars. Nowhere else are clustered quasars so closely matched in redshift. That this grouping is associated with a particularly disturbed galaxy cannot be coincidence. The uniqueness of this configuration was instrumental in Halton Arp's deducing many of the properties of quasars: In addition to adding evidence to his previous predictions that quasars are associated with and ejected from active galaxies, M82 adds information about the intrinsic brightness of quasars and the relationship between the absolute luminosity of a quasar and its redshift. Perhaps the most startling contrast seen in this simple photo of M81 and M82 is the difference between the predictions proposed by mainstream astronomy and the intrinsic redshift paradigm. In the billion years mentioned above, the old paradigm expects to find a single galaxy being slowly gobbled by a black hole. The new paradigm expects to find a whole new family of galaxies, with M81 as the patriarch, M82 as
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second-generation, and the visible quasars (and probably more that we can't see) will have become vigorous galaxies growing up and ejecting offspring of their own. Amy Acheson
ALIEN SKIES
By Wal Thornhill Homo sapiens sapiens is not always as sapiens as he sapiently should be. ~Professor Gus Nossall.
Two Voyager spacecraft are carrying a message from the human race to the remote future, somewhere in the distant stars. Our faint hope is that some other life form will find one of those spacecraft and decipher its cryptic hieroglyphs. If so, we will have established contact with other intelligent life in the universe! In a similar way, our ancestors have sent us not one, but thousands, of important messages in the form of legends and art from our remote, alien past. Like the Voyager message, they require intelligence to decode. Do we have that intelligence? Surprisingly, until the last half of the 20th century, the answer has been no! The problem has been in our human tendency to project our familiar world onto those messages. Intelligent aliens would be better equipped to decode those messages because they would have to make a conscious effort to give up their familiar references in an effort at understanding. As the comparative mythologist David Talbott has shown, we have simply assumed that the sky we rejoice in is the same as the sky that our long-forgotten ancestors lived beneath. On the other hand, alien investigators would not know whether we had one sun, or two or more, what color those suns were, and whether they rose and set like ours. So, when the ancient peoples from around the world record that the sun remained fixed in position in the sky, the aliens could allow for the possibility that the Earth was in some kind of phase lock with its nearest star. What have we done with similar information? We have discarded it as impossible nonsense. So our first obstacle has been the intellectual arrogance we bring to our attempts at understanding the stories and images our ancestors considered of utmost importance to be passed on faithfully to future generations. What we fail to understand we have minimized or denigrated. As De Santillana and Von Dechend wrote in Hamlet's Mill - An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth: ... we almost dare not admit the assumption ... that our ancestors of the high and far-off times were endowed with minds wholly comparable to ours, and were capable of rational processes always given the means at hand. It is enough to say that this flies in the face of a custom which has become already a second nature. Our period may some day be called the Darwinian period, just as we talk of the Newtonian period of two centuries ago. The simple idea of evolution, which it is no longer thought necessary to examine, spreads like a tent over all those ages that lead from primitivism into civilization. Gradually, we are told, step by step, men produced the arts and crafts, this and that, until they emerged into the light of history. Those soporific words 'gradually' and 'step by step,' repeated incessantly, are aimed at covering an ignorance which is both vast and surprising. One should like to inquire: which steps? But then one is lulled, overwhelmed and stupefied by the gradualness of it all, which is at best a platitude, only good for pacifying the mind, since no one is willing to imagine that civilization appeared in a thunderclap.
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The use of the word 'thunderclap' is remarkably prescient of the authors for it has been established by Talbott, that the overriding concern of our ancestors was with the actions of the capricious and warring planetary gods. And the weapon of choice was the thunderbolt. It was no earthly spark. It took the strange involuted, corkscrew form of plasmoids and was associated with stones (meteorites) falling from the sky and global devastation. It is therefore of little wonder that mythic traditions were established in an effort to remind future generations of those terrible experiences. Recent evidence from genetic studies suggests that the human race sprang from a handful of survivors. The question remains - survivors of what? Talbott answers provocatively that we are survivors of the apocalypse; doomsday; the end of the world. It was a time when the planets were not mere specks in the night sky but instead loomed as majestic, sometimes terrifying, spheres in the heavens. Like me, Talbott received an early intellectual mentoring from that great but unrecognized interdisciplinary scholar of the 20th century, Immanuel Velikovsky. It was he who identified the biologically impossible firebreathing, flying dragon or serpent as an awe-inspiring comet which later settled down to become the planet Venus. Velikovsky alone predicted the intense internal heat of Venus and was further vindicated before his death by the announcement of Venus' "cometary tail" which stretches as far as the Earth's orbit. As space exploration has continued, his ideas of 50 years ago have been confirmed while experts are continually forced back to their drawing boards. If a theory were to be judged by its successful predictions then Velikovsky should have received a Nobel Prize. Instead, academics lashed out with unprecedented fury at someone who would cross their jealously guarded disciplinary boundaries and open doors that they were unaware existed. The overwhelming desire "not to know" certain things seems to afflict us all. That is particularly true where the safety of our tiny blue spaceship Earth is concerned. It could be that much of modern science is subconsciously aimed at making us feel safe by pushing cataclysmic events into remote times or deep space. Velikovsky suggested that the human race behaves collectively like the victim of a dreadful trauma. The result is a kind of localized amnesia and an unwillingness to confront the painful memory. But until we face and accept our true past we will continue to behave neurotically. Here may lie the key to understanding our insane destructive behaviour toward ourselves and the planet as an unconscious identification with, and re-enactment of, the power of the old planetary gods. Only understanding can bring true healing. Clearly, astronomers can point to powerful theoretical reasons why the solar system cannot have had a chaotic recent history. However, astronomy is an odd science. While using all of the trappings of 20th century technology, its theory is firmly rooted in gas-light era science. As Velikovsky rightly said: ...it is of Victorian vintage. Astrophysicists have not yet discovered the electric light. Nowhere will you find any reference to electrical energy in celestial mechanics. Yet the ancients were adamant, as Heraclitus, ca. 500 BC, put it: It is the thunderbolt that steers the universe. Anomalistic behaviour of experiments during solar eclipses shows that we do not understand the true nature of gravity. Common sense (which as one wag said, isn't so common) suggests that it is a property associated with the fundamental electrical nature of matter and has nothing to do with empty space. So, aliens who intercept a Voyager spacecraft should have a clear advantage in deciphering our plaque and recording from the remote past. This is in stark contrast to our difficulty in understanding messages from our own species in the not so distant past. Aliens would not need to impose limits like a planet that has been undisturbed for billions of years, merely to make them feel secure. The chances are that they live in a far more interesting environment anyway, with two or more suns. But they should have no difficulty in visualizing a planet orbiting a gas giant, with other planets looming nearby, and a distant
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single sun. Nor do we - provided that it is an artist's fancy of an alien planet. Yet this is the kind of message we have been sent from the past! The aliens won't have to be super intelligent to detect from the Voyager recordings that they are dealing with a damaged species. And when they see that we have not mastered the electrical nature of gravity and resort to primitive rocket engines - maybe they will have discovered Homo sapiens ignoramus? ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 4 (February 29, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: FINDING ATLANTIS THE NATURAL REFERENCES OF MYTH MISLEADING NOMENCLATURE THUNDERSTORMS ON JUPITER LIGHTNING IN JUPITER'S GREAT RED SPOT
by Amy Acheson by Dave Talbott by Don Scott comments by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
FINDING ATLANTIS
By Amy Acheson Atlantis was described only in two of Plato's works, but nearly everyone has heard about the utopian island that supposedly sank into the sea nearly twelve thousand years ago. It's amazing how many claim to know where its ruins have been (or will be) found. Peter James, in his book, The Sunken Kingdom, reveals that "a positively dazzling array of places have been put forward as the 'real' site of Atlantis. North America, Ceylon, Palestine, Mongolia and Spitzbergen (together!), Carthage, Tartessos in Spain, Malta, central France, Nigeria, Brazil, Peru, the Caucasus Mountains, Morocco, the Sahara Desert, the Arctic, the Netherlands, East Prussia and the Baltic, Greenland, the South Pacific, Mexico, Iran, Iraq, the Crimea, West Indies, Sweden, and the British Isles have all, at times, had their advocates." Extensive as this list is, it's not complete. James omitted Antarctica, the Atlantis candidate of Italian researcher, Flavio Barbiero, and popular Canadian author, Rand Flem-Ath. James later adds his own well-researched and well-argued choice, Tantalus in Turkey, to the list. The Saturn Theory predicts that Atlantis was not an earthly location. As with Eden and Valhalla, Atlantis was celestial, another variation of the mythical home of the gods. Atlantis' concentric circles and springs, its immortal ruling family - Poseidon, Atlas, the Pleiades -- its location beyond the pillars of Hercules, its central mountain and its catastrophic demise all are mythical expressions of the polar configuration, the great conjunction of the Golden Age. So, if the Saturn Theory is right, then none of the many Atlantis locations here on earth will be right. The problem is more complex than that. The main interest, to the point obsession, of human cultures after the collapse of the polar configuration has been trying to recapture it. They did this in legends, in rituals, in art and architecture. So every stone circle, every fortress, every pyramid, every altar, every temple and every cathedral built in earlier times was fashioned from the blueprints of the memory of the polar configuration.
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So, if the Saturn Theory is right, then every one of the claimed earthly locations of Atlantis will also be right, at least in a sense. All of the terrestrial candidates reflect the same cosmic symbolism and the same underlying story. Thus it seems that among the many Atlantis theories, only the Saturn Theory is able to solve both problems. It provides a location for Atlantis and it also explains why there are so many different locations which seem to fit the description. Amy Acheson
THE NATURAL REFERENCES OF MYTH

By Dave Talbott (Excerpted from the forthcoming book, WHEN SATURN WAS KING) The extent to which world mythology reflects natural occurrences is an issue on which the specialists find little agreement. Despite the many competing interpretations by the different schools, they share a common--usually unspoken--assumption: they assume that no fundamental changes have occurred in the celestial order. Wherever possible they refer the objects of ancient art and myth to objects and events in our familiar world behaving exactly as they do today. The Sun, the Moon, comets, meteors, the pole star, the Great Bear or other constellations, or more terrestrial phenomena such as thunder and lightning, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, or local mountains, rivers, and common animal forms. If the great mythical dramas do indeed reflect natural events, then we face an inescapable paradox. Despite many years of cross- cultural research, the authors of this book have never found a general mythical theme that could find an explanation in our natural world. There is indeed a "sun" in the ancient sky, but when the imagery is traced to its earliest forms, it neither looks nor behaves like the sun in our sky. There is a crescent "moon", but its character and movement contradict everything about our moon today. While the planet Venus was venerated by all ancient cultures, the earliest memories of Venus simply defy modern observations of the planet. And as for other celebrated forms, one seeks in vain for any meaningful reference at all. Where is the famous fountain of the sun? Where is the ship of heaven? Where is the world mountain, the temple of the sun, or the world tree that spread its branches among the stars? It is precisely such images which have fostered the modern view equating myth with fiction. The storytellers understood nothing about the world in which they lived, we are told. The possibility that myth might reflect events no longer occurring simply does not enter the minds of modern scholars. Of course the skeptic will remind us that all sorts of strange and exotic ideas have been proposed on the basis of myth. He will suggest that you could argue for anything under the sun if all you have to do is select a few myths for support. And who could dispute this point? Bookshelves today are filled with adventurous hypotheses, based in large part on mutually contradictory uses of mythical fragments. But the answer here is to stop the selective use of myth altogether, to apply groundrules, which do not permit the investigator to ignore any commonly held beliefs. In the new approach we shall propose, the inquiry rests from start to finish on globally-recurring themes of myth, deeply-rooted ideas that have survived thousands of years of cultural evolution and tribal mixing. Additionally, this approach will place the highest emphasis on the oldest sources, those originating closest in time to the experiences behind the myths, with the least opportunity for distortion.
EVENT AND INTERPRETATION
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The first step toward understanding the myth-making epoch is to distinguish between the unusual and the imaginative. The events are unusual, while the interpretations are imaginative. We are not asking anyone to believe that a shining temple or city of living "gods" once stood in the center of the sky. We will not claim that a great hero of flesh and blood arose to rid the world of chaos-monsters; or that this very same hero once consorted with a "mother goddess". We WILL ask the reader to consider whether these unexplained and global themes may have roots in uncommon natural events. In its skepticism about such global themes the modern world forgot the elementary distinction between event and mythical interpretation, then tossed out the entire body of evidence. The astonishing fact is that all of the archetypes speak for celestial forms that are not present in our sky, and for events that do not occur in nature today. The resulting situation is untenable. Did early races, for reasons we cannot fathom, simply repudiate all natural experience, in order to celebrate things never seen? Or did the natural world in which the myths arose present a range of sights and sounds unlike anything known in modern times?
THE ANCIENT STORYTELLER

It's impossible to immerse oneself in the mythical world without realizing that the ancient storyteller himself is certain of the reported events' occurrence, despite the obvious tendency to project imaginative interpretations onto events. A "story" entails both an event and an interpretation. No living dragon ever flew about in the sky. But is it possible that something viewed imaginatively as a "dragon" did appear in the sky? To allow this possibility is to open the door to systematic investigation from a radically new vantage point. The urge of ancient peoples to record and to repeat their stories in words reflected the same fundamental impulse we see in all other forms of reenactment and alignment in ancient ritual, art, and architecture. Recitation of the story momentarily transported both the storyteller and the listener backwards to the mythical epoch, which was experienced as more compelling, more "true" than anything that came later. That is why, among all early civilizations, as noted by Mircea Eliade and others, the prodigious events to which the myths refer provided the models for all collective activity-One fact strikes us immediately: in such societies the myth is thought to express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred history; that is, a transhuman experience revelation which took place at the dawn of the Great Time, in the holy time of the beginnings (in illo tempore). Being real and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token as a justification, for all human actions. In other words, a myth is a true history of what came to pass at the beginning of Time, and one which provides the pattern for human behavior...Clearly, what we are dealing with here is a complete reversal of values; whilst current language confuses the myth with 'fables', a man of the traditional societies sees it as the only valid revelation of reality. It needs to be understood as well that the globally-recurring themes appear to be as old as human writing. All of the common signs and symbols we shall review in these volumes appear to precede the full flowering of civilization. This rarely acknowledged fact, which could be easily disproved if incorrect, is of great significance. If our early ancestors were habituated to inventing experience, we should expect an endless stream of new mythical content--new forms and personalities arising as if from nowhere. This absence of invention in historical times forces us to ask how the original "creativity" of myth arose: what unknown ancient experience could have produced the massive story content of myth, including hundreds of underlying themes that have lasted for thousands of years?
UNIVERSAL THEMES OF MYTH
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By following the comparative approach, and by concentrating on the universal themes of myth, a researcher is enabled to focus on the substratum. Nothing will boost the researcher's confidence more than discovering that the roots of myth are not only identifiable, but coherent, each identifiable theme revealing an explicit connection to the same taproot, while revealing verifiable links to the other themes as well. To illustrate this point let us consider just a few human memories whose deep connections to each other are beyond dispute. Though each of the themes listed here will require extensive review and analysis, our immediate interest is in a possibility generally ignored in our time--the possibility of a fully integrated and consistent substructure.
AGE OF GODS AND WONDERS

It is an interesting fact that every culture remembered a lost "age of the gods", a wondrous epoch clearly distinguished from all that came later. The gods were visibly present, and they radiated power and light-"the majestic race of the immortals", in the account of the Greek poet Hesiod, or "the age of the primeval gods" celebrated by the Egyptians. The gods ruled for a time, then faded from view, took flight, or wandered off. And everywhere will be found the compulsion to commemorate the critical junctures in the biographies of the gods, to carry forward the stories in pictures and words, to fashion replicas of the gods in clay and stone, and to reenact these events at all levels of collective activity. One of the great deceptions in conventional approaches to mythology is the pretense that this is all comprehensible in terms of primitive ignorance and superstition. The issue is far more fundamental than that. What demands explanation is the vividness, the consistency of the images, and the extraordinary passion and devotion with which ancient races sought to re-connect with the gods. Nothing meant more to the ancient world than to recover something distinctly remembered, but lost. There is structure to the stories. Even a superficial review of the world's mythical traditions will show that the different personalities tend to fall into certain categories. Universal sovereign, mother goddess, ancestral warrior, chaos monster: these personalities (as we will illustrate at length) repeatedly expressed the same relationships to each other. Moreover, the age of the gods not only has a familiar ending (the gods go away) it has a common beginning as well:
GOLDEN AGE
Certain general themes occur on every habitable continent. One is the deeply entrenched myth of a lost Golden Age, a period of natural abundance and cosmic harmony, when humanity lived under the beneficent rule of visible powers in the heavens. In fact, the Golden Age was universally invoked as the opening chapter in the age of the gods, and that is just one of numerous indications of unexplained and globally-repeated structure. The Hindus called it the Krita Yuga or perfect age; the Chinese the Age of Perfect Virtue, the Scandinavians the Peace of Frodhi. For the Egyptians this was the Tep Zepi or "First Time", the beneficent age of Re. The Sumerians knew it as the rule of the sovereign An, "the Days of Abundance"; Greek tradition similarly recalled the prosperous epoch of the god Kronos, when the whole world enjoyed peace and plenty. The Romans celebrated this as the Golden Age of Saturn. In the general tradition, the Golden Age means a timeless epoch before the fall, or before the arrival of discord and war, before the linkage of heaven and earth was broken. Many traditions recall the absence of seasons or of any time-keeping references, claiming that the land produced abundantly without any need for human labor. Skeptics have suggested that these are simply exaggerated local memories of "the good old days". But that claim is answered by comparative study. The theme of the Golden Age cannot be separated from other themes for which such "explanations" are entirely inadequate
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KING OF THE WORLD

Why, for example, did all of the early cultures connect the Golden Age with the rule of a figure remembered as the Universal Monarch--a prototype of kings ruling in the sky before any king ruled on earth? This is hardly a frivolous connection. The Egyptian Atum-Re, the central luminary of the sky, was the founder of the idyllic age, to which every later king or pharaoh traced his lineage. It was the Sumerian An, the Akkadian Anu, who inaugurated the "years of abundance", and from whom the very institution of kingship descended. Similarly, the Hindu Yama, Persian Yima, Norse Frodhi, Chinese Huang-ti, and Mexican Quetzalcoatl are all distinguished as founding kings, the first in a line of kings, and models of the good king. What defined the ideal was the harmonious existence and natural abundance, which marked the god's rule. Hence, human memories of the Golden Age and of the exemplary king are inextricably entwined, implying a substructure we cannot afford to ignore.
DOOMSDAY
The fear of doomsday, of the orderly world going out of control, ranks perhaps as the deepest of human fears. From the first glimmerings of civilization, every ancient nation kept alive its own tale of universal catastrophe, and if anything deserves to be called a collective memory it is this idea. But how are we to understand it? Various accounts describe the world- ending disaster so differently as to leave mythologists groping for a consensus. In one account a great deluge submerges the race; in another a fiery conflagration, while many myths say a celestial dragon's assault upon the world brought universal darkness. Such divergent story elements make it all too easy to overlook an overarching principle revealed by comparative analysis. The "mother of all catastrophes"--the event which ancient races feared above all else--was that which brought the Golden Age to its violent conclusion. Whether it is the ancestral rule of Re, or the universal kingship of An, or the Golden Age of Kronos (not to mention the numerous variations), the story culminates in earthshaking catastrophe. But only rarely do psychologists or historians ask whether this pervasive fear might have roots in natural experience as well--a time when the world did slip out of control, the stars did fall from the sky, and the rain of fire and brimstone did overwhelm the world. The Doomsday theme is not an isolated memory, but an integral component in a more complete and unified memory. Indeed, comparative analysis reveals numerous additional points of agreement, including the fate of the Universal Monarch himself--
DYING OR DISPLACED GOD

The Buddhists tell of the primeval king, during whose prosperous reign a vast wheel turned in the sky, remaining in one spot. This ancient and benevolent ruler was himself "the wheel turning king". But eventually the wheel fell from its established place, the king died, and this golden age was lost. The Zoroastrians spoke of the great cosmic wheel called the Spihr, symbol of the god Zurvan, "Lord of the Long Dominion." It too stood in one place, ever turning. And it was the fall or destruction of this cosmic wheel, which terminated the god's prosperous rule.
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In whatever terms the local accounts might present the Doomsday story, the consistent result is the death, flight, or displacement of the original sovereign power. The Egyptian Re grows weary and departs the human realm. The Sumerian An flees the scene as chaos overtakes the world. The Greek Kronos is forced from his throne, ending the Golden Age and plunging the world into darkness and discord. For the Romans the fabled Golden age of Saturn ended when, in the words of poet Ovid: Old Saturn fell to death's dark country. In such fashion did the ancient Paradise give way to cosmic turmoil. And here, too, one aspect of the story invariably merges with another:
WARS OF THE GODS

As a mythical archetype, the Doomsday catastrophe is not merely a terrestrial disturbance, it is the story of celestial upheaval. The gods themselves battle in the sky so violently as to rearrange the heavens. Their weapons include thunderbolts and stone, flaming "arrows", fire-breathing dragons, and allconsuming wind and flood. The tale is most familiar to us, perhaps, as the famous clash of the Titans, recounted by Hesiod and other Greek poets. This was the catastrophic aftermath of the Golden Age of Kronos, when "wide heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympos reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods...So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry. Then Zeus...showed forth all his strength. From Heaven and from Olympos, he came forthwith, hurling his lightning; and the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning, whirling an awesome flame". Such images are so common and occur on such a grand scale that historians rarely give them a second look. What do these "exaggerated" tales have to do with real history? In the Norse cataclysm of Ragnarok, the wars of the gods bring an idyllic age to an end, and this is surely one of the keys to understanding the archetype. The wars of the gods occur during, or as, the "break" that separates the Golden Age from the subsequent epoch. Witness, for example, the celestial conflagration of Aztec thought, the catastrophic interlude between world ages. So too in Hindu myth- the universe dissolves in flames, to be regenerated under a new world age. To the same category belong the great conflagrations separating the original rule of the Egyptian Re from the epoch that followed. Typically, scholars will "explain" the cosmic catastrophe theme through more familiar or ordinary events, an eclipse of the Sun or Moon, a local hurricane, earthquake, or volcano. Such "explanations" can only discourage close examination of the stories, with the result that vital, repeated elements are missed. But it is the full complex of themes that must be explained. A final example:
DRAGON OF DARKNESS
Nothing could be further removed from our familiar experience than a flying serpent or dragon. And yet it was not long ago that every race on earth remembered the fire-breathing dragon moving among the stars, disturbing the motions of the planets, and threatening to destroy the world. Such was the character of the Babylonian dragon Tiamat, whose attack caused even the gods themselves to flee. The Egyptian counterpart was the raging Uraeus serpent; or Apep, the dragon of darkness. For the Greeks, it was the Python serpent whom Apollo defeated in an earth-shaking encounter, or the great dragon Typhon, under whose attack the heavens reeled. How did it happen that so many diverse cultures recalled--in such vivid and similar terms--a biologically impossible monster? The cosmic serpent or dragon cries out for an explanation, and an explanation must be possible, even if we have missed it.
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From one land to another such monsters were celebrated as visible forms in the sky. If there is an inherent, irrational tendency of the primitive mind to conjure dragon-like beasts out of nothing, then one must wonder how this irrationality produced such surprising parallels from one land to another--fiery serpents, longhaired or bearded serpents, feathered serpents. The globally- repeated attributes are both impossible and absurd, and nothing in familiar human experience can even begin to account for them. The celestial serpent-dragon takes the form of a great storm or whirlwind, breathes fire and smoke, battles against the gods, and ushers in a period of universal darkness. But these are only a few of the pervasive themes. When, for example, did this chaos monster appear in the sky? It appeared specifically during the break between world ages--following the death or departure of the Universal Monarch, when the Golden Age collapsed--and prior to the renewal of the world. Appearance of the Babylonian Tiamat is synonymous with the flight of the original sovereign An. The Uraeus serpent rages in the sky as a symbol of Re's loss of power. The dethroning of Kronos, founder of the Golden Age, immediately precedes the attack of Typhon.
CONNECTIONS
With this brief listing of connected memories, we wish to drive home the principles of substructure and integrity. In considering the serpent-dragon, for example, we do not just find an improbable monster, but a monster figuring in a particular story in a particular way, with clearly defined relationships to other personalities. It is simply not useful to examine a mythical theme as if that theme stands on its own. What needs to be explained is the full complex of ideas embedded within a theme, and that will invariably involve repeated and unexplained connections to a larger story. Dave Talbott
MISLEADING NOMENCLATURE
By Don Scott
From JPL:
Galileo Millennium Mission Status

February 25, 2000 NASA's Galileo spacecraft has begun beaming volcano pictures and other science data to Earth, now that it has successfully completed its third and closest-ever flyby of Jupiter's fiery moon Io. Despite intense radiation near Io, the spacecraft completed all its planned activities during the flyby at 6:32 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, Feb. 22, at an altitude of 198 kilometers (124 miles). Don Scott comments: Here we have another one of those (intentionally?) misleading words: "radiation". The Galileo probe almost certainly passed through a region where there is a strong electrical current. It, therefore, experienced a shower of electrons and/or positive ions, which gave fits to the onboard computer. To use the word "radiation" to describe this is not technically wrong - but it certainly is misleading to the general public. Most people strongly associate the word "radiation" to "radioactivity" (the
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emission of alpha, beta or gamma streams, as from radium or uranium). This process occurs without the presence of an electric field. Radioactive "radiation" consists of streams of either completely ionized helium nuclei (alpha) which have double positive charge, electrons (beta) which have single negative charge, and/or photons (gamma) which are electrically neutral - all leaving the source and flowing outward in the same direction. A plasma discharge, on the other hand, contains electrons moving in one direction and positive ions moving in the other direction, both in response to the presence of an electric field. Sloppy nomenclature NASA, sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Don Scott
THUNDERSTORMS ON JUPITER
Summary from "Nature" magazine Comments by Wal Thornhill
Jupiter's massive storms resemble Earth's but are powered by the planet itself, not the sun, Cornell astronomers say
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Anvil clouds tower more than 30 miles high, casting a pall over a hazy sky. Amid the gathering gloom, 100 mph winds whip clouds across the sky, while lightning punctuates the tumult repeatedly. Meanwhile, clouds from yet another giant storm dump several inches of rain daily over an area more than 600 miles on one side. Given that severity, and thunderheads three times as high as we see in North America, this storm is obviously not on Earth, although the storms have similarities to terrestrial weather systems. This is Jupiter. Astronomers from Cornell University, the California Institute of Technology and the NASA Galileo Imaging Team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have discovered that some thunderstorms on Jupiter closely resemble clusters of thunderstorms, called mesoscale convective complexes (MCCs), found on Earth. Contrary to previous belief, these MCCs develop from the intense heat emanating from Jupiter's core rather than from the sun. And these MCC's drive the planet's weather system. The findings appear in the latest issue (Feb. 10) of the journal Nature. Wal comments: These statements about the energy coming from Jupiter's core are made as if they are a fact when they are conjecture. It gives the impression we know all about what causes storms on Earth, especially when a technical sounding term like "mesoscale convective complexes" is used. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the storms on Jupiter are created by the planet's internal heat, what causes the most powerful winds in the solar system on Neptune, which doesn't seem to have the internal heat to drive them? Neptune has 1,000 mph winds and only 5% of the heat input of Jupiter. Will we need another ad hoc theory for every planet? The report continues: "There is a lot of activity we see on Jupiter that we see on Earth," says Peter J. Gierasch, Cornell professor of astronomy and a lead author on a letter to Nature detailing the team's findings. We see jet streams, large cyclonic elements, large anti-cyclonic elements and many elements of unpredictability and turbulence. Of all the tempest-tossed storms in the solar system, the astronomers chose to examine an area west of the giant planet's great red spot, in a region known as the south equatorial belt. The
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scientists studied images taken by the NASA Galileo spacecraft when it orbited Jupiter on May 4, 1999. The images were part of a planned effort to search for and study local convection. What is remarkable about the Jovian MCCs, says Gierasch, is that they have the same physics as thunderstorm clusters on Earth, but the heat source to generate these events is completely different. Generally, thunderstorms on Earth are small cells of cumulonimbus clouds, singular in nature, and caused by summertime heat from the sun. An MCC, or cluster of many cells of thunderstorms of the type that commonly strikes the midwestern United States, also is formed by intense summertime heat.
Wal comments: It is not known what causes a thunderstorm. The origin of lightning on Earth is unknown. The Electric Universe model proposes an electrical input from space to the weather systems on all planets so we might expect to see similar activity on other planets to that seen on Earth. Even the Sun has weather! It explains with one common theory the intense winds on Neptune, the superbolts and intense lightning on Venus (which has no clouds but rather a planet-wide smog), the planet-wide dust storms and large dust devils on Mars, and the Sun's weather. Heat alone is not sufficient to create thunderstorms on Earth, Jupiter or Neptune. It requires electrical energy to be input too. The report continues: The difference between the formation of an MCC and that of a hurricane or cyclone is where the system gets its fuel. Hurricanes and cyclones on Earth are fueled by the warm ocean. MCCs develop because of atmospheric instability. Where it is warm near the Earth's surface in the summer and cooler aloft, condensation rises and forms many cells of intense thunderclouds over a vast area. These summertime giants can last for hours, even days, and dump unusually large amounts of rain. On Jupiter, they can also last from about 12 hours to several Earth days, producing huge quantities of rain. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is about 480 million miles from the sun, compared with Earth's distance of 93 million miles. The giant planet generally is thought to have been developed some 5 billion years ago, and it is perpetually shrouded by swirling clouds of water and ammonia ice. But because of the heat reservoir of highly compressed hydrogen in the planet's center, this gaseous giant emits nearly 70 percent more heat than it absorbs from the sun. This is what leads these astronomers to suggest that the source of the stormy turbulence on Jupiter seems to be the planet itself. Wal comments: So it is conjecture piled upon conjecture. The planet's age is unknown. How it formed and from what elements we don't know. The internal composition, structure and temperature of the planet is unknown. Some, or even all, of the excess heat may well be due to the high level of electrical energy input to Jupiter as evidenced by its powerful auroras and lightning storms. That has not been considered. The report continues: Gierasch explains that, interestingly, the physical attributes of Jupiter's vast thunderstorms are the same as those on Earth, except Earth's storms develop because of the sun's heat and Jupiter's storms develop from its own internal heat source. Jupiter's core still retains heat from the planet's original formation by collapse and compression. "It is in the process of cooling, and it will likely continue to cool for at least another five billion years," Gierasch says. Wal comments: The same effects can be expected from the same cause/s. The problem is to identify the real cause/s. That hasn't even been accomplished here on Earth. Heat alone is not sufficient. All models of gravitational collapse and compression are seriously flawed because they don't consider atomic dipolar electrical forces which resist compression. In addition, it is generally assumed that the compression takes place without much heat loss - which is a very special condition to impose on the model. Finally, we have
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no evidence that planets form by accretion in the first place. The result is that any pronouncements about the history of Jupiter and the origin of its excess heat and weather are just hot air. The report continues: An almost-continuous cycle drives the Jovian weather, he explains. The storms develop, drop precipitation, the precipitation evaporates prior to reaching Jupiter's core heat-source and the condensation rises again. Galileo's instruments are not able to detect lightning on the planet's sunlit side. But once the storm crosses into the dark side, astronomers are able to see the lightning and confirm the existence of MCCs. One part of these Jovian storm systems that dwarfs anything on Earth, says Gierasch, are the lightning bolts. According to research published by his colleagues, Andrew. P Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., and Blaine Little of ITRES Research, Calgary, Canada, in the planetary science journal Icarus (December 1999), the lighting bolts are as many as several times the size of the largest terrestrial bolts. With lightning strikes much larger than those found on Earth, "I wouldn't want to fly through that storm," says Gierasch. Wal comments: At the very least it might shake up their ideas. :-) Wal Thornhill
LIGHTNING IN JUPITER'S GREAT RED SPOT

By Wal Thornhill I wrote on the 5th June 1997: I would even hazard a guess that the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter is, for reasons as yet unknown, the continual focus of a powerful ionospheric discharge. I deduce this from an example of the same effect on a much smaller scale on Earth in the reported glow discharge seen from space above tornadic storms on Earth. It would be of interest to know if Jupiter's ionosphere is the site of diffuse electrical discharges above the GRS. And more expansively on 2nd September 1997: The Great Red Spot (GRS) and white spots on Jupiter may have something in common with sunspots. All are probably the point of connection of a Birkeland current rope from the plasmoid surrounding the planet/sun. The strong vertical magnetic field in sunspots suggests this is so in their case. (Birkeland currents flow along magnetic field lines in a force-free fashion). The longlived GRS on Jupiter may be associated with some underlying electrical inhomogeneity in the planet resulting from the catastrophic breakup of the Saturnian system. The many reports of Jovian thunderbolts attest to the probability that the giant planet may bear hidden electrical scars. Of course, the standard picture of the structure of Jupiter does not allow for a solid surface under the clouds to bear scars. But it must be remembered that the Electrical Universe requires a completely new estimation of what a "gas giant" really is. Calculations of both the density, composition and the internal heat budget will need to be reassessed, with the good possibility that there is a solid surface under the clouds. If so, it would allow for the simplest electrical inhomogeneity - a high point on the solid surface - to act as a giant lightning conductor. It was actually calculated back in 1982 that a mountain only a few thousand feet high on Jupiter could create an effect like the GRS in Jupiter's atmosphere. And again in THOTH VOL II, No. 7 April 15, 1998:
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It is very interesting to note the structure in the Great Red Spot - "a tangle of spiral arms". A short time ago I posted the view that the GRS is the site of a continual diffuse discharge from the ionosphere into Jupiter's atmosphere. A tangle of spiral arms could have been predicted on this basis if the electric currents flowing into the vortex were made manifest by some electrical action on Jupiter's atmospheric gases. Once again, the red colouration could be partly due to lowenergy nuclear transformations of gases in the spiral arms.
In the following report from NASA you will notice the fixation on the ideas that the energy for Jupiter's weather comes from below the clouds and that lightning can only occur where water droplets are in violent motion. One would think that the discovery of powerful lightning in Venus' dry smog would have put paid to that theory. It only reinforces that "what you know aint so" is a powerful deterrent to innovation in science. Wal Thornhill
Thunderstorms found to be an energy source for Jupiter's Great Red Spot, other large features
Caltech, February 9, 2000 PASADENA -- Using data from the Galileo spacecraft currently in orbit around Jupiter, scientists have discovered that thunderstorms beneath the upper cloud cover are supplying energy to the planet's colorful large-scale weather patterns -- including the 300-year-old Great Red Spot. In two articles in the February 10 issue of the British journal Nature and an article in the current issue of the journal Icarus, Caltech planetary science professor Andrew Ingersoll and his colleagues from Cornell, NASA, and UCLA write that lightning storms on the giant planet are clearly associated with the eddies that supply energy to the large-scale weather patterns. Their conclusion is possible because Galileo can provide daytime photos of the cloud structure when lightning is not visible, and nighttime photos of the same area a couple of hours later clearly showing the lightning. "You don't usually see the thunderstorms or the lightning strikes because the ammonia clouds in the upper atmosphere obscure them," says Ingersoll. But when Galileo passes over the night side, you can see bright flashes that let you infer the depth and the intensity of the lightning bolts. Especially fortuitous are the Jovian nights when there is a bit of moonshine from one of the large moons such as Io, says Ingersoll. When there is no moonshine, the Galileo images show small blobs of glow from the lightning flashes, but nothing else. But when the upper cloud covers are illuminated at night by moonshine, the pictures show both the glow from the lightning some 100 kilometers below as well as eddies being roiled by the turbulence of the thunderclouds. The association of the eddies with lightning is especially noteworthy in the new papers, Ingersoll says. Planetary scientists have known for some years that Jupiter had lightning; and in fact they have known since the Voyager flyby that the zonal jets and long-lived storms are kept alive by soaking up the energy of smaller eddies. But they did not know until now that the eddies themselves were fed by thunderstorms below. "The lightning indicates that there's water down there, because nothing else can condense at a depth of 80 or 100 kilometers," he says.
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So we can use lightning as a beacon that points to the place where there are rapidly falling raindrops and rapidly rising air columns -- a source of energy for the eddies. The eddies, in turn, get pulled apart by shear flow and give up their energy to these large-scale features. So ultimately, the Great Red Spot gets its energy and stays alive by eating these eddies. Adding credence to the interpretation is the fact that the anticyclonic rotation (clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern) of the eddies is consistent with the outflow from a convective thunderstorm. Their poleward drift is consistent with anticyclones being sucked into Jupiter's powerful westward jets. Ingersoll is lead author of the Nature paper that interprets the new Galileo data. The other authors are Peter Gierasch and Don Banfield of Cornell University; and Ashwin Vasavada of UCLA. (Banfield and Vasavada are Ingersoll's former doctoral students at Caltech). Gierasch is lead author of the other Nature paper, which announces the discovery of moist convection on Jupiter. The other authors are Ingersoll; Banfield; Vasavada; Shawn Ewald of Caltech; Paul Helfenstein and Amy Simon-Miller, both of Cornell; and Herb Breneman and David Senske, both of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The authors of the Icarus paper are Ingersoll; Vasavada; Senske; Breneman; William Borucki of NASA Ames Research Center; Blane Little and Clifford Anger, both of ITRES Research in Calgary, Alberta; and the Galileo SSI Team. Report ends. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 5 (March 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: ON SEEING SPECTACLES WORLD MOUNTAIN PARADIGM PORTRAITS (2): GALACTIC CENTER ELECTRIC SUN SKEPTICS
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill
ON SEEING SPECTACLES
Stephen Toulmin, in his 1961 enquiry into the aims of science (Foresight and Understanding), likens the fundamental concepts of science to wearing eyeglasses. ("Fundamental concepts" are those which are considered not to need explanation: E.g., for Copernicus and his predecessors, uniform circular motion was fundamental. For Newton and his heirs, uniform rectilinear motion was fundamental.) Toulmin, p. 101: For, though Nature must of course be left to answer to our interrogations for herself, it is always we who frame the questions. And the questions we ask inevitably depend on prior theoretical considerations. There is only one way of seeing one's own spectacles clearly: that is, to take them off. It is impossible to focus both on them and through them at the same time. A similar difficulty attaches to the fundamental concepts of science. To see both the world and how we see it we need at least two spectacles: With one we can examine the other. With only one set of fundamental concepts, we may not even be aware of them. With two, we can see them not as unquestionable truths but as aids to understanding that can be selected and utilized as best fits the immediate task. When Amy introduced me to Velikovsky's work in 1965, I disproved his thesis with a few calculations on the back of that ubiquitous envelope astronomers carry for just such purposes. It's a simple exercise for any undergraduate in astronomy: The orbits of Venus, Earth, and Mars cannot be made to intersect while conserving both energy and angular momentum. Appeal to mythology is irrelevant because everyone knows myths are just stories made up by ancient shepherds before movies were invented. Even if someone could twist an intelligible order out of them, it would have to be tested against the known laws of planetary dynamics. If the alleged ancient witness should be deemed to have witnessed something unusual, he should be alleged to have been mistaken or hallucinating. Amy only replied that I hadn't actually answered the problem V. posed: I'd have to read the book. But I didn't have time. Two years passed. My idealistic image of astronomy as a pure search for truth was shredded by several encounters with the politics that actually determined and preserved that truth. I dropped out. I had time to read. I picked up Worlds in Collision and therewith acquired my second spectacles.
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Toulmin again: We see the world through them [fundamental concepts] to such an extent that we forget what it would look like without them: our very commitment to them tends to blind us to other possibilities. Yet a proper sense of the growth and development of our ideas will come only if we are prepared to unthink them. I began unthinking everything I thought I knew. Newton's uniform rectilinear motion is the motion of a rundown, isolated, neutral particle. Newton had no concept of electrically driven, persistently interacting, complex systems of particles. (He, like all of us, lived in the midst of such systems: He just had no concept of them.) He didn't know about resonances in unstable, dissipative structures. He hadn't thought of hierarchies of order arising from relationships of relationships of relationships. He never imagined evolutionary principles could explain epistemological progress. The run-down, isolated, neutral properties of modern cosmology might not be fundamental to the universe: Those properties might rather be fundamental to Newton's spectacles. If planetary orbits are not the run-down remnant of an isolated system but resonant states in an energy flux through the system, they can gain and lose energy as the flux varies. Conservation laws don't apply. With Newton (as a symbol of all I thought I knew) cast into doubt, I began to see the other possibilities. One ancient witness could have been hallucinating. Two ancient witnesses could have been mistaken. Thousands of ancient witnesses from all around the world telling the same story required an explanation. But Newton's uniform rectilinear motion couldn't explain this story: planets aligned closely on a common axis spitting cosmic lightning at each other. It was more suited to electrically driven complexes and dissipative discontinuities. With my new spectacles, I could see a century-long development of research into electrical phenomena that was invisible through the other spectacles: Birkeland discovering under auroras the rope- like currents that were named after him. Alfven being awarded the Nobel Prize for formulating the principle that magnetic fields are frozen into plasmas and spending the rest of his life trying in vain to convince mainstream physics that he had been mistaken. Bruce pointing out the dozens of phenomena on the sun and in galaxies that were scaled-up lightning bolts. Dozens of researchers were gradually putting together the picture of a universe steered, as Heraclitus wrote, by the thunderbolt. Then along came Halton Arp. His observations of connections between quasars and low-redshift galaxies demolished the expanding universe and the Big Bang. Further observations of quantization of redshifts undermined the idea of gravity as I knew it. And his latest findings have collapsed the universe into a couple of superclusters centered in Virgo and Fornax. My old spectacles shattered. Toulmin, p. 108: For the business of science involves more than the mere assembly of facts: it demands also intellectual architecture and construction. Before the actual building comes the collection of materials; before that, the detailed work at the drawing-board; before that, the conception of a design; and, before that even, there comes the bare recognition of possibilities. [T]he men who discuss speculative questions of these kinds play an essential part in the development of science, those who conceive new frameworks of fundamental ideas. We seem to be living in a rare juncture between frameworks of fundamental concepts. It's an opportunity to become aware of our spectacles and of the possibility for changing them. The universe is large, and our spectacles take in only a small part: See what previous spectacles have missed; guess what the current ones are missing.
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P. 110:
There is no single, simple test of merit, and it is not for the philosopher to impose one on science; nor can a historian justly criticize earlier scientists for not jumping straight to the views of 1960. For progress can be made in science only if men apply their intellects critically to the problems which arise in their own times, in the light of the evidence and the ideas which are then open to consideration. Try on a new pair of spectacles: Consider an electrically driven axial alignment of four planets astounding our ancestors at the dawn of history. Mel Acheson
WORLD MOUNTAIN
By Dave Talbott When it comes to the model of the "polar configuration" no complete accord should be expected, though the points of agreement between those researching the Saturn theory far outweigh any areas of disagreement. This is particularly true in the case of the mythical "world mountain," about which volumes could be written, while only the Saturn model will account for many and varied themes. Dwardu Cardona writes (in a recent issue of THOTH): This tapering appendage has been explained in various ways. Rose compared it to the so-called flux tube which stretches between Jupiter and its satellite, Io. In his own Martian, as opposed to a Saturnian, model, Jueneman sees the axis as a colossal Rankine vortex. David Talbott, on the other hand, had originally explained the polar column as a stream of debris stretching between Saturn and Earth, but later amended this to a stream of debris attracted from Mars toward Earth Additionally, Wallace Thornhill believes he has recognized this ethereal pillar as a sustained plasma discharge in the form of Birkeland current. Dave Talbott responds: While acknowledging the advantages of Thornhill's "Birkeland current" explanation of the polar column, Dwardu opts for the vortex or "tornado"-like aspects of the column, as emphasized by Fred Jueneman. Amy summarizes: Cardona then expresses his opinion that, although Thornhill's Birkeland currents fit most of the criteria of the polar column, they would not be able to suck material up from the earth, which he believes the myths describe. Cardona prefers Fred Jueneman's proposed Rankine vortex, an interplanetary tornado, as an explanation for the axis mundi. Talbott: This, I would say, puts too much emphasis on "disagreement" and a little too much emphasis on the "tornado" aspect of the polar column. In fact, when I first conveyed the idea of the "world mountain" or "world pillar" to Fred Jueneman in the fall of 1972, I specifically used the phrase "tornado-like" to describe the appearance of the column in its "churning", or "writhing" phase. So I do not see later discussion of this tornado-aspect as an alternative "explanation" for the column. Rather, it needs to be distinguished from the column in its more stable or undisturbed aspect. Many images of the cosmic pillar suggest nothing of the violent celestial whirlwind, whirlpool, tornado, or ascending, spiraling serpent you see in connection with a disturbance of the system, when the World Mountain became a "churning" stake, pole, or spear stretching along the axis. I would not want to suggest that the tornado-aspect of the column is an "alternative" to Wal Thornhill's explanation either. I see the column as one of the more striking points of convergence between the
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historical reconstruction and the plasma physics which Wal has illuminated for us. Ancient descriptions should not be taken as explanations of physical principles. The more violent phases certainly did present the APPEARANCE of a "tornado" overtaking the land of the gods. But the dynamics of a terrestrial tornado do not represent the situation particularly well when you have visible gases, ice, dust, or other material stretching BETWEEN PLANETS. A vortex cannot exist in isolation from the movement of a surrounding medium, while the polar column appears as a discrete, well-focused stream or jet of material retaining a consistent structure over a considerable distance. This itself is most remarkable and should encourage us to look for any analogies either in the laboratory or in other regions of the universe, even if conventional dogma on the behavior of planets offers no encouragement whatsoever. What happened in ancient times WILL find (IS finding) an explanation, as open-minded theorists explore the emerging fields of evidence. In fact, thanks to Wal's summaries of plasma dynamics on the one hand, and recent revelations from the Hubble and Chandra telescopes on the other, we now have possible analogies for the polar column at all levels of observation. Contrast that with the situation only a few years ago. A focusing of energy to transport material over great distances and along a single path has never had any place in conventional theory. What, in Newtonian perspectives, would allow a jet to retain its structure across a vacuum, spanning distances (in the Saturn model) counted in tens of thousands of miles? Electrical phenomena are another matter, however. We know that electromagnetic frequencies ARE focused in a laser beam. We know that plasma focus devices DO produce well-defined jets and a flow of electric current on a linear path. Considering the great volume of historical evidence suggesting highly visible electrical phenomena in the Saturnian configuration, the electrical model is really the hands-down winner, I would say. The fact that a plasma environment will produce spiraling, vortex-like phenomena through which currents flow is also highly relevant to the dynamics of the polar column. Moreover, it can hardly be insignificant that astronomers have recently discovered POLAR or AXIAL jets on a mind-boggling scale: from "jetted stars" to massive galaxies--jets from billions of miles to light-years in length, where the coherent linear structure of the jets defies everything previously believed. The only theorists who anticipated such jets were those of the electrical schools. By comparison, the much, much smaller-scale axial jets in the Saturn model, where the charged bodies are planets, seem very tame indeed. And when you are considering the Saturn version, please do not forget that, at the time I first proposed these axial, interplanetary streams, I had no knowledge of laboratory-based plasma analogies, and the distant stellar and galactic analogies were unknown to science. Dave
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (2)

By Amy Acheson Gotta say WOW about this photo and the schematic that accompanies it. It's a view of the center of the Milky Way, shown in radio wavelengths. Looking at it, I feel like a mosquito perched under the hood of a fancy racecar, confused and amazed. What in the universe am I looking at? http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990128.html http://rsd-www.nrl.navy.mil/7213/lazio/GC/GCSchematicscan2rot.gif I consider myself lucky to be able to observe this from the vantage point of two different paradigms, or, as Mel described it in the above editorial, two sets of spectacles. Whether the "final answer" lies closer to the conventional interpretation, the electric universe interpretation, or something else that won't make sense for centuries doesn't really matter. It's a privilege to examine this wealth of new information in the light of more than one viewpoint.
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The title and subtitle of the story that goes with the pictures expresses the conventional interpretation clearly: A Monster in the Middle: The Chandra X-ray Observatory may have spied supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy The full story, with its black hole interpretations, are given here: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast29feb_1m.htm Now let's examine the same photographs and diagrams through a new set of observational spectacles: In the Electrical Universe, black holes are not necessary. They are viewed as a construct created by twisting gravitational math beyond the limits of observation. Once they calculated black holes, astronomers searched for confirmation of their calculations. They believe that they have found them in galactic cores. But cosmic electricians disagree. They point out that black holes are supposed to suck everything in, but galactic cores seem to eject large amounts of matter. In laboratories here on earth, plasma behaves exactly as these pictures of the galactic center show -- twisting into a central core that ejects discrete batches of highly charged matter. The feature called the Arc is extremely interesting. In the schematic, a curl of filaments (also visible in the radio image) connects the Arc to the bright radio source SgrA (Sagittarius A). The filaments of the Arc itself extend beyond the bright segment approximately twice the length of the Arc in both directions above and below the galactic plane. Proceeding in either direction from the Arc, these filaments are narrow for approximately half their length, then spread out to form a bubble of filaments at each end. According to the electric universe, these filaments may be the ejection axis of the Milky Way galaxy. That interpretation seems to be reinforced by exploring another weblink discussing the gamma ray nature of the galactic center: http://www.astro.nwu.edu/astro/purcell/511kev_press_release/ Here they report gamma ray observations that indicate surprising results: a gamma ray cloud in an unexpected location, above the Milky Way's nucleus. Although only observed in recent decades, this cloud of gamma-ray emitting material seems to show large variations in strength. The conventional interpretation is that the black hole in the center of the galaxy somehow "turns on" and "turns off". The electric universe interpretation would speak instead of the building up of galactic electrical energy, followed by its release along the spin axis in the form of an electrically charged blob. Near the bottom of the radio photo you will find an object called the "Snake". This is a one-and-a-half light-year long feature, previously identified as an enormous lightning bolt frozen in space. This feature, combined with the other filaments called threads, are interpreted by the electric universe as bright spots on the electrical circuitry that spirals inward to charge the galactic core. No matter which spectacles you wear to view it, this is a wonderful picture of the center of our Milky Way. Amy Acheson
ELECTRIC SUN SKEPTICS

By Wal Thornhill
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At the beginning of the month Dave Talbott forwarded for comment an email received from a skeptic. It takes another swipe at an electric star model. Skeptics puzzle me. Sir Fred Hoyle has commented that academics generally will not read papers they disagree with. That would explain why so many challenging papers from maverick scientists are met with silence. Halton Arp's work on non-velocity related redshifts is a notorious example. Skeptics, on the other hand, seem emotionally compelled to seek out challenges from "outsiders" and to uncritically fling every straw of orthodox theory in response, without regard to its coherence or applicability to what is being proposed. That results in a "straw man" which they then set about making look ridiculous. They are those who, in the words of the astronomer R. A. Lyttleton: ...regard the opinion of others, especially if they occupy positions of high rank, as providing a sound basis for their own views. It is, of course, a form of sloth enabling them to spare themselves the hard work of properly forming their own conclusion, and instead just take up a ready-made one issued by the establishment free of charge, just as one might wear a readymade suit, however ill-fitting. In almost every case I have seen there is no genuine attempt to understand new ideas. That can be seen in this case where it is obvious that no effort has been made to study the original papers by Juergens. When the intention is clearly to not understand what is being proposed, the exercise can finally become a waste of time. Initially however, it can be used to re-examine one's own assumptions and maybe express the argument better. In that spirit I am responding ... From a skeptic: The following press release, issued today, describes interesting new results in the study of the solar wind & the sun's magnetic field. Scientists analyzing a 38 year data set of solar wind and solar magnetic field data have determined a 27-day 43-minute period in the solar wind that has remained fixed over the entire 38 years, slightly more than 3 of the 11 year sunspot cycles, and slightly less than 2 of the 22 year full magnetic field cycles. Seen in light of current "standard" theory for the generation of the solar wind & magnetic field, the implication is that fluid motion inside the sun is likely less turbulent than thought, and more dominated by some large scale regular pattern that is yet to be described. Comment: Wal Thornhill There is no "standard" theory for the generation of the solar wind & magnetic field. In "Solar Interior and Atmosphere", 1991, DeLuca and Gilman after discussing the present state of knowledge about the solar "dynamo" which is supposed to drive all of the complex phenomena in the Sun's atmosphere, write: In closing, we remark that, after many years through which the prevailing opinion was that the problem of the solar dynamo was 'solved' ... new observational and theoretical results have now overturned that belief, leading to a stimulating new period of proliferation of solar dynamo theories. On examination those theories have so many assumptions and "fudge factors" built in that they are a top contender for Langmuir's pathological science award. Poincar has said that above all, a physical theory should allow predictions to be made. D. M. Rabin et al in the above volume report: ...as DeLuca and Gilman's chapter make clear, the daunting complexity of self-consistent dynamo models has thus far limited their role to achieving consistency with basic features of the activity cycle rather than making predictions at the detailed level of modern observations. The "standard" theory has not been able to predict anything that the new generation of solar observatories has discovered and has had to be "adjusted" repeatedly in an effort to cater for those observations. It cannot explain the many strange phenomena in the Sun's atmosphere nor the
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acceleration of the solar wind. It cannot explain the sunspot cycle or the totally unexpected correlations between neutrinos, the solar wind and sunspots. Helioseismology, or the study of solar oscillations, has been used to help constrain solar dynamo models. The observations have been applied to the standard solar model in order to achieve this. So we now have two interlocked models concerning unseen things going on inside the Sun. And what has been said recently of the standard solar model? In the same volume mentioned earlier, in a chapter called "The Global Sun", J. C. Pecker writes: ...we have difficulty in matching the observations with a theory. So we are twice removed from reality with the solar dynamo models. The electric star model makes the simplest assumption that nothing is going on inside the Sun. The few neutrinos we do see are generated in electrically mediated nuclear reactions in the photosphere. That provides a direct connection between neutrinos, the solar wind and sunspots. As the model name suggests, it takes into account the fundamental electrical nature of all matter. Unbelievably, this is ignored in the standard solar model, which is based on the equilibrium between compression of a gaseous sphere by gravity and the expansive force of heat in the centre. Eddington, who is responsible for the standard model, wrote: In seeking a source of energy other than [gravitational] contraction the first question is whether the energy to be radiated in future is now hidden in the star or whether it is being picked up continuously from outside. Suggestions have been made that the impact of meteoric matter provides the heat, or that there is some subtle radiation traversing space that the star picks up. Strong objections may be urged against these hypotheses individually; but it is unnecessary to consider them in detail because they have arisen through a misunderstanding of the nature of the problem. No source of energy is of any avail unless it liberates energy in the deep interior of the star. It is not enough to provide for the external radiation of the star. We must provide for the maintenance of the high internal temperature, without which the star would collapse. So there we have it. The thermonuclear engine inside the Sun is required principally to save the model! If we can find a reason why the Sun is the size we see, given its mass, without requiring internal heat then an external source of energy is possible. A few pages earlier, Eddington seems to deal with electric charge in the interior of a star when he invokes the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law for a gas at uniform temperature in a gravitational field. It simply says that the lighter molecules will tend to rise to the top. He writes: In ionized material the electrons are far lighter than the ions and tend to rise to the top... But this separation is stopped almost before it has begun, because the minutest inequality creates a large electrostatic field which stops any further diffusion. The calculated result is: "...a deficiency of 1 electron in every million tons of matter ... The electric force, which varies in proportion to gravity in the interior, is absurdly weak, but it stops any diffusion of the electron outwards." Eddington's argument is too simplistic. Thermal ionization of hydrogen only becomes significant at a temperature of about 100,000K. So for most of the volume of a star where the gravity is strongest, atoms and molecules will predominate. (In the electric model that applies to the entire star). The nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than the electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the centre of the atom. The result is that each atom becomes a small electric dipole. Those dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than simple gravitational sorting allows. That leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive force of gravity without the need for a central heat source in
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the star. An electric star will be roughly the same density throughout, or isodense. (An important corollary for the electric star model is that stars cannot be compressed to form neutron stars. The stronger the gravity the more powerful is the electrical repulsion to balance it. Since neutron stars are the theoretical pre-cursor of a black hole, both can be clearly seen to be a mathematical fiction). Do we have any evidence that our Sun is essentially isodense? Some early work in helioseismology by Severney, Kotov and others found dominant pulsations of the Sun which fitted the homogeneous sphere model. They wrote in 1976: The simplest interpretation is that we observed purely radial pulsations. The most striking fact is that the observed period [160 minutes] is almost precisely... the value if the Sun were to be an homogeneous sphere ... We have investigated two possible solutions to this dilemma. The first alternative is that nuclear... reactions are not responsible for energy generation in the Sun. Such a conclusion, although rather extravagant, is quite consistent with the observed absence of appreciable neutrino flux from the Sun, and with the observed abundance of Li and Be in the solar atmosphere. The second alternative involved force fitting the data to the standard solar model by assuming that the oscillations were not simply radial but of a more complicated form. However, the implications were so disturbing for theorists that the work was repeated in various locations and all sources of error looked for. The result in 1981 was that the original oscillation was found to be the highest peak in the power spectrum, and "one may conclude that 160-min oscillation shows mostly radial motion." In reporting the status of solar oscillation observations in 1991 in "Solar Interior and Atmosphere", F. Hill et al report on the 160-minute oscillation without any reference to the implied homogeneous Sun. Rather, they spend half a page casting suspicion on the extensive observations and attempting to minimize its significance. The reason is only thinly veiled: Additional doubt comes from the difficulty of theoretically describing the nature of the oscillation... In other words, we won't accept the data if it doesn't fit the standard model! The solar dynamo theory requires turbulence to generate the magnetic field. The hypothetical convection zone was supposed to provide that turbulence. But then it was realized that the field structures would be too short-lived to explain the sunspot cycle so the turbulence was shoved deeper into another hypothetical zone of shearing. This 38-year pattern only makes matters far worse for that model. Skeptic: It is up to someone else to see this in light of the "electric sun/star" hypothesis. We already know that the alleged rain of relativistic electrons responsible for the sun's surface temperature and magnetic field, according to the "electric sun/star" hypothesis, has as yet managed to remain undetected. Thornhill: By ignoring, or not troubling to find out about Juergens' model, we have here a "straw man", built upon an unspecified model. Juergens was at great pains to describe the model of a cathodeless glow discharge in a plasma. That was the specific model he chose on the basis of its match to all of the observed phenomena we call "the Sun". That includes such things as granulation of the photosphere, chromospheric spicules, anomalous temperatures above the photosphere, anomalous Fraunhofer spectrum, and so on and on. In a glow discharge, the current is carried through most of the volume, known as the positive column region, by a slow "drift" of electrons superimposed on their higher thermal velocity. It takes place in a quasi-neutral plasma with a low density of ionization. That is what we observe in interplanetary space. It is only very close to the anode that the electric field becomes strong and accelerates electrons to relativistic speeds. So if Thompson wants to find them he will need to get uncomfortably close to the Sun!
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Of course, we have indirect evidence for that strong electric field in the accelerating positive ions (solar wind) heading in the opposite direction. The solar wind is a natural outcome of the electric Sun hypothesis. It is an embarrassment to the thermonuclear model of the Sun. Skeptic: So does this mean that this rain of undetected electrons must have all of the solar periodicities buried in it (11 years, 22 years, 27 days 43 minutes), or do we accept even in this electric hypothesis, that these periodicities are of internal origin in the sun? If the latter, then why do we need an electric hypothesis to begin with? If not, then what effect imposes these periods on the incoming flow? And why does it remain undetected? Thornhill: Having set up a straw man, the skeptic sets about making it look more ridiculous. It is unnecessary for all of the observed periodicities to be driven by the power source. Just as in electric circuits that have inductance and capacitance and non- linear plasma effects, there will be oscillatory modes that have nothing to do with the power source. Also it is well documented that the planets have an influence on the Sun which is too large to be attributed to the conventional view of gravity. However, if both gravity and magnetism are derived from the electrostatic force there is a connection that could affect the Sun in a cyclic fashion. In the specific case of the Sun's magnetic field returning to the same configuration in each 11 year cycle, I consider the notion [see below] of Dr. Marcia Neugebauer, a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. to be supremely ad hoc: There may be something asymmetric about the Sun's interior, perhaps a deep-seated lump of old magnetic field... After 30 years astrophysicists have still not learnt Alfvn's lesson that it is not possible to "freeze" magnetic fields into a plasma indefinitely. I am not required to provide an explanation for all of the observed periodicities in order to have the electric star model considered seriously. The standard solar model cannot do it and it has had the full attention of hundreds of scientists for many decades. I can, however, provide some ideas that make more sense than that of Neugebauer. The switch in polarity of the Sun's field is likely to be superimposed on other rhythms by the current source that feeds the Sun, that is the Birkeland currents that shape the galactic arms. The relative movement of the Sun transversely across each filament will see the Sun's local galactic magnetic field reverse polarity roughly cyclically. The 27 day 43 minute cycle seems to be tied to the rotation of the Sun's core. In the standard model it is hard to imagine anything in a fiercely hot plasma that could lend itself to a longitudinal "memory". In the electric star model, it is likely that there is a solid object composed of heavy elements at the centre of the Sun. That would be much more likely to retain a longitudinal "memory". Variability in the external power source of the Sun is evident in the solar wind, UV and x-rays. The standard solar model has no generally accepted way of explaining any of these phenomena, let alone their considerable variability. None of them have any business being there if the Sun is merely a thermonuclear heat source, radiating into space. The standard solar model doesn't predict any of them and the solar dynamo is simply an ad hoc barnacle added to that theory in an unsuccessful effort to save appearances. Skeptic: It does seem that the "internal" solution is more parsimonious to me. Comment:
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See Lyttleton's quote in para. 2 above. This is a remarkable statement because there simply isn't a single coherent "internal" solution to explain all of the complexity we see on the Sun. And since the action is coyly taking place out of sight (as with so many other astrophysical models), ad hoc changes can and are being made continually to force-fit the data to ever more models. They all argue backward from effect to cause so they cannot predict anything. In Poincar's terms, the theories are almost certainly wrong. Who would be happy with "some large scale regular pattern that is yet to be described" as an explanation? The solar dynamo "internal" solution is only parsimonious in its predictions, not in its assumptions. Juergens' work, on the other hand, has a distinct advantage in that it starts from the observations and looks for a physical model that best fits them all. It has predictive power and does not require a return to the drawing board with each new discovery. Wal Thornhill
THE SUN'S MAGNETIC FIELD HAS A GOOD MEMORY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 1, 2000 By compiling all the solar wind data gathered in the space age, NASA scientists have concluded that even though the solar magnetic field is constantly changing, it always returns to its original shape and position. "We now know that the Sun's magnetic field has a memory and returns to approximately the same configuration in each 11- year solar cycle," said Dr. Marcia Neugebauer, a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Current theories imply that the field is generated by random, churning motions within the Sun and should have no longterm memory. Despite this expectation, the underlying magnetic structure remains fixed at the same solar longitude." "It's interesting that the solar magnetic field varies in strength and direction, but not in longitude," said Dr. Edward Smith, senior research scientist at JPL. The solar wind is composed of charged particles ejected from the Sun that flow continuously through interplanetary space. The solar wind carries part of the Sun's magnetic field into space. Before completing this research, scientists knew that features of the solar wind reaching the Earth tended to repeat about every 27 days, said Neugebauer. The new information pinpoints the repetition interval at 27 days and 43 minutes and shows that the Sun has kept this steady rhythm, much like a metronome, for at least 38 years. This pattern escaped previous detection because it is a very subtle statistical effect. There are many larger variations in the solar wind that come and go, which largely mask the underlying pattern. This repetitive behavior can't be seen if these data are examined for only a few months or years, but it was revealed in this 38-year database. "Why the Sun's magnetic field behaves in this way is a puzzle, but the answer must lie deep within the Sun," Smith said. "We're trying to understand how magnetic fields are generated in the Sun, the planets and the stars," said Neugebauer. "A better understanding of how the Sun generates its magnetic field will help us better understand the solar wind and space weather." Fluids conducting electricity under the Sun's surface generate the magnetic field, Neugebauer explained, and the field's apparent memory is most likely caused by a structure and process
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occurring deeper inside the Sun than previously believed. "There may be something asymmetric about the Sun's interior, perhaps a deep- seated lump of old magnetic field," she said. The findings, published in the February 1 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, are based on all the solar wind data collected from the dawn of space exploration through 1998, both by Earth-orbiting satellites and interplanetary spacecraft. This includes about 335,000 hours of solar wind speed data and 250,000 hours of magnetic field data. Co-authors of the article, in addition to Neugebauer and Smith, are Drs. Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman and Arthur Vaughn, all of JPL.
Additional information is available at: http://spacephysics.jpl.nasa.gov/pr/longitude.htm This study was funded under the Supporting Research Program of NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a NASA center managed by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 6 (March 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WANTED: COSMO-CENTRIC IDEAS THE NAME OF GOD SUPERLUMINOUS EJECTION QUESTIONS PARADIGM PORTRAITS (3): YOUNG GALAXIES FOUNTAINS OF IO PATTERNS OF HUMAN MEMORY
by Mel Acheson by Anthony Larson A Kroniatalk discussion by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill by Michel Tavir and Dave Talbott
WANTED: COSMO-CENTRIC IDEAS

By Mel Acheson Currently accepted theories have evolved a long way toward catastrophics from their ancestry in uniformism. Assumptions of actualism and gradualism-that present-day processes acting over long times could explain the changing morphology of rocks and species-have been displaced. Impacts from space have broken the continuously gradual action of erosion and natural selection into discrete episodes of modification of morphogenic discontinuities. Proposals such as the Alvarez asteroid and the Clubian comet appeared at first to add a few spectacular footnotes to the geologic record. Now they threaten to become the shapers of that record. Less apparent than this evolution from ideas of continuity to ideas of discontinuity is an underlying movement in viewpoint. The development of ideas over millennia can be simplistically characterized as a movement from explaining unfamiliar phenomena in terms of familiar to explaining all phenomena-familiar as well as unfamiliar-in terms of immanent intelligibility. Examples would be the change from geocentrism to heliocentrism and from anthropocentrism to open-ended evolutionism. For the purposes of this opinion, I'll limit my simplistically characterized movement to a segment beginning with uniformism and extrapolated one step forward. Uniformism (and its fellow travelers in physics: gravitation, expanding universe, etc.) is thus (relatively) geo- and anthropo-centric. Or perhaps helio- and Homo-centric would be better: It seeks to explain all space and all time in terms of processes active locally (in the solar system) in the present (as experienced by modern humans with their technologically-enhanced senses). It projects this momentary condition (of only a few centuries) of our tiny planetary system as sensed by one species (us) onto vast expanses of time and space. It illuminates There and Then with the light of Here and Now. In contrast, my one step forward would reverse this: It explains the local present in terms of processes active throughout the cosmos and throughout the past. It sees beyond our noses and the immediate blink of our eyes to place us in a cosmic context. It illuminates Here and Now with the light of There and Then. Intellectually, the two should be equivalent: We can start with This and try to explain That, or we can start with That and try to explain This. But geo-anthropo-ego-centrism tips the balance: We "naturally" prefer to explain That with This. One of the basic principles of scientific investigation is to keep such biases from
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influencing results. There's an inherent tension in this: A certain passion for dispassionate research is essential. An operative criterion is to let Nature speak for herself-in this case, to let the cosmos and the past speak for themselves. But we ask the questions, and the answers are constrained by the limits inherent in the questions, i.e., by our assumptions, viewpoint, mindset. We can counteract this bias by rephrasing the questions to invert (or at least to change) the limits. And we can pay attention to hints-to the things that don't fit. My three favorite misfits are: Excess redshifts (in stars) showed up early last century. They were ignored until Halton Arp discovered physical and statistical connections between high- and low-redshift extragalactic objects. Suddenly, astronomers were able to ask the question "Is redshift caused by some intrinsic mechanism and not solely by the Doppler effect?" instead of declaring "What else could it be but Doppler!" Suddenly, the Expanding Universe with its clusters of galaxies elongated along axes pointed at the Earth collapsed into superclusters not pointing at the Earth. (Geocentrism is alive and well and hiding in the Expanding Universe.) A long list of researchers, from Birkeland before 1900 to Thornhill today, discovered many unexpected properties of electrical discharges: pinching, braiding, formation of sheaths, isomorphism over large ranges of scale. They recognized close similarities in certain characteristics of the sun and other stars, of nebulae, and of galaxies. Their proposals for an electrically active cosmos were ignored, but the opportunity now exists to ask questions without gravitational limits and to let the stars and galaxies answer: Do stars generate light the way arc lamps do rather than by astronomical accumulations of insignificantly-gravitating particles? Do galaxies generate X- rays the way a dentist does rather than squeezing them out of unimaginably pressurized holes that shouldn't let anything out? The legends of our prehistoric greatSgrandparents from around the globe tell a coherent story. Their art and architecture and rituals illustrate that story. They appear somewhat obsessed with it. This has been noticed for some time. But Velikovsky said it out loud, and the questions were lost amid the howls and denials. Talbott, Cardona, and Cochrane (to name three recent researchers) put together a model that reopens the mouths of our greatSgrandparents and enables them to speak again of planetary gods hurling lightning bolts at each other. Are these the same cosmic lightning bolts that Thornhill suspects of electrifying the universe? Is this electrified universe pinched into a couple of "ball-lightning" superclusters that resonate at quantized values of redshift? I'm framing these questions with deliberate passionate bias. (It's an editorial, after all.) The point (for me) is to jostle loose the ossifications of thought that accumulate around widely accepted ideas. There's a whole universe out there to discover, and our ideas are still stuck plodding around in the provinces. It's time to move to the Big City of cosmo-centric ideas. Mel Acheson
THE NAME OF GOD

by Anthony E. Larson Sound is an evocative and thus a creative experience. Many cultures credit the gods with the power to make sounds, either through natural agencies, such as wind, water, and animals, or through musical instruments. In myth, sound can be bewitching (the voices of the sirens), or destructive (the shout with which Joshua and the Israelites felled the walls of Jericho). Many creation myths talk of sound disturbing the pre-existent stillness, thereby bringing the world into being. ~David Fontana, The Secret Language of Symbols, (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1994), p. 64.
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Velikovsky suggested that all humanity had once heard what they perceived to be a celestial voice, which spoke the name of God. That name, according to the good doctor, can be found in the ancient traditions of many cultures today, good evidence that the voice was heard worldwide in antiquity. Perhaps the best instance of its preservation is in the sacred Hebrew name, YAHWEH. For reasons that will become clear by the end of this monograph, the ineffable word was mere onomatopoeia. The source of this voice, according to Dr. Velikovsky, was the electromagnetic oscillations produced by the interplay between Earth and a proximate body. The Earth, acting as a great transducer or speaker, effectively converted those electromagnetic waves into audible sounds. A clue to the nature and form of this ancient voice may be found in the behavior of modern radio receivers because they convert electromagnetic signals into audio-in effect, doing the same thing that the Earth did anciently. Early radio receivers often produced an annoying 'whistling' sound that can only be called an electronic glissando. This sound began at a very high tone, slid down to a very low tone, then slid back up to the high tone. In fact, the receiver was reproducing a long wavelength carrier frequency on which the program audio was superimposed or modulated. The carrier wave is normally suppressed by circuitry within the radio so that only the desirable program material-music or voice-was reproduced. The technology to suppress the carrier signal was crude in early receivers, hence the 'whistle' was often heard when attempting to tune the set. This 'whistle' holds the key to understanding the sacred name, YAHWEH. To understand the relationship, we must alter that crude 'whistle.' Perhaps the most useful device for its reproduction is a modern analog music synthesizer, which can be manipulated-using tone or waveform generators, envelope generators and a variety of filters-to produce "electronic" sounds of epic proportions. In fact, the 'whistle' effect can be enhanced and refined to reproduce what must certainly be a close approximation of the sound the ancients heard. First, we begin with 'pink noise'-a hissing, rumbling noise that contains all audible frequencies sounding at the same time, with extra emphasis on the lower frequencies. This is the simple 'shhhh' sound we make with our mouths when we wish to quiet a noisy child. This represents the omnipresent background noise in the Universe, generated by all the electromagnetic activity around us. We push that noise through a comb filter, which is driven by an extremely low frequency sine wave-a pure fundamental tone that is the equivalent of the electronic oscillations set up by intersecting planets in antiquity. The sine wave causes the filter to emphasize only those parts of the pink noise that correspond to its amplitude-the 'peak' of the wave emphasizes only the highest frequencies, the 'valley' of the wave emphasizes only the lowest frequencies. This produces a 'swishing' sound, much like that which you can make with your mouth by rapidly opening and closing your lips while making the "shhhh" sound. It sounds like the onomatopoeic word 'swish' repeated over and over. The sound heard by the ancients was undoubtedly far more complex due to its nature as a random or chaotic electromagnetic event. By adding several other minor tones to our sound, we arrive at an even more dynamic sound that, I believe, is more representative of the sound heard in antiquity. Finally, by increasing the amplitude of our fundamental sine wave-beginning with an extremely high-pitched, noisy tone that gradually shifts to an extremely low, rumbling frequency-we approach the dynamics of the ancient sound. The 'swish' now moves at a snail's pace and it varies from extremely high to extremely low frequencies. What we hear now is probably what the ancients heard. If you do not have access to an analog synthesizer, you can use your mouth and your voice to simulate an onomatopoeic expression of it. Using only the vowel sounds, begin by making the 'eeee' sound heard in the word 'me,' with your jaw closed. At the same time use your vocal cords to intone the highest tone possible. Proceed from vowel to vowel-eeee, aaaa, oooo-letting your jaw open gradually as you purse your lips, all the while dropping the frequency of the tone you are singing until you are at the lowest tone possible and your mouth forms a perfect 'o.' Then, without stopping, reverse the sequence of sounds and events until you end where you began, with the 'eeee' sound.
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You have just spoken the sacred name of God, YAHWEH, as the ancients heard it and subsequently articulated it in countless sacred ceremonies and holy proceedings in antiquity. It seems likely that this sound was heard repeatedly and in various forms. At times it would have been at a very low volume-almost a whisper. It would have seemed to the listener that the pianissimo voice was whispering right in one's ear. On other occasions it would have been a mind-numbing, ear-splitting cacophony that would have been felt as much as heard, seemingly penetrating the very fiber of one's being. Such descriptions of the voice of deity are replete in ancient records. Of course, this was not the only sound heard anciently as the result of electromagnetic waves turned audible. As others have suggested, trumpet-like sounds, drum-like sounds and ringing, bell-like sounds were heard. Thus, these instruments found their way into the liturgy of all cultures in an attempt to replicate (re-member, as Talbott put it) the sacred sounds. So, too, the chants and mantras of all religions, including the chorale renditions of modern Christianity, hearken back to those audible sounds produced when the planets stood in proximity to one another. One wonders if composers, like their artistic counterparts who draw on universal symbology for their inspiration, do not subconsciously draw on those ancient sounds to reproduce them in modern musical expressions. This would explain the power of some orchestral and choral compositions to affect emotional responses. Indeed, the more true a musical expression is to the ancient originals, the more power it would seem to have for its listeners. This would explain why these sounds are so important to sacred rites and rituals. They not only replicate the sounds, they duplicate the human response to them. These sounds, then, were literally the 'music of the spheres' and the 'voice of God'. Anthony Larson
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (3): YOUNG GALAXIES

By Amy Acheson This is from an article on the CNN website for Oct 6, 1999 The article begins: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers new clues about the birth of spiral galaxies like our own. One team of astronomers studying pictures from Hubble said Wednesday they had confirmed that the central bulges of the more tightly wound spirals were all created at more or less the same time in the early universe. The team, led by Reynier Peletier from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, used the Hubble to look into the center of 20 spiral galaxies that have large bulges. "What they found that is quite surprising is that all of them are old," Peletier said at a news conference Wednesday. All of them were formed within a period of only two billion years. Amy comments: What they have left out of this analysis is how they determined that these galaxies were formed at "the same time in the early universe." All they have actually measured is the redshift. All they can say without invoking theoretical assumptions about what redshift means is that these 20 galaxies had similar (high) redshifts.
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What does this high redshift mean? In the conventional view, redshift was explained as a Doppler effect and only a Doppler effect. From this assumption, plus the observation that fainter galaxies seem to have higher redshifts, the whole idea of an expanding universe was deduced. From the expanding universe deduction, it followed that an object of high redshift will be farther away than an object of low redshift. Because it is farther away, its light will have been traveling for billions of years, so what we see now is what was happening billions of years ago. If all the members of a certain class of objects have high redshifts, then it is assumed that they are were all formed billions of years ago and that no galaxies of that type have been formed since. If we could teleport instantly from here to there (billions of light-years away) in the universe as hypothesized by mainstream astronomy (where redshift means Doppler effect and nothing else, we would presumably discover that all of these galaxies have "aged" and no longer have this "youthful" structure and appearance. If we then looked back from there to here, we would see billion year-old light from our familiar neighborhood, showing our own Milky Way and neighboring galaxies in this "young" form -- large bulges and tightly wound arms. Halton Arp's intrinsic redshift hypothesis would also conclude that these high redshift galaxies are "young". This may appear as though Arp is in agreement with mainstream astronomy. But there is an important difference. In Arp's cosmology, the high redshift is a property of the young galaxy itself. It is a measure of velocity or distance. So instead of automatically defining these galaxies as background objects based on their high redshift, Arp would examine the sky around each of them to see how they relate to nearby galaxies. Again and again and again he finds that quasars and galaxies of different redshifts high redshift form lines or arcs that are positioned in non-random formations in the sky. They are lined up along the spin axes of active galaxies. Again and again and again he finds high-redshift galaxies physically connected to lowredshift galaxies by gas clouds, radio isophotes and x-ray fields. When presented with the evidence, again and again and again, the mainstream astronomers and editors of the peer-reviewed journals say it's "just another isolated case." So what would you see in Arp's cosmos if you could step into that fantasy teleporter that we used on the mainstream universe and come out in the same "billions of light-years away" location that we visited in the conventional universe? Maybe nothing. The "redshift = velocity = distance" equation of the conventional viewpoint adds billions of light-years to the assumed distance of high redshift objects. From Arp's intrinsic redshift viewpoint, the universe we see is distributed in a much tighter configuration. Even the Hubble telescope hasn't probed as deeply into the universe as the expanding universe theories claim. But, unlike the expanding universe, the intrinsic redshift universe doesn't postulate that we know the beginning or the end, or even the "edges" of the universe, so let's assume that beyond the limits of what we see today, we will find something similar to what we see in our neighborhood. So look around. Even though the time is now billions of years later than what we might have seen from home, we can still expect to find a nice mix of galaxies -- low redshift and high, young and old, all connected, ejected, and evolving. The article continues: Scientists said the relatively brief incubation period for these galaxies could have happened through the collapse of a single hydrogen cloud or through the merging of primeval star clusters. "These bulges (in the spiral galaxies) are as old as the oldest galaxies we know of in the universe, which are the ellipticals and clusters," Peletier said. Amy comments: Arp discusses the ellipticals and the clusters, as well. There is more than one type of elliptical, and again astronomers have confused them by their redshift. The giant ellipticals of the Virgo and Fornax clusters are the most impressive groups of stars known. All have low redshifts, some of them even negative
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redshifts (blueshifts). The high-redshift ellipticals tend to be small, shapeless, sometimes no more than a handful of stars and some gas. Again, the expanding universe thesis assumes that these are normal ellipticals, dwarfed by their great distance. Arp sees them as nearby infant structures. In Seeing Red, he even argues that the clusters we see (supposedly in the far distance/past) are also front-row baby formations formed in the break-up of an unusual type of quasar called a BL Lac object. Are there any advantages to looking at the universe this way? Well, for one, in Arp's cosmology, we no longer have to look for that elusive dark matter and dark energy. Brought into their proper perspective, up close and personal, galaxies and clusters no longer behave as if they were super-dense. Quasars no longer eject jets at many times the speed of light. And even the biggest gamma ray bursts no longer appear as energetic as the Big Bang. All of these phenomena are distortions of perspective caused by the theoretical framework of the expanding universe/big bang cosmology. In Arp's cosmology, the problems simply disappear. As a bonus, Wal Thornhill's electric universe model, conceived in the mytho-historical celestial thunderbolts of planetary catastrophics, can explain how the galaxies are ejected and why their redshift changes. The rest of the CNN article (and a couple of delightful galaxy photos) can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9910/06/hubble.pictures/index.html Amy Acheson
SUPERLUMINOUS EJECTION QUESTIONS

A Kroniatalk discussion From the introduction to the book Open Questions in Relativistic Physics by Franco Selleri: Astrophysical evidence has been reported of superluminal (faster than light) propagations in jets emerging from galactic nuclei and in active clouds emitted from quasars. These can be explained away if quasars are indeed associated with nearby galaxies and their redshifts are not due to expansion. There remains the M87 ejections (blue knots propagating at a velocity of 5-6 c!) whose distance does not depend on redshift, but was obtained from Cepheids, planetary nebulae, apparent size of galaxy, etc. This distance is somewhere near 50 million light years. The M87 evidence was reported immediately after our conference. Amy Acheson wants to know: What does this mean? At first reading, it seems to contradict relativity, the expanding universe and the intrinsic redshift models. Don Scott discusses the problems associated with determining the velocity of the blue knots: I'll take a very brief shot at this ... The only stars whose distance can be directly measured are those that apparently move against the far distant background because of parallax. The parallax effect is what you observe by viewing a close object - say a person about 10 feet away - first with one eye and then the other. The person appears to move from side to side against the background. The same effect occurs when we make two observations (6 months apart, making the baseline distance the diameter of Earth's orbit) of a relatively close star. If the star apparently moves one second of arc (1/3600 of a degree) we say it is at a distance of one "parsec" (parallax second). It was discovered that a few dozen of these relatively close stars were variable in brightness (the most notable of these was discovered in the constellation Cepheus and so they were called Cepheids. It was subsequently discovered that the period of brightness fluctuation of Cepheids was proportional to their absolute luminosity - and "therefore" if any star was observed to be a Cepheid type variable, it is assumed
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that its absolute luminosity can be calculated. Knowing the absolute luminosity, the distance can then be calculated via an inverse square law. There are several assumptions in all of this that may or may not hold up. The original population of observable Cepheids was very small; there are at least two "populations" of Cepheids in our galaxy (and the Magellanic clouds) each having its own period- luminosity characteristic; and it is assumed that Cepheid type stars in other galaxies have the same period-luminosity characteristic as the ones near us do. The important statement in the paragraph is: There remains the M87 ejections (blue knots propagating at a velocity of 5-6 c!) whose distance does not depend on redshift, but was obtained from Cepheids, planetary nebulae, apparent size of galaxy, etc. Does he mean that Cepheid stars have been observed in the "blue knots"? I am willing to bet not. I am willing to bet that although the distance to M87 can possibly be measured without reference to redshift (Maybe. I'd like see specifics.), the ejecta have intrinsic redshifts, different from M87, that indicate their age and not their velocity. Wal Thornhill adds: Don gives a very good summary of some of the problems associated with determining the velocity of the blue knots being ejected from the core of the giant active elliptical galaxy M87. The distance to the jets is obviously the same as that of M87. The blue knots however have no spectral lines with which to measure a redshift. In fact they are so close to the nucleus of M87 that on Arp's model (or more correctly, Ambartsumian's model) they are newly born. The knots are strong sources of UV and hard x-rays. I would like to know more about the reported superluminal speeds of the knots. My information from the book 'Galaxies' by Timothy Ferris says that the jets are 15,000 years old and have achieved a length of 5,000 light years which is clearly not superluminal. I presume that such figures are derived from radio-telescope observations. I think that faster than light speeds may not be a problem in a non-Einsteinian electric universe. Once we acknowledge that he (and everyone else) didn't have a clue what is meant by mass then the interpretation of the increasing difficulty of accelerating particles in an electromagnetic field as due to increasing mass of those particles is a cranky supposition. And if Sansbury is right and the electrostatic force is instantaneous then it seems to me that the possibility of faster than light movement lies open. As well, there is then such a thing as universal time, time travel is impossible (sorry Dr Who but your police box is permanently out of order), clocks don't have to run slower than each other as Einstein's Special Theory requires, space is not warped in another dimension and has no connection with time, measuring rods do not change length as they approach the speed of light, and Schrodinger's moggy can get on with its nine lives without worrying about some demented physicist observer. What a wonderful universe! Halton Arp was of the opinion that the blobs formed near the centre of an active galaxy are created with practically zero mass and acquired mass over time, slowing down in the process. Because the blobs are near massless they can, like photons, travel initially at near light speeds. He may be right. I can see the outlines of an answer to this puzzle based upon the electrostatic dipole theory of inertial mass. In a private communication, Halton Arp says that the superluminal velocity was computed by parallax: Some small knots in M87 were observed with HST to be moving in position from year to year. That computed out to be 5-6 c apparent velocity at the distance of M87. But after the usual assumptions about projection angle and relativistic corrections they got the physical velocity down to ~.9999c. But at almost c
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they have to pump almost infinite energy into the motion so they really have not solved anything as they would have you believe.
FOUNTAINS OF IO
By Wal Thornhill
The following quote is from a recent NASA report. It relates to an image taken from NASA's infrared telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, at about the same time that Galileo did its close fly-by of Io. See http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/PIAGenCatalogPage.pl?PIA02522 It shows a bright spot which is taken to be the same bright lava fountain that was supposedly recorded by Galileo's camera. The report continues: When this image was taken, the fiery lava fountain was almost on the edge of Io's disk and about to disappear from view due to Io's rotation. The lava fountain was seen from an angle just 5.5 degrees above horizontal. Its prominence when seen so obliquely confirms that this eruption is indeed composed of fiery fountains rising up above the surface; horizontal lava flows would be much harder to see from so close to the horizontal. It is even easier to see cathode jets lit from below by hot spots at 5 or 6,000K on the surface of Io. One good distinguishing test might be to look for multiply ionized atoms in the spectrum of the so-called lava fountains. High ionization states would be expected from the electric arc model but not from lava. Wal Thornhill
PATTERNS OF HUMAN MEMORY

By Michel Tavir, Dave Talbott
Michel Tavir wrote: Human remembrance, forgetfulness and the good old days: every single person living in coastal Western Europe "knows" that the weather has changed in the past few decades. Every single person "knows" that when they were children, there was always snow at Christmas. Well, sort of. Meteorological records tell us another story: two white Xmas's in the past 50 years or so. Memory and the use humans make of it are very fascinating things indeed. Dave Talbott Replied: Gotta disagree with you here concerning the meaning of the "exemplary" epoch, since I believe you are referring to my comments on the Golden Age. Comparative analysis will show that the memory of the Golden Age is much more than a recollection of "the good old days". It is a global idea with very specific content: passage from timelessness to time; rule of the universal sovereign as first king "on earth", a superior, motionless sun in the sky; identification of this "sun" with the first king; paradisal garden divided by four rivers of life; identity of the garden with the turning "wheel" of the sun; identification of the "hub" or "nave" of the wheel with the mother goddess; identification of the "axle" of the wheel with the unborn warrior- hero; placement of a crescent on this same wheel; location of paradise on the summit of a mountain reaching to the center of the sky; identity of the original sovereign with Saturn; identification of the goddess with Venus; identification of the warrior-hero with Mars; violent collapse of the paradisal condition; exile or displacement of the original sovereign; subsequent wars of the gods; subsequent regeneration of the world-- to name only the most elementary components of the idea.
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All of this relates to the matter of memory "and the use humans make of it", which I do see as the key, though not quite in the sense I think you are implying :-). When investigating events witnessed around the world, the patterns of human memory enable us to draw conclusions of a far more specific and dependable sort than could be obtained through physical evidence or physical theory in the absence of human testimony. Initially, almost no one will realize this. But to discover that this is indeed true, it is only necessary to follow the appropriate groundrules. The groundrules are designed to expose the substratum of memory beneath all of the regional fragments, enabling one to speak for the substratum with the highest level of confidence. Quite frankly, this has been the most difficult point for a few of our readers to grasp, and we continue to hear references to "Saturnist's subjective interpretation of myth" and the like (c.f., Lynn Rose's and Peter James' comments at the recent SIS conference). But the purpose of pattern identification is to REMOVE all subjective interpretation, to assure that the reconstruction rests on cross-cultural points of agreement, where the patterns cannot be disputed. For example, no one can dispute that ancient words translated as "the sun" were words for Saturn in ancient astronomies. That's all we need to know, and the fact that one critic or another can guess at an alternative "explanation" to the one offered by the Saturn model is utterly irrelevant to the validity or non-validity of the Saturn model. All anomalies have prompted proposed "explanations" and that includes hundreds of recurring themes. If we had to separate out every theme and base a defense of the Saturn model on our ability to prove our interpretation WITH RESPECT TO THAT THEME ALONE, we would indeed be in trouble! The only issue logically is the predictive power of the Saturn model in relation to the substructure as a whole. Taken as a whole, the global patterns do not just suggest certain external events, they REQUIRE them. To see that this is so, however, one must consider the patterns with sufficient specificity and completeness, eliminating all selective perception. Considered in isolation from the larger patterns, all we can expect is a madhouse of guesses and interpretations. But when it comes to the full substratum, no fundamentally false "explanation" could possibly work. This truth, however, will be recognized only AFTER enough of the substratum has become sufficiently clear to the researcher to eliminate any doubt concerning the underlying coherence of the patterns Once one is willing to consider ALL verifiable patterns, it will become clear that they are all connected to each other, that they are entirely consistent with each other, and that, from top to bottom, they explicitly and flagrantly contradict all patterns in our sky today. Had the planetary forms not appeared in the ancient sky, such detailed and coherent patterns simply could not be there. [The comment which follows is not directed at Michel, who has shown a sincere interest in these issues] When I think about, I'd have to say that we Saturnists have been remarkably tolerant of the more extreme abuses of logic and common sense by certain critics :-) At the SIS conference, AFTER Ev had presented numerous illustrations of global imagery showing Venus smack in the center of the ancient and universal "sun" pictograph, Peter James stood up and drew a picture of a circle with rays, telling the audience that children naturally draw the Sun that way, end of mystery. Did he not HEAR Ev's presentation? :-) Did he not SEE the pictures Ev showed? :-) Did he not wonder why Venus was drawn as a SPHERE in the center of the depicted "sun"? Or why the streamers of Venus were shown reaching across the entire face of the larger body? Did he not wonder why the images are identical to ancient pictures of "Saturn's wheel"? Or wonder if there is any connection between such images and the ancient language of Saturn as "sun"? Peter James is a scholar commanding great respect. But after viewing his SIS comments, I am prompted to ask: If a critic will not even engage the first scratches on the surface in our presentation of acknowledged patterns, are we not permitted to doubt the sincerity of his interest? Michel wrote:
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Sacrifice is a fairly vast notion. I wonder whether sacrifice of animals (found in its "purest" form in clan initiation rituals) and human sacrifice (found in its uttermost form in holy wars - but aren't all wars "holy"?) can be equated. Some hints as to the mythical significance of the former (initiation consisting in the intake of the clan's animal's spirit by sacrificing it) might be found, if I remember well, in Carlos Castaneda's later books.
Dave replied: Sacrifice does indeed take many different ritual forms, and these collective practices certainly do reflect memories of planetary upheaval. But they also draw our attention to a deeper human tendency, and this tendency, I believe, must be confronted as a pre-condition to any healing deserving of the name. If we peel away the respective ritual forms of sacrifice, we will eventually confront a root idea more fundamental than any collective practice. By the "sacrifice principle" I mean the idea that something (be it yours or mine, a thing, a possession, or life itself) must be given up in order for ME to gain an advantage. How did this idea arise? There is nothing inherent in planetary catastrophe to make ritual sacrifice "logical", unless an underlying premise had already been accepted. (I do realize that more needs to be said to make the point clear.) Michel: The principle of sacrifice involves an obstruction of human awareness, a barrier to the innate sense of the unity of life. This does not seem - repeat seem - to apply to the cannibalistic sacrifice of war prisoners among pre-Portuguese Brazilian Indians - where prisoners received the best and most honourable treatment before they were sacrificed and eaten (hearts first). I would associate this kind of sacrifice with the type of animal sacrifice mentioned above, whereas animal sacrifice in the ancient religions of the Mediterranean (including Judaism) resembles Amerindian human sacrifices, for instance. Dave: But keep in mind that the "honorable treatment" you refer to above cannot be separated from the honor being paid to the sacrifice principle itself. The distinctions you make between ritual practices are surely valid, but all forms of sacrifice do express an underlying, uniquely human conflict, or a contradiction in human motivation and perception, if you will. Rather than address the point here, which would unfairly imply that I'm directing the comments toward something you have said, Michel I will post some further notes on the sacrifice principle separately. Michel: Not sure I can formulate where the line should be drawn, if a line has to be drawn, that is. Cruelty, maybe? The birth and the success of Christianity reflecting times when people felt pretty sure that the planetary gods had stopped "acting" (or had forgotten that they had been acting) and that they no longer had to be appeased with sacrifices? Nonetheless, the abolition of ritualistic sacrifice didn't keep cruelty away from Christianity, until very recently at least. Incidentally, it seems that ancient Greece, as opposed to most of the cultures and time periods we can turn our eyes to, shunned the practice of cruelty towards fellow humans (not that it was unheard of: the gods of the Pantheon made a generous use of it). Dave: I would suggest that when thinking philosophically, no "lines" be drawn in response to the sacrifice principle, since the distinctions between different expressions of the principle are only matters of degree and of variations in the form of projection involved. But an acknowledgment of the sacrifice principle and its effects is, I believe, essential both to constructive self-inquiry and to cultural healing. The value of penetrating to the taproot principle is that, once we discover that the idea is contradicted by another principle we know to be true and do not wish to violate, then only one correction is necessary. On the other hand, if we do not confront the taproot, we will tend to treat some forms of the error as advantageous, some as harmless, and some as unforgivable. And that pretty well encompasses the human condition in all its variations.
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Michel: "Guilt" is a concept extremely peculiar to Judaism and Christianity. As such, I believe, its "bandwidth" is too narrow to be useful when considering events on a planetary scale over such a time range as implied since the Saturn configuration. Dave: I do not believe that it is correct to limit the influence of "guilt"-concepts to Judaic-Christian influences. If there is no sense of SOMEBODY'S guilt, there can be no sense of "deserved punishment", and wherever actions or events are seen as deserved punishment, some idea of guilt (either "mine" or "yours") must be present. In fact many instances could be given from around the world in which the "guilty" party is a god. Much of Egyptian and Mesopotamian magic can be seen as early variations on the theme of "casting out the devil". Accordingly, various rites were designed to continue indefinitely the "punishment" of a guilty god or goddess, the male or female form of the chaos monster (witch- burning being the most familiar instance). This is only one variation on the scapegoat principle and that, too, is a form of sacrifice and certainly does involve the projection of guilt. All of this requires something more than a natural event. It requires that human imagination see events in a particular way. I simply do not believe that any experience of "guilt" is possible apart from a prior attraction to the sacrifice principle. (But again, I realize that what I mean by the "sacrifice principle" needs further explanation, and I'll try to get to that.) Dave
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, 1R7 (April 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: CONCEPTUAL CHROMATOGRAPHY MEMORIES AND SYMBOLS OF PLANETARY UPHEAVAL PARADIGM PORTRAITS (4): Galactic Ejections THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill and Mel Acheson
CONCEPTUAL CHROMATOGRAPHY
By Mel Acheson Chromatography has been quite a useful invention. The high- school-science demonstration of it is to place a drop or two of ink in a beaker of water and to suspend a length of filter paper over the water with the bottom of the paper barely immersed. The various pigments in the ink will travel up the paper at different speeds, producing a "spectrum" of colors. This technique can be used with various mixtures to detect the particular compounds composing them. But an analog of this process can occur with theories, and the results can be misleading instead of enlightening. Let's start with an example from cosmology. The "paper" of the Doppler effect is dipped into the "beaker" of redshift measurements of galaxies and quasars. The Doppler paper imposes a distance proportional to redshift on the measurements. Low- redshift galaxies don't get far; high-redshift quasars "chromatograph" into the farthest reaches of space. Hence, what could be a relatively nearby cluster of mixed galaxies and quasars becomes a "spike" or "finger" of objects stretching away from the Earth. What does this have to do with reality as we imagine it? On page 69 of Seeing Red, Arp plots all the galaxies in the Virgo cluster at their Doppler-interpreted redshift distances. The galaxies stretch out in a long, narrow strip exactly along a radius vector from Earth. The same effect can be seen in other clusters. If quasars were to be included in the plots, the entire universe would look like spokes of a wheel with Earth at the hub. Is the Earth at the center of the universe after all? Or is the Expanding Universe an artifact of conceptual chromatography? Well, that was an amusing exercise. Let's look for some more "paper theories". "Time," some wag has said, "is what keeps everything from happening all at once." But what if some things DID happen all at once, and a geologist came along with a "geologic record?" Single episodes of flooding have been known to build up many layers of sediments, sorted according to fluctuations in the velocity of the water. Afterward, dipping the concept of geologic record into the strata would stretch out each layer in time, marking off thousands of years at each stratum. Obviously, the flood would have to be
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slowed considerably. Equally obviously, the easy way to do that would be to freeze it. Our conceptual chromatography has created an ice age. But this is just idle speculation, right? Well, there is the matter of the Bretz floods in Eastern Washington. It took a long time and much careful argumentation, but it's now accepted that Eastern Washington was shaped by monstrous floods instead of by ice. One entire lobe of the Ice Age has been conceptually melted. Now I hear talk of similar floods coursing into the Atlantic from central Canada. The conceptual climate of the Ice Age just got a bit warmer, and a few things have started happening all at once. What if we "melted" the entire Ice Age and recalled the mythical stories of the collapse of the World Mountain or Tree that resulted in global floods from the north? This is fun. Let's play the game with plate tectonics: Instead of counting to a million years with every magnetic stripe on the Atlantic sea floor, let's use smaller numbers. Just to up the ante, let's use smaller units, too. How about a few minutes! We'd have to imagine SOMETHING ripping the Americas away from Europe and Africa all at once. It would have to be something so big that the continents and the energy to move them would be small potatoes in comparison. It would have to be something of astronomical proportions. Velikovsky already proposed other planets sweeping by and causing somewhat similar commotions. Let's take a clue instead from the Electric Universe: Instead of moving the Americas, we can leave them be. A "thunderbolt"--an interplanetary electrical discharge--just a bit more energetic than that alleged to have machined Valles Marineris out of Mars' surface arcs along the Earth from pole to pole. It blasts out and lifts large chunks of lithosphere along each side of the more sinuous central channel. It melts the bottom and leaves stripes of reversed magnetism every time the oscillations in the discharge channel reverse polarity. The pinching of the discharge channel confines the excavation to a parallel-sided gouge in the Earth that afterward fills with water. A few thousand years later, a geologist comes along with a strip of geologic record... If modern theories of astronomy and geology are vulnerable to chromatographic suspicion, can biology be far behind? Speciation and extinction color large areas on the paper of evolution. Natural selection works slowly but surely to bleed colorful moments into pastel millennia. A bit of color has been restored to moments of extinction with proposals of impacts from asteroids and comets. It's fairly easy to kill off large populations suddenly, but building up those populations surely takes time. The J-curves and S-curves of population growth have long initial tails. Gestation times and birth rates (for mammals-reproduction parameters in general) keep initial increases low. That is, if you start with only a few individuals. If it all happens at once--replacement of one population with another--the new population must be created ex nihilo, right? But what if the parents were another species? There have been several proposals for mass mutation. But their requirement for some direct linkage between genetic and environmental parameters is too Lamarckian for comfort. As long as we have chromatographic evolution, we don't need Lamarck. But if natural selection is augmented with forces of extinction that can be confined to extraordinary events of short duration, why not also augment the forces of speciation? The direct linkage between genes and environment would become a kind of "driven" genetics in which active groups of genes are "switched on and off" by extraordinary environmental changes. This leads to something like metamorphic evolution: If butterflies do it today, why not other creatures under other conditions? Ninety percent of our genes don't seem to do anything. What are they waiting for? A full moon? Let's perform one more thought experiment with this conceptual chromatography. Modern linguistics postulates a development of language gradually over thousands of years. A band of "oral color" spreads out before the band of "written color". But the earliest expressions contained in this linguistic "spectrum" testify that both utterance and symbol were given all at once by the gods. In the beginning was the word, and it was both an audible and a visual emanation from a planetary deity.
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Perhaps a prior language was obliterated and forgotten in the wake of the terrors and traumas accompanying the "sacred word." But linguistics is not concerned with the forgotten; it's concerned with the remembered. And languages remember "sacred sounds" that are tied to "sacred symbols" by way of "sacred stories" that memorialize an all-at- once creation witnessed by and imposed upon humankind. Linguistic chromatography dissociates the sound from the symbol and misses the story. Mel Acheson
MEMORIES AND SYMBOLS OF PLANETARY UPHEAVAL

By David Talbott [Editor's Note: The following paragraphs are excerpted from the Introduction of the forthcoming volume, WHEN SATURN WAS KING; co-authors David Talbott and Ev Cochrane]
OF PLANETS AND GODS

It seems that a great gulf stands between the textbook profile of the planets and the descriptions given by the first sky-worshippers. It is known that ancient cultures of both the New World and the Old honored the planets with much pomp and zeal, including human sacrifices on a horrifying scale. And when the priestly astronomers invoked these points of light, they summoned memories of heavenshattering catastrophe. What was it about these planetary specks that so preoccupied our ancestors, or prompted such pervasive fears? From ancient Babylon to China, from the Mediterranean to the Americas, planets loomed as the dominating powers of the universe. Among the Greeks and Romans we meet planets with remarkably well-defined personalities--old Saturn, the ancient ruler of the heavens; Mars, the impetuous warrior thundering in the sky; Venus, the temperamental goddess with the long-flowing hair, and Jupiter, presiding over the renewal of a world which had fallen into chaos. But the "personalities" of these planets are rooted in much earlier traditions, tracing to the origins of astronomy. In ancient literature the planetary gods are a quarrelsome lot-- and often violent. Wars of the gods not only disturb the heavens but threaten to destroy humankind. The planets wield weapons of thunder and fire and stone. Their behavior is not only capricious and unpredictable, but dangerous to human health! What a stark contrast to the placid solar system portrayed in our astronomy textbooks. For centuries now, science has regarded stable and predictable planetary motions as a bedrock principle, to which no credible challenge is conceivable. Yet ancient testimony IS a challenge to modern theory insofar as the testimony is both consistent and worldwide. There is a point at which ancient accounts, by their agreement, WILL weaken one's faith in established doctrines. In these volumes we present global evidence for an alien sky, recorded in pictures and words and ritual reenactments. It was apparently only a few thousand years ago that several planets moved extremely close to the Earth, appearing as massive spheres above us. This was a time of celestial splendor and chaos, of human wonder and overwhelming fear, the measure of which cannot be gauged by anything presently witnessed in the heavens. But now, having lived for millennia beneath a tranquil sky, we are deceived by appearances. It is easy to fall into a trance, easy to assume that natural processes observed today can be projected backwards indefinitely. Indeed, all well-known theorists in the sciences assume without question that observed cycles of the Sun and Moon and planets are virtually identical to the cycles witnessed by our early ancestors. A mere guess has become a dogma--not even a theoretical issue for official science. But have you ever wondered why ancient races insisted, with one voice, that the Sun and stars and planets do not move on their original paths? That was Plato's message more than 2300 years ago. It was
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also the message of the philosophers Democritus, Zeno, and Anaxagoras. The historian Diodorus of Sicily noted this belief among the Chaldeans. The Babylonian priest- astronomer Berossus said it too: the planets now move on different courses. The same statement is made in the Persian BUNDAHIS, the Hindu PURANAS, and the Chinese BAMBOO BOOKS. But these are only the more familiar voices amid a chorus of ancient witnesses. For the truth is that every culture on earth recalled a prior time of celestial discord, when the sky collapsed violently. To this disruption of the heavens the Greeks gave the name SYNODOS, a word meaning, in its original contexts, "a collision of planets" and "the destruction of the world."
PLANETARY UPHEAVAL AND HUMAN MEMORY

For many years the leading scientific theorists assumed that evolutionary principles have worked by slow and imperceptible degrees to produce an upward movement over great spans of time-- the formation of galaxies, suns and planets, the evolution of a habitable earth, the first appearance of life, arrival of Homo sapiens, emergence of civilization, and the final victory of rational science over myth and superstition. But recently much of this scientific confidence has given way to uncertainty. With the arrival of the space age, we turned our attention--and highly sophisticated technology--to our neighboring planets, and the remote landscapes revealed the unmistakable signature of large-scale violence. We have seen close-up photos of the torn and disfigured surface of Mars, its every square mile littered with freshly-strewn rubble. We have mapped the surface of Venus, a super-heated cauldron now said to have been "turned inside out" by a global catastrophe of unknown origin. And we have observed the devastated moons of Jupiter and Saturn, testifying to celestial encounters more dramatic and unusual than any astronomers had anticipated. Who could deny that earlier theoretical frameworks, predicated on nearly imperceptible linear evolution over many millions of years, are being eroded by an avalanche of new data and new theories? The new theme is evolution by catastrophe, and here the Earth is not the safe place we once imagined. Cometary disasters, global floods or tidal waves, tropical climates giving way to ice ages, sudden extermination of species--once the province of science fiction, the new speculations have given rise to the field of "catastrophics"--the study of EARTH-CHANGING catastrophe. But when did the hypothesized disasters occur? Just twenty years ago the familiar theories, such as the dinosaur-exterminating asteroid claimed by the Alvarez team, placed the catastrophes in a very distant past, many millions of years before the arrival of Homo sapiens--not something we should be particularly concerned about More recently, however, the look of catastrophics has changed dramatically, as one theorist after another has invoked global upheaval within the span of human history. These theorists include the noted astronomer Fred Hoyle, the British astrophysicist Victor Clube and astronomer William Napier, astronomer Tom Van Flandern (former head of the Naval Observatory), archaeologist Mike Baillie, geologist Robert Schoch, geologist C. Warren Hunt, and many others as well. Given the present scientific and scholarly interest in recent catastrophe it is no longer possible for the scientific mainstream to ignore human testimony on these matters. Memories of catastrophe pervade the ancient cultures, and a great wealth of evidence suggests that the eye-witnesses did not invent these stories: they used all of the means available to them to record extraordinary experiences. But historians have not understood the ancient words and symbols because they only listened superficially, then looked to our familiar heavens and found no correspondence. Nothing in the archaic language made sense to them.
ARCHETYPE AND SYMBOL
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Our investigation will concentrate on the patterns of human memory. Mythology, we will seek to show, means things remembered, however clouded by the language of magic and superstition. Since the investigation rests on cross-cultural comparison, a crucial level of evidence will be the archetypes, those deep structures of thought evident in the earliest writing systems and ritual practices, patterns so powerful as to find continuing--even global--cultural expression across thousands of years. It was the distinguished psychoanalyst Carl Jung who first used the term ARCHETYPES in connection with the origins of myth and symbol, suggesting universal patterns too often ignored in prior studies of myth. An archetype is a model or first form, a prototype. In connection with world mythology, it means the original idea or structure of thought--whether it is the root idea behind the "goddess" image, the model of a "good king" or "hero," or the ideal form of a sacred temple or city. To recognize the archetypes in the ancient world is to open up a new and crucial field of investigation. A considerable debt is also owed to the distinguished student of comparative religion, the late Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago, author of numerous books on the subject and editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Religion. Perhaps Eliade has done more than any other scholar to show that world mythology rests upon a coherent substratum. It is not the mere collection of disconnected fragments traditionally assumed within the western world. So too, the late Joseph Campbell has probably done the most to awaken popular interest in myth. Following a comparative approach, Campbell brought to light a large number of global themes--the "hero with a thousand faces," the "angry goddess," the "world mountain," renewal through sacrifice, and dozens of other motifs. Each of these impressive researchers came to discern certain unified layers of myth, layers never anticipated by mainstream scholars laboring under traditional cynicism about myth. Perhaps the greatest contribution of these pioneers is their acknowledgment that the common view--seeing myth as random absurdity--will not suffice to explain the layers of coherence. It is vital that the reader keep in mind, however, that by "archetype" we do not mean the unconscious structures of thought to which Jung referred, so much as the original patterns of conscious human experience, to which numerous unconscious ideas and tendencies may indeed trace. It can now be stated with assurance that any one of the acknowledged archetypes, if explored in its full context, will open the door to incredible discovery. But it is also clear that the pioneers of comparative study could not account for the content of myth in terms of any verifiable human experience. And they stopped short of asking the most important question of all: if the natural references of the myths are missing, is it possible that they were present in a former time? Campbell, for example, recognized the worldwide doomsday theme-- the idea of a prior age collapsing violently. But he did not relate the memory to anything that may have actually occurred in our world to inspire the universal memory. We, on the other hand, will take a firm stand on behalf of concrete experience. When widely dispersed memories point to an underlying natural event, those memories constitute evidence deserving rigorous study. When we speak of the archetypes as the "substratum of human memory" we refer to the underlying patterns shared by far-flung cultures. In a comparative approach these themes will appear as "points of agreement" shining through despite wildly divergent interpretations, fragmentation, dilution, and localization of myth over time. Were it not for the integrity of the original human experience, these patterns as a whole COULD NOT BE THERE. The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten what they considered most worthy of remembrance. We've forgotten the age of the gods. By assuming that the sky has remained unchanged over the millennia, we failed to discern the underlying agreement in their testimony. The only appropriate answer to that error is to hear the witnesses without prejudice and to invite the mythic nightmares into the light of day. Dave Talbott
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PARADIGM PORTRAITS (4): Galactic Ejections

By Amy Acheson Don Scott announces: The latest output from the Chandra x-ray space telescope is out. In Seeing Red, Halton Arp discusses this galaxy [NGC 5548] in great detail. On page 145 he says: Because of the new evidence that some faint 'galaxy clusters' are in fact ejected from active galaxies, the cluster adjoining NGC 5548 becomes a crucial case for further investigation. Arp, in his figure 6-5, shows a ROSAT image of the faint bridge between 5548 and the z = 0.29 cluster next to (ejected from) it. He pleads for further investigation of that object. Amy comments: Wonderful website. First of all, the photos: The first picture shows the whole galaxy with the area from which the spectrum was taken indicated. The second website has the article explaining the conventional interpretation -- gas clouds ionized and accelerated outward by x-rays from a hidden black hole -- and includes a photo of the spectrum. http://xrtpub.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0170/0170_composite.jpg http://xrtpub.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0170/index.html This picture crops off the link between NGC 5548 and the z = 0.29 quasar. It doesn't show the galaxy's jet, either. They're all cropped off. To see all that, you have to look at page 145 in Halton Arp's SEEING RED. I'm not suggesting that the cropping was malicious (although I can't claim to know for sure.) The goal of astronomers is to get the best possible photo, and in this case, that means narrowing the field in order to bring out the features of internal structure at the core of the galaxy. The hypothesized black hole is the target. "Coincidentally" adjacent quasars, even those attached by faint bridges of light, are annoying background objects to remove and save for another photo session (and on the day when the quasars are photographed, it's expedient to crop out the annoying foreground galaxy.) While going through old posts, I came across this comment of Wal Thornhill's from two years ago: All criticism about the physics of Velikovsky's scenario have been based on application of gravity and inertia alone because, to astronomers, the universe is amazingly electrically sterile! Everywhere there are exactly equal numbers of positive and negative charges. They frighten themselves in postgraduate plasma physics studies by using the same spurious argument ... about the enormous energy required to separate all of the electrons from all of the nuclei in a teaspoon of matter. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real universe. Amy again: Now compare this to the observations -- in this Chandra image of NGC 5548 we see more than one teaspoon of matter. We see a whole nebula of gas, made up of Magnesium XII (with one electron left) Neon IX and X (with one and two electrons left) oxygen VII and VIII (two and one electrons left), Nitrogen VII (one electron left) and Carbon VI and VII (one and two electrons left.) As to the redshift (blueshift, actually) of the ionized cloud at the center of NGC, the website said this: The exact position of the lines relative to laboratory standards shows that the lines are shifted systematically to shorter wavelengths by a fraction of a percent. This shift is due to the gas moving away from the source (Doppler effect). It indicates that the blanket of absorbing gas is flowing away from the black hole at about a million kilometers per hour (600,000 miles per hour),
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probably because of the enormous amount of energy radiated by the extremely hot gas very near the black hole.
Amy again: They expressed it in km/hr, perhaps to make it sound more impressive than it actually is. When you convert to km/sec, the velocity is less spectacular: only slightly faster than the sun's orbit around the Milky Way. (sun: 220 km/sec, NGC 5548's "envelope of expanding gases": 278 km/sec). What I'm thinking is this: Halton Arp and Wal Thornhill both say that galactic ejecta will be intrinsically redshifted, and that the redshift will be highest when the ejection is closest to the galaxy. Arp also shows that we can obtain a radial motion component (the velocity toward or away from us) of some quasars' redshift by comparing the difference between the redshifts of paired quasars on opposite sides of the same galaxy (Seeing Red, pg. 212.) In the case of NGC 5548, we're looking at the galaxy face-on, practically straight down the spin axis. Its jet is foreshortened, its quasar offspring are close by. So I'm suggesting that this knot of highly ionized gases that we're looking at could be NCS 5548's the most recent ejection. It may have a very high intrinsic redshift, but, since it's being ejected at high speed directly at us, the Doppler motion (blueshift) is even higher than the intrinsic redshift, resulting in a slight blueshift. Amy Acheson
THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

By Wal Thornhill and Mel Acheson This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of an astonishing and controversial book - Worlds in Collision. The provocatively titled 1950 book was written by Immanuel Velikovsky and caused an unprecedented furor in scientific circles. It led to the transfer of the book from the hurting academic publisher and dismissal of those who publicly supported the work. Among those summarily sacked was the distinguished Gordon Atwater, curator of the Hayden Planetarium, who planned to dramatize the book using the planetarium. In 1974, the AAAS held a session in San Francisco which was supposed to allow Velikovsky a forum to answer his critics. It was, as it transpired, a disgraceful ambush. Now, some quarter century later, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has discussed a similar topic but without Velikovsky's presence. The subject was "unpredictable events of extra-terrestrial origin and their impact on humanity". It was an occasion for the sensationalists to parade their predictions of doomsday by impact from a comet or asteroid. It also became another opportunity for academics to rewrite history and indulge in yet another miserable attack on Velikovsky. As reported in the WhyFiles: ...there are some neo-catastrophists, located mainly in Britain, who have an almost Velikovskian pseudo-scientific take on this matter and have argued that such impacts are more frequent... Velikovsky, of course, is the guy who gave asteroid impacts such a bad name back in 1950." See: http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/106asteroid/index.html It seems unlikely that Velikovsky's historical reconstruction of planetary catastrophes is correct and it is the British neo- catastrophists rather than academia who we have to thank for their scholarly work on the subject. However they have not argued for more frequent asteroid impacts. None of this denies Velikovsky priority in identifying the major destructive influence in the Earth's past as the near approaches of the planets Mars and Venus. His reconstruction of awesome celestial events in the dimly remembered past follow the laws of physics and the rules of evidence. His model is a good one when measured by its
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prediction score against that of conventional models. Conventional models are woefully deficient to pronounce upon impacts ands their effects. To begin with, planetologists have admitted they are unable to experimentally reproduce the features of so-called impact craters. So, what are the craters? If they are not a result of impacts, what possible use are they in predicting future impacts? Is the science of impacts a pseudo-science? Amazingly, Mars was often sculpted by ancient artists as a sphere. How could it be if Mars has always occupied its present orbit? The list is very long of other striking anomalies that have to be ignored by astronomers to maintain the status quo. A science that willfully disallows the documentary evidence for planetary encounters amassed by Velikovsky, and others since, is itself a pseudo-science. One point I will concede to the astronomers. Velikovsky's book title is misleading. It is not about colliding planets or asteroids. It seems there is an intrinsic avoidance mechanism involving cosmic electric discharges. But no astrophysicist on this planet is taught anything about electric discharges in space. Proof of that can be seen in the Tethered Satellite debacle. Yet the ancients reported planetary thunderbolts that wrought destruction on a global scale. That is where we must begin to look for the cause of cratering. Jupiter's thunderbolt is said to have created the colossal scar of Valles Marineris in a moment on Mars' face. Planetologists, in their limited view, have attributed it to water erosion. Photo caption: Valles Marineris [with nearby] ... craters (some with terraced walls). Crater chains and scalloped canyons are all characteristic of electrical scarring. See this and other photos photos of this article at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/pseudo_science.html As Sir Fred Hoyle wrote: ... could it be that Velikovsky had revealed, admittedly in a form that was scientifically unacceptable, a situation that astronomers are under a cultural imperative to hide? Could it be that, somewhere in the shadows, there is a past history that it is inadmissible to discuss? The answer is obviously "yes". But Hoyle shows his own Achilles heel when he mentions Velikovsky's documentary evidence as being "scientifically unacceptable". He is not alone when he writes ...we believed in the primacy of mathematical rules... But who is to say what the rules were when Jupiter hurled thunderbolts? Certainly not the rules of Sir Isaac Newton, who knew nothing of electricity. It is inadmissible to discuss Velikovsky's work because it requires a revolution in science. Astronomy would have to leave the gas-lit Victorian era and enter the era of the electric light. But science does not welcome revolution. Hoyle again: Slender progress means that the sheep cannot be separated from the goats. Nothing happens to threaten existing establishments... When there is near zero progress, slight steps can be misinterpreted (or misrepresented) as large steps, governments can be urged to throw immense sums of money into the air in the vain hope that something of value will be forthcoming, and, above all, establishments can perpetuate themselves. I leave the last word on the subject to Mel Acheson... Mel: When the Hebrews prepared to invade the land of Canaan, they were given the imperative to kill all the inhabitants, including the cattle. They didn't kill all the cattle, and they were punished. But they did write the history so God was on their side. What brings this historical anecdote to mind is a "history" of catastrophics at the WhyFiles. After listing a series of events that are now considered catastrophic from ancient times to modern, the WhyFiles says this:
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1950 -- Immanuel Velikovsky publishes Worlds in Collision, a pseudoscientific warning about impact hazards. In equal parts bogus and frightening, Velikovsky casts the entire field of impact studies into disrepute.
[You remember "impact studies": that ancient discipline which was a paragon of scientific inquiry until Velikovsky single-handedly demolished its respectability.] Now that the data have become so compelling that catastrophic events can no longer be ignored, the Uniformists need to invade catastrophist territory. But what they wish was uninhabited virgin wilderness turns out to be occupied. After centuries of denial that catastrophic events occur, after volumes written to disparage the idea, after calumnies composed to bury investigations under the headstone of pseudoscience, the invaders are embarrassed by the indigenous catastrophists. So the indigenes must be eliminated and history re-written to make the invaders into the good guys: Velikovsky is blamed for the centuries of disrepute, and the invaders can claim to have rescued "impact studies" from the depredations of crackpots. The unsavory truth is that Uniformists since the time of Lyell have done all they could to derogate ideas containing any hint of catastrophism. And they largely succeeded: No scientist would mention catastrophic events or their proponents (else he would quickly find himself no longer a scientist: Where, pray tell, is Gordon Atwater?). Catastrophists were shunned as superstitious crackpots or religious fanatics. No small part of Velikovsky's greatness was his courage and genius in presenting such a wellresearched and well-argued case that the wall of silence was breached, even if only to scream vituperations at him. Had he not done what he did, it's likely the wall would still be standing, and the ungrateful inhabitants of "impact studies" would be just more crackpots. It was VELIKOVSKY who rescued catastrophics. These little men who trail far behind Velikovsky and who make snide remarks with fabricated "history" while trying to cash in on his accomplishments are devoid of both grace and gratitude. Such continuing displays of malice are what give science its bad name. ~Mel Acheson Note: Worlds in Collision is planned to be reprinted later this year on the 50th anniversary of its first printing. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 8 (April 30, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE COLOR PURPLE RECONSTRUCTING THE SATURN MODEL MAY 5th CONJUNCTION SCIENCE HEADED FOR A BIG BANG
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill
THE COLOR PURPLE

By Mel Acheson Rediscovering F. A. Hayek's The Sensory Order has been exciting. He began his inquiry into the foundations of theoretical psychology in 1919 before specializing in economics (and winning a Nobel Prize in that latter field in 1974). He didn't publish The Sensory Order until 1952, when he found "with considerable surprise" that theoretical psychology "remained pretty much in the same state in which it had been" 30 years before. He attributed this stasis to "the prevalence during this period of an all too exclusively empirical approach and of an excessive contempt for 'speculation'. It seems almost as if 'speculation' (which, be it remembered, is merely another word for thinking) had become so discredited among psychologists that it has to be done by outsiders who have no professional reputation to lose." (Preface, p. vi, 1976 paperback reprint by University of Chicago Press.) Hayek presents the fundamental problem with which psychology is concerned to be explaining the existence of and differences between the sensory order of our minds and the physical or objective order as delineated by the various sciences. It's the distinction between things as related to us and things as related to each other. For example, the sensory order classifies colors in a circle: red shades into blue through the color purple. But in the physical order the colors are a short segment of a much longer linear continuum, and purple doesn't exist. Drawing on the largely physiological investigations of the previous century, Hayek notes that all nerve impulses are identical. A receptor cell discharges its tiny current; the next cell on the path to the brain is thereby stimulated to fire; and so on until the last cell in the brain fires. There's no continuity in current and no variation in current: cells either fire or not. There's no transfer of specific information. The only thing that distinguishes one nerve impulse from another is its location with respect to all other nerves. The sensory order thus arises from relationships of impulses relative to each other. It's not a manipulation of stimuli carrying information from objects in the physical world but a classification of internal relationships that stand in mutable correspondences to physical relationships. Hayek further notes that these impulses are not isolated. They occur in associations or 'linkages' with each other. Any one impulse will have a 'following' of other impulses. This following includes impulses to and from motor nerves and self-sensing nerves (proprioceptors) as well. The impulses become sorted or classified according to followings, groups of followings, groups of groups, etc. A complex network arises of multiple classification, both in a proliferation of classes and in a hierarchy of classes of classes.
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And this classification mechanism is dynamic: New impulses don't simply add to what's there, but the whole network continuously modifies and re-classifies itself. Hayek points out the dearth of information about how much of this network we're born with (i.e., is genetically determined) and how much results from learning. But certainly by the time a baby learns to talk, the network is fully functional and further learning consists essentially in modifications or re-classifications of what are literally preconceptions. Perception and conception, the concrete and the abstract, are merely slight variations in the underlying dynamics of the sensory network. One can as easily perceive gestalts as the individual objects composing them. (As an aside, Hayek mentions that ideas of some specific "nervous energy" that carries information or ideas of some "substance" of which mind is composed are actually materialistic conceptions, whereas his formulation, although based on physiology, is not.) What I find exciting are the implications for paradigm shifts. The sensory order that occurs in humans as a result of the particular arrangements and sensitivities of their nervous system must be different from other species. Thus there can be many sensory orders (how things relate to an observer) within the larger objective order (how things relate to each other). Put another way, the objective order (how things relate to x) is just one of many possible orders (where x may be an observer). Truth, or the real, lies not so much in a thing (the "ding an sich") as in relationships. It must be conceived as a multiplicity: Rather than being a singular order of things-an F(x)-it's a family of possible orders-F(x sub n). What does this have to do with paradigm shifts? Two things: First, currently accepted theories claim to be objective, but they're only relatively so: They're "objectified" re- classifications of sunlit reflections of objects we stumble over in the night. We hear the dogs bark, and we use that association of impulses to build our theories. But sometimes the dogs seem to bark at nothing. Except for the occasional lightning bolt, we don't sense electricity. For us, it's nothing. In our sensory order, it barely exists. If we could sense magnetic fields, as hammerhead sharks apparently do, or electric impulses, as platypuses do, our sensory order-and our image of the objective order-would be quite different. Auroras would extend all the way to the ground, perhaps through the ground. They would connect in space from pole to pole. Venus would appear as a spectacular comet with a writhing tail stretching all the way to the Earth. Perhaps all the planets would be classed as "big comets". Or perhaps we wouldn't be able to "see" the planetary surfaces we now see, seeing instead only the boiling tops of their plasma sheaths, and we would think of them as small suns. The Electric Universe would seem obvious and Newton's gravity would seem fantastical. Second, the ever-finer distinctions we make among our associations of nerve impulses can result in increased articulation of present classifications (Kuhn's "normal science"). But it can also result in drastic re-classifications whereby classes of impulses become linked to entirely different classes (Kuhn's "paradigm shifts"). This also explains the "incommensurability" of paradigms: A stimulus that energizes a particular group of impulses in one person (the word 'plasma' for a mainstream physicist, evoking associations of 'ionized gas' and 'ideal gas law') will energize an entirely different group of impulses in an electric-universe physicist ('plasma' evoking 'filamentation' and 'jets'). Hayek again (p. 142): If sensory perception must be regarded as an act of classification, what we perceive can never be unique properties of individual objects but always only properties which the objects have in common with other objects. Perception is thus always an interpretation, the placing of something into one or several classes of objects. An event of an entirely new kind which has never occurred before, and which sets up impulses which arrive in the brain for the first time, could not be perceived at all. Hence each of the two physicists may be unable to perceive what the other is talking about.
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The "bottom line" conclusion of these two aspects of the sensory order is that paradigm shifts are just as inherent in our lives as the color purple. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
RECONSTRUCTING THE SATURN MODEL

By David Talbott [Editor's Note: The following paragraphs are excerpted from the Introduction of the forthcoming volume, WHEN SATURN WAS KING; co-authors David Talbott and Ev Cochrane]
IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
It was in 1950 that Immanuel Velikovsky published his groundbreaking work, Worlds in Collision. triggering one of the most heated scientific controversies in this century. Based on a reading of mythical and historical material from around the world, Velikovsky described a series of catastrophes which he claimed occurred between 1500 BC and 686 BC, and he said that the agents of these disasters were planets moving on erratic courses. Most controversial of all was his claim that a few thousand years ago the planet Venus roamed the heavens as a terrifying "comet," whose catastrophic near collisions with the Earth brought an end to numerous civilizations. In his labors to comprehend early human history, Velikovsky commanded respect from many intellectual giants of the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud and Freud's first pupil Wilhelm Stekel; Harvard historian Robert Pfeifer; Harry Hess, one of the world's most respected geologists; noted French archaeologist, Claude Schaefer; and Albert Einstein, who edited the physics and mathematics section of Velikovsky's Scripta Universitatis. But this respect from such distinguished scientists and scholars would not redeem Velikovsky in the eyes of the larger scientific community, whose responses ranged from anger to misrepresentation and ridicule. The sweeping dismissal of Velikovsky by science implied that no fundamental aspect of his work had the slightest merit. And yet, even if Velikovsky was only correct at some elementary level, his treatment by the scientific elite will rank as one of the darkest marks on science in modern times. The prospect that major theoretical edifices could collapse under the impact of Velikovsky's revelations is hardly a small matter either.
THE ESSENTIAL VELIKOVSKY

Velikovsky saw in ancient literature, with its pervasive imagery of disaster and improbable monsters in the sky, a story of planetary instability. And he argued that the records of early cultures permit a reconstruction of the crucial events. Whether Velikovsky was correct in the details of his analysis is another matter. But our first interest is in the fundamental concepts1. The planetary system was unstable in geologically recent times, and the present order of the solar system is new. 2. Erratic movements of the planets dramatically affected our Earth. 3. Episodes of interplanetary catastrophe occurred within human memory. 4. World mythology and ancient astronomical traditions preserve vivid accounts of these events. 5. Both Venus and Mars were directly involved in earth-disturbing encounters.
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6. The planet Venus took the form of an earth-threatening comet.
These vital tenets of Velikovsky's work, we believe, will find converging support from both historical testimony and physical evidence. And certainly one cannot deny that, since the publication of Worlds in Collision, a major shift in scientific perspective has occurred.. When Worlds in Collision appeared in 1950, astronomers and geologists were entirely captivated by 19th century models, in which global catastrophes had no place in the history of the solar system, the evolution of the Earth, or the human past. But under the influence of space age discovery, has it been Velikovskians, or Velikovsky's critics, who have have lost the most ground? In the past two decades the notion of cometary catastrophe has emerged as a great fascination to science, and while this fascination is often focused on an apparent global disaster linked to extinction of the dinosaurs, it now extends as well to speculations on more recent cometary disasters. A good example is the work of the British astronomers, Victor Clube and William Napier, authors of The Cosmic Serpent and Cosmic Winter, offering a theory of doomsday comets that not only sounds a lot like Velikovsky, but IS Velikovskian in more ways than one.
VELIKOVSKY'S SATURN HYPOTHESIS

In addition to the well-publicized claims of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky had, in an unpublished manuscript, set forth an extraordinary idea. He suggested that in the earliest remembered time, the Earth was joined with other planets in a planetary arrangement vastly different from anything we observe today. He suggested that the Earth was a satellite of the planet Saturn, a planet Velikovsky associated with a former Golden Age or paradisal condition on earth. He identified Saturn as the "dying god" of ancient lore, and he claimed that a disruption of Saturn was responsible for the mythical Deluge, a global catastrophe which brought Saturn's Golden Age to an end and gave rise to a new epoch dominated by the planet Jupiter. But over the last 25 years of his life the details of his Saturn research remained sketchy, and nothing more than a few pages was ever published. Investigation of the Saturn question did not stop with Velikovsky,however. Over the past three decades a few independent researchers, inspired by Velikovsky's speculatons, have pursued the question in great depth, exposing a collective memory far beyond anything suggested by Velikovsky himself.
A SATURN MODEL
In the broadest sense, the hypothesis we present in these pages will offer a new way of viewing the human past. Our thesis is that the myth-making phase of human history arose as a direct response to natural phenomena no longer present. Astronomers and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and students of ancient myth and religion are asked to reconsider common assumptions about the ancient world, including many that have rarely if ever been questioned. We agree with Velikovsky that major changes in the planetary order have occurred within human memory and that our ancestors preserved a global record of tumultuous, Earth-threatening events. Moreover, we intend to demonstrate that the origin of the first civilizations is simply inexplicable apart from ritual practices honoring, imitating, and re-living these extraordinary natural occurrences. The dominant powers celebrated in ancient myths and rites were planets moving close to the earth. That the present order of the solar system may be extraordinarily recent, and that planet-sized bodies appeared gigantic in our sky will not be easily believed in an age accustomed to billion-year scenarios of planet formation and evolution. Nevertheless, the model we shall present has one advantage that prior theories based on ancient testimony have lacked: it is specific enough to be easily falsified if wrong. Whatever else one may think of our reconstruction, it meets that universal test of a good theory.
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The theory holds that our Earth formerly moved in a congregation of planets unlike anything observed today. For earthbound witnesses, the result was a spectacular and at times highly unified planetary form in the heavens, visually dominated by the gas giant Saturn.
POLAR CONFIGURATION
A fear-inspiring form, constituted by Saturn and an assembly of planets and moons, stretched across the northern sky, towering over the ancient world. We've termed this the "polar configuration" because it was centered on the north celestial Pole. And we've proposed that the history of this configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in the fantastic stories, pictographs, and ritual reenactments of the first sky worshippers. Included in the evidence we shall consider are the following highly enigmatic patterns which can be documented around the world- Remarkably similar pictures of a primeval "sun" in the sky, depicted as an immense sphere shining at night. An astronomically "absurd" crescent placed on the orb of this "sun;" An equally absurd "star" placed in the center of the "sun." Universal chronicles of a cosmic mountain, a pillar of fire and light rising along the world axis. A radiant "city" or "temple" of heaven, providing the prototype for sacred dwellings on earth. An angry or lamenting goddess, raging across the sky with wildly disheveled hair and threatening to destroy the world. A fiery serpent or dragon disturbing the celestial motions and throwing the world into darkness. An ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star- goddess to vanquish the chaosserpent or dragon.
Is it possible that such diverse images (we've cited only the barest few among hundreds) could have a unified explanation? Our claim will be that the common patterns of world mythology answer to a simple planetary model. And in this sense, our model can properly claim to provide a unified theory of ancient myth and symbolism. It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that this model is fully testable against a massive historical record, and we invite systematic evaluation of the reconstruction by qualified researchers. Additionally, the model will suggest numerous tests within the physical sciences, relating to expected physical markers on planets and moons. If the claimed events occurred, our Earth must have been affected in dramatic ways, and this would include effects so unlikely under the usual assumptions of science as to constitute a series of critical tests. Of course the subject is far too vast to be summarized adequately in a few pages. In several cases the broad themes identified will require separate volumes--they are simply noted, perhaps with an illustration or two. Our immediate goal is to substantiate an underlying idea--that the recurring themes of myth and symbol are not the isolated fragments historians have assumed, but intimately connected pieces of a whole, all tied to identifiable forms in the sky. [NOTE ON THE CO-AUTH0RS OF THE PRESENT VOLUME]David Talbott was serving as publisher of Pense magazine's "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" series in 1972, when he received a two-page summary of Velikovsky's Saturn material. That began an intensive research project to investigate Saturn's place in world mythology. In The Saturn Myth (Doubleday, 1980) Talbott presented evidence of the planet Saturn's central role in ancient myths of beginnings The book summarized the mythical Golden Age of Saturn and claimed that a spectacular planetary configuration once towered over mankind. It argued further that this unique planetary arrangement provided the objective source for numerous mythical and symbolic forms recorded
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by ancient civilizations on every continent (world pillar, world mountain, eye goddess, wheel of the sun, celestial city, bull of heaven, etc.)--images that historians and mythologists have always regarded as metaphors with little if any concrete reference in nature. In 1980, Ev Cochrane, then a graduate student at Iowa State University, was pursuing independent research on Velikovsky when a correspondent recommended Talbott's book. His reading of the book led eventually to communication with Talbott and the beginnings of collaboration extending over many years. Cochrane is now the publisher of AEON: A Journal of Myth, Science, and Ancient History, founded by Talbott in 1987. He is also author of the volume, Martian Metamorphoses, published in 1997, exploring the role of Mars in the ancient planetary configuration. Talbott, in his turn, published a notebook "Symbols of an Alien Sky" in 1997, offering a visual summary of key phases in the evolution of the planetary assembly. Both Talbott and Cochrane have, together with fellow "Saturn theorist," Dwardu Cardona, published many articles in AEON discussing aspects of the hypothesis. The present book begins the authors' efforts to clarify the reconstruction through a series of volumes. Dave Talbott
MAY 5th CONJUNCTION

By Amy Acheson In response to the many people who have mentioned the upcoming planetary conjunction, here's a short quote: In February 1524, the seven 'planets' were in the astrologically 'humid' signs of Aquarius and Pisces. The terrified astrologers predicted floods, earthquakes, and other catastrophes, but nothing special happened. Taken from: Planetary Grouping and the Millennium: Why Panic? By Jean Meeus Adapted from Sky & Telescope, August 1997 Whole article can be found here: http://www.skypub.com/news/special/whypanic.html Meeus retrocalculates all of the 5-planet conjunctions [defined as 30 degree or less separation] since the year 1, and forward at least as far as my current life expectancy. Meeus documents that we somehow managed to survive the line-up of 1962 and the non-existent alignment of 1982 [tightest-packed grouping of all planets of the 20th century; slightly wider than 90 degrees.) Even though the author omits any mention of solar electrical interactions (though tidal interactions are carefully calculated), I think I can safely conclude that the only thing preventing our discussion of the event on May 6th would be the failure of the list server. Unless, of course, we somebody should see fit to celebrate by starting a major war. Sadly, I can't imagine the tabloids or sensationalist book authors offering refunds in June if the world fails to come to an end on schedule. Amy Acheson
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SCIENCE HEADED FOR A BIG BANG

By Wal Thornhill Forget the glossy astronomy books and magazines - the Big Bang is pure fiction. The discoveries that prove it will also bring about the end of science-as-we-know-it. Of course, many books and articles have been published recently heralding the end of science - meaning there is little left to learn. The truth is the opposite. Much of what we think we know "ain't so". As always, unlearning it will give us more trouble than learning something new. The belief of scientists in their cleverly concocted creation story, the Big Bang, has become so entrenched and over-hyped that it is difficult to imagine an effective face-saving strategy when the news leaks out that it is nonsense. And let there be no doubt about it, the hard science to prove the case against the Big Bang has been done by an astronomer who is uniquely well placed for the task. [Ed note: see this article with photos http://www.holoscience.com/news/science_bang.htm] and diagrams at Thornhill's website:
His name is Halton Arp, known for his classic work in "Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies". When he began to announce findings nearly 30 years ago that contradicted orthodox cosmology he was refused telescope time and publication in the standard journals. In frustration he published two books, the first in 1987 titled Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, and more recently Seeing Red. "Redshift" is the term used to describe the shift in frequency of spectral lines toward the red end of the spectrum. It's known to occur when an object is speeding away from us. Edwin Hubble discovered that the luminosity of a galaxy is related to its redshift: the fainter the galaxy, the higher the redshift. He suggested one interpretation of this data is that the greater the redshift (and therefore, the velocity), the farther away the galaxy. Thus, the expanding universe was born. But he was careful not to assume that this was the only possible interpretation of the redshift data. Others since have thrown scientific caution to the winds and used Hubble's hypothesis as a rubbery yardstick with which to measure the size and age of the universe. Arp avoided this unscientific approach and made discoveries that are unequalled in the history of astronomy. Many peculiar galaxies turn out to be what are known as active galaxies. They are often seen to have thin jets of matter firing from their cores, and bridges of matter or radio lobes connecting them with nearby objects. Arp noticed that quasars are clustered in the sky with active galaxies far too often to be a coincidence. Quasars are faint starlike objects whose spectra are highly redshifted. The Big Bang view is that their redshifts are due to the expansion of the universe and the doppler effect as the quasars race away from us at a good fraction of light speed. A high redshift equates in that model to great distance so they should have no association with much closer galaxies. Yet Arp showed that some quasars are connected by bridges or jets of matter to active galaxies. Since the advent of orbiting x-ray telescopes these bridges are becoming abundantly clear. But now we come to the results of Arp's work that will shake the foundations of modern physics. He found that quasars lined up on either side of active galaxies as if they are spat out at regular intervals from the galactic cores, above and below the plane of the galaxy. He then found that the redshifts of these quasars fall back toward normal levels and increase in brightness the further they are from the parent galaxy. In other words, the redshift is a measure of the age of the quasar. Also, the quasars slow down as if they are increasing in mass.
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Even more shocking was Arp's discovery that quasar redshifts are quantised! IF SCIENCE WORKED AS ADVERTISED, THIS SHOULD BE BANNER HEADLINE NEWS! This raises the specter that our highly prized physics is way off the beam; that we do not understand such fundamental concepts as mass and gravity, nor the real meaning of quantum theory. So our university libraries and bookshops are crammed with science fiction. Nothing short of the biggest conceptual revolution in history will redress the situation. But universities are not in the business of fostering revolutions and the media seems incapable of exposing their nonsense. Based on his experiences Arp wrote: Investigative journalism so far as science is concerned is dead in the water. He believes that with such a broken-down way of doing and reporting science, breakthroughs must come from individuals outside academia. It is happening. The signs of revolution have been around for decades. But with their backs turned to us and absorbed in their computer screens, those who have derailed science are oblivious to the "Big Bang" that is about to occur. As David Stove, the noted Australian philosopher, wrote in Anything Goes: Everyone dislikes a sudden loud noise, but it is worse still if you are half asleep at the time. We can expect a bad-tempered reaction when it occurs. The famous mathematician Johann von Neumann seemed to intuit the problem at the heart of the mathematical physics approach when he wrote: In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. Meanwhile a growing number of independent thinkers have noted that physics lost any remaining connection with reality with the advent of relativity theories and quantum mechanics. Paradoxically, the way forward is to return to classical physics which is based on immutable standards and causality. The equations of modern science are merely descriptive and not causal explanations. The same equations may apply to many different causes. Relativity introduces "rubbery" rather than immutable standards. Mass, length and time change with velocities and observers. As the philosopher Michael Miller puts it: If a measuring standard varies who-knows-how, then the quantities measured by means of it vary who-knows-how, and the equations connecting those quantities mean who-knows-what. This is precisely the bog in which relativists have mired themselves; their doctrine of curved space is symptomatic ... Generations of science students have tried to make sense of curved space, and succeeded only in warping their minds. As with past revolutions, the seeds are already sown. A good scientist would be alert, without prejudice, to wider future possibilities. Unfortunately, academia teaches and encourages prejudice and a narrow focus. Arp goes so far as to compare the dogmatism of astronomy unfavorably to that of the medieval church. It is the mission of HOLOSCIENCE to look at the BIG PICTURE and find the promising ideas that could form the new science of this new millennium. Arp's observational work on intrinsic redshift is already a cornerstone for a new cosmology. It depicts a smaller, stable cosmos as part of an infinite, eternal universe. It has almost biological overtones when it traces families of galaxies with quasars being the galactic children in various stages of adolescence. There are two key elements required to explain the dynamics of quasar formation and quantization of redshift. An article featured in the March-April issue of American Scientist drops the first shoe. It demonstrates (again) that plasma physics holds the key to understanding stars and galaxies and the inexplicable (in gravitational terms) ejection of vast gobs of matter at colossal speeds. Experiment shows that a powerful electric current in a magnetic field can create a solar coronal mass ejection event (CME). And since magnetic fields are caused by electric currents, the prime mover is electric discharge phenomena in plasma. From personal experience, electric discharges in plasmas are
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not a part of the curriculum for astrophysicists. Cosmology should be the realm of plasma physicists and electrical engineers. Another recent example: British astronomers have discovered a "magnetic bubble" around one of Arp's favorite galaxies, M82. Notice that astrophysicists always deal with effects (winds, magnetism) and not causes (electric currents). The diagram of M82 is almost identical to that of the plasma physicist, Eric Lerner, in his book "The Big Bang Never Happened", published in 1992. The red and blue arrows show the observed magnetic field directions and the white dashed curves outline the magnetic bubble structure. The long white arrows depict the direction of the wind from the center of the galaxy. Photo: JAC Electric current (yellow lines) flows along the magnetic field lines - which conforms closely to the image of M82 In that book, a simple, highly compact and efficient ejection engine is described - the plasma focus. It can explain simply the episodic ejection of quasars from the centers of active galaxies. In an Electric Universe infinitely heavy objects are not needed to offset the infinitely weak force of gravity when explaining high-energy outbursts. Black holes and neutron stars simply do not exist. The electrical nature of matter prevents the formation of super-massive objects. The second shoe is dropped heavily by the physicist Ralph Sansbury who has been using his own resources to experiment with laser light and show that there are near-instantaneous electric forces that can account for light, magnetism and gravity. In other words, the electric force is fundamental and all others are derived from it - even the nuclear force. The quantum nature of matter interactions are then seen in a classical sense to be due to electrostatic resonances operating at near-infinite speed between sub-particles that constitute electrons, protons and neutrons. Causality is reinstated in physics. IF SCIENCE WORKED AS ADVERTISED, THIS SHOULD BE BANNER HEADLINE NEWS! (And Ralph wouldn't be working alone in his basement). In the view of HOLOSCIENCE, this is the only model that can sensibly explain Arp's galaxy-wide quantum jumps in redshift. The argument goes like this: a quasar is ejected from a galactic nucleus by the plasma focus effect as an electron-deficient plasmoid (electrons are trapped in the focus longer than the much heavier protons). Now, the phenomenon of mass is due to the energy conserving elastic response of charged particles to external electric forces. If gravity is an electric force, inertial and gravitational mass will always be identical. So, because the electric polarization of stars in the quasar is low at first, the mass of protons and neutrons will be lower than in the parent galaxy. Consequently electron orbits within quasar atoms will have lower energy - light from them will be redshifted. Luminosity will also be lower due to the lack of charge-carrying electrons. Electrons streaming after the quasar create an x-ray jet and vast radio- lobes. Such electron jets are seen clearly in images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray telescope. The active galaxy Centaurus A showing bright x-ray knots in its jet. An X-ray image of Centaurus A taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been superimposed over an optical view of the galaxy taken by the 4-meter reflector at Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory. As electrons arrive at the quasar, the luminosity increases at first and mass and redshift undergo quantum jumps to new resonant states across the quasar or galaxy. From a NASA news report issued on April 19: The distance record for a quasar has been broken yet again. At the present time, no other object in the universe has been found to be more distant than the above speck. The recently discovered
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quasar has been clocked at redshift 5.82. The exact relation between redshift and distance remains presently unknown, although surely higher redshifts do mean greater distance. The above quasar is likely billions of light-years away and so is seen when the universe was younger than one billion years old, less than a tenth of its present age. Like all quasars, this object is probably a large black hole in the center of a distant galaxy.
Blah, blah... Has NASA suddenly become uncharacteristically coy about the meaning of the redshift? The use of the word "surely" implies a question mark. It is usual in academia to ignore and ostracize a dissenter in the hope he will give up. But Arp is not a quitter, he is a big hitter. If ostracism fails then scientists rewrite history as if they really knew it all along. The first step in that process is to equivocate in scientific reports to allow a new interpretation to be introduced retrospectively. Watch carefully!
~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 9 (May 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: I DON'T BELIEVE THIS! THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS: an intro PARADIGM PORTRAITS V: COSMIC JETS IO'S WANDERING PLUMES So NEAR, yet so far from UNDERSTANDING
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!

By Mel Acheson How can I believe something as outrageous as the Electric Saturn Super Model? That shish kebab of overcharged planets goes against everything I thought I knew. It contradicts the millions of years of gradual development that produced the array of species and the stack of rock layers I discovered in grade-school textbooks. It violates the laws of motion and of gravity I was taught in high school. It flouts the differential equations describing the real world I learned in college. How can I believe an idea that's so certainly absurd? The short answer is: I don't. Beyond that, I have to explain something about belief. The word is commonly used in two opposite ways: In one way, it indicates uncertainty, provisionality, guessing on the basis of inadequate information ("I believe the plane will arrive on time"). In the second way, it indicates a deliberate certainty, the acceptance of an idea regardless of information ("I believe in God, the Father, Almighty ..."). The second way is an act of will that rejects doubt. But the first way can also be viewed as an act of will, an act that embraces doubt. In what follows, I'll use 'belief' only in the second sense. Back in the '60s I became fascinated with such questions as "What is knowing?" and "How do I know what I think I know?" (I was warned, apparently correctly, that dabbling in philosophy would ruin me as a scientist.) The usual context of discussions of these questions was an expectation of, even a craving for, certainty. Kierkegaard insisted on a "leap of faith". Wittgenstein made a desperate commitment to "somewhere I must begin with not doubting". The founding elements of knowledge, those fundamentals the certainty of which justifies all subsequent knowledge, were matters of belief. Science and religion were thus anchored to the same foundation. But I gravitated to Camus: In an absurd world, he asked, is it possible to live without hope? In The Rebel, he reviewed the intellectual climate of the age: the proposals and policies certain to transform men into supermen or gods or proletarian heroes, which instead transformed men into murderers. "Revolution without honor ... preferring an abstract concept of man to a man of flesh and blood ... raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering themselves for sale ... It is no longer either revolution or rebellion but rancor, malice, and tyranny." He concluded that to be men
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we must refuse to be gods. We must will ourselves to be human. Insofar as belief is an act of will, so is refusing to believe. The craving for certainty begins by assembling incorrigible elements into a foundation. The edifice of knowledge can then be erected on that certain base. But there are no incorrigible elements. We have only bits and pieces of information. Most of the information we need (to be certain of a theory) is beyond the capacity of our five senses--even with technological enhancements- -to sense it. And most of what we could be able to sense is too difficult or too costly to obtain. Data is not given but must be sought out, extracted, refined. Theories are based on the small quantities of information that lie readily at hand and that appear familiar in the light of past experience. Furthermore, we don't sense information directly: Our senses generate metaphors of pieces of the objective world, and those metaphors and pieces push and pull on each other. Peter Bernstein writes (in Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk): And the bother is that we never have all the information we would like. Nature has established patterns, but only for the most part. Theory, which abstracts from nature, is kinder: We either have the information we need or else we have no need for information. Considering the uncertainties inherent in information, it's tempting to retreat to theory, to leap to a belief, to seize certainty with an act of will. But this returns us to Camus and to "preferring an abstract concept ... [to] flesh and blood". Possession of certainty may justify knowledge, but it also justifies disdain for other visions. Ultimately, it justifies "rancor, malice, and tyranny" and clamors for the burning of books and heretics. To be human, we must refuse to be gods. The refusal of certainty is the abandonment of the foundation for knowledge. It's the abandonment of the metaphor of building and of incorrigible elements. It's to begin instead with the uncertain, inchoate, and dynamic whole of knowledge and to hold everything open to criticism. "For criticism only appears as an alternative to justification after the two notions are separated." W.W. Bartley elaborates on this in "Theories of Rationality" in Evolutionary Epistemology: This approach may produce in one who is unaccustomed to it an uncomfortable feeling of floating, of having no firm foundation. That would be appropriate: for it is floating; it is doing without a foundation. Bernstein again: Under conditions of uncertainty, the choice is not between rejecting a hypothesis and accepting it, but between reject and not-reject. You can decide that the probability that you are wrong is so small that you should not reject the hypothesis. You can decide that the probability that you are wrong is so large that you should reject the hypothesis. But with any probability short of zero that you are wrong--certainty rather than uncertainty--you cannot accept a hypothesis. This is similar to the situation in which juries deliberate. Their verdicts are limited to 'guilty' or 'not guilty'. Innocence is a matter beyond the ability of deliberation to determine. And in science, this deliberation convicts currently accepted theories as being fundamentally religious and not scientific. For were they truly scientific they would be 'currently-not-rejected' theories. Bernstein notes that "in a dynamic world, there is no single answer under conditions of uncertainty. The mathematician A.F.M. Smith has summed it up well: 'Any approach to scientific inference which seeks to legitimize an answer in response to complex uncertainty is, for me, a totalitarian parody of a would- be rational learning process.'" What my opening question is really asking is: How can I take the Electric Saturn Super Model seriously? Why waste time on something that's clearly impossible? I take it seriously precisely because I don't believe it--and because, for the same reasons, I don't believe currently accepted theories. One earmark of that "totalitarian parody" into which modern science has degenerated is the use of that word 'impossible': To be certain that the possibility is zero, you must be certain that another theory
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is 100%. Lacking that information, the certainty can only be gained by willing it, by believing it, by refusing to take anything else seriously. If you live your life only at the extremes of possibility, at 0% or 100%, you effectively rule out learning anything more. For me, one of the greatest joys of being human is learning. I would not be happy as a god. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

By Dave Talbott [Ed. note: This article is taken from the introduction to the book collaboration in progress by Dave Talbott and Wal Thornhill.] It is the thunderbolt that steers the universe! These are the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, living in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. To our ears today, the words are quite meaningless and easy to dismiss along with a thousand other "superstitions" of the ancient world. But in truth they point to an archaic teaching which, were it comprehended in our time, would overturn modern cosmology and transform our understanding of the human past. Cross-cultural analysis will show that the mythic thunderbolt held a most prominent place in the imagination of all early civilizations. But this awesome weapon of the gods is only indirectly connected to the "lightning" familiar to us today. Typically, the ancient stories describe the gods hurling their weapon not against humanity, but against each other, thereby throwing the heavens into turmoil. Universally, the thunderbolt is a symbol of cosmic upheaval - events powerful enough to rearrange the heavens and change the course of human history. That, at least, is the way the ancient poets and historians remember it. The flaming weapon is most familiar to us in the images of the Greek Zeus (Jupiter), who hurls his bolt across the sky. It is this fiery weapon which proves decisive in the god's confrontations with such chaos powers as the dragon Typhon or the rebel Enceladus. The god Yahweh, in Hebrew accounts, brandishes his lightning bolt against Rahab or Leviathan, the dragon of the deep, as the whole world trembles. Similarly, it is with lighting that the Babylonian Marduk blasts the dragon Tiamat, whose attack threatened to destroy creation. As we trace such images back to their earliest sources, we find that the feared thunderbolt really has nothing to do with local storms or regional events. When the world falls out of control, a sovereign god employs the weapon on behalf of "order" or renewal of the world after devastating catastrophe. When we examine the accounts systematically and in their specific details we see how clearly they exclude the popular interpretations given in our own time. As the ancient chroniclers tell it, even the gods themselves are "scarred" or "wounded" by blasts of lightning. Lightning streaks along the world axis, presenting the form of a luminous pillar in the sky. Repeatedly, we find popular warrior-gods taking the form of the lightning-weapon, while numerous mother goddesses are "impregnated" by the same fiery bolt. Or the lightning-weapon is hurled as a spiraling sphere trailing fire. Among numerous ancient cultures we find thunderbolts appearing as symmetrically arranged "arrows" launched toward the four quarters of the heavens, represented pictographically by a cross of light. Everything about the mythic lightning bolt is enigmatic, as if utterly divorced from natural experience. And yet the symbolism consistently points back to archetypal forms and events. Why was lightning, in the first
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astronomies, wielded by gods who are identified as planets? Why was the fiery bolt itself often presented with a twisted or corkscrew form? And how do we account for the famous "sulfurous stench" said to accompany the lightning- stroke? Or the universal claim that meteorites or stones ("thunderstones") fell with the lightning of the gods? A modern reader is easily desensitized to such "make believe." Were not all early races the victims of ignorance and wild imagination? All too frequently we grow so accustomed to the fantastic aspects of their accounts that we lose interest in the details. Or worse, we fail to notice the recurring patterns, the most vital keys to discovery. The thunderbolt will illustrate the extent of this dilemma while carrying us well beyond the particular symbol. As we intend to demonstrate, the patterns of ancient memory are simply too powerful, too detailed, and too consistent to be explained in the usual way.
UNSTABLE SOLAR SYSTEM

Much of the emphasis of this book will be on the dynamic and unpredictable roles of planets and moons, when they moved through highly active electrical fields. Planetary motions observed today are not a reliable guide to solar system history. But it seems that over many centuries observational science came increasingly under the spell of a predictable and uneventful planetary arrangement, and now certain questions are rarely if ever asked. How stable is the solar system? Have the planets always moved on their present courses? For many years, a principle called uniformitarianism has ruled the sciences. The principle says that evolutionary processes occurring in the past can be deduced from processes observed now. It is assumed, for example, that by noting uniform natural processes today, an observer can deduce how long it took the crust of the earth to shift and mountains to rise, for wind and water erosion to occur, and for lava flows and regional floods to sculpt the Earth's unique surface features. With the arrival of the space age, the same principles were applied to the natural events shaping the surfaces of planets and moons. As our probes sent back vivid images of planetary surfaces and the surfaces of the remote moons of Jupiter and Saturn, geologists drew primarily on a count of craters to "date" the surfaces. They simply projected theoretical impact rates backwards across great spans of time, and the results were the presumed "dates" for different surfaces, typically ranging from millions to billions of years. Such suppositions as these have guided data analyses throughout the space age. But are these suppositions really justified? Suffice it to say, if their assumption of uniformity is incorrect, planetary scientists have directed many billions of dollars toward asking the wrong questions. From the nineteenth century onward, the uniformity principle remained unchallenged. Undoubtedly that underlying supposition constrained the thinking of historians as they began to explore the world of our early ancestors and to offer translations of previously unknown ancient texts. Antiquarians--ethnologists, archaeologists, and students of the archaic languages--assumed without question that the celestial forms celebrated in the great "sky religions" answer to the Sun and Moon and other bodies as they appear in our sky today. But what would happen to our understanding of the mythmaking age if we set this supposition aside just long enough to ask the question: What were the skyworshippers seeing in the heavens when they invoked the prodigious forms of the gods? And what did they mean by the gods' awe-inspiring weapons of fire and stone?
IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
We would be remiss if we failed to make clear that both authors of this volume were independently inspired by the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, one of the most innovative and controversial theorists of the
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20th century. In 1950, Velikovsky's bestseller, Worlds in Collision, presented evidence for global catastrophes in historical times. He wrote that only a few thousand years ago planets moved on erratic courses and more than once the Earth itself was disturbed by errant planets. These upheavals, according to Velikovsky, were memorialized around the world in myth, art, ritual, language, and architecture. Three principles were paramount in Velikovsky's hypothesis: 1) Unstable motions and near-collisions of planets have produced large-scale terrestrial catastrophes on the earth. 2) Ancient cultures preserved massive records of these catastrophes. 3) Taken as a whole, historical records suggest a vital role of electricity: In catastrophic episodes, great bolts of lightning passed between planets. Velikovsky's approach was interdisciplinary. He used the insights of a professional psychoanalyst and the methods of a trained historian to investigate the astronomical, mythical, and religious traditions of diverse cultures. He discerned deeply rooted themes which others had failed to see. These cultural records told the story of traumatic events, apparently experienced on a global scale. Using a comparative method, he pieced together a coherent story. In support of his reconstruction he found physical evidence from geology, paleontology, and archeology. He also formulated a series of predictions-consistent with his hypothesis, but unexpected by previous theories. He predicted that the planet Jupiter would emit radio signals; that the planet Venus would be much hotter than astronomers expected; and that craters on the moon would reveal remanent magnetism and radioactive hot spots. Velikovsky's ability to anticipate scientific discovery produced a surprising statement from the renowned geologist Harry Hess (in an open letter to Velikovsky in 1963): 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 which confine the thinking of most of us. For ourselves, the authors of this work believe that Velikovsky was incorrect on many details of his reconstruction. But his place among the great pioneers of science will be secure if he was merely correct on the underlying tenets of his work: an unstable solar system in geologically recent times; close encounters of planets marked by interplanetary electrical discharges; catastrophic disturbances of the Earth; and human witnesses to these events; all with the most profound effects on human imagination and on the collective activity of early civilizations. In the 50 years since Worlds in Collision was published, the viewpoint of orthodox science has changed dramatically, leading some to say that the only mistake Velikovsky made was presenting his theory at the wrong historical time. Over the intervening decades various innovators began to investigate catastrophic possibilities previously ignored. One of the milestones in this trend was the hypothesis of Leo and Walter Alvarez, claiming dinosaur extinction by asteroidal impact. While the initial response of official science was ridicule, over time the hypothesis began to gain general acceptance within the scientific community. Soon thereafter, the respected biologist Stephen Jay Gould acknowledged the occasional catastrophe in a theory of "punctuated equilibrium." And the British astronomers Victor Clube and William Napier opened the door even further by postulating cometary or asteroidal disasters so recent as to have inspired vivid human stories (myths) of these events. Then several other astronomers, astrophysicists, and geologists added support to such speculations. Among these theorists are the eminent astronomers Fred Hoyle and Tom Van Flandern. According to the latter theorist, an "exploding planet" devastated the surfaces of Mars and other bodies in the solar system, perhaps leaving its scars on human imagination as well.
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And now, a half century after Worlds in Collision, a few wellaccredited catastrophists, including dendrochronologist Mike Baillie, are beginning to admit a debt to Velikovsky, usually with the disclaimer that of course he was wrong about unstable planets being involved in these events. This general assessment of Velikovsky is shared openly by the popular science and science fiction writer, Jerry Pournelle, on his website: Taken as a whole, Velikovsky's specific hypotheses are, in my judgment, quite beyond belief. On the other hand, his general hypothesis, that there were astronomical terrors in the Bronze Age and memories of them have come down to us in myths and legends, has always seemed to me to be well worth taking seriously and is in fact very probably true. We want to make it clear at the outset that the authors of this upcoming book stand with Velikovsky--if not on all the details of his reconstruction, then certainly on the general principles. When it comes to solar system stability we believe that Velikovsky was fundamentally correct, though it is certainly understandable that many intelligent writers find the errant planets of Worlds in Collision "quite beyond belief." Indeed, belief itself may be the greatest obstacle to objective investigation on this subject, given the inertia of prior assumptions. The very idea that wandering planets could quickly settle into their present highly uniform and predictable orbits is simply too much to countenance under accepted principles of Newtonian gravity and energy conservation. But in fact, the issue can be resolved dispassionately. The belief in uniform planetary motions over millions of years, though understandable, is just a belief. Placed within a wider field of evidence--a field ranging across the global testimony of ancient cultures and into a vast library of space age data--the very foundations of the belief will collapse. Newton developed the concept of gravitation in 1666, eight decades before Franklin flew his kite and more than two centuries before Maxwell wrote his famous equations. Astronomy developed in the gaslight era before electricity was known. In this volume we intend to show that something is missing from the standard treatments of planetary history and celestial dynamics. That missing component is electricity. Dave Talbott
PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: COSMIC JETS

By Amy Acheson This webpage from Merlin was part of my research for the videotaping session in Portland. The website includes wonderful pictures, plus the comments listed below. How long will they say things like 'Jets contain a mixture of charged particles and magnetic fields,' before they realize that they are describing electrical currents in space? Black holes are not needed here. Plasma can do the job better. ~Amy From the website: How this energy is generated, and how it is transported, is a key problem in astrophysics, but most theorists agree that only a massive black hole can provide enough energy to power these objects. In simple terms, a black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape from it.
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To power a quasar, a black hole would need to contain a mass a billion times that of the Sun. Material falling into the hole is heated to extremely high temperatures, emitting x-rays that can be detected by telescopes on board satellites. This release of gravitational energy can be more than ten times as efficient as nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun and the hydrogen bomb. By means not yet understood, some of this energy escapes from the nucleus along the jets and energizes the lobes. Jets contain a mixture of charged particles and magnetic fields, which together produce powerful radio emission ideally suited for study with MERLIN. The physics is undoubtedly complex, and the continuing study of radio jets will be a major task for MERLIN in the 1990s. Amy Acheson
IO'S WANDERING PLUMES

By Wal Thornhill Here is a very interesting report from NASA that shows how dismally earthly models fail when applied to Io's surface. Back on the 29th October last year I wrote on my web-site about the closest ever picture of Io: As expected in an Electric Universe, chains of circular craters show that an electric discharge has moved across the surface of Io. Such crater chains are characteristically found on cathode surfaces as the arc jumps from the neat, circular crater it has just burnt to the nearest high point often the rim of the same crater. This statement was repeated in another item about the Prometheus "volcano" on 7th November. The "migrating plumes" of this report are the moving cathode jets. They are not seen on Earth. As for determining the internal chemistry of Io from the surface sulfur deposits, this is another blind alley entered from the assumption that what are being looked at are volcanoes. The sulfur is being created at the point where the arc impinges on the surface. Each sulfur atom is formed by "fritting" two atoms of oxygen in the powerful electric field of the arc. The most likely source of oxygen is water ice, found also on the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter, particularly Europa. And it is on Europa that reddish coloration is found alongside the largest furrows (they are not cracks in the ice). None of the usual geological principles are much use in interpreting the features seen on Jupiter's moons. For that matter, it remains to be seen whether they apply on Earth. "Seeing Red" seems a popular headline these days!? Wal Thornhill
WANDERING PLUMES, SEEING RED, AND SLIP-SLIDING AWAY ON IO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 18, 2000 Detailed analysis of Jupiter's moon Io reveals a colorful, active world full of surprises, according to five reports published in the May 19 issue of Science, and based on new results from NASA's Galileo spacecraft and Hubble Space Telescope.
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The reports describe giant, erupting plumes migrating with lava flows, red and green deposits that change as unstable sulfur compounds condense from huge plumes, and mountains that may split and slide sideways for hundreds of kilometers, or miles. Galileo observations of Prometheus reveal a volcanic field similar to Hawaii's volcanoes, but more active and much larger. Prometheus features an 80-kilometer (50-mile) tall plume of gas and particles erupting from near the end of the lava flows, like where Hawaiian flows enter the ocean. This is Io's most consistently active plume. Its size and shape have remained constant since at least 1979, but the plume location wandered about 85 kilometers (53 miles) to the west between 1979 and 1996. "The main vent of the volcano didn't move, but the plume did," said Dr. Rosaly Lopes-Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of one of the reports. "This type of behavior has never been seen on Earth," said Dr. Susan Kieffer of Kieffer Science Consulting, Inc., Ontario, Canada, lead author of a Science report. Kieffer and her colleagues suggest that the Prometheus plume is fed when a "snowfield" of sulfur dioxide and/or sulfur vaporizes under the lava flow and material erupts through a rootless conduit in the flow. Scientists had speculated that bright red material on Io came from unstable forms of sulfur condensing from sulfur gas. By combining Galileo and Hubble Space Telescope results, scientists have learned more about the role of sulfur in Io's volcanoes. While Galileo carried out the first of three recent Io flybys in October 1999, Hubble scanned Io with its ultraviolet spectrograph to measure the composition of gases escaping from volcanoes. Hubble detected a surprise -- a 350-kilometer (220-mile) high cloud of gaseous sulfur in the plume ejected by the volcano Pele. The sulfur gas is a specific type, with sulfur atoms joined in pairs, that had never before been seen on Io; it is stable only at the very high temperatures found in the throats of Io's volcanoes. When these molecules fall onto Io's frigid surface (about -160 Celsius or -250 Fahrenheit) away from the volcanoes, they probably recombine into larger molecules with three or four sulfur atoms. The latter types of sulfur are red, so the Hubble results explain the 1,200kilometer (750-mile) wide, red debris ring around Pele. "These Hubble findings should help scientists understand the chemistry of Io's interior," said Dr. John Spencer of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., lead author of two of the Science papers. Galileo has found many other smaller, red patches near Io's active volcanoes, where this sulfur conversion process probably also occurs. The red deposits are found near calderas or shield volcanoes where lava first reaches the surface, often distant from plumes like Prometheus where lava flows apparently vaporize surface materials. The composition of bright green materials on Io has been puzzling. In some places, it appears that when red material is deposited onto fresh lava flows, especially on caldera floors, it transforms into green material. It is possible that the surfaces are still warm, which accelerates the transformation of the red types of sulfur and the sublimation of sulfur dioxide. Eventually both red and green materials acquire the pale yellow color that is characteristic of ordinary yellow sulfur, made of rings of eight sulfur atoms. Although Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, the mountains (up to 16 kilometers or 10 miles high) are not volcanoes. They have no volcanic vents or flows; instead, they appear to be giant tilted blocks of crust. Giant depressions on Io are thought to be calderas formed by collapse over empty magma chambers. Unlike Earth's calderas, many Io depressions have very straight margins, sharp corners, and are located next to mountains. In new images of the Hi'iaka Patera depression and adjacent mountains, it looks as though two mountain blocks have split and slid apart by 145 kilometers (90 miles), forming a pull- apart basin like California's
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Death Valley or Salton Sea. This is surprising because such large-scale lateral movements on Earth are caused by plate tectonics, but there are no indications of a similar process on Io. "We consider it more likely that lateral movements may be driven by deep 'mantle plumes' of rising hot rock masses within Io," said Dr. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead author of one of the papers. New images are available at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov .
So NEAR, yet so far from UNDERSTANDING

By Wal Thornhill On Valentine's Day, 2000, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft [went] into orbit around asteroid 433 Eros. It will be the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid. NEAR will examine the oddshaped rock, about twice the size of Manhattan Island, for about a year. What do we expect to learn from this adventure? Astronomers agree that it is a chance to examine material left over from the formation of the solar system. Maybe they are pieces of a failed planet? In any case, the usual mantra is invoked: it will help us understand the origin of the solar system. Yet images returned from close fly-bys of asteroids together with Hubble Space Telescope images of the large asteroid, Vesta, have already provided more puzzles than answers. That situation will continue while we remain so far from understanding what we are looking at. The accepted model for the origin of the solar system is a modern "fairy story", in the words of one noted astronomer, requiring ad hoc miracles to occur on every page in order to arrive at a happy ending. The biggest puzzle concerns the amazingly large craters on most of the asteroids. They create severe problems for the impact theory of accretion but astronomers have no alternative mechanism to offer. In an article in Science of 19 December 1997, titled "New View of Asteroids", Erik Asphaug writes: Last June, NEAR flew by the main belt asteroid 233 Mathilde ... Although the resolution was 50 times as coarse as expected at Eros, the images of Mathilde reveal some surprises and provoke an overdue reevaluation of asteroid geophysics. Mathilde has survived blow after blow with almost farcical impunity, accommodating five great craters with diameters from 3/4 to 5/4 the asteroids mean radius, and none leaving any hint of global devastation. Given that one of these great craters was last to form, preexisting craters ought to bear major scars of seismic degradation, which they do not. Furthermore, asteroids Gaspra and Ida (encountered by Galileo en-route to Jupiter) and the small satellite Phobos all exhibit fracture grooves related to impact, yet fracture grooves are absent on the larger, more battered Mathilde... Consider the third largest asteroid, 4 Vesta, a basalt-covered volcanic body 530 km in diameter that resembles the Moon as much as it does Mathilde or Toutatis. Recent views (36 km per pixel) by the Hubble Space Telescope show a 460 km crater, with raised rim and central peak, covering the entire southern hemisphere - an impact scar surpassing (in relative diameter, but not relative depth) the great chasms of Mathilde. Such craters greatly challenge our understanding of impact processes on asteroids, and on planets in general; evidently, our science must adapt. The study of asteroids is therefore particularly exciting, as small planets provide the fulcrum for the growth of planetology, and for an evolution of geophysics in general. Complex and poorly understood solar system processes such as impact cratering, accretion and catastrophic disruption, the evolution of volcanic structures, and the triggering of differentiation - may reveal themselves only in a study across the gamut of planets, from the least significant house-sized rock to the most stately terrestrial world. Like clockwork miniatures, asteroids demonstrate primary principles governing planetary
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evolution at an accessible scale, and thousands await discovery and exploration in near-Earth space alone.
In the Electric Universe model, moons, asteroids, comets and meteors are created in electrical discharges between planetary bodies. They are ripped from a planet's surface by electrical forces that easily overwhelm the weak gravitational force. The most well known, albeit unrecognized, arc scar from a recent planetary encounter is seen on Mars in the form of the colossal Valles Marineris canyons. Two million cubic kilometers of rock was excavated by the arc and hurled into space. Some fell back to form the strewn fields of boulders seen by every Mars lander. Some remained in orbit to become the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. (It is just possible that there is more rubble in orbit about Mars that has been the cause of inexplicable failures of spacecraft on arrival there). The rest formed meteors and a belt of asteroids. This model simply explains why many meteorites contain minerals whose crystals show that they must have formed inside a planet. It explains the origin of the Martian meteorites that are arriving on Earth. And the electric arc mechanism explains simply the strange flash heating of chondrules and other minerals in meteorites. So, if EROS' parent was Mars it may show similarities to Martian rocks. The most compelling evidence of their electrical birth is that all asteroids imaged to date bear scars in the diagnostic form of circular electric arc cratering. One large crater on asteroid Vesta has an untouched central peak. Impacts do not form circular craters with sharp rims - they "splatter". They don't form central peaks. Small secondary craters appear preferentially on the raised rims of earlier craters while the reverse is never seen - which also rules out an impact origin. Crater-filled grooves, seen clearly on Phobos have nothing to do with impact fracturing and are merely small sinuous rilles created by surface lightning streaking toward the main arc. Sinuous rilles are not collapsed lava tubes. Since electrical cratering is a slower process than sudden and does not involve mechanical shock to the same extent, there is little disturbance of pre-existing craters as seen dramatically on Mathilde. It is worth noting the odd low apparent density of asteroids. In such cases, astronomers introduce another ad-hoc assumption the asteroid is porous, containing up 60% free space. But that raises the question of how, in model, such an object could sustain any sizeable impact without shattering. In contrast, the Electric Universe model expects that a low level of charge on the surface of an object will lower its measured gravitational influence. For example, comets display non-Newtonian behaviour simply because they are visibly discharging and changing their state of electric charge. So a low density may be due to the electrical state of an asteroid rather than any porosity. In that case, the surface minerals will have a higher density, as measured on Earth, than the gravity of the asteroid would lead us to believe. Certainly, the asteroids do not give the appearance of being a "rubble pile". If asteroids maintained their integrity under the intense electrical forces that removed them from a planet they must have considerable mechanical strength. Having been "born" in a cataclysm created by a powerful electric discharge there may be strong remanent magnetism in any susceptible minerals on an asteroid. Strong magnetic remanence has been inferred on the asteroid Gaspra, equaling the Earth's field strength, and it is a distinguishing feature of meteorites. The process of electrical cratering will regions of anomalously strong patterns of magnetism. In addition, nuclear processes are to be expected. So nucleosynthesis, transmutation of elements and the formation of isotopes and radionuclides will have had an effect on the surface of asteroids similar to that seen in meteorites where odd isotopes occur from short-lived heavy parent radio-nuclides and others do not match those found in the solar wind. In order to advance we require much more than that "our science must adapt" or that understanding of these processes will come about from "an evolution of geophysics". It will require nothing less than a revolution in science before understanding is possible. That revolution begins with discarding the fairy
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tales about the formation of the solar system and returning to the laboratory to study the effects of electric discharges on model planetary surfaces. However that might be difficult for those who believe unshakably in their childhood stories and for many of the modern "virtual reality" computer generation. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 10 (June 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: FINDER'S FALLACY CRACK IN EINSTEIN'S PEDESTAL PARADIGM PORTRAITS (5): EJECTION JET BIGGER BUT NOT BETTER LABYRINTH AND FORTRESS OF THE GODS
by Mel Acheson by Wal Thornhill by Amy Acheson kroniatalk discussion by Dave Talbott
FINDER'S FALLACY
By Mel Acheson The Finder's Fallacy is the downside of the "Eureka!" of discovery. Searching for a needle of explanation in the haystack of data is exhausting, frustrating, often disappointing. Finally to have found a needle, a theory that "works", is cause for celebration. But the enthusiasm for the new-found understanding obscures a fallacious assumption. The desire to rest on success undermines speculation, postpones discovery, and ultimately erects a dogma that suppresses innovation. The Finder's Fallacy is just this assumption that "there is only one, and we've found it." Currently Accepted Theory (CAT)--Newtonian dynamics, Darwinian evolution, etc.--has found one needle and stopped looking. But successful theories have two characteristics: They "work", i.e., they explain or give meaning to certain sets of data. And they have limits, domains of truth, outside of which they "don't work". The Finder's Fallacy is the conceit that this theory's domain is infinite and this data set is complete and incorrigible. Therefore, this theory is the conclusion of a teleological evolution of ideas: There's nothing more to discover. This is the fallacy underlying Horgan's The End of Science and Hawking's "knowing the mind of God." But teleological evolution has drowned in a flood of surprises and novelties. Today, diverse voices contend over the discovery of other needles: the physics of complex systems; electrical plasma phenomena; the several schools of catastrophism. More will be found. There has been a long history of theories that "worked" for the data sets of their times ... and that were thought to be final. It's not that CATs are "wrong"--or "right". They work well for all the things in modern life for which they work well. But there are things--observations, differently arranged sets of data--for which they don't work so well, or not at all: the missing neutrinos in the sun and the missing dark matter in galaxies that may not be missing but may simply not be there; the physical and statistical connections of quasars to active galaxies; the quantization of redshifts; the Mesozoic fossils lying undisturbed in the center of the Chicxulub crater; the global themes of myths. The Finder's Fallacy will laugh at calls to resume the search. It will howl at announcements of further discoveries. Any new theory that does explain currently unexplained or under-explained data will alter the understanding of previously understood data as well. The newly found second needle will not only sew new clothes, it will sew the old clothes into new shapes. The effect will be not just variations on a style but
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an entirely new fashion. The desire to enjoy one's success quickly becomes a fear for protecting one's turf. The turf of ideas is not easily protected. Modern academia has done a remarkable job of erecting fences around its cherished dogmas. But that has only ensured that new discoveries will come from outside the fence. In time, the fence will enclose not the choicest turf but the junkyard. The Finder's Fallacy is the deadbolt on the door of the mind. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
CRACK IN EINSTEIN'S PEDESTAL

By Wal Thornhill It seems the Sheldrake effect is at work. For some years a lone researcher in New York, Ralph Sansbury, has been performing experiments that suggest that the light is a near-instantaneous action-at-a-distance and that the speed of light is merely a measure of the delay in response of the receiver. Now we have the following report from the London Times, June 4 edition: Eureka! Scientists break speed of light Jonathan Leake, Science Editor SCIENTISTS claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light. In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second. The implications, like the speed, are mind-boggling. On one interpretation it means that light will arrive at its destination almost before it has started its journey. In effect, it is leaping forward in time. Wal Thornhill comments: If Einstein was wrong about light then there need be no connection between space and time. It is far simpler to discard his old model altogether. If the phenomenon of light is caused by near- instantaneous signalling then there is such a thing as Universal Time, at least in our galaxy, and there can be no time travel. This is an "uncommon-sense" conclusion as well... Back to London Times article: Exact details of the findings remain confidential because they have been submitted to Nature, the international scientific journal, for review prior to possible publication. Thornhill: It will be of great interest to see whether the paper is published. Scientists use the peer review system as a very effective way of maintaining the status quo... Article: The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated caesium gas.
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Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right through it and travelled a further 60ft across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it travelled 300 times faster than light.
Thornhill: More sensitive tests should show that the effect was even faster, near-instantaneous, and therefore could be detected in two separate places at once... Article: The research is already causing controversy among physicists. What bothers them is that if light could travel forward in time it could carry information. This would breach one of the basic principles in physics - causality, which says that a cause must come before an effect. It would also shatter Einstein's theory of relativity since it depends in part on the speed of light being unbreachable. Thornhill: The problem only arises if we cling to Einstein's theory. It is more sensible to suggest that it is not possible to travel in time. That is the situation if light is a near-instantaneous action-at-a-distance and it is our electronic detection methods that introduce the delay we interpret as the speed of light... Article: This weekend Wang said he could not give details but confirmed: Our light pulses did indeed travel faster than the accepted speed of light. I hope it will give us a much better understanding of the nature of light and how it behaves. Thornhill: I have no doubt that it will. But I predict that it will be hard to hear the small voices of sanity above those who will defend Einstein to the death. Article: Dr Raymond Chiao, professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who is familiar with Wang's work, said he was impressed by the findings. "This is a fascinating experiment," he said. In Italy, another group of physicists has also succeeded in breaking the light speed barrier. In a newly published paper, physicists at the Italian National Research Council described how they propagated microwaves at 25% above normal light speed. The group speculates that it could be possible to transmit information faster than light. Dr Guenter Nimtz, of Cologne University, an expert in the field, agrees. He believes that information can be sent faster than light and last week gave a paper describing how it could be done to a conference in Edinburgh. He believes, however, that this will not breach the principle of causality because the time taken to interpret the signal would fritter away all the savings. Thornhill: Once again, the problem only arises if we cling to Einstein's theory. It is likely that there is a more sensitive way to detect the oscillating near-instantaneous electrostatic force of light than in conventional electronics. There is no suggestion that this would then breach the principle of causality. Article: "The most likely application for this is not in time travel but in speeding up the way signals move through computer circuits," he said. Thornhill:
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Time travel is a logical absurdity. However, speeding up signalling should be possible. We could do worse than look at how biological systems communicate - as distinct from moving bulk charge around... Article: Wang's experiment is the latest and possibly the most important evidence that the physical world may not operate according to any of the accepted conventions. Thornhill: Sansbury has had evidence for some years but could not get his work published. The evidence has also been around for many years in the form of "spooky" action-at-a-distance and quantum "entanglement" (which are both euphemisms for "we don't have a clue what's going on.") ... Article: In the new world that modern science is beginning to perceive, sub-atomic particles can apparently exist in two places at the same time - making no distinction between space and time. Thornhill: If by sub-atomic particles is meant photons, then modern theory, which treats light as a wave one moment and as a particle the next, was never acceptable. Sansbury shows that by simply re-introducing Newton's near-instantaneous action-at-a-distance, light is neither a particle nor a wave, but a force. Therefore, given appropriate detectors, light can be detected simultaneously in two places at different distances from the source. There is no connection between time and space. That was a blind alley we were led into by Einstein's "thought experiments"... Article: Separate experiments carried out by Chiao illustrate this. He showed that in certain circumstances photons - the particles of which light is made - could apparently jump between two points separated by a barrier in what appears to be zero time. The process, known as tunnelling, has been used to make some of the most sensitive electron microscopes. Thornhill: Tunnelling can be explained simply in the same way by near- instantaneous electrostatic forces between resonant particles. Article: The implications of Wang's experiments will arouse fierce debate. Many will question whether his work can be interpreted as proving that light can exceed its normal speed - suggesting that another mechanism may be at work. Neil Turok, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University, said he awaited the details with interest, but added: I doubt this will change our view of the fundamental laws of physics. Thornhill: "Debate" is a polite word for the reaction one can expect when beliefs are being challenged. Turok's initial response is the usual "I'll see it when I believe it" attitude from those in authority. It will not be possible to fudge Einstein's work sensibly to accommodate these results. However, the outcomes from Sansbury's simple new model of light have far-reaching consequences including the "holy grail" of unification of all forces as manifestations of the fundamental electrostatic force. It will change our entire perception of ourselves and our connection to the rest of the universe. It will open up amazing new vistas in science. Article: Wang emphasises that his experiments are relevant only to light and may not apply to other physical entities. But scientists are beginning to accept that man may eventually exploit some of these characteristics for inter-stellar space travel.
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Thornhill: These experiments support Sansbury's view that light is not a physical entity but a near-instantaneous oscillating electrostatic force. So inter-stellar communications may be possible without ridiculously long delays. And space travel will involve giving up Einstein's warped view of gravity as well. Being an electric force allows the possibility of constructing anti-gravity devices. R.I.P. Einstein! ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com
PARADIGM PORTRAITS V: EJECTION JET

By Amy Acheson On June 5, 2000, the Hubble Telescope published the following photos of a galactic jet: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2000/21/content/0021w.jpg The title of the accompanying press release was: Feasting Black Hole Blows Bubbles The article begins: A monstrous black hole's rude table manners include blowing huge bubbles of hot gas into space. At least, that's the gustatory practice followed by the supermassive black hole residing in the hub of the nearby galaxy NGC 4438. Known as a peculiar galaxy because of its unusual shape, NGC 4438 is in the Virgo Cluster, 50 million light-years from Earth. Amy comments: It's more than the shape that defines a peculiar galaxy. In his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, Halton Arp separated the galaxies by type of peculiarity; for example, unusual number of arms, active nucleus, etc. Those numbered 100 through 163 in his catalog are the most active, most explosive, most disrupted galaxies known. This galaxy, NGC 4438, appears in Arp's Atlas as number 120. Article: These extremely hot bubbles are caused by the black hole's voracious eating habits. The eating machine is engorging itself with a banquet of material swirling around it in an accretion disk (the white region below the bright bubble). Some of this material is spewed from the disk in opposite directions. Acting like high- powered garden hoses, these twin jets of matter sweep out material in their paths. The jets eventually slam into a wall of dense, slow-moving gas, which is traveling at less than 223,000 mph (360,000 kph). The collision produces the glowing material. The bubbles will continue to expand and will eventually dissipate. Amy Comments: This is where the distortion of seeing the universe through redshift-colored glasses causes a failure of observation. The jets don't dissipate. If you follow the path of these jets beyond the narrow focus of the Hubble Telescope, you will find an interesting array of high redshift objects. It's here, beyond the ends of the jets of active galaxies that we find quasars, BL Lac objects, and most of the high-redshift galaxy clusters and high redshift young galaxies. They spread from the ends of the galactic jets like sparks from a summer bonfire. I've been collecting a list of phrases for which Don Scott coined the term "electrical euphemisms." These are non-electrical words used to describe phenomena which deserve electric names in an Electric Universe paradigm. Additions to my list from this article include "bubble-blowing phase" for active galaxies with bright, ionized jets and "collision produces glowing material" for electrical discharge.

Photo Credit: NASA and Jeffrey Kenney and Elizabeth Yale (Yale University) Amy Acheson
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BIGGER BUT NOT BETTER

A kroniatalk discussion Harold Tresman sent the following: This is an article that appeared this week, (Jonathan Leake, Science Editor, Sunday Times. 04.06.2000) ...Comments ? From the article: Britons Open Eye on Dawn of Universe BRITISH astronomers are designing the world's ultimate telescope so large it will be able to make direct observations of lifebearing planets in other solar systems. Wal's comment: This assumes that life-bearing planets must be like the Earth in its present circumstance and usually orbit outside a star. The model I have proposed of life-bearing planets within the more favorable envelope of a red star would render them invisible to any telescope, no matter how large. Article: The so-called Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (Owl) will also see across space to the edge of the universe collecting light emitted 11 billion years ago from the first stars formed. The insights it provides, say astronomers, will be stupendous. Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, said the project was "the next big step" in probing the origins of the universe. "It will be looking at more distant and fainter objects than ever before including some that formed close to the big bang," he said. Wal comments: If anyone is interested in the Overwhelmingly Ludicrous decision making that characterizes the astronomical establishment in Britain, they should read Fred Hoyle's autobiography, Home is Where the Wind Blows. Rees is one who vehemently opposes Arp's work to the extent of indulging in personal attacks (Seeing Red, pages 21-23). He should be the last person to consult on such an expensive project since his involvement is obviously emotional rather than scientific. Article: A telescope capable of such feats has long seemed an astronomer's fantasy. The crucial part of any telescope is its reflector, essentially a mirror, which focuses light into cameras and other instruments. The largest telescope made has a reflector 10 metres in diameter, tiny compared with the 100 metres needed for the Owl. Until now astronomers had not even considered such a project. A 100metre glass mirror is beyond modern technology, would be too heavy to move and would be pointless because of the way light is distorted when it passes through the atmosphere. At Durham University, however, a team of physicists has designed a system that replaces traditional reflectors with hundreds of thin flexible mirrors with just a fraction of the weight. Such mirrors may even be made of fabrics sprayed with reflective coatings. These can be built onto a flexible frame whose shape is computer adjusted thousands of times a minute to counteract the distorting effects of the atmosphere. The result has been to cut the cost of the project to about 800m less than the total cost of the Millennium Dome...
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Among the most important questions the Owl telescope would resolve is the structure and origin of the universe.
Wal comments: No telescope can resolve that question if you bring to it a donkey-load of dogma and don't understand what you are looking at. Amy Acheson adds: An interesting side-conversations of the May seminar took place as Mel and Don and Wal and I tried to track down the answer to Don's question -- "If the velocity of recession equals the redshift (z) times the speed of light, then how can we have z equal to more than 1 without claiming the object has a speed greater than the speed of light?" Lately, NASA announced the newly discovered record-holding quasar at a redshift of 5.8 -- seemingly impossibly by their own standards. So we searched the Internet and found the full equation (v =cz is an approximation that works pretty well on small redshifts.) Sure enough, a redshift of 5.8 is only .97 times the speed of light. Examining the equation closer, we soon realized that there is no way to ever find a redshift over the speed of light. No matter how high the redshift gets -- 100 or 1000 or 953 gazillion -- the solution to the equation will be .99999999+ times the speed of light. There can never be, by definition, a redshift which exceeds the speed of light. Don Scott responds: The equation we found to convert redshift, z, into recessional velocity, v, was (in two steps): x = (1+z), then v = c[(x^2 - 1) / (x^2 + 1)]. I tried to find out where this comes from. All I have been able to find so far is that one writer says: From Relativity Theory we have the expression 1+z = sqrt[(1 + v/c) / (1 - v/c)] Now, where THIS comes from, I still haven't figured out. I DO know that if you solve this last expression for v, you get the first one. And Amy is right - via this expression, the value of v never exceeds c no matter how large z gets. Of course, according to Halton Arp, these high redshift values are primarily due to intrinsic (age related) properties of the object. So, the difference between the (large) measured shift and one of his quantum redshift values always turns out to be small enough that we can use the simple v = cz relationship to find the actual velocity. Mel Acheson adds: Mel retrieves his freshman physics text, blows off the dust, and finds feet of clay on the Doppler god: Physics by Resnick & Halliday, 1964 printing, Ch. 40, Sec. 5, p.914, introducing the Doppler effect for light, recaps the situation for sound waves: For an observer fixed in the medium and a source receding from the observer at velocity u, the frequency f' heard by the observer is f' = f [1/(1+u/v)]. For a source at rest and the observer receding from the source at velocity u: f' = f [1-u/v]. You can assemble these formulas by drawing a picture of the situation and applying the classical principle of addition (or subtraction in this case) of velocities. (The situation in which source and observer are approaching each other is represented by substituting -u for u.) Now I quote from Resnick & Halliday:
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We might be tempted to apply [these equations] to light... For light, as contrasted with sound, however, it has proved impossible to identify a medium of transmission relative to which the source and the observer are moving. This means that 'source receding from observer' and 'observer receding from source' are physically identical situations and must exhibit exactly the same Doppler frequency. [Emphasis in original--but I would like to draw your attention to the use of the term 'must'. Translation: We haven't found a medium yet, so we'll assume none exists. That assumption then requires the introduction of a fudge factor to make the two situations equivalent at high velocities. It turns the speed of light, c, into an asymptotic limit, and all further math dealing with c automatically incorporates that assumption--as Don pointed out above with redshift limits.] So the new, all-purpose, fudge-in-the-face equation is: f' = f [(1-u/c)/sqrt (1-u^2/c^2)] Well, of course physicists didn't stop with the assumption. They tested it, and the experiment (yes, one experiment) showed the new equation was spot-on (given the 2-significant-figure accuracy of the experiment). Resnick & Halliday describe the experiment. Now keep in mind that Resnick & Halliday never mention Hannes Alfven or plasma. H.E. Ives and G.R. Stilwell carried out such a precision experiment in 1938. They sent a beam of hydrogen atoms, generated in a gas discharge, down a tube at speed u ... They could observe light emitted by these atoms in a direction opposite to u ... using a mirror, and also in a direction parallel to u ... With a precision spectrograph, they could photograph a particular characteristic spectrum line in this light, obtaining, on a frequency scale, [two separated lines]. It is also possible to photograph, on the same photographic plate, a line corresponding to light emitted from resting atoms, [appearing between the other two lines]. R&H present a table of results, showing the 'at rest' line was half as far from the midpoint of the other two as the equations for sound predicted and very close to what the relativistic equation predicted. But then they continue: Ives and Stilwell did not present their experimental results as evidence for the support of Einstein's theory of relativity but rather gave them an alternative theoretical explanation. Modern observers, looking not only at their excellent experiment but at the whole range of experimental evidence, now give the Ives-Stilwell experiment the interpretation we have described for it above. R&H don't say what Ives' and Stilwell's interpretation was. So the Doppler fudge-formula rests on observations of light generated by hydrogen atoms passing through an electric arc and accelerated in an electric field, interpreted by observers ignorant of plasma effects. This adds historical depth to (and subtracts confidence from!) the old astronomers' response to questions about redshift: What else but a Doppler effect could it be? Modern physics stands, not on the shoulders of giants, but on the shoulders of giant assumptions. Back to the Article: What puzzles astronomers is why stars and galaxies are not spread around at random but occur in clusters with huge empty voids in between. More recently it emerged that galaxies often string themselves together into long filaments or form into flat sheets. The limited power of modern telescopes means they cannot provide enough detail to explain such phenomena.
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Wal comments: Halton Arp has shown why astronomers see the universe in such a distorted fashion. It doesn't require better telescopes. And when it comes to filaments and flat sheets, the plasma cosmologists have better answers. So why give scarce research money to those ill-fitted to use it? The Article: By contrast, the Owl telescope's ability to collect radiation from stars as they looked billions of years ago will allow astronomers to examine what was going on to create such unexpected patterns today. Its huge dish will also enable it to peer through the intergalactic clouds of dust that hide the hearts of galaxies and watch new stars being born. Wal comments: The unstated assumption behind this pronouncement is that we are looking back in time when we look into space. If the speed of light is not the barrier that Einstein made of it (and recent experiments suggest that this is so) then there is no relationship between time and space. The Article: But it is the search for life on other planets that provides the most powerful inspiration for building such telescopes. Designs are being drawn up at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh But Britain's astronomers are not driven only by lofty ideals. In the past few years there has been an increasing sense of frustration as Britain's telescopes have been eclipsed by others. Wal comments: So, it's all about status and bigger is better? If they really want to be in the forefront of astronomy they merely need to listen to Arp rather than build more expensive status symbols. Most of the data already to hand has been misinterpreted. The real breakthroughs in astronomy will come from new laboratory tests and re-examination of old data rather than ever bigger telescopes. Given the dismal track record of astronomical theorists, as portrayed in Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers", Halton Arp's prediction is the most likely - the breakthroughs will come from outside the field. In that case, who has the biggest telescope will be totally irrelevant. Wal Thornhill
FORTRESS AND LABYRINTH

By Dave Talbot Amy asks: Humbaba/Huwawa has the ugliest mug I have ever seen, made up of "intestines" twined around a couple of eyes (see Hamlet's Mill, By Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, pg. 291). The authors connect the monster's face and name with intestines and with the labyrinth. They also point out similarities to the Aztec Tlaloc, although Tlaloc's face was formed from two snakes rather than intestines. I can imagine that the superstition that you can read a person's fortune in the windings of steaming intestines also came from this image. Where did it come from? Was it part of the polar configuration? Dave responds: Well, I thought I'd take a little time to respond, since I've already stuck my neck out by claiming that, when it comes to the landscape of myths and symbols, all roads lead to the polar configuration.
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Amy, you're right about the ancient labyrinth and its connection to superstitions regarding entrails and fate. And yes, the labyrinthine "intestines" do have a logical place in the evolution of the polar configuration. The image relates to a rather complex phase, involving the transition from Saturnian to Jovian sovereignty. Here we also meet the terrible goddess (Venus) in her "entangling" aspect, and the legendary perils confronted by the Martian hero. As I've noted previously, I find it difficult to discuss these later sequences without the use of pictures, particularly while so much of the earlier symbolism remains to be presented at a sufficient level of detail. It is the earlier images that give the necessary context to comprehend the later evolution of the configuration. The brief comments here are for those familiar with the basic planetary forms of the polar configuration. The general motif involves these common elements, among others: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) meandering, "drunken" or "crane"-dance of the hero; winding path of the maze or labyrinth; the cross or swastika, the central celestial source from which the sinuous "paths" arose; "bowels" of the cavern entered by the hero; swallowing of the hero by the chaos monster; disheveled and "entangling" hair of the mother goddess in her threatening aspect; winding or unwinding of intestines; intricate windings of a rope or thread, or an elaborate "knot" which only the hero can undo; and a "riddle" or "paradox" which only the hero can solve--this being the most abstract form in initiation rites, folklore, and later analogies,.
In all of these forms we see key sequences in the hero's confrontation with the chaos powers. Though the images are quite diverse and often complex, the root explanation provided by the Saturn model is surprisingly simple. The explanation begins with the planetary alignment of the polar configuration--the juxtaposition of Mars, Venus and Saturn--when four luminous streamers were seen radiating from Venus in the form of an equal-limbed cross. (As I've noted on other occasions, this is the most frequently recorded form of the discharging Venus.) In a phase of intense discharging linked to the onset of instability, these streamers took on a whorl-like appearance, a form that numerous ancient cultures recorded stylistically as the swastika. There is reason to believe that initially the whirling appearance retained its symmetry as the streamers wound up the polar axis. But eventually the displacement of the aligned planets produced an irregular and complex streamer pattern, as Venus and Mars danced around the polar center in awkward motions, due to the visual effects of displacement from the polar axis and the moving position of the observer on a rotating earth. In their labyrinthine windings these streamers acquired the appearance of an impenetrable citadel in the heavens. Fundamentally, that is what the labyrinth means: a great fortress which only the hero, be he Gilgamesh or Theseus, will succeed in entering. There is much more to the ancient imagery of this celestial "stronghold" or "prison". The cavernous "bowels" of the divine habitation, the Gordian Knot, the mythic "cavern" of the hero's initiation or re-birth, and the labyrinth all mean the same thing. Moreover, only a few of the experts have discerned the essential corollary to this theme: the conjunction of the hero and mother goddess. The windings of the labyrinth are, in fact, the very essence of the goddess, and the hero's entry into the labyrinth can not be separated from his conjunction with the great mother. (As I've stated more than once, ALL mythical themes involve the conjunction principle.) Thus, the Saturn model provides a series of acid tests. It identifies specific forms in the sky as the objective references for seemingly incompatible mythical and symbolic images. What appear to be DIFFERENT symbols actually refer to the same external form and to the same sequence of events. The imaginative symbols will appear to have no connection to each other in the absence of the external references. But if you grant the concrete forms in the sky--if only for the sake of the obvious tests--then the connections will be EXPECTED. It is this logical expectation that supports the claimed "predictive
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power" of the model. The model implies entire complexes of symbolic equations that would not be anticipated under any other theory of the past. Since it will take a sizable volume to detail the labyrinth motif, for now I will simply provide a few random notes-Many themes relating to the terrible goddess and the ordeal, initiation, or rebirth of the hero occur in association with the first appearance of Jupiter. In one way or another the motifs of swallowing, cavernous hiding place, wrapping or winding, binding, and imprisonment run through all of the accounts relating to Jupiter's emergence as sovereign power. Ideas as to who was doing what to whom, and how badly, will vary according to highly subjective mythical interpretations. A good starting point for confirming the complex of motifs noted above might be Hesiod's Theogony recounting the fate of Kronos and the "birth" of Zeus. But don't expect everything to become immediately clear! Every motif or symbol has a larger context requiring cross-cultural analysis. It is the rigorous comparative approach that enables us to confirm the integrity of the substratum. That a great fortress in the sky would be composed of "intestines" is really quite ridiculous UNTIL one grants something visible in the heavens to prompt the mythical language. In the words of the Babylonians themselves, Humbaba/Huwawa was the guardian of "the fortress of intestines", and more than one specialist has proposed that this mythical fortress was a prototype of the labyrinth. But other crucial associations of the labyrinth are usually overlooked. The swastika at the center of the labyrinth occurs not just in Cretan and Attic art, but among the Hopi Indians as well. The most common centerpiece of the labyrinth, of course, is the equal-limbed cross, from which the swastika itself arose, representing the whirling aspect of the cross. One scholar who did not overlook this connection was A. B. Cook. From his extensive study of the theme, he concluded [Zeus, Vol 1, p. 478]: ...it seems certain that both Attic and Cretan art presuppose the swastika as the earliest ascertainable form of the Labyrinth. So it is simply inconceivable that the labyrinth motif could be illuminated without simultaneous illuminating the cross and swastika (or vice versa). One theme leads inexorably to another, each adding nuances and perspective: intestines, labyrinth, swastika, dance. There can be no doubt, for example, that the swastika is inseparably connected to the whirling dance of the hero and goddess when the world has slipped into chaos. Moreover, this dance is consistently linked to the labyrinthine passage. Indeed, one of the more common dance patterns in ancient times was that of whirling performers, dancing along a path marked by a labyrinth. Cook, for example, relates the pattern simultaneously to a symbolic "imitation of the sun's movements in the sky" and to a pattern of imitative spiraling dance. The word "labyrinth" often MEANS dance, and the archaic roots of the symbol are acknowledged to have given rise to the "Troy dance" and similar children's games. But again, the relationship of the swastika to the dancing form of the hero (in conjunction with the goddess) will virtually always go unnoticed by the specialists, while nothing in familiar experience today will suggest any link to the complex images of "intestines". Yet curiously, from the Americas to Africa to the South Pacific we find recollections of the dancing trickster-hero "unraveling his own intestines". That such ludicrous imagery would recur from one land to another surely requires an explanation! It is important to note that the labyrinthine dance of the hero has its own unique and awkward form, as we should expect. The dance of the warrior Theseus, most famous for his entry into the Cretan Labyrinth, was called the Crane Dance, a very appropriate image for the visual movements of Mars in relation to the origins of the labyrinth motif. Numerous Hindu myths relating to the "dance of Shiva" are suggestive of the same concepts while adding vital associations. The illustrated movement of the dancing hero's arms and legs mimic the whorl/swastika form of the discharge streamers. The warrior Siva holds his consort Sati
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above his head (again, as we should EXPECT), and in their violent whirling movement, the body or essence of Sati is dispersed in flame-From Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Shiva, pp. 319-20: He danced exceedingly, his arms flailing the regions. The stars were scattered by the swish of his hair. Death, love, and despair syncopated the escalating speed of his Tandava dance; the earth shook while Siva went on dancing in frenzy, his eyes whirling ... As Siva danced on and on, the body of Sati became lighter and lighter, and he saw that limbs and parts had fallen from it. In the end all that was left was the mystic yoni, the core identity of the goddess (the planet Venus, in the Saturn model). A comparative analysis will show that that the god's four arms "flailing the regions" are, beyond any reasonable doubt, the arms of the whirling cross or swastika that mark out the four regions or quarters of the celestial habitation. So too, the comet-like "hair" whirling in the heavens will trace to early images, such as those from Sumer, showing the arms of the swastika as the long- flowing hair of female figures. Hence, the presence of a swastika in the center of the labyrinth is a crucial piece of evidence. It needs to be emphasized here that the identification of Shiva's dance with the famous dance of the Theseus will not be justified by a mere reading of popular summaries. Too much is lost in trivial approaches to myth. How, for example, do we know that the dance of Theseus was in conjunction with a GODDESS, since the usual treatments do not mention such a thing? The builder of the labyrinth of Knosos was Daidalos, who constructed the palace-like fortress to imprison and protect the Minotaur. Though the labyrinth became the ground for the Crane Dance of Theseus, we read in the Iliad that Daidalos "once wrought in Knosos broad a dancing-ground for fair-haired Ariadne". But the real key is the golden "thread" of Ariadne, unraveled by Theseus as he danced through the winding passages. For the comparative approach will confirm that the spiraling thread of life and fate is nothing else than the luminous essence of the goddess herself. The hero's unraveling of the "thread" in his meandering dance is in fact a counterpart to Shiva's whirling dispersal of the essence of Sati. The dance of Theseus is in conjunction with the goddess. This is why, as noted by Cook, the labyrinthine dance was said to be "the first occasion on which men and women danced together." Here, as so often is the case, we see the telltale signature of an archetype, the cosmic "first form" to which all imitative or ritual practices direct our attention. [An aside: in Egypt one of the key images is that of the red ab- heart of Re, the "heart of carnelian" which Egyptian texts identify with such warrior heroes as Shu and Horus (Mars, in our reconstruction). This innermost masculine heart is presented within (i.e., in conjunction with) the feminine hati-heart of Re, The hieroglyphic image shows a male figure in a dancing posture virtually identical to that of Shiva, who similarly stands in conjunction with the Hindu mother goddess. But none of these images seems to be intelligible to Egyptologists or other specialists. Thus, they do not notice that the swastika itself symbolized the whirling, dancing heart of the ancient sun god (Saturn). And until the underlying equations are recognized, such obvious clues as the placement of a swastika on the HEART of Apollo in familiar Greek representations, will mean virtually nothing to them.] As noted above, a symbol linking the winding path of the labyrinth to a winding rope, cord, or string is the "thread of Ariadne". The Greeks claimed that Theseus' way through the labyrinth was MARKED by this very "golden thread" which he unwound as he entered the cavernous path. [Hero unwinding the golden thread = hero unwinding intestines = hero winding through the passages of the labyrinth = dancing hero and goddess] A common association noted by numerous comparative symbolists was that between the labyrinth and symbolic "knots" or elaborate "knotwork", a connection fitting perfectly with the Saturn model's identification of the labyrinthine pathway and the "Gordian Knot". In fact, the symbolic knotwork of Ireland and Scandinavia will often present striking parallels to the labyrinth, and I am fully satisfied that, at root, the two motifs arose from the same experience. Labyrinth and knotwork also overlap in the Chinese image of the p'ang-chang, the "endless knot" or "knot of happiness". Nor can the symbolic "intestines" be
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separated from this particular theme, for the legends describe the p'ang-chang as a "knot" formed from the INTESTINES of a slain enemy. All of which reminds us again of the "fortress of intestines" to which Humbaba/Huwawa, the enemy slain by Gilgamesh, gave his name. I should hasten to add that the most common association of the labyrinth revealed by cross-cultural comparison was with the mythical cave or cavern entered by the hero (as we should also expect). Thus Dorothy Norman, in The Hero, p. 107, writes: In those cases where the ritual has been preserved, the labyrinth itself, or a drawing of it, is invariably situated at the entrance of the cave or dwelling. The Saturn model says: labyrinth entered by the hero = cavern of the hero's initiation. In fact all of the predicted symbolic equations or identities noted above can be fully verified by an independent researcher following the keys provided by the Saturn model. The hero untying or finding his way through the "knot", as observed by Chevalier and Gheerbrant, is equivalent to the hero "being swallowed by the monster" -- a universal motif. The disgorging of the hero is simply one more form of the god's victory and release. To untie the knot is to defeat the chaos power. The labyrinth is a "puzzle", a challenge to the hero, and conceptually it is only a short distance to the mythic riddle or paradox, a folklore variant of the same critical juncture in the biography of the hero. When Oedipus answered the riddle of the sphinx correctly, the devouring goddess plunged over the precipice. Among those comparative symbolists who have discerned the essential connections (though certainly not accounted for them), I would list J. C. Cooper, who writes in An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols: [The labyrinth is] related to the symbolism of the cave and with initiation rites, often held in a cavern or crypt, or with funerary rites, all of which are associated with death and rebirth. It also shares the symbolism of the knot in binding and loosing, restricting but uniting. The labyrinth is also thought to have been concerned with the symbolism of the coiled snake [a globallyrecognized form of the devouring goddess] or with patterns of entrails divination and the bowels of the earth. The labyrinth in a square depicts the four cardinal points and the cosmos and may be connected with the swastika. Perhaps I should mention in closing that we are now looking ahead to a two and a half-day seminar in September, presenting the convergence of the Saturn model and electric universe. This event will include the first public presentation of several key mythical images and their relation to concrete forms seen in the sky. The labyrinth will be among the featured motifs. The tentative date for the event, which will include about eight presenters, is September 22-24, in Portland, Oregon. Look for an announcement shortly. Dave Talbott
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 11 (July 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE UNIFORMITARIAN PRINCIPLE ON DIAMONDS AND CANYONS AND COMPUTER RESETS OF DONKEYS, DONUTS, and WEATHER LABYRYNTHS
by Amy Acheson Kronia discussions with Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill Kronia discussion with Dave Talbott
THE UNIFORMITARIAN PRINCIPLE

By Amy Acheson The acceptance in the 1830's of James Hutton's uniformitarian principle, that "The present is the key to the past," has been hailed as the birth of modern geology, and James Hutton is considered the "father of modern geology." But "the present" to which James Hutton referred included not only the rock formations and fossils from which data was collected, but also the theories by which geologists made sense of the data they collected. For instance, although James Hutton was one of the first to suggest that erratics might have been transported by glaciers, he died in 1797, long before Louis Agassiz convinced geologists that Europe had once been covered with glaciers. (Agassiz' paper was read before the November 4, 1840, meeting of the Geological Society of London, and his Etudes sur les glaciers was published in the same year.) So the "present" in which James Hutton searched for keys to the past did not include moraines or eskers or drumlins or glacial striation; his "past" did not include Ice Ages. Which brings me to this: Before we can apply the uniformitarian principle, we must first define the present. If my definition of the present is "all the events seen on my little island in the Pacific Northwest of the USA", then Midwestern tornado season and tropical rainforests and Antarctic winters and deep-sea lava worms become highly unlikely. Should I hear about other ecostructures, I'm going to be hard-put to find an explanation for them in terms of Seattle drizzle. This example is absurdly limited, of course. Geologists consider all of the processes they are aware of in the "present" of the Earth when they seek their "key to the past." But is this definition big enough? Is the Earth itself too small a sample from which to understand the geological mysteries of the past? Let's take our concept of "present" one world beyond the Earth. The rubble field photos that Pathfinder took of the surface of Mars display an uncanny resemblance to both the rock-strewn Snake River Plain in Idaho and the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. In both cases, the cause appears to be geological events -- volcanism and flooding -- on a scale not currently happening on either Earth or Mars. On Earth, some of these formations -- the basalt floods or traps -- appeared in a geologically short time period and are associated with climate changes, extinction events, and the opening of new ocean basins. Could it be that the similar "present" on Mars is key to a similar past?
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If we expand our "present" just a few planets further, it is even possible to see massive volcanic floods in action. Jupiter's moon, Io, and Neptune's moon, Triton, both have active volcanism. From the Jovian system, where the successful Galileo space probe continues far beyond its originally planned mission, we have received incredible close-up photos of volcanoes hotter than any found today on Earth. During the few years of Galileo's observations, some of Io's volcanoes have measurably wandered across the moonscape, traveling on stepped plains that look remarkably like the ancient volcanic events we find on Earth and the canyons we see on Mars. Triton and Io are both close-orbiting phase-locked satellites of gas giants with large electromagnetic fields. Can this "present" offer any clue to Earth's past? There is one factor of Earth's "present" that has been systematically ignored by science, geological science included. This factor is the mytho-historical record. Legends are repeated around the world of a time when the sun was closer, when the sun was raised higher into the sky, when a new sun heralded the beginning of a new age. The global mythic record agrees that the original sun stood motionless in the sky. James Hutton's "present" had no reference for understanding that key to the past. But an observer on Io today would see Jupiter large and motionless in a sky, exactly as the ancient myths described the perfect sun of the golden age. The process of formulating the uniformitarian principle involved rejecting the human record. My feeling is that this was an appropriate step to take in James Hutton's time. In the 18th century, the mytho-historical record had long since become a tangle of misinterpreted rituals, beliefs and traditions that were used as excuses for tyranny and genocide all over the world. But I also think that with today's larger understanding of the "present" it is appropriate to reassess the value of the mytho- historical record. Just as similar geological strata hold keys to global events, a similar mythical stratum can identify such events which occurred within the memory of humanity. In this way, the present holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of not only our geological past, but our prehistoric human past as well. As to the future: our "present" is growing at an unprecedented rate. New extrasolar planets are being discovered nearly monthly. And the "present" they define is not the same as the "present" we expected from the theories we developed based on past experience of only one solar system. For example, of the first 20 extrasolar planets, only 8 had orbits greater than 0.2 AU. This is less than half the size of Mercury's orbit. And those 8 all have eccentricities greater than 0.1, as compared to eccentricities of less than 0.05 for Jupiter and all of the gas giants in our solar system. Most of the new planets are giants, larger than Jupiter. This doesn't mean that there aren't smaller planets out there -- only that we haven't developed instruments strong enough to detect anything smaller yet. But all 30 of the extrasolar planets known today (as of March 30, 2000) have orbits of less than 3 AU; 19 of them are closer to their stars than Mercury to our sun. In the old "present" of a few decades ago, it was theoretically impossible for a gas giant to form closer than 5 AU. Is it time to incorporate this larger "present" as a new key to earth's geologic past? If, in the course of improved astronomical instrumentation and space exploration we should come across a stellar system with a polar configuration in the process of breaking up, then not only planetary catastrophism in general, but the Saturn modern in particular will be more true to the uniformitarian principle than today's accepted geology. Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
ON DIAMONDS AND CANYONS AND COMPUTER RESETS

Kronia discussions with Wal Thornhill Frank Wallace here in Toronto Canada.
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What are the odds that kimberlite pipes, noted markers for diamond explorations, are the product of electric discharges up from the crust of the earth? At the same time what are the odds that the diamond fields located usually in surface till, within the vicinity of the pipes are the result of eruptions, from well below and/or just at the surface of the pipes, caused by electric discharges? Wal Thornhill responds: Diamonds occur in many types of meteorites. Conventional wisdom has it that they are not formed in the same way as "natural" diamonds on Earth. The larger ones, between 0.1 and 1.0 mm are thought to be a result of collision shocks. Smaller ones are thought to have been created outside the solar system because their parent meteorite shows no signs of shock. Vapor deposition is favored as the mechanism in such instances. I favor the electric discharge removal of surface material from a planetary body as the mechanism for both types since both conditions will be found in such a discharge. The shock effects can be caused by the magnetic pinch and the explosive expansion following. Vapor deposition and ion implantation are both seen to result in the most common chondritic meteorites. So, I think there is a good chance that electric discharges within certain minerals in the Earth's crust could give rise to the formation of diamonds. The surface deposits suggest that the sub- crustal discharge was part of an extended discharge between the Earth and a bolide. From Kronia: Michael Armstrong posted the following excerpts from a conference on the Grand Canyon, an article By SANDRA BLAKESLEE: NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE, late Spring, 2000: The Grand Canyon: A geological puzzle Scientists lack coherent clues to solve riddle The Grand Canyon is more than a mile deep in places, with the Colorado River running at the bottom. The geological evidence is confusing, and competing theories seek to explain how and when the canyon was formed. [Following are 4 current theories]
[1] ANCIENT RIVER THEORY

Canyon was formed roughly 70 million years ago. The original canyon theory says that as tectonic forces pushed the Kaibab Plateau upward 65 million to 70 million years ago, the river cut through the layers of rock as they were lifted. 100 million years ago [Land was flat with river running through it] 60-75 million years ago [ Plateau rises; river cuts through it. Canyon fills with gravel] 5 million years ago [Another uplift; the river finds the channel to clear out the canyon.]
[2] HOPI LAKE THEORY

Some geologists who think the canyon was formed in the last 5 million years also believe that the Colorado River once emptied into a huge body of water known as a Hopi Lake. As uplift occurred in the area, the lake may have overflowed, causing torrents of water to carve the canyon.
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[3] RIVER CAPTURE THEORY

Another theory suggests that the current Colorado River was once a young stream drainage that flowed east to west. By means of erosion, the drainage made its way back to connect with the old north-south Colorado River, which tore through the shallow drainage area, creating the canyon.
[4] REVERSE FLOW THEORY

Others suspect that the Colorado River cut the canyon when it flowed in the opposite direction from today. Proponents of this theory cite the present-day tributaries, which feed into the Colorado at an angle that supports the river's former flow.
WAL THORNHILL adds the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE THEORY: The simplest explanation is that the Grand Canyon was created in an event like that which created a similar but much grander series of canyons on Mars. That is, an interplanetary electric discharge. The stubby tributaries which join the main canyon at nearly 90 degrees are a strong indication that this is so. Erosion by a river through a mountain barrier is well nigh impossible, but electric arc machining has no such problem. The possible mechanisms available to geologists are far too limited to allow a sensible explanation for the Grand Canyon formation. Wal comments on the Galileo Millennium Mission Status February 25, 2000: The latest NASA report on the Galileo mission has some interesting things to say about the on-board computer resets. On Feb 23rd, I wrote: A 'radiation-related false reset is indistinguishable from an electrostatic discharge within the spacecraft. Radiation hits would be expected to have more random effects than an internal electrostatic discharge which will always choose the weakest spot in insulation to give the same effect. In the vicinity of Io, which is acting as a focus for the electrical discharge with Jupiter, the rate of charging of the spacecraft will increase rapidly as it closes in on the Moon. The faster the rate of charging, the more likely there will be internal arcing or "flash-overs" in the computer equipment or the signal and power lines feeding it. The Mission Status Report report states: Galileo engineers were somewhat surprised that this third computer reset happened well after the Io flyby, when the spacecraft was quite a distance away from Jupiter (29 Jupiter radii, which is 2.1 million kilometers or 1.3 million miles) and therefore not as close to the most intense radiation. This served as another reminder of the powerful effects of natural radiation in space. Wal comments: It serves more as a reminder of the power of assumption. It seems likely to me that a well insulated onboard computer could suffer another flash-over some time after leaving Io as the charge leaked slowly away from the body of the spacecraft but was unable to do so from the computer. The report continues with: Galileo has already survived more than twice the radiation it was designed to withstand, and its experiences will help mission planners design future spacecraft headed for high-radiation environments.
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Wal comments: It is true that the technology used in the Galileo spacecraft seems to have exceeded expectations concerning its hardiness in a high radiation environment. But to ignore the alternative of electrostatic discharging between components within the spacecraft may cost NASA dearly on subsequent missions, particularly those concerning close approaches to electrically highly active bodies such as comets. All spacecraft electrical equipment should have lightning arrestors integral in their design. I would then suggest that future spacecraft be tested in a vacuum chamber subjected to high voltage discharges. Such an environment is known to be extremely hostile to computers. Wal Thornhill
OF DONKEYS, DONUTS, and WEATHER

By Wal Thornhill The distant braying of the skeptics intruded, unwanted, into my email yesterday... As Don Scott noted at the recent Portland meeting, it is we in Kronia who are the true skeptics. We do not accept ex-cathedra statements by authorities without analyzing them critically. We do consider alternative points of view often from unusual sources. On the other hand, the card-carrying skeptic seems as incapable as any fundamentalist of considering alternative points of view ... the gist of the message was that since "convection" had been proven from recent measurements of the Evershed effect in sunspots, then the electric star hypothesis was disproven. The Evershed effect has nothing to do with convection and certainly cannot prove that convection occurs at deeper levels in the Sun - as required by the standard model. In fact C. E. R. Bruce, one of the early pioneers of papers on electrical effects on stars, claimed more than 50 years ago that the gas flow in the perimeters of sunspots (the Evershed effect) would be due to electric discharge effects and have a characteristic velocity - which he predicted and had later confirmed. Electric discharges give rise to anode and cathode jets with the simplest form having a circular cross-section. It is an anode jet that clears the photospheric lightning and gives rise to the phenomenon we call a sunspot. There is no clear explanation in standard models why sunspots should exist as a result of convection. Arm-waving about trapped and twisted magnetic fields breaking through the photosphere ignores the simple fact that a plasma is not a superconductor and cannot sustain a magnetic field without electrical input. And electrical input is anathema to astrophysicists. As might be expected in an Electric Universe, the pattern is repeated here on Earth. There is an earthly analogue of sunspots in the form of ephemeral holes that appear in the Earth's UV dayglow. (Seen in UV light the sunlit side of the Earth's atmosphere glows almost like the surface of the Sun due to ionized oxygen emission). The dayglow holes were famously misinterpreted by Prof. Louis Frank as being due to a steady influx of "snowball" comets. They do seem to be correlated with meteor trails... My view is that meteor trails in the ionosphere act as convenient "leader-stroke" paths for a form of diffuse, doughnut-shaped ionospheric lightning known as "elves". They have been photographed at night above large electrical storms by low-light cameras. Their altitude and dimensions tally well with the dayglow holes. Of course these discharges would be invisible in daylight. Taking that insight in the other direction, back to the Sun, raises another possibility - that some coronal mass ejections (CME's) in the Sun's atmosphere may be triggered by sun-grazing comets in a completely analogous fashion. The SOHO spacecraft has seen a surprising number of such comets and some of the CME movies seem to show one just prior to an outburst.
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I am not suggesting that sun-grazing comets cause sunspots. Just as large electrical storms on Earth can generate "elves", it is known that the Sun also exhibits large scale "weather patterns" and so we might expect a similar scaled-up phenomenon in the form of sunspots. And in an Electric Universe, weather patterns are driven primarily by external electrical input. Had any accurate weather forecasts lately? ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com
LABYRYNTHS
Kronia discussion with Dave Talbott Michel Tavir asked: Here under our latitudes {Denmark] it is claimed that what is known in the Anglo-Saxon world as "Celtic Knots" was actually brought over by the Vikings when they colonized the coasts of Ireland. If this is true, they are not two separate traditions. On the other hand, I cannot think of a similar "labyrinthic" symbol in Scandinavia before that time. If this is also correct, why did the symbol only turn up so many millennia after the event? Dave Talbott responds: That kind of erratic evolution is typical of the fragmentation and diffusion of symbols. And where particular symbolic styles emerge in later times as if from nowhere, it is usually the case that they were imported. Symbolic knotwork design is probably as good an example as any. But here it's crucial to distinguish between the symbol (knotwork in this case) and the archetype to which the symbol directs our attention. The elaboration of symbols over time involves a substantial role of innovation in which regional signatures can be recognized, helping historians to trace various paths of diffusion. My guess would be that the similarities between Scandinavian and Celtic knotwork, which I had mentioned in the same breath, will trace to a single cultural origin. Of course, the absence of a particular symbolic innovation does not take away from the more universal influence of the celestial archetype, which inspired numerous paths of symbolic expression, a number of which I had listed as part of a UNIVERSAL memory. I would not want to suggest that a particular mythical interpretation of an archetype--much less a particular style of representing that interpretation--was universal. In the absence of the direct reference in the sky, human imagination was free to conjure many variations on the received mythical concepts. The purpose of comparative study is to identify the root form (archetype) originally expressed by the entire range of symbols. It is the existence of these archetypes that cannot be explained by any prior theory of human history. As Don Scott had noted, Teutonic mythology was filled with the labyrinthine motifs I listed. In comparative study that would be the significant fact, not the continuity of a particular mode of stylistic representation. Dorothy Millard wrote: Here is a subject I love-Celtic Art! I tend to agree with Dave that the two motifs arose from the same experience. The origin of Celtic knotwork is not as easily understood as previously thought. I have been studying this subject for only 2 years, and there seem to be as many trails as there are in a labyrinth. :) One of the books I've read, <Maze Patterns>, by Aidan Meehan, traces labyrinths back to the earth goddess myths. How convoluted the earth goddess myths can be! Meehan starts with the chevron, goes through spirals, key patterns (although he doesn't like the term), other goddess symbols, and drawings of plans of court cairns (megalithic tombs) found in Ireland, c. 5000 BC. The cairns supposedly represent the goddess in a pregnant state, and the maze aspect to the tombs is a birth ritual. Then he associates Neolithic carvings with warrior-hero myths. I find it fascinating! But how accurate is it?
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Dave Talbott says These are of course the associations I suggested based on a much broader analysis. But while most scholars can recognize such associations, they cannot produce an intelligible explanation, due primarily to the fact that their interpretations are drawn from the language of nature TODAY, with no thought of the possibility that the myths might have originated beneath a completely different sky. The archaic goddess of the labyrinth (Ariadne- Aphrodite in the Greek tradition) is not an 'earth goddess" in the sense implied by familiar uses of words today. The phrase identifies the goddess herself as the HABITATION of the gods: "God's land," "Holy Land," "city of the sun," "Saturn's earth" (Virgil's phrase) That this dwelling of the gods was in the sky is universally supported by the more ancient texts. It's cavernous shape (the labyrinth) is formed from the spiraling essence of the goddess--the unraveling thread of life, the entangling knot-- and it is specifically associated with the "initiation" or symbolic death and re-birth of the hero, as I had also noted. In entering the labyrinthine "bowels" of the cavern, the hero enters the womb of the goddess in her dark and menacing aspect. His re-emergence is his re-birth. Dorothy Continues: I also found some history of the origins of knotwork in <Celtic Art -the methods of construction> by George Bain (Dover 1973, originally published by William MacLellan & Co. Ltd., 1951). He concludes that the various patterns that have been used throughout history are imitations of plaiting, weaving, and basketwork. He also states that knotwork interlacing was "peculiar to the Pictish School of Celtic Art," and that Pictish key patterns were similar to key patterns "found in the Ukraine and Yugoslavia dating from 20,000 BC to 15,000," but not like classical Greek key patterns or frets. Borders and panels of interlacing "are to be found in the art of most peoples surrounding the Mediterranean, the Black and Caspian Seas. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Moors, Persians, Turks, Arabs, Syrians, Hebrews, and North African tribes have used interlacing." According to Bain, "the finest achievement of knotwork interlacing are by the Pictish School," and that "interlacing humans, animals, birds, and reptiles each with interlacing top-knots were developed in East Pictland and Ireland to migrate at a later date to Scandinavia to become a decadent art." Dave Replies: ...I am highly skeptical of the author's interpretation. In all cases I can think of, enduring design elements trace to sacred activity, while sacred activity was, beyond any reasonable doubt, part of a collective act of REMEMBERING. With the explosion of human imagination in the myth-making epoch, all mundane functions such as pottery making, weaving and basketwork became vehicles for something more than the obvious practical functions. That is, the symbolism did not ARISE from the practical function, but from a collective endeavor to hold onto or to recover, if only for a symbolic moment, the lost age of the gods. Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the references you've given are valuable sources of information, and I hope you will continue with your investigation. Dave Talbott
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 10 (July 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS MALE GODS PARADIGM PORTRAITS (6): NASA BUILDS PLASMA LABS FAILED STAR OR FAILED SCIENCE?
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott and Rens van der Sluijs by Amy Acheson by Wal Thornhill
SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS
By Mel Acheson Think of the scientific method as the methodical application of human cognitive abilities. Everyone uses cognition to some extent; scientists use it methodically. It works through the interplay of three activities: observing or experiencing or paying close attention to some particularly interesting thing or event; thinking of or imagining some idea that might explain the thing or event, giving it meaning; and testing the idea, verifying whether it stands up to further observation and experience and thinking, judging its truthfulness. (Although described here as three separate activities, they occur together and recurrently.) One characteristic of the scientific method - and of any knowledge based on cognition - is that it seldom provides absolute certainty. Risk is an essential part of it. This is what makes it dynamic, adaptable, and, hence, useful. We are small people in a big and changing universe. There are always more things and events to experience, more viewpoints from which to observe them, and more ideas to make sense of them. This means the particular theories of science at any particular time are apt to change. In biological terms, they are "selected" by the intellectual environment of their times. Usually, they change in small ways. The big theories (such as evolution, atomic theory, and gravitation) are adaptable and can be modified to accommodate many new observations. But occasionally new observations are so different and so many that a consensus arises to abandon a big theory and to develop an altogether different one. This is what happened when Copernicus' idea of a heliocentric arrangement of the planets "succeeded" Ptolemy's geocentric idea. The intellectual establishment of the time resisted the change, but the leap in progress of knowledge that accompanied the new theory abundantly repaid the "transaction costs". The multitude of discoveries in the last few decades has opened modern science to the opportunities of adopting new big theories. The competition of proposals is itself a process of discovery: Which proposed theory not only explains the new observations better but holds the greatest promise of aiding further discoveries. I'll use the term 'paradigm' for only these big theories. Some of their properties are: They provide guidelines for "where to look" and "what to look for". They set standards for what constitutes a problem worthy of research and what qualifies as a solution. One of a paradigm's greatest benefits is also one of its greatest liabilities: It provides guidelines (or excuses) for what to ignore. This saves time (that can be devoted to details of research) not having to consider "crackpot" ideas, meaning other paradigms that are
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substantially different. The history of science provides many examples of a new discipline making little progress, squabbling over fundamentals, until a paradigm is adopted. But at the other end, when a paradigm is becoming obsolete, the ignoring of alternatives results in "paradigm paralysis" that wastes time and resources trying to force-fit big anomalies into the undersized clothes of the established paradigm. A paradigm does more than just make sense of existing observations. It leads to new observations, new data, new places to look and new ways to look, and to new technologies. This tension constitutes a creative dynamic. Paradigms enable discoveries that go beyond the limits of the paradigm, observations that can't be explained by the paradigm, thus motivating a search for a more inclusive paradigm. This continues the process of articulation and succession. But there are things that obstruct this process. One I'll call "scientific correctness": The (proper) concern that a theory is "correct" or "right" or "true", that it "fits" or explains the relevant data, becomes confused with a pseudo-religious "Right" or True" that exceeds the cognitive domain of the paradigm. All other ideas come to be judged by the standards of the one. "Crackpot" becomes a term of dismissal rather than one of mere differentiation. The process of discovery gets lost in defensiveness. A recent example of this is the behavior of the astronomical establishment toward Halton Arp. His observations of connections between quasars and galaxies put the brakes on the expanding universe and exploded the Big Bang hypothesis. But instead of saying, "Here's an interesting observation; we don't have time for it, but let's see what he can make of it," the reaction was, "Deny him telescope time and refuse to publish his findings and crop out quasars on photos of galaxies." Contrast "scientific correctness" with the concept of "domain of validity". The former assumes that its paradigm is "right" and that all further observations can be explained, requiring at most tinkering with the details. This assumption of continuous cumulation of knowledge becomes absolute and straitjackets further discovery. It leads to stasis and intellectual death. With the latter, science is seen not as the establishment of a catechism but as a process of discovering the borders. It assumes the continuous cumulation of knowledge within a paradigm will reach a limit. The cup of the paradigm will fill up, will reach a limit of explanatory power, and observations will spill over, that is, will be ill explained or unexplained. A new, bigger cup will be needed, a paradigm with a larger domain. In deference to Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, this could be called "punctuated cumulation". Thus, one mark of a good paradigm is that it leads to its own replacement. This is the effect of Popper's criterion of falsification. It means "true" knowledge is, in this larger sense, ultimately "false". That doesn't mean the knowledge isn't useful for its time. It merely means we need to maintain a sense of humility in the face of our, and our theories', mortality. Scientific correctness rejects old paradigms as "wrong" and their proponents as stupid or evil. There can be only one "right" paradigm. With domains of validity, many paradigms can be accepted as true within their limits. Their intelligibility and the intelligence of their innovators can be appreciated. Science becomes a tool box with many tools (paradigms) that can be chosen according to their appropriateness for solving particular problems: geocentrism for siting a house, heliocentrism for sending a robot to Mars, something yet to be worked out for explaining quasars. Scientific correctness masquerades in the dress of science, but it's only a mannequin without the vitality of science. In contrast with the three aspects of cognition, scientific correctness refuses to look at new observations, refrains from considering new ideas, and disdains to verify new insights. It's essentially antiintelligent. It confuses verification with conformity; it replaces the innovations of intelligence with the parroting of dogma; it lacks the provisionality that keeps science always on the move. It's a tyrant of stasis. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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MALE GODS
By Dave Talbott and Rens van der Sluijs Ev Cochrane recently forwarded to me a note from Rens van der Sluijs, dealing with "the problem of identification of the male gods within the Saturnist framework." Rens van der Sluijs wrote: My conclusion is that the godly assembly is variously referred to as either One God, having an acting Inner Soul, or Father and Hero-Son. The suffering Mystery God, in so many disguises, being torn apart is the One God, but on a deeper level it is his own acting Inner Soul that kills him. He can thus appear as Warrior and Victim in two separate beings. Mythologically speaking, this implies that the same story can be rendered in various ways. Thus we reach the startling conclusion that Zeus killing Kronos is identical with the various Marsgods killing the rightful King, whereas the story of the infant Zeus is directly identical with the numerous accounts of young Herakles, et cetera. Jupiter at face value is, therefore, not always simply to be equated with the archetypal Jupiter God that David Talbott had thus far established. When Zeus kills Kronos we envision the Mars God as Inner Soul overcoming the Golden Age God. The soul, i. e. Venus with Mars, subsequently reenters another body, notably the planet Jupiter, and in this way the same Zeus is said to have achieved kingship. As Inner Soul he is then identical with the body of Jupiter as a planet, i. e. the King acquired a new heart, or rather, the heart acquired a new body (sic!). This sounds like ancient mystery language and in fact it is. Nevertheless, it seems to be the only adequate solution and enlightens the ancient lore not a bit. This view predicts that the same divinity can alternately be described from the viewpoint of the acting Inner Soul or from that of the entire god. Methodically, this means that it gets harder to make a divine biography. A divine biography can only be set up once we split the united story in several versions with different role assignments and viewpoints. This is a challenge that I am greedy to face. All of this I hope to address sooner or later in an article, also paying attention to related issues: [1] The story of Kronos castrating and ousting Ouranos is different. This is not the common parricide myth, but describes an earlier transformation in the life of the Golden King, giving birth to Venus, as can be deduced from the themes and attributes involved in the myths. It is not as widespread. Dave Talbott Responds: 1. Re: Kronos and Ouranos. Rens is correct here. This is not the parricide myth. It is the story of Saturn's emergence as a separate power, in events synonymous with the birth of the goddess and hero. The subject is the "first activity" of the planetary configuration. Unified heaven (proto-Saturn) gives way to differentiation. In the Egyptian myth the birth of Shu and Tefnut from the originally inert and unified form of Atum gives rise to THREE--Re, Shu and Tefnut--Saturn, Mars and Venus in the Saturn reconstruction. The Hindu system also presents the story of a primeval sacrifice of Unity (first form of Brahma-Prajapati) in connection with the birth of male and female principles. Originally, the male and female powers stood in conjunction. In other words, the variants all answer directly to the Great Conjunction of Saturn's epoch, when Saturn's giant sphere, extremely close to the earth, stood behind the juxtaposed, much smaller spheres of Venus (goddess) and Mars(warrior-hero), these two orbs appearing as the luminous eye, heart or soul of Saturn. The comparative approach will confirm that the severed "testicles" of Ouranos correspond to the "seed" of the Egyptian Atum, holding the goddess and hero in conjunction. This male-female "seed"-- the BEN
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stone--typically appears as a single eye (the goddess) together with its "pupil" (hero), though the emerging male and female forms may also be called the "two eyes" in later elaborations of the myth. "Castration" and "blindness" thus go together in archaic symbolism (as Jungian symbolists have already noticed). In the Hindu system as well, the primeval conjunction of Rudra/Shiva and Sati defines the original Unity of heaven. The original male-female seed--the BINDU--is depicted as a small circle in the center of a much larger circle. That is the primeval condition of undifferentiated Unity: unborn goddess and hero in conjunction in the center of the vast sphere called "heaven" the gas giant proto-Saturn). The sign for this condition is among the two or three most common symbols in the world. (It is the sign of Re, for example.) Of course none of this will make sense unless you have the visual imagery very clear in your mind. The human memories trace to concrete forms in the sky, behaving in a highly specific way that can be tested from one culture to another. The fate of the primeval Unity, however, is the most archaic story element, and as such it reveals much less detail than you will find in the more richly elaborated accounts of the goddess and hero. It is a less defined background memory, and rapidly fades over time. That is why one will do best to concentrate on the oldest available sources. The symbolism of the Egyptian Atum and the Sumerian An/Akkadian Anu will give the most reliable data. 2. Re: Difficulties in establishing a divine biography. Correcto mundo on this point also. The universal sovereign (Saturn- Jupiter) tends to be a passive figure, while the goddess and hero are highly active. In later literature the Martian figure, the warrior-hero, will appear as the servant, messenger, or assistant in the service of a great king. BECAUSE the story was consistently localized, it was impossible for the original relationships to be maintained. Archaically, the hero figure does not just act on behalf of the universal sovereign--he is the masculine, innermost soul of the god, the active voice going forth as a visible "command," the externalized "will" or "desire" of the sovereign. In the margins between the most authentic (earliest) sources, and the highly fragmented (later) sources you will find both versions of the hero--i.e., both the original servant of the universal sovereign and the later "prideful," "foolish," rampaging hero acting AGAINST the sovereign, even "murdering" him. They are same figures. Thus, comparative analysis will reveal that the Greek Eros and Ares, who appear so unlike each other, reflect the SAME archetype. The evolution of the archetype through interpretation and storytelling, however, has taken the two figures in entirely different directions. Eros, the visible, external will or desire of Zeus is thus seen as a little male figure on the shoulders of Zeus--exactly where we should expect him. The poetic treatment of the Mars god Ares, however, will typically emphasize the rogue aspect--the warrior, the fool, the murderer. The ambiguous middle zone will be occupied by Heracles, whose name was also a name for the planet Mars in Greek astronomy. Here the poets have retained many separate traditions relating to the hero's labors on behalf of "great kings," while including as well the accounts of his murderous rampage, all the while attempting to rationalize the behavior. In truth, this ambiguity shows up in virtually all of the well- documented warrior gods around the world, though the chroniclers endlessly strove to separate the heroic and chaos-monster aspects by treating them as independent mythical figures. That way, one figure could represent the enemy (prototype of the devil in all his mythical forms) and the other a standard to be celebrated without ambivalence. (I will return to this tendency as soon possible, in discussing another point raised by Rens.) 3. Zeus and Kronos. Bingo on this one too. The overthrow of Kronos by Zeus refers to the same events which--through nothing more than a subtle twist of interpretation--were seen as the warrior Mars murdering or displacing the elder form of the universal sovereign Saturn. To this observation I would add a further principle, relating to the archetypal "birth of the hero." (I am speaking here not of the first appearance of the hero with the differentiation of the unified sovereign, but the RE-BIRTH of that figure in the great crisis at the conclusion of Saturn's epoch.) Hesiod's story of the birth of Zeus (Jupiter) within a cave is really the story of the HERO "born" in the cave. It was not Jupiter that was carried off by the goddess. It was the unborn hero, as in the universal legend. It is the story of what happens to the masculine, innermost heart of the sovereign, as it passes from the FIRST form of the sovereign (elder god Saturn) to the SECOND(younger god Jupiter). At this juncture, neither form of the
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sovereign is necessarily visible, while the externalized Martian "soul," "heart," or "will" of the sovereign-the hero--is very visible and highly active. In these events, the focus is on the activity, the transmigrating "soul," not its more passive owner. Remember that in the discussion of the labyrinth motif, I noted that the entry of the hero into the cavernous labyrinth is the story of the hero's re-birth. Typically, a goddess such as Isis, pregnant with the hero, finds a secret hiding place. These myths, I said, relate directly to the transition between Saturnian and Jovian epochs, the dissolution of a world age followed by renewal. Theseus enters the labyrinth where he slays the hidden or imprisoned Minotaur, transcript of the archetypal Bull of Heaven, the primeval form of Saturn. Though a lot of ground would have to be covered to make the equation clear and convincing, there is no doubt in my mind that the archetypal "birth [i.e., rebirth] of the hero" IS the story of the passage from Saturnian to Jovian sovereignty. Dave Talbott
PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: NASA BUILDS PLASMA LABS

By Amy Acheson Well, they aren't calling it the electrical, but it looks like somebody at NASA has been taking hints from Alfvn and Lerner and Peratt and Juergens and Thornhill. Okay, I'll admit that it's not likely they've been reading old issues of Kronos. It's more reasonable that the electrical nature of the universe is just impossible to overlook. The Electric universe resets their space probes' computers and breaks their satellite's tethers and surprises them with new discoveries even when they want to overlook it. Their terminology still carries the old gravitational overtones, though. They are not studying plasma reactions in a vacuum. They are "bombarding dust particles with radiation." Anyway, here's the story of the latest experiments: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast31jul_2m.htm?list Excerpt from the website: To better understand how dust grains respond to conditions in space, researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have built an apparatus in the Dusty Plasma Laboratory (DPL) that can suspend individual dust grains in a near vacuum. Once a dust grain is captured, scientists can bombard it with forms of radiation found in space and see what happens. 'What we're doing here is taking one particle and exposing it to these space-like environments and studying what happens to its (electrical) charge and other properties,' said Catherine Venturini, who worked on the project for more than four years while pursuing her master's degree in physics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. More from Amy: The web site also has the a marvelous quicktime animation of the rotation of the magnetic spokes on Saturn's rings. Don Scott's website article about Wal Thornhill http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm also has a picture of the spokes, with his comment that they almost scream for an electrical explanation. Here's what the NASA website says about them: Saturn's rings are marked by strange dark radial features called spokes. Since they have been observed on both sides of the ring plane, spokes are thought to be microscopic dust grains that have become charged and are levitating away from the ring plane. Another possibility is that a meteoroid punched through Saturn's rings, lifting dust particles away from the plane of the rings. When the Voyager spacecraft first observed these spokes, their movements seemed to defy
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gravity and had the scientists very perplexed. Since the spokes rotate at the same rate as Saturn's magnetic field, it is likely that electromagnetic forces are at work. This is still an unsolved puzzle. Amy again: It really seems to me that mainstream science is uncovering hundreds of tiny pieces of evidence for an electrical universe. The only thing they are missing is the most important part -- the big picture. And that big picture is the understanding that the whole universe (or as much as we know of it today) is electrically driven. It's interacting electrically, its connected and organized by plasma reactions. Gravitational forces, squeezing stars into H-bombs and galactic cores into collimated jets do not drive the universe. These concepts are the result of stretching the theoretical domain of gravitational math beyond its breaking point. Even gravity itself is electrically driven. Amy Acheson
FAILED STAR OR FAILED SCIENCE?

by Wal Thornhill
A Brown Dwarf Solar Flare

From NASA Science News for July 12, 2000 Astronomers were surprised when NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected an x-ray outburst from a failed star only 60 times more massive than Jupiter. NASA's latest observatory, designed to see the most violent and stunning cosmic phenomena, captured something unexpected. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, orbiting in space about onethird of the way to the moon, saw the first-ever flare from what's known as a brown dwarf, or failed star. "We were shocked," said Dr. Robert Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA, the lead author on the discovery paper to appear in the July 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We didn't expect to see flaring from such a lightweight object. This is really the mouse that roared." Wal Thornhill Comments: On 15 December 1999 I wrote: All of these puzzles are simply explained by an electric star. There is no lower limit to the size of a body that can accept electric power from the galaxy so the temperatures of small dwarfs will range down to levels conducive to life. The light of a red star is due to the distended anode glow of an electrically low stressed star. There are no "failed" stars in an Electric Universe. Since the power source for stars is external rather than internal, brown dwarfs can be expected to show most of the same kinds of variability as brighter stars. That includes sudden discharges (flares). The study of the bright X-ray flare will increase understanding of the explosive activity and origin of magnetic fields of extremely low-mass stars. Chandra detected no X-rays at all from the object called LP 944-20 for the first nine hours of a twelve-hour observation, and then the source flared dramatically before it faded away over the next two hours.
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The energy emitted in the brown dwarf flare was comparable to a small solar flare, and was a billion times greater than observed X-ray flares from Jupiter. The flaring energy is believed to come from a twisted magnetic field. "This is the strongest evidence yet that brown dwarfs and possibly young giant planets have magnetic fields, and that a large amount of energy can be released in a flare," said Dr. Eduardo Martin, also of Caltech and a member of the team. For the first 9-hr 36-min of Chandra's observation, no X-rays were detected from the brown dwarf (left panel). Then the brown dwarf turned on with a bright X-ray flare (right panel) that gradually diminished over the last few hours of the observation. The grainy appearance of the image on the right is due to a shorter exposure time. The bright dots in the background are other X-ray sources, 7 of which have been identified as stars. Professor Gibor Basri of the University of California, Berkeley, the principal investigator for this observation, speculated that the flare "could have its origin in the turbulent, magnetized hot material beneath the surface of the brown dwarf. A sub-surface flare could heat the atmosphere, allowing currents to flow and give rise to the X-ray flare -- like a stroke of lightning." LP 944-20 is about 500 million years old and has a mass about 60 times that of Jupiter, or 6 percent of that of the Sun. Its diameter is about one-tenth that of the Sun and it has a rotation period of less than five hours. Located in the constellation Fornax in the southern skies, LP 94420 is one of the best-studied brown dwarfs because it is only 16 light years from Earth. The absence of X-rays from LP 944-20 during the non-flaring period is in itself a significant result. It sets the lowest limit on steady X-ray power produced by a brown dwarf, and shows that the million-degree Celsius upper atmospheres, or coronas, cease to exist as the surface temperature of a brown dwarf cools below about 2500 degrees Celsius. "This is an important confirmation of the trend that hot gas in the atmospheres of lower-mass stars is produced only in flares," said Professor Lars Bildsten of the University of California, Santa Barbara, also a member of the team. Brown dwarfs have too little mass to sustain significant nuclear reactions in their cores. Their primary source of energy is the release of gravitational energy as they slowly contract. They are very dim -- less than a tenth of a percent as luminous as the Sun -- and of great interest to astronomers because they are poorly understood and probably a very common class of objects intermediate between normal stars and giant planets. Comment: On October 11 1999 I wrote: ... images from Chandra will be important evidence for the Electric Universe because x-rays are only emitted where electrical activity is strongest. Astrophysicists are unable to interpret the information from Chandra sensibly because their training does not include plasma electrical discharge phenomena. The unfortunate result is "pathological science" that employs magnetic fields that are generated by poorly understood and unseen theoretical "dynamos" inside cosmic bodies. The resulting hypothetical magnetic fields are then trapped in plasma despite the fact that plasma is not superconducting. Then magical "reconnection" of magnetic field lines is invoked to explain sudden energetic outbursts classified as being "like lightning". If we don't use magnetic reconnection in storm clouds to explain lightning, why use it in deep space to explain a similar phenomenon? As further evidence that magnetic models are inadequate, on July 12 the following image was posted on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.
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A Giant Starspot on HD 12545

Credit & Copyright: K. Strassmeier (U. Wien), Coude Feed Telescope, AURA, NOAO, NSF Explanation: What could cause a star to have such a large spot? Our Sun itself frequently has sunspots, relatively cool dark magnetic depressions that move across its surface. HD 12545, however, exhibits the largest starspots yet observed. Doppler imaging - the use of slight changes in color caused by the rotation of the star - was used to create this false-color image. The vertical bar on the right gives a temperature scale in kelvins. This giant, binary, RS CVn star, also known as XX Trianguli, is visible with binoculars in the constellation of Triangulum. The starspot is thought to be caused by large magnetic fields that inhibit hot matter from flowing to the surface. Comment: The explanation of sunspots has been contrived to fit the idea of an internally powered star. Common sense suggests that any break in the photosphere should allow the hotter and brighter material beneath to show through. Sunspots should be brilliant blue-white rather than cooler and darker. Once again astrophysicists have invoked magical magnetic fields to "solve" the problem. However, HD 12545 strains the magnetic theory of starspots past breaking point. Where does all of the throttled heat flow go? If it is diverted around this colossal starspot, the edges should be much brighter than the rest of the star. The electric star model expects this kind of transition between a star like our Sun and a red giant like HD 12545. Bright anode tufting is a feature of mercury arc rectifiers when the current load is high. Anode tufts tend to clump together while retaining their identity. Our Sun is a relatively small stellar anode so the photosphere is densely packed with bright granulations or anode "tufts". A red giant is a large anode so that "tufting" is not required to carry the current load. As a result, the red anode (chromospheric) glow predominates. A red star with a binary partner may also have an asymmetric anode glow due to a distortion in the current supply created by the partner. Starspots will be cooler because the power that drives the stellar electric discharge is being diverted. Starspots can be any size on an electric star. The 12-hour observation of LP 944-20 was made on December 15, 1999, using the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The ACIS instrument was built for NASA by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Pennsylvania State University, University Park. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, manages the Chandra program. TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, CA, is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, MA. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 13 (August 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: HOW YOU KNOW A UNIFIED THEORY CARNIVAL A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott A Kroniatalk Discussion by Wal Thornhill
HOW YOU KNOW

By Mel Acheson Probable, Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she's unable to postulate how. \ ~Frederick Winsor, The Space Child's Mother Goose People don't pay much attention to "how" they know; they just start arguing about "what" they know. From that beginning, grades and egos and jobs are on the line. If you know the answer, you get a better grade, you feel superior, you're promoted. There's security in thinking you're building your life on a solid foundation of knowledge. The idea of "how" is disconcerting. Thinking about thinking undermines what you think. If you were looking for a cognitive rock to stand on, "how" leaves you floating. Fortunately, knowledge is buoyant. The cognitive boat can take you to new and exciting places. With a few ideas and a handful of equations, it can fill the universe with meaning. Unfortunately, the boat doesn't come with a warranty. The history of ideas is a record of sinkings. You can be sure (almost) of one thing: What you believe today to be certain will someday go down. For practical purposes (for building a life or a career), the "how" doesn't matter. The carpenter doesn't have to know how hammers are made in order to drive nails. Nor do scientists need to know how knowledge is made in order to build theories. But then carpenters don't claim to be building Ultimate Truth. The "how" has two parts, roughly corresponding to "production" and "marketing". Individuals are constantly thinking up new ideas, exploring new things and looking at old things in new ways, testing the ideas and the observations against each other, judging how much sense it all makes. Then populations of individuals "buy" some of these ideas and pass up others. The ideas that most individuals "buy" become "accepted theories" and constitute knowledge.
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Hence, scientific knowledge is not an ever-closer approximation of some unknown Truth. Rather, theories are selected (in the sense used in theories of biological evolution) by the environment in which they're proposed: by the level of awareness and understanding of the people using them, by the characteristics of that part of reality people currently live in, by the dynamics of social and cultural power. Instead of being built on a foundation, knowledge is composed of relationships. The metaphor of construction is misleading. There is no "foundation" which justifies all subsequent knowledge built on it. Modern physics, for example, is anchored to a philosophy that sank over a century ago, as Karl Popper (among others) has pointed out. The rocks that sank it were the discoveries in the late 1800s about how the brain works. Neurons firing in your brain are distinguished only by their relationship with other neurons. Information about the world is not transmitted by nerves but is created metaphorically in the classification of impulses. Facts are not given. Evidence is not evident. And the entire apparatus (your brain) comes preassembled and running. The construction metaphor can only go this far: The progress of knowledge is a remodeling of existing neural structures. Sequences of neural firings can be rearranged, new sequences can be added or removed. But any sequence you might think is fundamental turns out to be just another association of associations of associations. This has a couple of interesting consequences: The hegemony of physics over the other sciences is attributed to its being more "fundamental". Presumably, the other sciences ultimately can be "reduced" to the collisions of "elementary particles" with which physics deals. Any theory in any other science, no matter how reasonable it may be in light of its own domain of evidence, must receive the imprimatur of physics to be taken seriously. The idea that psychology, say, could provide a critique of physical theories is considered absurd. But this is what the nature of the human cognitive apparatus allows. Its mechanism of classifying neural impulses treats the evidence and theories of physics exactly the same as it does those of every other science. "Gestalts" can be the "fundamental" objects of perception as readily as can the parts that compose them. If there is a foundation to science, it's this business of reclassification of neural relationships, not the content of any particular discipline. Disciplines can relate to each other, but one can't dictate to another. "Reasonableness" is the relationship of a theory to the evidence it seeks to explain, not its subservience to physics. Thus the idea that the conclusions of comparative mythology aren't to be taken seriously until they conform to the currently accepted theory of celestial mechanics is without foundation. The second interesting consequence concerns the many efforts to justify knowledge by starting with some simple element and building up all the rest. The brain works in just the opposite way: It starts with everything and narrows its focus to some simple thing. This has its usefulness, but along the way a lot gets discarded. When the process is reversed, what was discarded is likely to be ignored. The result is a picture of the universe that's simplistic, reductive, incognizant. This is what Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine discovered in his examination of dynamics. It bothered him that the "fundamental" laws of dynamics treated time as reversible when all experience indicated it wasn't. With the advent of the awareness of complex systems, he worked out generalized equations of state for populations of particles. He found that irreversibility of time and multiple solutions based on probability were inherent, essential characteristics of those systems. Reversibility only appeared in isolated systems at equilibrium. It's especially interesting that the complexity of his generalized equations persists down to as few as three particles: Thus the three-body problem in gravitational analysis is already beyond the scope of traditional dynamics. In other words, what has been proclaimed the "fundamentals" of physics upon which more complex systems are built is actually a degenerate case derived from those more general complex systems. In working up from the degenerate case to the complex, the multiple solutions are missed. To get the larger picture, you have to start with complexity and work down.
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The craving to justify the content of scientific knowledge, to establish it on some absolute truth, can never be satisfied. The mechanism of knowledge doesn't work that way. This doesn't mean our knowledge is "not true". But its truth is a truth within limits. It's a truth of special cases. It's a truth of human scale. The "how" of knowing may leave us floating, but we can learn to swim. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
A UNIFIED THEORY
By Dave Talbott Perhaps few claims I've made for the Saturn model will seem more outrageous than the assertion of a unified theory. But all I am really saying is that there was a mythmaking epoch of human history. It had a beginning and an end. Its focus was an unstable congregation of planets close to the earth, moving through phases of beauty, awe, and terror. The "myth-making" epoch was unlike anything which followed. With the drifting away of the planetary gods, attention shifted radically to the tools for remembering. Through mythical representations and reenactments, our ancestors sought to keep alive and to give meaning to experiences more intense than anything experienced in later times. Myth requires an active imagination, but something more as well. Always the myths point to EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS redefining the course of human history. A study of the archetypes--the first forms and enduring themes of myth--will show that they are already present with the flowering of civilization. AND NONE ARE ADDED OVER THE SUBSEQUENT MILLENNIA. Though quite remarkable from the usual vantage point (which assumes an expanding corpus of myth through history), the fact is expected under the Saturn model. I've stated often that there are hundreds of archetypal themes of myth. But there is, at root, a unifying thread, which I called the "One Story Told Around the World." The statement is indeed preposterous, but of this truth I no longer have any doubt. All of humanity experienced the same events. I believe that a series of snapshots of the polar configuration, together with animations illustrating the seamless connections between the different phases, will do the most to make the outrageous claims believable. It will also lend enough clarity and specificity for readers to see how easily the model will be disproved if our claims are fundamentally false. For a few weeks now I've been musing over the ways to establish the core principles and work outward from there, so that something more than random details will be evident. Though entirely understandable, the popular sense of randomness is the most pervasive misperception of myth. There is no such thing as a random original theme of myth. Randomness enters the picture only as the archetypes are subjected to localization, a process which can only introduce contradictions. As a testament to the unity of world mythology, I list below the archetypal personalities of myth. It's a small list. There are no others.
UNIVERSAL MONARCH
Though multiple bodies are involved in the planetary configuration, one planet in particular came to be identified as unified power, presiding over cosmic beginnings. That planet was Saturn. In this sense it is not inappropriate to call the archaic god, the subject of the One Story, the god Saturn, so long as it is clearly understood that other planetary powers in the configuration provided distinctive aspects of that god.
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Our first "snapshot" depicts the universal sovereign just prior to the visual displacement of the planetary bodies in conjunction. It is with their visual displacement that aspects of the unified god begin to emerge as separate powers, becoming the active forces in the "creation" and setting in motion a series of more complex events. With the emergence of distinct and independent forms, arising from aspects of a primeval Unity, other archetypal personalities take the stage, all standing in a fundamental relationship to the sovereign god we have called the Universal Monarch, and all playing distinctive roles in the One Story
QUEEN OF HEAVEN
Wherever you find the Universal Monarch you will find close at hand the ancient mother goddess--the feminine power whom the Sumerians called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians called Ishtar. For the Egyptians the prominent goddess figures include Isis, Hathor, and Sekhmet, each with numerous counterparts in their own and in other lands. Familiar names of the great goddess would include the Greek Aphrodite, Athena, and Artemis, or the Latin Venus, Minerva, and Diana, but many hundreds of counterparts could be named, all expressing a similar complex of ideas. While the goddess will at times appear as the mother of the universal sovereign, the more common role is as the god's daughter or spouse. When the goddess idea is traced to its earliest roots, one notes two crucial themes reflected in the symbolism: 1) The goddess is the central, animating source of the sovereign god's power. She is his "radiance," his "glory," even his "life,"--a role she fills concretely in her capacity as the god's central, luminous eye, heart, or soul. All of the leading Egyptian and Mesopotamian goddesses, for example, reveal this underlying character. 2) The departure of the goddess begins a series of events leading to a descent into chaos, the onset of world-destroying catastrophe and the perceived "death" of the sovereign himself, whose flaming "soul" rages in the sky in the form of the angry, lamenting, or warring goddess. The most common form of the raging goddess is the female serpent or dragon attacking the world. It will be our contention that the full complex of goddess images answers to the role of Venus in the planetary configuration. With a visual model as a reference we will see that the original "beauty" or "radiance" of the great goddess, her "life-giving" attributes; her role as "star" par excellence; her centrality in relation to the universal sovereign; her birth as an independent power; and her terrible aspect, are all rooted in the highly concrete visual appearances of Venus through two prominent phases, one quasistable, the other highly unstable, unpredictable, and violent. But a third, most fundamental attribute of the goddess must be mentioned as well: that is her role as the mother of another archetypal figure.
WARRIOR-HERO
This is the great national hero, originally the Demiurge, the servant of the Universal Monarch, but passing into later myth as the laboring warrior, messenger or servant of a great chief or renowned ruler. He is the Hercules archetype, a figure combining knowledge and brutish strength, quick wit, and episodic foolishness. He defeats the chaos monsters in primordial times, and he reconfigures the world. This is the most active personality in world mythology, clearly dominating the more developed chronicles and epic literature, while the more passive Universal Monarch fades into the background. The warrior-hero is the prototype of the famous tricksters and buffoons of later myth and folklore, flowering into innumerable tribal variations. Noteworthy instances of this warrior archetype would include the Egyptian Shu, Horus and Sept, Sumerian Enki, Damuzi and Ningirsu, Akkadian Ea, Ninurta and Nergal, Hindu Indra, Norse Thor, Greek
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Ares and Hercules, Latin Mars, Aztec Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, North American Coyote and Raven, to name the barest few among thousands. The comparative approach will identify this warrior figure as the planet Mars. In the Saturn model, that means the innermost circle or sphere in the pictographic representations under discussion. In the myths, Mars' displacement from that visual position is most commonly recorded as the "birth of the hero" and the "descent of the hero," two themes of immense impact on the ancient world. But numerous other themes must be confronted as well. Reducing this complexity to its most crucial details, four principles must be noted here. 1) In the earliest versions of the story, the warrior-hero is born from the womb of the mother goddess, who is Venus. The "birth of the hero" means the displacement of Mars from the position depicted in our initial snapshot of the planetary configuration. 2) Periodic movement of the warrior-hero along the world axis occurs, a motion associated with the visual descent and ascent of the god. This movement along the axis also bears a distinctive relationship to episodes of catastrophe. 3) The reunion, or consorting, of the warrior-hero with the mother goddess was celebrated by every ancient cultures. This pervasive story was rooted in the visual conjunction of Mars and Venus as they drew nearer to each other in the configuration. From this conjunction arose the repeated myth of the hero's liaison with the daughter or spouse of a renowned "king," or the hero consorting with his own mother. 4) In connection with the descent of the god, a cosmic column appeared, a luminous stream stretching along the world axis. This cosmic column will be the world mountain, or the mountain upon which the hero was "exposed" at birth, or the mythic river into which the hero was cast at birth. By this association the hero himself was inseparably linked to the world pillar. Originally, it was his essence as the Atlas figure, supporting the turning sphere of "heaven" (Saturn) upon his shoulders.
PRIMEVAL SEVEN
These satellite figures are presented in a variety of contexts, as seers or wise men, archangels, patriarchs, children, dwarves, stones, eyes, stars, orbs, heads of the chaos monster. They are the first (but not the only) reason for the sanctity of the number seven in ancient symbolism. We meet these gods as seven stones of fate, or seven demons in Sumerian and Akkadian symbolism; seven eyes of God in the book of Zechariah; seven Watchers of Enoch; seven stars and seven spirits of God in the book of Revelation; Seven Sages of Arabian epic literature, Seven Immortal Fates of the Persians; seven Rishi of the Hindu Vedas. Seven daughters of Aphrodite, or Seven Sisters in Greek myth. Seven heads of the primeval serpent or dragon in Egyptian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, and Mesoamerican traditions. In more than one land, constellational astrology eventually localized the Primeval Seven as stars of Ursa Major or the Pleiades. In the Saturn model these will be the seven moons or "satellites" originally seen in the presence of Saturn. (This point cannot really be clarified until we take up the polar enclosure, the visual dwelling of the primeval seven.)
CHAOS MONSTER
Here we meet the darker, more menacing powers, possessing an often-veiled link to aspects of the mother goddess or warrior- hero. Of these darker creatures none is more prominent than the cosmic serpent or dragon, a monster whose attack upon the world is synchronous with the twilight of the gods, and whose ultimate defeat signals the birth of a new age or, symbolically, a new year. Babylonian Tiamat. Egyptian dragon of Apep. Greek Typhon. But within every culture, endless variations will be found:
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hundreds of monsters held responsible for the primeval catastrophe, each providing a different nuance, a different accent, a different way of remembering the cosmic agent of Doomsday. Though we must oversimplify things in stating the planetary identifications, the general rule is that the female chaos monster is the terrible aspect of the mother goddess, who is Venus, while the male chaos monster is the terrible aspect of the warrior-hero Mars. Both planets participate directly in the unstable and catastrophic phases, yet paradoxically both are linked to the vanquishing of chaos and renewal of the world. Moreover, the close conjunction or interaction of the two bodies does not allow for an unequivocal distinction between the two, as I will seek to make clear.
CHAOS HORDES
These are the companions of the monster figures. They are the swarming powers of disorder and calamity, the fiends of darkness-- flaming, devouring demons which so many magical rites were contrived to ward off. From the Norse Valkyries to the Greek Erinyes, from the Babylonian Pazuzu-demons to the Egyptian "Fiends of Set," every culture remembered the onslaught of these chaos demons, moving across the heavens as a sky-darkening cloud and ushering in the cosmic night. In their earliest expressions, they do not just announce the primeval catastrophe, they ARE the catastrophe. The chaos hordes signify the cometary debris fields and gas or dust clouds particularly prominent in the unstable phases of the configuration. Mythically, they are to retinues of the goddess and hero in their terrible aspects, while also giving shape to the bodies of these monsters. And yet, in the phases of stability, they become the raw material of creation itself, giving form to a luminous habitation in the heavens. Both the polar column and the polar enclosure are constituted from this raw material, which the Egyptians called the "primeval matter," the alchemists' prima materia.
REJUVENATED SOVEREIGN
Lastly, there is the compelling personality of the dying and resurrected or transformed god-king, whose return to life is reflected in the dramas of the ancient New Year. As a global symbol, the "New Year" recalls the passing from one age to another, a remembrance often celebrated annually but on many other schedules as well. Though his identity is inseparably tied to the Universal Monarch, the resurrected god nevertheless emerges in distinction from that god as his son. He is simultaneously a younger version, and the rejuvenated form of his father, and his appearance or "reappearance" is synonymous with the renewal of a world which had fallen into darkness and discord. Such appears to be the underlying character of the Egyptian Osiris, Akkadian Marduk; Persian Ahura Mazda; Norse Balder; Hebrew Yahweh; Phoenician Bel, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter. This archetypal. renewed god will frequently appear as a more passive figure in contrast to the mother goddess and warrior-hero personalities, both of whom are highly active in the break between world ages and are typically involved directly in the episodes leading to the sovereign god's transfiguration or renewal. It is common in our time to represent the coming of the New Year as the departure of the elder "Father Time"--along with the emergence of the ever-young or new-born babe or "child" of the New Year. We are simply extending an ancient tradition whose meaning we have forgotten. The rejuvenated sovereign is the planet Jupiter, not visible in the illustrated phase (our first snapshot) because it was hidden behind Saturn, but becoming visible with the disruption of the collinear system, and emerging as the apparent re-birth of the original sovereign. Indeed, the identities of Jupiter and Saturn are so intertwined that we are really dealing with two aspects of the same mythical figure--the godking's original form as Saturn, and his renewed and transformed state as Jupiter. Mythically, the younger Saturn is Jupiter, and the elder Jupiter is Saturn.
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Additional Notes
In the above listing, while we have not separated the chaos monster into its male and female aspects, we do separate the Universal Monarch into his elder and younger versions. So while there are different ways one might distinguish or count the archetypal personalities, we arrive at an acid test. Do the listed categories actually encompass the vast layers of world mythology? While I have no intent to minimize the presence of ambiguous or unexplained details, the significance of the structure should not be minimized either, for the implications are quite astounding. Patterns do not exist without a cause. And that means that an explanation of the patterns must be possible. The implications become all the more astounding as one begins to see that each of the personalities has a defined role in the One Story. As will become clear, each archetypal figure achieves a turn of the prism, putting the focus on a particular aspect of the One Story and providing more colorful action and detail. But throughout these dramas, the core personalities of myth all know each other and interact in highly meaningful ways. The question, therefore, must be asked: what events could have unleashed human imagination in this way, inspiring a story so powerful as to have retained its underlying structure for thousands of years? Structure implies coherence, an integrity between the parts. Clearly, human imagination must have gone wild to have produced the incredible vistas, the complex personalities, and the magical events of world mythology. But structure is there too, and structure means that human imagination was not operating in a vacuum. It is the structure that directs our attention to common experiences and to the external references, without which a unified substratum would be impossible. Dave Talbott
CARNIVAL
A Kroniatalk Discussion Ted Bond queries: Someone very recently said that Carnival was a New Year's celebration. Carnival of course is in the Spring and is a Spring equinox festival. If it is a New Year's festival it dates from the time when the year began with March (as reflected in the names of the last four months of our year). The Jewish New Year was also originally a Spring festival, according to Genesis. However the Winter solstice festival, which is our Christmas, certainly was dropped on to the pagan Saturnalia (Yule), and this is very close to our New Year. Was there an ancient New Year's festival following closely on the Saturnalia celebrating the arrival of Jupiter (the reborn Saturn) as the Universal Monarch? Can anyone sort this out? Michel Tavir responds: Carnival, which emerged from the Saturnalia, symbolized the death of the old year, and took place in the late winter. Practically it was time to pig out on the remains of the last harvest, while they were still edible. Then came the New Year, which until the late middle-ages coincided with the Spring equinox. Some (I think I remember some pope conniving with a French king, maybe Franois the 1st) found it more politically expedient to move it to shortly after Christmas. There is still a trace of the "original" New Year in the April's Fool day. Dave Talbott adds: Ted, you might find of interest Theodore Gaster's little volume, The New Year. Gaster was one of the true experts on comparative myth and ritual.
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Our calendar is filled with New Year's celebrations. Even Halloween has to be included. (It traces to the Celtic New Year.) Either a solstice or an equinox timing of "New Year's" celebrations was most logical, though of course the archetypal event being recalled each year had nothing to do with either a solstice or an equinox. This is the way localization of myth works. First there was extraordinary and devastating event, remembered as the End of the World To commemorate the event, together with the subsequent renewal of the world, ancient symbolists re-enacted the fall into chaos, the displacement of the elder Father Time, and the regeneration of the world (Father time reappearing as a newborn babe). In this sense the New Year's festival must be set alongside others celebrations which were not annual but set on longer timetables. The Aztec 52 year cycle is a good example--symbolic destruction of the world followed by a new lease on life for another cycle. The Egyptian Sed Festival is a "New Year's" festival every thirty years, which happens (?) to accord pretty well with a Saturn cycle. Of the New Year's concept, Gaster writes: ...No other festival has been celebrated on so many different dates or in so many seemingly different ways... The more one examines them, however, the clearer does it become that these observances which seem at first sight so different and diverse are really no more than variations upon the same theme and that though the accompanying emotions may have changed and though he may be completely unconscious of this fact, the behavior of the modern sophisticate on New year's Eve or New year's morn stems ultimately from the same roots as does that of his more primitive brethren. The ancient celebrations were characterized by mock battles in the streets, great commotion, lamentations, joviality, celebrants in disguised, monstrous forms amid the chaotic throngs--and of course (in more than one land), the fall of a flaming wheel down a hill, or the running amok of a "chariot" through the streets (Phaeton revisited). What is most interesting is that, as you follow the celebrations backwards, you see an increasing scale of drama and literalism, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Attempts to account for a global archetype of this sort through feeble references to the annual course of the Sun only put an exclamation point to the failure of modern scholarship. The experts cannot see beyond the symbol to the thing symbolized. Dave Talbott
A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE

By Wal Thornhill 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. 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. For 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
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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. 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 aweinspiring 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
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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 Alfvn, 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. Alfvn & G, Arrhenius, p. 257. 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. Wal Thornhill 2000
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 14 (September 30, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: A RHINOCEROS SHAPED HOLE SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO NON-VELOCITY REDSHIFTS ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS
by Amy Acheson by Dave Talbott by Dave Talbott by Anthony Peratt by Wal Thornhill
A RHINOCEROS SHAPED HOLE

By Amy Acheson Typically, the greatest difficulties in communication will occur when one is questioning something already 'known' to be true. ~Wal Thornhill Fenton and Fenton's The Fossil Book describes an unusual fossil found in a Late Oligocene or Early Miocene Columbia River Basalt in Washington State, USA. Several rhinoceros bones were found preserved in a cavity in the basalt. Much later, someone stood back far enough to realize that the cavity itself was shaped like a bloated rhinoceros. It was, in fact, a cast made when the rhinoceros was engulfed in the lava flow. This an interesting phenomenon in itself, but it also serves as an analogy for the theory-making process. Every new discovery, every new theory, every new paradigm, spreads a fresh layer of conceptual basalt across the plains of old knowledge. Ideally, everything we know should be re-examined in the light of new data, but practically, the conceptual basalt engulfs old knowledge and buries it, leaving a rhinoceros sized holes in new ideas. Take, for instance, Ted Holden's impossible dinosaurs. Ted's delightful "world-class weight-lifter" approach may be new, but the problem is as old as the discovery of dinosaurs. Early paleontologists knew that dinosaurs were too big to survive on land. They solved the problem by assuming that the biggest dinosaurs spent most of their lives foraging in the shallow seas, where the buoyancy of water would compensate for their tremendous weight. Then more evidence was found, proof that they walked on land and were ill-adapted for aquatic existence. So they became the grazing herds that we see today on TV documentaries, and somehow it's been ignored that this, too, is impossible. There's a dinosaur sized hole in this theory. Halton Arp's discovery, that high-redshift quasars are associated with low-redshift galaxies is the kind of conceptual basalt that overruns entire herds of theoretical rhinoceroses. So much of modern cosmology is governed by the faulty relationship between redshift, velocity and distance that almost everything needs to be re-examined.
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A recent example: In the October issue of Astrophysics Journal, University of Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh announced that his predictions concerning the cosmic microwave background radiation were confirmed by findings of the Boomerang project (information gathered on the background radiation by an extended hot-air balloon mission over Antarctica). His predictions were based on a modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), which he had borrowed from another astronomer, Moti Milgrom, to explain the awkward data of a project involving the rotational curves of low surface brightness galaxies. MOND, McCaugh assures us, disproves the currently accepted theory of cold dark matter. Now the problem, in McGaugh's own words, is this: MOND introduces a new fundamental constant in a way that seems ad hoc, and which is aesthetically displeasing to most cosmologists. On the other hand, cold dark matter postulates new and so far unobserved particles... Arp's theory neatly removes both horns of this dilemma. When Arp strips galaxies of the distortion caused by "redshift distance" and relocates them adjacent to their galactic parents and offspring, neither their rotational curves and their surface brightness needs an ad hoc explanation. Cold dark matter is revealed for what it is: a sorry crutch invented to prop up the fantasy of an expanding universe. Both concepts -MOND and dark matter -- are not only unnecessary, but, if accepted, would be confusing and irrelevant in terms of Arp's theory. They fill the theory with rhinoceros sized holes. Arp's discoveries have spread a layer of conceptual basalt across the entire universe as we know it (or perhaps as we don't know it yet.) Talbott (et al)'s comparative mythology and Thornhill's electric universe, rooted in Velikovsky's reconstruction, go even farther. If plasma constitutes 90 percent of everything; if Heraclitus was right when he said that the thunderbolt steers the universe; if Peratt's Instabilities are recorded in petroglyphs all over the world; then every discipline must change at a fundamental level. If any "old" theory is retained or salvaged, sooner or later the new theory will spread out to it, engulf it. Then, like the rhino engulfed in lava, the old theory will leave holes in the new. This isn't a plea for a puritanistic approach. I'm not advocating the wholesale dumping of old theories whenever a new concept appears. Sometimes the cavities can be filled. What I am advocating is a careful re-examination of all old data in the light of new ideas -- taking care to "unlearn" old truths. It's as simple (and impossible) as that. Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT

by Dave Talbott [ed. note: this is an experiment, hoping to find a way to add illustrations to THOTH. The attached photo belongs with this article. Please let me know if you are able to receive it.] The attached illustration depicts four distinctive phases in the daily cycle of the polar configuration: UPPER LEFT. Here the Sun has set and the crescent is descending to the left. The sky is darkening and the configuration is growing bright. This is the beginning of the archaic "day," which continued to be celebrated at sunset for many centuries after the disappearance of the planetary configuration. Of course echoes of the original timekeeping language occur even into modern times. Archaic words for the brightening of Saturn will usually be translated as the "rising" of the sun, though the literal meanings will be "to grow bright," to "come to life," "to grow strong," etc.
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UPPER RIGHT. Now the crescent is directly below, in its midnight position. In the archaic language of the daily cycle, this is the supreme moment of the "day," the moment of greatest brilliance. LOWER LEFT. The crescent rises to the right as the sky lightens and the splendor of the configuration begins to diminish. Archaic words for this phase in the daily cycle will usually be translated as "evening," which can only foster more confusion. LOWER RIGHT. At noon, the crescent is directly above, in its weakest phase. Archaic words which are typically translated as "night" refer to this phase in the daily cycle, representing the waning of the sun god's "life," "strength," or "brightness." To make sense of the comments I intend to submit over the next several days, it will be imperative that readers understand this aspect of the model. If Saturn was at the pole, as required by the global traditions, and the Sun cast a bright crescent on Saturn, no other motion of the crescent is possible. Therefore, the tests of the model can only emphasize the profound contrast between the predictions of the model and the language of the daily cycle expected under the common solar interpretations. Michel Tavir wants to know: Excuse if I ask, ... how can the Sun cast a light on Saturn and still be invisible for Earthlings? And: can this be made to match Wal's idea of the whole series of planet being inside the Sun star's sheath? Dave responds: The brief answer: The arrival of the crescent on Saturn is a distinct mythical event. It is the beginning of a well-defined daily cycle, following the earlier, "timeless" epoch. That requires half of a rotating Earth to be illuminated by light of the Sun. I always assumed, though tentatively, that this event related to a diffuse gas-cloud of some sort, from which the planets gradually emerged. Even after the appearance of the crescent and a more sharply defined daily cycle, my general sense is that the Sun was not seen as a distinct form in the sky. There was a direction from which illumination arrived at the Earth, but not a clearly visible source. Wal's concept of a Saturnian glow-discharge "womb" came as an interesting variant, and quite promising, I believe. But, no matter how one chooses to explain what was going on physically, the Sun is not a named player in the original myths, though its effects are definite with the arrival of the crescent. This event finds its way into the myths as "the separation of heaven and earth," though that translation of the ancient words can only mislead. Walter Radtke reported: In Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) in Syria, an ancient tablet was discovered in the 1950s dating back to 1400 BC. The oldest known musical score, it takes the form of interval names and number signs, and even has lyrics. The text is identified as a hymn to the moon goddess Nikkal. Walter asked Dave: I was wondering what your take on Nikkal was. I don't recall mention of this deity in your work. Is this another case of erroneous reference to the crescent as being lunar? Dave replied: Walter, Nikkal is the Ugaritic form of the Sumerian goddess Ningal, clearly a Venus figure. Ningal in the WIFE of Nanna, the so-called Sumerian moon god (Saturn in his crescent-form). Similarly, the Ugaritic Nikkal is married to the "moon" god Yarih. Therefore, the idea that either the Ugaritic or the earlier Sumerian goddess is herself the moon will not stand up. In both she is the SPOUSE of the "moon." Of course people will not accept that the so-called "moon" god is Saturn without a lot of evidence. But in fact, more than one scholar has already noticed that, in the Babylonian astronomical traditions, the crescent god Sin (Sumerian Nanna) WAS identified with the planet Saturn. One of the great pioneers in the study of Babylonian astronomy, Alfred Jeremias, stated the equation of Sin and Saturn unequivocally.
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Earlier, Rawlinson had already observed that the crescent of Sin was an aspect of Saturn. Peter Jensen similarly confirmed the identity of Sin and Anu, which leads to the same conclusion. The spouse of the crescent god is the far- famed queen of heaven, the planet Venus, depicted both as a radiant star in the center of Saturn and as a radiant star inside the horns of a crescent. Since the crescent was on Saturn, these two most common representations stand in perfect accord with each other. Most popular treatments of the crescent-gods in Mesopotamia show no awareness of this enigmatic relationship to Saturn. Nowhere in the world is the crescent more prominent pictographically than ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of astronomy. Moreover, the two most frequent contexts of the crescent defy any identification with the moon in our sky. The crescent is most commonly wrapped around the wheel of the "sun" god Shamash, whom the texts identify as Saturn. We thus recall Rawlinson's original observation that the crescent was an aspect of Saturn. The same crescent, enigmatically, appears atop a cosmic pillar ... (T)hese two attributes are core principles of the Saturn model and lead to some of the most persuasive tests of our reconstruction. Dave Talbott
LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO

by Dave Talbott By way of background, the following are notes on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth. They are based on a section of my article, Mother Goddess and Warrior Hero, in AEON I:5. ~Dave In the natural evolution of myth, no tendency was more common than that by which originally cosmic figures were brought down to earth and their attributes, habitations, and life events affixed to a local landscape. Every temple, sacred city, and kingdom, built as a representation of a cosmic dwelling, soon came to be remembered as the place where creation began. In the same way, every local prominence became a figure of the cosmic mountain, every river, fount or spring a symbol of the ethereal stream. It was through this universal process that the crucial distinction between symbol and thing symbolized eventually broke down. For it was in the nature of ancient representations that the symbol bore the name and shared in the numen of the archetype. The myths take us back to the age of "beginnings," and the symbol eventually becomes a vital part of the collective memory: soon it is as if the localized emblem had itself emerged in the creation. In Egypt, every city preserved a myth identifying itself with the place where the primeval sun stood in the beginning, when the god produced his own "resting place" or luminous habitation in the sky, "giving birth to himself" through the first activity of the goddess and hero. By the progressive merging of emblem and archetype, the god's worshippers, in effect, altered the location of the primeval events, and once-cosmic powers devolved into the "ancestors" of the local tribe or city. (Clearly, the gods became "ancestors" because, with the blending of archetype and symbol, their home could no longer be distinguished from the terrestrial habitation; once such a process had begun, it was inevitable that the primeval companions or children of the sun would become "ancestors" of the nations telling the stories. Assimilation can only lead to pervasive confusion. While the hand- formed symbol, the city built by men, comes to enjoy an elevated stature and cosmic significance in the eyes of its inhabitants, the gods themselves are profoundly diminished as later chroniclers, seeking to preserve the local traditions, are compelled to adapt them to a familiar landscape. This ambiguity will be found, in varying degrees, in all religious and mythological systems. At one turn the gods rule the heavens, and at the next they live as men, occupying identifiable places and leaving identifiable "monuments" to their lives and activities. And
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the singular principle that can be counted on in all cases is this: the processes of localization and assimilation continue to advance with time so that the confusion grows increasingly severe. Wherever these processes have operated freely, given sufficient time, the warrior hero and mother goddess will have lost their cosmic character altogether. The vast majority of the heroic figures to which the modern researcher has access (such as the Greek Heracles, Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus and Oedipus), though still bigger than life, appear as extraordinary "humans" accomplishing their marvelous feats on earth, usually in identifiable locations, with an abundance of local "testaments" to their activity. The symbols have, in effect, redefined the archetype, creating massive contradictions between the different accounts. What does a Heracles, or a Helen of Troy, have in common with the archetypal male and female powers identified in the Egyptian creation legend? The answer is, in the most radical sense, everything. While local geography, culture and history have profoundly altered the portrait, there would simply be no subject without the prototype. The best efforts of modern scholars have failed to explain such figures because these miracle-working "humans" are the folk-tale and literary echoes of a wholly alien celestial order. Taking the most obvious distinction between earlier and later versions, there is the matter of scale. While the archetypal warrior-hero bears aloft the central sun and the all-encompassing land of the gods, it is obviously not possible for such an idea to be retained in the localized traditions, where the central sun has become an ancestral king, and the cosmic dwelling a terrestrial temple, palace or city. Yet the theme is not obliterated in the later chronicles, but re-focused. For the warrior-hero will still be found "supporting" the king, often as a slave, servant or priest (a theme endlessly repeated in the tales of Heracles, for example). What is not generally recognized, however, is the generic link to the older tradition of the heaven-sustaining hero as the servant or priest of the sun god Saturn, the celestial prototype of kings. In the archaic tradition the three meanings-- upholder, servant and priest--are synonymous. Similarly, one notes the repeated associations of the folk-tale warrior-hero with channels or flows of water, either irrigating or flooding an ancestral land or dwelling, or draining off enclosed floodwaters or swamps. In virtually all later instances, the chroniclers will point to a particular place in which the feat of the hero was accomplished. Due to the re-focusing involved in such localization, few modern commentators will recognize that the prototype was the heaven-supporting giant--in Egypt, the god Shu-who personifies the ethereal fount and celestial waterway. Yet the proof of the connection is readily at hand. For in the instance of the Egyptian Shu we possess at once the vivid cosmic portrait set forth in the world's oldest ritual texts, and later localized portraits of Greek, Roman and Christian times. Here we can observe in the clearest of terms the transition from the original cosmic power Shu to the Heracles-like hero of later times. At the Qes sanctuary of the XXth nome of Lower Egypt a black granite shrine from the Ptolemaic period (later transported to Al- 'Arish) recorded the story of "Shu and Geb when they reigned as kings upon earth." In this late tale, it is the god Shu who, in the style of Heracles, "excavated" the lake of the sanctuary and in the time of Ra (often recalled as a terrestrial ruler in later accounts) constructed the king's palace that it might endure "like the Mountain of Fire-Light." It is said that Shu, as a great warrior, rose to the throne of Atum or Ra and (apparently singlehandedly, in Heracles fashion) slaughtered "all the enemies of his father" and destroyed "the sons of rebellion." He then became a builder in the service of his father, for there were "hundreds of thousands of sanctuaries which the Majesty of Ra had called into being in all the names, and which the majesty of Shu had built." Thus, it was Shu who, according to this late chronicle: ...irrigated the towns, and the settlements and the names, and he erected the walls of Egypt and built temples in the Land of the South and the Land of the North. Could anyone familiar with the myth of Heracles deny the similarity? Localization and assimilation have led to rampant duplications of the story of creation, so that a later chronicler, traveling from city to city in Egypt, might indeed have pieced together a story of countless "labors" of Shu, creating a fabulous pastiche of local myth. It is not surprising, therefore, that Greek "histories" declare that Heracles himself
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sojourned in Egypt, serving as "general" under Osiris and achieving feats virtually identical to those of Shu. Though Shu and Heracles are ancient testimony illuminating systematically traced). And of additional ground will have to prehistoric god. in fact the same figure, we have the advantage in Shu's case of very the original cosmic personality (to which the later echoes can be course Shu is not the only instance of the warrior-hero in Egypt, so be covered if we are to establish the clearest possible profile of the
Similarly, the mother goddess must be followed from a set of originally unified concepts to the fragmented expressions of later times, in which the goddess appears alternately as mother, daughter or spouse of a great god or king, an enchanting maiden or fairy goddess, a harlot, hag or witch. In all of this we will find that what have long been viewed as separate and irreconcilable threads of ancient lore acquire entirely new meanings when viewed under the illumination of the polar configuration.
FROM THE FOOTNOTES:

Through assimilation, as noted above, every local symbolic sanctuary shared in the history of the celestial prototype, which was shouted into existence by the sun god and given form by Shu. Of course the connection of Shu and Heracles has already been noted by others. See K. H. Brugsch, Dictionnaire Geographique de l 'ancienne Egypte (Leipzig, 1880), p. 851. Dave Talbott
NON-VELOCITY REDSHIFTS
By Anthony Peratt Mel's question for Anthony Peratt at the September Seminar, "Our Violent Solar System" was the one all of us who want to see plasma physics combined with intrinsic redshift were yearning to ask. "Can you get a redshift from plasma ?" Anthony answered by displaying the following article from his WebPages. ~Amy Look here for the diagram to go with the article: http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/redshifts.html
Redshifts: The Wolf Effect and Gravitational Redshifts

Spectral lines can be redshifted toward longer wavelengths or blueshifted toward shorter ones. The Doppler effect explains how these shifts occur because of relative motions of the source and the observer along the line of sight. Approach causes a blueward shift and recessional a redward one. Scientists have long believed that only the Doppler effect or Gravity as described by Einstein could account for wavelength shifts in the spectrum of light as it travels through space. Where neither factor applies, scientists have always assumed spectral invariance-the spectrum remains the same no matter how far the light travels. This is the case with ordinary sources-called "Lambertian" after Johann Heinrich Lambert-such as the blackbody radiation from stellar surfaces.
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In the past few years, however, experiments have shown that there is a third way to shift spectral lines. This mechanism involves non-Lambertian sources that emit beamed energy, such as lasers and devices producing synchrotron light. The discoverer of this new effect is physicist Emil Wolf, who, along with Max Born, wrote the definitive textbook Principles of Optics. A mechanic analog to Wolf's discovery is a pair of tuning forks with nearly identical resonant frequencies (pitches). If these forks are connected together mechanically by, say, a sounding board, the coupling is strong and the resonant frequencies tend to get "dragged down" to lower ones. In other words, the wavelength is lengthened, or redshifted. This phenomenon has been verified experimentally with light waves and for sound waves from coupled speakers. The actual frequency shift due to the Wolf effect depends on the geometry. As the illustration above shows, whether an observer sees a redshift or a blue shift depends on his or her locations with respect to the source. The mechanism can be extended from the case of two radiating point sources to that of a whole collection of such objects, for example a plasma cloud. Wolf and his colleagues have shown that such a cloud can produce shifts that closely mimic the Doppler effect. The figure shows an example. Thus the assumption that quasars-beamed electromagnetic radiators with large redshifts-are part of the "Hubble flow" of an expanding universe could be wrong. This effect should also apply to normal galaxies, most of whose matter is in the plasma state. Left: Due to the Wolf effect beamed emission from two separate sources can interact and shift the wavelengths of the lines in their spectra. The change can be redward or blueward by different amounts depending on the observer's point of view, but from "head- on" the shift is to the red. This is a distinctly different process than the Doppler effect. Right: Here the two mechanisms are compared for the case of oxygen lines with a redshift of 0.07. However, the light sources involved in the Wolf effect are stationary, not fleeing the observer at 84 kilometers per second. Anthony Peratt
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS

by Wal Thornhill 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, The Call of Cthulhu. 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?
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Given the extreme fragmentation of established science today it's 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.
WHAT BIG BANG?

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.
ELECTRIC GALAXIES
For more than 10 years plasma physicists have had an electrical model of galaxies. It works with realworld 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.
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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. 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.
ELECTRIC STARS
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. Wal Thornhill 2000
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 15 (October 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND ONE STORY TOLD ROUND THE WORLD HUMAN NATURE AND SATURNIAN RITUAL STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS (2)
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Dave Talbott by Don Scott by Wal Thornhill
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

by Mel Acheson During my first close encounter with Wal Thornhill, he electrified me with a picture of Zeus holding a thunderbolt. The bolt was football shaped with stringy things spiraling out of it. Wal explained that it was the shape a plasmoid took in a vacuum. "Gee-golly-cornpone!" I thought. "The ancient Greeks carved statues of something that hasn't been seen until modern man cranked up the current in a high-voltage lab." Now it's happened again. At the recent seminar in Portland, the work of Tony Peratt, author of "The Plasma Universe," (Springer- Verlag, 1992) was called to our attention. His work shows pictures of extremely powerful plasma discharges in his lab. They're called "Peratt instabilities." As the current is pumped up, the stringy things (NASA's technical jargon for Birkeland filaments, which they re-discovered awhile back in the tail of Venus) grow saw-toothed edges and make a tumultuous noise. (That last is the ancient Egyptian scribe Ipuwer's jargon: "Oh that the Earth would cease from noise and tumult be no more.") Then the sawteeth develop into strings of triangles, ladder shapes, and stacks of donuts. Several well-known mythologists in attendance jumped up shouting and pointing: The dragon! The arrows! The ladder of heaven! The backbone of the sky! Ev fired up his laptop and opened his collection of petroglyph files. There, carved into rock walls in unmistakable detail by ancient artists, were Peratt's instabilities. For three or four or ten thousand years, no human eye has seen them. Not until Tony Peratt put cathode to anode, as shown in his publications, has there been a referent in nature for the images borne by the rocks throughout millennia. The ancients saw all the instabilities. They heard them. The discharge lasts a billionth of a second in the lab. Plasma scientists, scaling up the spark to interplanetary dimensions, estimate it lasting for 8 to 16 years. Imagine attending a decade-long Jimi Hendrix concert with oversize amps. And when the discharge quenched and the "electrodes" went away, the descendants of the eyewitnesses wondered why great grandfather drew meaningless pictures and muttered about noise. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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ONE STORY TOLD ROUND THE WORLD

By Dave Talbott Ancient peoples narrated and re-enacted the story in a thousand ways, but when the core is exposed, it comes down to this- Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky--creator, primeval sun-god, and father of kings-- presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. This was the exemplary epoch, the Golden Age, a standard of justice and prosperity invoked by all later generations. But the ancient order fell into confusion when the king of the world tumbled from his celebrated station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens. And yet, from this descent into chaos a new and reconfigured world emerged, and the universal sovereign, rejuvenated and transformed, assumed his rightful place in heaven.
A few notes: This is the most elementary statement I can construct with respect to the totality of world mythology. Obviously, it can not stand on its own, however. The reference to the sovereign power as creator, for example, introduces a vast field of myth and symbol. The first "snapshot" of the polar configuration and the related "sun" pictographs depict the condition of the unified power, the subject of the One Story, just prior to displacement of Mars and Venus. Differentiation has already begun. Mars and Venus have emerged visually from the embryonic cloud--the "golden seed" in which they were jointly enshrouded in the visual center of Saturn. Venus is discharging violently, putting Mars in shadow. Thus, in this phase, Mars appears as a darker innermost sphere, what the Egyptian language calls the "heart of the heart." What follows this phase is the displacement, departure, or "spitting out" of Mars and Venus as the first forms of the hero and goddess, who now become quasi-independent, highly active figures in the creation events. Though this activity grows complex, I have two animations in preparation which will illustrate the definitive motions: 1) the visual descent of Mars and (in vital connection to this descent) the appearance of a stream of luminous material stretching along the polar axis, 2) the displacement of Venus from its axial position in the center of Saturn, leading (via a more complex path) to the spiraling cometary form of Venus. It is from the spiraling form of Venus that the enclosure of the gods--the primeval "earth" of the creation legend--is constituted. The axial column arising with the descent of Mars is, of course, the world mountain on which the celestial land comes to rest. (According to the global tradition, the land of the gods takes form on the summit of the world mountain: the Egyptian Mount of Glory, Greek Olympos, Hebrew Zion, Hindu Meru, Chinese Kwenlun, and innumerable variants.) Hence, the components depicted in the "sun" pictographs have very direct roles to play in more specific chapters of the One Story. A sidebar: the One Story, as I've stated it, does not really conclude the age of the gods, since (obviously!) the rejuvenated sovereign is no longer present in our sky today. This is, however, the common framework commemorated in the creation stories and in ritual commemorations of creation and renewal associated with the New Year celebrations. The farther back you go to examine variations of the story, the closer you will get to the root idea.
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The final events in the age of the gods tend not to focus on the fading of the rejuvenated sovereign but rather on the departure of the hero and/or the goddess, these two figures having become the prime characters in the stories. The ascension of the hero or goddess by way of a terraced mountain or tower, a whirling cloud, ladder, or steps to the sky, their sailing off, and/or their translation into distant stars (planets) is the final chapter in the age of the gods. Also, of course, the collapse of great palaces (Samson removes the pillar, etc.), or the sinking of lost kingdoms into the abyss, or the disbursement of ancestral "tribes" are common ways in which the final dismemberment of the planetary configuration found expression in the myths. Dave Talbott
HUMAN NATURE AND SATURNIAN RITUAL

by Dave Talbott These thoughts might be subtitled, "On Avoiding Reductionist Approaches to the Saturn Model." Reductionism is the practice of assimilating more to a single theoretical principle than that principle can accommodate or explain. Two classic examples of reductionist approaches are the hypotheses of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Each of these theorists is identified with a particular principle taken to the extreme and offered as a unified explanation of human motivation and behavior. It's difficult for me to imagine any critically-minded person not saying much the same thing about the Saturn model. Is the Saturn model reductionist? Actually, it's not, though most of the suspicions expressed are perfectly understandable in the early stages of communication. The model simply claims that there was an extraordinary myth-making epoch: the patterns of myth, symbol, and ritual originated in a unique phase of human history, one dominated by awe-inspiring planetary forms in the sky. I do not believe that critically minded folks, after assimilating the full range of evidence, would still suggest that the theory is reductionist. I base this observation on actual experience. Again and again, I've watched the suspicion disappear as people realized that the global patterns, the only field of evidence we are concerned with in the historical argument, REQUIRE the celestial forms. As a rule, it will be the new enthusiasts who run the risk of falling into the reductionist trap. I've often noticed, for example, a tendency for enthusiasts to suggest psychological interpretations which do appear to exceed the explanatory power of the model. I would make a critical distinction between "living in Saturn's shadow" and "being human." When individuals get in a fight, or nations drop bombs on each other, are they being Saturnian, or just being human? Generally, I would say that they're just being human, though one can often find echoes of Saturnian images, particularly where fierce religious concepts dominate. In more ancient times, however, warring nations were consistently Saturnian: through warfare, they sought to replicate on the battlefield the devastation formerly wrought by the gods themselves. And in no sense is it reductionist to observe this pervasive influence on human memory. Consider, for example, the words of Assurbanipal describing his military campaigns against neighboring Arabians: Ishtar, who dwells in Arabia, who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendour, rained fire over Arabia. The warrior Irra, engaging them in battle struck down my foes. Urta, the lance, the great warrior, son of Enlil, pierced my enemies to the life with his sharp arrow. Nusku,
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the exalted messenger of the gods, who makes my rule glorious, and who, at the command of Assur and Ninlil, the valorous lady, goes at my side, guarding my kingship, took his place before my armies and brought low my foes.
Clearly, this is not just being human, but also living in Saturn's shadow. In essentially the same terms, the Egyptian king Seti described his devastation of neighboring tribes as the activity of the warring "majesty" of Amon (in the Saturn model the royal "majesty" means the discharge streamers of Venus--the effusive, terrifying "radiance" or "splendor" of the Great Star/Great Comet)--"I have caused them to see thy majesty as lord of radiance... I have caused them to see thy majesty like a circling star, which scatters its flame in fire... I have caused them to see thy majesty like a flame of fire, like the very being of Sekhmet, in her tempest." Etc. etc. In the most explicit terms, the king sought to repeat the tempest of the Venus goddess Sekhmet, the majesty, the eye of Re, which had vanquished the rebelling enemies of Re, the chaos fiends, when celestial confusion and darkness had overtaken the world. It seems quite clear to me that, while countless echoes of the Saturn myth surround us still, one can be human without necessarily being Saturnian. Often, when an individual is going through a transforming experience, he will experience a sense of imminent disaster. Generally, I don't see that experience today as a symbol of Saturn, though various Saturnian influences might be considered. If one looks for signs in the sky, or trembles at the approach of a planetary conjunction, THAT is Saturnian. The Saturn experience is not the cause of human anxiety, though it can still affect the forms of anxiety (and presumably the scale of anxiety under certain circumstances, such as the end of a millennium.) Belief in God is not Saturnian. But viewing God as a merciless, bearded man on a mountain top, periodically destroying the world IS Saturnian. And of course any tendency to cling to ancient myth as the word of God is by definition Saturnian, though people often cling to non-Saturnian ideas as the word of God as well. To feel guilty is not Saturnian per se. To want to blame others is not Saturnian either. That's just being human. To clutch at a crucifix, an Ankh, or praying wheel in response is being human AND Saturnian. Dave Talbott
STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC

by Don Scott The Electric Sun hypothesis is a logical extension of the Electric/Plasma Universe theory which came into being through the seminal work of Hannes Alfven, Kristian Birkeland, P. Carlqvist and others. The person who originated and codified these ideas is the late Ralph E. Juergens of Flagstaff, Arizona. The ideas embodied by the Plasma Universe are now being developed further by researchers such as Wallace Thornhill, Anthony L. Peratt, Eric Lerner, and others.
PROBLEMS WITH THE THERMONUCLEAR (FUSION) MODEL

The certainty that the Sun generates its prodigious outpourings of energy through thermonuclear reactions deep in its interior has been with us for about half a century. ~Juergens, 1979. But, there are many reasons to doubt this presently accepted theory of how our Sun (and every other star) generates its radiant energy. In almost every article written for the popular press, the very first sentence usually contains some reference to the "fact" that the Sun is, at its core, a thermonuclear fusion
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reactor. The heat (energy) produced in this core then "rises to the Sun's surface by convection (a laminar fluid flow) and is there radiated out into space". The granulations we see on the photosphere are supposedly the tops of these convection columns. The fusion model was first proposed by a "great expert" who simply rejected the idea that the Sun could be getting its energy from outside - because he could not conceive of such a thing happening. Therefore, if the energy was coming from inside, and the Sun hasn't burned up in a few billion years, the source had to be nuclear energy. There are at least five major things wrong with this scenario. The first and most important is the "Missing Neutrino Problem". 1. Missing Neutrinos A thermonuclear reaction of the type assumed to be powering the Sun must emit a flood of neutrinos. These neutrinos have not been found after thirty years of searching for them. A series of grandly expensive experiments have failed to find the necessary neutrino flux. Wouldn't a normally intelligent scientist now stop and go back and ask if perhaps some other mechanism might be at the root of this energy production? Mainstream science has consciously turned a blind eye to the possibility of any other energy producing mechanism in the Sun. Instead, presently there is great activity trying to explain how the flood of neutrinos that "must be there" remains invisible. It is suggested that neutrinos must come in various "flavors", some of which are unobservable. A detailed description of the "Missing Neutrino Problem" is available at: http://home.thezone.net/~squires/text/SciSoc/NEUTRINO.html A Quote from Astronomy Magazine Jun 1999 The results of Davis's experiment are now the stuff of science legend. While the cleaning solution proved successful at capturing solar neutrinos, the surprise was how few of them there were to catch - less than half the number predicted by [thermonuclear] solar models. The results have since been confirmed by other experiments, all of which use different means of detecting neutrinos. No matter how astrophysicists adjust their [thermonuclear] solar models, it has proven impossible to accommodate the experimental results within standard theory ... With astrophysicists confident that their understanding of solar physics was on firm ground, suspicions turned toward the neutrino itself as the source of the problem. WHY were they confident they were on "firm ground" when all the experimental evidence strongly suggests just the opposite? Some solar neutrinos have been observed - but less than half the number required if the fusion reaction really is there in the Sun's core. If any fusion is taking place at all, it is most certainly not at the sun's center. The negative results from the neutrino experiments have resulted not in any re-examination of solar models, but rather, an intense theoretical discussion of new magical properties that solar neutrinos "must have" because we cannot see them. In the Electric Sun model there is no energy produced in the core - energy is produced at the surface and not by nuclear fusion, but by electric arc discharge. There is no "missing neutrino" problem in the Electric Sun model. 2. Convection of Energy Up from the Core The accepted view of how the sun transports its energy from its central core outward to its surface is the mechanism dubbed "non- stationary convection." The granules that are visible on the photosphere are, in
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the accepted view, the tops of laminar columns that penetrate down toward the core. Supposedly, heat (energy) is smoothly transported outward from the core in this "convection zone" via these tubes. There are several problems with this idea. The Reynolds Number The Reynolds number is a dimensionless measure that combines several physical parameters and pinpoints conditions under which a moving fluid will behave this way or that way. The number is essentially a ratio between forces tending to accelerate a fluid medium and viscous forces that resist such acceleration. Under given conditions, motions in one fluid - liquid, gas, or plasma - will be unlike those in another fluid unless their respective Reynolds numbers are approximately the same. When the Reynolds number of any fluid exceeds a critical value, flow in that fluid due to convection or any other accelerating force will be turbulent and highly complex. The actual Reynolds number of the photosphere, as calculated from observable characteristics of the plasma, turns out to be in excess of 10^11, which is to say, at least 100 billion times greater than the critical value! Clearly, then, any convective motion in the photosphere should be violently turbulent and highly disordered... ~Juergens, 1979. Again, to quote Juergens: Many facile assertions to the contrary, it becomes increasingly obvious that photospheric granulation is explainable in terms of convection only if we disregard what we know about convection. Surely the cellular structure is not to be expected. In the Electric Sun model there is no transporting of energy from the core up to the surface - energy is produced at the surface. There is no need for magical "non-stationary convection." The "granules" are really anode tufts (electric arc discharges). 3. Temperature Minimum below the Corona Any typical source of radiant energy is expected to obey the inverse square law. That is to say, the farther we get away from it, the less energy we receive per unit area. A wood stove is hottest at its core, a bit less on its outside surface, and as we backup away from it, we feel continually less and less radiant energy on our body. This too is the way the Sun ought to act if it really is generating all its energy in its core and then liberating that energy at its surface. Instead, however, the Sun is coolest at its surface - only about 6000K! But then, as we back farther away from it, the temperature abruptly jumps to about 2 million K in the corona. http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Sun.htm Figure 2. Temperature profile as a function of radial distance from the Sun's surface. Image Credit: Big Bear Solar Observatory The standard fusion model is completely incapable of explaining (let alone predicting) this behavior ... The Electric Sun model predicts the temperature minimum and shows why it occurs (see below). 4. Acceleration of the Solar "Wind" Ions The positive ions that are the main constituent of what mainstream astronomers euphemistically call the solar "wind" move faster and faster the farther away from the Sun they get. They accelerate! Nothing in the fusion model predicts nor explains this observed phenomenon. The orthodox "explanation" is that photons collide with the ions and accelerate them.
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Any student of physics who has heard of electric charge and electric fields, knows that the way to get electrically charged particles to accelerate is to apply an electric field to them. The acceleration of the positively charged solar "wind" particles is a purely electrical phenomenon. It is accurately predicted by the electric sun model. 5. Periodic Fluctuations in the Sun's Output and Size There is experimental evidence that the Sun vibrates in a way that throws doubt on both the assumed convection process for heat transportation and the thermonuclear reaction itself. There is a fluctuation with a 27 day 43 minute period observed in the stream of particles emanating from the sun. In the 1970's the Sun was observed to be oscillating in brightness with variable cycles lasting from a few minutes to nearly one hour. The sun actually expands and contracts in size (diameter) with a periodicity of 2 hours and 40 minutes. Russian investigators found a periodic rise and fall of the entire solar surface, the amplitude of which was 10 kilometers in height. Then another observer recorded a regular expansion and contraction of the Sun with a period of two hours and forty minutes. These pulsations are much more consistent with a homogeneous model of the Sun - like a balloon whose gases are of uniform density throughout its body. In Nature (Jan 15, 1976) two British theorists, J.Christensen-Dalsgaard and D.O. Gough emphasized the unlikelihood that any model can be devised for the Sun to accommodate both the observed radial oscillations and the thermonuclear theory. They are also consistent with a model wherein the Sun is an isodense sphere of gas that supports, on its outer surface, an electric arc discharge powered externally, electrically.
THE ELECTRIC SUN HYPOTHESIS

Juergens, Milton, Thornhill (and others) propose an electrical mechanism for the energy release of the Sun. The major properties of this Electric Sun model are as follows: Most of the space within our galaxy is occupied by plasma (rarefied ionized gas) containing electrons (negative charges) and ionized atoms (positive charges). Every point in the plasma has a measurable (electric) potential energy (or voltage). The Sun is at a more positive electrical potential (voltage) than is the space plasma surrounding it probably in the order of 10 billion volts. The Sun is powered, not from within itself, but from outside, by the electric (Birkeland) currents that flow in our arm of our galaxy as they do in all galaxies. In the Plasma Universe model these currents create the galaxies and the stars within them. It is a small additional step to propose that these currents also power those stars. Galactic currents are of low current density, but, because the size of the Sun is large, the total current (Amperage) is high. The Sun's radiated power at any instant is due to the energy imparted by incoming cosmic electrons. As the Sun moves around the galactic center it may come into regions of higher or lower total current and so its output may vary (both periodically and over time). Positive ions leave the Sun and cosmic electrons enter the Sun. Both of these flows add to form a net positive current leaving the Sun. This constitutes a plasma discharge analogous in every way (except size) to those that have been observed in electrical laboratories for decades. The Sun's radiative lifetime will extend only until the solar charge (and therefore, its electrical potential [voltage]) equals that of its galactic surroundings. Incoming cosmic ray protons, which bombard the Earth and Sun from every direction, represent currents (solar "winds") from higher voltage stars which liberate
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positive ions with sufficient energy to overcome the Sun's repelling voltage and impinge on its surface. (Is this mechanism, by which the Sun is able to regain some + charge, significant in extending its ultimate lifetime? No one knows at this point.) Because of the Sun's positive charge (voltage), it acts as the anode in a plasma discharge. As such, it exhibits many of the phenomena observed in earthbound plasma laboratories, such as anode tufting. The granules observed on the surface of the photosphere are anode tufts. To be continued... Don Scott
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS (2)

by Wal Thornhill [ed. note: this is a continuation (with slight overlap) of Wal's brief review of Electric Universe principles. See full text and photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/eu/eu.htm parts 6-10].
ELECTRIC STARS
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.
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
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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.
ELECTRICAL CRATERING
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 closeup images of Io became available. 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.
ELECTRICAL WEATHER
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 [ed. note: see image at: http://www.holoscience.com/eu/synopsis/9.elecweather.html] on the right is NASA artist's view of lightning on Venus during the descent of one of the Pioneer probes. Venus has no [water] clouds yet it suffers intense lightning. This argues against the popular notion of what causes lightning.
LIFE ITSELF
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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. Wal Thornhill 2000
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 16 (October 31, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SWIMMING AROUND ROCKS EGYPTIAN WHITE CROWN RENS' OUTLINE OF MYTHICAL THEMES STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (2) ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS (3)
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Rens van der Sluijs, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott by Don Scott by Wal Thornhill
SWIMMING AROUND ROCKS

By Mel Acheson When Einstein introduced the theory of relativity in 1905, astronomers thought the universe consisted of only the Milky Way. What we think of today as galaxies were thought of then as tiny clouds within the Milky Way. It was 20 years later that Hubble showed they were composed of stars and must lie outside the Milky Way. Astronomers have been arguing ever since about how far outside they are. Estimates of distance are based on what can be seen in a mere handful of photons. Calling those estimates "speculations about distance" would be more honest. A quarter century after Hubble's discovery, astronomers revised the calibration of the period-luminosity curve for Cepheid variables. That curve was their primary tool for estimating galactic distances, and the (assumed) redshift-distance relationship was calibrated by the Cepheid yardstick. In consequence of the revision, the distances to the galaxies doubled. But now Arp's observations have undermined the redshift-distance assumption, and galactic distances have collapsed. As much as we might wish the galaxies were rushing about to conform themselves to our expectations for them, it's highly likely they are, and have always been, going about their business in total disregard of us. It's deflating to our egos, but the universe doesn't seem to think our theories are as important as we think they are. In fact, our theories are only metaphors for a few recurrent experiences we have of a few tiny pieces of the universe during a few insignificant moments of its existence. We have only a vague idea of how we come to create these metaphors, and we have no idea why we do it. But we sure love to fight over them. We promote and destroy careers and lives not just over what people say they believe but over what they merely find curious. Remember Gordon Atwater: He was director of Hayden Planetarium when Velikovsky published Worlds in Collision. He planned a program illustrating V's ideas. Before he could fire up his star projector, he was fired and blacklisted. He never held another job in astronomy. Readers can no doubt recognize the parallels with the Inquisition. Julian Jaynes wrote near the end of The Origin of Consciousness..: It is not religion but the church and science that were hostile to each other. And it was rivalry, not contravention. Both were religious. They were two giants fuming at each other over the same ground. Both proclaimed to be the only way to divine revelation.
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Scientists talk about seeking truth, as do theologians, and the image is of something absolute: a rock to stand on in the midst of the flood of experiences. We need something to make sense of the experiences, something to make them meaningful. We need ideas to enable us to do things with experiences. We need theories to give us the ability to respond, to become response-able. Attributing absolute truthfulness to a concept can fill this need. But it simultaneously undermines response-ability: The concept becomes an icon that can't be altered or even questioned. It can't be doubted. It can only be believed, thereby placing it beyond the operation of our cognitive abilities. When we experience something outside the concept's domain of meaning, something the concept can't explain or explains ineffectually, we can't respond as fully and as harmoniously as if we were able to create a new concept. Responsibility is shifted to the absolute, and we therewith lose power to act. It gives us something other than ourselves to blame when things go wrong, but it reduces us to being helpless victims. We become cognitively impaired by paradigm paralysis. At this point, one is tempted to jump to the conclusion that "anything goes". But this is merely jumping to another rock, one that assumes certainty is zero instead of 100%. It's often called relativism, but it's only an absolutism of negation. If we're not to cling to rocks of either negativism or positivism, we must learn to swim. Leaving everything open to critical reevaluation means accepting every concept as provisional. It means living with uncertainty. It means abandoning the idea of constructing a foundation for knowledge and embracing instead the idea of knowledge as a succession of strokes of understanding. Critical rationality is not an ability to construct theories we can subsequently use to isolate ourselves from the flood. Rather, it's an ability to immerse ourselves in the flood and to navigate in it. It enables us to understand the changing characteristics of each wave and to respond to the current. It empowers us to surf the ocean of the universe and therein to discover joy. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
WHITE CROWN
by Dave Talbott In addition to the twin imagery of the rotating crescent, it is necessary to deal with certain additional mirror images due to the polar placement of celestial bodies as seen by an observer on a rotating earth. This can involve either mirror aspects of illumination from the Sun, or mirror sunset and sunrise aspects of the configuration due to displacement of bodies from the axis. An instance of the latter will be the mirror images associated with the Inanna sign in ancient Sumerian symbolism of the "gate post with streamers." An instance of the former will be the illumination of the conical "White Crown" such that the lightened portions presented mirror images at sunrise and sunset. I've attached as a single JPEG pic a few slides from my seminar overview of the evolving configuration. The images relate to the Egyptian White Crown and its intimate connection to an enigmatic feather symbol, called Mayet. In the Saturn model this feather could ONLY mean the illuminated portion of the White Crown. Hence, the language and symbolism of the feather and White Crown provide important tests. [ed note: See attachment for pictures.] FIRST SLIDE. This is the opening frame of an animation segment, showing a view of the configuration from space, as material streamed up the axis from Mars toward Venus. The bodies are slightly displaced from the axis, and this displacement will force some additional,
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highly unique tests. (I'll get to these in a day or two.) A closer view of the Earth and Mars shows that the material leaves Mars at its equator, to stream upward toward Venus. SECOND SLIDE. This shows the view of the depicted stream from the Earth (22nd parallel), along with the Egyptian White Crown, which the Saturn model interprets as a ritual image inspired by the celestial prototype shown here. THIRD SLIDE. Here we see the two phases of sunset and sunrise, presented along side the ostrich feather. For the obvious reasons, the model considers this feather to be symbol of the illuminated portion of the celestial White Crown. FOURTH SLIDE. The goddess Mayet IS the ostrich feather. She was also the Eye of Re. Numerous texts confirm that the Eye, the goddess and the White Crown are synonymous. Though the equation appears ludicrous to specialists, the Saturn model will not only explain, but predict the equation. FIFTH SLIDE. In Egytpian ritual and symbol, the two feathers of Mayet represent two halves of the daily cycle. That is exactly what we should expect, though nothing in nature today would suggest the idea. SIXTH SLIDE. Repeatedly, Egyptian artists placed the two feather to the right and left of the White Crown, though the origin of the symbolism remains inexplicable to Egyptologists. SEVENTH SLIDE. Together, the feathers of the right and left CONSTITUTE the White Crown, exactly as the Saturn model claims. The feathers reach upward from a red disk. In the ritual of kings, the pharaoh honors and imitates this relationship of the warrior-hero to the goddess by donning the crown and feathers. EIGHTH SLIDE. Mars descends visually from the sphere of Venus, appearing to wear a conical crown. Thus, in the myths the god Shu, originally resting inside the central Eye of Re, is "spit out" to become the first form of the warrior hero. Remarkably, the feather is an acknowledged Egyptian symbol of Shu's birth, exactly as we should expect. NINTH SLIDE. The Saturnian crescent stands in a definitive relationship to the crown. The horns of the crescent signify the horns of the Bull of Heaven. Thus, the Egyptian Bull is depicted with a red disk resting between its horns, from which rise two feathers, in precise accord with the model. Dave Talbott
RENS' OUTLINE OF MYTHICAL THEMES

Rens van der Sluijs, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott To all, Yesterday I put an article on the Web containing a brief outline of the methods and principles to be followed in comparative mythology. A large number of previous theories claiming to explain the origin of myth and religion are discarded and it is shown that planetary catastrophism is the only possible theory to account for all the data available. Comments are welcome. Address: http://home2.worldonline.nl/~mdvds/doctrine.htm. Rens van der Sluijs, Holland EV COCHRANE WRITES: If this is a brief outline, Rens, I wonder what the completed work would look like! Very impressive indeed. In the first paragraph, I noted a sentence that read like pure Dave Talbott:
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[The Saturn theory accounts] for the entire range of concepts appearing in every single aspect of human civilization. Who said that unified theories were a thing of the past? DAVE TALBOTT ADDS: Yes, it was very gratifying to see Rens' insightful summary. I would only qualify the sentence in question slightly. Certain ancient concepts belong to a deeper stratum of experience and perception than any natural event can adequately explain. While the ritual and symbolic FORMS are Saturnian, the taproot in human motivation has to run deeper. "WE are guilty!" "HE is guilty!" The planetary dramas certainly did invite deep human tendencies to the surface. But the collective response (scapegoat principle, sacrifice, war, etc.), though highly Saturnian in form, reveals levels of human perception and motivation outside the reach of the Saturn model. I would say that the Saturn model is a unified explanation of the ritual and symbolic forms, but it cannot ultimately account for the roles of fear, guilt, separation, competition, or rage in human relationships. Intensely experienced events did, however, catalyze such harsh or starklyexpressed responses that it becomes impossible to deny the presence of motivations which are, in our own time, often expressed much more subtly. In that sense, the Saturn research can be very revealing, throwing light on an internal shadow-world which still cries out for an explanation. RENS REPLIED: I would never claim that purely psychological mechanisms would stem from an exterior cycle of events such as the establishment and disintegration of the polar configuration would have been. Qualities like anger, envy and longing are inherent to human neurology and behaviour and also shared with the higher mammals. That is never the point. What I would claim, based on judgment of the evidence available, is that every aspect of human civilisation - beyond the strict biological! - that is, every innovation that mankind made in his social framework, was triggered by these celestial happenings. His normal mental patterns were the tools by which this happened and the mechanisms which gave shape to the process of coping with the experiences. In short: with 'aspects of civilisation' I restricted myself to tools and artifacts and social structures. A very limited number of basic structures, which Homo sapiens shared with mammals, would have predated the adaptation from celestial originals, such as the relationship between child and parents. EV SAYS: When reading Rens and Dave talk about the ability of the Saturn theory to explain everything there is to know about ancient civilization, I am often reminded of Ed McMahon's recurring quip on the old Johnny Carson show: That is everything one could possibly know about this particular subject. At which point Johnny would respond: Wrong, rhino-breath. Personally I would much prefer to downplay such claims and simply proceed to carefully document the many aspects of ancient civilization that the Saturn theory can help to explain. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if certain important aspects of man's civilization did not originate in celestial fireworks. Consider the invention of fire, for example, certainly one of the most important tools/findings of prehistoric man. I would suspect that the ability to artificially generate fire far predates the polar configuration. That said, it would be easy to show that ancient man, upon witnessing the whirling motions of Mars' "fire-drill" in the sky, ascribed the invention of fire or the fire-drill to the warrior hero thereby confusing the true historical order of the invention. DAVE ADDS: I think we've got a misunderstanding here. The question isn't whether all ancient technology derived from the Saturnian experience, but whether the specific forms of collective RITUAL activity, from which a vast
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wealth of technology emerged, were inspired by the ancient planetary experience. That an explosion of technical capabilities can be traced to ritual motives is an eminently defensible hypothesis. All you have to do is chronicle the examples to see that this eruption of collective activity defines early civilization in distinction from the earlier pastoral condition. To make this point does not require us to claim that precivilized races were without technical knowledge or skill. What distinguishes the emerging civilizations is not only profoundly Saturnian, but apparently exclusively so. The ritual "sun"-wheel preceded the useful wheel. Astronomy grew out of intense concern with planetary motions, for the obvious reason. Kingship ritual re-enacted the ascension of Mars as regent of the universal sovereign. Every queen that can be identified in the ancient world was a living symbol of the Queen of Heaven. Temples and cities mirrored the remembered celestial prototypes. Mathematical and architectural skills arose in the service of monument building and celestial observation. Writing systems emerged from pictographs of the gods and their attributes. All of the great magical and symbolic traditions can be traced to attributes and incidents in the lives of the gods. Sacrificial practices re-enacted critical junctures in the biographies of gods. Wars of nationalistic expansion commemorated the vanquishing of chaos and the progressive expansion outward of the land of the gods in the creation. All of the great calendrical festivals were rooted in memories of the age of the gods. Collective agricultural rites and practices explicitly recalled the myth of the dying god. I don't see any reason to equivocate with respect to planetary drama catalyzing the ritual underpinnings of emerging civilization. With respect to the origins of myth, we need to continually remind ourselves that the claimed "unified theory" relates to verifiable, indisputable archetypes--patterns that are either fully acknowledged by independent comparative studies, or that we are prepared to document beyond any reasonable doubt. The groundrules are designed to explicitly eliminate selective perception. A unified explanation of myth does not mean that we have to explain any particular myth in any particular land. There is far, far too much random evolution, fragmentation, and cross-cultural assimilation of myth over SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS to justify any insistence of that sort. The value of the comparative approach is that while random evolution introduces contradictions, the points of agreement between the cultures expose the substratum of human memory. The Saturn model offers a unified explanation of archetypal mythology, and it's imperative that this claim be clear. That way, there can be no question as to the appropriate tests. Anyone documenting an archetype that does not find clear and convincing explanation in the Saturn model should have the right to say that the Saturn model fails as a unified theory, putting the burden on us to prove him wrong. Dave Talbott
STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (2)

by Don Scott
The Electric Sun Hypothesis

Juergens, Milton, Thornhill (and others) propose an electrical mechanism for the energy release of the Sun. The major properties of this Electric Sun model are as follows: 1) Most of the space within our galaxy is occupied by plasma (rarefied ionized gas) containing electrons (negative charges) and ionized atoms (positive charges). Every point in the plasma has a measurable (electric) potential energy (or voltage). 2) The Sun is at a more positive electrical potential (voltage) than is the space plasma surrounding it - probably in the order of 10 billion volts. 3) The Sun is powered, not from within itself, but from outside, by the electric (Birkeland) currents that flow in our arm of our galaxy as they do in all galaxies. In the Plasma Universe model these
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currents create the galaxies and the stars within them. It is a small additional step to propose that these currents also power those stars. Galactic currents are of low current density, but, because the size of the Sun is large, the total current (Amperage) is high. The Sun's radiated power at any instant is due to the energy imparted by incoming cosmic electrons. As the Sun moves around the galactic center it may come into regions of higher or lower total current and so its output may vary (both periodically and over time). 4) Positive ions leave the Sun and cosmic electrons enter the Sun. Both of these flows add to form a net positive current leaving the Sun. This constitutes a plasma discharge analogous in every way (except size) to those that have been observed in electrical laboratories for decades. 5) The Sun's radiative lifetime will extend only until the solar charge (and therefore, its electrical potential [voltage]) equals that of its galactic surroundings. Incoming cosmic ray protons, which bombard the Earth and Sun, represent currents (solar "winds") from higher voltage stars which liberate positive ions with sufficient energy to overcome the Sun's repelling voltage and impinge on its surface. (Is this mechanism, by which the Sun is able to regain some + charge, significant in extending its ultimate lifetime? No one knows at this point.) 6) Because of the Sun's positive charge (voltage), it acts as the anode in a plasma discharge. As such, it exhibits many of the phenomena observed in earthbound plasma laboratories, such as anode tufting. The granules observed on the surface of the photosphere are anode tufts. A cross-section taken through a granule is shown in the three plots below. See Don Scott's website for graphs at: http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Sun.htm The horizontal axis of each of the three plots is distance, measured radially outward, starting at a point near the bottom of the photosphere (the true surface of the Sun - which we can only observe in the umbra of sunspots). The first plot shows the energy per unit (positive) charge of an ion as a function of its radial distance out from the solar surface. The second plot, the E-field, shows the outward radial force (toward the right) experienced by such a positive ion. The third plot shows the locations of the charge densities that will produce the first two plots. Figure 3. Energy, Electric field strength, and Charge density as a function of radial distance from the Sun's surface. All three of these plots are related mathematically. By the laws of physics: E = - dV/dr, and Chg density = dE/dr. In words: The value of the E-field, at every point r, is the (negative of) the slope of the energy plot at that point. The value of the charge density at each point, r, is the slope of the E-field plot at that point. The charge density plot necessary to produce the compound energy curve between points c and e used to be called a "double sheath". Modern nomenclature calls it a "double layer"(DL). It is a typical and well known phenomenon in a plasma discharge. Because of the DL being there between points c and e, a +ion to the right of point e sees no electrical force from +ions to the left of point c. The energy plot (above) is for positively charged particles. Because the E-field represents the force (toward the right) per unit charge on a positively charged particle, the region wherein the E-field is negative (a to b) is a region where positively charged particles will be accelerated toward the left - inward, toward the Sun's surface. One can visualize them falling down the energy hill from point b to a. Any +ions attempting to escape outward from within the body of the Sun must have enough energy to surmount this energy barrier. In order to visualize the effect this energy diagram has on electrons (negative charges) coming in toward the Sun from cosmic space (from the right), turn the energy plot upside down. Doing this enables us to visualize the "trap" that these photospheric tufts are for incoming electrons. As the trap fills, the energy level between b and c (inverted for electrons) rises, and so the tuft shrinks, and eventually disappears. This is consistent with the observed random movement and shrinkage of photospheric granules. Charged particles do not experience electrical forces in the range b to c. Only random "thermal" movement occurs due to diffusion. At a point just to the left of point c, any such random movement toward
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the right (radially outward) that carries it even slightly to the right of point c will result in a + ion being swept away, down the energy hill, toward the right. Such movement of charged particles due to an E-field is called "drift". This drift of positive ions is the source of the solar "wind" (which is a serious misnomer). As positive ions accelerate down the potential energy hill from point c through e, they gain extremely high radial velocity and lose random motion. Thus, they become "dethermalized". In this region, the movement of these ions becomes extremely organized (parallel). The pinch effect of parallel current filaments in a plasma should be very strong. If any fusion is taking place on the Sun it is likely occurring here (not deep in the core). When these rapidly traveling + ions pass point e they lose most of the radially directed E-field force that has been accelerating them. Because of their high velocity, any collisions they have at this point (with other ions or with neutral atoms) are violent and create high amplitude random motions, thereby "rethermalizing" the plasma to a much greater degree than it was in the photospheric tufts (in the range b to c). This is what is responsible for the high temperature we observe in the lower corona. The photosphere has temperatures reported to be from 4000 K to 6000 K. Ions in the lower corona (just to the right of point e) are reported to be at temperatures of 1 to 2 million K. Nothing else but exactly this kind of behavior could be expected from the electric sun (anode tuft - double layer) model. The "re- thermalization" takes place in a turbulent region analogous to the "white water" boiling at the bottom of a smooth waterfall. In the fusion model no such "waterfall" exists - and so neither does an explanation of the temperature minimum. The energy plot in figure 3 (to the right of point e) actually trails off, with slightly negative slope, toward the negative voltage of deep space (our arm of the Milky Way galaxy). Consistent with this, a low amplitude (positive) E-field extends indefinitely to the right from point e. This is the effect of the Sun being at a higher voltage level than is distant space. The outward force on positive ions due to this E-field explains the observed acceleration of +ions in the solar "wind" (which is another unexplained phenomenon in the "accepted" thermonuclear model). Mainstream astronomers normally fall back on vague references to the "Sun's mysterious magnetic field" to explain just about everything they can't explain; this acceleration of solar "wind" +ions is a case in point. The particles in our solar wind eventually join with the spent solar "winds" of all the other stars in our galaxy to make up the total cosmic ray flow. Astrophysicists tell us that the Sun is a rather mediocre star as far as radiating energy goes. If it is electrically powered, perhaps its mediocrity is attributable to a relatively unimpressive driving potential. This would mean that hotter, more luminous stars should have driving potentials greater than that of the Sun and should consequently expel cosmic rays of greater energies than solar cosmic rays. A star with a driving potential of 20 billion volts would expel protons energetic enough to reach the Sun's surface, arriving with 10 billion electron volts of energy to spare. It is interesting to note in passing that the three plots shown in figure 3 are analogous to the plots of energy, E-field, and charge distribution found in a pnp transistor. Of course in that (solid- state) device there are different things going on at different energy levels ("valence band" and "conduction band"). In the solar case there are no fixed atomic centers and so there is only one energy band where "the action is". In a transistor, the amplitude of the collector current (analogous to the drift of +ions in the solar "wind" toward the right) is easily controlled by raising and lowering the difference between the energy levels at points a and b (base-emitter voltage). Is the same mechanism (a voltage fluctuation between the anodeSun and its photosphere) at work in the Sun? e.g., If the Sun's voltage were to decrease slightly - say because of an excessive flow of incoming electrons - the voltage rise from point a to b in the energy diagram of figure 3 would quickly reduce the solar wind (both the inward electron flow and the outward +ion flow). In May of 1999 the solar wind completely stopped for about two days. The mechanism proposed above explains it. The fusion model is at a complete loss in doing so. The volt-ampere characteristic of a laboratory plasma discharge has the general shape shown in figure 4: The volt-ampere plot of a plasma discharge. [see website -- same as above].
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This plot is for a plasma contained in a column - a cylindrical glass tube with the anode at one end and the cathode at the other. These two terminals are connected into an electrical circuit whereby the current through the tube can be controlled. In such an experiment, the plasma has a constant cross-sectional area from one end of the tube to the other. The vertical axis of the plot in figure 4 is the voltage rise from the cathode up to the anode (across the entire plasma) as a function of the current passing through the plasma. When we consider the Sun, of course, a spherical geometry exists - with the sun at the center. Assume a constant total electron drift moving from all directions toward the Sun and a constant flow of +ions outward. As we approach the Sun from deep space, the spherical boundary through which this total current passes has an ever decreasing area. Therefore, for a fixed total current, the current density (A/m^2) increases as we move toward the Sun. 1) In deep space the current density there is extremely low even though the total current may be huge; we are in the dark current region; there are no glowing gases, nothing to tell us we are in a plasma discharge. 2) As we get closer to the Sun, the spherical boundary has a smaller surface area; the current density increases; we enter the normal glow region; this is what we call the Sun's "corona". 3) As we approach still closer to the Sun, the spherical boundary gets to be only slightly larger than the Sun itself; the current density becomes extremely large; we enter the arc region of the discharge. This is the anode tuft. This is the photosphere.
Sunspots and Coronal Holes

In a plasma, the dimensions and the voltage of the anode tufts are both functions of current density at that location (near the anode). The tufts appear and/or disappear, as needed, to maintain a certain required relationship between +ion and electron numbers in the total current. This phenomenon was discovered and reported by Irving Langmuir. In the Electric Sun model, tufting disappears wherever the flux of incoming electrons impinging onto a given area of the Sun's surface is not sufficiently strong to require the shielding produced by the plasma double layer shown in figure 3. At any such location, the anode tufting collapses and we can see down to the actual anode surface of the Sun. Since there is no arc discharge occurring in these locations, they appear darker than the surrounding area and are termed "sunspots". Of course, if a tremendous amount of energy was being produced in the Sun's interior, the "spot" should be brighter than the surrounding photosphere. The fact that sunspots are dark supports the contention that very little, if anything, is going on in the Sun's interior. Because there is no anode tuft where a spot is located, the voltage rise (region a to b in figure 3), which normally controls the local flow of positive ions leaving the anode surface, does not exist there. In sunspots, then, a large number of ions can be ejected upward toward the lower corona. Such a flow constitutes a large electrical current - and, as such, will produce a strong localized magnetic field. The Sun's corona is difficult to see except in solar eclipses and in X ray images. In some X ray images of the Sun (such as the one shown in figure 1(b) at the very top of this page) we can see "coronal holes" large dark regions in the brighter image of the solar corona. The bright regions indicate hotter, more energetic areas of the solar corona, mainly above the sunspot regions. Strong electric currents also flow in and above the Sun's surface in the vicinity of sunspots due to the voltage difference between nearby anode tufts and the sunspots (where there are no tufts). This region is called the sunspot's penumbra. These currents produce magnetic fields. Since, in plasmas, Birkeland currents follow magnetic field lines, the glowing plasma in these regions often shows the complicated shapes of these spot-related looping magnetic fields. TO BE CONTINUED... Don Scott
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ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS: Part III

by Wal Thornhill [ed. note: this is a conclusion of Wal's brief review of Electric Universe principles. See full text and photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/eu/eu.htm parts 11-12].
SOME BASICS
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-adistance. "Electromagnetic" radiation is then simply the result of an oscillating electrostatic force. We don't require the ad hoc theoretical barnacles of fields, photons, waves or an "ether". At a fundamental level, the Electric Universe model is based upon the work of Ralph Sansbury, an independent New York physicist. 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 subparticles 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.
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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. Alfvn.
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. 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 subatomic 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 makes the very odd assumption that energy and matter are interchangeable. It seems simpler and more sensible to suggest that both nuclear and chemical energies are released or absorbed by the rearrangement of the resonant orbits of charged particles into new resonant orbits. 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 these days for theory to dominate over common sense and observation. It has resulted in the dogmatic adherence to the speed limit of light as the fastest signalling speed in the universe. However, there is evidence from several experiments that effects can follow a cause at speeds far in excess of the speed of light. Because these results conflict with dogma they are described with euphemisms like "spooky action- at-a-distance", "nonlocality", and "quantum entanglement". Yet it is simple to show that unless gravity acts with near-infinite speed, the planets would orbit the Sun in an odd way - being always accelerated to where the Sun was
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minutes or hours earlier. Experiments have shown that this is not so and gravity must act at near-infinite speed.
Gravity
Sansbury's electrical model of matter leads to a simple explanation of gravity that allows space to be three-dimensional and Euclidean - which is the way we perceive it. The unification of gravity with the other forces, that has been the subject of almost a century of wild-goose-chases, turns out to be simple. It is merely another manifestation of the electrostatic force. Each proton, neutron and electron, being composed of both positive and negative charge, will respond to an imposed electric force by distorting into an ellipsoid with a positive and negative pole, in other words an electric dipole. We have already proposed the near- infinite speed of the electrostatic force, required for the force of gravity, but the electric force can either attract or repel, whereas gravity always attracts. The simple answer to this problem lies in the nature of electrostatic dipoles which, when free to move, always tend to align themselves so as to mutually attract. So gravity is the force due to the sum of all the instantaneous electrostatic dipolar forces between one massive body and another. Note that it has nothing to do with bulk charge separation, although an electrically charged body will exhibit a modified force of gravity. It is particularly noticeable that many physics textbooks deal only cursorily, if at all, with electric dipole theory. The subject has been left to chemists who deal with molecular dipole forces and who have noted the similarity to gravity. This oversight may be recognized in future as a crucial failure of 20th century physics. The electrostatic dipole model of gravity explains why "G", the universal gravitational constant, is the most ill-determined physical constant of all. The simple answer is that "G" is neither constant nor universal! This fact can explain how electrical interactions between planets will create stable orbits in a very short period of time. It also acts to prevent direct impacts between massive bodies and facilitates the capture of satellites.
Magnetism
Magnetism results when electrons move in response to an electric force. Magnetism is a transverse electrostatic force resulting from the distortion of moving electrons by an applied electric force to form electronic dipoles. Sansbury has derived all of Ampere's laws from the theory of transverse forces between electronic dipoles.
Light
In the Electric Universe model, fields, electromagnetic waves and photons are all unnecessary theoretical constructs. How can light be either a wave or a particle depending on some hypothetical observer? If it were a wave it would require a medium to carry the wave. If light were a particle, how does that explain wave interference? And what is meant physically by the "collapse" of a wave function? By proposing that an electromagnetic disturbance is due to an oscillating near-instantaneous electrostatic force, the simplification is enormous. What we measure as the speed of light is then a delayed response of bulk electric charge to an oscillating near-instantaneous electrostatic force. Recent experiments that have demonstrated faster-than-light effects may be more simply explained by this model.
Mass
The equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass has always been a puzzle. However, it is a simple outcome of the electrical model. When one object exerts a force on another the interaction at the atomic level is electrostatic, the same as gravity. The mass of a particle is a measure of its deformability in the presence of an electrostatic force. The more easily a particle can absorb energy elastically in its
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deformation, rather than in its acceleration, the more massive it appears to be. The larger proton is more easily deformed than the tiny electron. However, the more a particle is deformed the more it soaks up energy in further deformation. This gives rise to the observed apparent mass increase of accelerated charged particles in particle accelerators. Once again, energy is not being converted into matter.
Antimatter
One success of the purely theoretical approach to particle physics was the prediction of the existence of anti-particles: the positron, anti-proton and anti-neutron. They were subsequently discovered, but without an accurate physical model of the structure of normal matter it led to serious cosmological questions about where all of the anti-matter had gone when normal matter was created the assumption being that it must have materialized in equal quantities from pure energy according to E = mc2. Sansbury's model suggests that matter and anti-matter are not created from radiant energy but are alternate resonant forms of the same "normal" sub-particles, with the sign of the charge reversed. When an electron and its antiparticle, the positron, "annihilate" they simply create a new resonant neutral particle of very low mass < in other words, one that is highly resistant to electrostatic deformation < a neutrino, plus radiation. The decay path for annihilation of protons and neutrons and their respective anti-particles involves a chain of events that result in neutrinos, radiation and electron-positron pairs. So the final result will always be neutrinos and radiation. A neutrino would seem to be a resonant neutral particle that achieves a very low ground-state by radiating most of its orbital energy away in the form of gamma rays. That would make it extremely small and low in mass. The consequences and possibilities in an Electric Universe are far-reaching: 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 since the thermonuclear evolution theory does not apply to them. Supernovae are totally inadequate as a source of heavy elements. 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 a brown dwarf star! Our solar system has gained new planets, including the Earth. Almost all planetary craters are electric arc scars received during their birth or later encounters with other cosmic bodies. The speed of light is not a barrier. Real-time communication over galactic distances may be possible. Time travel is impossible. Space has no extra dimensions in which to warp or where parallel universes may exist. Anti-gravity is possible. 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 may not hold the key to life but be more like a blueprint for a factory floor. 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 may be external to the DNA. There is more to life than chemistry. The future in an Electric Universe looks very exciting indeed! Wal Thornhill 2000
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL IV, No 17 (December 15, 2000)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: MATTER, CHARGE, AND CONJECTURES STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (3) RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION GALACTIC CONNECTIONS SPINNING ELECTRONS BRIEF SIS REPORT
by Mel Acheson by Don Scott by Amy Acheson and Halton Arp posted by Walter Radtke by Wal Thornhill by Wal Thornhill
MATTER, CHARGE, AND CONJECTURES

by Mel Acheson One of the hot topics of discussion in the Monday meeting after last month's conference was the relative strengths of electricity and gravity. The electricians knew the electric force was 39 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, and the graviticians knew the gravitational force was 40 orders of magnitude stronger than electricity. This misses the point. On the purely mathematical level, you can plug numbers into the equations to get any magnitude of force you want. The gravitational force between two 10 kg lead spheres placed 1 m apart is: F = GM^2/R^2 = 6.7x10^-11 times 10^2 divided by 1^2 = 6.7x10^-9 Newtons. To equal that force with electricity, the spheres would have to be charged to: 6.7x10^-9 = [1/(4 x pi x e-sub-naught)] times Q^2 divided by 1^2, or Q = sqrt (6.7x10^-9 divided by 9x10^9) = 8.6x10^-10 coulombs, or 860 micro-micro-coulombs. This could be achieved with a current of 1 microampere in less than a millisecond. The technology of nylon rods rubbed over cat fur can transfer enough static charge to overcome the gravitational attraction of lead spheres. But as Tom kept asking: Can you get electricity to move planets? That would require a lot of cats. The question is not relative strengths of forces but whether it's possible to accumulate enough charge and move it with enough power to toss planets around like electrons. Irving Langmuir could provide some enlightenment here. He's dead, but his discoveries linger on. One discovery was that just a few ions in a substance can cause it to behave in unexpected ways. It forms cells and filaments. Charges separate into double layers that insulate cells from each other. The filaments
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twist around each other. They writhe and radiate. They seem almost alive-- which is why Irving called the substance a plasma. An accumulation of charge inside one cell doesn't interact with that in another cell until the double layers break down. Then they interact with tremendous power. Another discovery (maybe this wasn't Langmuir's) was that plasmas exhibit the same behavior over large ranges of scale. From millimeter-sized sparks in a lab that last a millionth of a second to kilometer-long lightning bolts that last several seconds, the same properties can be observed. A long list of investigators has tried to draw attention to the similarities between certain astronomical phenomena and these lab and terrestrial plasmas. Just on a theoretical level, it seems rather simple to scale up a lightning bolt (at 10^9 kW) that can toss around our lead spheres to the size of an interplanetary bolt (at 10^21 kW) that can toss around planets (move the Earth 1/4 au in a year, say). But does it actually happen? We can't clip the leads from a planet-sized voltmeter across the solar system and measure the voltage drop. So we're left with arguing about similarities. And we all know argument from analogy is fallacious. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, only that it's uncertain. The idea of gravity tossing planets around is familiar; the idea of plasma doing it isn't. Much of our preference for one idea over another is simply this business of familiarity. Much of the work required to reach a new understanding of something is just this effort to make the unfamiliar familiar. By analogy with argument from analogy, argument from familiarity is also fallacious. After allowing for the preference for familiarity, gravity is in no better shape than plasma. We see large accumulations of matter--which we could just as easily see as large accumulations of charge if that idea were familiar. We assume an identity between the ideas of a large accumulation of matter and a large accumulation of mass. But mass is a property--F/a--that's not necessarily identical with quantity of matter. The Machian idea of inertial mass being the relationship of a particle of matter to all other particles within its sphere of communication implies that a newly created particle increases its mass as it ages. The Meta Model idea of gravitational mass being the shielding effect of other matter within the mean collisional distance of gravitons implies an upper limit of matter accumulations beyond which mass remains constant. We can't hatch a Machian chicken and see if it grows without feeding it corn, nor can we stick a large toothpick into cakes of Meta matter to see if there's uncooked mass in the middle. What we're stuck with is a conflict of paradigms. Each explains overlapping sets of data in different ways. We won't know for sure if the universe is electric until we travel to a Seyfert galaxy and stick our finger in the socket. Nor will we know for sure if it's gravitic until we drop Newton's apple off the Leaning Tower of M87. The question of "what's the truth" is premature. The truth is this: No paradigm is believable. I.e., none are certain. Being stuck with a conflict of paradigms is really an opportunity. We can choose whichever conjecture strikes our fancy and follow its implications to see if we can invent something new to make our lives more comfortable and exciting. It's not necessary to choose; it's an opportunity to choose. We're better off having more conjectures to choose from than having less. It's time to scrap the outworn philosophy of physics based on an illusory certainty. Instead, a more biological philosophy based on conjectures and refutations (Karl Popper's phrase) or blind variations with selective retention (Donald Campbell's phrase) would be more appropriate for small soft creatures living on a speck of terrestrial dirt and prancing around the cosmos. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
STARS: NUCLEAR VERSUS ELECTRIC (3)

by Don Scott
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[Ed note: This concludes on the electric sun taken from Don Scott's WebPages. You can access the entire article, along with the photos and diagrams at http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Sun.htm]
Prominences, Flares, and CME's

All of the above discussion applies to the steady-state (or almost steady-state) operation of the Electric Sun. But there are several dynamic phenomena such as flares, prominences, and coronal mass ejections (CME's) that we observe. How are they formed? Hannes Alfven, although not aware of the Juergens Electric Sun model, advanced his theory (3) of how prominences and solar flares are formed electrically. It is completely consistent with the Juergens model. Any electric current, i, creates a magnetic field (the stronger the current - the stronger the magnetic field, and the more energy it contains). Energy, Wm, stored in any magnetic field, is given by the expression Wm = 1/2 Li^2. If the current, i, is interrupted, the field collapses and its energy must be delivered somewhere. The magnetic field of the Sun sometimes, and in some places on its surface, forms an "omega" shaped loop. This loop extends out through the double sheath layer (DL) of the chromosphere. One of the primary properties of Birkeland currents is that they follow magnetic field lines. A strong current will produce a toroidal magnetic field that will expand the loop. If the current following this loop becomes too strong, the DL is destroyed1. This interrupts the current (like opening a switch in an inductive circuit) and the dissipation of the energy stored in the magnetic field is explosively released. It should be well understood (certainly by anyone who has had a basic physics course) that the magnetic field "lines"2 that are drawn to describe a magnetic field, have no beginning nor end. They are closed paths. In fact one of Maxwell's famous equations is: div B = 0 Which says precisely that in the language of vector differential calculus. So when magnetic fields collapse due to the interruption of the currents that produce them, they do not "break" and "recombine" (as some uninformed astronomers have claimed). The field simply collapses (very fast!). On the Sun this collapse releases a tremendous amount of energy and matter is thrown out away from the surface - as with any explosively rapid reaction. This release is consistent with and predicted by the Electric Sun model as is shown above. 1) Double layers can be destroyed by at least two different mechanisms: a) Zener Breakdown - The electric field gradient becomes strong enough to rip all charges away from an area, thus breaking the discharge path; b) Avalanche Breakdown - A literal avalanche occurs wherein all charges are swept away and no conducting charges are left - thus the conducting path is opened. 2) A magnetic field is a continuum. It is not a set of discrete "lines". Lines are drawn in the classroom to describe the magnetic field (its direction and magnitude). But the lines themselves do not actually exist. They are simply a pedagogical device. Proposing that these lines "break" and "recombine" is an error (violation of Maxwell's equations) compounded on another error (the lines do not exist in the first place).
The Power Source

The question, "Are there enough electrons out there in nearby space to power the Sun?" is a valid one. Juergens studied it and came up with the following answer: In an article compiled from Juergen's notes after his death by Earl Milton, "Electric Discharge As the Source of Solar Radiant Energy," Juergens (Milton) says the following: The solar constant, defined as the total radiant energy at all wavelengths reaching an area of one square centimeter at the Earth's distance from the Sun, is about 0.137 watts per square
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centimeter (see R.C.Wilson, Journal of Geophysical Research, 83,4003-4007 1978). It works out, then, that the Sun must be emitting about 6.5x10^7 watts per square meter of solar "surface", and the total power output of the Sun is a (very nearly) constant 4x10^26 watts. The hypothetical electric discharge must then have a power input of 4x10^26 watts ... suppose that the Sun's cathode drop may be of the order of 10^10 volts, ...then..the total power input divided by the cathode drop [is] 4x10^16 amperes... Let us suppose that the effective velocity of a typical interstellar electron would be about 105 m/s, corresponding to a kinetic temperature of a few hundred Kelvin. From current estimates of the state of ionization of the interstellar gas, we might conclude that there should be as many as 50,000 free electrons per cubic m.(S.A. Kaplan, Interstellar Gas Dynamics - Pergamon 1966). The random electric current of these electrons then would be Ir = NeC/4 where N is the electron density per cubic meter, e is the electron charge in coulombs, and C is the average velocity of the electrons. Using the given values, we find that the random electric current density should be about 2x10^-10 amperes per square meter through a surface oriented in any manner. The total electron current that can be drawn by the discharge is the product of the random current density and the surface area of the sphere occupied by the cathode drop. There is little to indicate how large this sphere might be, but in view of the enormity of the cathode drop it seems likely that the radius of the sphere would be large in terms of solar system dimensions. The mean distance of Pluto's orbit is 39.5 AU, or about 6x10^12 meters. We might guess that the cathode drop would reach to at least 10^13 meters from the Sun, so that its spherical boundary would have a collecting surface area of somewhat more than 10^27 square meters. Such a surface could collect a current of interstellar electrons amounting to practically 10^18 amperes twenty five times greater than the total current that seems proper. And of course a larger sphere could collect an even greater current.
So there are enough electrons out there to power the Electric Sun. Note that although astronomers ought to be aware that magnetic fields require electrical currents to make them, currents and E- fields are never mentioned in standard models. Nor do they seem to be included in astrophysics curricula.
Why Doesn't the Sun Collapse of Its Own Weight?

How can we account for the fact that the Sun has been around for a long time with something like the same luminosity, yet has not collapsed in upon itself.3 In orthodox theory, a main-sequence star like the sun behaves like a ball of gas, its temperature and pressure both increasing monotonically from the outer surface towards the center. The temperature is needed to sustain the pressure, and the pressure is needed to fend off gravitational forces which, in the absence of sufficient pressure, would lead to collapse. It is hard to understand how in Juergens' theory, with no fusion going on in the core, such a "reverse" temperature gradient can be maintained. The answer is best stated by Wal Thornhill: The electric star model makes the simplest assumption that nothing is going on inside the Sun ... So for most of the volume of a star where the gravity is strongest, atoms and molecules will predominate. (In the electric model that applies to the entire star). The nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than the electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the centre of the atom. The result is that each atom becomes a small electric dipole. These dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than simple gravitational sorting allows. That leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive force of gravity without the need for a central heat source in the star. An electric star will be roughly the same density throughout, or isodense.
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We should also remember, considering a pair of similar particles (say protons) that the strength of the electrostatic repulsion force between them is something like 35 orders of magnitude greater than the strength of gravitational attraction! (Not 35 TIMES, but 35 Orders Of Magnitude). So the offset of the electron from the nucleus can be absolutely miniscule and yet produce an extremely strong force to counteract gravitational collapse. The Sun does not require internally generated heat in order to avoid collapse. 3. The same question ("Why doesn't it collapse due to gravity?") should be asked about globular clusters of stars or even galaxies. The real answer in these cases is also electrical in nature.
Questions
There are many questions still to be answered regarding the Electric Sun model. Is there any fusion at all occurring in or on the Sun? If so, where - the chromosphere? - the bottom of the corona? - penumbrae of sunspots? What is the exact circuit diagram - precisely what paths do the galactic currents take in the vicinity of the Sun? Will the solar charge be replenished over time by cosmic ions ("rays")? Do incoming cosmic rays help power the Sun? We know that large currents are necessary to produce the Sun's strange and changing magnetic fields. Are the magnetic field reversals observed on the Sun due to reversals (or changes of some sort) in the galactic currents across which the Sun is traveling? Or is the Sun simply traveling through many different current streams? Are pulsars binary stars that act together as relaxation oscillators?
Conclusion
This has been a brief introduction to the Electric Sun model: - the idea that our Sun is a ball of lightning a huge electrically charged relatively quiescent sphere of gas that supports an electric plasma arc discharge on its surface and is powered by the subtle currents that move throughout the tenuous plasma that fills our galaxy. The scientific community now ought to at least begin to re-examine the assumptions of today's orthodox thermonuclear models which fail to explain the most basic, observed, solar phenomena. Juergens' Electric Sun model does predict the existence of the temperature minimum. It doesn't require convection to occur where it cannot. It does predict both the existence and the acceleration of the solar wind. The neutrinos are not "missing" they just aren't there. All of the above are failures of the "generally accepted" thermonuclear model that are easily understood from the point of view of the Electric Sun. Ralph Juergens had the genius to be the first to develop the Electric Sun model after reading the works of Alfven, Birkeland, Langmuir and other giants of electrical/plasma science. His model uniquely passes the harsh tests of observed reality. His seminal work may eventually get the recognition it deserves. Or, of course, others may try to claim it, or parts of it, and hope the world forgets who came up with it first.
References:
1. The Physics of the Sun and the Gateway to the Stars - Eugene N. Parker, Physics Today June 2000 p26-31. 2. Guest Editorial - Anthony L. Peratt IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.613. 3. Double Layers and Circuits in Astrophysics - Hannes Alfven (Nobel Prize) IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.779.
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4. Model of the Plasma Universe - Hannes Alfven (Nobel Prize) IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.629. 5. The Persistent Problem of Spiral Galaxies - Halton Arp, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.748 6. Evolution of the Plasma Universe: I Double Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and Extragalactic Jets Anthony L. Peratt IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986 p.639. 7. Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II The Formation of Systems of Galaxies - Anthony L. Peratt IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.763. 8. Intergalactic Plasma - Grote Reber IEEE Transactions on Plasma Physics, Dec 1986. p.678. 9. STELLAR THERMONUCLEAR ENERGY: A FALSE TRAIL? - Ralph Juergens, KRONOS A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis, Vol. IV, No. 4 Summer 1979, pp. 16-27. 10. THE PHOTOSPHERE: IS IT THE TOP OR THE BOTTOM OF THE PHENOMENON WE CALL THE SUN? - Ralph Juergens, KRONOS A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis, Vol. IV, No. 4 Summer 1979, pp. 28- 54. 11. THE NOT SO STABLE SUN - Earl R. Milton, KRONOS A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis, Vol. V, No. 1 Fall 1979. [Ed note: Don's WebPages are still under construction. Check back again to learn more: Spicules, Bulk gas flow between tufts, Stark effect (Fraunhofer "broadening"), etc., etc., ...are all predicted by the Electric Sun hypothesis.] Don Scott
RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION
By Amy Acheson and Halton Arp Well, I could have called the post "raging fury". It's how I've felt today since reading the latest release from Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0011/12quasar/ My out of proportion anger hasn't much to do with the article itself. The article discusses the mainstream concept of gravitational lensing of quasars. It completely ignores the controversy that they may be observing a group of ejected quasars rather than one gravitationally lensed quasar, especially in the topic sentence, which says: A carefully planned observation of this mirage may be used to determine the expansion rate of the Universe as well as to measure the distances to extragalactic objects, arguably two of the most important pursuits in modern astronomy. [GRRRR! I'll show them "arguable!" The expansion rate is zero and if they ever find an honest hint of the actual distances, they're in for a BIG surprise.] What Halton Arp said last week about Stephan's Quintet applies here, as well: This case dramatizes, I believe, the power of government controlled agencies to publish pictures which, at a glance, contradict current theory but then they say with complete authority that it once again proves 'Big Bang' cosmology. But, like I said, that's not what's getting my Irish up today. What's bothering me is that this time I'm fully aware -- I have the printed-out copy in front of me -- that Halton Arp has written to NASA and ESA officials (among others) just this week to let them know that the controversy isn't over. And here they've printed yet another article that fails to acknowledge that the Big Bang and Expanding universe are still in doubt.
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Okay, I can accept it when the mainstream ignores us "crack-pots." Most of us turned our backs on them. In my more positive moods, I believe it's because we recognized their foolishness "before it was too late", and I think there's more truth than bravado in that. But the fact remains that many of us did walk away from mainstream science. But Halton Arp did stay in. He jumped through all the hoops. He even accepted an assigned thesis when (hindsight shows) the one he proposed might have "discovered" quasars a decade before they actually were discovered. He got his assignment to Palomar. He earned the Helen B Warner prize and the Newcomb Cleveland award and the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. This is what makes me angry today. After all that, WHAT RIGHT DOES THE MAINSTREAM HAVE TO TREAT ARP'S MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY LIKE THIS? End of temper tantrum. For the most part, I think our best response is to ignore them back. If Arp is right, then all the number-crunching and computer-enhanced space-telescope photos in the world will never make the fairy tale of a Big Bang and an Expanding Universe come true. But Arp added another sentence to his note about Stephan's Quintet. He said: NASA and ESA are sensitive to public pressure, but only slowly to very strong pressure. You mean even us crack-pots? Do you (or anybody else?) have any suggestions of how we might exert that kind of pressure? ~Amy Acheson Response to Amy, Probably anger is evolutionarily useful. So I am glad that I am not the only one that gets angry about official disinformation. The present release on the "gravitational lens" 911 +0551, however, is a trap the overconfident have walked into. In one of two long papers which are scheduled to appear in the 1 March Astrophysical Journal I print, in color, a picture of this object with a string of galaxies leading directly back to a relatively large, obviously, nearby galaxy! The miracle of my getting papers published in the Astrophysical Journal, however, is tempered by the fact that certainly most professionals will not read this article and, of course, only the professionals see the journal. I am setting up a web site and can put some of this material on it. But it will be hard to compete with the Penn State news release which apparently is supported by the English magazine "Astronomy Now" on their website "Space Flight Now". This means there are more loose cannons rolling around besides the NASA website. The current version of Astronomy Now is a for profit scrambling outfit which would only react they saw a possible financial advantage. Maybe they would go for the controversy angle if they realized their audience was much more informed than the professionals. NASA might react if they thought some congressmen were getting pressure about their overhyping their data. Possibly some energetic, objective people could set up a rival news service that would win the hearts (and financial support) of the interested public. (Margaret Burbidge is writing up a paper for the January AAS meeting announcing a devastating new pair of quasars across Arp 220.) [Ed note: you can find Arp 220 in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, at this website: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Arp55.html ]
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Maybe we should support more the existing alternative journals like Journal of Scientific Exploration and Tom Van Flandern's Meta Research Bulletin (and website). Maybe we should do all of the above while not forgetting to celebrate the new, paradigm busting results which are relentlessly rolling in. Halton Arp
BRIEF SIS REPORT

By Wal Thornhill Having just about recovered from being upside-down again I thought a short report on the SIS meeting in London would be in order. It was only last Saturday, on a grey, showery autumnal day, that the SIS meeting was held in University College, London. The sloped lecture theatre was well suited and technically fitted out for the 60 or so that turned up. There was a Chinese astronomer from Beijing, Clark Whelton from New York, Birgit Leisching from Belgium, and a Scandinavian astronomer whose sole reason for being there seemed to be to throw doubt on Halton's work. He didn't succeed and left at the lunch break having presumably learnt nothing. Evidently the Electric Universe was beneath his dignity to attend. There were two young students(?) at the meeting too. Brian Moore, Jill Abery, Trevor Palmer, Peter James, David Salkeld, the Tresman family and many other familiar faces from the SIS were there. Halton had the floor from 11am until lunch-time. The material covered was much the same as we saw in Portland. Question time was enthusiastic and it provided an opportunity to raise the surprising connection between the spacing of planetary orbits and quantized redshifts. The presentation was videotaped by Randall Meyers who had been taping an interview with Fred Hoyle the day before. Halton and I spent lunch-time talking about some of the issues raised by plasma cosmology and the Electric Universe model. Unfortunately he had to leave following lunch. The afternoon began with a short history by John Crowe of Velikovsky's challenge to astronomical orthodoxy and his relationship with Einstein. Many of V's outrageous "advance claims" were noted that were later confirmed. John felt that Velikovsky would be well pleased with the work that was now being done on the electrical nature of the cosmos. John was followed briefly by Clark Whelton who thought that Velikovsky would be well treated by future historians of science but that his historical reconstructions would not because he was a "chronological fundamentalist". Velikovsky believed absolutely in the chronology of the Bible. Clark made the important observation that history should be pieced together by working backwards, building the evidence in a continuous fashion, rather than setting benchmarks and trying to fill in the gaps. That is a technique that should apply to cosmology as well. It is heeded far more by Halton Arp, Tony Peratt and myself than by astrophysicists who seem content to work forward from some hypothetical, idealized beginning. The Saturn model extends the time span of human observations enormously and so offers us the most complete set of data from which to work. The Electric Universe presentation occupied the rest of the afternoon apart from a short tea break following the introduction. It used the same format as in Portland but with some improvements and changes to suit the different audience. I also included a brief review of the Portland meeting. There followed an extensive question time with many good observations and queries. The audience response was enthusiastic and easily the best I have had from the SIS. It reflects, in part I think, the longer time available and continuing improvements in presentation - it was the first time I have had the facilities to give a computer driven show to the Society. My thanks go to Simon and Ian Tresman for their technical support.
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The SIS stalwarts and those with further questions repaired to a local pub to continue discussions over a pint. The two young students were there. I believe we are at last winning converts to the Saturn thesis in London. Wal Thornhill
GALACTIC CONNECTIONS
posted by Walter Radtke [Ed Note: Here's some fascinating excerpts from an article posted to Kroniatalk by Walter Radtke.] (full article and histograms can be found at: www.21stcenturysciencetech.com )
RUSSIAN DISCOVERY CHALLENGES EXISTENCE OF 'ABSOLUTE TIME'

by Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum ...By demonstrating the existence of a universal, astronomical factor influencing the fine structure of supposedly random fluctuations, Shnoll et al. have opened up an entirely new field of scientific investigation which is not supposed to exist, according to Bohr. A Simple Experiment We now give a very brief description of the basic phenomenon discovered by Shnoll and his collaborators. The phenomenon itself is so astonishingly simple, that it is amazing that it has not attracted more attention until now. The simplest case is the measurement of radioactive decay, where Shnoll has conducted thousands of experiments of the following simple type. We take a radioactive sample, and place it in front of a suitable detector (such as a Geiger counter), which counts the individual acts of radioactive decay of nuclei in the sample by detecting the emitted particles. Assuming the half-life of the radioactive element involved is relatively long, the count-rate of the detector, in counts per second or per minute, will fluctuate around a certain average value, which is related to the number of radioactive atoms in the sample and their halflife. This phenomenon of continual fluctuations in the number of counts per unit time, around a relatively fixed average value, is normally accounted for by assuming that the radioactive decay of any given atom is a random event, and the assumption that decay of a given atom occurs independently of the other atoms in the sample. Thus, each atom which has not yet decayed up to a certain moment in time, has a certain probability of decaying during the next minute-a probability which is fixed for any given isotope by the character of that isotope, and virtually independent of the temperature, chemical environment, and activity of neighboring atoms. An extraordinary phenomenon emerges, however, when we examine the fluctuations more carefully, with the help of a histogram: We fix a certain period of time (10 seconds, or a minute for example), and record the number of counts during each of a series of consecutive intervals of the given length. This gives us a sequence of whole numbers. We construct a histogram, by plotting the number of times a given whole number appears in the sequence, as a function of the number. Now, from the standpoint of simple statistics we would expect the histogram curve to have a simple bell shape, with a maximum around the number corresponding to the overall average number of counts, and then declining gradually on both sides. Naturally, if the number of measurements is small, the histogram will look more irregular, owing to the effect of random fluctuations; but we would expect that as we
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increase the total time of measurement, the curve would become closer and closer to the ideal mathematical bell curve. However, real measurements of radioactivity and many other processes, carried out by Shnoll and others over many years, give a completely different result! The histograms typically show several clearly defined peaks, which do not "smooth out" as we increase the number of measurements, but which actually become more and more pronounced! In four histograms, each plotting the results of 1,200 consecutive measurements of the radioactivity of a sample of the iron isotope Fe-55, over 36-second intervals, the largest peak corresponds to the average count, of about 31,500 pulses per 36 seconds; but there are a number of other peaks, which we can see emerging more and more clearly as we follow the cumulative results of the first 100, 200, 300, and so on, measurements as "layers" under the main curve (Figure 1). Change in Shape over Time The histograms, made from more than two days from four successive 12-hour-long series of measurements, show another typical phenomenon discovered by Shnoll: The shapes of the histograms change over time (Figure 2). Most remarkably, the shapes of histograms for independent measurements taken over the same time period, tend to be very similar. For example, simultaneous measurement of the reaction rate of ascorbic acid, dichlorophenolindophenol (DCPIP), and beta activity of carbon-14 show histograms of very similar shape. These and a large number of other experiments carried out by Shnoll and his collaborators over many years, point unambiguously to the existence of a universal factor influencing the shapes of histograms, and which varies in time. Furthermore, the Russian researchers have discovered well-defined periods, over which similar histogram shapes tend to recur (Figure 3). To do this, they devised a computer-based algorithm for measuring the relative degree of "closeness" or similarity of histogram shapes, and on this basis carried out a computer analysis of hundreds of histograms taken over a long period. Examining the distribution of time intervals between "similar" histograms, they found strong peaks at 0 hours (that is, histograms made independently at the same time tend to be similar), at approximately 24 hours, at 27.28 days (probably corresponding to the synodic rotation of the Sun), and at three time intervals close to a year: 364.4, 365.2 and 366.6 days. More recent data, just reported to the author, indicate that the "24-hour" period is actually slightly shorter, and corresponds quite precisely to a sidereal day! The latter would suggest, that at least one astronomical factor influencing histogram shape may originate outside the solar system, being associated with the orientation of the measuring station relative to the galaxy, and not only relative to the Sun. Shnoll concludes: From the data presented above, it follows that the 'idea of shape'-the fine structure of distributions of results of measurements of processes of diverse nature-is determined by cosmological factors. He does not put forward a definite hypothesis concerning the nature of the these factors, but suggests as a possibility the notion of a global "change of space- time structure," and notes that "a sound analysis of such a hypothesis will possibly require experiments under different gravitational conditions." Clearly, these results should be intensively followed up by scientists around the world... Copyright (c) 2000 21st Century Science Associates. All rights reserved.
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SPINNING ELECTRONS
by Wal Thornhill [Ed note: this post was offered in response to the above article.] I favour the idea of classical, "causal" physics as distinct from the fashionable "acausal" quantum mechanics. It is this kind of evidence of connectedness of matter on a galactic scale that I believe is required to solve the problems thrown up for physics by Arp's observations of quantised redshifts of quasars and companion galaxies. However, I don't expect theoretical physicists to be overjoyed at the news. It is going to be a very difficult road to follow for those who are besotted by the "elegance" of their mathematical theories. So the outcome I expect will be a resounding silence. The item has prompted me to share with you something I read today that portrays the problem very well. It is an excerpt from an editorial in Physics Today of last March, written by N. David Merman: In a lecture at Fermilab ..., Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar talked about "harmoniously organizing a domain with order, pattern, and coherence." (See his article in Physics Today 1979, page 25.) He cited five examples of such pinnacles of exposition, one of them being Paul Dirac's celebrated book, Principles of Quantum Mechanics. "The translucence of the eternal splendor through material phenomena," Chandrasekhar remarked, "[is] made iridescent in these books." Keeping that iridescent translucence firmly in mind, consider the following remarks of the eminent mathematician Jean Dieudonn: When one arrives at the mathematical theories on which quantum mechanics is based, one realizes that the attitude of certain physicists in the handling of these theories truly borders on delirium ... One has to ask oneself what remains in the mind of a student who has absorbed this unbelievable accumulation of nonsense, real hogwash! It would appear that today's physicists are only at ease in the vague, the obscure, and the contradictory. What is Dieudonn talking about? He is addressing the approach to quantum mechanics laid out in Dirac's book. Elegance in physics is as much in the eye of the beholder as it is in any other field of human endeavor. Dirac's formulation appeals to physicists because, by being a little vague and ambiguous about its precise mathematical structure, it enables them to grasp and manipulate the physical content of the theory with a clarity and power that would be greatly diminished if one were distracted by certain complicating but fundamentally uninteresting mathematical technicalities. But for mathematicians, those minor technical matters lie at the heart of the subject. Quantum mechanics becomes ill-formulated and grotesque if it does not properly rest on impeccable mathematical foundations. Merman then uses a beautiful phrase to describe this situation when he writes: Chandrasekhar and Dieudonn ... sensitized me to what one might call interdisciplinary aesthetic dissonance ..." Merman writes, a little later: ... it occurred to me that a curious episode, early in my professional career, was yet another manifestation of the same phenomenon. Over 25 years ago, I became interested in the physics of the newly discovered superfluid phases of helium-3. I realized that one of the phases of this unique fluid bore a striking similarity to a type of structure known to mechanical engineers as a Cosserat continuum. So when I noticed one day
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that there was a seminar on Cosserat continua on the Cornell Engineering quad, I wandered over. I didn't learn anything useful about helium-3 from the engineers, but in the discussion period after the lecture, rather to my surprise, a heated debate broke out over whether a point particle could have an angular momentum-the terms of the argument were whether a particle with no internal structure at all could nevertheless spin like a top. I found this dispute remarkable for two reasons. First, because I hadn't thought that hard-headed engineers could become so passionate about so fundamentally metaphysical an issue. And second, because the question, insofar as it had empirical content, had an elegant answer whose relevance to their argument the disputants seemed not to have noticed. So I rose to my feet and made a remark, elegantly stated in four words, that I was sure would settle the whole debate: What about an electron? There followed a sickening silence. It was as if someone in the crowd had shouted an obscenity. (This was the early 1970s, when somebody in any crowd was quite likely to shout an obscenity.) A senior professor of theoretical and applied mechanics rose slowly from his seat, fixed me with a baleful gaze, and delivered this crushing rejoinder: Have you ever seen an electron? His riposte elicited nods and murmurs of approval throughout the auditorium. Then they returned to their deliberations with undiminished vigor. My elegant invocation of physical reality to cut through a metaphysical argument was viewed as a clumsy introduction of speculative metaphysics into a tough-mindedly practical debate aboutabout what? To this day, I do not know what the debate was about. So I slunk back to the physics corner of the campus, where the elegance and relevance of spinning electrons remained unchallenged.
It is interesting that Merman seems to visualize an electron as a spinning object when it is treated by physicists as a mathematical abstraction - a point particle. For those who have had their curiosity aroused, see the full text at: http://www.aip.org/pt/mar00/refmar.htm Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 1 (January 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: ERROR PROBES, TRUTH PROBES, AND SPACE PROBES YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND ONE HUBBLE TELESCOPE RELEASE CHALLENGED A PERPENDICULAR EXPLOSION STRANGE GRAVITY
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott by Halton Arp by Kroniatalk and Friends by Wal Thornhill
ERROR PROBES, TRUTH PROBES, AND SPACE PROBES

By Mel Acheson Christiaan Eijkman discovered that a bacterium in polished rice caused beriberi and an anti-toxin in the coating cured it. This was in 1886, just after the germ theory of disease had become fashionable. Eijkman verified his theory with a massive study of 280 000 people. He ruled out the possibility of other causal factors--sanitation, hygiene, and so on. And he cured victims by feeding them unpolished rice, just as his theory predicted. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his achievement. Gerrit Grijns followed in Eijkman's footsteps. But Gerrit was a crackpot, that is, he had an altogether different idea. He imagined beriberi was caused not by something in the rice but by something not in the rice. He began looking for data that would raise doubts about Eijkman's theory: Beriberi was also associated with diets of tapioca root; foods other than rice polishings could cure it. And no one could find Eijkman's bacterium. Both theories explained the facts. Both theories predicted the cure. Both theories were verified. But Grijns' theory could be applied to a much larger assemblage of data and had benefits far beyond the domain of rice diets and beriberi. Today astronomers attribute the non-Newtonian motions of stars and galaxies to an infection of dark matter in the universe. Gravitational theory--which has been experimentally verified many, many times-can explain the observed motions only by assuming there's some unseen matter swirling around outside what we see. The cure is in the galactic polishings. Now along comes a crackpot idea: Perhaps the non-Newtonian motions aren't caused by something out there but by something not out there. Perhaps gravity is not out there. An abundance of anomalies raises doubts about gravitational theory: Galaxies that are supposed to be astronomically far from each other are interacting; the primary distance indicator, the cosmological redshift, is quantized in sharply delineated bands; matter is collimated into extremely thin, long, and coherent filaments; concentrations of matter that should be pulling everything in are spewing everything out. And the quantity of dark matter needed to explain those anomalous motions turns out to be over 90% of the universe.
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Douglas Allchin, in his recent paper "The Epistemology of Error", discusses the episode of Eijkman, Grijns, and beriberi. He emphasizes that the important distinction for characterizing knowledge is not the conventional "dichotomies of fact/artifact, true/false, and right/wrong." Rather, the "key epistemological distinction ... is between empirically unresolved questions, or uncertainty, and resolved questions." Grijns's challenge was not to show ... that beriberi was a nutrient deficiency. Rather, he had to show first how initial evidence consistent with a bacterial interpretation was ambiguous. Then ... it could indicate something else. Allchin identifies 'uncertainty' as the primitive state. Fact and artifact co-emerge from undifferentiated perception. He goes on to assert that simply confirming a theory doesn't provide reliability. Verification must be accompanied by a search for alternate explanations, which he calls "error probes". He presents the idea of error probes in a rather static way: A theory, such as Eijkman's, which is verified, is later shown to be "erroneous". But in moving from one to the other, a dynamic process occurs. One can't assume (as the term "error" tends to do) that the process stops with the second theory. The later theory may eventually be shown also to be erroneous. The concept of "domain of validity" fits better with an ongoing process of discovering alternative explanations. The domain of Eijkman's theory was the data then available about rice diets and the effects of polishings. Within the boundaries of that domain, Eijkman's theory was true. Verification, then, is a "truth probe" that probes no further than a theory's frontier. Eijkman's efforts were limited to truth probes. He neglected to perform an error probe because he assumed (albeit unconsciously) that the domain of the bacterial theory was infinite. You can't learn anything new if you limit yourself to verifying what you already know. Presumably, Eijkman was not in a position to be able even to imagine a cause bigger than bacterial infection. But his work began the process of differentiation that prodded Grijns to imagine a bigger concept. Similarly, Newton was not in a position to imagine anything bigger than gravity. His error--and that of his mainstream followers down to the present day--was the assumption that the domain of validity of gravitational theory is universal. Newton didn't know about plasma or galaxies or redshifts or error probes. His followers, however, don't have this excuse of simple ignorance. Their efforts to preserve the theory at the expense of the phenomena are culpable. To establish what Allchin calls "deep reliability", it's necessary to investigate possible alternative explanations. [R]eliability hinges on a dual process of confirmation and ruling out error. Today there are a number of alternatives to the Newtonian idea of universal gravitation. Tom Van Flandern has developed a theory of "limited action" gravity. Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar have proposed a variable-mass version of gravitation. And there are several proposals of electrical and plasma dynamics that largely or entirely replace gravity. All these theories explain more data and have furtherreaching implications than the mainstream theory. Their domains are larger. Their potential benefits are larger. Their promises of increased understanding of the universe are larger. Universal gravitation suffers from "shallow reliability" that extends no further than verification. Even that is eroding as space probes discover anomalous details to once-confirmatory data. Ambiguity is increasing. Knowledge heretofore assumed to be secure is slipping back into the primitive state of uncertainty. It will re-emerge transformed by a new resolution. The error probe, when finally it's forced on a stubborn and blind establishment, will find the error to be Newton's.
Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND ONE

By Dave Talbott Year Two Thousand and One. I like the sound of that. Taking a momentary break from book-related work, I'd like to offer a few notes and asides on what promises to be our most productive year ever.
INTERSECT 2001
WORLD CONFERENCE, July 6-9. The event will be held in Laughlin, Nevada, and we expect to attract a minimum of 200 attendees, including a couple of dozen internationally respected scholars and scientists invited as special observers. Presenters will include many of those at the September 2000 seminar, but also a few noteworthy additional names to be announced shortly. The event will include extensive presentations on the Electric Universe and Saturn Model, with a good deal of animation and graphic material presented for the first time.
THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

Over the past 60 days we've made substantial headway on the book, scheduled for completion by June 30 this year. This will be the first integrated presentation of the Saturn Model and Electric Universe and will represent a major step forward. In this regard, I must mention that Wal and I have received superb help from Amy Acheson in assembling previous material into a working narrative--a tremendous challenge in view of the breadth of subject. It will not be a small book, and it will be richly illustrated in full color.
DATABASE.
Thanks to the financial support obtained in the wake of the highly successful September seminar, the accomplished linguist Rens van der Sluijs is now working full time on the development of our mythological database. This is a comprehensive, non-selective, region-by-region compendium of gods, their attributes and symbols, and listings of astronomical traditions, general folklore, and superstitions. This raw database is supplemented by a listing of broadly-distributed or global mythical and symbolic motifs abstracted from the data base and currently totaling more than 500 themes. We expect the list to reach perhaps 1000. Of course the files will continue to evolve over the coming years, and eventually we expect to have many additional authorities contributing to this invaluable resource.
SNAPSHOTS OF THE POLAR CONFIGURATION.

In connection with the rapidly-growing data base, I'm now preparing a series of "snapshots" of the evolving planetary configuration. These are designed to enable objective researchers to test the predictive ability of the model along any lines they might choose. The model claims that the defining events of world mythology are directly connected to the illustrated phases of the configuration and to the violent transitions from one phase to another. For each snapshot there will be a listing of the story elements and visual symbols directly inspired by that phase. This overview will give independent researchers the tools needed to test the implications of the model down to hundreds of specific details. It will also enable the critic to challenge our claim of a unified theory by seeking out archetypal elements that are not expected or predicted under the model. Our claim, of course, is that all of archetypal
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mythology arose from the same core experiences of the human race and that substratum of ancient memories is highly unified.
SCHOLARLY AND SCIENTIFIC OUTREACH.

Perhaps our greatest progress over the past year resulted from liaison with such distinguished experts as astronomer Halton Arp, plasma cosmologist Tony Peratt, and geologist Robert Schoch. Our plan is to expand and accelerate such liaison in the coming months as we look ahead to the July world conference. In this regard, we will welcome suggestions from readers. We are seeking to identify uniquely openminded researchers with the highest qualifications in these areas of interest: cosmology, astronomy, physics and mathematics, geology, history and philosophy of science, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, comparative mythology, and comparative religion. We would particularly like to hear from readers who are in a good position to assist us in liaison with such experts.
PERATT INSTABILITIES.
Certainly the most promising developments of all in the year 2000 relate to the surprising information we received from Tony Peratt, Associate Director for Experimental Programs at the Los Alamos Laboratory and author of Physics of the Plasma Universe. Tony has devoted many years to the study of unstable plasma discharge configurations and personally documented what are now called, in plasma science, "Peratt Instabilities." (Some examples will be found in his textbook.) As it turns out, these discharge configurations provide a thoroughly convincing explanation for some of the most extraordinary and detailed aspects of the Saturnian configuration. The direct correspondence with various rock art and other ancient images (on which the Saturn Model is based) is so detailed and so precise that, to put it bluntly, the correspondence simply could not be due to accident. Though we're not able to say more at this time, if all goes as we now expect this breakthrough will enable us to present the Saturn Model on a much faster track. And the presentation will include laboratory demonstrations and computer simulations beyond anything we had earlier envisioned. All told, therefore, we have every reason to believe that 2001 will be a very good year. Dave Talbott
HUBBLE TELESCOPE RELEASE CHALLENGED

By Halton Arp On 26 October, the European Space Agency issued "breaking news" on Stephan's Quintet of galaxies: (http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0010/26hststephen/) It stated "Just by looking at this splendid [Hubble Space Telescope] image it is clear that the redshift discordance ... is now finally resolved. Hubble's resolution is so high that individual stars can be discerned in [the lower redshift galaxy], showing that it is definitely closer than the [remaining higher redshift] group of galaxies." Surprisingly, "just looking at the picture" shows that the resolution of young stars in the high galaxies is just as good as in the low redshift galaxy! HII regions of glowing gas are supposed good indicator of galaxy distances. But in the Hubble picture they appear the same in both systems. If the high redshift galaxies were really at their assumed redshift distances their HII would be relatively 7-8 times smaller and fainter. Obviously they are not. redshift to be a redshift regions
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Contrary to the statement in this news release, the low redshift galaxy (NGC7320) has always been considered a nearby galaxy. It is only 31 arcminutes from the large, nearby NGC 7331, has the same redshift and resolution characteristics and is the normal type of companion which most large galaxies have. The point at issue has never been the distance of NGC 7320. It has always been whether the high redshift members of the Quintet are at the same close distance of NGC7320, thereby invalidating the redshift distance law on which the theory of an expanding universe is based. In addition to the above, the evidence that the high redshift galaxies are closeby is still the same or stronger than in the past, namely: 1) The edge of NGC7320 is extended toward the high redshift galaxies as if in interaction. The majority of its HII regions are on this side. Not shown in the Hubble picture is a long tail extending backward from NGC7320 supporting the interaction interpretation. 2) The differences in redshift between the high redshift members, if interpreted as velocity, is greater than 1000 km/sec. Galaxies are not supposed to have such high peculiar velocities. The accepted redshift-apparent magnitude relation would be destroyed for brighter galaxies. Moreover, if the galaxies were really travelling this fast, the group would dissipate on a very short time scale. The chances of our seeing them all so close together would be very small. 3) It has been shown that large galaxies like NGC7331, the parent to NGC7320, have higher redshift companions preferentially along their minor axes. In the present case, just on the other side of the minor axis of NGC7331 is a group of companion galaxies almost exactly matching the high redshift members of Stefan's Quintet in redshift, size and appearance - a circumstance very unlikely to occur by chance.) 4) Radio telescope measures in the region show a continuous connection between the high redshift companions on the east of NGC7331, through NGC7331 and toward Stefan's Quintet to the south west. All the above evidence has been published in numerous articles in the Astrophysical Journal in the 1970's (e.g. Astrophys. Journ. 183, 411, 1973) and summarized in the book Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, Interstellar Media, 1987,) pp. 96-102.) It would seem to be an important responsibility for agencies like ESA and NASA, which are responsible for governing the use of Space Telescope, to release complete information and be careful to avoid one-sided and possibly misleading interpretations of observations.) Halton Arp Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik 31Oct. 2000) ADDENDUM The Space Telescope picture of Stefan's Quintet, however, also shows some new features that argue for the interaction of NGC7320 with the high redshift galaxies. The features are: 1) Large numbers of blue stars in the body of NGC7320. Even in a population I type dwarf, it is unusual to see such dense numbers of stars which have such short lifetimes. This means there must have been a very recent event which caused widespread star formation in NGC7320. The only other objects in the vicinity that could have caused such an event are the high redshift NGC7318A and B. In this regard it is a little noted fact that Jack Sulentic showed some years ago that NGC7320 is strikingly deficient in hydrogen. Since this is the raw material out of which stars are made, the residual gas must have been stripped out of NGC7320 after the already very recent formation event of the numerous blue stars. 2) The resolved blue stars as well as the underlying population on the NW side of NGC7320 are extended toward NGC7318A and B. The blue stars even show some evidence of streaming toward the high redshift pair.
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The obvious model to explain these observations is that NGC7320 and NGC7318 started approaching each other. The medium surrounding the high redshift pair compressed the medium in NGC7320, initiated star formation, and then started sweeping the hydrogen out of NGC7320. The well known long, faint surface brightness tail coming out the other end of NGC7320 not only attests to such an interaction but confirms its direction. Of course the new stars in NGC7320 no longer are controlled by the gas pressure and can fall toward the gravity source in the direction of the centers of NGC7318A and B. IT WOULD BE OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE TO OBTAIN A SPACE TELESCPE IMAGE OF THE TAIL COMING OUT OF THE SE END OF NGC7320! It is also noteworthy that the place of the major HII and star formation region in NGC7318B is just in the interface between NGC7320 and NGC9318B. It is in the form of a filament bent back toward the higher redshift galaxy in just the direction of the deduced pressure from the approaching NGC7320. The present space telescope image shows delicate absorption features emerging from the nucleus of NGC7319. Being a Seyfert galaxy, NGC7319 would be expected to be ejecting material out along its minor axis. The high redshift H alpha emission and the X-ray and radio emitting material all suggest ionized material jetting out of the NGC7319 nucleus, along the minor axis, impinging on the medium surrounding NGC7318A and B and spreading north and south. This southern material reaches essentially to the NW end of NGC7320 and attests both to the medium surrounding NGC7318 but also suggests the physical contiguity of NGC7320. Halton Arp 2 Nov, 2000
A PERPENDICULAR EXPLOSION
By Kroniatalk and Friends
MARK KORSKY POSTED THIS WEBSITE: http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/edu/g-bank/articles/anctcity.html EXCERPTS: Ancient City Found In India Irradiated By Nuclear Blast 8,000 Years Ago Radiation still so intense, the area is highly dangerous A heavy layer of radioactive ash in Rajasthan, India, covers a three-square mile area, ten miles west of Jodhpur. Scientists are investigating the site, where a housing development was being built. Scientists have unearthed an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people. One researcher estimates that the nuclear bomb used was about the size of the ones dropped on Japan in 1945. MYTH REFERENCE FROM ARTICLE: An ancient battle is described in the Drona Parva, a section of the Mahabharata. 'The passage tells of combat where explosions of final weapons decimate entire armies, causing crowds of warriors with steeds and elephants and weapons to be carried away as if they were dry leaves of trees,' says [researcher] Ganguli.

DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS:
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For all it's worth: The descriptions of the holocaust from the DRONA PARVA section of the MAHABHARATA as relayed by this Kroniatalk person are entirely correct - by which I mean that these descriptions ARE contained in the DRONA PARVA. However, it should be kept in mind that deities (and planetary ones at that) also took part in this warfare in which the "Triple City" was destroyed. Even so, as I had long ago realized, the descriptions of this battle, and especially its aftermath, read very much like a modern atomic confrontation. Personally, I do not believe that atomic weapons were known during the time of the Bharata War, but this has always left another door open - which raises the question: Could the planetary thunderbolts (the weapons of the Bharata War) which brought the Saturnian configuration to an end have been imbued with nuclear energy? I'm sure Thornhill will be against this notion and, not to be misunderstood, I am only posing the question. But one thing HAS to be kept in mind: As already stated, and I could supply more quotes, the descriptions in the DRONA PARVA are identical to descriptions that came out of the Hiroshima bombing and, in fact, I have compared the DRONA PARVA battle, item by item, with the Hiroshima event. These events match. As for the reported discoveries of sites in India which bear radioactive strata, I had never before now read anything of the sort and, as far as I know, nothing of the sort has made it into the type of news-literature I usually peruse. MARK KORSKY WANTS TO KNOW: I'm curious: how would an electrical explanation of the phenomenon account for the residual radiation? AMY SAID: I would guess that we always need to keep that pot on the back burner -- the possibility that previous civilizations have already "blasted themselves back into the stone age." So I won't discount it completely. But the Mahabharata is not at all alone in describing "an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death". This is certainly the same story told round the world of the gods and their lightningweapons. That's why the working title of Dave and Wal's upcoming book is "Thunderbolts of the Gods". So, if this ancient city was destroyed by an atomic bomb, then there must have been many other bombs dropped as well to generate the many other stories. The other possibility (the one that I favor) is that the description of gigantic thunderbolts is a description of interplanetary electrical interactions. And, like particle accelerators in labs, a planetary thunderbolt would also be capable of initiating both fusion and fission reactions that could produce radioactive isotopes. Certainly something of that sort happened to the dinosaurs in Colorado -- paleontologists have to hide their finds because old prospectors (with Geiger counters) would grind up dinosaur bones for their uranium content. Like the article reports in India, many areas of the Rockies produce rocks which (when used in building foundations and fill) lead to some of the highest rates of cancer and deformities in the USA. MARK KORSKY SAID: Thanks for your reply. You mentioned ...the possibility that previous civilizations have already "blasted themselves back into the stone age. One reason I find this possibility incredible is the extensive infrastructure required to create nuclear weapons, and the intense contamination caused by nuclear reactors, chemical plants (for making conventional explosives), electronics factories, etc. As far as I know, no evidence of such
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ancient toxic sites exists. And the nuclear explanation cannot account for the "fighting sky chariots," or the imagery of lightning bolts. (As we know too well, nukes are more like "balls of fire.") I asked about electrical causes of residual nuclear radiation, and I like your answer: ...like particle accelerators in labs, a planetary thunderbolt would also be capable of initiating both fusion and fission reactions that could produce radioactive isotopes. Stupendous discharges could involve temperatures great enough for fusion (around 10^8 - 10^9 K), and if enough unstable isotopes were created, some radiation might remain after thousands of years. One could estimate the magnitude of the discharge from the amount and kind of residues. I'd think that given the geology of a site, one could also search for "combustion products" typical of such temperatures in the local surface and building materials. Please understand that I am a complete novice to the theories of catastrophism, and largely skeptical (for want of having read the evidence). But the idea enchants me, both the scope of the questions it addresses, and the audacity of its claims. It's a pleasure to be part of your discussion.
MICHAEL ARMSTONG JUMPED IN WITH: My answer is not intended to be definitive but is just exploring some alternatives to an atomic weapon explanation. First of all it is helpful to get some things into perspective. The US military has what is called a FAB, a fuel-air-bomb that is comparable to a nuclear weapon in explosive energy release and destruction. The device works simply by exploding an aerosol device that mixes a huge amount of flammable gas such a propane with a comparable amount of air into an explosive mixture over a huge area, and then detonates it in a huge and widespread fireball. The magnitude of the size of the aerosol cloud before detonation is what gives this device such destructive potential. Secondly, it is apparent that in a catastrophe on October 8, 1871 around the Chicago area and know as the Great Chicago Fire, a small piece of a comet entered the Earth's' atmosphere and both discharged electrically and exploded and burned an area that covered parts of four states. Material that would be coming at us from outer space would most probably be coming from a nonoxygenating environment and could consist of almost any material;, many of which would react violently in the Earth's Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere. It is helpful to understand that for the non-metallic elements Oxygen and Nitrogen are the second and third most chemically reactive elements behind Fluorine. A chunk of material coming in could be partly elemental Phosphorous, Selenium or Sulphur, for instance. Even vaporized Fe has a tremendous reactive potential when suddenly released into Oxygen/Nitrogen. According to Velikovsky's research we have significant reason to believe that chunks of frozen hydrocarbons--naphtha, methane, ethane, propane, acetylene, etc.--have intersected the Earth and rained down fire and flammable material with devastating results. Thirdly, in the electrical universe view of things, it is possible and even probable for incoming material to be charged--sometimes even HIGHLY charged--in relationship to the Earth, and then, after glowing brightly on its way into our electrical environment, to discharge in a bolt or bolts between it and the Earth. Such a discharge could or would fragmentize or vaporize this material, and in a moment release the combined electrical, chemical and kinetic energy, and could easily make our largest nuclear weapons look puny by comparison. Finally, it is a postulate of the electric universe view that such highly energetic discharges in/through our atmosphere can and do initiate a degree of nuclear fusion, say, between O & O giving S and can rain down a shower of radioactive material, or otherwise produce radioactivity and remenant magnetism around the crater or rille. And, there is nothing to say that incoming material cannot be already radioactive.
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I hope this helps us all see that there is a significant range of possibilities for the above type of destruction other than postulating that such was a designed-by-intelligence nuclear weapon in purposeful warfare. Probably variations of the above scenario have happened MANY times down through the ages and around the world. Consider the Tunguska event. See Dr. V's writings regarding the time around Sennacherib in Worlds in Collision and other articles in Pense and Kronos concerning such destructive fireballs as well as discharge-induced fusion. I also hope that you continue to sleep well:>) HANK MAY ADDED: My background is in ionizing radiation, but (as with everyone else on the planet) I have had no experience with fission or fusion caused by interplanetary lightning or thunderbolt strikes. One can only speculate. I would simply like to point out that Mark's mentioned an essential point that must be considered in any study of the possibilities. Although a self described novice, he pointed out that "One could estimate the magnitude of the discharge by the amount and kind of residues ... and could search for "combustion products". I am doubtful about estimating the magnitude of the thunderbolt, but he is solidly on the mark about studying the amounts and kinds of [radioactive] residues and combustion products. Such a study could likely shed light on whether fission or fusion took place, when it took place, and the amount of fissioning/fusioning that occurred. It could also eliminate possibilities such as the radiation being natural, or even modern contamination events (such as surreptitious disposal or dispersal of radioactive waste). For example, Amy mentioned radioactive dinosaur bones and wondered what caused that. Knowing that the radionuclide is uranium strongly suggests that the radioactivity is natural. Determining the isotopic ratio of U235/U238 would confirm it, and a careful analysis of decay products associated with the uranium would clinch it with near absolute certainty. There is also a mechanism that is known ... uranium deposits were created when solubilized uranium flowed through underground interstices until it arrived at a place (different pH, different chemical environment, etc.) where it left solution and precipitated. Dinosaur bones back then might have contained (and apparently did contain) the right chemicals to cause the precipitation. I think radioactive dinosaur bones are well known and the cause understood, although I once did a quick search to confirm this and found that the literature to be scant (nonexistent). I didn't find anything, but I have a strong recollection of seeing an article somewhere on dinosaur bones contaminated with uranium, during my career in environmental radiation. I am left wondering if the astronauts on the moon were able to collect any information that would shed light on the specific radionuclides that are responsible for the enhanced radiation of craters on the moon (mentioned by Wal). If so, the data could shed a lot of light on the mystery. ANNA MORTON ADDED FROM HER EXPERIENCE: I have a large collection of dino bones from Colorado and Utah. These are from many different species and come from different geological periods too. They all are radioactive. The bones from Moab, Utah show the same amount of radioactivity as the bones from Fruita in Colorado. Both areas are famous for their uranium deposits. The question is, are these bones contaminated? I purchased at one time some fossilized eggs from China, and they show radioactivity as well, so the bones from Argentina. Anna HANK MAY ADDED A CAUTION: I am assuming that all of the radioactivity is from contamination by natural uranium, which decays predominantly by alpha emission. Alpha radiation is extremely hazardous if it gets inside the body, but poses negligible threat otherwise, as alpha particles cannot penetrate the dead layer of skin. However, the alpha decay and subsequent decays are accompanied by beta and gamma radiation, which can penetrate the skin and can be hazardous if there is enough of it. I would recommend that you not eat any of the bones (which hardly needs to be said), and that you also not store them under your bed or anywhere where you are apt to spend a lot of time very near them. RETURNING TO MARK KORSKY'S QUESTIONS:
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I'm curious: how would an electrical explanation of the phenomenon account for the residual radiation?
WAL THORNHILL REPLIES: There is absolutely no reason to attribute nuclear technology to ancient people. Velikovsky gave the answer to this question decades ago in the 1950's when he claimed in Earth in Upheaval: Should an interplanetary discharge take place between the Earth and another celestial body, such as a planet... with possibly billions of volts of potential difference and nuclear fission or fusion, the effect would be similar to that of an explosion of many hydrogen bombs... He claimed in advance that some craters on the Moon would exhibit enhanced radioactivity. That was later discovered to the surprise of geologists. The specific appearance and action of the electric discharge is the realm of the plasma physicist and high-voltage electrical engineering. The tornadic effects "causing crowds of warriors with steeds and elephants and weapons to be carried away as if they were dry leaves of trees" is expected from the rotary nature of such a discharge and the acceleration of matter upwards. The strange type of burning associated with an electric arc is also expected and was reported in the famous Chicago fires at the time of the return of Biela's comet. It is also interesting, given the widespread association of "thunderstones" with lightning, that the blast should be called an "iron thunderbolt". The parasol imagery is interesting and potentially important. CARDONA: Well, I guess that answers the question I posed in my previous message re this discussion. However, let's be careful here. The Triple City destroyed during the DRONA PARVA battle compares with the triple city associated with the Saturnian/Martian hero and must therefore be understood as a celestial entity. (I won't go into details here, but think of the Saturnian enclosure, or band, which, at one time, was composed of three individual rings before it separated into seven.) If that is the case, then the warriors involved in this battle would also have had to have been celestial entities (Talbott's hordes of darkness?). And yet, the ills that befell the CONQUERING army, together with their steeds and elephants, as also the damage suffered by buildings and innocent birds, compare so favorably with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, that one is torn between accepting the entire event as being TOTALLY celestial or only PARTIALLY so.
STRANGE GRAVITY
By Wal Thornhill
The following report was posted on space.com. It seems possible that we are seeing the effect of electrostatic charge on an interplanetary spacecraft that is changing its apparent mass from that measured on Earth. That would be a simple explanation for the boost in acceleration due to an effective increase in the gravitational force between the spacecraft and the Earth. Of course this model has implications for Chip Arp's observation that quasars appear to gain mass as they age. Wal Thornhill
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ARTICLE FOLLOWS:
May the Force Be With You? Mysterious Effect May Influence Spacecraft Trajectories
By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 02:40 p.m. ET 26 November 2000 WASHINGTON -- Space probes using Earth to slingshot their way outward into the solar system appear to have received an extra boost by a mysterious force - perhaps an unknown component of gravity. Scientists hope to confirm the unusual effect as the Stardust spacecraft whips by Earth this coming January. Analysis by radio scientists of the post-Earth flyby trajectories of three spacecraft have shown each craft to have picked up an unexpected increase in speed: The Galileo spacecraft in December 1990; the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) probe in January 1998; and the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft in August 1999. The Galileo spacecraft slipped by Earth a second time in December 1992. But the vehicle dipped too close to Earth making the measurement of any "flyby effect" unusable. Doin' the Doppler shift "This problem has been with us for about 10 years, and we haven't found a solution," said John Anderson, a senior research scientist and member of the Stardust science team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "We're looking forward to the Stardust flyby. That would be our fourth measurement of this anomalous effect," Anderson told SPACE.com. [ed. note: to learn more about the stardust mission and its January 15, 2001 flyby, visit: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/] ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 2 (January 31, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: KEYHOLE EPISTEMOLOGY PARADIGM PORTRAITS (7): DARK MATTER MAPPING THE ELECTRIC SUN (1) ERASER ON EROS BLACK HOLE PROOF A SPOOF
by Mel Acheson by Amy Acheson by Don Scott from Discussion by Wal Thornhill
KEYHOLE EPISTEMOLOGY
by Mel Acheson We peer at the universe through keyholes: We sense half a dozen colors, variations of rough and smooth, flavors that are sometimes familiar, a few octaves of pressure oscillations in air. What are we missing? The colors of microwaves and x-rays, the sounds of electric currents, the smells of magnetic fields, the sensations for which we have no names or even imagination. All we get from these keyholes are cascades of tiny sparks between nerve cells. We arrange these sparks into patterns, which we call perceptions and conceptions and facts. We give them names, and the names relate one with another, and these relationships imply points of view. The name we give to the viewpoint that's peering through the keyhole, to the metaphorical eye that sees what there is to see, is the I of ego who understands that it sees. When this eye looks back on itself, when the I understands that it understands, it becomes conscious. This consciousness has an inherent bias. Because we're not conscious of what's unconscious, we assume what's conscious is all there is. Consciousness is like a spotlight in a dark room: Because all we see is what's within the circle of illumination-- the wallpaper, the picture, a chair and its shadow--we think that's all there is to see. We can overcome this bias if we pay attention not to the objects illuminated but to our activity of seeing them. Memory helps: The circle of illumination moves; we see other objects; we remember what we no longer see. Libraries help: We can discover what others have seen. This prompts us to realize there's more to the universe than we've seen, experienced, understood. But it's not just the circle of illumination that can move. The source also can move. The spotlight can shine on the same objects from different locations. The nervous sparks from which we form the patterns that imply a viewpoint can be rearranged to form a different pattern, and the different pattern will imply a different viewpoint. We call this learning. It prompts us to realize there can be more than one way to see things, there can be more than one theory to explain things. From a different viewpoint, familiar objects--"the facts"--look different: We see the wallpaper, the picture, and two chairs. Curiosity goads us to invent ways of generating additional sparks that might allow us to
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judge whether the pattern of one chair and its shadow or the pattern of two chairs is the "real" one. We call this experimentation, verification, and speculation. Again, if we pay attention not to the objects illuminated but to our activity of seeing them, we realize that "reality" is not what we start with but what we end up with. It's the picture that results from arranging patterns, generating patterns, modifying patterns, and associating patterns until we have a coherent composition. With a large movement of viewpoint, the patterns of nervous sparks we call "fundamentals" can change. This is a paradigm shift. What once was a dark room with light shining through pinholes in the wallpaper becomes a four-dimensional manifold of emptiness interrupted with transient specks of thermonuclear explosions. It produces a different picture of a different reality. Seeing the universe from more than one paradigm provides a kind of cognitive parallax that gives a sense of depth and historicity to consciousness. The awareness of different objects and different viewpoints and different realities can lead to an awareness of limits: Each perspective will have its domain of validity. These domains are the basis for what we call the provisionality of theories in science. The nature of cognitive knowledge--that common human trait which is simply applied methodically by science--is not suited to staking claims to The Truth. Provisionality is more limited...and more useful. It's flexible, adaptable; a tool, not a Procrustean bed. The "I" who thinks of itself as the center of a viewpoint can be liberated from its attachment to particular viewpoints. It can see itself as an explorer of viewpoints, a creator of viewpoints, an artisan of cognitive composition. This makes of science an art instead of a religion, an invention instead of a ritual. Science is not so much a search for THE TRUTH as it is the generation of truthfulness. This is the distinction between justificationism and critical rationality. Cognitive knowledge is not something that's justified by being founded on some incorrigible ground. Rather, it's a mutable metaphor in which every theory and every proposition is open to critical reexamination. This is what makes peeking through the keyhole so exciting. Everyone's carving a different sculpture or composing a different tune or painting a different picture of the universe. Some of those efforts turn out to be quite useful and pleasing. I've collected a few; I plan to collect more. If you've only got one hanging on your wall, I urge you to make room for a second. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (7): DARK MATTER MAPPING

By Amy Acheson QUESTION FROM A READER: I'm just wondering how you might interpret the findings discussed in the following "dark matter" article: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/03vlt/ Regards, Andy Doerkson THE ARTICLE BEGINS: An international team of astronomers has succeeded in mapping the "dark" (invisible) matter in the Universe, as seen in 50 different directions from the Earth. They find that, within the uncertainty, it is unlikely that mass alone would stop the current expansion of the Universe. AMY ACHESON RESPONDS:
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This calls to mind the many careful calculations made by hard- working astrologers to nail down the perfect epicycles of the planets. Their math was accurate, their tools were the best available for the time, their results were impeccable. But the assumption behind their theory -- that the earth was the center of the solar system -- was wrong. Today, another assumption goes without question in cosmology. That assumption is the "recession factor" -- Observation: for the nearest galaxies, the smaller diameter, fainter the galaxy, the higher the redshift. Conclusion: the farther the galaxy, the higher its redshift. Usual use of that conclusion: galactic distances can be determined by redshift -- the higher the redshift, the farther the galaxy. This assumption is the only basis of the further extrapolation that the universe is expanding and the only reason for believing that there ever was a big bang. Even Edwin Hubble, who did the first observational studies and for whom the conclusion -- the Hubble Expansion -- was named, was uncomfortable with this "recession factor". As he writes in his 1937 book, The Observational Approach to Cosmology: The disturbing features are all introduced by the recession factor, by the assumption that redshifts are velocity-shifts. The departure from a linear law of red-shifts, the departure from uniform distribution, the curvature necessary to restore homogeneity, the excess material demanded by the curvature: each of these is merely the recession factor in another form ... On the other hand, if the recession factor is dropped, if redshifts are not primarily velocity-shifts, the picture is simple and plausible. There is no evidence of expansion and no restriction of the time-scale, no trace of spatial curvature and no limitations of spatial dimensions. Without the redshift/distance relationship, the mighty Coma Cluster would have been located where it fits perfectly, as a northern arm to the Virgo Supercluster. And if the Coma Cluster actually is where it appears to be (as opposed to where the redshift places it), then astronomers would never have reached the conclusion that this cluster needs 10-100 times more mass in order for gravity to prevent it from flying apart. Dark matter was invented to solve that problem for the Coma Cluster, and has been used as a fudge factor to reconcile discordant observations ever since. But the question raised by this article is galactic alignment. In a big bang universe, distances are determined by redshift and distribution is homogeneous, especially in the early (high redshift) stages that happened so soon after the big bang. Thus, any non-random distribution of galaxies must be explained. The dark matter fudge factor, this time combined with gravitational lensing, is needed again. In Halton Arp's intrinsic redshift universe, high redshift quasars and low redshift galaxies are clustered together in family groups. The high redshift objects are associated with and ejected from low redshift active galaxies. Alignment is expected, even predicted - - no fudge factor involved. In Seeing Red, Arp shows that most quasars are distributed in a 20 degree cone from the spin axis of active galaxies. Galaxy clusters and individual galaxies follow a similar pattern, with a 35 degree ejection cone. Also in Seeing Red, Arp devotes an entire chapter (7) to gravitational lensing. In every case he has been able to show that the phenomenon claimed as high redshift object "lensed" by foreground galaxy or cluster is more likely an object ejected by the foreground object (usually a quasar, but sometimes a shell or jet). This was an interesting article on dark matter, but beware of the conclusion that "It can only be explained by gravitational lensing effects produced by clumps of dark matter in space, distributed along huge 'filaments'." There are other -- maybe better -- explanations. ~Amy Acheson
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THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM

by Don Scott
INTRODUCTION:
In 1911 Ejnar Hertzspung constructed a plot of the absolute brightness vs. spectral class (temperature) of the stars whose distances we could then accurately measure by the parallax method. In 1913 Henry Norris Russell independently repeated this exercise. This plot is therefore named the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram, and is one of the first topics presented in introductory astronomy courses. It is clear that the HR diagram is a plot of actual observations - not something deduced from theory. So, any viable model of the workings of a star must be consistent with it. Is the Electric Sun (ES) model of how a star is powered consistent with the HR diagram?
THE HR DIAGRAM:
In the HR diagram, as it is usually presented, the vertical axis is labeled with two scales: Absolute Magnitude (linear scale from about 18th magnitude at the bottom running up to perhaps -8 or so at the top), and Luminosity x Sun (log scale with 0.00001 at the bottom running up to 100,000 at the top). The horizontal axis also is labeled with several scales: Spectral Class - left to right: O and B[blue], A[white], F[yellow], G[yellow-orange], K[orange], M[red]). More often, recently, the "Johnson B-V index" replaces the Spectral Class scale. B = blue, and V = violet. A star is viewed through a blue (pass) filter and then through a violet (pass) filter. The star's "color index" is the difference in apparent magnitude between the two observations. For example, the B-V color index is mB-mV. B-V is zero for the star Vega (spectral class A0), and is about 0.61 for the Sun which is redder than Vega. Red giant Betelgeuse has a B-V index of 1.83 and spectral class M2. Originally, the B-V index was simply the difference between a star's visual and photographic magnitudes. Another horizontal axis scale - Absolute Temperature, also runs from left to right (from around 20,000 to 3000 K) corresponding to the (decreasing!) black-body temperature of those spectral classes. [As an engineer, I object to plotting increasing temperature from right to left! But such is the convention of astronomers. We will live with it.] A single given star defines a single point on this plot. A web search for the topic "Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram" will yield many different renderings of the HR plot. Our Sun, being a fairly typical star, falls almost at the center of the diagram (at Luminosity = 1 and Abs mag. = 5, Spectral Class G, and (photospheric) Temp. = 6,000K). The points on the plot seem to group nicely, generally forming a long, slightly diffuse line, that snakes from the upper left down toward the lower right. The line falls very steeply at the lower right end. There are two other less populated clouds of points: one group at the upper right and another one strung out across the bottom of the plot from a concentration in the lower left of the diagram.
STELLAR EVOLUTION:
Mainstream "stellar evolution" attempts to describe how stars age (run out of nuclear fuel) and slowly migrate, taking hundreds of thousands of years to do so, tracing paths from one location on the HR diagram to another (the star going from one spectral class to another). The paths that stars "must take" are, of course, completely predicated on the assumption that stars are fueled by the Hydrogen - Helium fusion process. The ES model does not make that assumption. Humans have not been around long enough to actually observe any stars making the predicted slow migrations from one place on the HR diagram to another. So, at present, slow "stellar evolution" is another one of those complicated theoretical constructs that live brightly in the minds of astronomers without any observational evidence of their actual existence.
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ADD A NEW HORIZONTAL AXIS:

In the ES model the important variable is: current density (Amps/sq m) at the star's photospheric surface. If a star's current density increases, the arc discharges on its surface (photospheric granules) get hotter, change color (away from red, toward blue), and get brighter. The absolute luminosity of a star, therefore, depends on two main variables: current density at its effective surface, and its size (the star's diameter). Therefore, let us add a new scale to the horizontal axis of the HR diagram: Current Density at the Surface of each Star. Consider moving from the lower right of the HR diagram toward the left. In so doing we are moving in the direction of increasing current density at the star's surface.
RED AND BROWN DWARFS:

The first region on the lower right of the diagram is where the current density has such a low value that double layers (DLs) (photospheric granules) are not needed by the plasma surrounding the (anode) star. This is the region of the brown and red "dwarfs" and giant gas planets. The plasma that constitutes the star is in its "normal glow" range - or perhaps, in the case of a large gas planet, the "dark current" range. As we progress leftward and steeply upward, we enter the range where some arc tufting becomes necessary to sustain the star's electrical discharge. The orbiting X-ray telescope, Chandra, recently discovered an X- ray flare being emitted by a brown dwarf (spectral class M9 = very cool) . This poses quite a problem for the advocates of the stellar fusion model. A star this cool should not be capable of X-ray flare production. However, in the ES model, a slight change in the level of total current impinging on a brown/red dwarf star might well produce a large change in the size and/or number of photospheric arcs (tufts) and their associated double layers. A strong electric field is associated with every DL, and a strong E- field is the easiest way to produce X-rays. As arcing covers more and more of the surface of a star, the star's luminosity increases sharply - plasma arcs are extremely bright compared to plasma in its normal glow range. This accounts for the steepness of the HR curve in this region - a slight increase in current density produces a large increase in luminosity. As we move upward and toward the left in the diagram, stars have more and more complete coats of photospheric arcs (tufting). A case in point - NASA recently discovered a star, half of whose surface was "covered by a sunspot". A more informative way to say this would have been that "Half of this star's surface is covered by photospheric arcing." The present controversy about what the difference is between a gas giant planet and a brown dwarf is a tempest in a teapot. They are members of a continuum - it is simply a matter of what the level of current density is at their surfaces. NASA's discovery supplies the missing link between the gas giant planets and the fully tufted stars.
MAIN SEQUENCE STARS:

Continuing toward the left, beyond the "knee of the curve", all these stars are completely covered with tufts (have complete photospheres), their luminosity no longer grows as rapidly as before. But, the farther to the left we go (the higher the current density), the brighter the tufts become, and so the stars' luminosities continue to increase. The situation is analogous to turning up the current in an electric arc welding machine. The increased brightness of the arcs accounts for the upward slope of the line toward the left. Mathematically we have the situation where the variable plotted on the horizontal axis (current density) is also one of the factors in the quantity plotted on the vertical axis (luminosity). The more significant this relationship is, the more closely the plot will approach a 45 degree straight line.
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[Reminder: Our progression from right to left is not necessarily a description of one star evolving in time we are just moving across the diagram from one static point (star) to another.] That the stars do not all fall precisely on a line, but have some dispersion above and below the line, is due to their variation in size. The relatively straight portion of the HR diagram is called the "main sequence." This nomenclature gives a false impression, that stars move around "sequentially" in the HR plot. The HR diagram is a static scatter plot, not a sequence.
WHITE AND BLUE STARS:

When we get to the upper left of the main sequence, what kind of stars are these? This is the region of O type, blue-white, high temperature (35,000+K) stars. As we approach the far upper-left of the HR diagram (region of highest current density), the stars are under extreme electrical stress - too many Amps per sq. meter. Extreme electrical stress can lead to a star's splitting into parts, perhaps explosively. Such explosions are called novae. The splitting process is called fissioning.
FISSIONING:
To quote from page 6 of Wal Thornhill's web site on the Electrical Universe: ...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. If a sphere of fixed volume splits into two smaller (equal sized) spheres, the total surface area of the newly formed pair will be about 26% larger than the area of the original sphere. (If the split is into two unequally sized spheres, the increase in total area will be something less than 26%.) So, to reduce the current density it is experiencing, an electrically stressed, blue-white star may explosively fission into two stars! This provides an increase in total surface area so as to result in a reduced level of current density at each point on the (new) stars' surfaces. Each of two new (equal sized) stars will experience only 80% of the previous current density level and so both will jump to a new location farther to the right in the HR diagram. If the resulting binary pair are unequal in size, the larger one will have the larger current density - but still lower than the original value. The smaller member of the pair might have such a low value of current density as to drop it back, abruptly, to "brown dwarf" or even "giant planet" status. In any event, both stars will move to new locations in the HR diagram.
FG SAGITTAE:
The star FG Sagittae is a case in point. Wal points out that FG Sagittae has changed from blue to yellow since 1955! It, quite recently, has taken a deep dive in luminosity. FG Sagittae, is the central star of the planetary nebula (nova remnant?) He 1-5. It is a unique object in the sense that for this star we have direct evidence of stellar evolution but in a time scale comparable with the human lifetime. Around 1900 FG Sge was an inconspicuous hot star (T = 50,000 K) of magnitude 13. During the next 60 years it cooled to about 8000 K and brightened in the visual region to magnitude 9, as its radiation shifted from the far-UV to the visual region. Around 1970 a whole new bunch of spectral lines appeared due to elements such as Sr, Y, Zr, Ba and rare earths. These elements, produced by neutron capture in the stellar interior had bubbled up to the surface! The star cooled further in the 1970s and 80s and then all of a sudden in 1992 its magnitude dropped to 14. Further drops occurred from 1992 to 1996 with a very deep minimum near magnitude 16 in June of 1996. [Italics added]
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So, after abruptly brightening by four magnitudes, it has dropped seven magnitudes. From the end of the last century FG Sagittae has evolved across the HR diagram changing from a normal hot giant to a "late spectral type" (cool) star with marked changes in its surface chemical composition. This is not the kind of slow stellar evolution mainstream astronomers envision. And FG Sagittae is a binary pair! The official wording was: In 1995 FG Sge changed in brightness in a quite sporadic manner from V~10.5 to ~13.0 according to the data by Hungarian Astronomical Association-Variable Star Section. During the spectral observations on 9/10 and 10/11 August, FG Sge was very faint (HAA-VSS data: V~12.513.0, according to Variable Stars Observers' League of Japan: ~13.3) and therefore erroneously the visual companion 8'' apart from FG Sge was actually observed. This is probably the first high resolution spectrum of the companion ever obtained. The spectrum turned out to correspond to a quite normal giant with the spectral type around K0. Is FG Sagittae an example of the binary fissioning (caused by electrical stress) that was described above? It seems to have all the basic characteristics: nova-like brightening followed by loss of luminosity and loss of temperature - moving to a different spectral type with marked changes in its surface chemical composition, and discovery of a binary companion. So, in the Electric Star version of "stellar evolution" things happen fast. If the fusion model were correct, even if a star's "central core" could be instantaneously extinguished, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for the effect to be seen at the star's surface. It would not be observed within a "human lifetime". It didn't take FG Sagittae hundreds of thousands of years to "run down." Migrating across the HR diagram can happen (astronomically) very quickly - and apparently does! Binary stars are extremely common. Don Scott
ERASER ON EROS
discussion AMY SAID: Check this out: http://near.jhuapl.edu/iod/20010112/index.html The caption suggests that the surface looks as if part of it were erased. That's exactly Wal Thornhill's concept of what electric machining does. It can peal the surface off in one place and it can deposit it elsewhere in layers (even on a different astronomical body). Meanwhile, NEAR-Shoemaker is in close orbit around Eros from now until it sets down February 12. The pictures it is sending back are fabulous. The one above is only 1.4k (.9 miles) across. Check out the "picture of the day" archive for more. Here's the homepage: http://near.jhuapl.edu/ AL de GRAZIA COMMENTED: Yes, it does look like electrical machining and also like tornado hoovering -- and possibly the two are the same. A de G
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WAL THORNHILL REPLIED: Exactly, Al. When I was doing experiments on electric discharges to a clay surface there was an electric wind effect that would blow away all of the dust and loose particles from the surface before any arcing took place. When the diffuse discharge is big enough it will rotate causing a tornado effect. We have seen but not recognized electric winds on Mars. Mars has no counterpart of thunderclouds to provide a convenient path to ground for electrical differences between the ionosphere and the planet. As a result more diffuse and very tall discharges must occur, giving rise to an electrical vortex that manifests by the material raised from the surface into the thin atmosphere. They are powerful "dust devils". In addition to dust it is likely that some electrical spark machining of surface rock takes place. There have been pictures of dust devils leaving tracks across Mars. In some areas where they are prevalent the surface is marked with dark streaks like a plate of wholemeal spaghetti. Some markings are straight, others curved and loopy. The Martian dust devils are tall by comparison with their Earthly counterparts, reaching a height of 8 kilometres (5mi), [comparable to the height of the tallest peaks in the Himalayas.] ~Wal Thornhill
BLACK HOLE PROOF A SPOOF

by Wal Thornhill the following report enters the twilight zone of one of Einstein's monsters: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/01/0112blackhole.html The text follows: <snip> No one has ever seen a black hole, but they are predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, and few scientists doubt their existence. Finding an event horizon, a sphere around a black hole that represents the last gasp of 'normal' activity, would prove the whole concept. So [Joseph Dolan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center] spent years in search of one, poring over old Hubble Space Telescope data of an object called Cygnus XR-1, a stellar black hole in our own galaxy, roughly 6,000 light-years away. What he found in images from 1992 were bright flashes of ultraviolet light that sputtered and then disappeared. Dolan suggests that the signals-he found two separate instances of them- represent hot blobs of gas orbiting inward and spiraling through the event horizon. Dolan presented his findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, California.
The Twilight Zone

Cygnus XR-1, with a mass estimated at three to seven times that of our Sun compressed into an area no larger than Earth, is thought to be part of a binary system . The black hole sucks hot gas off of a large companion star, which is roughly 30 times as massive as our Sun. This gas streams toward the black hole, going into an ever-tighter orbit. Along with other material, the gas forms a flat disk called an accretion disk.
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Here's how the gas blobs would disappear, as predicted by the theory of black holes: As a blob of hot gas approaches the point of no return -the event horizon -immense gravity stretches the light waves emanating from the hot gas. At a certain point, the wavelengths are stretched so far that they are no longer visible. The gas then crosses over into a sort of 'twilight zone,' where time and space no longer obey rules we understand.
Pulse Trains
The sequence of pulses Dolan spotted six in one event and seven in the other - each lasted just 0.2 seconds, diminishing in strength with each pulse. And then they were gone. Such an event, if this was one, is called a dying pulse train. "If pulse trains have clearly been detected, then it is indeed a milestone," said Neil Brandt, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. "However, the difficult part is in proving that they have indeed been detected. It is generally difficult to use a complex system, such as an accretion disk around a black hole, as a springboard to address fundamental issues." The difficulty becomes more pronounced when working with limited data, Brandt told SPACE.com , adding that the finding could spur new research, using similar methods, into Cygnus XR-1 and other black holes in our galaxy. In an e-mail interview, Dolan emphasized the preliminary nature of the findings. "If we were trying to convict Cygnus XR-1 of being a black hole in court, we'd win a civil case that only needs a preponderance of the evidence, but not a criminal case, that requires beyond a reasonable doubt," Dolan said. "Finding an even horizon would put the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt." Dolan notes that observations of many binary star systems suspected of having a black hole have proved that the dense central object is not a white dwarf star or a neutron star . Though these are also very dense objects, they are not massive enough to account for the activity scientists see. "But we haven't ruled out the possibility of their being something more exotic than a black hole," Dolan said, admitting the possibility that black holes don't exist at all. But this would mean that Einstein was no Einstein, and a new theory of gravity would have to explain the complex activity around objects like Cygnus XR-1. WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: I think the unpalatable truth is contained in the last sentence. It seems to me that Einstein made it fashionable for theoretical physicists to live in their heads and perform "thought experiments". It is one thing to frame hypotheses by day-dreaming but to think that experiments are carried out by sucking on a pipe in an armchair is pure "Disneyesque" fantasy. Einstein's theory of gravity is the craziest explanation of the phenomenon imaginable. I believe a recent cartoon in Scientific American has unwittingly shown us where black holes are to be found: They exist inside the heads of theoretical astrophysicists! And with their eyes wide shut and fingers in their ears, there they shall remain. A sequence of pulses in a "dying pulse train" is precisely the kind of effect expected from the pinch effect in a plasma when stored electric charge is suddenly discharged and at peak current is repeatedly 'pinched off'. The black hole theorists have never satisfactorily explained why an accretion disk should store matter up and release it in blobs - never mind in decreasing sized blobs!

Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 3 (February 28, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: QUESTION GRAVITY PARADIGM PORTRAITS (8): COMET TALES THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM (2) EROS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS
Mel Acheson Amy Acheson Don Scott Wal Thornhill
QUESTION GRAVITY
by Mel Acheson It's generally assumed gravity is a fact. It's not. It's a theory, invented by Newton and barely three centuries old. It's generally assumed gravity is a universal law. It's not. The prominences on the sun don't obey it. Neptune scoffs at it. The stars repudiate it. Galaxies ignore it. Its jurisdiction is pretty much limited to Newton's falling apple at the surface of the Earth. Even there the constant of gravitation refuses to be constant and wiggles around like a plasma in a magnetic field. Newton said: Gravity steers the universe. Heraclitus said: The thunderbolt steers the universe. Who're ya gonna believe? Newton knew nothing about electricity. Heraclitus knew nothing about gravity. Newton had seen lightning, and Heraclitus had seen falling apples. But neither thought it was something that needed to be explained. Because he didn't have a theory that enabled him to imagine the possibility, Heraclitus was unable to send a space probe to Mars. What electrical possibility was Newton unable to achieve because he didn't have a theory that enabled him to imagine it? Newton not only didn't explain electricity, his theory of gravity didn't allow him even to perceive it. And to this day astronomers have not been explaining it or even perceiving it. They talk about a "rain" of ions on Europa and a "wind" of charged particles from the sun. But moving charged particles are better known as an electrical current. Except for the surfaces of half a dozen planets and moons, all we see of the universe is electrical: filaments and jets, accelerated and accelerating ions, synchrotron radiation and bremsstrahlung, polarized emissions, magnetic fields, Birkeland braids, Peratt instabilities, inverse linear force relationships, ...and that "wind" and "rain" buffeting the planets accompanied by radio "noise" typical of
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double layers. The electrical nature of those phenomena goes unperceived for want of a theory that will make it "make sense", that will make it sensible. It's not that a theory doesn't exist. Electrical plasma physics (EPP) has been developing for over a century. It's properties and principles have been discovered and described by such illustrious experimenters as Birkeland, Langmuir, and Alfven. EPP is to be distinguished from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), which also uses the term "plasma". What MHD means by that term is not electrically active assemblages of charged particles but masses of hot air. It's MHD that brought us the meteorological image of the solar system. EPP flips the switch to turn on the light of (electrical) understanding. Unfortunately, EPP is widely ignored. It's not mentioned in standard textbooks. The training of most physicists leaves them unaware that many of the words they use are euphemisms for (and obfuscations of) electrical currents. For people wedded to a mechanistic view of the cosmos, EPP is frightening. Electrically active plasmas behave as though they were alive. They self- organize into complex forms that twist and turn and change states. They're mathematically messy. They're anarchic. But they're conceptually elegant. The theory of gravity is surprised by each new discovery of space probes and space telescopes. Each surprise has to be patched with another ad hoc excuse. EPP accounts for the many surprising features of the cosmos with a single coherent theory. It can often point to a lab demonstration or to a computer simulation--or even to an ancient petroglyph!--that mimics the newly discovered form. What EPP may lack in mathematical elegance is more than made up for in generality. The Age of Gravitational Mechanics has achieved many impressive feats: It's taken people to the Moon. It's sent a robot to Mars. It's put satellites into orbit around Venus and Jupiter and Eros. It's put SOHO into orbit around nothing more than a mathematical point. It's also discovered the data and collected the facts that require a new, larger theory to explain them. So the time has come to question the relevance of the cogs-and-wheels theory of gravity from the gas-light era. It's time to plug in to an electrical cosmos with an electrical theory. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (8): COMET TALES

by Amy Acheson Today, ESO released a photo and article about Hale-Bopp, from the mainstream point of view, of course. I would like to discuss the data from two other points of view, the exploded planet and plasma. First, the ESO release: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2001/phot-07-01.html
DESCRIPTION OF HALE-BOPP TODAY:

(from article) Since the passage four years ago, the comet has been moving away from the Sun and is now located at a distance that corresponds to nearly midway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. However, as the comet's orbit is highly inclined to the main plane in which the major planets move, Hale-Bopp is now far below that plane. It is seen deep in the southern sky, south of the Large Magellanic Cloud in the constellation Dorado (The Goldfish). It can therefore only be observed with telescopes located in the southern hemisphere.
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THE PUZZLE:
(from article) As it moves away, observations are made from time to time to document the comet's behaviour. The large 'dirty snowball' nucleus of ice and dust (probably about 50 km diameter) continues to be active, despite the very low temperature where it is now. This is quite unusual for a comet and is clearly confirmed on the present photo (PR Photo 07a/01) from the WFI camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at La Silla, obtained a few days ago. The comet was about 1950 million kilometres (13.0 AU) from the Sun (and about 1965 million km from the Earth). AMY's COMMENTS: The article speaks from the commonly-accepted viewpoint of a comet as a dirty snowball melting in the sun. From this point of view, the tail of the comet is produced by melting, which is dependent on temperature, which in turn is dependent on the distance of the comet from the Sun. They assume that comets are very old, probably left-over scraps of the original accretion disc that haven't yet collided (merged) with a planet. Tom Van Flandern's EPH (exploded planet hypothesis) would define a comet as a cluster of debris leftover from the explosion of a planet or moon. At the distance of the orbit of the original planet, these bits and pieces have separate orbits, but when (if) they are flung farther from their primary (the Sun) than the original distance, their spheres of influence (the distance at which they can hold a satellite) become larger, so that they can capture debris from similar neighboring orbits. So a comet would be a large rubble pile of bodies (down to the size of dust and regolith) with possible orbiting mini-moons. If the eccentric orbit of this clump takes the body within the orbit of the original exploding planet, this sphere of influence (dependent on distance from sun) shrinks until comet's gravity is no longer able to hold the rubble-pile together. The particles fly apart, forming a tail swept away from the Sun. Thus, from the EPH point of view, Hale-Bopp will continue to produce a tail until it passes beyond the distance at which the body that produced it orbited. From the EPH point of view, the period of orbit is an important factor for a first-time comet such as Hale-Bopp. Its 10,000 year orbit tells us that its origin was different than most first-time comets (which have 3.2 million year orbits), and therefore, we can expect it to behave differently. From this viewpoint, comets were created in discrete batches as the result of specific events in the history of the solar system. From the plasma viewpoint, the comet is probably a coherent solid body rather than a dirty snowball or a rubble pile, although it may be coated with debris and sediment, like the asteroid Eros. In fact, from the plasma viewpoint, the major difference between a comet and an asteroid is their electric potential. The eccentric orbit of comets is a large factor in creating the change of electrical potential which powers the jet that arc machines the Sun-facing side to produce x-rays, dust tail and ion tail. From the plasma point of view, both the tail and jet of a comet will be activated whenever the comet passes through an electrical environment which is substantially different from the comets' own electrical potential. Since the electrical potential in the solar system increases with decreasing distance to the Sun, this means in general that the closer to the Sun, the stronger the discharge. But this can vary from comet to comet (depending on the comet's charge) and can be subject to flare-ups in response to changing solar electrical activity. From this viewpoint, comets were created in recent electrical machining events involving the stabilization of the solar system after a major re-adjustment.
CONCLUSION:
Same comet, three different interpretations of the data. Which is correct? The prudent answer is that we don't yet have enough information to confirm any of the above. But my personal opinion is that knowing more than one viewpoint, but reserving judgement (keeping theories on the back burner) will give me a better perspective to evaluate new data coming in. So I look forward to information from future comets, to what Chandra and Hubble uncover about them, and to the Stardust probe as it tried to actually retrieve comet dust and return it to Earth. ~Amy Acheson
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THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM (2)

by Don Scott
Red Giants
The diffuse group in the upper right hand corner of the HR diagram are stars which are cool (have low values of current density powering them) but are luminous and so must be very large. They are highly luminous only because of their size. These are the red giants. They are not necessarily any older than any other star.
White Dwarfs
Similarly, the group in the lower left hand corner have very low absolute luminosity but are extremely hot. The ES model simply explains them as being very small stars that are experiencing very high current densities. These are the "white dwarfs." Although most of them are concentrated in the lower-left corner of the diagram, the white dwarf group actually extends thinly across the bottom of the diagram. Thus the name white dwarf is a kind of misnomer. The shape of this thin grouping begins to drop off steeply at its (cooler) right end much as the main sequence does. A professional astronomer has been quoted as saying: The observed white dwarfs are basically cooling embers. The nuclear fire of the stars burned out billions of years ago. The light emitted comes from the heat remaining from the earlier nuclear burning. By measuring the spectrum of the light, the brightness in various colors, the temperatures of the stars were determined. The two coolest of the white dwarfs studied, PSR J0034-0534 and PSR J1713+0747, are 3400 degrees Kelvin (5600 F), making them the coolest known white dwarfs. For comparison, the surface of the sun measures 5800 degrees Kelvin and the coolest previously known white dwarfs are 4000 degrees Kelvin. But then, why are these relatively cool stars called "white"? One presumes it is only because they seem to be members of the grouping in the HR diagram that was originally given that name.
Stars in Globular and Open Clusters

Relatively recently, other more distant groups of stars have been plotted on HR axes with quite different results from when the stars near our Sun are plotted. Two examples of this are shown on the web page: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/hr/hr.html. The two different shapes of the HR diagrams given in that web site, one for the globular cluster, M5, and the other for the Perseus "double open cluster" give possible clues to the structure of those star clusters. For example, current density seems to be roughly the same for most of the stars in M5, but their luminosity (size) varies widely. And the largest of these stars seem to have the lowest current density. Are they at the dense center of the cluster and therefore somewhat shielded from the current? Another group of stars in M5 seem to be of a similar size but with high and varying levels of current density. Are they the stars doing the shielding?
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The HR diagram for the stars in the h and chi Persei double cluster has a markedly different shape from both that of M5 and the one for the stars in our neighborhood. Each of these different HR shapes simply indicates the contrasting properties (size, electrical input levels) of the stars in these groupings. The different shapes of the HR diagrams should not be thought of as being indicative of the ages of those stars or their interior composition or the "evolutionary processes" they are undergoing. It's not that complicated.
Blue Stragglers
Up until recently no O or B type stars were observed in globular clusters. It was thought that all stars in any given globular cluster were of a similar age. Therefore, it came as a big shock when it was discovered that there were some blue "stragglers" (stars that hadn't "aged properly") in certain clusters. It was said, in awe, that these stars were "rejuvenated stars that glow with the blue light of young stars"! "Stellar evolution" doesn't seem to be working too well in these cases. Another example of "stellar evolution" that is difficult to explain via the H-He fusion reaction is that in recent years, the centers of elliptical galaxies have been found to emit unexpectedly high amounts of blue and ultraviolet light. Elliptical galaxies (and the stars in them) are thought to be quite old. How, then, can there be so many "young" blue stars in them? One mainstream answer is that some dying old stars suddenly decide to burn the Helium they had been previously producing - or we hear (as always) the mantra that perhaps there were "collisions between stars". From the ES point of view, any star can move quickly across the HR diagram if its electrical environment changes. Anyone who has seen the aurora's plasma curtains moving and folding in the polar sky realizes that Birkeland current filaments are not fixed, static, things. They move around. If the galactic Birkeland currents move around, it is likely they will move relative to some stars - either increasing or decreasing the current densities these stars experience. A blue star is just one that is experiencing the full brunt of a strong Birkeland current. "Blue stragglers" aren't stragglers at all. They are just blue.
Variable Stars
When I was researching topics for this article, Wal Thornhill said to me, Have a look at variable stars, particularly bursters, where I think you will find the brightness curve is like that of lightning with a sudden rise time and exponential decay. Some stars are regular and others irregular. The irregular ones seem to average the power over the bursts. When they are more frequent, the energy is less per burst. If there is a long latency, the next burst is more powerful. It's the kind of thing you would expect from an electrical circuit when the trigger level is variable and the power input constant. I think many variable stars are actually binaries with some kind of electrical interaction. Long period Miras (A type of variable star) may actually have an object orbiting within the shell of a red giant (as I have proposed for the proto-Saturnian system) Following Wal's suggestion, I looked at the recent Hubble image of Mira itself, the flagship star of that class of variable stars. Mira's image reveals a huge (plasma?) emission on one side of the star. The official explanation includes the words: Mira A is a red giant star undergoing dramatic pulsations, causing it to become more than 100 times brighter over the course of a year. S. Mira can extend to over 700 times the size of our Sun, and is only 400 light-years away. The S. photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the true face of Mira. But what are we seeing? The unusual extended feature off the lower left of the star remains somewhat mysterious. Possible explanations include gravitational perturbation and/or heating from Mira's white dwarf star companion. [Italics added.]
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Mira has a white dwarf companion, just as Wal suggested was likely. So, a much better possible explanation of its pulsating output is that an electrical discharge is taking place between Mira and its companion, much like a relaxation oscillator. It's not really "mysterious" at all.
Gamma Ray Bursters

If you check the web page http://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast13oct98_1.htm you will see the following description of what constitutes a "gamma ray burster". October 13, 1998: Cosmic gamma-ray bursts have been called the greatest mystery of modern astronomy. They are powerful blasts of gamma- and X-radiation that come from all parts of the sky, but never from the same direction twice. Space satellites indicate that Earth is illuminated by 2 to 3 bursts every day. What are they? No one is certain. Until recently we didn't even know if they came from the neighborhood of our own solar system or perhaps from as far away as the edge of the universe. The first vital clues began to emerge in 1997 when astronomers detected an optical counterpart to a gamma-ray burst. In February 1997 the BeppoSAX X-ray astronomy satellite pinpointed the position of a burst in Orion to within a few arcminutes. That allowed astronomers to photograph the burst, and what they saw surprised them. They detected a rapidly fading star, probably the aftermath of a gigantic explosion, next to a faint amorphous blob believed to be a very distant galaxy. [Italics added.] Doesn't this sound like fissioning again? An explosion, followed by a rapidly fading star, accompanied by some sort of companion! Might it be that the reason they "never [come] from the same direction twice" is that the creation of the binary pair has relieved the electrical stress (at least for a long enough time that we humans haven't yet seen a recurrence).
Pulsars
Although pulsars do not occupy a specific place in the HR diagram, it is worth noting that they, too, have characteristics that are most comfortably explained via the ES model. Pulsars are stars that have extremely short periods of variability in their production of EM radiation (both light and radio frequency) . When they were first discovered it was thought that they rotated rapidly. But when the observed rate of "rotation" got up to about once per second for certain pulsars despite their having masses exceeding that of the sun, this official explanation became untenable. Instead, the concept of the "neutron star" was invented. Wal has written at length about how impossible this notion is: The discovery now of an x-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 (J1808 for short), located in the constellation of Sagittarius, that flashes every 2.5 thousandths of a second (that is 24,000 RPM!) goes way beyond the red-line even for a neutron star. So another ad hoc requirement is added to the already long list - this pulsar must be composed of something even more dense than packed neutrons - strange matter! ...When not associated with protons in a nucleus, neutrons decay into protons and electrons in a few minutes. Atomic nuclei with too many neutrons are unstable. If it were possible to form a neutron star, why should it be stable? [Italics added]
So, some pulsars oscillate with periods in the millisecond range! Their radio pulse characteristics are: the "duty cycle" is typically 5% (i.e., the pulsar flashes much like a lighthouse - the duration of each output pulse is much shorter than the length of time between pulses); some individual pulses are quite variable
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in intensity; the polarization of the pulse implies the origin is near a magnetic pole. These characteristics are consistent with an electrical arc (lightning) interaction between two closely spaced binary stars. So, I was pleased when I saw the announcement: Hubble Space Telescope Observations Reveal Coolest and Oldest White Dwarf Stars in the Galaxy Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have detected five optical companion stars orbiting millisecond pulsars. Only two other such systems are known. Three of the companions are among the coolest and oldest white dwarf stars known. [Italics added]
The Crab Pulsar

The "Crab Nebula" (M1) is a cloud of gas (plasma) that is the remnant of a nova explosion seen by Chinese astronomers. Lying at the center of the nebula is a pulsar - a star called CM Tauri. The frequency of repetition of the pulsar's output is 30 pulses per second. The length of each "flash", however, is approximately 1/1000 sec., one millisecond! The obvious question to ask next is: Is this star a binary pair? No companion is visible from even the largest earthbound telescopes. But, the Hubble orbiting telescope has found a companion: ...a small knot of bright emission located only 1500 AU (= 1500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from the pulsar. This knot has gone undetected up until now because even at the best ground-based resolution it is lost in the glare of the adjacent pulsar. The knot and the pulsar line up with the direction of a jet of X-ray emission. A second discovery is that in the direction opposite the knot, the Crab pulsar is capped by a ring-like 'halo' of emission tipped at about 20 degrees to our line of sight. In this geometry the polar jet flows right through the center of the halo.
Supernova Remnant G11.2-0.3

On August 6, 2000, and October 15, 2000, the orbiting X-ray telescope Chandra discovered a pulsar at the geometric center of the supernova remnant known as G11.2-0.3. Chandra provides very strong evidence that the pulsar was formed in the supernova of 386 AD, which was witnessed by Chinese astronomers. The official description of the image included the words: "The Chandra observations of G11.2-0.3 have also, for the first time, revealed the bizarre appearance of the pulsar wind nebula at the center of the supernova remnant. Its rough cigar- like shape is in contrast to the graceful arcs observed around the Crab and Vela pulsars. However, together with those pulsars, G11.2-0.3 demonstrates that such complicated structures are ubiquitous around young pulsars." Upon examination, the image of the central star reveals that it is at the center of a "cigar shaped" plasma discharge, not a "bizarre wind nebula" (whatever that is). Although no binary companion has (yet) been found, the presence of the observed plasma discharge makes one suspect it is only a matter of time. Each new discovery of a binary pair of stars, one of which is either a variable star or pulsar, at the center of a nova remnant, is one more piece of evidence that Juergens' electric star model and Thornhill's theory of the fissioning of those electric stars are both valid.
Electric Star Evolution
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Mainstream astronomers accept and promote the notion that O type stars are young; they are thought to age due to the nuclear burning up of their Hydrogen fuel. In the ES interpretation, there is no reason to attribute youth to one spectral type over another. We conclude that a star's location on the HR diagram only depends on its size and the electric current density it is presently experiencing. If, for whatever reason, the strength of that current density should change, then the star will change its position on the HR diagram. Perhaps, like FG Sagittae, abruptly. Otherwise, no movement from one place to another is expected. And its age remains indeterminate regardless of its mass or spectral type. This is disquieting in the sense that we see now that our own Sun's future is not as certain as is expected by mainstream astronomy. We cannot predict whether the Birkeland current now powering our Sun will increase or decrease, nor how long it will be before it does so.
Summary
A fresh look at the HR diagram, unencumbered by the assumption that all stars must be internally powered by the nuclear fusion reaction, reveals an elegant correspondence between this plot and the Electric Sun model proposed by Ralph Juergens. Assuming, as he did, that stars are powered externally by the vast Birkeland currents that exist in the arms of their galaxies, the details in the shape of the HR diagram are exactly what his ES model predicts. The observed actions of variable stars, pulsars, and the high frequency of occurrence of binary pairs of stars are all in concordance with Thornhill's Electrical Universe theory, his stellar fissioning concept, and the Electric Star model as well. So is the otherwise totally inexplicable behavior of FG Sagittae. We eagerly await NASA's next "mysterious discovery" to further strengthen our case. Don Scott
EROS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS

by Wal Thornhill
The following message is from Reuters: On February 12, the world's first spacecraft will land on an asteroid - Eros, named after the Greek god of love - and stream a series of photographs in nearly real time. That equates to two images a minute, which will be streamed to the Web site www.near.jhuapl.edu At more than 196 million miles from Earth, the asteroid will be the most distant object on which a spacecraft has landed. The event is the grand finale of a one-year orbital mission of Eros, the first of NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) program, whose goal has been to determine Eros' mineralogical make-up and its relationship to comets, meteorites and the origin of the solar system. THE RESULT? The NEAR web site Science Update December 28, 2000 is headlined:
MORE MYSTERIES
We are planning to devote the last two months of the mission to low altitude observations. What we have seen so far in the low orbits has merely whetted our appetite for more. We went up close to have a better look at the surface than ever before, but we now see things we do not understand, and we need more information. That has been the story of the NEAR mission, and
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that is why we are going back to low orbit despite the rough ride that the irregular gravity field of Eros will give us. The craters on Eros provide several examples of mysteries that we are working on. Craters are the records of impacts that have largely shaped the surface of Eros, of other asteroids we have seen, and of objects from Mercury to the moons of Neptune. From the beginning of the mission, we saw two large concavities on Eros, for which we have proposed the names Himeros and Psyche. In the early images Himeros appeared saddle-shaped, and we could not be sure if it was indeed an impact crater, but Psyche displayed from the start the classical bowl shape of an impact crater. Although it was not immediately apparent, Himeros was actually not saddle-shaped at all, but bowl-shaped. Careful mapping of its topography by the NEAR Laser Rangefinder and by the imager shows that as far as Eros' gravity field is concerned, its depth is consistent with impact excavation. Still, if it is an impact crater, it is oddly shaped. Another mystery is that the interior surface of Himeros is relatively smooth and much less heavily cratered than typical areas on Eros, and so it must be relatively young. The same is true for the interior of Psyche. However, the largest impact features on a body are most likely the oldest. Moreover, there is a third global scale depression on Eros that is actually larger than Psyche in diameter. We have proposed to name this third depression Shoemaker Regio, and it too may be an ancient, degraded impact crater or as many as three degraded craters side-by-side. The interior of Shoemaker Regio is young like the interiors of Himeros and Psyche, because it is lightly cratered, but it is also the most boulder-rich area on Eros and very different from the relatively smooth interiors of Himeros and Psyche. What has happened? We do not know. Eros is a body without atmosphere or ocean, without large-scale volcanism (Eros has never melted completely, but some partial melting may have occurred in the past), and without plate tectonics, but it has ongoing geologic activity. What could be sculpting the surface except impacts? Much the same can be said for the Moon, although the Moon did have extensive magmatic activity (releases of lava on a global scale) billions of years ago. On the Moon, the primary process shaping the surface is cratering. In the lunar highlands, for example, we see that the continuing rain of projectiles has produced a state that approaches what we call "equilibrium saturation", where each new impact on the average erases as many pre-existing craters as it makes new ones (each projectile makes a primary crater but can make additional craters if it produces ejecta that fall back to the surface at high speed). In the equilibrium state, we find that the density of craters on the surface obeys a characteristic relation. Namely, if we count craters of a given size range, say from 10 km to 14 km diameter in a certain region on the Moon, and we ask what is the total area covered by craters of this size in this region, we find empirically that about one fifth of the area is covered. The same is roughly true for craters in other size ranges (say from 20 to 28 km), as long as the minimum and maximum diameters of the size range stay in the same ratio, and provided that the craters are not too large. This distribution implies that the total number of craters smaller than some diameter scales roughly as the inverse square of this diameter, up to some maximum size. That is, the total number of craters smaller than 2 km is four times as many as the total number smaller than 4 km, and the number smaller than 1 km is four times as many again. Similar distributions are found on heavily cratered bodies throughout the solar system, although there are deviations from the simple power law that reflect the geologic histories of the individual objects. The crater size distribution records how many projectiles of various sizes hit the Moon, which interests us because the distribution of projectiles that bombarded the Moon must also hit the Earth. Although there are complications - it is not completely straightforward to relate the distribution of craters to that of projectiles - this is why horrific impacts like the one at Chicxulub, which ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, are much less frequent than minor impacts like the one that made Barringer Meteor Crater (and we are thankful). This is also why the largest impact craters on a body, like Psyche or Himeros (if it is one), are likely to be the oldest. Larger impacts occur less frequently, so it is unlikely for a large impact to have occurred very recently.
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Moreover, large impacts create large volumes of ejecta and produce large seismic disturbances, both of which tend to erase small craters around them (by covering or obliterating them). A very large impact, like Psyche on Eros, may be able to erase small craters globally. Perhaps if Psyche formed after Himeros, it could have 'reset' the surface on Eros by erasing small craters, but then how was the interior of Psyche also reset? In any case, when we saw heavily cratered surfaces on Eros, we were not surprised, and we expected an equilibrium saturation distribution to apply. However, the distribution of craters that we actually see at Eros is very different. An equilibrium saturation distribution would mean that if we are able to see smaller craters, we should find more of them, approximately as the inverse square of the size. This is not true at Eros. We went to low altitudes and looked for smaller craters, but found that craters below about a hundred meters in diameter are markedly depleted. Furthermore, the smaller the size of crater we look for, the fewer we find relative to what we would expect from an equilibrium distribution. So, again we ask, what is happening? Perhaps it will not be us, but some future scientists, who will unravel some of the mysteries we are studying. In any case, we are working hard to understand the surface of Eros. Andrew Cheng NEAR Project Scientist WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: The mysteries about the asteroid Eros begin the moment it is assumed that the history of asteroids is fairly well known. A great deal is made out of the so-called impact cratering record. But the story about the formation of the solar system from a disk of rubble is nothing more than a fable. And like any fable, disbelief must be suspended when a miracle is called upon at the end of each chapter to keep the story alive. We don't have to wait for future scientists to unravel the mysteries of Eros. It is almost 30 years since the publication of an electrical model of the solar system by the brilliant engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona Ralph Juergens. Following his death in 1979, the Canadian physicist, Earl Milton, continued the work of his good friend. A simple version of the cosmic electricians' story is that most comets, asteroids and meteoroids have a common origin. They are formed from material that has been electrically torn from an existing planet during a close encounter with another planet. The forces that melted, shaped and eroded the surface of an asteroid are those encountered in plasma arc machining. Milton and Juergens independently came to the same conclusion. In 1980, Milton wrote: Likely the small body of the comet here functions as an undersized anode and evaporates like an electrode in an arc. Over time the cometary nucleus should become cratered and pitted like the surfaces of some of the planets and satellites of the Solar System. When a spacecraft finally achieves a rendezvous with one of the comets scientists are going to be surprised to find a surface pitted like that of the Moon, Mars, or Mercury. The same statement applies to asteroids. The circular craters on Eros with smooth interiors are not due to impacts. The size distribution of craters is dependent solely upon the power of the cosmic lightning being endured by the body during its birth or during a cometary existence. And differences in cratering density have nothing to do with age of the surface. Electrical cratering takes place in a flurry and, as with the sunward side of a comet, may be selective in the areas struck. Groovy Asteroid Images returned by NEAR Shoemaker show that Eros, like a number of other asteroids and asteroid-like moons, has a surface cut by linear troughs called "grooves." Similar features have been identified on asteroids Ida and Gaspra and on Mars' moon Phobos. However, the high-resolution images of Eros allow the origin of its grooves to be investigated in unprecedented detail.
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Grooves on asteroids are usually explained as evidence of structural faults. In fact, with their population of craterlets they are to be seen wherever electrical arcing has been widespread on a surface. They often form parallel patterns and are caused when powerful electric currents travel along the surface. The filaments of current exhibit long range attraction and short range repulsion, which creates parallel grooves. Eros has such features which have been compared with a wood-grained appearance. The onchannel craters are formed where the intense surface heating creates sufficient charge carriers to be the focus of a short- lived arc. Comets and asteroids are the same bodies, distinguished only by their orbits. Asteroids occasionally show a diffuse cometary appearance and one asteroid, Chiron, was observed in 1988 to become a comet. An asteroid will become a comet if its orbit becomes highly elliptical. Any large object, including a planet, will find a rapidly changing electrical stress as it moves radially with respect to the Sun. The result is the formation of a Langmuir plasma sheath to enclose the charged body's alien electric field. That is what forms and stabilizes the huge comet comas that may have a visible diameter of a hundred thousand kilometres. There is no way that the puny gravitational field of a 10km rock can control that volume. The close up image of the nucleus of comet Halley, snapped by the Giotto spacecraft as it flew by, shows the kind of electrical surface machining that shapes asteroids. The nucleus cratering and presence of x-rays and energetic particles near a comet were all predicted by Milton years before the Halley encounter in 1986. The electrical model of the solar system has implications for the NEAR spacecraft as it attempts to softly crash-land on the asteroid. An electrical discharge between NEAR and Eros may occur even though the spacecraft has had a year to slowly equalize its voltage with that of the asteroid. If that happens, the signal from the spacecraft may disappear before touchdown. Once down, and if still functioning, dust could electrostatically coat the lenses of the cameras. The state of surface material in the form of dust, soil and boulders, will be determined by the asteroids history. It is more likely to have loose surface material if the asteroid has not had a cometary history since its formation. The many boulders on Eros hint that this is so. Small craters on the Moon were seen by the Apollo astronauts to contain glassy deposits at their centers. They are the equivalent of fulgurites formed by lightning in sand. With luck a close up of the small craters may show evidence of glass. The place to look is the enigmatic light colored filamentary deposits which are reminiscent of the light colored rayed-craters on the Moon. Such rays, Juergens showed, are electrical in origin. Near has made a historic landing on Eros. And 69 detailed pictures were taken during the last 5 kilometres descent. The closest was from a height of only 120 metres showing features down to 1 centimetre across. In a press conference on 14 February, Dr Joseph Veverka said: These spectacular images have started to answer the many questions we had about Eros, but they also revealed new mysteries that we will explore for years to come. One of those mysteries was an area "...where the surface appears to have collapsed." They are shown here in the insets above the closest image taken of Eros. The argument of surface collapse is well worn, having been used to describe similarly etched areas of Mars. There it is attributed to subsurface liquid flows. It doesn't work on Mars, so to use it as an explanation on an asteroid is a sign of desperation. The simple answer is that it is electric arc erosion. The left hand close-up image shows the usual sharp, rounded edges and flat floor of spark machining craters. Electric discharge phenomena are scaleable over a huge range so that it is acceptable to compare erosion on a surface under a microscope with landforms on Mars that stretch over hundred's of kilometres. It seems entirely appropriate on Valentine's day that Eros should be showing us his etchings! ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 4 (March 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHEN LOGIC FALLS SLOPPY DEAD THE THUNDERBOLT IN MYTH AND SYMBOL BIG BANG GENESIS
by Mel Acheson by Dave Talbott a Kroniatalk Discussion
WHEN LOGIC FALLS SLOPPY DEAD

by Mel Acheson A common assumption about myths explains them as stories about "daily life as we know it." The idea is that the prehistoric world was little different from today's world, but prehistoric people were both ignorant and credulous: Instead of developing scientific explanations for the events of daily life, they told stories which were anthropomorphic exaggerations. Many scholars have labored for many years trying to explain myths with this assumption. For example, a shining god driving a chariot across the sky can only be the diurnal cycle of the sun. The awakening of a fertility goddess is probably the coming of spring. Wheels turning in the sky are merely ornamental exaggerations of flowers. Every story is an autonomous tale with quotidian referents. But a difficulty arises. Exaggerations of common experiences should have random embellishments from one culture to another. Any common theme should point to the mundane elements of the referent experience. But this is not the case. Common themes often point to fantastic referents. Persistent and widespread relationships are present which make no sense under the "daily life as we know it" assumption. One example is the enigmatic ancient language of Saturn as a primeval "sun" god. Another is the persistent association of Saturn with the celestial pole. Immanuel Velikovsky, writing two decades earlier, applied forensic methodology to myths, comparing one with another across cultures to identify common themes. Of critical importance was his abandonment of the "daily life as we know it" assumption. This allowed previously unquestioned interpretations to be distinguished from the mythic themes and less constrained speculation to be entertained. In the above example, the constraint of associating the mythic image of a shining god with the present sun was removed and the ancient association with Saturn stood out. Subsequent work by a number of researchers has produced, for the first time, a unified theory of myth. It's also produced a logical (although, so far, not a sociological) crisis of paradigms. The model of ancient planetary positions implied by this unified theory of myth is simply impossible to explain with currently accepted theories of gravitational dynamics. A promising correlation with plasma dynamics is developing: Laboratory experiments with plasma phenomena have reproduced some of the more "impossible" images from myth. But plasma dynamics itself contradicts many of the tenets of gravitational theory and is mostly ignored by "mainstream" physicists.
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The crux of the crisis is this: A rational method (comparative mythology) applied to the totality of relevant data (all myths of all cultures, together with their art, architecture, rituals, and customs) has resulted in the identification of hundreds of themes occurring in common at a high level of specific detail. There are only three possible explanations: 1) A global event was experienced by all cultures and memorialized in the specific elements of each culture, which retained the detailed reproduction of the objective common event (i.e., one story told around the world). 2) All cultures originated in one primordial culture and the original elements of the one were superficially modified as it dispersed into the many, with some unspecified psychological fixation keeping the underlying themes unchanged at a level of minute detail (i.e., one story teller imitated around the world). 3) The human psyche, at some deep level where myths are generated, has a "hardwired" structure that allows only the existing themes, in their highly detailed form, to be expressed, but superficial modifications can occur (i.e., one story telling emerging uniformly around the world). (Perhaps I should list a fourth possibility, although it's not explanatory: 4) All the above, including the data, can simply be ignored. It doesn't fit what we believe, so we'll pretend it doesn't exist. This seems to be the "explanation" preferred by most professionals outside the field of mythology.) All three possibilities contradict currently accepted theories. Depending on your social status, economic position, and beliefs, this is either an opportunity to discover something new or a threat to your prestige, livelihood, and sanity. And it's on that level the issue will be decided. Logical argument, scientific comparison of data and theories, and reasonable weighing of alternatives will only tag along in the footsteps of the cultural combatants. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE THUNDERBOLT IN MYTH AND SYMBOL

By Dave Talbott A thunderstorm is a remarkable, often terrifying event. So it's not surprising that few scholars have paused to wonder about the prominent role of lightning in ancient mythology. Archaic images of huge lightning gods roaring in the heavens, or of celestial armies hurling lightning across the sky will appear perfectly "understandable." Thus, students of folklore assure us that, through the primitive logic of the lightning myths, our early ancestors sought to describe one of the more frightening aspects of everyday life. This common supposition is unfortunate, however, because it has prevented even the most discerning comparative mythologists from seeing the underlying patterns, none of which describes the phenomenon familiar to us. As strange as it may seem, all of the most common lightning motifs speak of things never observed in our time. Our comparative investigation has identified hundreds of recurring themes of myth, including numerous global images of lightning. The disconnection of these images from the observed behavior of lightning is an impressive anomaly. The usual tendency will be to look for what is intelligible under the tests of common experience. If, however, "UNCOMMON experience" is the basis of the global imagery, then this very habit must be confronted as a prime obstruction to discovery.
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The lightning gods of old have a story to tell, and that story, when traced to its substructure, points to extraordinary natural events. The prime requirement for investigators in this field is an independent attitude, free from theoretical prejudice and eager to consider all patterns of ancient memory, even when the mythic themes make no sense under prevailing assumptions.
SEEKING A UNIFIED THEORY

The interpretation offered here will add new opportunities for interdisciplinary exploration. Stunning revelations of plasma physics must be studied alongside ancient memories of the divine thunderbolt. Laboratory demonstrations will find a place next to prehistoric rock art. Ancient tales of prodigious gods battling in the sky must be compared with the massive scars on planets and moons, now revealed by space age probes. And recent telescopic images, revealing new worlds in space, must be considered on the same page with ancient astronomical traditions describing the thunderbolt as a weapon launched by PLANETARY gods. Our ancestors lived beneath an alien sky, a world so different from what we experience today that historical descriptions required a vast complex of analogies to make sense of it. That is precisely what the lightning symbols give us. Great spectacles in the sky produced an explosion of human imagination--a myth-making epoch that had no counterpart in later times. Let us begin, therefore, with the most common ancient symbols of the divine thunderbolt. All of the unusual motifs listed below find wide distribution in the ancient world: 1) Lightning takes the form of a frightful weapon--a sword, arrow, mace, club, spear, axe, or hammer. 2) Lightning is an ancestral warrior, the hero god who defeated chaos monsters in primeval times. Lightning-hero and lightning-weapon are frequently synonymous. 3) Lightning appears as a great bird or "thunderbird" with heaven-spanning wings. 4) Lightning is the flash of an "eye" in heaven. It is the destructive power of the "evil eye," destroying opposition. 5) Lightning is launched from a great wheel turning in the sky, the "chariot" of the gods. 6) Lightning is accompanied by falling stones or "thunderstones." 7) Lightning is the messenger of a central sun that ruled the sky before the present sun. 8) Lighting streaks along the world axis, acquiring the form of a towering column, the axis mundi. It is the pillar of the sky which, at the beginning of time, "separated heaven and earth." 9) Lightning is a generative, masculine pillar. It impregnates goddesses. 10) Lighting is a "chain of arrows" launched skyward by a great warrior or hero. 11) Lighting appears as a ladder or backbone of the sky, whose steps were ascended by an ancestral hero. 12) Lightning spirals, twists, or whirls across the heavens. It is a whorl, swastika, or triskeleon. 13) Lighting appears as an undulating, fiery serpent. 14) Lightning takes the form of twins, two brothers, or two companions, each viewed as the alter ego of the other. 15) Lightning is two serpentine or rope-like filaments wound around a central axis (caduceus motif) 16) Lightning appears as an equal-limbed cross; it explodes as luminous streamers, dividing the home of the gods into equal quarters. 17) Lighting "blossoms" as a flower, the celebrated plant of life. 18) Lightning is fire and brimstone (sulfur). The lightning of the gods gives rise to a sulfurous stench. 19) In their violent wars, the gods blast each other with lightning. Chaos monsters are destroyed by lightning. 20) Lightning leaves its mark on celestial heroes and chaos monsters, who are "lightning scarred," or "thunderstruck." 21) The lightning-scar or wound of the warrior-hero is the mark by which he is identified or recognized.
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WEAPON OF PLANETARY GODS

There is one more lightning motif that must be mentioned. This theme is perhaps the most enigmatic of all, and it traces to the earliest astronomical traditions. It seems that, amongst many ancient peoples, the owners of the lightning bolt were PLANETS, when the planets were claimed to have ruled the world. All of us are familiar with the ancient Greek images of Zeus, the bearer of the thunderbolt, wielding his weapon against the powers of darkness. Zeus is, of course, the Latin Jupiter, and classical images were strongly influenced by the Akkadian images of Marduk, the king of gods, the planet Jupiter, famous for the thunderbolt by which he assumed celestial sovereignty. It was Immanuel Velikovsky who, in Worlds in Collision, drew our attention to the ancient memory of lightning passing between planets. The historian Pliny, for example, wrote: Most men are not acquainted with a truth known to the founders of the science from their arduous study of the heavens. Thunderbolts, Pliny wrote, "...are the fires of the three upper planets." A vivid description of an interplanetary discharge was also given by Pliny: Heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal flies from a burning log. When such a discharge falls on the earth, he reported, "it is accompanied by a very great disturbance of the air," produced "by the birth-pangs, so to speak, of the planet in travail." Pliny also referred to an ancient Etruscan tradition describing a bolt from the planet Mars that fell on Bolsena--"the city was entirely burned up by this bolt." Similarly, Pliny's contemporary, the naturalist Seneca, distinguished the "lesser bolts" of the local storm from the vastly more powerful bolts of the planet Jupiter, "by which the threefold mass of mountains fell."
THUNDERBOLT AS ARCHETYPE
I've said it before, but the surface of world mythology is a madhouse, and on the matter of the thunderbolt we have a particularly telling example. It is as if the mythmakers took special pleasure in defying all experience, including direct and unassailable observation. The myths have no integrity. They insult our intelligence. How could a rational, feet-on-the-ground investigator see more than random fiction in these tales? It is the recurring themes, the ARCHETYPES, that rescue us from such skepticism, enabling us to distinguish the substratum of human memory from the carnival of fragmentation and elaboration over time. An archetype is an irreducible first form--it cannot be reduced to a more elementary statement. And as far as can be determined from historical investigation, it has no precedent. Archetypes as a whole are the keys to our understanding of ancient mythmaking imagination. In the remembered age of the gods, our sky presented to terrestrial witnesses a stupendous display of light, form, color, and sound, associated with concrete bodies in the heavens, evolving through well-defined stages. Sometimes exquisite, sometimes terrifying, these forms were, in the imagination of the sky gazers, divine and awe-inspiring gods. Thus the myths themselves insist that nothing comparable ever occurred over subsequent millennia.
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RULES OF INVESTIGATION
A productive investigation of the archetypes will require three overriding principles: 1) The investigation must focus exclusively on common mythical, symbolic, or ritual themes: including all points of agreement between far-flung cultures. 2) Each verifiable theme must be traced to its earliest instances. 3) All common cultural expressions of the themes must be considered as evidence. Pictures illuminate ancient storytelling. Ritual celebrations give context to the pictures. Myths add crucial background to the rites. Certain extraordinary facts can now be stated concerning the archetypes, and these facts challenge all prior explanations or theories of myth: 1) No archetype finds its natural reference in our familiar sky. All common themes of myth point to events that do not occur in our time. 2) All archetypes are inseparably connected to each other. No isolated archetype can be found. It is this stunning fact that encourages the investigator to seek out a unified explanation of the archetypes. 3) All archetypes trace to the beginnings of recorded human history. Following the flowering of ancient civilizations, it does not appear that any new archetypes arose. We further claim that no comprehension of world mythology is possible apart from the memory of PLANETS extremely close to the earth, accompanied by earth-shaking electrical activity. It was not that long ago that heaven was alive with electricity as planets moved through a rich plasma environment. Ambient electrical activity gave rise to unearthly sights and sounds for which natural experience today can only provide the faintest reminder. In the wake of these events, cultures around the world strove to reckon with the forces unleashed, to interpret the meaning of cosmic catastrophe, and to REMEMBER. From this new vantage point, it is now possible for the serious student to follow the progression of the symbolic language from first form, or archetype, through later elaboration. The "Saturn model," about which we have spoken so frequently in this newsletter, is based on rigorous cross-cultural comparison. Hundreds of archetypes, traced to their prehistoric roots, provide the concrete basis for a series of "snapshots" showing an evolving planetary configuration as seen from the earth. Many of these first glimpses have been presented at seminars and conferences, and more will be presented at the upcoming conference, July 6-9. An introduction will be offered in the forthcoming book, Thunderbolts of the Gods (co-author is Wal Thornhill.)
ACID TESTS OF A HYPOTHESIS

As for the implications of the Saturn model, there can be little ambiguity. The model is both unique and highly specific. Moreover, our rules of investigation preclude selective perception, focusing entirely on an undisputed field of evidence: the verifiable themes, the archetypes. When measured against the known patterns of human memory, does the model meet the test of a good theory? The role of electricity is crucial, and I must confess that I did not realize the full import of electricity until the meeting with Wal Thornhill late in 1996. For thirty days, Wal camped out in my office helping us prepare for the January' 1997 world conference. During that time he convinced me that the celestial images I had reconstructed were plasma discharge phenomena. This revelation proved to be a critical turn in the historical investigation. For many years I had insisted that electromagnetism would have to be considered if we were to account for the remembered dynamics of the ancient Saturnian system. From the beginning I was convinced (following Velikovsky's lead) that lightning bolts had passed between planets. And I had identified the
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Valles Marineris on Mars as the lightning scar, wound, or disfiguring mark on the celestial warriors of mythology (the "Scarface" motif about which I've spoken elsewhere). But prior to Wal Thornhill's arrival in Portland, I didn't even know what a Birkeland Current is, and I knew nothing about the unique configurations taken by plasma discharges.
CONVERGENCE OF MYTH AND SCIENCE

While I've experienced many breakthroughs over more than a quarter century, this one exceeded all others. It was the first indication that, at a level of explicit detail, a convergence of myth and science may be possible. This, then, inspired me to reconsider the mythic thunderbolt in terms far more concrete than I had previously envisioned. Until then, I had treated the thunderbolt as a secondary symbol, a meteorological signpost only generally directing our attention to the sights and sounds of primordial times. I had not zeroed in on lightning as a core mythical motif, one inspired by the ELECTRICAL attributes of the planetary configuration itself. What you do not recognize you do not see. Wal's revelations encouraged me to reconsider the thunderbolt from the ground up. Applying the principles of the historical reconstruction, I abstracted from my files a summary of the archaic forms taken by "lightning" in ancient texts and art. The conclusion was startling. The recurring patterns of lightning symbolism turn out to be nothing else than the extraordinary forms taken by the planetary configuration. When considered in their ancient contexts, not one of these archetypal forms is either logical or expected under our familiar sky. Hence, an entirely new level of evidence came into the picture.
LABORATORY CONFIRMATION
There is more. Those who have seen some of the "snapshots" of the Polar Configuration will recall that the reconstructed images involve certain filamentary streamers radiating from planets or stretching between planets. In human imagination these were seen most commonly as braided hair, entwining ropes, streaming feathers, or undulating, twisting serpentine forms. Here the interactions of Venus and Mars within the configuration are most prominent, illuminating the global myths of the goddess and warrior-hero. (Several examples will be given in future installments in this series.) One of the forms I will present at the upcoming conference is that of the far-famed caduceus. Another is the so-called "winged disk" and its many variants in the ancient world. Since these highly unusual forms answer to nothing in nature as we know it today, they must be included among the acid tests of the model. But for now I must simply state the punchline-THE VIOLENT EVOLUTION OF THE PLANETARY CONFIGURATION, RECORDED ON PAPYRUS, CLAY, AND STONE, FINDS DIRECT VERIFICATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF PLASMA DISCHARGE CONFIGURATIONS IN THE LABORATORY.
THE MYTHICAL "CHAIN OF ARROWS"

This surprising picture emerged only in the past year. In my earlier reconstruction, I had followed the connections between an undulating, upward-spiraling, serpentine form and two powerful mythical motifs-the "chain of arrows" and the "ladder of heaven." Gathered around these motifs in texts and art are numerous other themes, including: backbone of the sky, tower of heaven, flared skirt of the mother goddess, pyramid or steps of ascent, bound serpent or dragon, severed limbs of the serpent or dragon, and more. In the course of assimilating this material, it became clear to me that a simple evolutionary
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sequence explained the full range of symbolic connections, if one allows for the three-dimensional perspective of an observer on earth. At the heart of this evolutionary sequence is the "chain of arrows" event, a global theme so preposterous as to mock every attempt of comparative mythologists to understand it. In this theme an ancestral warrior or hero launches arrows toward the sky, and each arrowhead embeds itself in the one above it. The chain of arrows then becomes a ladder by which the hero ascends to heaven. Numerous examples of the theme will be found in the Americas alone, but other examples occur from Africa and India to the South Pacific. In the Kathlamet legend of a hero named "Many Swans," this great ancestor launches a stream of arrows heavenward, these forming a ladder of ascent to the sky. In the Hindu Ramayana the arrows of Arjuna form a bridge capable of carrying the mighty Hanuman, the traveler between worlds. From a systematic examination of ancient pictographs, I had concluded that the chain of arrows involved a series of toroids stacked along a central spine and that these toroidal forms had evolved violently from a luminous filament spiraling up the polar axis. Additionally, since Wal Thornhill had persuaded me that the unique phases of the polar configuration involved plasma discharging, I became increasingly aware of the vital links between the arrow-chain and the mythical "lightning" of the gods. In 1997 I had sketched out the unique form of the arrow-chain for Wal. He replied that this configuration must indeed have its explanation in plasma behavior. He agreed to look into it.
PERATT INSTABILITY
Then came one of the great surprises in the history of the research. It occurred only last September, when Tony Peratt, one of the world's most accomplished plasma theorists, described the violent evolution of a plasma discharge form that he had documented over more than two decades. In plasma science this configuration is named after Tony--it is called the "Peratt Instability." From the moment of this revelation, nothing has been the same. The correspondence between the global pictographic record, our reconstruction based on historical testimony, and the extraordinary forms of the evolving discharge in the laboratory is simply "too specific and too precise to be due to accident" (not my words, but the words of plasma experts). The result of this new information is that the "chain of arrows," one of the most perplexing archetypes, is no longer seeking an explanation. Moreover, these revelations will bring us into direct liaison with leading experts in plasma science, and the convergence appears to be more powerful than anything we had previously hoped for. NEXT: "Thunder Gods and Celestial Marvels" EDITOR'S NOTE: The Intersect 2001 conference: "Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History" will include the first public presentation of this story, with new animation and other visual support. Dave Talbott
BIG BANG GENESIS

A Kronia Discussion HANK MAY WRITES: While browsing the shelf of newly acquired books at the university library that I visit most, I came across "Genesis of the Big Bang", by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, Oxford Press, 2001 -- call #s QB991.B54 A47 and 523.1 '8 - dc21, ISBN 0-19-51112-6. (Alpher and Herman worked with George Gamow in the 1940s and for many years, developing the Big Bang ... Herman passed away in February,
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1997 but he and Alpher had worked through an outline of the substantive content of the book and had developed a few rough drafts of chapters, so he is listed as a co-author. HANK QUOTES WHAT THE BOOK SAYS ABOUT HALTON ARP: On the other hand, some astronomers challenge Hubble's interpretation, arguing that there must be some other physical phenomena producing what we observe as redshifts. The principal protagonist has been Halton C. Arp, an astronomer now in Germany who used to be at Mount Wilson-Palomar. As mentioned earlier, he claims to see instances of galaxies which, though their separation projected on the sky is very small, exhibit rather different redshifts. He concludes that the redshifts must have been produced by some process that is local to the radiating object. Arp's view is shared in a general way by a few astronomers and cosmologists who still argue that the Big Bang never happened. A detailed discussion of this controversy is beyond the scope of this book, and for most cosmologists it is a dead issue. Suffice it to say that a number of astronomers and cosmologists -- for example John Bahcall of Princeton -- have looked at Arp's associations and concluded that there is a statistical problem. The number of close associations seen as projected on the sky is easily understood in terms of the scatter in the probability distribution of galactic positions across the sky. HANK ADDS: I came across mention of the new book by Burbidge, Hoyle and Narlikar. However, Alpher says he hasn't read it. EARL STAELIN ASKS: After reading "Seeing Red" I rather doubt that Bahcall is correct. I wonder if anyone in our group or Halton Arp has analyzed Bahcall's report, what the results were, and if a written response has been published. Or does anyone plan to do so? If not, wouldn't it be a good idea? HANK MAY REPLIES: I spent a couple of hours looking for the Bahcall reference cited by Alpher/Herman, as requested by Earl Staelin, and came up blank. I found one statistical study by John and Neta Bahcall that may possibly be the one, but it dates back to 1970 (Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 82, 1276-1292) and I doubt they would be citing a study that far back. I think I recall reading about John Bahcall's statistical study just a few years ago. I ... volunteered because I was going to the library anyway, and thought I could find it quickly. I was wrong. I also did a computer search and only found the 1970 ref. cited above. AMY COMMENTS: I think you may have uncovered what motivated Arp to title his latest book Seeing Red and why he wrote as much about the response of the academic community as he did about his fascinating astronomical discoveries. (BTW, you can purchase Seeing Red for $25 from the kronia web store at http://www.kronia.com/products/products_books.html) Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar's new book (A Different Approach to Cosmology -- the one Alpher didn't read) discusses Bahcall's (and others') early 70's objections to Arp's discoveries on pages 122- 123. The papers which Alpher/Herman claims completely disprove Arp's associations between high and low redshift galaxies were written when only four such objects were known (a fifth that had been overlooked was later discovered in the same data.) Since that time, Big Bang theorists have ignored Arp's work because, in Alpher's words: ...for most cosmologists it is a dead issue. Most, but not all cosmologists consider it a dead issue. In 1989, Geoffrey Burbidge extended the galaxy/quasar pair investigation to include 392 galaxies, concluding that the angular separation of the pairs was inversely dependent on the distance of the low redshift member of the pairs. In plain English, that means the closer the galaxy is to us, the farther apart its quasar companion appears. This is the effect of simple perspective if the two are physically associated, and an impossible coincidence if they
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aren't. This study represents the complete set of galaxy/quasar pairs of less than 10 arc minutes separation and for which the redshifts were known as of 1990. It doesn't end there, of course. The separation of galaxy/quasar pairs is only one of 15 arguments against the redshift/distance relationship that Halton Arp offers in his 1987 book, Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies, summarized according to their relevance on page 174. Several more are discussed in his 1998 book, Seeing Red, and even more are coming to light since then. Margaret Burbidge alone has identified eleven more sets of high redshift quasars paired across the spin axis of bright low- redshift Seyfert galaxies in the past four years. The evidence continues to pour in. And this is crucial evidence. If it is true, then many of the discoveries of the last half- century of astronomy are seriously flawed or completely unnecessary, like curved spacetime, dark matter, inflationary expansion. Alpher/Herman's comment, "for most cosmologists it is a dead issue", does not reflect well the integrity of "most cosmologists". HANK ADDS: I browsed Bahcall's web page and found the attached short article out of Nature, which I thought might be of interest to you. It doesn't mention Arp, however. http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Popular/nature.html NATURE, Vol. 408, 21/28 December 2000, pp. 916-917 The Big Bang is bang on JOHN BAHCALL John Bahcall is at the Institute for Advanced Study, Natural Sciences, Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA. Did the Universe really start in a hot Big Bang? New measurements of the temperature of the Universe when it was young provide exciting confirmation that it was indeed hotter in the past. The Universe is filled with unimagined things of great beauty and enormous significance, just waiting to be discovered. On page 931 of this issue, for example, Srianand, Petitjean and Ledoux1 report the discovery of a rare set of features (absorption lines) in the light from a distant quasar. These features make it possible to test rigorously the fundamental idea, underlying all of modern cosmology, that the Universe was hotter when it was younger. The results reported by Srianand and colleagues are a convincing test of this idea and represent a landmark result. AMY COMMENTS: Forgive me for applying the methods I deplored above. There seems no reason to post the rest of this article. Because if Arp is correct, this quasar can't tell us anything about the early Universe, because, first, it's not 6 billion light years away, so the light we're seeing hasn't been travelling for six billion years. Second, there is no "early Universe closer to the Big Bang" for us to "see", even if our telescopes could gather ancient photons from billions of years ago. There was no Big Bang! Where is this quasar? Bahcall's website fails to mention the quasar's name or position, but the European Southern Observatory's press release announcing the Nature article Bahcall reviews does. See the press release here: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2000/pr-27-00.html The quasar's name is: PKS 1232+0815 That's important, because the PKS number is based on the quasar's position in the sky. Right ascension (RA) 12 hrs, 32 min, declination (Dec) 8 degrees 15 minutes. Look it up on a star map -- I did. The giant
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elliptical galaxy M49 is listed at RA 12 hours, 29 minutes, 46.8 sec, Dec 8 degrees, 00 minutes, 02 sec. That's only 3 arcminutes away in RA and 15 arcminutes away in Dec! From Arp's point of view, M49 is the granddaddy of the Virgo Supercluster, father to (among others) the jetted pair, M87 and 3C273 (the first confirmed quasar). This quasar (PKS 1232+0815) may be an offspring of M49, or a secondary ejection from one of the many tightly-packed galaxies in that region. And the cloud which absorbs the quasar's light is probably material entrained from its own parent galaxy in the Virgo Supercluster. The website article says in wonder: It is almost as if nature planted an abundance of clues in this anonymous cloud in order to allow some lucky researchers to infer the temperature of the CMB when the Universe was young. I reply: It was no accident. This cloud is not "anonymous!" But it isn't far away nor are we seeing it when the Universe was young. This quasar is part of the biggest galactic family known. As such, its distance must be approximately that of the center of the Virgo Supercluster -- on the order of 50 million light years away. Any unique characteristics will reflect its recent genesis, the characteristics of its parent galaxy, maybe bridges of material entrained between them, and its position in the Virgo Supercluster. I can't imagine how anything about this quasar could have anything to do with the cosmic microwave background of the early Universe.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 5 (April 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: REALLY? OF THUNDERGODS AND CELESTIAL MARVELS PARADIGM PORTRAITS (9): DISTANT SUPERNOVAS IO-THE ELECTRIC MOON
Mel Acheson Dave Talbott Amy Acheson Wal Thornhill
REALLY?
by Mel Acheson What's "reality"? For science, for the past century or more, it's "what's out there", "the given". And we get to know it by looking at it. (I say "looking" to mean all sensation.) To get to know it better, we need only to look closer. To that end, we invent microscopes and telescopes to magnify it. We substitute electronic devices for our eyes in order to "see" reality in radio and x-ray wavelengths. Our technologically enhanced senses have put us more in touch with reality than at any other time in the history of our species. But we've known all along that's not how knowing works. And if that's not how we know, what we know probably isn't what we think it is. Reality may not be real. Looking only produces a tingling in the nerves. Sensation, as such, is meaningless. People learn to make sense of their sensations soon after birth, and by the time they can talk, they've forgotten how they learned and even that they did learn. But when cataract surgery was first perfected, it enabled many people who had been blind from birth to see for the first time. Marius von Senden wrote about their experiences in Space and Sight. The newly sighted people experienced patches of color or brightness without meaning. They had to learn to associate the patches with concepts previously associated with other sensations. (This may be the only episode in the history of our species in which individuals capable of communicating their response experienced "pure observation".) Nor do nerves transmit anything. One nerve is stimulated to discharge its tiny electrical spark, and this may stimulate nearby nerves to discharge theirs. There's no variation in amplitude, no "gray tones". It's either on or off. When the chain of discharges reaches the brain, the only way to distinguish one spark from another is the relationship with all other sparks. These relationships can form into groups, and the groups can become associated. Associations of associations can stimulate each other. Hierarchies of associations can develop, which can become "tangled" by associations among higher- and lower-level associations. In this way a dynamic classification system arises. It creates the sensory order, which is not so much a one-to-one mapping of the real world as a metaphor of it. For example, in the real world, colors are part of a linear arrangement of increasing wavelengths. Beyond red is infrared, and beyond violet is ultraviolet. But in the sensory order, red and violet join at purple to make a circle. There is no purple wavelength in the real world.
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So looking can in no way be equated with knowing. We need an idea to make sense of sensation. That's what theories do. It's also what fantasies do, and they're not what we usually consider to be knowledge. We're missing something. What turns percepts and concepts, those associations of nervous sparks, into knowledge is judgement: answering the question, "Is it true?" Either answer--yes or no--does the trick. Douglas Allchin points out in The Epistemology of Error, "The key epistemological distinction ... is between empirically unresolved questions, or uncertainty, and resolved questions...," between determinate and ambiguous. But judgement, unlike diamonds, is seldom forever. There can be new sensations, new data, and new ideas, new theories. Old sensations and ideas can be rearranged. The question for judgement can be recalled. The determinate can become ambiguous again. The tangled hierarchies of associations of associations of nerve sparks are continually re-energizing themselves and shifting their patterns. Sometimes they reorganize themselves en masse: There can be paradigm shifts which shift reality. How can reality shift if it's "what's out there," to be known by looking at it? Maybe we started our march down Epistemology Lane on the wrong foot. Notice that from the beginning we've unconsciously assumed a dichotomy between a "real" "out there" and what must therefore be an "unreal" "in here". One of Piet Hein's Grooks is pertinent: ...lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over. A clue to catching our balance is to notice that, to me, your nerve sparks and classification system and sensory order and paradigm- determined reality are part of my "out there" reality. The dichotomous categories we invented encompass each other and can't be dichotomies. Notice too that equating knowing with looking also equates reality with the descriptions of that looking. This error underlies much of modern physics: Mathematical equations are symbolic representations of the descriptions of looking, so equating reality with the descriptions reduces reality to a set of equations. A vicious circle results: The equations allow you to deduce reality, and you no longer need even to look. What began as empiricism ends up as idealism. The objective and the subjective become confused. Cause and effect become meaningless. The arrow of time becomes an illusion, as in relativity, and existence depends on measurement, as in quantum mechanics. Our unconscious assumptions in the beginning have come back around to bite us on the ankle. And in light of the nerve sparks and sensory metaphors and mutable judgements, an even more basic, unconscious, and untenable assumption comes to light: that reality is something we start with. For science, for the cognitive understanding of our experiences, reality is really what we end up with. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
OF THUNDERGODS AND CELESTIAL MARVELS

by Dave Talbott In ancient traditions, few images find more vivid expression than the great thunderbolts of the planetary gods. When the gods went to war, the heavens shook. Lightning sped between the planetary combatants as flaming weapons, with the fate of celestial kings and kingdoms hanging in the balance.
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Again and again, we find sovereign gods relying upon a "thunder weapon" to defend cosmic order. Rulers of the sky vanquish chaos monsters with stupendous, earth-shaking bolts. We see this most dramatically in the confrontation of the Greek Zeus with Typhon. But the thunderbolt is also decisive in the Babylonian Marduk's battle against the dragon Tiamat and the Hebrew Yahweh's war against Leviathan. So too, we see the mythic thunderbolt when Indra engages Vritra, or Horus battles Set, or Apollo vanquishes the dragon Python. It is also noteworthy that great hero-gods alternately hurl lightning against the chaos dragon, or TAKE THE FORM of the thunderbolt itself. In the global pattern the hero is often inseparable from his own arrow, sword, spear, club or axe -- even a "tusk" in his mythical form as a "boar" -- while all such symbols merge as distinct forms of the cosmic lightning. [See Lightning Motif #8 in our previous article: "Lightning takes the form of an ancestral warrior, the hero god who defeated chaos monsters in primeval times and consorted with the mother goddess."] A systematic review of lightning themes will make clear that the regional lightning of later times was but an echo of the vastly more terrifying bolts which once held the entire world in awe. Consider the ancient images of the gas-giant Jupiter, whom the Greeks remembered as the ruler Zeus, the victor in the celestial clash of the Titans. Jupiter is just a speck of light in our sky, but ancient races recalled the GOD Jupiter as a heaven-spanning form, employing lightning as his most effective weapon. If we've failed to recognize the celestial players, it's because the implied references are PLANETS appearing huge above the ancient skyworshippers, while our present knowledge of the planets is constrained by their remote and predictable courses today. We see no evidence of unstable planetary motions today, and most assuredly we see no interplanetary lightning arcing between them! Yet that IS the human memory. In Hesiod's Theogony, the poet describes the god Zeus, when the dragon Typhon threatened to destroy the world: From Heaven and from Olympus he came immediately, hurling his lightning: the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning, whirling an awesome flame. In this overwhelming conflagration there was "thunder and lightning, and ... fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt." Destroyed by a searing bolt from Zeus, the world-threatening dragon came to be known as the "thunderstricken." Similarly, Typhon's counterpart Enceladus, struck down by Zeus, was the "lightning-scarred" god. Hebrew tradition recalled the lightning of the gods in similar terms. Thus Psalm 77 proclaims: The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook. From India, the Mahabarata and Ramayana describe great battles in which lightning of the gods filled the heavens like a rain of fiery arrows. So too, in the texts of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Scandinavia, China, and the Americas, myths and legends describe conflagrations attributed to divine thunderbolts, appearing in the forms of flaming arrows, darts, lances, and other weapons. For anyone seeking to comprehend ancient images of the gods, there can be no greater mistake than to rationalize away the cosmic scale of the described events. But that WILL be the tendency so long as scholars demand that present references in nature account for the ancient depictions.
EVIDENCE FROM MANY FIELDS

This is an interdisciplinary investigation. To expose the roots of the mythical and symbolic archetypes, we must range across highly diverse fields of evidence. Archaic images of the thunderbolt will provide a
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unifying thread, connecting planetary geology, plasma science, and astronomy to a most extraordinary epoch of human history, anciently remembered as "the age of gods and wonders." In this investigation, the "lightning bolts" now spanning galaxies will offer crucial analogies for the remembered thunderbolts of mythical gods and heroes. Physical scars on solid bodies within the solar system will become evidence EXPECTED under a new model of planetary history. And the configurations taken by plasma discharges in the laboratory will confirm the accuracy of highly enigmatic rock art and other depictions of the divine thunderbolt. It is the correlation between the different domains of evidence that provides the acid test of a hypothesis. For if, as we claim, planets once waged battles in the sky, then all related fields of inquiry should support the same conclusion, even if the experts, expecting something else, have missed the underlying story. Since plasma science is far from my own field of expertise, I must emphasize that, in the following discussion of planetary discharges and plasma environments, I am indebted to the contribution of Wal Thornhill, my co-author of the forthcoming book, Thunderbolts of the Gods. Also, I must credit Amy Acheson for numerous helpful contributions. (Of course, if I've failed to accurately paraphrase either, they are not to be held responsible.)
THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE

In recent decades, the majority of space age surprises could be listed under a single heading: electromagnetism. Electrical and magnetic principles, though never envisioned by the pioneers of gravitational theory, are evident at all scales of observation, from comet tails to the most expansive intergalactic structures. But the accepted models of planetary evolution permit virtually no discussion of electricity. When electrons are removed from atoms, the result is an assembly of charged particles, a plasma. The removed electrons provide the negative component and the remainder of the atom -- called an ion -- the positive. It was Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) who first described the behavior of plasma as a kind of "gas" of charged particles, and it was he who coined the name "plasma," due to its similarity to the biological plasma of the bloodstream. When subjected to electric and magnetic stimuli, plasma will respond as if alive -- and often unpredictably. Langmuir describes what happens when a charged object is placed in plasma. The charges within the plasma adjust their positions to form a barrier, called a "Langmuir sheath." This Langmuir sheath then shields any object outside it from the introduced charge. Langmuir sheaths also form around larger bodies immersed in plasma, such as planets. These planetary sheaths are called plasmaspheres or magnetospheres. The charged objects will not "see" each other electrically until the sheaths themselves touch. This unusual effect can be demonstrated with a novelty plasma ball, perhaps most familiar to us in the old sci-fi movies showing the laboratories of mad scientists, with strange spheres zapping away and emitting luminous, filamentary arcs in every direction. The ball is constructed from a glass sphere filled with a low- pressure gas and enclosing an inner conductor, usually a smaller ball. A high voltage, radio-frequency power source is connected between the two spheres and ionizes the gas -- that is, the components of the atoms dissociate into charged particles. The resulting plasma forms glowing, twisting filaments. If you wave your hand through the air around the ball, the filaments in a plasma ball will be unaffected. However, when you touch the glass, your hand will introduce additional charges. The filaments will be drawn toward your hand and will follow it when you move it along the surface of the glass. Similarly, if two electrically charged planets were to approach each other, neither would respond to the electrical charge of the other so long as their plasmaspheres made no contact with each other. If,
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however, they moved sufficiently close that their plasmaspheres touched, a discharge would occur between planets.
DO PLANETS CARRY CHARGE?

To justify an exploration of interplanetary lightning bolts, we must address the issue of planetary charge. Accepted wisdom in astronomy states that all bodies in space are electrically neutral; that is, they must contain equal numbers of positive and negative charges throughout, with a net charge of zero. This theoretical assumption, usually stated as fact, stems from a misunderstanding of the electrical nature of space. The foundation of astronomical theory, Newton's theory of gravity, was formulated before the electric light or Maxwell's equations -- even before Benjamin Franklin flew his kite. Under the influence of gravitational doctrines, phenomena that are now better explained electrically, such as the behavior of cometary ion tails, were forced into an electrically sterile, gravitational explanation. But recent decades have seen an explosion of new data challenging all traditional suppositions. Much of the data comes from space age tools farther beyond Newton's gravity than electric light-bulbs are beyond Victorian gas-lights. Of particular significance are the contributions of plasma experiments, utilizing electrical forces to replicate many extraordinary and previously unexplained configurations now observed in deep space. Space is not empty. It contains atoms and charged particles whizzing about in intricate patterns -- a plasma. But since plasma is a better conductor of electricity than copper, astrophysicists (virtually none of whom are trained in electrical phenomena) supposed that a plasma environment will not support charge differential. To this supposition, astronomer Donald Menzel added an exclamation point with his nowfamous statement: ...the Sun could not hold enough charge to run a flashlight for more than a few minutes. But the statement is false. That plasma is a very good conductor is only half the story. Equally crucial is the fact that plasma in space is extraordinarily tenuous -- thinner than the thinnest vacuums science can produce on Earth. Hence, there are very few charged particles to carry the currents. If the Sun is electrically charged, the only sign of it would be an accelerating, tenuous "wind" of charged particles "blowing" away from it. Of course, that flow of charged particles is exactly what our modern probes discovered. We call it the "solar wind." If the Earth is electrically charged, there should be a detectable electric field at the surface. And there is. In fine weather, this electric field measures 100 volts per meter as you travel up from the surface. If the Earth is charged, we should also expect electrical currents to flow between the Earth and space, particularly when the Sun is continuously emitting a "wind" of charged particles past the Earth. And we do find such currents. Most obvious are the auroras, now forecast like weather on the Internet. But there is another phenomenon so familiar that it may not be recognized as a planetary electrical discharge. This phenomenon is lightning. In recent years it has been found that lightning storms may be accompanied by strange faint glow discharge phenomena, playfully called elves, sprites and jets, radiating toward space above the clouds. This is exactly what we should expect if regional lightning is part of a continuous exchange between the Earth and the larger electrical environment through which our planet moves. If the Earth is charged, it should possess a Langmuir sheath. And it does. Astronomers call it a "magnetosphere," implying that electricity is not involved. However, this sheath not only traps the planet's magnetic field but the electric field as well. This means there is a flow of electricity across the plasma of interplanetary space. Hence, the term "plasmasphere" would be more fitting.
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WHEN PLANETS SPEAK ELECTRICALLY

Evidence from wide-ranging disciplines will enable us to reconstruct the events accompanying the close encounter of another planet with the Earth. This evidence will include ancient accounts of interplanetary "thunderbolts," modern day experiments with electric discharge phenomena, and the scarring patterns on planets and moons. Taken as a whole, the evidence will permit an interdisciplinary "forensic" approach, one that must remain open to the possibility of extraordinary cosmic events in ancient times. But before we can discuss the effects of a planetary close encounter, three major types of electric discharge in plasma need to be briefly described. The first, noted above, is a "wind" composed of neutral atoms being driven by collisions with ions, or charged particles, as they are accelerated in an electric field. (By this mechanism, ionic air fresheners give rise to a gentle "breeze" that can be felt.) The second discharge type is more energetic and is called a "glow discharge." It can be seen in auroras and neon signs, and is occasionally observed on high- voltage power lines. The third and most energetic discharge is the electric arc, as illustrated by terrestrial lightning. It should also be noted that plasma phenomena are known to be scalable over at least 12 orders of magnitude. This means that phenomena seen in the laboratory and recorded in billionths of a second may span light-years and last for centuries in space. It is this scalability that enables us to compare laboratory discharge phenomena with galactic-scale events. It also enables us to compare similarities between laboratory discharge patterns and ancient depictions of the sky. In both cases, plasma discharge phenomena will account for data that have no other explanation in scientific theory. We are thus reminded of Immanuel Velikovsky's warning many years ago that science can not afford to ignore the role of electricity in the evolution of the solar system. Velikovsky pondered the ancient stories of earth-threatening thunderbolts, envisioning near collisions of planets and electrical discharges flying between them. In Worlds in Collision he wrote: I became skeptical of the great theories concerning the celestial motions that were formulated when the historical facts described here were not known to science ... The accepted celestial mechanics, notwithstanding the many calculations that have been carried out to many decimal places, or verified by celestial motions, stands only if the sun ... is as a whole an electrically neutral body, and also if the planets, in their usual orbits, are neutral bodies. Fundamental principles in celestial mechanics including the law of gravitation, must come into question if the sun possesses a charge sufficient to influence the planets in their orbits or the comets in theirs. In the Newtonian celestial mechanics, based on the theory of gravitation, electricity and magnetism play no role. This was written several years before the space age began. But now, more than fifty years later, the vital role of electricity and magnetism can no longer be denied. The outcome will be a more holistic science for the third millennium. Through our own investigations, weighing ancient evidence against the revelations of plasma physics, we have come to accept Velikovsky's underlying hypothesis. We have, however, gone beyond Velikovsky's observations to identify numerous details of an ancient gathering of planets vastly different from the arrangement observed today. An assembly of planets and moons, moving close to each other within a plasma sheath, produced a celestial drama that is unimaginable to astronomers. The most extraordinary aspect of this hypothesis is the ancient "polar configuration." It is the mythic thunderbolt that has catalyzed the merging of my own reconstruction -- the polar configuration -- with the electric universe as summarized by the pioneering work of Wal Thornhill. And thanks to the voluminous descriptions left by our ancestors, it is now possible to show in detail that all
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ancient images of the divine thunderbolt are nothing else than images of the ancient planetary forms, as reconstructed over more than a quarter century. NEXT: "Polar Configuration and Cosmic Thunderbolt." EDITOR'S NOTE: The Intersect 2001 conference -- "Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History" -- will include the first public presentation of this story, with new animation and other visual support. Dave Talbott
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (9): DISTANT SUPERNOVAS

by Amy Acheson In a press release dated April 2, 2001, NASA announced more discoveries in the Deep Field North. This time it's the "most distant supernova" ever seen, and that is important "because it tells us more about the early universe." See pictures here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010404.html AMY COMMENTS: This one is a twisted bag of intertwined concepts -- they claim to have discovered that dark energy is a repulsive force. Will this "dark energy" remind astrophysicists that they already "know" of a repulsive force? Like electricity? Maybe they will squeeze in a plasma explanation of the universe through the back door of a far-off supernova? But as for this "discovery" of dark energy in the early universe, it's NOT A DISCOVERY AT ALL! It's an attempt to twist data into a theory that will explain away evidence which blatantly contradicts standard cosmology. Halton Arp compares this aspect of astrophysics to the crew of the Titanic: ...full speed ahead in spite of the icebergs, because they believed their ship was unsinkable. The Deep Field supernova is an iceberg, and dark energy is a wad of pre-chewed gum that completely fails to patch the hole. Translation: like the distance to quasars, ULIRG's and galaxy clusters, the distance to this supernova was determined by the redshift of the galaxy in which it exploded. The surprising news (also like quasars, ULIRG's and galaxy clusters) is that the supernova was brighter than expected. The "distance as measured by the brightness of the supernova" fails to match the "distance as measured by the redshift." Rather than admit that their rubber ruler (redshift = distance) doesn't work, they invent a whole new type of energy and a whole new history for the universe to compensate for the awkward figures. The simple answer is Arp's -- the galaxy is closer than its redshift indicates. That's why the supernova was brighter than expected. There is even evidence associated with Stefan's Quintet and M82 (see Halton Arp's Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, pg. 100) that points to redshift-related variations of supernova brightness [intrinsically high-redshift galaxies have lower- luminosity supernovae]. If this is true, then the supernova may have an even lower absolute magnitude than the one already too high for the standard theory to explain. Then both the supernova and the galaxy it resides in may need to be brought closer yet. In conclusion: If Arp is right, this galaxy and its supernova are NOT (as claimed) more than ten billion light-years away. Therefore, this galaxy and this supernova cannot tell us ANYTHING AT ALL about how the universe behaved 10 billion years ago. Furthermore, an intrinsic interpretation of redshift knocks the props out from under the accepted age of the universe, as well. It implies a much larger and older,
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possibly infinite and eternal, universe. So even if the redshift-dependent distance were accurate, the universe itself wouldn't have been "young" a mere 10 billion years ago. Amy Acheson
IO-THE ELECTRIC MOON

by Wal Thornhill It is well known that there is an electrical connection between Jupiter and its inner Galilean moon, Io. However, when plumes of matter were discovered jetting into space the immediate interpretation by geologists was that they must be volcanic. The intense volcanism on Io is explained by the notion of rhythmic 100 meter high tides as it orbits Jupiter with a slight eccentricity. But such an obvious answer leaves many mysteries. For example, what makes the lava on Io much hotter than any on Earth? Why are the plumes filamentary? How do the volcanoes move tens of kilometres in a few years? Why is the fallout deposited in rings? New photos from NASA show the ring deposits around old and new eruptions on Io: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/files/images/browse/pia02588.gif These oddities make it unlikely that we are looking at volcanoes or hot lava on Io. So why do NASA scientists leap to weak tidal effects to explain what is happening on Io's surface when it has been calculated that the voltage induced across Io is 400 thousand volts and the observed current flowing in its vicinity is about one million amperes? (Note that these figures may be an underestimate because they assume that the Jupiter system is electrically closed. Evidence [exists] ... that this is not so.) Part of the answer probably lies in the fact that neither volcanoes nor lightning are well understood on Earth. Also it is traditional that geologists are asked to pronounce on such matters. So it has been easy to suggest that the electrical power passes around Io rather than into it. Geologists can then ignore the obvious electrical scarring features on Io but they are then forced into far-fetched explanations. There is a little known behaviour of lightning that seems to be at work on that small moon. That is, lightning's ability to accelerate material upwards from a surface against the force of gravity. Of course, lightning on Io is not going to look anything like earthly lightning because it has no atmosphere to speak of. It will take the form of a diffuse glow discharge. Plumes have been seen with no attachment to an identifiable volcanic caldera. Io glows visibly when eclipsed by Jupiter. Did no one recognize the obvious electrical activity on Io? It is clear that Thomas Gold is a scientist that you ignore at your peril. In the journal, Science, of 30 November, 1979, he published an article titled "Electric Origin of the Outburst on Io." The abstract reads in part: The outbursts on Jupiter's satellite Io have been described as volcanic eruptions. They may instead be the result of large electric currents flowing through hot spots on Io and causing evaporation of surface materials. Gold made several telling arguments for such an interpretation: 1) for the plume to reach heights of several hundred kilometres it would require a volatile propellant capable of accelerating surface material to speeds of 1 kilometre per second. 2) with incessant activity, in a small fraction of geologic time all of the volatiles would be driven off. 3) heavy sulfur atoms form compounds that are not ideal as a propellant. In a 1987 paper in Astrophysics and Space Science, plasma physicists Peratt and Dessler supported Gold's interpretation and went into more detail. They explain the jets in terms of a plasma- arc discharge.
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The high velocity and parabolic cross-section of the plumes are derived from laboratory plasma experiments. The filamentary penumbra and convergence of ejecta into well-defined rings are characteristic plasma discharge effects that have no counterpart in volcanoes. See pictures and more info on Wal Thornhill's website at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/volcano_io.htm http://www.holoscience.com/news/flashback.htm Reports have expressed surprise at the high temperatures measured at the hot spots on Io. They have been headlined as being the second hottest objects in the solar system, following the Sun. Such a result fits the notion of the hot spots being the touchdown points of electric arcs. The wandering of the hot spots over tens of kilometres, their preference for the edges of earlier cratering, the production of circular edged scalloping to give a fretted appearance, seen to advantage in ... clasp[s] of Io ..., are all characteristic of electric arc machining but have no coherent explanation in volcanic terms ... [T]he brightly coloured "lava fountains" [seen on press release photos] ... were painted in by NASA artists. In the original image whatever was occurring there was too bright for Galileo's camera to register. If they were hot spots created by electric arcs then it would be like trying to film an arc welder in action. When we finally get cameras to Io that can register bright light in fine detail we will find tiny points of light brighter than the Sun. Io will be a unique and valuable laboratory to begin to understand some of the electrical scarring suffered by comets, asteroids, moons and planets. Ironically, it may also help us to understand lightning and volcanoes here on Earth. For example, for reasons unknown to geologists, eruptive activity is greatest on both Io and the Earth at mid-latitudes. Also it is known that here on Earth powerful lightning is often associated with volcanic eruptions. Now, in plasma experiments where a magnetised ball is placed in a vacuum and subjected to an electric discharge, the ball has a plasma torus form around the equator which then discharges to the mid-latitudes of the ball. Can it be that volcanoes here on Earth are connected to electrical activity in space via the lightning above them? Are volcanoes a result of an underground electrical discharge? Also, lightning and strange electrical and magnetic effects are often reported to precede and accompany strong earthquakes. Are earthquakes a different manifestation of the same phenomena? ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 6 (May 31, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: TOOL TIME POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT PARADIGM PORTRAITS (10): MAPPING THE UNIVERSE TWO SPACECRAFT WATCH AN ARC WELDER ON IO KINKS IN SOLAR WAVES
Mel Acheson Dave Talbott Amy Acheson Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
TOOL TIME B
By Mel Acheson Have you ever seen a carpenter try to cut a 2x4 with a hammer? Probably not. Carpenters usually carry a saw as well as a hammer in their toolboxes, and they know to use the proper tool for the task at hand. If they didn't have a saw, they likely could flail away with the hammer and eventually produce a splintered length of wood that more or less fit their need. But it wouldn't be pretty. Astrophysicists have only one tool in their kit--the hammer of gravitational theory. When called upon to build an explanation for the phenomena of a universe filled with plasma, they can't cut it. They're forced to flail: An oscillation in a plasma discharge that produces a thousand pulses of electromagnetic radiation per second--a pulsar--will be splintered into ad hoc kindling by the hammer of gravity. Several stars' worth of matter must be pounded into a tiny volume and spun around at a thousand r.p.s. Then a hot spot must be tacked on to produce the pulses of radiation. The self-constraining filaments of plasma spiraling out from the poles of active galaxies--galactic jets-require even more gravitational hammering. An astronomical quantity of matter must be pounded into such a tiny volume that it loses most of its recognizable properties and becomes a black hole. The black hole then pulls in all the surrounding matter and squeezes it. Next, gravity has to poke tiny holes in the squeezed matter to squirt it back out. Finally, emergency aid from magnetic forces has to be called in to keep the streams of hot gas from evaporating into the empty space around them. The spiraling filaments of a plasma "rope" can pinch down into a small "hot spot". If the current density is high enough, the pinch and the tubular or conical volume around it can glow, revealing the filamentary structure in visible light. To explain these planetary nebulae with gravity, a catastrophic imbalance between radiation and gravitational pressures must be generated in the core of a star. The resulting explosion blows off a spherical shell of hot gas. That shell must then be molded into the observed bipolar shapes (the tubes and the cones) by way of asymmetric interactions with previous gaseous emissions and interstellar gas. Sometimes a little help from (currentless) magnetic fields is thrown in. (As far as is known, with the possible exception of bar magnets, an electric current is the only way to produce a magnetic field. But "electric current" is an alias for a plasma.)
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These examples of gravitational flailing illustrate a fundamental incommensurability in viewpoint. A carpenter chooses a saw or a hammer according to whether he's working with wood or with steel. Identifying the material at hand is one of those cognitive activities that's so basic it's taken for granted. It's often unconscious. It surprises us when it's forced into our awareness by being mistaken, when what we assumed was a nail turns out to be a splinter of wood. In the case of the universe, this fundamental identification is whether it's composed of masses or of plasmas. A carpenter has many sources of information about his materials--sight, touch, smell, and a history of experience. Physicists are severely limited: They have only the readings of a few instruments exposed to a thin stream of photons from the sky. This vacuum of sensory deprivation tends to suck in material from the nearest source of cognitive substance, which is preconceived ideas. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And to a physicist with a theory of gravity, everything looks like mass. When the mass he imputes to the source of the thin stream of photons doesn't nail down the explanation he needs, he imagines more mass, invisible mass, mass compressed into black holes and expanded into dark halos, until his universe is 90% imaginary. A physicist with a theory of plasma is much better off. At least she can perform laboratory experiments on her alternatives to black holes and dark matter. She has more sources of information about her material than the thin stream of photons from the sky. She can test the ideas she imagines with the sparks she can manipulate. She can hammer on the wood; she can saw on the nail; she can see that doesn't work and go back to try the reverse. She can be scientific, can use concepts as tools, and can avoid transubstantiating them into pseudo-religious icons. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT

By David Talbott To see the divine thunderbolt's true role in world mythology, the sense of context provided by a physical model will prove crucial. What we've called the "Saturn theory" or "Saturn model" provides a unified reference, enabling us to interpret and account for the extraordinary commemorative activity of ancient cultures. It offers a coherent explanation of global patterns, and does so at a level of extraordinary and highly specific detail. Moreover, we claim that a fundamentally incorrect theory could never achieve this explanatory power. The model rests upon a verifiable substratum of human memories and traditions. Beneath the surface of world mythology and symbolism, certain points of agreement shine through. In fact, scholars as a whole have never acknowledged the great volume of broadly distributed themes. The reason for this is that the experts themselves lack the necessary references; they cannot distinguish the underpinnings of the original human experience from the flood of random and contradictory details added by the various cultures as they localized, interpreted, and elaborated aspects of the universal experience. In fact, the most significant motifs, the ones that reflect the archetypes most directly, are often the most likely to go unnoticed or to be swiftly dismissed. That's because these motifs arose from unfamiliar phenomena, events that do not occur in our time, whereas later elaborations of the motifs sought to ADAPT them to familiar phenomena. The archetypes, the root patterns, are neither random nor contradictory. All archetypes belong to a coherent substructure, and all are inseparably connected to each other. Hence, a logical and consistent explanation must be possible, even if all prior attempts at a unified theory immediately collapse when critically investigated.
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MEMORIES OF DOOMSDAY
Of course, certain official tenets of science will obstruct the historian's ability to recognize patterns. Over the past two centuries, suppositions cultivated within the sciences placed rigid boundaries on historical investigation. How many archaeologists, anthropologists, or ethnologists, for example, have paused to notice the underlying agreement of the first sky-worshippers on the Doomsday memory? Every ancient culture insisted that a "world-destroying" catastrophe occurred in former times. For the Greeks this was the KATAKLYSMOS, when the world ended in flood and a cosmic winter, or EKPYROSIS, the destruction of the world by fire. We call the Doomsday memory an archetype because no culture failed to recall such an event, marked by great prodigies in the sky and a violent shift in the celestial order. On this vital point, Immanuel Velikovsky's presentation of global evidence still stands. But just consider how severely our scientific assumptions will limit the historian's imagination, as he confronts this recurring memory. Without a second thought, he already "knows" that the sky remained fundamentally unchanged across all of human history. So he can only appeal to unconstrained imagination for his explanations. And his "explanations" will invariably discourage attention to detail and cross-cultural patterns. In almost thirty years of investigation, for example, I never found a mainstream scholar wondering why, on every habitable continent, the Doomsday accounts recall a biologically absurd serpent or dragon thrashing about in the sky. One would think that such an obvious enigma would capture the attention of the experts! Eventually, it became clear to me that unproven scientific assumptions, stated as fact, have fostered an intellectual trance, closing off the possibility of discovery.
MEMORIES OF PLANETARY DISORDER

As we descend to specifics, the observed rigidity becomes even more severe. What about the evidence for changes in the motions of planets only a few thousand years ago? With the birth of empirical astronomy in the first millennium BC, every priest astronomer knew that the planets, then seen as distant points of light, were once towering forms in the sky. The astronomers knew that, in a remote age of gods and wonders, the planets ruled the heavens, determining the fate of kings and kingdoms, and indeed the destiny of the world. Planets brandished weapons of thunder, fire, and stone. In their earliestremembered appearance, they inspired awe and reverence, but in the end their behavior was both capricious and violent, leading directly to the Doomsday catastrophe. The testimony is indisputable in the case of the Babylonian astronomer priest, Berossus, as cited by Seneca, and the same memory is echoed by Lucan, citing Nigidius. Plato, in the Timaeus, noted the change in the movements of celestial bodies in connection with world-destroying disaster. And he ascribed the great conflagration of Phaeton's fall to a shift in the motions of celestial bodies. More than one source reports the transformation of Phaeton into a planet (the "Morning Star") in our now-orderly solar system. Similarly, ancient Persian, Taoist, Chinese, Mesoamerican and other sources, gathered by Velikovsky, declare PLANETARY motions to be the source of the great cataclysms that punctuated world history, causing the collapse of world ages or the displacement of former "suns" prior to the re-birth of the world. So it's no wonder that, even with the arrival of planetary stability and predictable orbits, a deep anxiety hung over all of the early cultures. We see this anxiety most vividly in the rise of astronomy and the systematic study of planetary motions. For thousand of years after the myth-making epoch, the astronomer-priests were still oppressed by the primeval fear, incessantly scanning the heavens, meticulously recording diaries of planetary motions, seeking out the signs of the one thing they feared the most - the return of Doomsday. But how will modern historians, under the spell of a clock-like solar system, comprehend this Doomsday anxiety? Is it possible that ancient testimony, by the power of its consistency, could actually CORRECT
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science at a level so fundamental as to invite an intellectual revolution? For myself, I believe that this correction is inevitable and when it occurs, it will not reduce our interest in scientific fact, but re-direct our attention, infusing scientific investigation with a profound sense of discovery and new possibilities.
THE SATURN MODEL

The strongest advantage of the Saturn model is specificity. It connects hundreds of verifiable patterns to tangible and highly unusual forms in the sky, all vitally linked to equally tangible and unusual sequences of events. It further demonstrates that the archetypal figures of myth - most fundamentally the universal sovereign, mother goddess, and warrior-hero - can be fully comprehended. It is only necessary that we see these archetypes in their root identity, as planets and aspects of planets close to the earth, in defined spatial and dynamic relationships to each other, and in a celestial environment dominated by ELECTRICITY. In prior installments of this newsletter we've introduced several dozen themes, some of these appearing as integrated complexes, such as the following themes relating to the earliest remembered time.
ARCHETYPES CONCERNING THE GOD OF BEGINNINGS

a universal sovereign or central luminary of the sky, the father of kings, and founder of a lost Golden Age; displacement of that former sovereign in overwhelming, world altering catastrophe; a primeval sun, superior sun, best sun, or motionless sun in former times, before the appearance of the present sun; a great luminary or chief of the sky at the celestial pole; ancient language and symbolism of the pole as the motionless spot, the place of rest; or the cosmic center; the holiest day of the week (Sabbath) as a commemoration of the primeval epoch, the day or time of the "resting god."
Generally, these closely-related traditions occur in contexts and locations far more widespread than the limited influence of empirical astronomy. Consequently, in the majority of instances, no direct information will give us the planetary identifications of the mythical personalities. But Babylonian astronomical diaries of the first millennium BC give motions of planets extremely close to their present orbits, thus allowing us to identify the references. And this, in turn, enables us to document the extraordinary and unexplained associations of the planets as mythical gods throughout the Near East and beyond. For the planet Saturn, we find these unusual associations, as we've noted in prior THOTH articles Saturn as universal sovereign and father of kings, ruling at the beginning of time; Saturn as founder of the lost Golden Age; Saturn as an ancient ruler displaced by overwhelming catastrophe; Saturn as the archaic "sun god"; Saturn as motionless or resting god; Saturn ruling from the celestial pole; Saturn's day of the week as the holy day, the Sabbath, or day of rest.
We find, therefore, that while the first list includes separate fragments and nuances of a general tradition preserved around the world, the second list integrates all of the components by reference to a single planet. It thus substantiates a sense of underlying integrity. But it does more. It puts an exclamation point to the huge gap separating ancient memories from observed phenomena today. All "Saturnian" attributes directly contradict the actual behavior of the planet. This extraordinary situation surely does not permit the skeptic to merely claim that myth is foolishness and make believe. The situation requires the skeptic to
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explain how countless cultures, dispersed around the earth, could have relentlessly denied everything actually experienced, yet produced a universal accord on such unusual details. Moreover, to note the Saturn connection is only to place the first surface scratch on the unified substratum. Once we take up the themes of the mother goddess and warrior hero, the universal motifs grow explosively, for these are, beyond question, the most fully documented figures of myth. And in both cases a gigantic library of global themes will converge on two planets - Venus and Mars. Since we could quickly become lost in the great volume of material relating to the goddess and hero archetypes, I'll let the following list suffice for now.
GODDESS THEMES
goddess as central eye of the primeval sun or universal sovereign; goddess as luminous heart of the sovereign god; goddess as animating soul of the sovereign god; goddess as radiant "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs; goddess as inner glory, power, strength of the universal sovereign; goddess as hub and radiating spokes of a great wheel turning in the heavens; goddess as omphalos or navel; goddess as departing eye, heart, or soul, raging in the sky at the time of world-threatening catastrophe; goddess taking the form of a chaos-serpent or dragon at the time of world threatening catastrophe; goddess as Great Comet presiding over the end of a world age.
These goddess themes, all of which we've discussed previously, are extremely widespread, and are most clearly expressed by the earliest cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But it is the links to the planet Venus that give the definitive clues. With the birth of empirical astronomy, every listed theme was connected to the planet Venus. Indeed, Venus is the ONLY planet identified as a goddess by astronomer priests of the first millennium BC.
WARRIOR-HERO THEMES
hero born from the womb of the mother goddess hero appearing as pupil of the eye, or born from the eye hero conceived in the heart or soul of the sovereign god hero leaping from the "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs hero wearing the inner glory, power, or strength of the universal sovereign as a radiate crown hero as axle of a great wheel turning in the heavens hero as "navel-born" god hero pacifying the raging eye goddess hero vanquishing the cosmic serpent or dragon hero wielding symbols of the Great Comet to restore the world after a great catastrophe
Here, too, the respective themes are far more widely distributed than any astronomical identification, though the clear and undisputed planetary associations that ARE available will lead to one conclusion only. The warrior-hero was the planet Mars.
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A SNAPSHOT OF GATHERED PLANETS

It should go without saying that none of the common mythical themes, nor any of the associations with planets noted above, will find explanation in familiar natural events. But can this disparity justify an entirely new vantage point? To answer this question, we do not propose to take the reader on all of the sinuous paths of the original investigation. Rather, we shall simply offer a model which, we claim, WILL make sense of the global traditions, integrating and accounting for the field of evidence more completely than any prior theory. The underlying principles of the model are these: The planetary system we observe today is new. Only a few thousand years ago planets followed vastly different courses, in an unstable solar system. Our Earth formerly moved with several planets in close congregation, through a rich, electrically active plasma environment. The planets included (among others) Earth, Mars, and Venus, in a close dynamic relationship to the gas giant Saturn. In periods of relative "stability," the dominant planets in the system moved in COLLINEAR equilibrium. That is, the primary bodies remained in line as they moved through space. At an early phase of the configuration, the planet Saturn - prior to acquisition of its present ring system - appeared as a stationary, towering form at the celestial pole. This means that the axis of the earth was pointed directly to the aligned planets. Both Mars and Venus played highly prominent roles in the configuration, these two bodies appearing one in front of the other in the center of Saturn, positions confirming the collinear equilibrium of the system. It is tentatively assumed that the planet Jupiter was also part of the ancient assembly, though Jupiter was apparently hidden behind Saturn until a period of profound instability. Evolution of the configuration was marked by continuous electrical discharging, profoundly affecting the visual appearance of the celestial forms - and presumably the dynamics of collinear equilibrium as well. It was the highly unusual configurations taken by the discharge phenomena that inspired the ancient symbolism of the divine thunderbolt. Hence, the entire range of thunderbolt images in antiquity will add a vital layer for testing our hypothesis as a whole.
I'm attaching to this newsletter a slide from an upcoming presentation at the INTERSECT 2001 world conference. (For most email readers, the image should appear at the end of the newsletter.) This will be my first reference slide for the articles to follow. The slide depicts an early phase in the hypothesized configuration as seen from Earth, together with a few prehistoric rock art images from Ireland and California. The pictographs, inscribed on stone, illustrate the relationship we intend to document, between planetary forms seen in the sky, the patterns of world mythology, and verifiable formations of plasma activity in the laboratory. It was the dynamic evolution of this planetary assembly, we shall contend, that inspired the mythical histories of the gods. Dave Talbott EDITOR'S NOTE: The Intersect 2001 conference -- "Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History" -- will include the first public presentation of this story, with new animation and other visual support. NEXT: DIVINE THUNDERBOLT, GREAT CONJUNCTION, AND POLAR CONFIGURATION
PARADIGM PORTRAITS (10): MAPPING THE UNIVERSE

by Amy Acheson [excerpt from May 16th NYT article by JAMES GLANZ]
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Scientists Detect the Traces of the Seeds of Cosmic Structures

A telescope in eastern Australia has seen what appear to be the faint imprint of waves, much like sound waves, that may have rippled through the gases of the young universe. Scientists have long theorized such waves were the seeds for all structures glittering in the heavens today. The imprints were revealed within the clumps and filamentary patterns formed by tens of thousands of galaxies that the telescope observed in Earth's cosmic neighborhood. Using the 12-foot-wide Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran, Australia, the project -involving scientists at a dozen institutions in Australia, Britain and the United States -- has mapped the positions of nearly 170,000 galaxies. The map not only revealed great clusters and filigree patterns made by the galaxies, which earlier surveys had seen, but also let project scientists analyze the data for more subtle features. When they did so, the scientists found that hidden in the irregular clumps and filaments were imprints of waves of particular sizes, or wavelengths, that cosmologists believe were generated in the explosive birth of the universe. The waves are thought to have seeded the primordial gases with slight irregularities that later grew into galaxies and clusters. AMY COMMENTS: What they are measuring is redshift. What they are seeing, and interpreting as waves of galactic structure, is quantization of redshift. What they are not seeing is that high and low redshift objects are connected. There is no way they will be able to "map" the universe accurately as long as they continue to believe that redshift distance. In my article on Don Scott's website, I reproduced Halton Arp's pie-chart diagram of how a mixed-redshift galaxy cluster will be distorted by applying a redshift-distance ruler to it. http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Amy.htm (the chart appears in the second article). These maps of galaxies arranged by redshift distances are as unrealistic a picture of the universe as Ptolemy's epicycles were of the solar system. It took ancient astronomers 1000 years to "unlearn" Ptolemy. The big bang and expanding universe distortions have reigned supreme for over half a century. How long until their misinterpretation is unraveled? Today's "Galileo", Halton Arp, is alive and working full-time (with neither telescope time nor paycheck) to turn the extragalactic paradigm around. His most recent project involves the newly released HST Cepheid distances and Hubble constant info. He says that the data is full of inconsistencies that shed new light on old mistakes and reinforce the new "age but not distance" interpretation of redshift. All that remains is to watch the old paradigm fall apart. See also: http://www.dragonscience.com/arpteaser.html Amy Acheson
TWO SPACECRAFT WATCH AN ARC WELDER ON IO

by Wal Thornhill MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION March 29, 2001 FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
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A plume near Io's equator comes from the volcano Pele. It has been active for at least four years, and has been far larger than any other plume seen on Io, until now. The other, nearer to Io's north pole, is a Pele-sized plume that had never been seen before, a fresh eruption from the Tvashtar Catena volcanic area. The observations were made during joint studies of the Jupiter system while Cassini was passing Jupiter on its way to Saturn. The two craft offered complementary advantages for observing Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Galileo passed closer to Io for higherresolution images, and Cassini acquired images at ultraviolet wavelengths, better for detecting active volcanic plumes. The Cassini ultraviolet images, upper right, reveal two gigantic, actively erupting plumes of gas and dust. Near the equator, just the top of Pele's plume is visible where it projects into sunlight. None of it would be illuminated if it were less than 240 kilometers (150 miles) high. These images indicate a total height for Pele of 390 kilometers (242 miles). The Cassini image at far right shows a bright spot over Pele's vent. Although the Pele hot spot has a high temperature, silicate lava cannot be hot enough to explain a bright spot in the ultraviolet, so the origin of this bright spot is a mystery, but it may indicate that Pele was unusually active. COMMENT BY WAL THORNHILL: In the Holoscience news report of 22 December 1999, NASA's Xmas Coloring Book, an alternative explanation was offered: The Galileo camera was looking at a number of arc-lights in the form of cathode spots. It is definitely unusual activity for a volcano to produce UV light. However an electric arc is a copious source of UV light. This is further confirmation of the electrical sculpting of Io's surface. What we are witnessing are not volcanos but planetary surface sculpting by cosmic electric arcs. It is a process that has left characteristic circular craters and fretted terrain on all solid bodies in the solar system. It calls into question everything we think we know about the history of the solar system. THE NASA REPORT CONTINUES: Also visible is a plume near Io's north pole. Although 15 active plumes over Io's equatorial regions have been detected in hundreds of images from NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, this is the first image ever acquired of an active plume over a polar region of Io. The plume projects about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) over the limb, the edge of the globe. If it were erupting from a point on the limb, it would be only slightly larger than a typical Ionian plume, but the image does not reveal whether the source is actually at the limb or beyond it, out of view. A distinctive feature in Galileo images since 1997 has been a giant red ring of Pele plume deposits about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) in diameter. The Pele ring is seen again in one of the new Galileo images, lower left. When the new Galileo images were returned this month, scientists were astonished to see a second giant red ring on Io, centered around Tvashtar Catena at 63 degrees north latitude. (To see a comparison from before the ring was deposited, see PIA-01604 or PIA- 02309.) Tvashtar was the site of an active curtain of high-temperature silicate lava imaged by Galileo in November 1999 and February 2000 (image PIA-02584). The new ring shows that Tvashtar must be the vent for the north polar plume imaged by Cassini from the other side of Io! This means the plume is actually about 385 kilometers (239 miles) high, just like Pele. The uncertainty in estimating the height is about 30 kilometers (19 miles), so the plume could be anywhere from 355 to 415 kilometers (221 to 259 miles) high. COMMENT: The ring of deposits does not make any sense whatever for a volcanic outburst. However, the shape and size of the plumes and the trajectory of the particles to form a ring have been explained by plasma
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physicists in terms of an electrical discharge. The result is rather like that of a giant natural mass spectrograph. THE NASA REPORT CONTINUES: If this new plume deposit is just one millimeter (four one-hundredths of an inch) thick, then the eruption produced more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. NASA recently approved a third extension of the Galileo mission, including a pass over Io's north pole in August 2001. The spacecraft's trajectory will pass directly over Tvashtar at an altitude of 200 kilometers (124 miles). Will Galileo fly through an active plume? That depends on whether this eruption is long-lived, like Pele, or brief, and it also depends on how high the plume is next August. Two Pele-sized plumes are inferred to have erupted in 1979 during the four months between Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flybys, as indicated by new Pele-sized rings in Voyager 2 images. Those eruptions, both from high-latitude locations, were shorter-lived than Pele, but their actual durations are unknown. Before its August flyby, Galileo will get another more-distant look at Tvashtar in May. It has been said that Io is the heartbeat of the Jovian magnetosphere. The two giant plumes evidenced in these images may have had significant effects on the types, density and distribution of neutral and charged particles in the Jupiter system during the joint observations of the system by Galileo and Cassini from November 2000 to March 2001. See full article and photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/inferno.htm More information about the Cassini and Galileo joint observations of the Jupiter system is available online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com
KINKS IN SOLAR WAVES

by Wal Thornhill NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE Posted: March 29, 2001 Scientists unravel the kinks in solar waves Kinks in the Sun's magnetic field have puzzled scientists since they first started studying the solar wind, and now researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have found the reason: they are caused by the evolution of a type of magnetic wave called Alfven waves. Scientists measured sudden changes in the Sun's magnetic field with the magnetometer instrument on the Ulysses spacecraft, which is orbiting the Sun's poles at a distance between Jupiter and Mars. Ulysses has been studying the Sun since 1990 and has just finished studying the south pole of the Sun at solar maximum, a time of great activity. "Over the poles of the Sun, we saw abrupt decreases in the magnetic field," said JPL's Dr. Bruce Tsurutani, a co-investigator on the magnetometer instrument on Ulysses. "We did not know what they were, because we had never seen anything like it before. Now we know that the disturbance is caused by Alfven waves."
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Scientists expected to find that either the field magnitude remained the same, though the angle changed, or that the magnitude changed, with no fields threading across the structure, said Tsurutani. Instead, they found that the ends of Alfven waves always have both rotational and tangential characteristics. Like the movements of a plucked guitar string, Alfven waves travel down the magnetic fields that emanate from the Sun. Disturbances in the Sun's magnetic field, which is embedded in the solar wind, travel through space to eventually cause auroras on Earth. The high-energy particles from the solar wind become trapped in the Earth's magnetic field and come down into the atmosphere near the Earth's north and south magnetic poles. The highly-charged particles then collide with oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere and emit light, forming the aurora. Tsurutani also studied polar plumes, long trails from the base of the Sun. The plumes form in the Sun's polar regions, the upper and lower 30-degree latitude regions, and where these plumes occur, the magnetic field isn't kinked, but instead forms long, thin, straight tubes. This means that the Alfven waves don't operate in these regions, though scientists don't yet know why. "Ulysses was able to find that the Sun's polar plumes stretch out past the orbit of Mars and maybe farther," said Tsurutani. "What's fascinating is how these plumes can be so thin and so long at the same time." A plume could be 100 times wider than it is long (sic). The European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) noted these polar plumes in 1996. COMMENT BY WAL THORNHILL: What is fascinating is that astrophysicists cannot "see" what they are looking at because of the dogma that electric currents cannot flow in space and the Sun cannot be electrically charged. The thin, straight tubes are diagnostic of Birkeland currents. Birkeland currents also have an outer twisted filament or ropelike form taken by electric current flowing in plasma. The Alfven waves are therefore more likely to be the structure of the magnetic field associated with Birkeland currents. Otherwise there is some unspecified activity required beneath the Sun's surface to excite the Alfven waves, or "pluck the guitar string" as it is colorfully described. Unfortunately this "explanation" follows a well-established tradition of ascribing every weird feature of the Sun to poorly defined activity hidden from view inside the Sun. It is what is known as "pathological science" - a term coined by a pioneer of plasma physics and Nobel Laureate, Irving Langmuir. THE REPORT GOES ON: Alfven waves are named for Hannes Alfven, a Swede who in 1942 discovered the waves, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. COMMENT: Alfven must be spinning in his grave to see the continued misuse of his work by astrophysicists. In 1970 he used the occasion of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in unprecedented fashion to admonish them for treating plasma in a way he had subsequently shown to be mistaken. He said: The cosmical plasma physics ...is to some extent the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulas we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong. The astrophysical ...crisis has not yet come. We are still waiting...
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 7 (July 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: IN PRAISE OF ORTHODOXY INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (1)
by Mel Acheson by Ian Tresman, Amy Acheson, Jamie Thistlethwait
IN PRAISE OF ORTHODOXY
by Mel Acheson I come not to bury astronomical orthodoxy but to praise it. It's replaced the imaginary Man in the Moon with real men ON the moon. It's put robots on Mars and Venus and Eros. It's put Ulysses into a polar orbit around the sun and SOHO into a halo orbit around a mathematical point. With the Hubble telescope it's looked farther than man has ever looked before, and with the Chandra x-ray telescope it's looked in a light man has never looked in before. It's replaced Galileo's telescopic view of Jupiter with an electronic eye orbiting Io. Without the achievements of orthodox astronomy, we wouldn't have the accumulation of anomalies to inspire new ideas. Without the orthodoxy of orthodox astronomy, we couldn't identify ourselves as crackpots with impossible theories. We complain about the blindness of orthodoxy. I'm always tickled to hear Wal's depiction of "applying a blind eye to the wrong end of a telescope and telling us what they imagine they see." But blindness is beneficial and even epistemically necessary. Donald Campbell, Karl Popper, and others maintain that the accumulation of knowledge itself, scientific and otherwise, is a process of blind variation and selective retention. This is commonly known as trial and error. Attempts to plan or to second-guess the trials have opportunity costs: Peeking under the blindfold keeps you from stumbling over new discoveries. This requirement for discovery is antagonistic to the requirement for funding. No self-protective bureaucrat is going to risk approving a research grant that doesn't have a foreseeable outcome. To get funding, the researcher must propose what he will find and when. This is not just peeking under the blindfold, it's taking it off. Orthodox astronomers have shown courage and ingenuity in finding ways around these antagonisms. I commend their achievements in finance as well as in space. Perhaps I can even be of some help. Here's a research project that's a slam-dunk, and it's going begging: There are 10 x-ray and radio sources in a line to the northwest of the active galaxy M82. They've never been analyzed to see if they're quasars. On the exactly opposite side of M82 are 9 quasars, coincidentally aligned with a jet of luminous material from M82. Now the odds of adding coincidences in a string is the product of the odds for each incident. This means the 9 in a line are highly unlikely, but, hey, coincidences happen. Because quasars are background objects at the far reaches of the universe, they're distributed fairly uniformly. This means the 9 in a line pretty much account for all the quasars in the vicinity
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of M82. Multiplying all these unlikelihoods makes it nearly certain the 10 unidentified objects are NOT quasars. Because they're clustered together, analysis would be easy. You can get spectra of them all with a few nights' observation. You could hold a press conference the next day to announce the results. The bureaucrats will love the project because it's a sure find, and the astronomers will love it because it's sure to vindicate orthodox truth over crackpot error. The enterprising researcher can gain fortune and fame with practically no risk and with losing only one night's sleep. Bureaucratic science doesn't get any better than this! Why hasn't someone jumped on it? What do you think they would find? Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
IMAGES OF CONFERENCE: INTERSECT 2001 (1)

by Ian Tresman Amy Acheson, Jamie Thistlethwait IAN TRESMAN PROVIDES DAY BY DAY COMMENTARY: I arrived on Thursday evening, staggered to find the outside temperature at 11pm to be 92degrees. In England, it doesn't get that hot during the day! Fortunately daytime temperatures have been falling this week, and are expected to touch 100-degrees. [Amy adds: as opposed to 123-degrees reported by the weather news 3 days before the conference.] On Friday morning, it was reassuring that the first person I bumped into when I was getting out of the hotel elevators was Wal Thornhill. After a quick exchange of pleasantries, Wal told me that they're setting up in the Toucan room, one of a several conference rooms at the Flamingo hotel (www.flamingolaughlin.com). This is a casino hotel, and Laughlin could be mistaken for being a mini Las Vegas. Friday evening's Intersect 2001 registration and introductory talks begin at 7pm. Most of the attendees seem to have arrived before me, though there are still 20 or so welcome packs on the table. Ted Holden is one of the first people I met. He found two hotel guests with an interest, and mustered them along to take part. They won't forgot their holiday in a hurry. Next I saw Michael Armstrong who organized the conference. I could tell it's him because he had his name badge on. I didn't have mine on yet so he looked at me knowingly and blankly. As soon as introductions are made, it's like greeting old friends. Kathleen Anderson, conference co-director, was taking registrations at the table outside the Toucan conference room, helped by Annis Scott (Don's wife), who looks just like her photo at www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/ As my registration was completing, Dave Talbott emerged from the conference room, and we greeted each other like long lost friends. The opening agenda looked like this: Intersect 2001: Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History. July 6 - 9th 2001 7:15. Don Scott: Welcome and Announcements
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7:30 Wal Thornhill: The Electric Universe -- The Big Picture 7:55 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 8:00 Rupert Sheldrake: An overview of his work 8:30 CJ Ransom: Circumstance
DON SCOTT got the conference off to a bumpy start, through no fault of his own: the microphone stopped working. But Don showed his experience of speaking to lecturer theatres crammed with 300 students, and boomed out his voice to all. "Many of the speakers are iconoclasts", Don Scott told us. "They have recognized patterns, and their works have converged". The introduction was good. Upbeat. Full of details and trivia. WAL THORNHILL was first to speak, giving an overview of the Electric Universe, a project he has been developing over the last 40 years, and feels that it is just now coming together. We were reminded that Samuel Johnstone said that "Nothing is achieved if all the objections have to be solved first". And that Velikovsky, in Worlds in Collision, wrote that it was a heresy that gravity was the dominant force in nature. AMY ACHESON ADDS: I especially liked Wal's opening. He played the intro to "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (the theme to the movie 2001) while displaying an animation of the Polar Configuration and saying something like "Throughout history, mankind has had a vital interest in Conjunctions." It was a fine dramatic touch. BACK TO IAN: Wal added that the Electric Universe is a holistic approach to science (a term which I feel is more encompassing, and easier to spell than 'interdisciplinary'). Wal said that science still does not know all the answers, and pointed out that there is still little understanding about the true nature Electric Charge, Magnetism, Light, Mass, Gravity and Life itself. Wal explained the analogue between lightning storms on Earth, and the Sun's own atmosphere. Terrestrial lightning is "shadowed' from above by Blue Jets and Red Sprite, above them are Elves; the energy of these affects increases UPWARDS, and this is analogous to the Sun's atmosphere, where there is a temperature inversion gradient. MEL ACHESON gave the first of several promised "Verbal Vignettes", this one reminding us that not only can landscapes look different from different viewpoints, but so can science from different paradigms. [Ed note: Mel's Vignettes appeared as editorials in the THOTH newsletter and a reasonably complete set may be found on the Acheson's website, www.dragonscience.com under "viewpoints". This particular one is titled: THE PARADIGM SHOPPE] RUPERT SHELDRAKE introduced himself as a biologist, and as someone who hadn't heard of planetary catastrophism nor Kronia before. But he felt optimistic because the group contained a bunch of maverick scientists... AMY SAYS: I would say that Rupert was the backbone that really "made" this conference, in the same sense that Halton Arp and Tony Peratt "made" the last conference. All were mainstream enough to be scientists, PhD's (all three) with actual monthly paychecks (two out of three) to show for it. But all are vitally interested in new research and all showed at least polite interest in most of the totally crazy ideas we were presenting. Bruce Lipton and Gary Schwartz added the same sense of validation. I don't know what they whispered to their friends about us when they got home, but to our faces they were interested and enthusiastic. BACK TO IAN:
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One of Rupert's interests was in Morphogenetic fields, which he defined as that which make plants a certain shape. According to orthodox biology, hormones, DNA and genes do this. But different plants contain different amounts of the same hormone, and the same plant would have the same genes and DNA in the individual cells of both its leaves and stem, yet every cell somehow knows exactly how to grow in order to form the part required. Later Rupert became interested in other non-mainstream aspects of biology, such as ESP in animals, and how animals could predict earthquakes, or tell when their owners were coming home. CJ RANSOM gave the final talk of the evening, an introduction to how science works. He described two broad examples: using a top- down approach where you begin with a bigger picture and work out the detail later; and bottom-up, where you begin with lots of data, and try and work out patterns from the data in order to work out the bigger picture. AMY SAYS: In addition to the new friends from various fields, it was great to see old friends from the early Velikovsky years to remind us of where our search for understanding diverged from the mainstream. CJ Ransom, Lynn Rose and Nancy Owen were three of these. One of the saddest notes from the conference was that Nancy tripped on a non-working escalator and cracked her kneecap. But, in keeping with her delightful spirit, she was soon back, pushed around by Lynn in a wheelchair. IAN SAYS: CJ the described how much science had changed since 1950 (the first publication date of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision.) As one illustration, he reminded us that Carl Sagan (in 1963) had predicted that Venus could support life, because the scientific community felt it was similar to the Earth. He mentioned that scientists believed that the Solar System and the planets were formed from a disk of gases. However, all the planets differ in form, size, composition, axial orientation, etc. There were some nice quotes too, e.g. "It is easy to find what you hope to find" attributed to Derek Ager. People believe what they want to believe, e.g. Oppenheimer could not accept C14 dating because he could not believe that C14 existed, because THEORY did not account for it. And as General Colin Powell said "Experts often posses more data than judgement". And finally, CJ quipped: When it comes to Paradigms: Shift Happens JAMIE THISLETHWAIT ADDS: Because of Ian's incredible work covering the content of the various papers, I'll gladly stick to my usual feeling-intuitive, impressionistic subjective right-brain, Mercury in Sagittarius babble mode. Right off I must agree with Amy about Rupert being the star speaker, just because of the effortless gravitational pull of his rhetorical style. Charismatic in a charming, modest, brilliant and unconventional way, he spoke with an accent that was toney but never posh and he gesticulated with a gentle swaying body language you don't find much on scientific podiums (podia?). They should name a new order of stellar objects after him, the Red Elves. He and his ex-colleague, the American Latter-Day Psychedelic Saint, Terence McKenna (now deceased) were 2 visionary elves on an evolutionary shelf. Both make attempts to re-enchant a world rendered dead by Cartesian logic, one by entering the collective time-spirit dimension through psycho-active plants and the other through expanding our understanding of the seemingly super-natural mental spectrum of animal (and human) communication. From
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observation I can say both operated with a fey and humorous approach to their intellectual journeys which never precluded serious insights into scarcely travelled mental realms. Shifts happen, but it helps when someone leads the way. I find it curious what the balancing of male and female energies in one individual can produce. Rather than taking yang or yin to extremes and then getting blind-sided by the return of the repressed energies, why not cultivate a dynamic balance? These guys make it work and there may be a universal lesson. Likewise, both Dave and Dwardu reminded me in private conversations that Saturn was androgynous, and even that pesky old Polar Column, can be seen as either male (cock) or female (skirt). Finally, I believe Rupert was quite taken with Wal's evidence for crater scarring and other interplanetary effects though he didn't seem ready to connect his "morphic fields" at a fundamental (atomic) level with the electric/plasma universe. My intuition tells me the dialogue is not over yet as his intriguing observation that plasma may respond to telekinetic force in a lab experiment showed an interest in collaboration. Cheers, Jamie
DAY 2 FROM IAN's REPORT: Saturday 7th July. AM 8:30 Annis Scott: Our Universe: Unlocking its Mysteries 9:00 Michael Armstrong: Context for Reconstruction 9:30 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 9:35 Don Scott: Our Electric Sun 10:35 Break 10:45 Dave Talbott: Symbols of an Alien Sky, Part I 11:30 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 11:35 Ted Holden: The Impossible Dinosaurs 12:15 Lunch ANNIS SCOTT is a freelance writer and editor. It was mentioned that at conferences such as this, there is a lot of information to digest, and people tend to end up seeing the trees, but not the forest. An overview would go someone towards helping us out, and this is what Annis sets out to do. AMY ADDS: Annis has been working on this since the conference in September. She saw the new people, Anthony Peratt in particular, two days into the conference snagging Wal and Don to say something like "Saturn was here, and Earth was here and WHERE was Venus?" "MARS, too?" Annis thought it was odd that we never gave a concise summary of the polar configuration and the electric universe, not to begin with, not in the middle, not even at the end. So she set out to remedy the situation with a simple "ABC" version. When Annis asked the rest of us for ideas and comments on the subject, we were a bit apprehensive. We had, after all, been tutored by Velikovsky, who carefully warned that these concepts are simply too radical to introduce up front. Velikovsky bragged that in Worlds in Collision he had waited until page 153 before even mentioning the word "Venus." We we afraid that to give a short summary would be too much of a jolt for newcomers. However, Annis persisted. The rest of us picked over the details until she was tearing her hair out, but the result turned out to be a delightful introduction. And Ian (following) has summarized the summary nicely. Thank you to both. I think that it added cohesiveness and understanding to the conference.
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IAN AGAIN: Annis asks: What kind of sky did the ancients see? The ancients were long fascinated with the sky, and their myths tell of strange and violent events. Were ancient myths merely fantasies? Myths tend to be dismissed by astronomers and even mainstream mythologists. But Dave Talbott, Ev Cochrane and Dwardu Cardona have found that there are consistent patterns, with widely separated cultures telling the same story. Now Kronia have begun to challenge some of the generally accepted theories, and includes astronomers, physicists, electrical engineers, and mythologists. Annis reminds us that heavenly bodies were worshipped as gods. Myth proclaimed that "We once lived in the presence of gods". The gods were visible and often violent. The myths often speak of a Garden of Eden, and then also a Doomsday. Wal Thornhill ventures that Earth was once within the protective aura of a cool brown dwarf star --proto-Saturn -- which provided an ideal environment for life on Earth, and there were no seasons. This was the Golden Age. And then the end of the Golden Age was Doomsday, caused by the breakup of the Earth-Saturn system. Critics of the "Saturn Theory" suggest that there is no mechanism that could circularize the planets' orbits. Annis says that Donald Scott points out the plasma physics could help here, electrical attraction and repulsion could be the answer, which become effective when their plasma sheaths overlap. Annis mentions that dinosaurs would be impossible in today's gravity, and is the subject of a talk to be given later by Ted Holden. And Red Shifts, the 'lynch pin" of modern cosmology which are assumed to related to objects moving away from, are reassessed by the work of Halton Arp. Dozens of his photos provide strong evidence that "redshift = distance" as an assumption is wrong. And finally, Annis mentions that there is common thread that connects the speakers at Intersect 2001, they have a willingness to base their theories on new data, and change their theories if the data requires it. MICHAEL ARMSTRONG followed. He's studied the Saturn theory for some 25 years, and was aiming to pull together the themes from the conference towards an intersection, combining "The Saturn Model Reconstruction", with psychological and physical scarring, with a spiritually fragmented "Cacophony of Confusion". Michael told us that the Big Bang was under attack, as is the Universal Gravitation Constant, and a fixed upper limit for the speed of light. And that fundamentalist elevate ancient myths to a god-like status, similar to scientists whose theories are elevated to a dogmatic cosmic view. Michael thought that although Velikovsky had gone astray in some of his detail, he must be credited with several innovations: (a) That the Earth was once in orbit about Saturn (b) Electric energy plays a part in orbital mechanics (c) Mankind witnessed and recorded catastrophic events. Finally Michael went on to summarize why we should consider the Saturn thesis, even though it is often obscure, violates the theory of gravity, violates orbital dynamics, and introduces catastrophic mechanisms which can shorten geological time scales. AMY COMMENTS: And I want to add that for Michael this is a small part of the story. His take is far more serious than say, mine and Mel's. We want to study our environment and our past in order to understand what happened. Michael wants much more -- to understand what happened well enough to undo it and return the Earth and its living family to the Golden Age. MEL ACHESON gave another Verbal Vignette, starting with the story of Christian Eijkman and Gerrit Grijns. In 1886, Eijkman thought that unpolished (white) rice contained a toxin or microbe that caused
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beriberi. However, Grijns thought it was due to something that was not in the white rice. Both had data to support their claims. Eventually it was found that white rice was missing vitamin B1 [see Thiamine History at http://chemistry.gsu.edu/glactone/vitamins/b1/] Astronomers on the other hand, assign non-Newtonian movements to so-called Dark Matter. New ideas (i.e. Electric universe) suggest that non- Newtonian movements are due to gravity not really being there! Newton's mistake was assuming that the domain was gravity was universal. [See this editorial at www.dragonscience.com -- it's called "Error Probes, Truth Probes, Space Probes".] IAN SAYS: DON SCOTT is a professor of Electrical Engineering, and became interested in the idea of an electrical sun after reading an article in Industrial Research magazine by Ralph Juergens, on plasmas; the Sun is a plasma (cloud of ionized gas), there are ionized particles (hydrogen ions) in space, but astronomers say this can't happen. But it a appears that stars and galaxies tend to form strings: plasma is carried along braided Birkeland currents, stars and galaxies are formed where the Z-pinch effect occurs. Plasma discharges appear in one of three types: (a) Dark current (invisible, but gives off radio frequency emissions) (b) Normal glow, as in fluorescent tubes and the Sun's corona (c) Arc discharge, as in the Sun's photosphere. Moving from (a) to (c) requires increasing the voltage. There is a threshold point where the change occurs and as small a charge as a millivolt can separate regions of differing discharge type. A planet's magnetosphere usually discharges in the Dark Current region, as does the Sun's heliopause which extends out past Pluto. As you get closer to the Sun, the voltage density increases (same voltage, but squeezed into a smaller volume,) until normal glow appears at the Sun's corona, etc. The Standard Solar model uses "Twisted Magnetic Fields" to explain many anomalies. But the Standard Model has many problems, such as (a) the lack of neutrinos (said to be due to there being different flavours of neutrinos) (b) Heat Transfer (convection) from the Sun's interior (c) Oscillations in the Sun's size and brightness (much faster than expected) (d) The temperature inversion layer (e) The acceleration of the Solar wind which increases as it moves away from the Sun (f) The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles. Ref: http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Sun.htm IAN SAYS: DAVE TALBOTT gave an introduction to the Saturn Theory, about when the planets were gods, when the gods lived in the sky. Dave asks why we do not believe in the gods as the ancients did in the past; the answer is simply that nature does not support any of the original primary motifs, i.e. we just don't see them like the ancients did. Myth has no reference in nature today. Dave also credited Velikovsky identifying (a) planetary instabilities (b) electricity plays an important part (c) Human memories of past events count as evidence (even though he disagrees with much of the detail). TED HOLDEN described the problem of the size of dinosaurs in today's gravity. If size had been such an advantage, why had nothing evolved since to fill their place? Because there are size limits in animals that are designed to hunt, fly etc. A hundred years ago, it was thought that dinosaurs lived in water, but (a) the area of their feet is too small to cope with muddy ground (b) their teeth is suited to harder vegetation (c) The snorkel idea of breathing is unworkable (d) Fossilized tracks show that walking may have been difficult (e) In water, they would have no defense from predators, i.e. sharks. Also, elephants need 25 sq-miles of grazing area, so a sauropod would require more. They get to sizes approaching 180 tons! [More at http://www.seismosaur.com/]
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Bill Kazmaier is a legendary strongman 6' 3'' and ranged from 330 to 350 lbs. [see http://www.mcshaneenterprises.com/ASL/kaz.html]. But because power/weight ratio decreases with size, at what size would he become dysfunctional. Ted calculates this would happen at about 20,000 lbs. So much gravitation attenuation would be required for a sauropod to be able to lift itself? Ted calculates 2.1:1 ratio. Even the Saturn configuration would not fully account for this, but combined with another explanation of gravity (e.g. Sansbury's dipole electrical explanation of gravity), it could explain how gravity could have been much less in the past. Dinosaurs necks are also a problem: blood pressure, and torques. A giraffe is on the edge of maximum neck length with specially strengthened artery walls. A seismosaur's neck is 40-60ft long weighing 2540,000 lbs. Blood pressure would be a problem if it held its neck upright; if it held its neck down and outwards, the torque would be a problem: you couldn't support that weight with steel I-beams. Ted went on to speculate on whether dinosaurs co-existed with man, and mentioned some of the evidence from rock art, and the work of Vine Delores in "Red Earth, White Lies" [see http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/deloria/] More at Ted Website at www.bearfabrique.org Saturday 7th July. PM 1:45 Earl Staelin: Resistance to Scientific Innovation 2:30 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 2:35 Dwardu Cardona: A World with One Season 3:00 Break 3:20 Amy Acheson: Halton Arp: A Modern Day Galileo 4:35 Ben Ged Low: The Saturn Theory video trailer 4:50 Panel: Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott, Michael Armstrong, Rens van de Sluijs EARL STAELIN is introduced as a trail lawyer, advocate of human rights, and an impressive and varied biography. I thought we looked nearly the same age. He was born in 1940 making him at least 60. I'm 40. Earl begun with couple of quotes: ...the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate - -the necessity of revising their convictions. ~Thomas Henry Huxley A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe. ~Henry David Thoreau Earl covers several areas concerning the resistance of science to new idea. He says that the better we can understand resistance, the more easily we'll be able to overcome it. Resistance is due to changes in idea. Small changes, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and discovery of penicillin, can still take a short time accept (penicillin was left on Alexander Fleming's shelf for several years after its discovery in 1922, and use in the Second World War). Big changes concern large paradigm shift. The Electric Universe is a major change in paradigm. There are many reasons why people find it hard to accept new ideas, including psychological and emotional causes such as the possible humiliation experienced by mainstream scientists who suddenly
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find their life's work is wrong, or, if they have to consider a new paradigm, may have to risk the loss of the job, existing friends and even family. Flaws in the educational system give a false aura of authority, where there is often little mention of limitations, anomalies and assumptions with a scientific theory, and the history of science is also neglected. The peer review system can not handle major change in paradigms, and it is also flawed: (a) It is anonymous (b) there are no disclosed conflicts of interest (c) there are no rights of appeal. Perhaps if the peer review system followed the methods of a legal trial, it might be fairer. Repressed childhood memories can also affect how an individual accepts new idea. Teaching the young is probably the best way encourage change, by teaching them about alternative theories, conflicts of interest, etc. It would also helps if weaknesses in a theory are also taught. In The Graduate, one of the characters tells Dustin Hoffman that "The Future is in Plastics". Perhaps we would help the next generation by telling them that "The Future is Plasma." MEL ACHESON gave another verbal vignette. These are very good, but I can't take down the notes fast enough! This was loosely on thinking, and that people often relate WHAT they know, but not WHY they know what they know. AMY ADDS: This editorial, "How You Know" will be available soon on www.dragonscience.com, perhaps even as soon as this newsletter is published. At lunch during the conference, one of the invited guests, Gary Schwartz, asked Mel to post his entire collection of editorials. Gary, a professor at the University of Arizona, would like to make them required reading for his classes. IAN SAYS: DWARDU CARDONA starts his talk with no build up: Earth was once a satellite of Saturn, AND it was once extraneous to our Solar System. Perhaps Saturn was brown dwarf star. Earth did not orbit Saturn (as the Moon does the Earth), but shared the same axis of rotation. Hence there was no day/night, only daytime. There was a springtime-like climate. But are seasons necessary for life. (The word 'seasons' derives from the word 'sowing' which in turn derives from the word for 'Saturn'). In equatorial areas, temperature and rainfall do not necessarily correspond to the season. The people of the Gilbert Island (now Kiribati) do not even refer to the four seasons. The Romans tell that during Saturn's reign, seasons were absent. What hard evidence is there for there having been no seasons? The Arctic once enjoyed a tropical climate, and islands within the Arctic circle had forests that could not have survived with 6 months of darkness throughout the year, and sub-freezing temperatures. There were also crocodiles, tapirs, etc. DWARDU CARDONA ADDS: Continental Drift cannot be used to explain tropical fauna and flora in the Arctic regions because, during the Tertiary to which these assemblages belonged, the regions in question WERE ALREADY WITHIN THE ARCTIC. Melvyn Cook's assertion, on the other hand, refers to the ANTARCTIC, in that land masses moved away from Antarctica RADIALLY, leaving Antarctica more or less in the position we now find it - thus Continental drift cannot be made to account for Antarctic sub-tropical flora either. BACK TO IAN's REPORT:
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The Antarctic also enjoyed a warmer climate. But if the Earth and Saturn shared the same axis of rotation, with the Earth's North Pole pointing towards Saturn, how did the Southern Pole receive a similar amount of heat? To be answered Dwardu's next talk tomorrow! AMY ACHESON talked about Halton Arp comparing him to a modern-day Galileo. Arp is a 21st century scientist, Galileo a 17th century one. Both threatened the established view. Both were ordered to stop their research. Both could not get published in the mainstream, so wrote their own popular books. Arp was refused telescope time to pursue his research. People refused to look through Galileo's telescopes. Arp eventually had to move to German. Galileo was put under house arrest. Amy reminded us that it difficult to measure the distance to stars and galaxies. Originally, the brightness of galaxies was used as an indication to their distance, the brighter they appeared, the closer they were. But now redshift is used to calculate distance. Edwin Hubble discovered that the spectra of galaxies was shifted (light patterns that mark individual chemical elements are shifted toward the red end of the spectrum). Not only did he assume that his meant that they were moving away from us, but the greater the redshift, the further away the galaxies are. Since he found that all galaxies appeared to be moving away from us, then at some time in the past, they must come have all been together. This is the origin of the Big Bang. The only foundations of the Big Bang are: (a) Size and luminosity are proportional to redshift. (b) Size and luminosity are proportional to distance (c) Hence Redshift is proportional to distance (d) Hence velocity of galaxies is proportion to distance (i.e., the further away galaxies are, the faster they appear to move). However, Arp found many galaxies that fail this test. So Arp questioned the expansion. For example NGC1372 and its companions, 1372A&B all have radically different redshifts; Arp found that NGC1372B had 15 times the expected redshift. [See also www.haltonarp.com] The high redshift objects don't look smaller and fainter because they are farther away. They look smaller and fainter because they really are smaller and fainter. The prediction of microwave background radiation is often used a evidence of the Big Bang, and when it was eventually measured, was proclaimed as proof. But it was actually predicted in 1896 by CharlesEdouard Guillaume, and others, as expected in a steady- state universe. [see http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/history.html] BEN GED LOW is planning a film on The Electric Universe, and together with a Canadian animation company, have produced a short 5-minute 'rough'. It begun with a stock image of stars in the sky, and went on to ask if this is what we have always seen, and proceeded to show some animation of how the skies may have looked. PANEL. Unfortunately I didn't note all the questions that were asked, and didn't know the name of all those that asked. RUPERT SHELDRAKE asked a multipart question; as a trained biologist, he was having problems with many of things he had heard, such as the development of circadian rhythms, reoccurring ice-ages, and sacrifice. AMY ADDS: I remember Rupert's long list of questions, too, ending with the one which springs quickly to mind for anyone who seriously considers planetary catastrophics. How in the world could we on earth have survived something like that? And Dave Talbott offered the short reply that "It's a friendly universe." BACK TO IAN's REPORT: GARY SCHWARTZ asked whether, since the recent past was about deconstruction (taking everything apart in order to explain it), was it now time for reconstruction. Dave Talbott replied that it was not exactly 'reconstruction', but reconciliation.
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EARL STAELIN asked about the "No Eight" = "No Night" translation, also seen in French, German, Spanish. RENS replied that it appeared to be just a coincidence. [See also Usenet thread at: http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=9e314f9fb0623cce]
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of special issues of THOTH devoted to the INTERSECT 2001 Conference. The second should be coming out in a few days.
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 8 (July 31, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart COTENTS: THE NO-BELIEF BELIEF SYSTEM INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (2) CONFERENCE IMPRESSIONS
Mel Acheson Ian Tresman James Conway
THE NO-BELIEF BELIEF SYSTEM

by Mel Acheson I believe in not believing. I try not to believe anything, which is not the same as believing nothing. Even though nothing is not something, believing in nothing is still believing, and I try not to do that. People seldom ask me what I mean by "believe". They argue that I must believe something, or they smile and roll up their eyes. I don't take offense: On alternate days, I smile and roll my eyes at myself, too. But I do have an excuse for my confusion. Before I can say what I mean by "believe", I have to say something about what I mean by "mean". Consider the ideas of heads and tails. They stand in opposition to each other. You can't have one if you have the other. It's either/or. It's yes/no. It's good/bad. Let's put all these heads and tails in a small room with a hole in its ceiling. Now imagine a conceptual ladder. It runs through the hole in the ceiling. Climb the ladder. Stick your head out the hole. Look around. You're in a larger room, one that completely encloses the heads-and-tails room. This larger room is full of ideas of coins. Each coin has a head and a tail on obverse and reverse sides, but the coin is a whole. The head and the tail are merely parts that are thought of as opposites, along with other parts (the edge, the metal, the shape) that aren't thought of as opposites. So what were opposites in the room below are unities in the room above. You've just discovered a nested hierarchy of ideas. Ideas other than opposites can also nest into hierarchies. In logic, one such hierarchy is the distinction between an object language and a metalanguage. The object language is the one in which you formulate statements. The metalanguage is the one in which you talk about the object language. In the metalanguage, you don't care about the content of statements. You pay attention instead to how the statements interact. The metalanguage is a higher or more inclusive or more abstract level of meaning than the object language. The same term may be used in both languages, but in the object language it refers to its content and in the metalanguage it refers to its function in the object language. For example, in the first sentence in this essay I first use "believe" in a metalanguage mode: how I choose to evaluate the overall processes of the evaluation of particular theories. Then I use it ("not believing") in an object language mode: how I evaluate particular theories.
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Now I can answer the first question: What do I mean by "believe"? In the object language mode, I mean placing greater confidence in a particular theory than is warranted by the facts and by the nature of cognition. Notice there can be a complimentary definition: "Disbelief" is the placing of less confidence than is warranted. In order to place the proper level of confidence in a theory, i.e., in order to avoid both belief and disbelief, all I need do is evaluate the facts and the operation of cognition. Theories can then be given an index of confidence, and the one with the highest number can be judged most credible. Unfortunately, I immediately run into an insoluble problem. Facts are polymorphic and cognition is creative. Facts take on different meanings depending on the theory in which they're used. Cognition selects and applies different pigments of facts to paint different pictures of reality. So what's warranted cannot be calculated. That's not to say reason can't come up with good excuses for believing or disbelieving an idea. But reason is an abject slave: When Desire gives a command, Reason obeys. So if warrants are indeterminate, why bother with belief at all? You can skirt the issue of confidence and still use an idea as a working hypothesis. You can still test the idea and experiment with it and develop its logical implications. In fact, what's left after belief is abandoned is a provisional idea that's subject to critical evaluation and testing: In other words, science. If this is the cup with which we measure science, the most notable aspect is the great quantity that spills over the edge. Theories, speculations, idle thoughts, surmises are barely articulated before someone judges them by the criterion of "credibility". Because you can't put numbers on "credibility", the criterion deflates to mere "familiarity". Peer-reviewed papers are rejected because they're not credible, but the only apparent objection is that they disagree with a currently accepted theory. A more sophisticated reaction to innovation is the listing of evidence. The idea is that the theory with the longest list is best. New theories are at a disadvantage because they haven't been around as long to collect as much evidence. But the accumulation of evidence can never "prove" a theory. Nothing can guarantee that some new theory won't explain more things better. If credibility can't be calculated and confirmation can't be counted on, how are we to know if our knowledge is true? I'd make a distinction between true and truthful: "True" is an exact representation of some hypothetical rock-solid reality; "truthful" is a correspondence with selected parts of a reality that includes and is interactive with the knower. What "truthful" lacks in confidence is more than made up for in adaptability to a dynamic and hierarchical reality. "True" is dogmatic, "truthful" is critical. Karl Popper developed this idea of criticism as the criterion of demarcation between science and all the other cognitive efforts to understand our world. Theology, metaphysics, pseudo-science, even politics can be just as meaningful as science. They can be beneficial or detrimental, just as can science. But there's a reason dogmatic theology is called dogmatic: The fundamental tenets of faith are not subject to critical evaluation. Now there's a good and useful place for dogmatism, too. But what sets science apart, what distinguishes it, is the encouragement of criticism, even of fundamentals. This is why science moves and the others stand fast. This is why science progresses and the others preach. This doesn't mean we should abolish the others. Most ideas arise in pseudo-science or metaphysics or theology. They become scientific when they're criticized and tested. And they can become metaphysical or pseudo-scientific again if the criticism and testing stop. Belief is an anchor that prevents the winds of criticism from blowing the ship of curiosity into new cognitive waters. Belief turns science into the pseudo-religion of scientism, which then tries to wrest from established religions the sacerdotal claim to revelation of divine truth. Criticism, especially of fundamentals, will be the first sacrificial offering slaughtered on the new altar. Science is not all of life, and curiosity is not the only reason for living. But they are an important part. As long as this limitation is respected, belief can be excised from science, and science can continue to discover new worlds.

~Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (2)

Ian Tresman Sunday 8th July. AM 8:30 Anthony Peratt: Electric Currents in Space 9:30 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 9:35 Dwardu Cardona: A World with One Season. Part II 10:15 Break 10:30 Dave Talbott: Symbols of an Alien Sky, Part II 11:35 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 11:45 John Chappell: Problems with Modern Physics ANTHONY PERATT has a doctorate in plasma physics. He studied under Hannes Alfven, from whom he inherited an interest in the plasma universe. Alfven, in turn, inherited his interest from Kristian Birkeland. Tony pointed out that his presentation was available on the Web at www.theuniverse.ws He kicked off the morning with an introductions to plasma, and plasmas in space. He mentioned that it is often thought that plasmas in space are not generally accepted by the scientific community. On the contrary, in the past decade or so many changes have occurred, and plasma is becoming more and more accepted in the astronomical community. The plasma labs at Los Alamos employ a greater number of astrophysicists than perhaps any other facility. Tony went on to explain WHAT a plasma is[See Web site for detail: click on Main Directory] and that it is scaleable over 14 orders of magnitude. In other words, you could produce a plasma in the laboratory with milliamp currents, and then scale the resulting plasma, and see the same affects using GigaAmp currents, and bigger. Los Alamos claims that the Universe is fully ionized, and that plasma is a better conductor than even copper or silver. Indeed, in a fluorescent lamp a resistor must be introduced, otherwise the current would short-circuit. WHERE is plasma? [See Web again]. He mentioned some forms that I had not heard of before, such as plasma which occurs in crystals, and magma in the Earth's crust which is magnetized plasma. WHERE PLASMA IS NOT FOUND. In general, in the biosphere and on the surfaces of rocky planets. In other words, plasma is rarest exactly where we live. UNDERSTANDING plasma: Its distinguishing characteristic is that it forms filaments. They are more influenced by electromagnetic forces than by gravitational forces. Plasmas also give off radio frequency emissions; solids also give off radio frequencies if shocked, such as during earthquakes (cf. earthquake lights), and during underground nuclear testing. Los Alamos has some impressive facilities and can generate incredibly high voltages and currents for very short lengths of time, e.g. Mega-amps for millionths of a second. It cost $243,000 each time they fire the plasma guns, so lots of thought goes into preparation for each experiment in order to obtain a maximum of data.
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Still not much is known about SPACE PLASMAS. They follow magnetic lines, tend to draw in matter, such as dust. Stars and maybe planets, too, were formed this way! MEL ACHESON: Mel reminded us that gravity is theory. Stars in galactic arms, for instance, repudiate gravity. Solar prominences disobey it. [See Velikovsky's comments in Cosmos without Gravitation, at http://www.varchive.org/ce/cosmos.htm] The Gravitation Constant is like a dancing plasma. Herodotus says that "Thunderbolts steer the universe". Like Newton, Herodotus would have seen apples fall from trees, but did not consider the observation significant to his view. Likewise, Newton would have seen lightning, but not considered the observation significant to his view of gravity. Full editorial at www.dragonscience.com is called "Question Gravity." DWARDU CARDONA continued his talk on A World with One Season, focusing first on tree rings and whether they always indicate seasons. Apparently fossilized trees do not always show tree rings. Carboniferous trees lack rings, as do trees found in coal swamps. Trees found in the Permian period, and also in Canada, Europe and Asia often have weak tree rings. South American trees often have strong tree rings, even though the seasons are not necessarily differentiated. In the Triassic period, and in the Amazon, there are found a mixture of trees both with and without tree rings. Some tropical trees do not grow rings, some grow 3 or 4 rings per season. In the dry season, rings may be missing. What all this shows is that tree rings are not determined by seasons, but by water and growing periods. How did proto-Saturn warm the Earth's southern pole as effectively as it warmed the north polar region? One possibility is larger enveloping atmosphere, but this might hinder man's view of proto- Saturn (although maybe there was a hole in the atmosphere here). In 1976, Ralph Juergens suggested that the proto-Saturnian system may have been surrounded by a plasma sheath. In 1981, Roger Ashton suggested that the "plasma bubble" may have had an opaque surface. Wal Thornhill has suggested that proto-Saturn may have been a brown dwarf star, and that Earth orbited within its "atmosphere". Evidence for similar effects include Uranus, whose temperature is uniform, even though one pole stays in darkness for 40 years due to its axially tilt. And on Io, the night temperature is similar at the poles and equator. But none of the preceding DEMANDS a Saturn-Earth system. However, there is evidence that some plants and animals in the polar regions evolved 4-million years ahead of their appearance at lower latitudes. The Saturn-Earth alignment supports this idea, dating from at least the Eocene period. The Papago Indians believe that the Sun was once closer to the Earth, and there were no seasons. DAVE TALBOTT continued his talk on Symbols of an Alien Sky. He stated that important considerations for the Saturn model would be (a) Cross-cultural points of agreement (b) Recurring themes (c) Most ancient sources are given precedence (d) Must take into account both texts and images. The acid tests of such a theory would be (a) Historic testimony (b) The perspective of such forms as seen from the Earth (c) Dynamics (d) Physical evidence (e) Consistency. Dave recalled that a collinear alignment for Saturn and Earth (i.e., in a line, rather than each independently revolving around a center of gravity) was considered dynamically impossible until Robert Grubaugh showed that there could be an equilibrium position for each planet on a single line, at which they would all have the same period of revolution, staying in line until disturbed. [See "Visualizing Collinear System", THOTH Vol II no 19, Nov 30, 1998, http://www.kronia.com/thoth/ThotII19.txt, and "A Proposed Model for the Polar Configuration", Aeon Volume III, No 3 (Oct 1993)] Grubaugh's strictly Newtonian model is only one possibility from which to choose. Plasma cosmology offers several others.
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Other collinear systems are seen the universe, such as Herbig-Haro objects (e.g. see HH 409.) Some of the main archetypes of the Saturn model are: (a) The Universal Sovereign, Saturn (b) Mother Goddess, Venus (c) Warrior Hero, Mars (d) Chaos Monster or "terrible aspect" of the goddess and hero. [For more, see http://www.aeonjournal.com/articles/talbott/talbott.html] JOHN CHAPPELL talked about the problems with Special Relativity [see http://www.howstuffworks.com/relativity.htm] Special Relativity is a very difficult theory to criticize in the press. The theory itself is based on two postulates. For example, for a ball being thrown in a moving train (1) That the laws of physics apply, so the ball moves with the train, so that if you throw it inside the train, you can ignore the motion of the train. (2) The velocity of light is a constant (regardless of how fast the train is moving). But these two postulate contradict each other (light does not obey the laws of motion, the first postulate). It was Thomas Kuhn in his book the Structure of Scientific Revolution who made the 'paradigm' a household word. In choosing paradigms, scientists often choose non-scientific criteria; physicists can be dominated by anti-logic. People often believe in a different way of interpreting evidence, such as when they describe the Sun moving across the sky. In reality the Sun does not move, the Earth rotates and the sky appears to move. The classic Michelson-Morley experiment [e.g. see http://www.drphysics.com/syllabus/M_M/M_M.html] can be interpreted in at least 5 different ways (including assuming that the Earth stands still). But the interpretation chosen is the one the fits the preconceived idea. Michelson ridiculed Special Relativity. Chappell tells the story of a Harvard undergraduate (Duncan Enzmann?) who wanted to interpret Special Relativity in a Newtonian context, but was refused. And John Chappell himself wanted to do a thesis on Special Relativity, but physics department refused. The book "The Golem" (Barnes and Collins, 2nd Ed 1998) takes a critical look at Arthur Eddington's experiment concerning starlight bending around stars. The authors believe Eddington threw out some of his significant data. There is also an interesting article in the journal Lingua Franca call "Constructivism", and in Newsweek, April 1997 which accused scientists of being biased. A 1976 issue of Physics Journal actually included 2 letters criticizing Special Relativity, but no articles; indeed the letters editor had a draw of 50 articles that he would not publish. The online newspaper www.salon.com features an article on scientific descent on 6/7/2000. For more information, see the Web http://members.home.net./saiph/npahome.html site of Natural Philosophy Alliance at
Sunday Afternoon: 1:45 Wal Thornhill: The Electric Universe Part I: Electrical Scarring 2:45 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 2:50 Dave Talbott: Symbols of an Alien Sky, Part II [Note: items in square brackets are mine. - Ian] WAL THORNHILL kicked off the afternoon session describing his Electric Universe theory, focusing on electrical scarring on planets. Wal suggested that geologists are unable to simulate the shape of lunar craters with the use of explosives or high speed impacts. And then he poses the questions: are the Thunderbolts of the Gods responsible?
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In a standard impact, a bolide explodes, there is a shallow dish crater with little melting, producing shock flows and a butterfly- shaped ejecta pattern. Complex impact craters, craters with such features as a flat floor, a central peak, and wall terraces, have never been created in common geologic materials in the lab or with large explosions. At present, only the morphometry of impact craters on the solid bodies of the solar system can provide data on how various target and impactor properties affect complex crater formation. "Inversion of crater morphometric data to gain insight on the cratering process," Robert R. Herrick and Suzanne N. Lyons, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, 131-143 (1998). Now consider electric arcs (spark machining) cratering. They produce circular craters with flat floors, melted terraces, a central peak, steep walls, a raised rim with smaller craters on the rim, bilateral symmetry, shocked material, with fulgarites and glass. Such glasses are found both in lunar craters and in Meteor Crater, Arizona. Disturbed electrical craters may give asymmetry, eg: the Anaxagoras crater [see http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib/features/craterac.html], * lunar corkscrew crater, Tharsis Tholus [eg see http://www.exploringmars.com/science/atlas/tt.html]. The asteroid Mathilda has a crater almost equal to its radius [eg see http://www.planetary.org/html/neo/Objects-Impacts/mathilda.html] which, if it was an impact, should have broken the asteroid apart. And the asteroid Eros also shows some unexplained surface features such as inexpected crater distribution, flat-bottomed craters, sedimentary layering, asteroid-wide grids. [eg. see http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/5421/eros.html] Comet tails are supposedly composed from icy substances subliming from their surface or pockets within their core [eg see Giotto's image of Halley's Comet, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/giotto.html ], but Wal suggests that the tails are actually cathode arcs, due to the comet cutting across the Sun's radial electrical field. Meteorites often contain crystals, condrules and isotopic anomalies which Wal suggests were due to them being formed in cosmic lightning bolts. Meteor Crater in Arizona [www.meteorcrater.com] shows features associated with electrical arcs, including: fulgarites [eg see http://www.minresco.com/fulgurites/fulgurites.htm], and two sinuous rilles which Wal crossed during his trip to the crater. Some of the characteristics of lightning include filaments, parallelism and sinuosity. Wal showed a photograph of a lightning strike on a golf course green showing a characteristic Lichtenberg figure [see also Pense IVR X, p. 31, and images at http://www.aquila.net/bert.hickman/frames/coilgallery.html]. There is also a 40-foot trench caused by lightning, blasted out of a baseball diamond by a lightning bolt [see image in Pense IVR, IX, p. 26] whose most important characteristic is that it is a channel of constant width, as described by Ralph Juergens in the Pense in the same article. It was Juergens who first suggested that sinuous rilles were formed by lightning. The Moon's sinuous rilles are up to 250km in length, and are often suggested to be collapsed lava tubes, though Wal's own experience, having visited actual collapsed lava tubes in Hawaii and Australia, is that they are dissimilar. One type of electrical discharge arcing is "cathode scarring" which typically jumps around the strike zone resulting in small circular craters within and surrounding the main channel. The Moon's Hyginus Rille features such on-channel scarring. One of the "Smoking Guns" of the Electric Universe theory, is the activity on Jupiter's moon Io [eg see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/moons/io.html]. Other moons show examples of fretting, circular scalloped craters, furrows as on the moon Europa [eg see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/moons/europa.html],
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which resemble plasma scarring more than they resemble cracks in the ice. Indeed, Europa has some very unusual features, such as parallel cycloid patterns which would seem to indicate electrical activity. Venus also appear to be covered with electrical scars. The valley, Baltis Vallis is a 6800km rille of continuous width, with signs of levied banks. There also are many groups of raised dome formations on Venus which appear to be fulgamite (not fulgurite) scars. Mars' Tharsis Tholus is an example of an electrical fulgamite scar. Mars also features fretted terrain, such as Labyrinthus Noctis which shows no signs of fluid flow, nor debris outflow, and also shows overlapping circular pits. Nirgal Vallis is characteristic of a rille showing transverse ridges and transverse glass effects. And one wonders where the contents of Mars' Vallis Marineris went? Of course pictures of the Martian surface show it to be rock strewn and often burnt. and then there are the Martian meteorites found on Earth. Lightning accelerates material upwards (cf. Eric Crew, who suggests that blocks of ice that fall from the sky could be due to lightning accelerating water in moist air up into the atmosphere). Wal suggests that interplanetary lightning would be capable of excavating Valles Marineris and scattering most of the contents into space and onto Mars' surface. Wal concluded by looking at Mons Olympus [eg see http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mep/science/olympus_mons.html ] which is considered to be the Solar System's largest known volcano. Wal pointed out that it is burnt around the top, there is no apparent lava flow, and there is a fluted escarpment, once again characteristic of an electrical scar, comparable to fulgamites found on lightning arrestors after a strike. MEL ACHESON gave another verbal vignette, this time highlighting the need for using the correct tool for the right job. Unfortunately astrophysics use one tool, that of gravity. http://www.dragonscience.com/view/tooltime.html DAVE TALBOTT continued his talk on Symbols of an Alien Sky (Part II). Unfortunately his talk moved so fast with so many interesting new ideas, that I was unable to take down many notes. Dave began with plasmas, and how they try to reduce their electrical stress; one way is by discharging in equally distributed streamers, or symmetrical star-like patterns. When electrical stress becomes greater, the plasma will produce a larger number of streamers, in evenly spaced radial streams. Using three-dimensional modeling provided by Rick Smith, Dave noted that three symmetrical streamers or "rays" of Venus, as they exploded from Venus' equator and stretched upward toward Saturn, alternately presented a perfect triangle or a three-rayed "star," depending on the specific angle and length of the streamers in relation to the polar axis. Both forms are extremely common images of the great mother (the "threefold goddess") in the ancient world. In the same way, the phase of four streamers yielded simultaneously the image of a four-rayed star and of a "diamond," both of which were popular Venus or goddess symbols in both the Old World and the New. Also, the star with many "rays," placed in the center of the primeval "sun" (Saturn) is one of the dominant forms observed in ancient times. The Saturn Model has the planets Earth, Mars, Venus and Saturn (in that order) in a collinear arrangement (basically a straight line). Mythically, this was the "Great Conjunction" of the Golden Age. As the system destabilized, the perspective of the observer on earth shifted dramatically, and with that shift the appearance of the streamers changed as well. To illustrate the importance of perspective, Dave showed an animated sequence in which, as the Earth changed its position in relation to the streamers (a highly active phase involving many streamers), the change in perspective produced a perfect image of a "scallop shell," perhaps the most familiar image of Venus we have inherited from ancient times. But in this transformation (the mythical "birth" of Venus), no change in structure of the streamers was necessary, just a change in Earth's position relative to Venus.
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Dave showed quite convincingly how images such as Egyptian White Crown, the Ankh symbol, the worldwide role of the feathered headdress, the plant of life, world tree, seven-headed serpent, and numerous other images suggesting discharge streamers, all derived from the one Saturnian model. [It crossed my mind that since the Saturn Model was derived from mythological symbols, then by definition, one seems to follow from the other]. [Ed note: Final episode will appear in the next issue. Ian will also be using the notes (with extra references and pictures) in the next issue of the SIS Internet Digest (2001 No. 2), details at www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/. Pictures can be found online at www.catastrophism.com/intersect2001/] ~Ian Tresman
CONFERENCE IMPRESSIONS
James Conway Rupert Sheldrake was a star. I read his book on morphic fields and his biography just before the conference so it was nothing new to me. His response on the other hand to Kronia would be a bit difficult to put into words ... But by his next lecture he said that his intellectual view had gone over a complete meltdown. He said this in a good way not a dismissive way. Sheldrake has ... proved statistically that animals and humans are telepathically connected. Those of you who were doubters simply get over it. It's a done deal. It's only a matter of time and better tests before it's proved to be a human to human connection also. The man was pleasantly surprised that we didn't dismiss his work outright. The idea of morphic fields and resonance fits very well in the electrical plasma universe which even predicts such phenomena. I think Sheldrake saw for the first time supporters he never knew existed. He will not be going away any time soon because he can see that open minds are ... in greater supply in Kronia. If Sheldrake was a star Bruce Lipton was a nova. The sound mike the hotel provided required you to speak into it like a rock star eats it. All of the other speakers had little experience in this and so mostly spoke too far away from the mike. Imagine now a person who has a lectures voice that boomed so he had no need of any mike. Then he of all of the lectures ate the mike. I thot my ears would lose their ability to hear but nobody complained because what he was saying was just too astonishing. I simply could not believe my ears and eyes - he [Bruce Lipton] has great videos only surpassed by Dave's and Wal's. [He tells us that] Cells are just batteries. Cells have antennae outside and receptors inside. The antennae tell the receptors when to open and close to allow outside stimuli in or out. The antennae were the 'identification' of who each of us are. Take the antennae off and you could put the cells in anyone else and they will not be rejected. The DNA only replicated itself and those parts made proteins as chains of amino acids which the cells needed. Meaning that genetics is a dead field and there is no software everyone is looking for written in the physical cell anywhere. All of a sudden morphic fields are needed to explain the behavior of cells. I doubt Sheldrake lost the point. Why I didn't think to ask him myself when he was close at hand now defies my imagination. But to me this was synergy at its greatest. The best minds in biology have come to ... groups like Kronia to find the support they deserve and aren't getting from the mainstream. Of course, the cancellation of Arp was a great disappointment to many of us. I was looking forward to an update of his work.
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But Tony was there and he did not disappoint by providing undeniable evidence that rock art was detailed figures of plasma discharges. Along with the other backbone of physical evidence by Wal, Scott, Dave, and Michael all went predictable well. As for the general overall feel for the conference, the constant ding ding ding of bells and noise makers ... To say the least such an environment did not lead to high intellectual conversation. You couldn't even get away from it at the bar as each stool was next to a slot machine embedded in the bar itself. But it [Nevada} was not as bad as it could have been since us WA and Seattle people brought cloud cover keeping the temperature to only the 100's. The best investment I made was to take the group dinner river cruise. It afforded the best after dinner conversation to be had besides one other late talk the night that I got involved in by pure chance. The after dinner speeches on banquet night were filled with humor and pride at being a part with other individuals who work at being self honest with internal integrity. Some of the people who got up and spoke called themselves the deadwood group. I tried to speak on that part because there is no such thing as deadwood. Of the three main groups in Kronia: professionals, amateurs in specialty fields, and intellectual fans, all are *Essential*. Special notice needs to be given to Ben Low who put together a very good animation of past planetary interactions. The pictures were excellent and the sound was superb. I hope more outside input and discussion is in the offering on this project. Also outside individuals that make broadcasts for PBS filmed the entire conference. I hope we will hear more from them soon. Laura Lee worked the crowd the entire conference. Kronia should be most grateful for her talents and thankful for all the work and time she has put in for Kronia. Obviously, she has excellent instincts for what matters. ~James Conway
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 9 (August 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: IT'S A NEW UNIVERSE INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (3) STUDENT VIEWPOINT SUMMING UP
Mel Acheson Ian Tresman Bobby Moretti Ian Tresman
IT'S A NEW UNIVERSE

by Mel Acheson When discussing theories, it's always prudent to keep in mind where they come from. Especially when dealing with currently popular theories, it's good to remember GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. Logic (and math is just a kind of logic) only guarantees that the assumptions you start with will be preserved in what you end with. No matter how much you chase them around a computer, assumptions will never change into facts. It's also prudent to keep in mind that proof never discovered anything. No matter how accurately you measure, no matter how many significant figures you calculate, no matter how many results you predict, it's only verification. Verification has its uses, but it will never get you over the next hill. The track record of a theory only tells you where it's been. Verification is not reliability. No amount of confirmation will provide assurance that a different idea with a different viewpoint on the facts won't explain things better. As long as you don't look over the fence, everything will seem familiar. Keep in mind the conceptual fence of science pretty much encloses only our experience on the surface of the Earth for the last 300 years. Every theory that's currently fashionable in every science has been devised without taking plasma into account. This dog bites twice. First, plasma doesn't behave the way physicists expect from standard theory. Second, 99% of the universe is composed of plasma. We should therefore expect currently accepted theories to explain no more than 1% of the phenomena in the universe. I urge you not to be timid in your skepticism of currently accepted theories. I urge you not to be reluctant to reject currently accepted theories. Be courageous in your speculations and radical in your innovations. We face a new and unexplored universe. ~Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
INTERSECT 2001: CONFERENCE SPECIAL (3)

By Ian Tressman

Monday Morning: 8:30 Rupert Sheldrake: Morphic Fields and Resonances 9:30 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 9:35 Wal Thornhill: The Electric Universe: How and Why it Works 10:30 Don Scott: Electric Currents in Space 11:15 Dave Talbott: Plasma Phenomenon in the Polar Configuration [Note: items in square brackets are mine. - Ian]
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RUPERT SHELDRAKE told us that science is radically incomplete, for example, in two fields: (1) Formative Causation (2) The Extended Mind. Rupert proposes that there are morphic fields and morphic resonance which shape, form and order not only biological systems, but perhaps even planetary systems and galaxies. A Morphic Field exists around a form (molecule, animal, social group, etc) and organizes its characteristic structure and patterns of activity. It is the morphic field that underlie the form and behavior at all levels of complexity, and includes morphogenetic, behavioral, social, cultural, and mental fields. Morphic fields are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance. Morphic Resonance is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. Through morphic resonance, formative causal influences pass through or across both space and time. These influences are assumed not to fall off with distance in space or time, and they come only from the past. In general, science can be approached in one of two ways: (1) reductionism (2) holism. Reductionism is the doctrine that more complex phenomena can be reduced to less complex ones; for example, in biology, it is the belief that all the phenomena of life can ultimately be understood in terms of chemistry and physics. Holism is the doctrine that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. A cell, for example, divides randomly, this indeterminism occurring at all levels of nature. In practice, it is restricted by the whole and works probabilistically. Morphogenesis is the coming into being of form. Standard theory suggests that more form comes from less, for example, all cells have DNA which influences the formation of different cells. In contrast, morphogenesis envisions hierarchies of morphic fields which affect not only individual cells, but also organs, organisms, communities of organisms, etc. As an example, Rupert used the way fish swim or birds fly in formation, rapidly changing direction without ever bumping into each other. Research and funding today typically goes into genetics... Rupert commented that there was hardly a biologist left who could recognize a plant! Onto regeneration: bits of flatworm and willow trees can grow back into new forms. Likewise, magnetism and holograms have the property of fields: breaking a magnet into two pieces generates two magnets, and each piece of a broken hologram contains the whole image. Newt eyes will regenerate if their lens is removed, and they do this in a different way than the lens was originally formed in an embryo. [e.g. details at http://members.tripod.com/~Glove_r/Sheldrake.html] So what are morphogenetic fields? There are three schools of thought: (a) That morphogenetic fields are heuristic devices, that is, a conceptual ideas, but a physical mechanism will eventually be found; (b) That morphogenetic fields can be mathematically modeled with field equations define their operation. This school of thought includes attractors as defined by Rene Thom in his catastrophe theory; (c) That morphogenetic fields represent a new concept, not yet understood, whose properties have yet to be determined. Definition (c) is the school of thought supported by Sheldrake.
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Proteins molecules have the potential to twist into many shapes (conformers), many of which are at the same energy minimum (the multiple minima problem), and yet the protein is active in only one particular form; Sheldrake suggested that a morphogenic field is at play here too. In the brain, there are "brain fields" which may explain how schools of fish behave as one; their lateral line organ has been suggested as the cause, but in experiment it has been cut without loss of such behavior. Other impressive group behavior includes termites and termite mounds which take years to build, even though individual termites only live a few months. Eugene Marais placed a steel plate through the center of a termite mound, destroyed part of the mound, and found the termite rebuilt it nearly perfectly, with corridors meeting at the same place on both sides of the steel plate [see article: Extended Mind, Power, & Prayer: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious Part III, at http://www.sheldrake.org/articles/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default &id=43&ww=1&full=1&view_records=1] Rupert suggest that genes are responsible for making proteins and chemicals, etc., but not for the particular form taken by individual cells. As an analogy, he said that if you remove a transistor from a TV set, the sound may stop, but this does not mean that the transistor alone produced the television program. Morphic resonance influences how subsequent forms are produced. There are two approaches (a) Eternity (b) Evolutionary. Eternity (from the Greek) implies shapes, maths, timely principals of change, but is never changing. Evolutionary implies that everything changes. In Sheldrake's opinion, the Big Bang theory has made physics evolutionary! An example of evolutionary morphic resonance involves the formation of new crystals for the first time. It predicts that after a crystal has been formed the first time, it should get easier to produce because the morphic field creates a memory of the process. And indeed, this is what is observed. The standard model suggests this is due to their being microscopic crystals contaminating future crystalisations; but this often happens in new laboratories (where it is suggested that the crystal contamination is carried on the beards of chemists!). Additional, new crystalisations should be more stable that much older ones, so one would expect their melting points to increase over time. Rupert researched a series of data reference books and found that this is true -- newer books report a linear rise in melting temperatures for synthetic compounds. For comparison, he found that occur in nature -- that is, have been around for long periods of time -- so not show a similar change of melting point. As lab rats learn to solve a maze, it should become easier for subsequent rats to solve it, even if they are based in different labs in different countries. Sheldrake reported the results of one test; The first time the experiment was performed, rats made about 200 mistakes, reducing this down to about 40 in subsequent runs. In an identical experiment in another lab in another country, the rats made only about 40 mistakes on the first run. Similar experiments, show that crossword puzzles are easier to complete once some people have solved it first. And likewise with IQ test over the years, something called the Flynn Effect [e.g. see http://plaza.vwave.com/delajara/] Jungian Collective memories would be explained by being due to resonances with oneself in the past. And hence there would also be parallels with twins who exhibit paranormal behavior. Rupert suggested that new plasma forms, such as that found in neon tubes, could also be expected to exhibit "unusual/more stable" behavior. [I looked over at Tony Peratt, and saw that he was nodding in agreement]. WAL THORNHILL reminded us that Einstein felt that there was a lack of completeness with quantum mechanics. A holistic approach to the Electric Universe is (a) Hierarchical (b) the source of the electric
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power is currently beyond detectors (c) is a common simple electric model (d) Stars are not isolated in their environment (e) Weather systems on stars and planets have an electrical input. Space plasma can be neutral or charged, and have electric currents and magnetic fields. They form filaments that radiate energy. Kristian Birkeland placed a magnetized sphere representing the Earth (a "terrella") inside a vacuum chamber and directed electrons towards it, and saw that were steered by the magnetic field to the vicinity of the terrella's magnetic poles. From this he concluded that the aurorae were powered electrically from space. [More on the terrella experiment at http://wwwistp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whaur1.html] Space plasmas also demonstrate a Z-pinch effect, heating, squeezing, and sweeping up gas and dust. This force operates at a ratio of 1/r, quickly overpowering gravitational effects. The Electric Universe builds on Tony Peratt's Plasma Universe. Looking down the barrel of a plasma focus device shows paired Birkeland current filaments. And galaxies appear to be homopolar motors (a.k.a. Faraday Disks) [see also http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/n-mach.html]. He reminds us that in Einstein's equation, e=mc^2, m equals mass and NOT matter. DON SCOTT talked about electric currents in space. He started with a scale diagram of the Solar System and nearest star, our Sun being a millimetre-sized dot, the earth some inches away, and the nearest star being at a distance of some miles. He wondered just how much gravitational force there was between two stars? It was Arthur Eddington who came up with an early model for the Sun's interior. However, the electric sun model assumes that the Sun's energy comes from outside in space. Evidence includes "Double Radio Source Associated with a Galactic Nucleus", or DRAGN, [more, including illustrations at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~abridle/dragnparts.htm] In 1958, Alfven suggested that 'magnetic-field aligned electric fields', in structures called electric double layers, exist above the ionosphere. This differs from Ralph Juergens who had his double layers at the photosphere. In 2001, polar plumes were discovered (as per Alfven, 1986) suggesting that Alfven's model of double layers was correct; some plumes are in the dark current mode while others are in glow mode. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram [e.g. see http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/HRDiagr.htm] shows temperature verses luminosity for stars near the same. Gas Giants such as Jupiter are located in the bottom right of the diagram; lightning is observed, x-rays... it is a plasma sphere in the dark current mode. On the giant star XX Triangulum, also known as HD12545 [e.g. see http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0571.html], there is a sunspot covering nearly half the star; half the photosphere appears to be arc rutting. If there is too high a voltage on a star, Don hypothesizes that the star would start mitosis-like fissioning into two spheres which, if equal-sized, would result in a 26% increase in surface area, hence the current density amp/m^2 reduces. A possible example of two equal sized offspring may be the binary pair called Y Cygni. Another fissioning process is similar to the peeling off of a grape's skin. Examples would be T Coronae, and U Geminorum in which we see a B-type blue dwarf and a G-type dwarf. The orbital period is just 4.5 hours -- the separation distance is just a few hundred thousand miles, i.e., the smaller star appears to orbit inside the corona of the larger. Hence this kind of fissioning can also give rise to small bodies. The Ancients report that some stars have changed their brightness at a rate faster than anticipated by present understanding of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. For example, in the past Sirius was reported as being redder, and FG Sagittae (HE 15) in Castor was reported as being brighter than Pollux; Capella was described by Ptolemy as a red star.
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Hence the position of a star on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram indicates its electrical environment, and NOT its age. The origins of novas, pulsars and binaries can be explained in electrical terms. As Hannes Alfven said: 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 ... The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory. For more, see Don Scott's Web site at: http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/ DAVE TALBOTT continuing his talk, this time on plasma phenomena in the Polar Configuration. He began by returning to the Egyptian ostrich feather motif and its relationship to the White Crown, as noted in a previous lecture. The details of the relationship appear to be predicted by the role of the "White Crown" formation in the Polar Configuration. The collinear system has an analogue in the universe, he said-- that of Herbig-Haro objects or jetted stars with anomalous, star-sized mass concentrations gathered along the polar axis of the jets. Dave presented a NASA illustration of a Herbig-Haro object that was surprisingly similar to his own diagrams of the Polar Configuration prior to discovery of Herbig-Haro objects. He also showed other images of linear formations in space, in seeming violation of Newtonian dynamics, but anticipated by electric or plasma models. He showed a picture of a plasma discharge and compared it to his reference "snapshot" of the polar configuration, with Venus discharging violently and the streamers radiating across the face of Saturn. He noted the general symmetry of the plasma discharge streamers, due to electrical equilibrium, and the disorderly effect of unstable streamers. Here he suggested that the disheveled "hair" of the mother goddess (Venus in her terrible aspect as lamenting goddess, Medusa with serpentine hair, etc.) signified the more unstable phase of the planetary configuration, when the streamers of Venus took on a wildly disordered appearance. The "tentacles" of various monsters appear to trace to the same appearance. Dave went on to talk about the "whirling Venus", the Latin Venus Verticordia, and various pictographic counterparts in the ancient images of whorls, triskeleons and swastikas. These images also have a counterpart in laboratory plasma effects. Here he cited one laboratory demonstration in particular, in which the whorl-like appendages presented the precise appearance of ancient drawings. In the experiment the number of appendages changed with a change in magnetic strength. This suggests that the triskeleon form and the swastika form were distinguished only by the intensity of electrical stresses on Venus. Were the legs of the triskeleon constituted from the serpentine "hair" of the Medusa, as Dave's suggested? To make his point, Dave showed a Greek image of the Medusa head, with the three triskeleon legs emerging from the radiating hair of the goddess. Dave also discussed the labyrinth and its relationship to the swastika--the latter form often presented at the center of the labyrinth. His contention was that, in a highly active and unstable phase, the filaments of the swastika-like discharge streamers wound chaotically up the axis, taking on the appearance of a maze or tangled "knot." He compared an illustration of Birkeland Currents, as documented in the laboratory, to remarkably similar ancient images. It seems that entwining filaments were observed stretching between the planets of the Polar Configuration. An image from Ninevah, for example, shows the mythic "waters" descending from a celestial "vessel" (the goddess Venus in the Polar Configuration model), taking the classic form of the
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Birkeland Current. The ancient Egyptian symbol of "eternity," the Caduceus and staff of Aesculapius, were included among numerous other examples. He also showed how the entwining filaments of Birkeland Currents, as seen from the earth, could produce the precise form of the ancient Sumerian sign of the goddess Inanna, identified astronomically with Venus. He then showed artistic renditions of the "unicorn," and compared these to a three dimensional representation of the currents flowing upward from Mars. With perspective, the Birkeland Currents gave the same image as the single, twisted horn of the unicorn. Then he presented some Greek images of "lightning," with exactly the same appearance. All of the unique forms taken by "the lightning of the gods," he claimed, were discharge formations of the Polar Configuration, and no such formations are observed in our terrestrial environment today. Dave concluded his talk by suggesting that the entwining streamers of the Birkeland Currents evolved through violent, unstable phases, leading to the mythic "chain of arrows" and "ladder of heaven." These involved a stack of toroids around a central, axial spine. In the myths this form is continually associated with both the dismembered body of the chaos serpent and the "backbone of heaven." But when the system moved into polar alignment, the visual image, as seen from earth, was of a terraced mound rising atop the sphere of Mars, when the planet appeared very close to the Earth. This form, he said, was the celestial prototype for both the symbolic terraced mound and the sacred pyramid of monumental cultures. Dave ended by noting that the coming year will see some surprising revelations linking these "chain of arrows" and toroidal formations to evolving plasma configurations seen in the laboratory. ~Ian Tresman 12:05 Steve Parsons: Slide Show 1:15 Bruce Lipton: Biology of the Cell 2:15 Mel Acheson: Verbal Vignette 2:20 Wal Thornhill: Electric Universe 3:20 Rupert Sheldrake: Morphic Fields 3:50 Michael Armstrong: Reflections on a Third Story STEVE PARSONS started the afternoon with a slideshow of images, starting the planet earth, and then going on a journey around the Solar System and galaxy, before returning back to Earth. BRUCE LIPTON is a cytologist (cell biologist) whose talk is on the paradigm breaking "biology of the cell". His first question, is where is the cell's "brain". According to Darwin, traits are inherited; Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the "blueprint of life" (DNA). The human genome project aims to map all the genes in human DNA which was estimated at 50-90,000 to account for the complexity in humans. But the project found only 35,000. As David Baltimore said in Nature: The number of coding genes in the human sequence compares with 6,000 for a yeast cell, 13,000 for a fly, 18,000 for a worm and 26,000 for a plant. None of the numbers for the multicellular organisms is highly accurate because of the limitations of gene-finding programs. But unless the human genome contains a lot of genes that are opaque to our computers, it is clear that we do not gain our undoubted complexity over worms and plants by using many more genes. Understanding what does give us our complexity - our enormous behavioural repertoire, ability to produce conscious action, remarkable physical coordination(shared with other vertebrates), precisely tuned alterations in response to external variations of the environment, learning, memory... need I go on? remains a challenge for the future. ~David Baltimore, "Our Genome Unveiled", Nature vol. 409, no. 6822, pp. 814 - 816 (February 15, 2001). [In full at http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v 409/n6822/full/409814a0_fs.html]
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And Dr. William Haseltine, the CEO of Human Genome Sciences, says he wants a recount! [see http://www.arn.org/docs/news/mapmissinggenome.htm] Conventionally, the cell nucleus is its "control center". But cells survive without a nucleus. Hence the nucleus is not its "brain". A cell is like a machine, but made out of proteins with some 70,000 parts! And proteins are chains of amino acids. The shape of a protein is changed by an external signal, and this cause the protein to change to a different 'conformation' (e.g. a muscle contracts). Hence a protein + signal = behaviour. T.Y. Tsong discovered that a cell can respond to an electromagnetic field (see "Deciphering the language of cells" Trends Biochem. Sci. 14: 89, 1989). [See also Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields at http://chimclin.univr.it/omc/138(E-M-1).htm] Bruce reminded us the third leading cause of death in the US is medicine. Magnetic fields can affect DNA u.ac.jp/magcap/research/dnas.html]. synthesis [e.g. see http://magmac1.ec.t.kanazawa-
Cells can "read" their environment. The membrane is like a bread and butter sandwich, where lipid "sticks" make up the middle butter layer. Built into the membrane are proteins that look like olives in the bread and butter sandwich. There are two kinds of these proteins: RECEPTORS and EFFECTORS. Receptors are the cell's "sense" organs, (equivalents of eyes, ears, nose, etc.) When a receptor recognizes a signal, it responds by changing its conformation. Conventional biology says that the receptors only respond to other molecules (a reductionist approach). When the receptor protein changes its conformation, it is able to react with a specific effector protein, and it is these that carry out cell behaviors. Effector proteins may be enzymes, cytoskeletal elements(cellular equivalents of muscle and bone ) or transporters (proteins that carry electrons, protons, ions, and other specific molecules across the "bread and butter" barrier). This is how an environmental signal activates a cell's behavior. And if specific proteins are not present in the cell, effector proteins send a signal to the nucleus to request that it is generated. A definition of the cell membrane is as follows: the membrane is like a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates (receptor proteins) and channels (effector proteins). This definition is the same as that used to define a computer chip. Simply stated, the cell IS an organic computer: the "CPU" is the cell membrane, the keyboard (data entry) are the membrane receptors, the disk (memory) is the nucleus, the screen (data output) is the physical state of the cell. Receptor/effector proteins, (the units of "perception) are equivalent to computational BITS. Cells can also "rewrite" gene programs to overcome a stressful condition. These DNA changes are mutations. All mutations were thought to be "random", and could not be directed. It is now recognized that environmental stimuli can induce "adaptive" mutations which enable a cell to specifically alter its genes. Furthermore, such mutations may be mediated by an organism's perception of its environment. For example, if an organism "perceives a stress that is actually not there, the misperception can actually change the genes to accommodate the "belief". (See "The Origin of Mutants", John. Cairns, J. Overbaugh and S. Miller Nature 1988, 335:142-145) receptor=sensation=perception. Increasing awareness increases membrane area (for which fractals must be used). Hence we are NOT genetically controlled, but controlled by our energetic environment. See also www.brucelipton.com See also Bruce's interview with Laura Lee at http://www.lauralee.com/lipton.htm
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There wasn't time for all of Mel Acheson's scheduled "Verbal Vignettes", but they (and many more) can be found at: http://www.dragonscience.com/view/vcontent.html WAL THORNHILL continued his presentation, this one a little more speculative than the previous ones. Wal began by mentioning Aboriginal x-ray art [e.g. see http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Jardin/2744/painting.html] although I don't recall the context, and then went on to say that the current solar system dust model appears to be iffy. There is no such thing as a "failed star" -- brown dwarfs are the most abundant in the galaxy; they have no photosphere, planets can orbit within their "atmosphere", and such a planet would have equal energy radiating onto its surface, and hence no seasons. Brown dwarfs also show carbon in their spectra, and most would be a benign environment for life. Sedimentary layers are found even on the Moon, Mars and asteroids, perhaps from the material ejected by stars. The proto-Saturn system could have its origin outside our Solar System. It approaches the ecliptic, and as it encounters the Sun's electrical environment, the proto-Saturn system destabilizes, and it breaks apart. The Grand Canyon looks like an electrical scar. Universal energy is electrical, and if there are particles whose is speed is greater than light, then we are part of a holistic universe. See also Wal's Web site: www.holscience.com RUPERT SHELDRAKE continued his talk looking at where a person's mind is located, the brain being the traditional view, though the "mind in heart" theory had been around earlier. Aristotle considered that the soul organizes form. Traditionally your perception of someone comes from the light reflects off their image, into and through your eye, onto the retina's cones and into your brain. But consider that your actual perception of them is not in you brain where the image is processed, but outside of your brain and body where the person actual is! This external perception is occurs through Perceptive Fields; the mind then, reaches out to what you're look at. But is this idea testable? Consider that anecdotal evidence that some people can tell when they are being starred at from behind; women apparently experience the feeling more. Before 1990, there would have been hardly any papers on such as subject. Rupert has devised scientific experiments to test his idea, there have been tens of thousands of results recorded (a public test is running in Dutch museum), and the results are statistically significantly with odds against chance being 10^39. There has been criticisms on the experiment by CSIOPS (Committee for the Scientific Investigation for Claims of the Paranormal) [see http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-09/staring.html], yet Rupert believes that they have interpreted the data incorrectly. Curiously, US marines are trained not to stare at someone they are trying to attack, in case they look round. Telepathy. Cats seem to know when their owners are about to take them to a vet. One vet has even abandoned their appointment system. Dogs seem to know when their owners are about to take them for a work. So Rupert devised a "Coming Home" experiment. A dog's owner leaves the dog at home and goes out for the day. At some random time, the owner is told to come home. Two synchronized video cameras, recording both the dog and the owner, seem to show that when the owner know that they are coming home, the dog will often move towards the front door, apparently in anticipation. The experiment has been performed hundreds of times, and the results are statistically significant. Likewise, nursing mothers often start lactating ("let-downs") when their infants want to start feeding.
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And telephone telepathy, one of the most common forms, is when certain people, especially family members, "know" who is at the other end of a ringing phone before picking up the call. It appears that the stronger the emotional bond between the two people, the stronger the phenomenon. In Rupert's experiment with four callers where chance would expect a 25% guess rate, the results showed a 48% success rates with a sample high enough to put them a billions-to-1 against chance. Rupert concluded his talk with a video of a talking grey parrot who appeared to be able to read its owner's mind (two video cameras recording the results). More details at Rupert's Web site: http://www.sheldrake.org/ MICHAEL ARMSTRONG concluded the afternoon and the conference. He reminded us of Thomas Kuhn in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" who quoted Max Planck as saying: '... a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.' Michael suggested that there were four levels of knowledge with four levels of reliability: 1. Intrinsic knowledge: This is intuitive "hard-wired" knowledge, and includes how to apply logic, do math, and come to conclusions. 2. Experiential knowledge: This comes to us through some kind of personal experience. The two types of knowledge above are the most reliable. 3. Evidential knowledge: This is composed of personally experienced evidence which directly implies conclusions reached beyond a reasonable doubt. Since we do not experience the thing itself directly, this makes such knowledge less reliable because it involves some subjective inference and some limiting interpretation of the evidence. An example would be if we saw tyre tracks in the snow on our driveway, we would infer that a car had driven in and out. Of course it's always possible that a joker rolled a car tyre carefully up and down the driveway, even though it's unlikely. 4. Consensual knowledge: This is knowledge that others have shared that we consent to know because we trust the person or source passing on this knowledge. Consensual knowledge can be further broken down into four distinct categories: a. That based on other's experiences, their recollection, interpretation and account of that experience b. That based on other's experienced evidence, their recollection, interpretation and account of such. c. That based on other's consensual knowledge. d. That based on other's beliefs, opinions, estimations, guesses, imaginations, fantasies, falsities and misunderstandings. The latter two categories of evidential and consensual knowledge are simply and clearly less direct than the other types, and therefore intrinsically less reliable. They are also the most voluminous forms of knowledge. Michael concluded by telling us that the last 1000 years of history has tended to be catastrophic in thinking, the last 200 years being gradualism, and only the last 50 years, catastrophic again. ~Ian Tresman
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STUDENT VIEWPOINT
by Bobby Morreti I am sixteen years old, and this was my third Kronia conference. While I thoroughly enjoyed the 1997 World Conference, I was only twelve at the time, and I had a hard time understanding a good portion of the material presented there. Last summer I found out that there would be another conference in September 2000. I was so excited that on the interest survey sent to us I marked that it was a metaphysical certitude that I would be attending. The September conference blew me away. It changed my entire outlook on the world. It was so excellent that I could not conceive of a better experience. I was so impressed with its quality that I felt that any other conference would be a disappointment. So when I found out that I would be able to go to the Laughlin conference, I was careful not to get my hopes up. BOY WAS I WRONG! This conference was as enjoyable, if not more, than the previous ones. You have probably read before that Rupert Sheldrake stole the show. I feel obligated to emphasize that. He was the backbone of the conference. He spoke with style and he employed the perfect amount of humor. His ideas of morphic resonance were brilliant, offering an explanation for many of the unsolved aspects of biology. I believe that his ideas offer to biology what the Saturn Model offers to mythology. They both are in fields that have become entirely reductionist. They both look past the reductionist orthodoxy and attempt to unify a broad aspect of their field that is simply ignored by the mainstream. Whether or not they turn out to be right is not the point. They both attempt to expand their respective fields instead of narrowing them. I was truly disappointed to find out that Halton Arp would not be in attendance. It was really a shame, but I hear that he was preparing for a symposium at the Max-Planck Institute on Quasars, ULIRGs, and Galaxy Clusters, the Lighthouses of the Universe. Each attendee of Intersect 2001 received a tape of Arp's lecture at the previous Kronia seminar. Tony Peratt reminded us of the evidence for cosmic electric currents, and for a plasma cosmology. Since the September conference, he has been intrigued by the Saturn Model. He showed us that he could superimpose several different petroglyphs from around the world of a wheel which he identified as a plasma penumbra. He said that he was convinced that the ancients were drawing a giant penumbra seen in the sky. He also said that, since he first learned about Kronia research last September, he had seen enough petroglyphs to make his eyes glossy (his words). Don Scott spoke of his continued work on the Electric Star hypothesis and showed us his latest work reconciling his stellar model with the HR diagram. He even told about a star that wandered along the HR diagram in the last century, something that could not happen at all in the slow, steady, (somewhat) predictable evolution expected in the fusion model of stars. One of the best parts of the conference for me was the cruise dinner. It gave me the opportunity to talk to, and actually get to know, some of the scientists. It never ceases to amaze me how approachable all of the scientists at Kronia are, even for a student like me. The greatest success of this seminar (perhaps besides introducing Rupert Sheldrake) was the Grand Canyon trip. Although it was riddled with communication errors (I hear that we left Wal stranded as we left on the bus), we all had an excellent time. On the way to the Grand Canyon, Wal spoke over the bus' microphone. He read us an article that he had found in the popular press about the many problems with the standard model for the formation of the canyon. It was an introduction to a conference of prominent geologists to try to solve the problems with their model. I seriously doubt they ever did.
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He then told us about the features that we should look for if the canyon were really an electrical cathode scar. He said that the river should be extremely sinuous, that there should be a number of tributary canyons that branch out from the main canyon at ninety degrees, that these should follow a branching fractal pattern, and that they would be preposterously short to explain away as tributary rivers, and that there should be a large degree of scalloping patterns formed. He said that we should be on the lookout for these patterns, and that we should make up our own minds based on what we saw, and not on our preconceived assumptions. Right after we got off the bus we saw a relief map of the canyon, and it became a no-brainer that the canyon was never carved by a river. A large group of us gathered around, and started pointing out the features that Wal told us to look out for. A woman, not part of our group, was staring at us in fascination. She gathered up the courage to ask, What do you think it was formed by, then? We showed her all the evidence for electrical scarring. She agreed with us, saying, That makes so much more sense than what I was taught. Wow! Eager to gain a convert, Michael Armstrong gave her the portal to infinite knowledge, as he called the Kronia website. I hope she looked into it. The canyon itself was incredible. Over a mile deep at its deepest, 400 miles long and eighteen miles wide at its widest point, it was impossible to explain by water erosion. It was full of electrical scallop patterns inside, and had a very sinuous sub-channel in the middle. Seeing Wal there was a special treat. He was like a kid in a candy store. If there is an Electric Universe heaven, this was as close as it comes on Earth. On the bus ride back, I had the privilege of speaking extensively with Dave Talbott. He and I discussed the possibility of forming a student wing to Kronia. I believe that some of our best supporters could be high school and college-age students. If any student is interested or anyone who knows of a student that is interested in Kronia, please contact me. -Bobby Moretti
SUMMING UP
by Ian Tresman The Conference was very good. Congratulations to Michael Armstrong and Kathleen Anderson for organizing it all! The Flamingo hotel was not ideal: apparently Kronia could not sell any merchandise for lack of the appropriate permit, and attendees were not allowed to bring their own food or drink into the conference room, only that which had been bought at the hotel. The breadth of the talks was excellent, though I was disappointed that Ev Cochrane and Halton Arp were not present as billed, as their work and presentations are of the highest quality and relevance. This conference was good for a number of reasons:
1. Interdisciplinary breadth
I was initially doubtful at having Rupert Sheldrake and Bruce Lipton as speakers, wondering what the relevance was. But in some ways they were the best speakers because the subject of their talks fitted in with the holistic perspective of the Electric Universe. Bruce showed as that cells are not programmed from the inside by DNA, but from outside, in response to external signals of some kinds. He also showed that the brain itself was analogous to a cell, itself being surround by a membrane, the proteins in it enabling the brain (like cells), to "tune into" external signals.
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Rupert suggested that this external signal was perhaps something he calls Morphic Fields, and gave examples of several experiments which seem to show that there is something out there. As an aside, another person who attended the conference was Gary Schartz, a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona, and who runs the Human Energy Systems Laboratory. They do research into what I would call the paranormal, but what they describe as "research, education, and clinical applications that embrace these evolving shifts in science, society, and spirituality .. [and that] .. potentially explains a large array of seemingly anomalous phenomena in psychology and medicine, including homeopathy, cellular memory in transplant patients, energy healing, and survival of consciousness after death." I mention Gary because he implied that their lab has been able to record humans emitted x-rays. And if Bruce's brain and cell model can receive external signals, then perhaps mankind is more in touch with his surrounds than many people would accept. More on the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at http://www.livingenergyuniverse.com/
2. Interdisciplinary Corroboration
As a follow-on from the breadth of the talks is that they all seem to corroborate one another. For example, Bruce's model of the cell seems to be analogous to his model of the brain, which in turn appear to be analogous to the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth [see also "The Same at Every Level" at http://www.flatrock.org.nz/resources/scienceandgeography/fractal_evolution.htm ]
3. Evidence
I'm sure many people have found the Saturn Model compelling (the mythological evidence is overwhelming), but aspects of it difficult to reconcile. The collinear nature of the Earth-Mars- VenusSaturn system being a case in point; the system appears to be inherently unstable, so how could it possibly have existed in our Solar System. The answers from the conference were that the polar configuration is indeed unstable. It could not have existed for long in the Solar System. Indeed, on entering the Solar System, the previous Saturnian System would have met the Sun's electrical effects (on reaching the heliopause), and this would have been the cause of the formation and dissolution of the polar configuration, as well as the electrical effects seen during its breakup (as comets are similarly affected on approaching the Sun). How would the Earth have survived outside the Solar System? Saturn would have been a brown dwarf, one of the most common objects in the Universe. There was even suggestion that collinear systems are formed by plasma currents (Birkeland currents) as exemplified by Herbig-Haro objects, some of which "consist of highly linear chains or jets", and the accretion of material in a plasma Z- pinch, where "Most models of young stars and their immediate environments incorporate magnetic fields. Magnetic fields in the collapsing, rotating cloud core are advected with the accretion flow and form an hour glass shaped B field that is pinched inward by the forming disk." [See "The Birth of Stars: Herbig-Haro Jets, Accretion and Proto-Planetary Disks", John Bally and Jon Morse, in the book Science with the Hubble Space Telescope -- II, Book Editors: P. Benvenuti, F. D. Macchetto, and E. J. Schreier, at http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/shst2/ballyj.html And I am reminded that planets do appear to exist without a star (i.e. outside a solar system), see "18 Possible Planets Lacking A Central Star Discovered", AAAS, 6 Oct 2000, at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/10/001006075617.htm as the press release said "these free floaters may pose a considerable challenge to current theories about how planets form .. They lack a
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central star like our sun, and they are part of a star cluster, sigma Orionis, that is no more than five million years old. (Our sun is billions of years old.) " Intersect 2001. PHOTOS As promised, I've uploaded some photos of the conference to: www.catastrophism.com/intersect2001/ ~Ian Tresman
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 10 (August 31, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE VICINITY OF THE FAMILIAR SUDBURY NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY REPORT: AN ANALYSIS SOLAR NEUTRINO PUZZLE IS SOLVED?
Mel Acheson Don Scott Wal Thornhill
THE VICINITY OF THE FAMILIAR

by Mel Acheson Understanding is a process of familiarization. The first step is to reach out to the unfamiliar. And that with which we reach out is the finger of imagination, the touch of speculation. Knowledge is excessively emphasized. It's the product, the commodity. It's where the money is. The factory is learning. Today's knowledge is what was learned yesterday. Knowledge is the past; learning is the present. Learning is a process of critical examination. It's the testing, the observing, the seeking, the falsifying. It's the trial and error, the R & D of knowledge. It's the smelter that refines truthfulness from the ore which imagination and curiosity dig out of the mine of ignorance. The seeds of speculation from which theories grow are abundant-- unless cognitive herbicides enforce a monoculture. Established science tends to do that. But established science is only one herbicide among many sitting on the shelf of tradition. (Lest I be mistaken as advocating the abolition of herbicides, let me only mention the opposite danger of crop failure from choking by weeds. The Greek admonition of moderation in all things is appropriate.) Even more effective at killing speculation than established science is knowledge: knowledge that's become internalized and taken for granted; knowledge that's become beliefs and unconscious assumptions. This is the burden of knowledge, the cost of knowledge. We judge the universe and limit it according to what we know. Concepts are static; experience is dynamic. The immediacy of seeking is arrested by the authority of prior knowledge. Eye/mind coordination is disrupted. Sensation/sense coordination is disrupted. To learn something new, to become familiar with the unfamiliar, we must revolt against the reification and the deification of concepts imposed by the authority of knowledge. We must free our minds from the tyrannies of our thinking that ossify imagination and alienate us from experience. The greatest impediments to the advance of knowledge are the timidity of imagination and the dearth of speculations. We've touched but a tiny part of the universe, and our search is blind. We grope around in the vicinity of the familiar and discover novelty just beyond our grasp. We wonder what it is. We imagine what it might be. We test our speculation and usually find it mistaken. But once in a while we find some truthfulness in our fantasies: We become familiar with another piece of the unfamiliar. Mel Acheson
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thoth@whidbey.com
SUDBURY NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY REPORT: AN ANALYSIS

By Don Scott For decades the measured flux of neutrinos coming from the Sun has been insufficient when compared to the theoretically predicted value. This has been a continuing embarrassment for those who believe that the accepted H-He fusion model of how the Sun produces its energy is correct. There are three types ("flavors") of neutrino: electron-neutrinos, muon-neutrinos, and tauon- neutrinos.
THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

In June 2001, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Ontario, Canada made an announcement that was joyfully hailed by defenders of mainstream orthodoxy. The official announcement can be viewed at http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/sno/first_results/page00.html As a result of their interpretation of the data from their experiments SNO researchers claim the problem did not lie with the fusion model, but was due to the fact that neutrinos change from one flavor to another on their way to Earth. Some of these flavors were not measurable by the previous experiments that were looking for them. They claim, on the basis of their conclusions, that the measurable neutrinos turn into previously non-measurable ones enroute, and that explains the apparent shortage.
PRESS RELEASES:
Press releases were filled with pronouncements of confidence that the standard fusion reaction did indeed live at the core of the Sun. There was, however, more joy and dancing than factual information in most of these releases. SOME EXAMPLES: 1) "Physicists have wrestled with the 'solar neutrino problem' since the early 1970s, when experiments detected a shortfall of the particles coming from the sun. The neutrino shortage meant either that theories describing the nuclear furnace at the sun's core were wrong, or that something was happening to the particles on their way to Earth. Monday's announcement demonstrates with 99 percent confidence that it is the latter." ~AP article appearing on line in The Nando Times of June 19, entitled "Physicists: Neutrinos have some mass," by Matt Crenson. Don's Question: What was the basis for the "99% confidence" figure? Was that a firmly derived number based on statistical analysis - or was it just joyful exuberance (a non-scientific number)? 2) "The SNO detector has the capability to determine whether solar neutrinos are changing their type en-route to Earth, thus providing answers to questions about neutrino properties and solar energy generation." ~http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/sno/first_results/ Don's Question: How can SNO claim the ability to determine whether something happens to neutrinos enroute from the Sun to Earth without making measurements at the Sun (at the start of the journey) or somewhere along the route? Or by making assumptions about how they started out? More on this question below. 3) "SNO appears to be measuring a rate expected for all types of neutrinos combined but a decided deficit for the electron neutrino." ~http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010710.html
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Don's comment: This appears to be in contradiction with the official announcement which states that the results of the only SNO experiment that can measure all three flavors of neutrino will not be announced until a later time.
ANALYSIS OF THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

Reading the official announcement reveals the following: Sudbury uses three different reactions to measure neutrinos: 1. Charged Current reaction (CC). Sensitive only to electron- neutrinos (e) 2. Neutral Current (NC). Sensitive to all types (e,u,t) 3. Elastic Scattering (ES). Sensitive to all types but with reduced sensitivity to muon and tauon type neutrinos. If indeed the total flux is what is of interest, one would expect the second experiment, the Neutral Current (NC) observation which is sensitive to all types (e,u,t) of neutrinos, to be the most important one. Unfortunately the announcement says: A measurement using the NC reaction, which has equal sensitivity to all neutrino flavors, will be reported in a future publication. DON'S COMMENT: We eagerly await it. Thus we are limited to the results of the CC (electron-neutrinos only) and the ES (electron-neutrinos and reduced sensitivity to the other two types) observations. These observations are made here on Earth. No observations were made anywhere along the path, certainly not at its beginning where the neutrinos start their journey. QUESTION: Consider a freight train that goes from New York to Chicago. We live in Chicago and are only able to observe the train as it arrives in Chicago. It arrives with 4 freight cars, 2 tank cars, and 1 flat car. How is it possible, no matter how sophisticated our method of observation, for us to make any conclusions about whether freight cars, tank cars, or flat cars have been added to or subtracted from the train at, say, Cleveland? Moreover, how is it possible to say that freight cars have turned into tank cars or flat cars along the route somewhere? (And do it with 99% confidence?) The logic used in drawing conclusions seems to be faulty in other ways as well. In the conclusion of the Sudbury report it states: Comparison of the (neutrino) flux deduced from the ES reaction assuming no neutrino oscillations, to that measured by the CC reaction can provide clear evidence of flavor transformation without reference to solar model flux calculations. If neutrinos from the Sun change into other active flavors, then CC flux < ES flux. A logical analysis of the above sentence: Let (a) = Neutrinos from the Sun change into other active flavors. (b) = Electron-neutrino flux measurement is less than the measurement that includes electronneutrinos and some of the other two types. The sentence says: IF (a) is true, then (b) is true. No one would disagree with that. But they are implying: IF (b) is true, then (a) is true. (If the measurement of the flux of electron-type neutrinos is less than the more inclusive measurement that includes some of the muon and tauon and all of the electron type, then neutrinos from the Sun change flavor on their way to Earth.)
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That is a logical non-sequitur. If the Sun is emitting all three types of neutrinos, e+u+t, then an Earthbound experiment that measures only e will always have a lower output than one that measures (for example) e + 0.1u + 0.3t. The report states that the CC measured value (e type only) is "significantly smaller than the measurements by [S. Fukuda in an earlier experiment]". So the electron neutrino flux measured by SNO is even lower than previously reported. Until this experiment, no muon or tauon neutrinos had been seen coming from the Sun. But that doesn't mean they aren't. It is possible that muon-neutrinos oscillate into electron- neutrinos. And that would present a further complication to the SNO conclusions. If the various neutrino flavors have different masses the possibility for quantum mechanical mixing arises. Whenever we detect a neutrino, we see it as a particular flavor, but each flavor may be a mixture of two or more mass states, in which case the probability of seeing a particular flavor will oscillate as the neutrino travels away from its source. An ideal neutrino oscillation experiment would then create neutrinos of one particular flavor and attempt to detect one of the other flavors some distance from the source. The LSND experiment at Los Alamos is such an experiment, and has seen some evidence for muon neutrinos oscillating into electron neutrinos, but has seen fewer than one hundred events. The Boone experiment presently being planned at Fermilab will be able to confirm (or rule out) this result with an order of magnitude more data. [Ital. added] - http://www-e815.fnal.gov/~bugel/why.html It is regrettable that the SNO results do not address several other questions relative to the solar neutrino flux. For example why does the total flux seem to be a function of the sunspot cycle? Physicist Wal Thornhill points this out in detail in his analysis of the neutrino problem at his Holoscience web site. [ed. note -- see following article by Thornhill.] Thornhill states that, in the Electric Sun model, fluctuations in neutrino counts are expected to be correlated with electrical input to the Sun, that is, with sunspot numbers and solar wind activity. This has already been observed. The standard solar model cannot explain such observations. Neutrinos carry no electrical charge, therefore the usual hidden "strange magnetic fields" cannot be invoked to explain away this correlation between neutrino flux and sunspot number. The high decibel level of rejoicing contained in the pronouncements is a clue that cannot be ignored. It stands in curious contrast to the existence of obvious errors in fundamental logic contained in the report. The most absolute requirement in research is scientific objectivity. And (given the paucity of actual data that was collected) there is substantial reason to question to what extent some "wishful thinking" went into the conclusions of this report. There is no way that a measurement taken only at one end of a transmission channel can reveal changes that have occurred farther up the channel. The only way such conclusions can be made is when observations have been made at more than one place along the path! Clearly, although the fusion model has now seemingly been vindicated in the minds and hearts of its defenders, the "missing neutrino" question is still very far from being answered. http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Sudbury.htm ~Don Scott
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SOLAR NEUTRINO PUZZLE IS SOLVED?

by Wal Thornhill The Electric Universe model has made some capital from the fact that the key evidence for a nuclear engine in the Sun, the neutrino count, failed to live up to expectations. In Physics World, July 2001, [see http://physicsweb.org/article/world/14/7/10] an article appeared that asserted that the solar neutrino puzzle is now solved and that it "confirms that our understanding of the Sun is correct." Is this a serious blow to the Electric Universe model? The short answer is no! The longer answer requires a bit of background.
WHY DOES THE STANDARD SOLAR MODEL HAVE A NEUTRINO PUZZLE?

The Sun is mostly hydrogen gas. According to the Standard Solar model, if the Sun were not generating heat, gravity would compress all of the gas into a much smaller space. Since the sun is bigger than a hydrogen sphere held together by gravity, we know (along with the fact that it shines VERY brightly) that there must be a source of energy inside. And only nuclear energy can produce enough energy to last for billions of years. According to the Standard Solar model, originally proposed by Eddington in the 1920's, just knowing the solar radius and mass and that the sun is supported in hydrostatic equilibrium we can calculate the temperature in the center needed to support the rest of the sun. The temperature works out to be of the order of 10 to 20 million degrees Kelvin.
WHAT IS THE NUCLEAR PROCESS THAT IS SUPPOSED TO MAINTAIN THIS UNIMAGINABLE TEMPERATURE?
At tens of millions of degrees hydrogen is fully ionized into electrons and protons and the resulting energetic protons are free to collide. It is proposed that such collisions form the first step in a chain of nuclear reactions known as the proton-proton (p-p) chain. In the p-p reaction, two protons are fused together to form a deuteron, a positron and a neutrino. A deuteron consists of a proton and neutron. A positron is a positively charged electron. For this reaction to happen the two colliding protons must approach each other within 0.1 trillionth of a centimetre and simultaneously one of the protons must decay to a neutron and positron. Although it is extremely improbable for this reaction to happen (one reaction per particle in 14 thousand million years!), there is such a vast supply of protons available that it is argued many such reactions occur. The second stage in the p-p chain is the fusion of a deuteron with another proton to form a nucleus of an isotope of helium, 3 He, consisting of two protons and one neutron, and a gamma ray photon. In the last stage this isotope must fuse with another 3 He isotope to form a helium nucleus, 4 He, and two protons. The first two steps must occur twice before the last can take place. WAL'S COMMENTS: Producing nuclear fusion by squeezing and heating matter is the most inefficient method conceivable, as witness the half-century long attempts to produce fusion power. It is highly improbable even under the calculated extreme conditions at the center of the Sun. The unlikely process above omits to mention that quantum tunnelling is also needed to make it work. And if nuclear fusion is happening as theorized, it can only produce the first few light elements in the periodic table. Where do the heavy elements, seen in the Sun's spectrum, come from? Don't say "from supernovae" because there are far too few of them. What's more, they are in the business of dispersing matter into the vastness of interstellar space. Wouldn't it be better to have a theory that solved this fundamental problem in situ for all stars? Nature does not do anything the hard way so why would she not use the same technique that particle physicists use to create heavy elements on Earth - particle accelerators? But particle accelerators require electrical power and astrophysics is the only science that does not use it! Astronomy remains, with Eddington, in the gas-light era. [Eddington, A.S., The Internal Constitution of the Stars. See particularly pages 272-3.]
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THE NEUTRINO PROBLEM:

From the usual understanding of the p-p reaction, about 1.8 x 10^38 neutrinos are produced by the Sun per second. That means at Earth's distance, some 400 trillion neutrinos go through our bodies every second! This is a phenomenal number, and yet there is not the slightest interaction with any of them. However, detection of these neutrinos would give us a method to "view" inside the solar core because they pass through the substance of the Sun with ease. On the other hand, radiant energy from the Sun's core may take millions of years to percolate to the surface. The problem is to detect the neutrinos, since those from the p-p reaction have an energy which is far too low for detection. However, higher energy neutrinos are known to come from a side reaction involving 3 He and 4 He particles to form a beryllium nucleus (7 Be) which then captures a proton to form a boron nucleus (8 B); this nucleus then breaks up into Beryllium (8 Be) plus a positron and neutrino. Only 2 of these reactions are produced out of 10,000 completions of the p-p reaction, so these neutrinos are rarer. To detect these higher energy electron neutrinos, a large vessel (400 cubic metres) filled with dry-cleaning solvent (perchloroethylene) was placed 1.5 km underground in a gold mine in South Dakota -- away from all other cosmic radiation. Left for 3 months a few of the chlorine atoms ( 37 Cl) are expected to react with the neutrinos to form 37 Ar and an electron, which then reverts to 37 Cl plus a neutrino. The 37 Ar atoms are purged with helium gas and the decay is counted. According to the standard model, the detector should measure about 8 x 10^36 interactions per second per atom or 8 SNU (pronounced 'snoo') with an error rate of 33%. The neutrino detector has averaged only 2.2 SNU with a deviation of 0.3 SNU. The detection has been only about one third of the calculated number and the discrepancy is well outside both the uncertainty of the calculations and experimental deviations. The problem was so intractable for the Standard Solar model that the particle physicists were called upon to determine if there was something we did not know about the neutrino. They proposed that if neutrinos had mass (so far undetected) then they might oscillate between the three known forms, the electron, muon and tau neutrino. The low count of electron neutrinos might then be accounted for if they had changed "flavour" on their journey from the Sun's core to the Earth. FROM THE PHYSICS WORLD ARTICLE: Solar neutrino puzzle is solved. The Physics World article opened confidently with this heading and the assertion: New evidence that solar neutrinos can change 'flavour' confirms that our understanding of the Sun is correct and that neutrinos have mass. It continued: The first results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory [SNO] in Canada have finally solved a problem that has puzzled astrophysicists for 30 years: why do experiments detect less than half the number of solar neutrinos predicted by models of the Sun? The results confirm that electron neutrinos produced by nuclear reactions inside the Sun 'oscillate' or change flavour on their journey to Earth. Neutrino oscillations are only possible if the three flavours of neutrino [electron, muon and tau] have mass. The SNO result therefore has important implications for cosmology and particle physics. THE ARTICLE CONTINUES: The Sudbury Neutrino (SNO) experiment Although the SuperKamiokande experiment in Japan has seen strong evidence for the disappearance of 'atmospheric neutrinos' [neutrinos that are produced when cosmic rays interact with nuclei in the Earth's atmosphere (Physics World July 1998 pp17-18)] the SNO results are significant because, when combined with solarneutrino data from SuperKamiokande, they show for the first time that the disappearance of one neutrino flavour is accompanied by the appearance of another. This is the key signature of neutrino
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oscillations. The new results are also in excellent agreement with the predictions of standard solar models. The SNO collaboration includes physicists from 15 centres in Canada, the US and the UK, and the results were presented on 18 June at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Physicists in Victoria, and at seminars at Oxford University in the UK and the University of Pennsylvania in the US. They have also been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. "It is incredibly exciting to see such intriguing results coming out of our first data analysis," says the collaboration's UK spokesman, David Wark of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Sussex University, "and there is so much more to come." Neutrinos are elementary particles of matter with no electric charge and very little mass. They only interact weakly with matter, which makes them very difficult to detect. Indeed, the SNO experiment detects a mere 10 or so solar neutrinos per day. Electron neutrinos are produced in the Sun's core when boron-8 nuclei undergo beta decay: the Sun is not thought to produce muon or tau neutrinos. Previous experiments have detected less than half of the predicted solarneutrino flux, but these experiments were only sensitive to electron neutrinos. The combined SNO and SuperKamiokande results make it clear that this shortfall arises because electron neutrinos have changed into muon or tau neutrinos. 'This result agrees perfectly with theoretical predictions and indicates that we really do understand the nuclear processes that are the source of the Sun's energy', says Lincoln Wolfenstein, a particle theorist at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. According to the SNO detector, the flux of electron neutrinos from the Sun is 1.75 million neutrinos per square centimetre per second. The SuperKamiokande experiment puts the total flux at 2.32 million in the same units (S Fukuda et al. 2001 Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 5651, 5656). By comparing these figures, physicists from SNO and SuperKamiokande calculated that the true solar-neutrino flux is 5.44 million neutrinos per square centimetre per second, which is in excellent agreement with the 'standard solar model' of energy production in the Sun. WAL COMMENTS: The headline underscores a cultural problem in reporting science that leads to bald statements of "fact" when a conclusion is in fact conjectural. The detection of neutrino oscillations cannot confirm the Standard Solar model. It merely offers a possible solution to one of a number of serious observational problems with the Standard Solar model. There can be no confirmation of oscillation of neutrino flavours between the Sun and the Earth without simultaneous neutrino measurements being made near the Sun. And that poses formidable experimental problems. On the other hand, the Electric Universe proposes an electrical model for stars, based on the pioneering work of Ralph Juergens. It argues that Eddington's model, which treated the Sun as a ball of neutral gas, is wrong. The large difference in the weight of the proton, 1836 times heavier than the electron, ensures that in the Sun's strong gravity hydrogen atoms will form weak electric dipoles with their positive poles aimed at the Sun's center. (At temperatures near that of the Sun's surface, hydrogen is only weakly ionized). And since the electric force outguns gravity to the tune of 39 powers of 10, its omission from the Standard Solar model renders that simple gas model unrealistic. The effect of the radially aligned atomic dipoles to propel free electrons in the plasma toward the Sun's surface, leaving behind an excess of positive charge. As we know, like charges repel, so the interior of the Sun will simply resist compression due to gravity. In other words, the electric force will tend to compensate for gravitational compression and make the Sun more homogeneous, with presumably a small core. In fact, the Sun is about the size expected if its hydrogen were not compressed by gravity! So it is not necessary for an internal nuclear furnace to bloat the Sun to the size we see. It is important to stress that the only other method of divining what is inside the Sun, that of measuring small solar surface oscillations, or helioseismology, supports a homogeneous model of the Sun. In 1976 the discoverers of a dominant 160 minute radial pulsation of the Sun were well aware of that serious implication of their discovery. The Sun can have no nuclear engine! Everything possible has been done since to explain the observation away, without success. It remains one of those damned facts that will be explained... someday soon. Meanwhile, most of the complex oscillation overtones have been fitted to
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Standard Solar models. But that is not surprising given the many degrees of freedom to tweak those mathematical models. The Electric Sun hypothesis has the virtue that it does not require any hidden activity inside the Sun to explain the features of the Sun. It is amenable to physical testing in the laboratory because we are not dealing with supposed unearthly conditions at the center of a star and because plasma phenomena are scalable over 14 orders of magnitude (at last count).
WHAT IF THE NEUTRINO DISCOVERY IS CORRECT?

It says nothing about the correctness of the Standard Solar model. However, it does have "important implications for cosmology and particle physics". If neutrinos do have mass it will tend to confirm the Electric Universe model. In it, neutrinos are not fundamental particles but are comprised of the same charged sub- particles that make up all matter. They are the most collapsed form of matter known. When a positron and an electron "annihilate", the orbital energy in both is radiated as a gamma ray and the subparticles that comprised them both assume a new stable orbital configuration of very low energy, or mass. Matter cannot be created from a vacuum nor annihilated in this model. The differences between the neutrino "flavours" is merely one of different quantum states and therefore different masses. The electric Sun model expects far more complex heavy element synthesis to take place in the natural particle accelerators in the photospheric lightning discharges. In that case the various neutrino "flavours" are all generated on the Sun and do not need to "oscillate" on their way to the Earth to make up an imagined deficit. What is more, fluctuations in neutrino counts are expected in this model to be correlated with electrical input to the Sun, that is, with sunspot numbers and solar wind activity. This has been observed. The standard solar model does not expect any correlation since there is a lag estimated in the millions of years between the nuclear reaction in the core and its final expression at the surface of the Sun. Electric discharges in plasma take the form of twisted filaments, seen here in a close-up of sunspots. Each filament is a powerful natural particle accelerator. There is an experiment suggested by the SNO results that could confirm the Electric Sun's photospheric origin of neutrinos. It would require continuous measurement of neutrinos of all flavours as a very large sunspot group rotated with the Sun. In this model, sunspot umbrae are not a source of neutrinos so there should be modulation effects associated with the Sun's rotation that might be measurable with present equipment. Such an experiment, if sensitive enough, offers the possibility of detecting neutrino oscillations in the Sun as they traverse varying proportions of the body of the Sun. A positive result would falsify the standard nuclear model of the Sun. THE ARTICLE CONTINUES: Proponents of 'dark matter' will be pleased to hear that neutrinos have mass. Astrophysicists have struggled for years to understand why galaxies rotate as if they contain more matter than we can see, and many believe this can only be explained by 'dark matter' that cannot be seen. 'Our calculations show that neutrinos account for between 0.1% and 18% of the mass in the universe,' says Wark. 'Neutrinos may not account for all the dark matter, but they could certainly represent some of it now that we know they have mass.' The new results limit the possible range of masses for neutrinos to between 0.05 and 0.18 eV. WAL'S COMMENT: A sea of neutrinos won't account for galactic rotation curves -- the neutrinos cannot be distributed evenly, but must be collected in a halo. Dark matter is not required to explain galactic form and rotation in a plasma universe. The galactic forms and evolution have been experimentally confirmed in plasma laboratories and in super-computer plasma simulations. No strange invisible matter is needed. However, a vast sea of unreactive neutrinos could be the long debated "ether" that permeates space. Space is not a void. We then have an electrically responsive medium for the transmission of light in which the characteristic velocity of an electrical disturbance in that medium is the so- called speed of light, c.
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THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES: Removing uncertainties. The new-found mass of neutrinos must also be incorporated into the Standard Model of particle physics. According to Wark, the neutrino could be the first ever example of a Majorana particle, a type of particle that is its own antiparticle. "If you could place a bet at the bookmakers on the next change to the Standard Model, the Majorana theory would be the front-runner," he says. Author: Katie Pennicott is Editor of PhysicsWeb WAL'S COMMENT: In the Electric Universe model, there is no antimatter forming antiparticles. An electron and a positron are composed of the same charged sub-particles in different conformations. They come together to form a stable neutrino, emitting most of their orbital energies in the process. They do not annihilate each other. In that sense a neutrino embodies both the electron and the positron. It can have no antiparticle. The bookmakers would be wise not to bet on the Standard Model of particle physics. To sum up, the electrical model of the Sun requires that neutrinos of all "flavours" are produced by heavy element nucleosynthesis in the photosphere of the Sun. It is far simpler than the nuclear fusion model whose major assumptions cannot be confirmed, either by visual inspection or certain "rogue" data. All of the obvious electrical discharge phenomena seen on and above the photosphere have analogs that can be seen on Earth and/or reproduced in electrical engineering laboratories. It is simpler to assume that the energy we receive from the Sun is coming from where we see it - at the surface, or photosphere, rather than a minuscule and unlikely hydrogen bomb 93 million miles distant, shrouded in opaque gas. Then the fact that sunspots are dark makes perfect sense - it is cooler everywhere beneath the photosphere. Mysteriously generated magnetic fields are not required to explain every strange solar phenomenon and to defy the laws of physics in the process by breaking and 'reconnecting' hypothetical field lines. The surprisingly even magnetic field of the Sun, from the equator to the poles, is to be expected if the Sun is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge, as Juergens suggested 30 years ago. Magnetism cannot exist on the Sun without electric currents. Finally, the very experiments designed to confirm the Standard Solar model may instead confirm the Electric Sun model if neutrino variability can be clearly tied to sunspot activity. A number of authors have suggested that we have almost reached the end of new science. That is true while we are confronted, in this scientific age, with a medieval response to a new paradigm. It is as if we were whisked back to the beginning of the Copernican revolution. At that time there was religious adherence to a complex Earth-centered Ptolemaic model of the heavens. It offered as its greatest virtue mathematical beauty in the addition of endless epicycles to make the model fit the observations of the heavens. The mathematicians were in their heaven and resisted the simpler but less beautiful (noncircular) Copernican, or Sun centered model. Centuries later, the mathematicians are doing it again while they dominate astrophysics. It is very unwelcome for them be confronted with a far simpler electrical engineer's model of the Sun that does not require endless mathematical intervention to save it. Perhaps it remains for those without such a cloistered view to see that just as our civilization and science depends upon remotely generated electric power, the idea of a remotely powered electrical Sun has a certain uncommon-sense symmetry to it - particularly when plasma physicists have already identified the cosmic "transmission lines". ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL V, No 11 (October 15, 2001)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE SKETCH OF THAT "E" WORD CELESTIAL CATASTROPHES IN HUMAN PREHISTORY? BINARY STARS: FUSION vs COLLISION MARS and the GRAND CANYON
Mel Acheson Press Release Don Scott Wal Thornhill
BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE SKETCH OF THAT "E" WORD

by Mel Acheson Epistemology is knowledge about knowledge. Fortunately, it has almost no practical value: If people had to know how they know before they could know something, they'd never know anything. But I've developed a fascination for it (or maybe I just like its potential for puns). There are many views of this; the following is mine. None of it's original with me. I've collected it from various books and conversations. But it's provided me with a kind of grandstand seat overlooking the games of science, which are my other fascination. Knowledge comes in several brands. Or rather the word "knowledge" is used to label several diverse, even contradictory, phenomena. There is intuitive knowledge and religious knowledge or revelation. There is visceral knowledge: activities such as playing a piano or hammering nails that you perform without much conscious direction or possibly without involving your brain. There is animal knowledge: for example, how a paramecium seeks its food. My interest is scientific knowledge. So I need some criterion with which to distinguish scientific knowledge from all the rest. There have been many of proposals for such a criterion; the one I like best is Karl Popper's idea of criticism. All brands of knowledge can be meaningful and useful, but what distinguishes scientific knowledge is that it's subjected to critical examination and testing. Especially important for the criterion of criticism is the idea of falsification. This is because the logical structure of theories only gives certainty of falsity. Verification is always ambiguous: You can never be sure that another theory won't explain things better. But you can be sure that a theory fails to explain something. (In logic, this is called "Modus Tollens" or "denying the consequent". Verification is called "affirming the consequent", and it's a fallacy.) In addition to distinguishing types of knowledge, knowledge can be considered in two aspects: Its generation and its development. I like to call the aspects "production" and "marketing". Or they could be called "creation" and "evolution". (Of course, the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary. They overlap quite a bit and influence each other.) Individuals create knowledge by discovering a new idea or by gaining a new insight or by understanding something differently. In other words, they learn something new. This learning process can be considered
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to have three aspects: theorizing, observing, and judging (whether it's true). These could also be called speculating, experimenting, and verifying. Or imagining, testing, and falsifying. Once an individual has come up with a new idea and communicated it to someone else, it becomes objective knowledge: a book, a picture, a computer program, a college course, etc. It's beyond the creator's control (assuming it ever was in his control) and can take on a life-or death-of its own. Others can use it in ways the creator never imagined or intended. It can interact with other knowledge. Or it can be forgotten. It becomes part of an epistemic ecosystem, where ideas play a part similar to populations of biological species. The dynamics and development of these species of ideas (the theories and paradigms) can be modeled after the fashion of evolutionary theory. Theories compete. They become widespread or go extinct. They are succeeded by new species, whose niches may be created by the previous species. This evolution of scientific knowledge under the selection pressure of criticism is what we call progress. It's what distinguishes scientific knowledge from the other brands, which generally don't progress. This isn't a rigid distinction: Dogmatic theology, for example, may allow or even encourage criticism of details, but it seldom tolerates questioning the fundamentals of faith. And science must stick to a certain amount of dogmatism in order to develop a theory, else it would waste its energies jumping from one new theory to the next. But if you consider, say, Christianity's arising from Judaism as similar to a paradigm shift in science, then religion has experienced one shift in several thousand years and science has experienced many in a few centuries. The other side of this coin of progress is that scientific knowledge is unstable. It's insecure. The freedom of opportunity rides a see-saw with the fear of risk. Theories are always changing, not only by improving the model but occasionally by replacing the brand. Every theory is provisional. Every idea is open to criticism. This is not a condition that inspires belief in any particular theory. Yet belief in particular theories seems to be the usual condition. Perhaps the craving for security inevitably intrudes. If judged by Popper's criterion, most theories are pseudo-scientific and the sciences are largely pseudo-religious. These are theoretical categories; in practice, I don't know how you could distinguish between a popular scientific theory that everyone takes for granted and a fideistic assumption that no one questions. And in the political competition among theories, the prefix "pseudo-" becomes not a theoretical label but an aspersion. The passions of knowledge are as important as the contents. The fear of uncertainty is amalgamated with the creative tensions of learning: frustration, elation, disappointment and hope. When these passions become attached to particular theories, the distinction between science and the other brands of knowledge becomes confused. Popper's criterion of demarcation needs to be accompanied by a passion for dispassionate criticism. This sketch may be nugatory for the players kicking their theories around. But for spectators such as myself it provides a kind of scorecard with which I can track the game. Now please excuse me: I'm gonna get another epistemic beer. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
CELESTIAL CATASTROPHES IN HUMAN PREHISTORY?

Ed note: if any of our readers in the Philadelphia area are able to attend this meeting, could you please tell us about how it goes? -- Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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PRESS RELEASE: "Celestial Catastrophes" Program Oct. 17 From: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Date: 10/12/2001 Contact: Pam Kosty, Public Information Officer PHYSICIST DR. ANTHONY PERATT TO PRESENT NEW FINDINGS THAT LINK ANCIENT ROCK ART, STONEHENGE, TO WORLDWIDE OBSERVATIONS OF UNUSUAL SPACIAL OCCURENCE Scientist to Speak at University of Pennsylvania Museum Program "Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory?" Wednesday, October 17, 6 p.m. Philadelphia, PA-New Mexico physicist Dr. Anthony L. Peratt offers a provocative new theory about the catastrophic "story" that many of the world's petroglyphs, pictographs, rock carvings, rock paintings and even monuments from antiquity may in fact be telling, when he speaks on "Talking Rocks" at Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory?, a special program in the Harrison Auditorium, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Wednesday, October 17, 6 p.m. The public program, which runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and includes discussants from several departments in the University of Pennsylvania and the Museum, is free. A reception with Dr. Peratt and the discussants, running from 7:30 to 8:30, is $20; $15 for Museum members. The number for more information or to preregister for the reception (through October 15) is 215/898-4890. Basing his findings on new high technology experimental research, Dr. Peratt , Associate Laboratory Directorate, Experimental Programs and Simulation and Computing, Los Alamos National Laboratory, argues that numerous rock art designs, and even the monument Stonehenge, can be linked to the recording of a highly visible outer space event that occurred many millennia ago. Dr. Jeremy Sabloff, the Williams Director, UPM; Dr. Harold Dibble, Deputy Director, UPM; Dr. Robert Giegengack, Chairman, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. Charles Alcock, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, will respond. Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory? continues an occasional series, co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Center for Ancient Studies, on the impact of catastrophic events on human history. Past programs have examined the impact of volcanoes ("Explosive Volcanism," January 17, 2001), asteroids ("Impact Craters in Earth History" May 11, 2000 ) and flooding ("Flooding the Black Sea: Noah and Early Agriculture?" October 14, 1999). The series is made possible through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. A. Bruce Mainwaring. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity. Founded in 1887, the Museum has sent more than 350 archaeological and anthropological expeditions to all the inhabited continents of the world. With an active exhibition schedule and educational programming for children and adults, the Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind's collective heritage. UPM is located at 33rd and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays; closed Mondays, holidays and summer Sundays from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Museum admission donation is $5 adults; $2.50 senior citizens and students with ID; free to Museum members, children under 6, and University of Pennsylvania staff, students and faculty with a PENNcard, and FREE Sundays, through May 19, 2002. Visit the Museum's website at www.upenn.edu/museum or call (215) 898-4000 for general information.
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BINARY STARS: FUSION VS. COLLISION

by Don Scott Today's APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011010.html has yet another ... example of the fantasy world astronomers live in these days. The image is of the central part of the omega Centauri globular cluster. The "explanation" emphasizes the probability of collisions of the stars in that cluster because "stars are packed in 10,000 times more densely than near our Sun." Ok - Some of you may remember the model of our local stellar space that I presented at Laughlin. The scale I used was 1 mile in the model equals one light year in reality. In the model, our Sun is a speck of dust 1/100 inch in diameter and the nearest star to us, proxima Centauri, is almost 5 miles away (and it too is a speck of dust.) That means the local stellar density is approximately one star per 125 LY^3(cubic light years). If, in omega Centauri, the density is 10,000 times as great, the density must be 10,000 stars per 125 LY^3. This is 80 stars per one LY^3. Thus, in my model, we have 80 specks of dust (each one about 1/100 inch in diameter) floating around inside a one cubic mile volume of space. What are the chances of a collision in that situation? The "explanation" goes on to say: When two stars collide they likely either combine to form one more massive star, or they stick, forming a new binary star system. In my opinion it is highly likely that a massive star is more likely to fission into a binary star system - rather than the reverse. In fact almost half (40%) of all the stars we see are binary pairs - were there THAT many collisions? And also they say: Close binary stars interact, sometimes emitting ultraviolet or X-ray light when gas falls from one star onto the surface of a compact companion such as a white dwarf or neutron star. Yes, binary pairs do interact - and many companions are white dwarfs. But none are "neutron stars" because the half life of "neutronium" is less than 14 minutes. Don Scott
MARS AND THE GRAND CANYON

by Wal Thornhill Quotes to think about: The ultimate objective of comparative planetology, it might be said, is something like a vast computer program into which we insert a few input parameters (perhaps the initial mass, composition and angular momentum of a protoplanet and the population of neighboring objects that strike it) and then derive the complete evolution of the planet. ~Carl Sagan, The Solar System, Scientific American, September 1975, p. 29. First Law of Computing: Garbage in = garbage out.
THE GRAND CANYON
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Most people would think that experts agree on an explanation for the formation of such a grandiose site as the Grand Canyon. Surprisingly that isn't so. It is an enigma. The latest attempt to figure it out occurred as late as June last year at the Grand Canyon Symposium 2000. The Colorado River is held generally responsible for carving the Canyon. However, even before the Glen Canyon dam stemmed its awesome desert floods, the river seems hopelessly inadequate to have formed such a geological spectacle. The Colorado River flows west from the Rockies and encounters a raised plateau known as the Kaibab Upwarp. Instead of turning away from that barrier it continues through the plateau. How could it do that? The river is much younger than the Kaibab Upwarp so it could not have progressively cut the Canyon even if the land rose very slowly. "In any case, most of the material that was removed from the Canyon seems to be missing, according to a report from the symposium, leaving little evidential support for the original theory that a simple progression of water erosion formed the Canyon we see today. "Since the 1930's and 1940's, geologists have searched for other explanations -- that the Canyon once drained to the south-east (reversing the route of the present-day Little Colorado, then joining the Rio Grande and into the Gulf of Mexico." When problems arose with that explanation too, it was proposed that it once flowed NE along one of the present-day side tributaries such as Cataract Creek. See: http://www.kaibab.org/geology/gc_geol.htm#how and The New York Times, June 6 2000, "Making Sense of Grand Canyon's Puzzles" by Sandra Blakeslee] Now let us consider a 21st century solution to the question of how the Grand Canyon was formed, based not only on Earthly evidence, but also on data returned by space probes and produced by more than a century of experimental and theoretical work in plasma laboratories. The Grand Canyon has often been compared in form, if not size, to the gigantic canyons of Valles Marineris on Mars. Because of these similarities it was initially thought that Valles Marineris was caused by massive water erosion at some earlier, supposedly wetter, epoch in Martian history. That idea has been abandoned because the evidence for water erosion and ponding in Valles Marineris is missing. The presently favored explanation of Valles Marineris is that the surface of Mars has opened up with a giant tectonic rift, rather like the East African rift valley. Rifting is usually accompanied by vulcanism caused by increased heat flow from the interior. Yet major volcanic features are lacking in Valles Marineris. There are also many deep yet short tributary canyons to both of these Canyons, which require a different explanation. The favored one is undercutting by groundwater erosion. Both on both the Earth and Mars the canyons seem to have been cut cleanly into a raised flat surface. There is very little collateral damage to that surface. Is it likely that two different causes could end up creating landforms on two planets that look so similar? At the heart of geology and planetary studies is a reasoning process called abduction. It is a form of logic whose major premise is certain and minor premise is probable. Then let us consider the question of flowing-liquid erosion. The major premise is "all sinuous channels are formed by a flowing liquid" and the minor premise is "Nirgal Vallis on Mars is a sinuous channel." The deduction follows that "Nirgal Vallis was formed by a flowing liquid." However such reasoning can be hopelessly misleading if the major premise is not certain. Mars is a desert planet with no possibility of flowing liquids today nor, it seems, for a long time past. But the huge channels look as if they were carved yesterday. That should be sufficient to doubt the major premise. However lazy logic forces us simply to conclude that there must have been large quantities of liquid water on Mars in the past. That is the present consensus. So typically the missing water has been conveniently consigned out of sight, beneath the Martian surface. The same thing was said of the channels on the Moon before the Apollo missions proved otherwise. Once again this incurious approach has led to huge expenditure on new spacecraft to detect sub-surface ice on Mars. What if the major premise is completely wrong? What if none of the sinuous channels (usually called 'rilles') on Mars, Venus and our Moon, were originally formed by flowing liquids? This is a key question to
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be answered before we can address the more complex canyons on Mars and here on Earth. Rilles have the same form on all of these bodies, yet no one today seriously suggests that we look for water on the furnace-hot surface of Venus or on the airless Moon. Instead, hot fluid lava has been called upon as the flowing liquid on these bodies. The problem is that the lava had to remain liquid over hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles. So a roof of rock was added, to form lava tubes. But some of those roofs needed to be miles wide! Some rilles on the Moon and on Venus are wider than the longest lava tubes on Earth. And the rock roofs had to collapse later to expose the channels. There is no rubble from collapsed roofs in any of the rilles. The rilles are cleanly chiselled into the surface. The lava is supposed to have flowed billions of years ago on the Moon, and only millions of years ago on Venus. A good example of a lunar rille, photographed in great detail by the Apollo astronauts, is Schrter's Valley. The channel looks brand new. Once again, the liquid that is supposed to have cut the channel is missing - there is no lava outflow. And lava cannot seep into the ground and be hidden as water can. Something is wrong with this picture. The major premise must be wrong. There are many more mysterious features of these channels. Their wider "outflow" end is higher than the narrow "source" end, as if whatever formed them was not responding to gravity. In flagrant breach of that law, some run both uphill and down with no sign of the damage that might be expected if the topographical changes were due to later vertical movement of the terrain. Others cut through mountain ridges as if they were not an obstacle. Unlike rivers, rilles often run in parallel. Some have circular craters along their length, others seem to be formed from a continuous series of pits. Most terminate on a crater. Because of the many craters found in and around them, dating the rilles by crater counting makes them appear older than the surface they cut into. The channels of these rilles are often much more sinuous for their width or the slope of the surface, than would be expected if they had been carved by a liquid. Some have a smaller, more sinuous channel in the floor of the larger channel. Some have flat floors and steep walls. Others have a deep V-shaped cross-section. Tributaries, if any, are often short, end in a circular alcove, and join the main channel at near right angles. To explain these (on worlds with water), recourse is usually made to underground water flows that remove soil and cause collapse and progressive headward erosion of the channel. Many channel floors show transverse markings or small ridges. On Mars they have been described as sand dunes. Many channels have material heaped up on each side to form levees. There are neither catchment areas nor systems of feeder streams sufficient to carve the often-gigantic main channels or tributary streams. The source and sink of the water remains invisible. And the question remains: where did the eroded soil go?
A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SOLUTION

The real actors on the stage of the universe are very few, if their adventures are many. The most 'ancient treasure' -in Aristotle's words- that was left to us by our predecessors of the High and Far-off Times was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces reside in the starry heavens, and all the stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are planets. ~Giorgio Di Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill. The thundergod is regarded as the most powerful of all the gods of heaven and earth, since the effects of his anger are so terrible and so evident. ~Christopher Blinkenberg in "The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore." See http://www.users.qwest.net/~mcochrane/Thundergods/thundergods.html
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The answer to the riddle of rilles has been available for 30 years! It was provided by an engineer, the late Ralph Juergens, of Flagstaff, Arizona. In a brilliant series of papers that would not be published in a mainstream scientific journal, he showed that flowing liquids are not adequate or even necessary to explain river-like channels on planets and their moons. He showed how the strange features of those channels could be simply scaled down and matched against the kind of damage caused by powerful lightning strikes on Earth. So even if Mars had surface moisture in the past its vast channels were not carved by rushing water. At Baker, Florida, in 1949, lightning struck a baseball field. It furrowed the infield for 40 feet during a baseball game, killing 3 of the players and injuring 50 people. The more sinuous path taken by the lightning forms a smaller trench in the bottom of the main furrow. [National Geographic, June 1950, p. 827.] When we look at the pattern of a lightning scar on Earth we see the features of sinuous rilles in miniature. Electrical phenomena exhibit the same forms from the scale of centimeters to the scale of thousands of kilometers. In fact, it has been shown in high-energy electrical experiments that the same patterns of behavior can be scaled up yet another 100 million times. Because of this, the forms of scars on insulators and semiconductors and/or the surface erosion of spark-machined objects, seen under a microscope, can be used as analogs of electrical scarring of planetary surfaces. Plasma cosmology can do inexpensive controlled experiments on Earth to answer puzzles that have plagued planetologists for decades. Without a shadow of a doubt, Valles Marineris is an electrical arc scar. It bears the hallmarks, writ large on a planet's face. Juergens identified it as such 30 years ago from the early Viking Orbiter spacecraft images. "... to me this entire region resembles nothing so much as an area zapped by a powerful electric arc advancing unsteadily across the surface, occasionally splitting in two, and now and then-weakening, so that its traces narrow and even degrade into lines of disconnected craters ... I can only wonder: Is it possible that Mars was bled of several million cubic kilometers of soil and rock in a single encounter with another planetary body? Might the Canyonlands of Mars have been created in an event perhaps hinted at by Homer when he wrote: Athena [Venus) drove the spear straight into his [Ares' (Mars')] belly where the kilt was girded: the point ran in and tore the flesh... [and] Ares roared like a trumpet... Juergens' explanation requires a dynamic recent history of the solar system, entirely different from the one we have been taught to believe. It highlights an electrical dimension to astrophysics which is nowhere to be found in their textbooks. So it is little wonder that geologists are clueless when confronted with electrical erosion. When planets come close, gargantuan interplanetary lightning results. It is perfectly capable of stripping rock and gases from a planet against the puny force of gravity. It does so leaving characteristic scars. It can explain why some two million cubic kilometers of material is missing from Valles Marineris along with 90% of the atmosphere Mars was expected to have. A subsurface arc through an electrically coherent stratum can explain the peculiar morphology of Valles Marineris. The parallelism of the canyons is due to the long-range magnetic attraction of current filaments and their short-range strong electrostatic repulsion. Particularly significant are the small parallel rilles composed essentially of chains of craters. A traveling underground explosion follows the lightning streamer and cleanly forms the V-shaped tributary canyons. There is no collapse debris associated with undercutting water flow. Similarly, the "V" crosssection is usual for craters formed by underground nuclear explosions. The circular ends of the tributaries, where the explosion began, are precisely of that shape. In comparison, headward erosion by ground water sapping gives a U-shaped cross-section and does not necessarily end in a circular alcove. Note that some of the tributary canyons on the south rim of Valles Marineris cut across one another at near right angles. This might be due to repeated discharges from the same area chasing the main stroke as it travelled along Ius Chasma. No form of water erosion can produce crosscutting channels like that. The fluted appearance of the main canyon walls is probably due to the same travelling explosive action.
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The walls of Valles Marineris show evidence of widespread sedimentary layering on Mars. But such enormous quantities of sediment must have eroded from somewhere and the fact that any ancient highlands are preserved on Mars is difficult to reconcile with such a source. A second major difficulty is that Valles Marineris is near the top of a bulge 10 km above datum. How are sediments deposited at that altitude? It would require the region first be a deep basin to collect a thick stack of sediments (assuming there was copious fast-running surface water), then be uplifted an incredible 20 km by a mantle plume and voluminous lava intrusions, but with little surface volcanism. How many major premises in geology are wrong? The electrical model provides a far simpler solution never considered before in sedimentation. The material removed electrically from one body in a cosmic discharge is transferred in large part to the other body. That creates widespread surface layering. The airless Moon shows evidence too of extensive layering and it is covered in electrical scars. The arguments for the electrical sculpting of Valles Marineris on Mars apply equally to the Grand Canyon on Earth. These major features on two very different planets look so similar for the simple reason that the same forces created them. Water was not involved in the process. Let us note the similarities. The Grand Canyon is on a high plateau. The tributaries are deeply incised, short, and tend to end in rounded alcoves. The tributary canyons of Ius Chasma are strikingly similar to those of the Grand Canyon. The material excavated from the Grand Canyon seems to be missing. On a watery Earth, the Colorado river simply took advantage of the sinuous channel carved by the subsurface cosmic lightning. The edges of the Grand Canyon are sharp and do not show much erosion into the mile deep valleys. That argues for very recent formation. Geologists cannot decipher the history of the Grand Canyon because their training never envisaged electrical erosion as a result of interplanetary thunderbolts. Nor did it teach that thick strata and anomalous deposits can be dumped from space in hours. Interplanetary electrical forces can raise mountains, twist and overturn strata, dump oceans onto land, preserve shattered flora and fauna in the rocks - all in a geological instant. Since the days of Lyell, early in the nineteenth century, geologists have managed to lull us all into insensibility with vast time spans and piecemeal explanations for each morphological feature of the landscape. The question that should be asked is whether the slow causes they invoke are sufficient to the task they are asked to perform. Fossils do not form under normal circumstances. The sharp outlines of mountains and the tortured strata within them look like still frames from a dramatic action movie. And when it comes to assigning ages, cosmic thunderbolts cause radioactivity, change radioactive decay rates, and add and subtract radioactive elements. So the assumptions underpinning the rickety edifice of geological dating will need re-examination without prejudice. Geologists are between a rock and a hard place because the main claim of geology to being a "hard" science has come from its bold claims to chart the history of the Earth. But it is clear that the chart they have been handed by cosmogonists and the clock bequeathed by the physicists are equally flawed. It is interesting to find that NASA and the SETI Institute have set up a base camp on Devon Island, Nunavut Territory, in the Canadian high arctic, for the scientific study of the Haughton impact crater and its surroundings. The joint study is known as the Haughton Mars project because the unexplored island is considered a Mars analog. Mars analogs are sites on the Earth where geologic features approximate those encountered on Mars. Devon Island has channels described as glacial meltwater networks. Several types of valleys resemble those seen on Mars. The resemblance appears to be more than superficial, as the similarities are often specific and unique. They have been compared to the tributary canyons of Valles Marineris and are claimed as perhaps the clearest evidence for episodes of sustained fluid erosion on Mars by water. However they present many unusual characteristics that cannot be explained by water erosion: 1) the valleys are spaced apart with large undissected areas between valleys, 2) the valleys display open, branching patterns with large undissected areas between branches, 3) branches often have ill-defined sources but mature in width and depth over short distances relative to the size of the network, 4) branches maintain relatively constant width and depth over long distances,
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5) branches split and rejoin to form steep-walled islands, 6) branches have V-shaped cross-sections which transition to larger U-shaped troughs with steep walls and flat floors, 7) channels on valley floors are absent or poorly expressed. Their scale also varies over an order of magnitude. Here we have a different explanation from geologists for essentially the same morphological feature. The Devon valley networks are merely interpreted to be glacial meltwater channel networks formerly lying under an ice sheet. Some valleys do have a little ice in them today. However, the arguments for their formation by the action of ice make little sense. It suggests that glacial melting on a cold desert planet formed some Martian valley networks, which is hardly helpful. The strong similarities between the Devon valley networks and the tributaries of Valles Marineris, like that of the Grand Canyon to Valles Marineris, is simply because they were formed by the same process - a cosmic electric discharge. All of the unusual features listed above are expected in the plasma phenomenon of cathode erosion. Even the nearby Haughton crater is to be expected, for the same reason that rilles on other planets and moons are associated with craters and often have more craters than the surrounding landscape. The Haughton crater is simply the scar of a cosmic thunderbolt, like practically every other circular crater in the solar system. So NASA is correct in their choice of analog, but wrong in their attribution of causes. "In light of more than a century's research in the field of plasma cosmology and the 20th century discoveries of the space age, we can confidently propose the celestial thunderbolt as a common cause of the formation of canyons and rilles on rocky planets and moons." See: www.arcticmars.org/docs/03c.LPSC.pdf There is a geological perspective on planetary scars available at: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/DAAC_DOCS/geomorphology/GEO_10/GEO_CHAPTER_10_TABLE.HTML where the difficulties facing geologists are often expressed. With the perspective offered here you may begin to form your own opinion. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 1 (January 15, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: CREDIBILITY THE CAPTURE QUESTION AGAIN THE FUTURE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES MISSING "DARK" MATTER!! BROWN DWARFS AND IRON SUNS
Mel Acheson Dwardu Cardona Amy Acheson Don Scott Wal Thornhill
CREDIBILITY
by Mel Acheson For most of my life I've tried to be a crackpot. That's because all the bold and interesting new ideas first appear as crackpot ideas. It's a risky business because most bold and interesting new ideas don't pan out. But the excitement of the few that do makes it worthwhile. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people react to a bold, new idea with the question: Is it credible? When I describe one of my crackpot ideas to some unsuspecting victims, they're apt to exclaim: How can you believe that? Now I never said I believed it, only that I found it interesting. And I find it interesting that it's often the people who call themselves skeptics who respond with this fideistic snap judgement. (Look up 'skeptic' in your dictionary. It derives from a Greek word that means to look around, to consider. It's defined as someone who doubts conventional beliefs. You'd think a skeptic would welcome crackpot ideas.) But I have to admit my own first response to a new idea is often the credibility question: I have to work at not disbelieving what I don't believe. I have to ask myself: What makes an idea credible? Perhaps it has something to do with a correlation between the idea and the facts. Theories are often claimed to be "proved" by some fact. Of course, this isn't true in any logical sense: It's been proved since the time of David Hume that you can't deduce a universal statement, which is what a theory is, from an existential statement, which is what a fact is. A less ambitious claim is that theories explain facts. Or, turning the claim around, it's said that the facts verify a theory.
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But what is a fact? Karl Popper has proposed that a fact is an observation pinned down by language. But language is intimately tied up with theory. The very act of explaining a fact is what makes it a fact. And a fact verifies a theory in part because the theory enables that interpretation of the fact. Perhaps we can avoid this circularity by jumping over the facts and dealing directly with observations. But our jump falls short: An observation is practically useless unless we tell someone-even ourselves-what we've seen ... and then it becomes a fact. As Julian Jaynes puts it, language is not just a tool for communication, "language is an organ of perception." Perception, like language, is a Siamese twin to the ideas we want to evaluate from some independent ground. A credibility of perceived facts is not that ground. If it's true that "I'll believe it when I see it," it's equally true that "I'll see it when I believe it." Facts and perceptions are slippery and mutable things: Sometimes they imitate what we believe. Sometimes they change when those beliefs change. And sometimes they defy us regardless of what we believe. They're just not stable enough or independent enough to use as a foundation for judgement. I'll try a different approach. Perhaps credibility has something to do with compatibility between the new idea and other ideas that are already credible. But the wiseacre at the back of the room is already on his feet asking what made the other ideas credible. This is an infinite regress. It's also a surreptitious way of asking merely how familiar an idea is. It's simply a bias against newness. In the end, it would find credible only tautologies of what we already know. Creativity and discovery would not be credible. This credibility of familiarity says more about the timidity of our imaginations and about our fear of the unknown than it does about the worth of a new idea. With all this in mind, I have to conclude that credibility as a criterion for judging the worth of a theory is just not credible. So if credibility doesn't work, what does? There's an important aspect of this matter that's almost always overlooked. Ideas and theories, including the facts and observations with which they're twinned, are usually discussed as if they were islands of concepts unrelated to anything else. But ideas, and scientific theories especially, arise in response to some problem. They're attempted solutions. Once they solve the problem, the problem fades from awareness and the theory floats off to become another familiar cognitive island. But it's this relationship with problems that provides criteria for evaluation that are objective, in contradistinction to the subjectivity of "credibility." Instead of asking if a theory is credible or true or correct and then floundering around to invent a credible theory of truth or a correct definition of correctness, we can ask such questions as these: Does the proposed theory solve the problem better than alternative theories? Is it more comprehensive? Can it solve more problems? Is it more elegant? Is it simpler to use? Does it provide greater opportunities for further discoveries of interesting problems? Evaluating a theory in terms of how well it solves a particular problem avoids the unending-and unendable-squabbling over correctness or believability according to some ill-defined and ultimately subjective standard. It avoids absolutism in the sense of "only one" true theory. It recognizes that truth is not some isolated, unconnected, and therefore literally irrelevant standard. And it avoids relativism in the sense of "anything goes." It recognizes that truth is not some construct of propaganda and therefore, once deconstructed, again irrelevant. In this view, truth is relational in that it's an appropriate solution to a particular problem. A true theory will have a domain of validity within which it's verified and outside of which it's falsified. Different viewpoints, different data, different arrangements of data, or different formulations of the problem will have different solutions with different domains of validity. Each solution can be judged true or false in relation to the problem it tries to solve. And problems can be related to each other, generating "tangled hierarchies" among which solutions can be compared.
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A corollary of this is that you can't stop with the discovery of the first solution that works. There may be another one that works better. And the problem itself is apt to change after you poke it with a few speculations. You need to conduct what Douglas Allchin calls an error probe: You need to look for other solutions, from other viewpoints, with different assumptions. The history of physics illustrates this discrepancy between problem-delimited domain and justified credibility. For 200 years after Newton, physicists believed his mechanics was the sole and indubitable truth. Even though it incorporated the idea of influences of one body upon another (derived from astrology, which made even Newton uncomfortable), its accuracy generated verifications that overwhelmed all doubt. No one thought about error probes or alternate assumptions. Then Einstein invented the mechanics of relativity. His idea was based on geometry instead of on influences. It explained more phenomena with greater accuracy than Newton's mechanics, but it wasn't as simple to use. Now there were two edifices of theoretical truth. Still, they shared the fundamental assumption that the primary quality of the universe was mass. A third contender arose over a century ago which replaced the assumption of mass with the assumption of charge. Instead of gravity influencing or geometrizing the cosmos, electricity was driving it. Plasma mechanics is a shocking error probe that has received only gradual and grudging attention. As a solution to the problem of cosmology-explaining the structures and motions of the universe-it's certainly more comprehensive than either Newton's or Einstein's mechanics: It can explain similarities of structure over 14 orders of magnitude as homologues to laboratory phenomena. It's conceptually simpler: The discoveries of the space age have surprised both Newton and Einstein, resulting in a proliferation of ad hoc adjustments. Plasma physics can explain the fine detail of structures in space as expected properties of high-energy electricity. It provides greater opportunities for discovery because theoretical solutions can be subjected to laboratory experiment. But the mathematics are messy and not yet well developed, compared with the mathematics of gravity: If it can't produce numbers that tell how much of what to put where, it can't produce technologies that rival, say, space travel. Newton's mechanics could still be the preferred truth for landing a robot on Mars, but perhaps with the addition of lightning rods. (Of the more than two dozen probes which have been sent to Mars, two thirds reached the end of their rope sooner than expected. Did those unexplained "flashes" get them?) The point to all this is really rather simple: The truth that's relevant to our current scientific condition is the truth that solves our current scientific problems and leads to the next ones. It's to be distinguished from certainty and from the leap of faith that credibility entails. It's tempting to say, it's what works. But what works can't be conceived in simplistic terms nor can it be prejudged. We need speculation to uncover possibilities; we need experimentation to weed out what doesn't work; and we need awareness of being in the middle of a process of discovery. Reality is interactive. Credibility, determined by familiarity and by facts seen through theory-colored glasses-the usual criteria for deciding whether an idea is crackpot-is the only crackpot idea around. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE CAPTURE QUESTION AGAIN

by Dwardu Cardona QUESTION: In your opinion, is there enough information in the mytho- historical record(or geological record) to discriminate between an interpretation of the Saturnian system coming from outside the system and the Saturnian system always being at the distance of the asteroid belt? If so, what do you accept as evidence?
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REPLY: This ties in with the manner in which the Cosmic Egg was seen to break. See here my article, "The Evolution of the Cosmogonic Egg," AEON III:5, pp. 52 ff., but especially p. 67. are available for $15 each at [editor's note: back issues of AEON http://www.aeonjournal.com/back_issues/back_issues.html. Here's a brief summary of the reference from pg. 52: ... "one consistent motif connected with [the myths of creation] ...concerns the universal, celestial, or cosmic egg. This motif is found scattered throughout the entire world -- Mircea Eliade has noted examples from Polynesia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Greece, Phoenecia, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Africa, Central and South America." And from pg. 67: As Talbott has already shown, the luminous gases expelled by the dislodged Venus slowly congealed into a circular band which expanded and was visually seen from Earth to surround the Saturnian orb. This band, or egg, ... was originally of a golden color ... having glowed as a complete circle for an ambiguous length of time, the band's illumination changed so that, while half of it remained a brilliant gold, the other half changed to a lesser silver light -- or half bright and half dark, as other sources inform us. What this means is that the position of the ring must have changed with respect to the present, but still somehow hidden, Sun. ] Also, had the Saturnian system always existed at the distance of the asteroid belt, the crescent would always have been there, and we have deduced from the mytho-historical record that it had not. Also, had the crescent always been there, its circling around the Saturnian orb would have enabled man to tell the passage of time, which the ancients themselves tell us they could not. See here my paper, "The Beginning of Time," in same issue of AEON, pp. 71 ff. Also, we need a mechanism to account for Saturn's flare-up and, as Thornhill has indicated, this is best explained by the Saturnian system's plasmasphere coming in contact with that of the Sun. Had the Saturnian system always existed at the distance of the asteroid belt, it would already have been within the heliosphere. Also, had the Saturnian system always been at the distance of the asteroid belt, Venus, Mars, and Earth would have long been within the clutches of the Sun's attracting power, and the planets would not have been able to sustain their linear stacking. The asteroid belt is therefore best understood as the GENERAL locality in which the system broke up, having come within that orbital distance from outside the Sun's domain of influence. There's more, but the above should suffice for now. Dwardu Cardona
THE FUTURE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

by Amy Acheson Velikovsky dissected the world of ancient history, art and storytelling to reveal the science locked within. He called this process interdisciplinary research, a term continually gaining popularity in small pockets of successful scientific research.
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But what does it mean? Scientists strive to make sense of experiences, and artists all over the world have preserved human experiences scientists have ignored. The conventional scientist asks, what does a mere artist know? Especially an artist or storyteller who lived before the great scientific paradigm shifts of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton? For the modern day catastrophist, the many forms of ancient art are treasure chests of unsorted jewels. How could ancient Greek sculptors carve thunderbolts in the hands of the planetary gods which look like the plasmoids in Australian lightning labs? How could the ancient petroglyph artists carving on rock with tools of rock record the same forms all around the world? How could ancient storytellers compose epic poems that tell the same global tale? Equally important is the question, where will interdisciplinary studies lead tomorrow? I caught a glimpse of a possible answer at the conference in Laughlin. Among the participants was a band called "The Sedona Players". The musicians set up keyboards, drum machines and a harp in the corner and added delightful background music between sessions. It's not the sort of thing you find at a scientific convention. And, indeed, some attendees feared the band's presence might undermine what little scientific credibility catastrophists enjoy. But I disagree. I ate dinner one evening with the keyboard player and discovered she is as passionate about catastrophics as I am. After that, I went out of my way to linger near the band during breaks. That's why I was one of a very few witnesses of an almost magical moment. Between sessions, one of the speakers was standing near the band explaining the details of plasma discharge phenomena to an attendee. As the speaker talked, the band picked up on his words, tone of voice, and gestures. They began improvising a musical accompaniment to his descriptions. The tension of the build-up of charge, the thunder of release, the complexity of the discharge -- it was all there, threaded into the music. Although I used the phrase "almost magical" in the last paragraph, I don't think of what happened as magic. Professional musicians can improvise, and most, if motivated, could have produced an exciting background for scientific discourse. But I think this moment illuminates an aspect of the big picture that may too often be overlooked. Science and the arts belong together under the larger category of human experience. The extreme specialization of the academic approach is a divisive, defensive, "king of the mountain" stance. The role of interdisciplinary studies is one of healing old wounds and stimulating new ideas. We're opening up the possibility of a new paradigm. For science, that means expanding our theories to include plasma and catastrophics in every field -- in astronomy, in biology, in geology and psychology. But that's not the end to this new paradigm. There will also be new music, new art and new inventions. From where I stand, on the brink of a new century, it is as difficult for me to see the future of interdisciplinary studies as it was for a 19th century buggy whip manufacturer to anticipate personal computers, commuter jets and hard rock radio stations. But I can almost guarantee there will be changes. Amy Acheson
MISSING "DARK" MATTER!!

by Don Scott Dutch astronomer Jan Oort first discovered the "missing matter" problem in the 1930's. By observing the "Doppler red-shift" values of stars moving near the plane of our galaxy, Oort assumed he could calculate how fast the stars were moving. Since the galaxy was not flying apart, he reasoned that there must be enough matter inside the galaxy such that the central gravitational force was strong enough to keep the stars from escaping, much as the Sun's gravitational pull keeps a planet in its orbit. But when the calculation was made, it turned out that there was not enough mass in the galaxy. And the discrepancy was not small; the galaxy had to be at least twice as massive as the sum of the mass of all its visible components combined. Where was all this "missing matter"?
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In addition, in the 1960's the radial profile of the tangential velocity of stars in their orbits around the galactic center as a function of their distance from that center was measured. It was found that typically, once we get away from the galactic center all the stars travel with the same velocity independent of their distance out from the galactic center. (See the figure below.) Usually, as is the case with our solar system, the farther out an object is, the slower it travels in its orbit. See full article and charts at: http://www.electric-cosmos.org/darkmatter.htm To visualize the seriousness of the problem cosmologists face, we need to consider just a bit of Newtonian dynamics: To change a body's velocity vector - either in direction or magnitude, or both, a force must be applied to the mass of the body. The resulting acceleration is equal to the ratio of the applied force divided by the mass of the object; i.e., f = m a, where f is the force applied to the body, m is the mass of the body, and a is the resulting acceleration (change in velocity). Both f and a are vectors; the change in direction of the velocity will be in the direction of the applied force. When an Olympic athlete, starting to do the hammer throw, swings the hammer around himself in a circle, the force he feels stretching his arms (the force he is applying to the hammer) is the "centripetal force". That force is equal to the product of the hammer's mass, m1, times the "centripetal acceleration" (which in this case is the acceleration that continually changes only the direction, not the magnitude, of the velocity vector of the hammer - inward - so as to keep it in a circular orbit around the athlete). This acceleration is equal to the square of the hammer's tangential velocity, v, divided by the radius of the circle. So, the inward force the athlete needs to exert to keep the hammer in its circular path is: f = m1 v^2/R. Newton's law of gravitational force says that the force between two masses is equal to G (the gravitational "constant") times the product of the two masses divided by the square of the distance between them. f = G(m1 x m2)/R^2. Consider the case of a star on the outskirts of a galaxy. Its radius from the galactic center is R. Its mass is m1, and m2 is the total mass of everything else (all the other stars and matter) inside a circle whose radius is R, the distance of the star from the galaxy's center. All that combined mass, m2, acts as if it were located at a single point at the galaxy's center. For the star to remain in a fixed orbit, the necessary inward (centripetal) force, m1 V^2/R, must be exactly equal to the available (gravitational) force, G(m1 x m2)/R^2. Setting these two expressions equal to each other results in the expression: m2 = (V^2) R /G This, of course, says that for the tangential velocity, V, to remain constant as R increases - as it does in figure 1 (as we look at stars farther and farther out from the galaxy's center) the included mass, m2, must increase proportionally to the radius. But we realize that, if we move far out from the center, to the last few stars in any galaxy, included mass will not increase proportionally to the radius. So there seems to be no way the velocity can remain the same for the outermost stars as for the inner stars. Therefore, astronomers have concluded that, either some mass is "missing" in the outer regions of galaxies, or the outer stars rotating around galaxy cores do not obey Newton's law of gravity. There were problems, too, at a larger scale. In 1933 astronomer Fritz Zwicky announced that when he measured the individual velocities of a large group of galaxies known as the Coma cluster, he found that all of the galaxies that he measured were moving so rapidly relative to one another that the cluster should have come apart long ago. The visible mass of the galaxies making up the cluster was far too little to produce enough gravitational force to hold the cluster together. So not only was our own galaxy lacking mass, but so was the whole Coma cluster of galaxies.
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MACHOs, WIMPs & MOND

At first, cosmologists decided to leave Newton's laws inviolate and to postulate the existence of some "invisible, unmeasureable, dark" entities to make up the missing mass. To quote Astronomy magazine (Aug. 2001 p 26): What's more, astronomers have gone to great lengths to affectionately name, define, and categorize this zoo of invisible stuff called dark matter. There are the MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) - things like ... black holes, and neutron stars that purportedly populate the outer reaches of galaxies like the Milky Way. Then there are the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which possess mass, yet don't interact with ordinary matter - baryons such as protons and neutrons - because they are composed of something entirely foreign and unknown. Dark matter even comes in two flavors, hot (HDM) and cold (CDM)... 1. Cold dark matter - supposedly in dead stars, planets, brown dwarfs ("failed stars") etc. 2. Hot dark matter - postulated to be fast moving particles floating throughout the universe, neutrinos, tachions etc. And all the while astronomers and physicists have refined their dark matter theories without ever getting their hands on a single piece of it. But where is all of this dark matter? The truth is that after more than 30 years of looking for it, there's still no definitive proof that WIMPs exist or that MACHOs will ever make up more than five percent of the total reserve of missing dark stuff. Of course, the second possibility mentioned above (that the outer stars rotating around galaxy cores do not obey Newton's Law of Gravity) was thought to be impossible. But the first alternative - the fanciful notion that 99% of the matter in the universe was "invisible" - began to be worrisome too. It was stated that WIMPs and MACHOs were in the category of particle known as "Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories" (FAIRIE DUST). Even such an august authority as Princeton University cosmologist Jim Peebles has been quoted as saying: It's an embarrassment that the dominant forms of matter in the universe are hypothetical... So the second alternative, radical as it is, was chosen by some astronomers and called "MOdify Newton's Dynamics" (MOND). This paradigm shaking proposal to alter Newton's Law of Gravity - because it does not seem to give correct answers in the low density regions of galaxies - was first put forward in 1983 by astrophysicist Moti Milgrom at the Weizman Institute of Science in Israel. It has recently been given more publicity by University of Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh. Some other astronomers have grasped at the announcement that neutrinos, that permeate the cosmos, have mass. This, they say, must be the previously "missing matter". But the "missing mass" is not missing homogeneously throughout the universe - just in specific places (like the outer reaches of galaxies). The neutrinos are homogeneously distributed. So this last ditch explanation fails as well. The dilemma presented by the fact that Newton's Law of Gravity does not give the correct (observed) results in most cases involving galaxy rotation can only be resolved by realizing that Newton's Law of Gravity is simply not applicable in these situations. Galaxies are not held together by gravity. They are formed, driven, and stabilized by dynamic electromagnetic effects.
The Real Explanation: Dynamic Electromagnetic Forces in Cosmic Plasmas

Ninety nine percent of the universe is made up of tenuous clouds of ions and electrons called "electric plasma". Plasmas respond to the electrical physical laws codified by James Clerk Maxwell and Oliver Heaviside in the late 1800's. An additional single law due to Hendrick Lorentz explains the "mysterious" stellar velocities described above.
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d/dt(mv) = q(E + v x B) Simply stated, this law says that a moving charged particle's momentum (direction) can be changed by application of either an electric field, E, or a magnetic field, B, or both. Consider the mass and charge of a proton for example. The electrical force (given by the above Lorentz equation) between two protons is 36 orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational force (given by Newton's equation). It's not that Newton's Law is wrong. It is just that in deep space it is totally overpowered by the Maxwell- Lorentz forces of electromagnetic dynamics. Electrical engineer Dr. Anthony L. Peratt, using Maxwell's and Lorentz's equations, has shown that charged particles, such as those that form the intergalactic plasma, will evolve into very familiar galactic shapes under the influence of electrodynamic forces. The results of these simulations fit perfectly with the observed values of the velocity contours in galaxies. No missing matter is needed - and Newton can rest easy in his grave. The electromagnetic force is many orders of magnitude stronger than the force due to gravity. But present day astronomy refuses to recognize the existence of any cosmic force other than gravity. An allegory: A farmer and his young daughter are driving along a dusty road. They are almost home when the car breaks down. The farmer walks to the barn and gets his horse, Dobbin. He harnesses Dobbin to the front bumper of the car and begins to drag it along the road toward home. The young daughter takes a piece of string and attaches it to the bumper and says: I'll help drag the car, Daddy. Anyone who cannot see horses will think the daughter must possess "missing muscle". In 1986, Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven postulated both an electrical galactic model and an electric solar model. Recently physicist Wal Thornhill has pointed out that Alfven's circuits are really scaled up versions of the familiar homopolar motor that serves as the watt-hour meter on each of our homes. The simple application of the Lorentz force equation ("crossing" the direction, v, of the current into the direction, B, of the magnetic field) yields a rotational force. Not only does this effect explain the "mysterious" tangential velocities of the outer stars in galaxies, but also (in scaled down version) the observed fact that our Sun rotates faster at its equator than at higher (solar) latitudes. see diagram at http://www.electric-cosmos.org/darkmatter.htm Up to now astronomers and cosmologists have not given serious consideration to any sort of electrical explanation for any of the above phenomena. This is puzzling because all these electrical principles have now been known for decades. They have long been applied in the solution of problems in plasma laboratories here on Earth and have been used successfully in the invention of many practical devices such as industrial electrical arc machining, particle accelerators, etc. The correct, simple, solution to the "mysteries" of galaxy rotation lies in Plasma Electro-Dynamics - not in the invention of imaginary, fanciful entities such as WIMPs and MACHOs or in the trashing of a perfectly valid law of physics as is proposed in MOND.
Conclusion
Present day astronomy/cosmology seems to be on the horns of a very painful dilemma. This dilemma is caused by the fact that Newton's Law of Gravity does not give the correct (observed) results in most cases involving galaxy rotation. The "missing matter" proposal attempts to balance the equation by
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increasing one of the variables (one of the mass terms). The second proposal (MOND) is to change Newton's equation itself. (If you are losing the game, change the rules.) But, the ultimate resolution of the dilemma lies in realizing that Newton's Law of Gravity is simply not applicable in these situations. Maxwell's equations are! ~Don Scott
BROWN DWARFS AND IRON SUNS

by Wal Thornhill [Editor's note: There are a lot of new ideas currently being proposed about star formation and function in orthodox astronomy circles, probably because the large input of new data is stretching the standard theories beyond their domain of validity. Here are two examples of new ideas, compared by Wal Thornhill to the electric universe.] ARTICLE I:
Strange Object Found, Defying Ideas of Solar System Formation

By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer WASHINGTON D.C. - Solar system creation theorists got more to chew on Monday when astronomers announced the discovery a huge object called a brown dwarf orbiting a star nearly as closely as Saturn is to our Sun. Added to recent findings of extrasolar planetary systems that are markedly unlike the one around the Sun, the new finding makes our solar system look like an oddball in the galaxy. Brown dwarfs are large balls of gas, much more massive than Jupiter but not heavy enough to generate the thermonuclear fusion that powers a star. In recent years, these strange, in-between objects have been found in so many bizarre configurations that researchers are scrambling to figure out whether they are dealing with one class of object or several. Lone brown dwarfs have been spotted wandering through space fairly nearby. Others have been detected at vast distances from other stars, forming in nests. Brown dwarfs might even spawn their own planetary systems [on this see: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/aas_browndwarfs_010607.html]. Full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gemini_keck_020107.html WAL THORNHILL RESPONDS: It's going to be quite a task to convince experts, who "know" that stars are powered by thermonuclear fusion, that brown dwarfs have access to the same power source that lights up all stars. In my view there may be two classes of brown dwarfs, those that were formed in a z-pinch like all bright stars, and those that were born later by electrical expulsion from the center of a bright star. The different origins should show up in their element abundances. Estimates that brown dwarfs probably equal bright stars in number are probably correct, or even on the low side. That is encouraging because I believe they are prime environments for the development of life. Paradoxically, bright stars like our Sun are quite inhospitable by comparison.
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I am also confident that brown dwarfs don't "spawn" their own rocky planetary systems in the sense that planets grow outside the body of the star in a so-called accretion disk. The word "spawn" covers a multitude of ad hoc requirements in an unsuccessful attempt to explain planet formation from a ring of dust. Instead, if we pursue the biological analogy, I am confident that brown dwarfs "give birth" to fully formed planets (and maybe expulsion disks). Brown dwarfs are so dim that there could be another "proto-Saturn" system near the Sun without our being aware of it - so far. The first indication of its presence then might be a sudden cometary flare-up as it entered the heliosphere. Now that would confuse the astronomers! What to call it - a failed star or the daddy of all comets? ARTICLE II:
Sun Is Mostly Iron, Not Hydrogen

University of Missouri-Rolla, 8-Jan-02, Description: For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper to be presented Thursday, Jan. 10, at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Washington, D.C., Dr. Oliver Manuel says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. See http://www.newswise.com/articles/2002/1/IRONSUN.UMR.html WAL THORNHILL RESPONDS: Here we have an extreme proposal - that the Sun was built upon a collapsed supernova remnant and has an iron core! I suggest that if orthodox astronomers do not understand what a star is in an electrified cosmos, there is no chance that they understand supernova outbursts or their consequences. What is more, the Sun is observed to be an average star. Birth in a supernova is anything but average. The report also proposes that: The inner planets are made mostly of matter produced in the inner part of that star, and the outer planets of material from the outer layers of that star. But it has been clear to blind Freddie that all of the conventional stories of the primordial formation of the solar system are inadequate. The planets are a complete fruit salad of element and isotope abundances. Both planets and meteorites have short-lived isotopes in them that conventionally require supernovae to be blasting away in the vicinity of the nascent solar system. This proposal takes this idea one step further and places the supernova at the center of the solar system. A supernova has the energy to destroy and disperse any hapless planets it might have had. We have no evidence of planets orbiting supernova remnants. And we have no evidence of stars like the Sun sitting where we expect to find a supernova remnant. With new planetary systems being discovered almost daily, and proposed for brown dwarfs, are we to believe that they all required one of the galaxies rarest events for their formation? Or is it that we are unique in having rocky planets and moons in our planetary system? Any theory that requires us to be unique is off to a bad start. The fixation on rare supernovae as the source of all the heavy elements, which they dissipate into deep space, strikes me as one of the silliest ideas in cosmology (and it has plenty of competition) ... This latest proposal, like so much else in cosmology, is driven by a theory that is built upon many others, each with so many knobs to twiddle that the outcome could as well have been an ornithorhynchus as a planetary system. It is all concocted after the event and is not predictive ... It is time to start from scratch. The fact that "strange xenon is enriched in isotopes that are made when a supernova explodes," and we find it in meteorites and on the Moon and Jupiter, does suggest a local origin. But a model that does not
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require an extraordinary event is to be preferred. One of the simplest means of producing short-lived and strange isotopes is to use a particle accelerator. Plasma discharges are natural particle accelerators. So the simplest solution is to suggest that plasma discharges accompanied the formation of meteorites, the Moon, Jupiter and most likely all other bodies in the solar system. But because the experiences of each body is unique under these circumstances, we should expect a fruit salad of planets and moons. And with such different faces it proposes the question of who was parent to whom, and when? ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 2 (March 15, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE LOGIC OF PROOF LIGHTNING DOGS DARK RIDER AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Mel Acheson discussion with Rens van der Sluijs Wal Thornhill
THE LOGIC OF PROOF

by Mel Acheson Scientific theories-or, for that matter, theories of any kind-are "if-then" statements: If a theory is true, then certain events can be observed. If Relativity is true, then starlight passing near the sun will be bent twice as much as Newton's theory predicts. If evolution is true, then variations in a species can develop into independent species. If the Big Bang is true, then there will be a cosmic background radiation corresponding to the temperature to which space has cooled since it Banged. One of the tools logicians use to evaluate statements is the truth table. On one side are listed all the possible combinations of truth and falsity of the components of the statement. On the other side are listed the resulting truth values of the statement. So for the theory "if A, then B" we have this truth table: A T T F F B T F T F If A then B T F T T
I'll illustrate this with the following theory: If the moon is blue, then my desk is black. Premise A is: The moon is blue. Prediction B is: My desk is black. The first line of the truth table says that in case the moon really is blue and my desk really is black, the theory will be true. In other words, the theory is verified or confirmed. The second line says that in case the moon really is blue and my desk is not black, the theory is false. In other words, the theory is falsified. But consider the third and fourth lines: If the moon is not blue -- that is, if the initial assumption of the
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theory is false -- my desk could still be black, or, for that matter, any color at all. The theory would be logically true -- if the moon were blue. In other words, a false premise can imply anything. The critical thing to notice is that confirmation of the theory's prediction -- that my desk is black -- doesn't prove the theory. There could be another explanation for the color of my desk. Verification only allows the theory to stay in the running: It MIGHT be true. The only certain conclusion we can get from this truth table is falsification. Verification is ambiguous. Let's apply this to a real theory. If the Big Bang is true (premise A), then there should be a cosmic background radiation (prediction B). If no background radiation were found (assuming the search was thorough), B would have a value of false. Looking at the truth table, we see there are two possibilities: Either the theory is false (line 2) or the premise is false (line 4). In either case, the theory has been falsified. But if we find the background radiation, B would have a value of true. And the radiation has been found. The discovery was announced as proof of the Big Bang. But is that logical? Again, looking at the truth table, we see there are two possibilities. In the first case (line 1), both the theory and the premise are true. We've verified the theory. It's a proven truth you can take to the bank -- or in this case to the press conference. But wait: There's that second possibility (line 3). The premise could be false. Remember I said a false premise can imply anything? Our proven solid-gold truth has clay feet. Our moment of certainty passes before we can get in the door of the bank. The publicity about proving the Big Bang turns out to have been a wishful pretense. In fact, a search of the astronomical literature reveals several predictions of background radiation by various theories dating back to the late 1800s. The only certain argument that can be constructed from this truth table is this: If A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A. It's called "Modus Tollens," or "denying the consequent." The argument that claims to prove a theory is this: If A, then B. B. Therefore, A. It's called "affirming the consequent", and it's been known to be a fallacy since the time of Aristotle. (Let me emphasize again: "fallacy" doesn't mean the argument is necessarily wrong; it means it's indeterminate.) This means you can never prove the truth of a theory. No matter how many predictions are confirmed, you can never be sure the insolent little crackpot across the street won't come up with a better idea. If crackpots disturb you, you're going to have a bad day. You can never get rid of them with logic. But if the prospect of discovering better ideas thrills you, you can look forward to a long and exciting life. There will always be better ideas ... for better living ... through logic. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
LIGHTNING DOGS: in myth and plasma labs

discussion with Rens van der Sluijs Cardona: people's beliefs about natural phenomena often don't make sense with regard to those phenomena. The lightning was on all continents regarded as a dog or wolf descending from heaven. G. Johannesson:
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One of the most common themes in plasma discharges is an item called hetermomacs, that originated in the experimental laboratories of the Kurchatov Institute. The common theme is dogs and foxes all over the place. van der Sluijs: lightning as a canine animal [Meso-America, Europe, Malaysia, Africa] 'The Chinese "celestial dog" is similarly a thunder and lightning deity, and there are many references to it in the Chinese books, including the following: When dark clouds covered the sky everywhere at night, a noise of thunder was heard in the north -- This was what people call a descent of the celestial dog ... It has a shape of a large moving star, and produces a noise. When it descends and reaches the earth it resembles a dog. Whatever it falls upon becomes a flaming fire; it looks like a fiery light, like flames flaming up to heaven ... The celestial dogs live on the top of high mountains ... The dogs are mentioned 'as a kind of badger living in the mountains, or as birds or plants ..., or dragons.' ~D. A. MacKenzie, Pre-Columbian America (New Jersey) 1923: 246 According to the Matacos Indians of the Gran Chaco, the jaguar was in possession of fire and guarded it before man had procured it for himself. ~Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 208 The Bakairi Indians of Central Brazil allege that in the early days of the world the Lord of Fire was the animal which naturalists call Canis vetulus. ~Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 208 However, in other parts of British New Guinea the dog is said to figure in most stories as the animal which brought the first fire to men. ~Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 209 The Shilluk of the White Nile relate how, ..., they swathed the tail of a dog in straw and sent him to fetch fire from the land of the Great Spirit; the dog returned with his tail ablaze, and ever since the Shilluk have had fire. ~Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 210 The Sia Indians of New Mexico say that they procured fire from the coyote... ~Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 211 On the Maya thunder dog: "At times he is dotted with spots to represent stars ... His body is often in human form, carrying a torch in each hand ... he falls from the sky..." ~D. A. MacKenzie, Pre-Columbian America (New Jersey) 1923: 247 The dog is associated with the night and is a god of death and lightning; he fell from heaven. (Maya). ~MacKenzie a Keeping one's distance from the family DOG is also a good idea, as dog's tails are alleged by some to attract lightning. ~D. Pickering, Dictionary of superstitions, 1995: 157 ad "lightning" A dog coming into a house during a storm will 'draw lightning' and the same applies to a horse. ~N. N. Puckett, Folk beliefs of the Southern Negro, New York, 1969: 48 Some people are afraid of wet dogs and horses in a thunderstorm, believing that they 'draw' the lightning... (Europe).
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~M. Leach (ed.), Standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend, 1984: 621 ad "lightning" Sometimes he (Kadaklan, the creator, MAS) sends his dog Kimat (the lightning) to bite a tree, a field, or a house. He amuses himself by playing his thunder drum (Malaysia, MAS). ~H. R. Hays, In the beginnings; early man and his gods, New York, 1963: 358 Kadaklan, the thunder-god of the Tinguian people of the Philippines, lived in a tree with his dog Kimat, lightning, and sent him to bite people he disliked. ~K. McLeish, Myth; myths & legends of the world explored, London 1996: 605 ad "Thunder" In the Congo, it was believed that lightning was a magic dog that gave a sharp bark. ~T. Andrews, Legends of the earth, sea and sky; an encyclopedia of nature myths, 1998: 5 ad "Africa" That should be enough to give an impression. Similar connections exist between lions/cats and lightning, etc. etc. Next to nothing about mythical lightning seems to be 'ordinary'. Rens van der Sluijs
DARK RIDER AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS:

Sprites, gnomes and elves at the edge of space by Wal Thornhill In August 2001 a high-altitude balloon was sent aloft into the dark, moonless night. Its mission was to ride far above the great storms of the USA mid-west where it could spy on ephemeral sprites*, gnomes** and elves***. [see glossary at end of article] They hold the secret to the giant expanding rings of light on the edge of space. In the 1920s, the Scottish physicist C. T. R. Wilson predicted the existence of brief flashes of light high above large thunderstorms. Almost 70 years later, Bernard Vonnegut of SUNY Albany realized that evidence for Wilson's then-unconfirmed predictions might appear in video imagery of Earth's upper atmosphere recorded by space shuttle astronauts. He encouraged NASA's William Boeck and Otha Vaughan to look for evidence. Their search was successful. At the 1990 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Boeck and Vaughan presented evidence for upper-atmosphere flashes. Evidence of a different nature came from the University of Minnesota's John Winckler and his colleagues, who had serendipitously observed a flash in moonless night skies over Minnesota in 1989. Few direct measurements have been made of the flashes, now dubbed "sprites". Research aircraft cannot fly in the thin mesosphere and it is too low for orbiting spacecraft to access, so most of what's known comes from low-light video cameras and electromagnetic sensors based in mountain-top labs. Prof. Edgar Bering, a physicist at the University of Houston in Texas, has recently changed that. He heads a team from NASA's National Scientific Balloon Facility to study sprites by the tricky business of flying a high-altitude balloon above major thunderstorms. (See Rider on the Storm by Harriet Williams, New Scientist Vol. 172 No. 2321, 15 December 2001, p.36)
How is a sprite formed?

The sprite lies above horizontal (so-called spider) lightning in the lower portion of the upper stratiform cloud. The spider lightning's large horizontal extent shows the large layer of electric charge that feed the positive ground flashes. Such lightning flashes are not generally found in ordinary isolated thunderclouds. It is generally thought that an energetic positive cloud-to-ground discharge, in which the positive charge is
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neutralized by an upwards flow of electrons from the ground, causes the negative charges left in the lower part of the cloud to set up what physicists call a "quasi-electrostatic (QE) field"-an intense electric field that extends high into the atmosphere." "There is absolutely no question in my mind," says Umran Inan, director of the Space, Telecommunications and Radioscience Lab at Stanford University. "Sprites are caused by QE fields." Only two sprites have ever been clearly associated with flashes of negative cloud-to-ground lightning, whereas the number of sprites verifiably produced by more energetic positive cloud-to-ground lightning runs to thousands. Although the characteristics of positive lightning are different from those of negative lightning, the differences are still inadequate to account for the pronounced asymmetry. The extraordinarily rapid initial growth of sprites is not well understood. From New Scientist: After more than a decade of disagreement, atmospheric physicists think they are finally close to agreeing on how sprites form. Bering's balloon offers one of the first real chances to confirm their theories. But it seems a storm is brewing that threatens to set Bering against his colleagues. What little information we have has led to a model of sprite formation that many in this close-knit community of investigators now agree on. It depends on intense but short-lived electric fields created in the atmosphere by lightning discharge.
How a sprite is formed [conventional hypothesis]

Although most lightning originates in the negative charges at the bottom of storm clouds, roughly 1 in every 5 lightning strikes originate in the positive charges near the cloud tops. This results in an energetic positive cloud-to-ground discharge, in which the positive charge is neutralised by an upwards flow of electrons from the ground. The negative charges left in the lower part of the cloud set up what physicists call a "quasi-electrostatic field"- an intense electric field that extends high into the atmosphere. The critical breakdown limit for air depends on its density. At very high altitudes-about 75 kilometres upwhere air density is low, the QE field now exceeds the critical breakdown limit for air. Electrical breakdown occurs and molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen are ionised, releasing electrons. Under the influence of the QE field, free electrons are accelerated upwards, while positive ions accelerate down towards the ground. Edgar Bering's balloon flights suggest that the currents responsible for sprites may carry far more oomph than anyone had suspected. Previous estimates suggested that the sprite-inducing current carries about 3000 amperes. Bering's data, on the other hand, puts the figure nearer 12,000 amperes. Whether this huge current could pose any direct physical danger to anyone is unknown. Airliners don't fly in the mesosphere, but sprites can reach down into the cloud tops. And it is certainly possible that sprites could affect spacecraft, Bering suggests. In particular, sprites are the prime suspect in the unexplained downing of a high-altitude balloon a few years ago. Almost as quickly as it appears, the sprite fades away, disappearing completely in just a couple of milliseconds. However, the QE field lasts much longer. Researchers on the ground can monitor its presence using radio receivers since the field produces a continuous electromagnetic signal at frequencies from a few hertz to tens of kilohertz. The signal often persists long after the sprite has disappeared, slowly fading as charges in the cloud disperse. This electromagnetic signal, Inan and his colleagues argue, is the signature of the QE field. But what scientists need now are direct measurements of the electric field-and what could be better than information gathered by a balloon flying high above the clouds?
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The team scoured the results for the signature of a QE field-the low-frequency radio hum. But they were in for a surprise. The balloon's instruments did not record it. As dawn breaks, the researchers realize the favoured model of sprite formation doesn't measure up. The results from the ground stations suggest that once a positive lightning strike occurs, the intensity of the electric field in the mesosphere builds up over two or three milliseconds until breakdown occurs, and the sprite lights up. This delay may be related to the flow of currents created by the lightning which bring the high-altitude electric field to the level required for breakdown, says Victor Pasko, an atmospheric physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Then, once the sprite has faded, charges in the clouds begin to disperse or flow away, and the electric field observed from the ground decays slowly over tens of milliseconds. However, the balloon data paints a very different picture. It implies that sprites are produced by a sudden burst of current and there is no slow build-up of the electric field. Several milliseconds after the positive lightning strike, sensors recorded a sudden upward-flowing current pulse. Just 300 microseconds later, the sprite lit up in the sky. To add to the mystery, the electric field disappears far more rapidly than ground observations suggest, in just a few milliseconds. Bering's results-some of which he presented at the recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco-turns sprite theory on its head. "The charge that produces sprites is not below in the cloud, it's in the mesosphere itself," suggests Bering. So now there are new puzzles: where could this charge be coming from, and if there's no QE field, what causes the delay between lightning and sprite? "We have a problem understanding why the sprite takes so long to form," admits James Benbrook, a colleague of Bering's in the physics department at the University of Houston. And what of the low-frequency hum picked up by labs on the ground? Bering thinks the signal may be caused by the lightning strike itself rather than the mechanism that lights up a sprite. Researchers on the ground face an additional problem, they are close to one electrical contact of the global electric circuit-the Earth itself. The low-frequency hum could be an artifact and we hear it if we are on the ground when the charges in the clouds flow to earth, Bering suggests. Benbrook agrees. The signal received on the ground is more likely due to the rearrangement of charge in the cloud tops, he says, or the flow of current in the lightning channel. "But I don't see what that has to do necessarily with an excitation mechanism in the mesosphere." Other researchers urge caution in interpreting Bering's results. "At high altitudes the field can be very small," says Pasko. Inan suggests that more sensitive instruments on the balloon may have picked up the hum of the QE field. "Whether or not there is a continuing field signature is a matter of how sensitive your measurements are. It could be there but below the noise level of your instrument." Most sprite investigators agree that Bering should have been able to detect the low-frequency hum, and blame his instruments for failing to do so. Bering defends the quality of his experiment and insists his instruments were working. "We wouldn't have seen the electric signal of the sprite if they weren't." Can the QE field theory recover from this blow? "My personal guess is no," says Bering. "None of the existing models will survive when people finally pay attention to what our data actually says."
Toward an Electric Universe model of Sprites

The size and color of sprites is simply explained by the very low air pressure at great heights. In the same way that a long spark in a laboratory discharge tube becomes an extended glow as the air is pumped from the tube, so the "sparks" of lightning at ground level become colorful glows and filaments when occurring in the upper atmosphere.
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In Physics Today, November 2001, Earle R. Williams* made the obvious connection in a feature article, Sprites, Elves, and Glow Discharge Tubes. The venerable field of gaseous electronics underlies the understanding of a lightning-like phenomenon of spectacular extent, shape, and color. Sprites and elves are a grand natural manifestation of ideas and laboratory experiments conceived many decades ago by Rayleigh, Thomson, Wilson, and Langmuir--all of whom won Nobel prizes--and by a host of 19th century glow discharge tube spectroscopists. * Earle Williams is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He works at the Parsons Laboratory on the main campus and at Lincoln Laboratory. The discharge tube model has been confirmed by many ground-based experiments. But discharge tubes require a power supply to function. Where is the power supply for sprites? Anyone who says that it is powered by the thunderstorm hasn't understood the question. If we don't understand how a thunderstorm generates lightning then we have much further to go than is generally admitted by researchers. Bering writes: From what is known to date, it may be speculated that sprites or jets, or both, are an integral feature of every thunderstorm system of moderate size or larger in the terrestrial system, and may be an essential element of the earth's global electrical circuit. Further, it seems likely that they have been a part of thunderstorms that have occurred over previous millions of years or longer. One may speculate about the possible occurrences of similar phenomena associated with lightning on other planets where lightning has been detected, most notably Jupiter and Venus. Bering's speculations are well-founded from the Electric Universe point of view but the stumbling block to further progress is immediately apparent in the use of the words "earth's global electrical circuit." It is a circuit that assumes heat driven convection in clouds is the global electricity generator. It separates electric charge mysteriously in clouds to power world-wide currents. It is "unplugged" from any electrical connection with any other body in the universe. It is a most serious constraint on theorists. In July 1993 at the Cambridge, U.K., Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies* I presented a paper about the planet Venus that dealt with reports of lightning. I said: The principal difficulty in understanding the origin of lightning is likely to be the assumption that the Earth and Venus are closed electrical systems with no input from the solar plasma environment via the magnetosphere. There has been one crucial name missing from the earlier list of Nobel Prize winners. Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland (1867-1917) was the founder of experimental astrophysics. Note the crucial adjective "experimental" as distinct from modern theoretical astrophysics. He studied under Poincar and Hertz and was a professor at Oslo University at the age of 31. Wealth and fame accompanied his many achievements in technology and applied physics. He was the good guy in a 50-year dispute involving the idea that electrons streaming along magnetic field lines caused the Earth's auroras. His opponent was the astronomer Sydney Chapman who maintained that the Earth moved through a vacuum. In 1974 space probes found in Birkeland's favour. Chapman and others then promptly made space plasma superconducting, which relieved them from the complications of dealing with electric fields. Birkeland actually demonstrated his theory long before in an experiment called a "terrella". It consisted of an electromagnet contained within a sphere and placed in a large vacuum chamber. By initiating an electric discharge in the chamber he was able to reproduce a light show with many of the odd features of auroras.
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The importance of this simple experiment cannot be overstated because it demonstrates that aurorae and lightning seem to require an electrical power source external to the Earth! That would explain the puzzle raised by Bering: The charge that produces sprites is not below in the cloud, it's in the mesosphere itself. Thunderstorms are not generators, they are motors. The violent winds and lightning are driven by electric power focused on the Sun but minutely intercepted by the Earth. Bering is right, similar phenomena will be encountered on other planets, but modified by the planet's environment. It is quite sobering that a century ago Birkeland was writing that similar experiments could be done to model other planets, the Sun, and galaxies. He wrote: ...experiments were carried out under these conditions for many years. It was in this way that there gradually appeared experimental analogies to various cosmic phenomena, such as zodiacal light, Saturn's rings, sun spots and spiral nebulae. * See http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/sisbacks.htm Wal Thornhill's full Venus article, "Evidence for the Extreme Youth of Venus" (and much much more) is printed in the Proceedings of the 1993 Cambridge Conference: Evidence that the Earth has Suffered Catastrophes of Cosmic Origin in Historical Times. The proceedings are available on the Catastrophism CD-ROM, which can be purchased from several groups in both the UK and USA at the following web site: http://www.catastrophism.com/costs.htm
Do we have any proof of interplanetary electric currents?

In the Venus paper I wrote: The magnetic flux 'ropes' of the solar wind, entwined about the planet, are indicative of electric currents flowing directly into the planet's ionosphere ... Any cosmic body which is charged relative to the surrounding plasma has a plasma sheath or magnetosphere. It is a region in which electric current flows and energy is released. The sheath is generally invisible unless the current is strong enough to generate light, such as on the Sun and in the coma and tails of comets. Four years later in a news item, "Planet's tail of the unexpected" on 31 May 97, New Scientist reporter, Jeff Hecht, wrote: One of our neighboring planets can still pack a few surprises, it seems. Using satellite data, an international team of researchers has found that Venus sports a giant, ion-packed tail that stretches almost far enough to tickle the Earth when the two planets are in line with the Sun. 'I didn't expect to find it,' says team member Marcia Neugebauer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 'It's a really strong signal, and there's no doubt it's real.' NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter first found the tail in the late 1970's. Around 70,000 kilometres from the planet, the spacecraft detected bursts of hot, energetic ions, or plasma. The tail exists because ions in Venus's upper atmosphere are bombarded by the solar wind, a stream of plasma that blows out from the Sun. But now Europe's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a project partly sponsored by NASA, has shown that the tail stretches some 45 million kilometres into space, more than 600 times as far as anyone realized. This satellite, which sits about 1.5 million kilometres away from the Earth, passed through the tail last July, when it was roughly in line with Venus and the Sun. Neugebauer suspects the tail is 'a lot of little stringy things' like those of some comets, which can have several ion tails. If so, says Neugebauer, 'the theorists are going to have fun trying to explain why they're as narrow as we saw them'. Standard physics says that narrow plasma streams are unstable and should dissipate fast. No one can yet explain how
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they hold together over tens of millions of kilometres. This surprise has since been repeated for comet Hyakutake with its tail stretching half a billion kilometres across the solar system!
No one can explain 'stringy things' in space?

Birkeland's name has been given to an electrical phenomenon very important in space plasma. He found that electric currents move through space largely by means of electrons spiraling along magnetic field lines. Such a plasma current is known as a "Birkeland current". When two Birkeland currents are parallel they experience a long range attractive force that brings them closer together, or pinches them. When they get very close, a short range repulsive force holds them apart so that they maintain their identity. The result is that separate Birkeland current filaments come together to form pairs and the pairs may form a twisted, filamentary "rope" of electric current in space. Plasma physicists have shown that Birkeland currents can remain coherent over intergalactic distances. The prescient Birkeland again: According to our manner of looking at the matter, every star in the universe would be the seat and field of activity of electric forces of a strength that no one could imagine. We have no certain opinion as to how the assumed enormous electric currents with enormous tension are produced, but it is certainly not in accordance with the principles we employ in technics on the earth at the present time. One may well believe, however, that a knowledge in the future of the electrotechnics of the heavens would be of great practical value to our electrical engineers. It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. Birkeland is right. The "stringy things" that puzzled astronomers are proof positive of an electric current in plasma. Venus-and Jupiter-are part of an electric circuit that involves the Sun. The Sun is part of a circuit that involves the entire galaxy. The Earth with its own Langmuir sheath (misnamed magnetosphere) is wired in to the same power grid. This raises a serious question about the study of weather and climatology because a crucial energy input to the Earth is unrecognized. If that is so then predictions about the Earth's climate are presently worthless. It may explain why scientists are having difficulties explaining weather systems on other planets. Jupiter, for instance, is known to be the source of intense electromagnetic activity. That energy is thought to be derived from Jupiter's rotation-in other words it is a giant electrical generator. If so, it should be expected that the equator is being 'braked' in the process. What do we find? The equator is spinning fastest of all! Jupiter is an electric motor, not a generator. Enormous power is being intercepted by its vast Langmuir sheath, lighting up the moon, Io, with cathode arcs, on its way to Jupiter. This simple electrical model also explains why the fastest winds in the solar system, 1000 mph, are found on Neptune, the most distant planet from the Sun. It explains the enigmatic "spokes" in Saturn's rings. Bering notes that short duration (~1 ms) gamma ray (1 MeV) bursts of terrestrial origin have been detected by the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory over thunderstorm regions, and their source is believed to lie at altitudes greater than 30 km. X-rays and gamma-rays are hallmarks of electric discharge processes. An external source delivering power through an atmosphere, which is increasing in density, can be expected to give rise to the highest energy radiation at the top of the atmosphere or at the footprints of arcs on the surface (lightning). It is a situation we see on the Sun where the hardest radiation comes from high above the photosphere, except when an arc touches down and a solar flare results. The predilection for sprites to accompany positive cloud-to-ground discharges is probably due to the higher energy discharge, which makes them more visible, but also to the likelihood that the Earth plays a cathode role in the Sun's discharge and therefore is in the business of supplying electrons to space and receiving solar wind ions. It is interesting therefore that the presence of solar wind ions inside the earth's magnetosphere has also puzzled scientists.
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So, like Tolkien's character, Bering's "dark rider" didn't find what it was looking for. The problem facing the wizards of science is to let go of their old mythology of an electrically sterile universe. Switch on the light! It then requires no magic. If Tolkien will forgive me, There is one power to rule them all and in the darkness, light them. An interesting footnote to lightning on Venus: It is known that lightning backscatters microwaves at wavelengths of a few centimetres. One of the most puzzling discoveries by the Magellan Venus Orbiter was that all high terrain on Venus reflected radar signals as if it were coated by metal. I explained this phenomenon several years ago as being due to a glow discharge in a dense plasma. It is the most prevalent form of lightning on Venus because that planet doesn't have clouds like the Earth to provide a convenient path to ground for cosmic electric power. Without clouds on Earth we too would have glowing mountain tops and destructive super-bolts from a blue sky. The Galileo spacecraft detected super-bolts on Venus. Full article with photos available at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/balloon.html
Glossary:
*What is a sprite? Sprites are colossal towers of red and blue light up to 10 kilometres across, usually climbing up to 30 kilometres from a starting height of about 50 kilometres, well above the storm. They glow for only a few thousandths of a second, which makes them difficult to see and record. Most importantly they seem to be triggered by lightning flashes in storms far below. Although we are all familiar with the story of vertical movements of water droplets in storm clouds giving rise to lightning, the truth is that it is not known what causes a thunderstorm. Somehow negative charges collect at the bottom of a cloud and positive charges at the top. Eventually the intensity of the electric field between cloud and ground causes electrical breakdown of the air. The freed electrons are accelerated by the field toward the ground in the form of sinuous "stepped leaders." This is a weakly luminous process. On reaching the ground a conductive channel is now available between the ground and the cloud. The result is the brilliant arc of the "return stroke" - a bolt of lightning. The simplest and smallest sprites are single vertical columns named C sprites. Large collections of C sprites resemble a mammoth fireworks display. A subset of the sprites with tendrils--often the largest and most energetic--also exhibit upward branching toward the ionosphere, and are named carrots. Very large sprites with diffuse tops and lower tendrils extending down to altitudes of 30-40 km have been dubbed angels, jellyfish, and A-bombs. With maximum vertical extents exceeding 60 km, these giant sprites extend vertically three times farther than the largest thunderstorms. Long-lived species may also be present at lower altitudes-in the long tendrils that stretch down below the sprite's body to the cloud tops like the tentacles of an octopus. These tendrils light up with bright, spherical "beads" which on some occasions outlive the main sprite, lasting up to a hundred milliseconds in some cases, and can even momentarily flare up long after the sprite body has faded. "Such bright spots give the impression of embers in a dying fire," says Stenbaek-Nielsen, from the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska. A good web page is: http://lightning.nmt.edu/sprites/sprites.html **What is an elve? Elves are shaped quite differently from sprites and were first identified in 1990 as brief brightenings of the airglow layer in space shuttle imagery. The ringlike elve in Figure 1 (not "elf": the acronym stands for
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"emissions of light and very low frequency perturbations from electromagnetically pulsed sources") is centered on the vertical channel to ground. ***What is a gnome? "We're seeing things we've never seen before on top of active storms-electrical discharges coming out the top of clouds that could be a new form of lightning," says Lyons. They have tentatively been christened gnomes. "They look like fingers of light going straight up out of the cloud but at rather slow speedIt looks like lightning in pictures but takes over a second or two to happen." Could gnomes be more energetic than sprites? "I wouldn't volunteer to sit in one," says Lyons. Sprites have tremendous amounts of energy spread over a great volume. We've got no idea how much energy is in a gnome, but it's compressed into a smaller area." ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 3 (May 31, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: THE TRUE DISBELIEVER A YOUNG AMATEUR MILLISECOND PULSARS A MYSTERY SOLVED
Mel Acheson Jason Goodman discussion with Don Scott Wal Thornhill
THE TRUE DISBELIEVER

by Mel Acheson "I'll believe it when I see it" could be the motto of the empiricist. His not unreasonable belief is that reasonable belief in an idea should be governed by tests that give results which can be sensed. His concern is that beliefs not anchored to what is sensible can't be distinguished from beliefs that are fictional. But with a little empirical investigation, the empiricist will see that the converse is also true: I'll see it when I believe it. Our perceptions are largely influenced, often determined, by our beliefs. Seeing and believing are Siamese twins joined at almost every organ. The sense we make of our sensations follows the ideas that usher our sensations to a seat in our sensibilities. Furthermore, testing is a tool of selection: from among several ideas proposed as solutions to a problem, a well-designed test can select the best. But testing can't generate the ideas. Conjecture must come first. Insofar as beliefs empower perception, the suppression of what could be called "conjectural beliefs" impairs perception. Imagination, the mind's eye, is as much an organ of perception as our physical eye. In addition, the logic of testing dictates that only refutation is certain. Confirmation provides no guarantee that a better solution won't come along tomorrow, especially when continued investigation discovers unexpected facts and ideas that transform the problem. Hence, the reasonable belief based on sensible tests is at best provisional. It must always be vulnerable to the speculations of new dawns. Having seen this, the empiricist will recognize that his concern over non-sensible beliefs must be matched by a symmetrical concern over sensible disbeliefs. The greatest obstacle to discovery is the contrapositive of his motto: I won't see it as long as I disbelieve it. With scientific discovery, as with a novel, the key to new insight is the suspension of disbelief.
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To believe one thing with certainty, we must disbelieve everything that raises doubt about it. The empiricist who slips over the line and believes his knowledge is "for sure" must close his eyes and mind to contrary insights. Conversely, if we disbelieve everything that raises doubt about one thing, we effectively believe that thing. The empiricist who knows something is impossible effectively believes that what makes it so is absolutely true. Eric Hoffer noted in his 1951 essay, "The True Believer:" It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs. It requires "a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world ... Strength of faith ... manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move." Because conception and perception are so inseparable, both belief and disbelief are fact-proof screens that obstruct discovery of novel understandings. The true believer, who possesses ultimate truth, is a cognitive twin to the true disbeliever, who possesses ultimate truth by default. In the sciences especially, where a history of empiricism has raised sensitivity to the dangers of true belief, blindness comes most readily from true disbelief. Scientists who are reluctant to claim certitude for their knowledge are reckless in claiming impossibility for rival ideas. The empiricist interested in discovery must adopt the additional motto: Don't disbelieve what you don't believe. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
A YOUNG AMATEUR EXAMINES CRACKPOTTERY IN SCIENCE

By Jason Goodman [ed. note: Jason Goodman shares his http://www.geocities.com/kingvegeta80/cosmology.html.] research on his website at
I am an amateur astronomer in my early 20's. About a year ago, I read The Big Bang Never Happened by Eric Lerner. This sparked my interest in alternate concepts, especially plasma cosmology, nonrecessional redshifts, and catastrophism. I tried discussing these ideas at several different message boards online. In most cases, I was met not by scientific discussion or even logical refutation, but by base insults. In the November and December 2001, issues of Scientific American, Skeptic Society Director Michael Shermer gives a recipe for identifying pseudoscientific crackpot ideas. He calls it a ten-step "baloney detection kit." I've summarized it here and added my own comments (JG). 1. How reliable is the source of the claim? Pseudoscientists often appear quite reliable, but when examined closely, the facts and figures they cite are distorted, taken out of context or occasionally even fabricated. JG: The facts and figures stated by plasma cosmologists are the result of laboratory experiments and computer simulations and the facts and figures of catastrophism are the results of legitimate and intensive forensic research. The Big Bang theory (BBT) has a much sloppier record. For example, it predicted irregularities of one part in 1000 in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The COBE satellite (Cosmic Background Explorer) recorded irregularities of only one part in 100,000, one hundred times less
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than the BBT predictions. Despite this, the mainstream still cites the CMB as proof of the BBT and they almost never point out the problems associated with the COBE findings. 2. Does this source often make similar claims? Pseudoscientists have a habit of going well beyond the facts. Of course, some great thinkers do frequently go beyond the data in their creative speculations. Watch out for a pattern of fringe thinking that consistently ignores or distorts data. JG: This is very much a corollary of #1. It's been my experience that the new cosmologists are careful to distinguish between observation and speculation, while the purely hypothetical aspects of the BBT, are often presented as fact. Dark matter, for example, was invented to disguise observations of orbital motion which do not conform to gravitational theory. 3. Have the claims been verified by another source? Typically pseudoscientists make statements that are unverified or verified only by a source within their own belief circle. We must ask, "Who is checking the claims, and even who is checking the checkers?" Outside verification is crucial to good science. JG: This is interesting. Since the ideas of the new cosmology were already considered pseudoscience from the get-go, it is very hard to get any significant amount of people outside the "belief circle" to even listen to them, let alone try to verify them. The mainstream wouldn't want to verify crackpot ideas, now would they? 4. How does the claim fit with what we know about how the world works? An extraordinary claim must be placed into a larger context to see how it fits. When people claim that an unknown advanced race built the Egyptian pyramids and the Sphinx, they are not presenting any context for that earlier civilization. Where are the rest of the artifacts of those people? Where are their works of art, their weapons, their clothing, their tools, and their trash? Archaeology simply does not operate this way. JG: Good point. But plasma cosmology fits what we know very well. The behavior of plasmas (filamentation, inability to "freeze in" magnetic fields, twisted/braided geometries, etc.) has been proven in the lab. It's the mainstream that has pushed the limits of physical reality past the breaking point with their ideas. Superdense objects, such as black holes and neutron stars both violate proven physics. During the last couple of years, this model has been stretched even further past physical reality with the concept of "quark stars." 5. Has anyone gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only supportive evidence been sought? This is the confirmation bias, or the tendency to seek confirmatory evidence and to reject or ignore disconfirmatory evidence. The confirmation bias is powerful, pervasive and almost impossible for any of us to avoid. It is why the methods of science that emphasizes checking and rechecking, verification and replication, and especially attempts to falsify a claim are so critical. Outside verification is crucial to good science. JG: There is plenty of information for both sides of the cosmological debate. Each one's ideas and theories contradict the other side's. Confirmatory and disconfirmatory evidence abounds in astrophysics regardless of which cosmology one supports. 6. Does the preponderance of evidence point to the claimant's conclusion or to a different one? JG: In cosmology, the evidence strongly agrees with the alternative ideas and refutes the BBT. Electromagnetic/plasma connections are being discovered everywhere, from gigantic galactic clusters to tiny nearby comets. The evidence points to a non-expanding universe and to catastrophic changes of the celestial order witnessed by the ancient humankind. 7. Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others that lead to the desired conclusion? A clear distinction can be made
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between SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientists and UFOlogists. SETI scientists begin with the null hypothesis that ETIs do not exist and that they must provide concrete evidence before making the extraordinary claim that we are not alone in the universe. UFOlogists begin with the positive hypothesis that ETIs exist and have visited us, then employ questionable research techniques to support that belief, such as hypnotic regression, anecdotal reasoning, conspiratorial thinking, low-quality visual evidence, and anomalistic thinking.
JG: Halton Arp and the intrinsic redshift astronomers focus on analysis of the distribution of high and low redshift objects in the sky, which documents physical connections between them that nullify the Expanding Universe. Plasma cosmologists since Birkeland in the late 19th century have focused on laboratory experiments that can be scaled to fourteen orders of magnitude. 8. Is the claimant providing an explanation for the observed phenomena or merely denying the existing explanation? This is a classic debate strategy--criticize your opponent and never affirm what you believe to avoid criticism. JG: The supporters of the new cosmology DO have an entire cosmology that is complete and detailed, explaining the phenomena that the BBT fails to explain. However, you rarely hear anything about the alternate ideas in cosmology from a mainstreamer. Only two mainstream astronomy books out of the dozens I have read even mentioned plasma cosmology or Arp's works, and none of those even hinted at catastrophist's research. About the only time you hear them talk about catastrophics is when you try to discuss it with them. And then they simply declare that alternative ideas are "wrong" or "stupid" or "unscientific." If you don't agree, then you, too, are "wrong" or "stupid" or "unscientific". 9. If the claimant offers a new explanation, does it account for as many phenomena as the old explanation did? JG: Plasma cosmology offers explanations for all the phenomena the accepted theory tries (and fails) to explain. Moreover, it accounts for phenomena that remain, in the words of the mainstream, "big mysteries" in astrophysics. For example, standard theory (comets as icy snowballs) expected comet nuclei to be icy- bright, while plasma cosmology theory (comets as electric discharge phenomena) expected them to be burnt like the terminals of a battery. The two comet nuclei that have been photographed on spacecraft flybys, Halley and Borrelly, are extremely dark -- astronomers compare their appearance to black velvet, coal, or photocopy toner. 10. Does the claimant's personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa? All scientists hold social, political and ideological beliefs that could potentially slant their interpretations of the data, but how do those biases and beliefs affect their research in practice? Usually during the peer-review system, such biases and beliefs are rooted out, or the paper or book is rejected. JG: Yet whenever someone points out the biased attitudes of the peer-review system toward mainstream science, he is dismissed as, you guessed it, a crackpot. Clearly, there are no foolproof methods of detecting baloney or drawing the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Yet there is a solution: science deals in fuzzy fractions of certainties and uncertainties, where evolution and big bang cosmology may be assigned a 0.9 probability of being true, and creationism and UFOs a 0.1 probability of being true. In between are borderland claims: we might assign superstring theory a 0.7 and cryonics a 0.2. In all cases, we remain open-minded and flexible, willing to reconsider our assessments as new evidence arises. This is, undeniably, what makes science so fleeting and frustrating to many people; it is, at the same time, what makes science the most glorious product of the human mind. JG: Is it me, or is Mr. Shermer contradicting mainstream thinking with this last paragraph? The attitudes taken toward many unconventional thinkers, like myself, are often rude and closed- minded. We could write a book (just a figure of speech) of the base insults lobbed at us. When the universe is discussed, it
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is accepted without question that it all began with a Big Bang. Nowhere but the crackpot fringes will you hear that there's even a 10% chance that this theory is wrong. Mainstream astrophysics would do well to follow Shermer's advice: become more "open minded and flexible," and "reconsider their assessments as new evidence arises." Jason Goodman
SOURCES:
http://www.sciam.com/2001/1101issue/1101skeptic.html http://www.sciam.com/2001/1201issue/1201skeptic.html
MILLISECOND PULSARS:
by Don Scott ZWP wrote: Check this out gents -- and make sure you're not holding anything that will spill... zane http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0205/26pulsar/ DON SCOTT RESPONDS: Thanks for posting this Zane. It is yet another piece of evidence that supports the Electric/Plasma Universe theory. Those who have read my past posts will know that I (and Wal and others) maintain that all pulsars are simple electrical "relaxation oscillators". I believe they are binary pairs that are experiencing electrical discharges from one of the members of the pair to the other. There is no such entity as a "neutron star". There can't be. (See http://207.10.97.102/chemzone/lessons/11nuclear/nuclear.htm for an explanation of radio active decay that would quickly demolish any such star.) The story contains a gold mine of non sequitors and illogical conclusions. FROM THE WEBSITE: The system has one of the lowest-mass companions of any stellar binary. The finding provides clear evidence that neutron stars can slowly "accrete" (i.e., steal) material from their companions and dramatically increase their spin rate... DON SAYS: Fine, the system has one of the lowest-mass companions of any stellar binary. That's nice. But that fact certainly does NOT provide "clear evidence that neutron stars can slowly 'accrete' (i.e., steal) material from their companions..." FROM THE WEBSITE: "The companion will eventually vanish as a result of both the force of gravity pulling matter onto the neutron star(accretion), and the pressure from the resulting X-ray radiation emitted from the neutron star blowing matter away from the companion (ablation). " is 100% conjecture which is not supported by any observations taken over time. Gravity pulling matter one way and X-ray "pressure" are opposite forces neither of which are significant when compared to electrodynamic effects.(Actually, I'm not sure that Xrays produce "pressure" on anything.) I could go on, but you get the idea. They are wallowing around in a failed theory populated with fictional entities which they expound with an attitude of complete confidence. It's scary. They have absolutely NO idea about what they are looking at or talking about.
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Pulsars are simply relaxation oscillators.

All the above boils down to the fact that charges, moving in a magnetic field, put out "electromagnetic radiation" - especially in a cosmic plasma, where we have Birkeland currents where charges spiral along within the magnetic field. So that's why cosmic plasmas give off EM signals. If the plasma current pulsates, so will the signal. And, so one last thing, if I may. A "relaxation oscillator" is an electrical circuit wherein a capacitor first charges up (because current is flowing into it) and then, when the resulting voltage on the capacitor gets "too large", it discharges rapidly. What determines the value that is "too large" depends on the physical situation. How often this charge/discharge cycle occurs depends on the electrical properties of the circuit. Two stars in a binary pair could easily be acting like such an oscillator. The magnitude of the charging current going from one of the stars to the other would depend on the voltage difference between them. This voltage goes up and down with the charge/discharge cycle. The bottom line is this: The frequency of this pulsation can be very high; the charge/discharge period very short. It is not determined by the mechanical (rotation speed) properties of the binary pair but, rather, by their electrical properties. The two stars can be rotating around each other and revolving on their axes) quite slowly. No magic "neutronium" or "strange matter" is required to hold them together because they simply do NOT rotate at2000 rpm. This is the speed required by the 30 millisecond repetition rate seen in the Crab pulsar (33 pulses per sec x 60 sec per min =3D 2000 rpm). That "lighthouse" would be really spinning! This demonstrates the degree of nonsense these folks are willing to engage in so that they can avoid thinking about ANYTHING electrical. ~Don Scott A THOTH READER ADDS: The only way Astrophysicists can imagine the millisecond periodicity of a pulsar is with the 'lawn sprinkler' model, e.g., the spinning black hole or neutron star. But all of the radiation properties of pulsars say it is just a pulse in a transmission line like those which occur naturally in the lab or in any number of industrial products. [Ed note: 17 radiation characteristics are listed in a 1995 paper by Kevin Healy and Anthony Peratt: reprinted below.] Astrophysicists only address item number 2 from the list, the "double pulse". The precession model of the pulsar was born to account for this observed double pulse. Hundreds of papers have been written on it in the Astrophysical Journal. Turning to reality, there is no such thing as a pulsar. An electrical circuit in space accounts for all of the observed properties. They were first observed not in stars, but in very high energy density plasmas under laboratory conditions on Earth. THE LIST: In particular, any model must address the following known pulsar features: 1) Radio luminosities estimated to lie in the range of 10^27 to 10^30 ergs per second (10^20 to !0^30 W.) 2) Pulse periods within a range of a millisecond to several seconds. 3) Stable mean pulse profile having one, two or three components. 4) Monotonic rotation of linear polarization vector with a signature that depends on the component structure. 5) Slow decrease of the pulse width with increasing radio frequency, and with increasing period. 6) Slow decrease of periodicity, usually with dP/dt in a range between 10^-14 the 10^-16 sec/sec, but for millisecond pulsars as small as 10^-19 sec/sec. 7) Glitches -- a jump-like decrease in the period P. 8) Interpulse components midway between the main pulses.

9) 10) 11) 12)
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A continuum, low-power background. Linear polarization angle modes spaced by 90 degrees. A circularly polarized component that reverses polarity between pulses in the main pulse. Memory in the pulse-to-pulse fluctuations which in some pulsars takes the form of periodically spaced subpulses drifting slowly in time. 13) Erratic pulse-to-pulse amplitude fluctuations. 14) Micropulses within single pulses that are sometimes periodically spaced.
Other Problems a model must address include: 15) The extreme bandwidth of radiation observed, in some pulsars from radio frequencies to gamma ray energies. 16) A very high Doppler-interpreted velocity, up to 500 km/sec. 17) The global pulsar system and topology which, for the Crab Nebula encompasses a fibrous and filamentary region 2 x 10^16 meters beyond the pulsar; 'wisps', 'jets', and other features symmetrically oriented 19^15 meters beyond the active region. Full paper, Radiation Properties of Pulsar Magnetospheres: Observation, Theory, and Experiment. K. Healy and A. Peratt, Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 1995, available here: http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/papers.html
A MYSTERY SOLVED -- WELCOME TO THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE!

by Wal Thornhill We simply do not have a truly unified view of the world, one that paints an unambiguous picture of some overall scheme ... one invariably confronts a deep fissure that can be overcome only with revolutionary new ideas. ~Etienne Klein & Marc Lachize-Rey, The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics. NASA has confirmed a "deep fissure" in our understanding of the universe. The answer, though revolutionary, is simple. But it implies that the real nature of the universe is nothing like the fanciful stories we are being told. So who will have the courage to listen? Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph filed this report: Mysterious force holds back NASA probe in deep space: A SPACE probe launched 30 years ago has come under the influence of a force that has baffled scientists and could rewrite the laws of physics. Researchers say Pioneer 10, which took the first close-up pictures of Jupiter before leaving our solar system in 1983, is being pulled back to the sun by an unknown force. The effect shows no sign of getting weaker as the spacecraft travels deeper into space, and scientists are considering the possibility that the probe has revealed a new force of nature. Dr Philip Laing, a member of the research team tracking the craft, said: We have examined every mechanism and theory we can think of and so far nothing works. "If the effect is real, it will have a big impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation," said Dr Laing, of the Aerospace Corporation of California. Pioneer 10 was launched by NASA on March 2 1972, and with Pioneer 11, its twin, revolutionised astronomy with detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn. In June 1983, Pioneer 10 passed Pluto, the most distant planet in our solar system. Both probes are now travelling at 27,000mph towards stars that they will encounter several million years from now. Scientists are continuing to monitor signals from Pioneer 10, which is more than seven billion miles from Earth.
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Research to be published shortly in The Physical Review, a leading physics journal, will show that the speed of the two probes is being changed by about 6 mph per century - a barely-perceptible effect about 10 billion times weaker than gravity. Scientists initially suspected that gas escaping from tiny rocket motors aboard the probes, or heat leaking from their nuclear power plants might be responsible. Both have now been ruled out. The team says no current theories explain why the force stays constant: all the most plausible forces, from gravity to the effect of solar radiation, decrease rapidly with distance. The bizarre behaviour has also eliminated the possibility that the two probes are being affected by the gravitational pull of unknown planets beyond the solar system. Assertions by some scientists that the force is due to a quirk in the Pioneer probes have also been discounted by the discovery that the effect seems to be affecting Galileo and Ulysses, two other space probes still in the solar system. Data from these two probes suggests the force is of the same strength as that found for the Pioneers. Dr Duncan Steel, a space scientist at Salford University, says even such a weak force could have huge effects on a cosmic scale. "It might alter the number of comets that come towards us over millions of years, which would have consequences for life on Earth. It also raises the question of whether we know enough about the law of gravity." Until 1988, Pioneer 10 was the most remote object made by man - a distinction now held by Voyager 1. (c) Text copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
Solution of the mystery:

Common sense suggests that it is unlikely that the laws of physics will need to be rewritten, simply that we should understand better those we have. We need not trouble ourselves with arguments about the nature of gravity in this instance because the mystery can be solved if the electrical nature of the universe is acknowledged. The mystery only arises because astrophysics is taught incorrectly. Students are taught that any separation of charge in space is quickly neutralized as electrons rush to neutralize the charge imbalance. As a result, electricity in space is almost never mentioned, except as a transient effect. So no astrophysicist would think to ask the question of whether there is a steady interplanetary electric field. They have not "examined every mechanism and theory." It is always assumed that there is a source of electrons to meet any deficiency and that they can be supplied faster than the charging process. However, space is a far better vacuum than any we can achieve on Earth, so the assumption that there are sufficient electrons available may not be true. And where there are sufficient electrons, in their rush to neutralize the electric field they may undergo the magnetic "Z pinch" effect that cuts off the current at some maximum value before recovering and beginning the cycle once more. In fact, observations of energetic activity in space on all scales show this kind of "bursty" behavior. The most recent example came from Jupiter and was reported by Scientific American on March 4 as "a mysterious X-ray 'hot spot' that flares up like a beacon every 45 minutes." We produce X-rays every day in industry and medicine by using electrical discharges. Why would Nature do it any other way? In our electric universe the forces between charged objects is of the same form as Newton's equation, with charge replacing mass. The BIG difference is that the electrical force is about 10^39 times stronger than gravity. So if there is an electric field in space, it will have a measurable effect on a charged spacecraft. An electric field in space can give rise to electric discharge phenomena like those seen in a low-pressure gas. The most familiar example is the neon tube, and for some lucky people-the wonderful natural spectacle of an aurora. Extensive research was done on gas discharges early in the 20th century but its application to solar physics, pioneered briefly in the 1970's by an engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona, Ralph Juergens, was perforce published in an obscure journal and permitted to sink without trace.
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This is a diagram showing a discharge tube with all of the important features annotated above the tube. [Full article, including diagram and pictures, available here: http://www.holoscience.com/news/mystery_solved.html][D.S. =3D dark space]. Note that in the Sun's huge environment, the only bright regions are very close to the Sun because the energy density is too low to excite a glow. Below the tube are graphs showing the variation of important variables along the tube length. The simple discharge tube demonstrates some of the complexity of electric discharges in near vacuum and surprisingly it holds the key to the mystery of spacecraft deceleration. As Juergens argued, within our solar system the Sun bears all of the hallmarks of a small spherical anode in a galactic discharge. The planets occupy a vast region within the heliosphere, known in gas discharge theory as the positive column, which has a weak electric field centered on the Sun. Unlike the thin neon tube, the Sun occupies a vast sphere more than 16 billion miles across, so the positive column disappears and the current is carried throughout that volume by a low density of ionization. It requires only that the Sun's electric field has sufficient strength to cause a drift of electrons toward the Sun, superimposed on their random thermal motion. In other words, it is immeasurably small. Notice that the net charge density in the positive column is zero. In other words, there are an equal number of negative and positive charges in interplanetary space. That is what spacecraft have generally found. The regions of high electric field are close to the anode and cathode. In the Sun's case, being the anode, it is in the corona, where electrons are accelerated toward the Sun, causing the apparent million-degree temperatures there, and the protons are accelerated away from the Sun-to form the solar "wind." The continued acceleration of the positive particles in the solar wind beyond the orbits of Mercury and Venus is a natural consequence of the same weak electric field that slows down the negatively charged spacecraft. The cool photosphere beneath a "hot" corona is, for the first time, understandable if the Sun's energy is delivered externally. Of course, the Sun does not have an identifiable cathode in space like the metal cathode in the glow discharge tube. Instead, the plasma in space forms a bubble, known as a "virtual cathode." Effectively it is the heliopause. In plasma terms, the heliopause is not a result of mechanical shock but is a Langmuir plasma sheath that forms between two plasmas of different charge densities and energies. In this case it forms the boundary between the Sun's plasma and that of the galaxy. Such "bubbles" are seen at all scales, from the comas of comets to the 'magnetospheres' of planets and stars. To the plasma engineer they show that the central body is electrically charged relative to its surroundings. After launch, a spacecraft accepts electrons from the surrounding space plasma until the craft's voltage is sufficient to repel further electrons. Near Earth it is known that a spacecraft may attain a negative potential of several tens of thousands of volts relative to its surroundings. So, in interplanetary space, the spacecraft becomes a charged object moving in the Sun's weak electric field. Being negatively charged, it will experience an infinitesimal "tug" toward the positively charged Sun. Of most significance is the fact that the voltage gradient, that is the electric field, throughout interplanetary space remains constant. In other words, the retarding force on the spacecraft will not diminish with distance from the Sun. This effect distinguishes the electrical model from all others because all known force laws diminish with distance. The effect is real and it will have a fundamental impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation becauseS Pioneer 10 has confirmed the electrical model of Stars! Pioneer 10 is now 7.4 billion miles from Earth, maybe 90 percent of the way to the heliopause. The electrical model of the solar system predicts that additional anomalies will be found if a distant spacecraft encounters the heliopause while still in contact with Earth. For the heliopause is the "cathode drop" region of the Sun's electrical influence. It is a region of strong radial electric field, which will tend to decelerate the spacecraft more strongly. Almost the full difference between the Sun's voltage and that of the local arm of the galaxy is present across the heliopause boundary. As a result, it is the region where so-called "anomalous" cosmic rays are generated by the strong field. It has nothing to do with a shock front and some poorly defined acceleration mechanism. Some measure of the driving electrical potential of the Sun may be gained from the study of
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"anomalous" cosmic rays. Also we can deduce the driving potential of other stars by the study of normal cosmic rays. The implications of an electrical dimension to stars are profound. Obviously, if we do not understand our closest star, all speculation about more distant stars and their histories are misguided. Of course, it begs the question of the power source that maintains the galactic charge differentials to power stars. It is here that the electric star hypothesis merges seamlessly with plasma cosmology, which also had its origin in electrical engineering. Plasma cosmology, which is now recognized by the IEEE, is practically unknown amongst astronomers and astrophysicists. The latter have been content to ignore the warnings of Hannes Alfven, the "father" of plasma physics and plasma cosmology, that their use of plasma theory is outdated and wrong. For example, the spiral arms of a galaxy must carry the electric current that lights the stars. The force between parallel currents varies inversely with distance, instead of the much more rapid fall-off of gravity with the square of the distance. The result is that the longest-range force law in the universe governs galactic motions, and short-range repulsion maintains the integrity of the spiral arms. In comparison, by using the puny force of gravity astrophysicists must insist on the cranky notion that most of the mass in the universe is invisible and distributed in arbitrary fashion. Even so, they cannot explain the preferred spiral structure of galaxies. As a leading member of The Spaceguard Foundation, Duncan Steel's final comment about comets is selfserving. Those who publicize the threat of comet or asteroid impact with the Earth have a great deal to "unlearn" and learn anew about the electrical nature and origin of comets. What really happens when charged bodies are on a collision course? Who has ever seen a single bolt of lightning in an artist's depiction of cosmic impact? Spaceguard argues that an impact could send us the way of the dinosaurs. But something far more dramatic than a puny impact killed the megafauna, simply because they could not function in Earth's present gravity. Our scientific beliefs must change spectacularly once the electrical nature of the universe is recognized. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 4 (June 30, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: GETTING AT THE TRUTH FROM: THE MANY FACES OF VENUS PULSAR REDSHIFT ANTIGRAVITY?
Mel Acheson Ev Cochrane a discussion Wal Thornhill
GETTING AT THE TRUTH

by Mel Acheson Science begins with observations and gets at the truth with inductive reasoning. Or so I was taught. Scientists look at things and perform experiments; then they draw conclusions from the results. They need to watch out for preconceptions that can distort their conclusions, but basically they are engaged in looking clearly at what's before their eyes. Ideally, science would arrive at indubitable truth by applying inductive reasoning to pure observation and eliminating all assumptions and speculations. Karl Popper would undercut this idea of inductive reasoning by commanding his listeners to start observing and to report their inductive conclusions. After a moment of confusion, someone would ask what they should observe. =46rom this observation Popper would conclude that science begins with problems, questions, and conjectures. Observation is never pure. Looking is guided by some idea of what to look for. And seeing is constituted by some theory, some viewpoint, what's seen is seen from. These ideas and theories are like eyeglasses: You have to look through them in order to see your observations. They are, strictly speaking, preconceptions. The ideal of inductive reasoning is self-contradictory. Popper proposed that the chief purpose of observation (and the criterion that distinguishes science from all other intellectual endeavors) is testing. Because theories are generalizations, they can't be tested directly. What can be tested are specific deductions from theory. If a theory is true, certain consequences logically and necessarily follow. But deductive logic is only certain if the test finds the consequences are not true. If the consequences don't actually occur, the theory is necessarily false. Logicians call this type of argument "modus tollens": If A, then B; not B; therefore, not A. On the other hand, if the consequences DO actually occur, that is no guarantee the occurrences are not for some other reason than the theory in question. Perhaps an alternate theory, not yet developed, would also predict the same consequences. To insist that "verifying the prediction proves the theory" is to commit what logicians back to the time of Aristotle have known as "the fallacy of affirming the consequent." Because of this, all theories are provisional. The only certain knowledge available is knowing a theory is false. And this mires us in skepticism and relativism.
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We can't do anything with a theory that's false. We can only do things with theories that are true. Every day we do things with ideas and theories we intuitively "know" to be "true." Can something this common be inherently false? Has humanity survived this long on illogical knowledge and unreasonable truth? What is this everyday truth and how do we know it? Bernard Lonergan came up with an answer in his 1957 book, In sight. He turned Popper's formulation on its head. Instead of deducing consequences from a theory and testing them, he determined the conditions which, if verified, would make the theory true. The theory would still be provisional--a better one might come along tomorrow--but, given the data on hand and the understanding of today, the conditions for truth could be determined and sought. If those conditions were actually fulfilled, the theory would be logically true. Logicians call this type of argument "modus ponens": If A, then B; A; therefore B. This introduces a third leg to enable knowledge to stand above the swamps of both an illusory absolutism of blind belief and a whimsical relativism of make believe. Empiricism understood that knowledge had to be based on experience. But experience by itself is meaningless. Idealism recognized that intelligence and imagination were necessary. But ideas by themselves are indistinguishable from fantasy, and ideas combined with experience can never get beyond conjecture and criticism. (In Anything Goes, Australian philosopher David Stove calls it "criticismism".) Empiricism and idealism are the two legs which, by themselves, have persistently caused theories of knowledge to fall on their faces. Lonergan discerned that what turns observation and conjecture into knowledge is judgement. It's the "yes" or "no" answer to the question: Are the conditions fulfilled for this theory to be true? With knowledge staggering on only two legs, the history of science is a drunkard's walk of wrong theories believed by our predecessors, who must have been either stupid or benighted. To avoid ending up with them in the gutter of history, to ensure our theories appear to be the final truth, we are compelled to suppress novel conjectures and to overlook anomalous observations. But with knowledge standing firmly on three legs, the history of science is a progression of intelligent people like ourselves figuring out the truths of their times. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
FROM: THE MANY FACES OF VENUS

by Ev Cochrane [editor's note: This is the introduction to Cochrane's latest book. The Many Faces of Venus and Cochrane's first book in the series, Martian Metamorphoses can both be purchased at the Aeon website, www.aeonjournal.com ] If we look at the physical universe the way astronomers do, we may never know anything about it. The recent U.S. planetary probes revealed a shocking paucity of real knowledge about the contents of the cosmos. ~Garrett Verschuur The slow and steady movement of the respective planets about the sun is frequently lauded as a sign of the clock-like regularity and order which distinguishes the solar system. Yet it can be shown that this much vaunted regularity is a comparatively recent development. As we will document in the pages to follow, the ancient sky-watchers describe a radically different solar system. If we are to believe their explicit testimony, recorded in countless sacred traditions from every corner of the globe, Venus only recently moved on a much different orbit, cavorting with Mars and raining fire from heaven. Is it possible
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that modern astronomers, in neglecting the ancient folklore surrounding the respective planets, have overlooked a vital clue to the recent history of the solar system? I, for one, believe this to be the case. From time immemorial the planet Venus has fascinated terrestrial skywatchers, and cultures everywhere assigned it a prominent role in their mythological traditions and religious rituals. Already at the dawn of recorded history, Sumerian priests composed hymns in honor of the planet which they venerated as the goddess Inanna: To her who appears in the sky, to her who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the hierodule who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the great queen of heaven, Inanna, I want to address my greeting, to her who fills the sky with her pure blaze, to the luminous one, to Inanna, as bright as the sun, to the great queen of heaven. ~sacred marriage-hymn of Iddon-Dagan, circa 1960 BCE As our earliest historical testimony regarding Venus, the Sumerian literature surrounding Inanna is indispensable for reconstructing the ancient conceptions surrounding our Sister planet. Especially intriguing are those hymns which describe the planet-goddess as dominating the skies and raining fire and destruction. The following passage is typical in this regard: You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake. Great Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart? You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth. Your deafening command ... splits apart great mountains. Such imagery is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with Venus' current appearance and behavior. Indeed, scholars investigating the literature surrounding Inanna/ Venus rarely make an attempt to interpret it by reference to celestial phenomena, preferring instead to interpret the vivid catastrophic imagery as the product of poetic metaphor and creative imagination. As we will document, however, the Sumerian testimony has striking parallels around the globe, in the New World as well as the Old, a telling clue that common experience of catastrophic events -- not poetic metaphor -- is responsible for the peculiar traditions surrounding Venus. The planet Venus as disaster-bringer is equally apparent in Mesoamerica, where the observation and veneration of Venus amounted to a collective obsession. For the Aztecs and Maya alike, the heliacal rise of Venus was an occasion of ominous portents marked by dread and hysteria. Bernardino de Sahag=FAn, a Franciscan friar writing in the 16th century, chronicled the Aztecs' perception of Venus: And when it [Venus] newly emerged, much fear came over them; all were frightened. Everywhere the outlets and openings of [houses] were closed up. It was said that perchance [the light] might bring a cause of sickness, something evil when it came to emerge. In the attempt to propitiate Venus, the Aztecs offered it human sacrifices, a practice associated with the planet in the Old World as well. What is there about the planet Venus that could have inspired such grim rites? Venus' present appearance would never inspire mass hysteria or vivid tales of impending doom and world destruction. How, then, are we to account for the fact that Sahag=FAn's testimony documenting the Aztec's attitude towards Venus echoes the Sumerian skywatchers' conception of Inanna/Venus: To provoke shivers of fright, panic, trembling, and terror before the halo of your fearsome splendor, that is in your nature, oh Inanna! In this book we will seek to discover the historical circumstances and logical ratio-nale behind the ancient mythology attached to Venus. To anticipate our conclusion: Venus was associated with dire portents and tales of apocalyptic disaster for the simplest of reasons -- it was a primary player in spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth in relatively recent times, well within the memory of ancient man.
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The implications of this theory, if true, are at once revolutionary and far-reaching. In addition to necessitating a drastic revision in our understanding of the historical determinants of ancient myth and religion, the central tenets of modern astronomy and a host of allied sciences would be called into question as well. With stakes this high, it is imperative that we endeavor to gain further insight into the origins of ancient Venus lore. The ancients' obsession with the planet Venus stands in marked contrast to the relative indifference currently accorded our nearest planetary neighbor. Who among us could even point out the Evening Star on any given night? Would anyone in their right mind be inclined to view Venus as an agent of destruction and impending doom? David Grinspoon, a NASA astronomer and the author of a very entertaining history of Venus observation, offered the following summary of the ancients' preoccupation with Venus: Venus must always have seemed a unique, animated entity. For our ancestors the details of the complex movements of Venus served as important harbingers of war and peace, feast and famine, pestilence and health. They learned to watch every nuance for the clues they could wrest of what nature had in store. They watched carefully, obsessively, through skies not yet dimmed by industrial haze and city lights, and they learned to predict accurately, for years and decades to come, the rising, setting, dimming, brightening, and looping of Venus. Confronted with Venus' prominent role in ancient consciousness, Grinspoon, like countless others before him, seems to take it for granted that it is only natural that the ancients would look to that particular planet for omens of things to come. But why should this be, since there is neither an inherent nor logical relation between Venus and the phenomena mentioned by him -- war, pestilence, fertility, etc.? Indeed, it stands to reason that any ancient skywatcher worth his salt would soon discover that there was precious little to be learned about such terrestrial matters from the patient observation of Venus. That is, of course, if we are to believe the conventional version of Venus' history, which holds that the planet's appearance and behavior has hardly changed for millions of years. In recent years, modern astronomy has made great strides in removing the veil which had previously obscured the physiognomy of Venus. For the first several centuries of telescope observation it was commonly believed that Earth's so-called twin was home to beings like ourselves, complete with a thriving civilization. Until the midpoint of the present century it was still thought possible that Venus might be "Earth-like" in its features, with a tropical climate, vast oceans and swamps teeming with various forms of life. Yet all such geocentric scenarios were to receive a severe jolt in 1962 when, courtesy of Mariner 2, Venus was revealed to be a most inhospitable place, with surface temperatures in excess of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Under such conditions, oceans (of water, that is) are quite out of the question and life, as we know it, almost unthinkable. The recent history of the scientific investigation of Venus reveals a vast theoretical graveyard of discarded hypotheses, false deductions, erroneous premises, shoddy observations, and wishful thinking. While many astronomers, Carl Sagan among them, expected the Venusian clouds to be composed of water, Mariner 9 found precious little water and plenty of concentrated sulfuric acid. Where leading astronomers "observed" luxuriant Venusian vegetation in full bloom, modern space probes discovered a barren, desiccated wasteland. Indeed, if the truth be known, the Mariner, Magellan, and Pioneer missions have forced astronomers to radically revise their previous assessments as to Venus' origin, nature, and geological history. On virtually every major feature of the Venusian landscape and atmosphere, the astronomers' theoretical expectations have been proven wrong time and again. And wildly wrong at that. Given this dismal track record, there would appear to be some justification for maintaining a healthy skepticism with respect to astronomers' current "best guesses" as to what is possible regarding Venus' recent history. Indeed, as we will document, there are good reasons for believing that other -- even more radical -- revisions in our understanding of Venus are in order. Ev Cochrane
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PULSAR REDSHIFT
a discussion JASON GOODMAN starts it: Amy posted an article about the recent discovery of anomalous periodic redshift in a pulsar. The article is at http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/1132/index.html. AMY AND MEL CAN'T RESIST COMMENTING: Amy says: They didn't miss a beat -- jumped straight from "magnetic field a hundred trillion times more intense than Earth's" to "gravitational redshift" without even mentioning the "electro" part of every magnet. Mel says: If you limit yourself to one set of assumptions, deduction will lead you into a tunnel of inevitability that is logically secure but blind to other inductive possibilities. It pulls you through a conceptual black hole into a theoretical universe of fact-free ideas. JASON SAYS (about the pulsar redshift): This is exactly what I predicted. There must be an electrical connection to redshift. The K effect is observed in blue stars, which are extremely electrical. Quasars have the highest of all redshifts, and there are giant plasmoids so are probably the most electric things in the universe. And don't starburst galaxies have rather high redshifts compared to non-starbursts on the same morphological types? Now we have a pulsar, which is the most electrically stressed star of all in Juergens' theory, having redshifts. We must now check to see if Herbig-Haro objects have a redshift (an HH-K effect, so to speak). WAL RESPONDS: You can take it to the bank that intrinsic redshift is electrical in nature since it relies on lower orbital energies of electrons to give the desired effect. I think the story goes something like this: If we assume that the charge of an electron and proton always remains the same it means that their effective inertial mass must be lower. If we take Sansbury's model of electrons and protons - being composed of smaller orbiting charges - then it means that the electrons and protons are subject to a lower ambient polarizing electrostatic force - in other words, gravity. That is borne out by the high initial velocity and subsequent slowing of quasars as their redshift falls. Herbig-Haro objects should show the same effects because in both cases I think that the plasma focus (PF) effect, that spits out jets and quasars. I believe that the PF traps the much lighter electrons for a time after the main ejection event. Also, many of the protons are released from the PF in the form of an intense beam of neutrons which subsequently decay into protons and electrons plus a great shower of gamma-rays to add to those from the PF. IMHO that PF mechanism is the origin of gamma-ray bursts (the neutron decay halflife and gamma-ray energy will probably not be what we expect on Earth, however). The synchrotron radiation from the jets is a result of electrons streaming after electron-deficient knots of matter that have been ejected earlier. As the electrons recombine with the knots (quasars), the electrostatic polarization (gravity) increases along with the masses of particles. The stable or resonant orbits undergo quantum shifts from time to time to accommodate the increasing particle masses. These are Arp's decreasingredshift quanta. Since this is my best guess at the moment and I haven't had time to examine all of the details and consequences, I would appreciate it if you kept it as background information to test against new discoveries. I would be pleased to receive any thoughts on this proposed model. JASON: On another thing. If, as the article speculates, pulsars are composed largely of kaons or pions, then that idea is worse than a neutron star. Positive pions decay in 2.6 x 10^-8 seconds, neutral pions in a paltry 8.3 x 10^-17 seconds, and kaons in 1.24 x 10^-8 seconds. Much less than the 15
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minutes of a neutron. Of course, they still have gravity, which is thousands of trillions of trillions of times weaker than the "weak force" that causes particle decay, being the boss of everything.
WAL: The redshift of the pulsar indicates that it is highly electron deficient and the plasma is unable to deliver the electrons in a steady stream but instead undergoes repetitive pinching of the current - hence the pulses. Instead of the gravitational field of the pulsar being impossibly high, the redshift shows that it is actually low. The chain of deduction used to figure out the radius and mass of the pulsar and the magnetic field is flawed at every step.
ANTIGRAVITY?
by Wal Thornhill According to the physicist, Lee Smolin, cranks are just a fact of life for working physicists. Several of us have speculated that there must be a particular psychosis that results in people believing that they have disproved relativity. New Scientist, 12 Jan 2002, reported that Evgeny Podkletnov is a Russian migr whose claim to have demonstrated antigravity caused such a storm he was thrown out of his job at Tampere University of Technology five years ago. He now works as a researcher in superconducting materials at the nearby University of Tampere. He has recently convinced NASA to spend $600,000 on a machine he claims will shield matter from Earth's gravity. The implication is that if it works it will open up a whole new branch of theoretical physics. In 1992 he published a paper describing how he had stumbled across a "gravity shielding" effect while running a routine test on one of his superconductors. The details were sketchy. But the basics are these: make a superconducting disc 145 millimetres in diameter and 6 millimetres thick, according to a special chemical recipe that Podkletnov did not make public. Cool the disc to below -233C, then levitate it using a magnetic field. Finally, apply an electric current alternating at around 100 kilohertz to coils surrounding the disc. The current makes the disc rotate in the constantly changing magnetic field, something like an electric motor. So far, there's nothing extraordinary here. [See full article, with pictures and diagrams at http://www.holoscience.com/news/antigravity.html] But Podkletnov claimed that when the disc was spinning at more than 5000 revolutions per minute, objects placed above it lost around 1 per cent of their weight. Increasing the spin speed, he claimed, reduced their weight still further. In subsequent experiments, he claims to have seen weight reductions of up to 2 per cent. Podkletnov concluded that this apparatus somehow reduced the strength of the Earth's pull on any object placed above it and called it a "gravity shielding" device. Stick a more powerful version of this apparatus on the bottom of a spacecraft and rocket propulsion would be history: just the slightest nudge would be needed for lift-off into space. Terrestrial transport would be revolutionised too, together with a large chunk of theoretical physics. Comments from Wal: Here we see a tendency to ascribe observations that don't fit the accepted paradigm to "new physics" or "new forces." However, rather than add more barnacles to the heavily encrusted vessel of theoretical physics, the truly scientific approach would be to revisit all of the assumptions that underpin the accepted paradigm to see if they might be wrong. Unfortunately, it is at this point we are usually torpedoed by fashionable dogma, as shown by the opening comment from Lee Smolin, who also wrote:
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What is space and what is time? This is what the problem of quantum gravity is about. In general relativity, Einstein gave us not only a theory of gravity but a theory of what space and time are--a theory that overthrew the previous Newtonian conception of space and time. The problem of quantum gravity is how to combine the understanding of space and time we have from relativity theory with the quantum theory, which also tells us something essential and deep about nature. In the words of the inimitable Harry Belafonte: It was clear as mud, but it covered de ground, de confusion made me head go 'round.' Here we have the confusion about gravity, space and time, instigated by Einstein, to be compounded with ignorance about the physical meaning of quantum theory. We are about 80 years overdue for a simplification, rather than more complexity. If, by the attempt I must join the ranks of the cranks, then so be it. As one noted astronomer has said: When the complete answer is not known, in a sense everyone is a crackpot. It is somewhat ironic that Einstein hated the probabilistic nature of quantum theory because it seems that the confusion created by his Relativity theories prevented a classical model being developed. That is, a model that relates cause and effect, and where time and space are not subject to dilatation. "God does not play dice," he is reputed to have said. He felt that quantum physics could not possibly be complete because it cannot relate cause and effect and does not go beyond predicting the properties of matter statistically. Einstein, starting with the following three premises, showed that quantum theory was not a complete description of reality: 1. The predictions of quantum theory are correct 2. No effect can travel faster than the speed of light 3. If; without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to that physical quantity. The Irish physicist, John Bell, was able to prove rigorously that any theory claiming to describe reality on the basis of (1) and (3) is automatically in conflict with (2). But rather than confront the possibility that (2) may be wrong at the level of fundamental particle interactions, physicists have preferred to enter the realm of metaphysics with meaningless terms like "spooky interaction at a distance", "non-locality", and "entanglement." It has even been suggested that macroscopic objects behave classically but atoms and subatomic particles do not! The coherent behaviour of lasers , Bose-Einstein condensates, and on the grandest scale- the discovery of quantized redshifts of galaxies, should have disposed of that idea. What can a simple answer possibly be? "God is subtle but he is not malicious," Einstein said in 1921. But was it his "law" of the universal speed limit that stood in the way of further progress? We observe that gravity operates between atoms at a speed far greater than the speed of light. Otherwise the Earth would be tugged toward an empty point in space that the Sun occupied 8 minutes ago, and the Earth's orbit would quickly change. If Newton was right and gravity does operate at near-infinite speed then Einstein's Special Theory reduces to Euclidean space of 3-dimensions and time is universal. There is no reality to "warped space" and "space-time." We return from fantasy-land to the world we perceive, which is probably a giant step back to the future. So, could it be that the force of gravity and the electric force are the same, and that the speed of light is merely the characteristic velocity of an electrical disturbance in the medium of space? After all, space is not a vacuum - it teems with neutrinos. That would be a major simplification. The first problem with an electric gravitational force is that like charges repel and unlike charges attract, whereas gravity always attracts. A simple way out of that problem is to propose that electrons, protons and neutrons are composed of smaller orbiting charged units (which we may dub "subtrons")* whose total charge sums to -e, +e and zero, respectively. The magnetic moment of the neutron and spin of the electron suggests that this is so. The stumbling block to such a model has always been the assumption of Einstein's speed limit on the electric force between charged subtrons. For instance, it has been calculated
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that subtrons orbiting inside the classical radius of the electron would have a speed of 2.5 million lightyears per second. That is the distance from here to the other side of the great Andromeda galaxy in one second! The speed of the electric force must exceed that by a considerable margin for the electron to be a stable particle. * The word "subtron" was coined by Ralph N. Sansbury in his monograph "Electron Structure" in The Journal of Classical Physics in January 1982. It led to a new classical explanation of magnetism and gravity. The electron, proton and neutron have not only a classical size but also a shape, which changes in response to the electric force. The electrical energy absorbed by these particles in deformation rather than acceleration gives rise to the phenomenon of inertial mass. It is the fundamental origin of the relationship E =3D mc^2. If gravity is an electrical force, we can see why the gravitational mass of a body is identical to its inertial mass. We have a real classical model with which to explain inertia, gravity, magnetism and quantum theory. Magnetism is a subject on its own to be dealt with later. But if we take an atom for example, it is a complex system of electrical resonances between orbiting charged subtrons within orbiting charged particles. A stable electron orbit is one in which the gain and loss of energy between a deformable electron and all of the subtrons in the other electrons and the nucleus sums to zero over that orbit. Electrons in an atom "whisper" to the nucleus in order to prevent the "classical catastrophe" of the electron spiralling into the nucleus. Changes in resonant state occur in quantum jumps and give rise to an un-cancelled oscillating electric force that may be accepted by another atom. An atomic nucleus operates in the same way, so that quantum tunnelling effects and nuclear interactions can be understood in resonant terms rather than simplistic coulomb barriers. The nuclear force is then another manifestation of the electric force between resonant subsystems within the nucleus. "Cold" fusion is possible in such a resonant system and radioactive decay has an electrical cause and can therefore be modified. It seems that electrons in composite (more than one proton) atomic nuclei are essential for resonant stability. When they leave a nucleus in the company of a proton we call the pair a neutron. Oddly enough, that resonant system is unstable, with the result that it has a lifetime outside the nucleus measured only in minutes. ...it may be that the next exciting thing to come along will be the discovery of a neutron or atomic or electron electric dipole moment. These electric dipole moments ... seem to me to offer one of the most exciting possibilities for progress in particle physics. ~Steven Weinberg, from his summary talk for the 26th International Conference on High Energy Physics at Dallas in 1992. To return to gravity, each subatomic particle is itself a small sphere of orbiting charges, which will be distorted in an external electric field to form an electric dipole. Since each particle is free to rotate, the dipoles will align themselves with the field so that they always attract each other. Chemists who deal with dipolar molecules have already noted the similarity of their interactions to that of gravity. The distortion of the subatomic particles is exceedingly small and so the dipole is exceedingly weak. That accounts for the difference between the naked electric force and the gravitational force of some 40 powers of ten. An immediate objection to this model is that the force between dipoles falls off with the cube of the distance, while gravity diminishes with the square of the distance. But Newton's law operates counter-intuitively as if the entire mass of the Earth were concentrated at the center of the Earth. The electrical model must take into account the real situation and integrate the effect of all of the dipoles throughout the Earth. The result is the usual inverse square relationship. Newton developed a mathematical expression that related an apparent force, gravity, between ponderous objects, to their masses and the distance between them. The expression involved a constant, G, given the grand title of the Universal Gravitation Constant, with no evidence whatsoever of its universality or its constancy. The electrical model of gravity has G a variable that depends also upon the charge distribution in the body. That would explain why G is the most ill defined "constant" in physics The New Scientist report goes on to mention:
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Podkletnov's only current collaboration is with Giovanni Modanese, an Italian physicist who is trying to build a theoretical explanation for Podkletnov's results. But because physicists have such a poor understanding of the mechanisms behind both gravity and high- temperature superconductivity, his explanations are necessarily vague. He suggests that quantum processes within the superconducting material are interacting with quantum processes in the gravitational field. But, he admits, he can't go far with the work because there are too many unknowns. We can understand his problems! However, the electrical model may offer a basis for understanding the Podkletnov experiment. When the thermal energy of a conductor is reduced to a level where it becomes a superconductor, the resonant behaviour of the conduction electrons extends throughout the entire conductor and is lossless. The atomic nuclei are also involved in the macroscopic resonance and that may explain why particular atomic nuclei in particular proportions work best as superconductors. It is a curious fact that conduction electrons in a superconducting magnet have an inertia that is the square of the number of electrons, instead of the normal Newtonian linear relationship. This seems to be telling us that the electrons in Podkletnov's spinning superconducting disk are able to absorb energy more by distortion than by acceleration. Now, if we envisage the electric force of gravity acting on a static horizontal disk, it distorts all of the subatomic particles in the disk in the direction of the gravitational force and consequently forms small vertical electric dipoles. If we spin the disk, there is an accelerative force toward the center of the disk, which will distort the particles radially. These particle distortions must rotate through 360 degrees for each revolution of the disk. But as we have seen, superconductors fiercely resist such accelerations so there will be a lag in orientation of the dipoles. All that is required to provide a gravitational shield like that claimed by Podkletnov is to have the gravitationally induced dipoles offset from the vertical by particle distortion. It seems probable that the effect would be more marked if the disk were rotated in the vertical plane. In that case the gravitational dipoles have to rotate through 360 degrees each revolution and the opportunity for offset from the vertical seems much greater. That could possibly explain the apparent loss of weight of gyroscopes demonstrated on TV by the controversial Eric Laithwaite. When Professor Eric Laithwaite [1921-97] was invited to give the Faraday Lecture in 1974-5 at the Royal Institution, he brought with him an array of gyroscopes - from toy ones that balanced on model Eiffel towers, to a huge 50lb one that he spun up and raised effortlessly above his head with one hand. "Look," he exclaimed to the assembled dignitaries, "It's lost weight!" ignoring their evident shock at such a heretical claim. "I thought my fellow scientists would be genuinely interested, so I wasn't prepared for the utter hostility of their reaction," Laithwaite recalled later. The Royal Institution did not publish his lectures. Laithwaite's nomination for the Fellowship of the Royal Society was cancelled. He retired from Imperial College in 1981 pretty much in disgrace. "None of my critics could ever explain to me how a 50lb spinning wheel loses weight," he said. At the very least, the work of Ampere, Gauss and Weber should be reexamined to see how Weber was able to deduce by 1870! the existence of the charged atomic nucleus and oppositely charged orbiting electrons, the classical electron radius, and the nuclear binding force. Some of these things had to wait until the 20th century for their eventual discovery, without any mention of the priority of the aforementioned distinguished scientists. So goes the scandalous politics of science. Their work demonstrated that the more general laws of the electrical behavior of matter must take into account all of the electrostatic and electrodynamic interactions between the positive and negative charges that comprise normal matter. By applying their methods to charged subtrons we may find the secret to antigravity.
Warped Minds
The best analogy I have seen of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity comes from a small book, The Logic of Special Relativity by S. J. Prokhovnik. In it he equates the apparent shortening of measuring rods and slowing of clocks when they move away from an observer at constant velocity to the diminution in
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size experienced by two receding travellers. The effect is reciprocal but no one imagines that the effect is real. Strangely, in effect that is precisely what Einstein did imagine and it has led to continual confusion and argument. Experiments were said to prove the effect was real but when examined closely each brought its own set of preconceptions to the data. The problem was compounded when it was argued that space itself shortened, not the rod. It is like saying that the receding traveller appears to shrink because the space he occupies is shrinking. And as space is shrinking it takes less time to cover a given distance. Here we see the insidious effect of this kind of thinking because we now have time and space tangled up together. The British scientist, Herbert Dingle, for many years wrote the entry for the Encyclopedia Brittanica on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity before recanting. Then, in his book, Science at the Cross-Roads, he related the difficulties he encountered after he realized that Einstein's version of the theory of relativity didn't make sense. He wrote: The equations [Einstein or Lorentz as the need arose] worked, so the 'experimenters' became convinced that the theory, whatever it was, must be right. The superior minds acknowledged that they did not understand it, but the majority could not rise to that height. Nothing is more powerful in producing the illusion that one understands something that one does not, than constant repetition of the words used to express it, and the lesser minds deceived themselves by supposing that terms like 'dilation of time' had a self-evident meaning, and regarded with contempt those stupid enough to imagine that they required explanation. Anyone who cares to examine the literature from 1920 to the present day, even if he has not had personal experience of the development, can see the gradual growth of dogmatic acceptance of the theory and contempt for its critics, right up to the extreme form exhibited today by those who learnt it from those who learnt it from those who failed to understand it at the beginning. Mathematics is an indispensable and powerful tool where it has been demonstrated that it applies to a real world experience. However, it is inappropriate and, as Dingle points out, potentially dangerous, to give credence to deductions arising purely from the language of mathematics. The problem is that mathematicians now dominate physics and it is fashionable for them to follow Einstein's example, with fame going to those with the most fantastic notions that defy experience and common sense. So we have the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings, wormholes in space, time travel, and so on and on. It has driven practically minded students from the subject. There is an old Disney cartoon where the scientist is portrayed with eyes closed, rocking backwards in his chair and sucking on a pipe, which at intervals emits a smoke-cloud of mathematical symbols. Much of modern physics is a smoke-screen of Disneyesque fantasy. Inappropriate mathematical models are routinely used to describe the universe. Yet the physicists hand us the ash from their pipes as if it were gold dust. If only they would use the ashtrays provided. It seems that every practitioner of physics has had to wonder at some point why mathematics and physics have come to be so closely entwined. Opinions vary on the answer. Bertrand Russell acknowledged "Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little." ...Mathematics may be indispensable to physics, but it obviously does not constitute physics. ~ Etienne Klein & Marc Lachize-Rey, The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics. ~Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 5 (Aug 30, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: BACK TO BASICS MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (1) WATER ON MARS?
Mel Acheson Earl Staelin Wal Thornhill
BACK TO BASICS
By Mel Acheson Newton, Einstein, Darwin and the other early explorers of science discovered the "New World" of fundamental laws of reality, and the scientists who have come after them are mere colonists. Continuing this line of thought, John Horgan writes in THE END OF SCIENCE that the latecomers have only two choices: to apply those fundamental discoveries in the construction of derivative theories or "to pursue science in a speculative, post-empirical mode that I call ironic science... [Ironic science] offers points of view, opinions, which are, at best, interesting, which provoke further comment. But it doesn't converge on the truth. It cannot achieve empirically verifiable surprises that force scientists to make substantial revisions in their basic description of reality." Horgan classifies most modern theories as ironic science: superstring theory and the inflationary big bang and punctuated equilibrium. This interesting opinion provokes me to make a couple of further comments. A "basic description of reality" is not the same thing as "fundamental laws". Fundamental laws are generalities. Reality is concrete. A description of reality asserts, among other things, which fundamental law applies in which real situation. Between the laws and reality lies the description, in which scientists select which laws to apply. The accepted description of reality in astronomy asserts that only the law of gravity applies in space. The law can be Newton's or it can be Einstein's, but it cannot be Darwin's law of evolution. A description of astronomical reality based on Darwin's law probably wouldn't make any sense, but the point is that one law is selected and another is not. Even the particle physicists who lately have invaded astronomy select only certain fundamental laws on which to construct their basic description of atomic reality. This business of selection is so simple as to be not worth mentioning. But not mentioning it leads to not paying attention to it, which leads to skipping over it in the occasional circumstance when it may be important. My next comment, of course, is that it's important now. Horgan and the scientists he interviewed for his book have overlooked a deeper irony. While the theories of ironic science have been unable to "achieve empirically verifiable surprises", experimental and observational science has produced a flood of them. Nearly every discovery of the space age, from the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth to the high velocity winds around Neptune, has been announced as a surprise. And the surprises have been surprising precisely because they haven't verified the prevailing "basic description of reality."
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One might think a reasonable plan in this circumstance would be to take a second look at the fundamental laws selected for one's description. One doesn't have to resort to anything as ridiculous as considering Darwin's law: For instance, the laws of electromagnetism have been lying around for over a century, mostly ignored (because "you can't get charge separation in space") except by a few electrical engineers. The problem is that scientists are like the horse led to water: Neither the failure of ironic science to achieve empirical surprises nor the failure of achieved empirical surprises to verify the accepted description can force scientists to drink basic revisions if they don't want to. Selection is the result of wanting to choose, and if you want to defend a theory you can always find expedient excuses. Almost nothing outside the solar system and a lot of things inside it don't obey either Einstein's or Newton's law of gravity: E.g., the stars in the arms of spiral galaxies revolve at about the same velocity instead of slowing down with distance as gravity predicts. To make these observations fit the gravitational description of reality, astronomers have chosen to hedge the fundamental law with a thicket of ironic "opinions" and "points of view" that are not empirical: There might be appropriately configured halos of unseen "dark" matter outside the galaxies that produce the observed velocities. This avoids the necessity of questioning fundamentals. But it turns the basic description of reality into an imaginative fantasy that is explanatory but neither verifiable nor falsifiable. Modern theories, with appropriate adjustments, can explain everything and anything, just as psychoanalysis, with childhood trauma, the dark matter of the mind, can explain any behavior. However, the point of science is not merely to explain but to find out which explanation is actually the case. For that, you need more than one explanation from which to choose. This object might be a black hole; that object might be dark matter. Having disallowed competition from fundamentally different theories, there's no way to tell if those objects might be something else. Verification alone is inadequate: You need to search for alternatives and to test them to gain reliability. (See "The Epistemology of Error" by Douglas Allchin.) Planting more hedges of ad hoc hypotheses around the fundamental law of gravity may appeal to ironic scientists. But other scientists, mostly outside astronomy, are more inclined toward empirical results. The new field of plasma cosmology has admitted Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism to the description of astronomical reality. The properties of electrical discharges applied to the phenomena of space by such pioneers as Birkeland, Langmuir, and Alfven explain the new discoveries without ironic fantasies. The revised description expects the observations that are surprising to the standard gravity-only version. And this electrical description is directly verifiable in plasma labs. Dark matter and ten-dimensional superstrings are not. The reality we think we see is constantly being revised by what we actually see of a partially known reality. (See, e.g., "The Sensory Order" by F.A. Hayek.) Usually the revisions are superficial. But there have been times in the history of thought when the revisions have reached to the basics. Plasma cosmology hasn't discovered a new fundamental law. It merely replaces one law (gravity) with another (electromagnetism). But the effect on the basic description of astronomical reality is as great as if a new law had been discovered: We think we see an entirely new reality. This shouldn't be a surprise. The space age has brought substantial revisions in instrumentation, allowing us to sense the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio wavelengths to gamma wavelengths. For the first time in human history, we are not restricted to an anthropocentric sensory viewpoint. The space age has also brought substantial revisions in location, allowing us to sense the cosmos from positions off the Earth's surface. For the first time in human history, we are not restricted to a geocentric positional viewpoint. We should expect these revisions in basic viewpoint to be accompanied by a revision in the basic description of the reality viewed. The ultimate irony would be that, in the face of our liberation from an anthropocentric and geocentric viewpoint, we would be unable or unwilling to liberate ourselves from a traditional way of thinking about reality.
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Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (1)

By Earl Staelin
THE AMAZING ROLE OF MICROBES IN GEOLOGY: ARE BIOLOGICAL TRANSMUTATIONS INVOLVED?

Copyright, July, 2002 EXCERPTS: The past twenty years has witnessed a revolution in geology-the discovery that microorganisms or microbes play a major role in many geological processes in the crust of the earth. The evidence goes back over 200 years ... [forcing] Geologists to take a new look at old problems in which microbes appear to play a prominent part. [Among these are] the formation of limestone, petrified wood and bone; the formation of elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, magnesium, calcium, silica, aluminum, phosphorus, chlorine, and sulphur; the formation of heavy metals such as iron, manganese, silver, and gold, the origin of geodes, and the formation of natural gas and other hydrocarbons. In recognition of these discoveries university departments are popping up with new names such as geomicrobiology. Some of these startling findings challenge our understanding of certain laws of physics and thermodynamics as applied to biology, because it appears that the nuclei of elements may be altered and recombined so as to produce other elements. Henry Ehrlich, author of the textbook GEOMICROBIOLOGY said "we're still at the very beginning of understanding how microbes shaped the planet." (NY Times, 10/15/96). Stephen Jay Gould has written with approval and considerable awe over such evidence in his book Full House, and cites evidence that microbes in the earth's crust and ocean live up to several miles deep in the earth's crust, in temperatures up to 650 F, and under pressures up to 265 atmospheres (Full House, p. 189). Microbes may even outweigh all other living matter including trees. As William J. Broad, science writer for the New York Times wrote: In hundreds and perhaps thousands of cases, scientists are discovering that microbes dwelling up to miles deep in the planetary crust are responsible for creating and arranging the rocks, seas, gases, metals and minerals that make up the Earth's surface. ~William J. Broad, "Microbes likely had vital role in shaping Earth's outer crust", New York Times, Oct. 15, 1996. According to William A. Fyfe, an environmental geochemist at the University of Western Ontario, 20 years ago there were about 40 or 50 compounds that were known to be made or amassed by microbes, sometimes as excreta or body parts, just as humans concentrate calcium to make teeth and bones. "Today the number is hundreds" he said. "Every time we look harder, we find more." (Broad, NY Times, ibid.) Thomas Gold, eminent scientist at Cornell University, originator in 1948 with Hoyle and Bondi of the steady state universe theory (which may be making a comeback), and the theory that pulsars are neutron stars, has written a recent book that gives significant support to the role of microorganisms in geological processes. (Gold, The Deep Hot Biosphere (1999) p. 131). He says: Indeed the problem is so great that answers are promoted piecemeal-some chemical reactions are proposed for the solution and deposition of one metal, and a different set is proposed for
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another. Piecemeal answers are especially questionable when there is a group of metals involved, and a different path is proposed for each of them., yet they are often packed closely together. (p. 132)
The scientific evidence shows that microbes play a major role in a wide variety of geological and paleontological formations, and mineral and hydrocarbon deposits, and that they often perform these transformations rapidly, that is, within a few years, or even in weeks or days. Let's begin by looking at some of the well documented roles of microbes in geology. Limestone gets its name because of the high percentage of calcium or lime in it. Ehrlich's textbook contains a detailed discussion and excellent microscopic photos of numerous bacteria, fungi, and lichens inhabiting and altering limestone. (3rd Ed., pp. 200-204). It appears that microbes also may play a major role in the creation of limestone, which I will discuss later.
PRESERVATION OF FOSSILS.
British and French scientists propose that microbes are responsible for the preservation of ancient soft tissues, by turning them into rock. (Wilby, P.R., Briggs, D.E.G., Riou, B., "Mineralization of soft-bodied invertebrates in a Jurassic metalliferous deposit," Geology, September, 1996, v. 24, no. 9, pp. 847-850). When the bacteria form apatite, the fossil is preserved at the subcellular, microscopic level. (Apatite is the chief mineral, a form of calcium phosphate, from which our bones are composed) "(W)here soft tissues are preserved in pyrite [iron sulfide] and other minerals, only their outline usually survives. A progressive sequence of fossilization caused by microbes appears as follows: apatite [calcium phosphate] calcite [calcium carbonate] gypsum [calcium sulfate] pyrite [iron sulfide] chalcopyrite [copper iron sulfide] galena [lead sulfide]. Laboratory experiments show that the mineralization of soft tissues in apatite occurs within two to four weeks after death". (p. 849) (Parenthetical matter [] added). Transformation of apatite to other minerals also occurred at an early stage. (loc. cit.). Petrified Wood. In 1975 Richard F. Leo published his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard entitled Silification of Wood. He found that silification of wood may occur rather rapidly, such as a wood specimen taken by Leo from a spring in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming which the author said could not have been in the spring more than 13 years, since the spring came into being 13 years before as a result of an earthquake. The author speculates about the mechanism of silification or petrification, and reaches no firm conclusions. He did not seriously consider the role of microbes, perhaps because it was not until several years later that knowledge of the role of microbes in geological processes became more widespread. However, he says that the presence of water is necessary for the process. Of course water would also be necessary for microbes. Leo assumes that silica comes into the tree from outside, however, such as from sand deposits in which the tree rests. Later experiments using bacteria or yeasts such as the residue of beer to cause petrification of wood have reported petrification within three years. These experiments used wood soaked in beer-making residue and embedded in sand. The moisture must be sufficient for the microbes but not so great as to cause the wood to rot. Leo points out that "beer, due to the malt husk, is essentially a saturated solution of silica," citing Iler, 1955 (p. 74). Of course fossilized trees would not have been immersed in beer. There is another potential source of petrified silica in the wood itself, which I will discuss later, and which might better explain why the subcellular structure of the wood or of fossils is often preserved than the assumption that the silica migrated from outside the wood.
GOLD AND SILVER.

The Serra Pelada is a famous gold field in the Amazon jungle, where prospectors have extracted more than 100 tons of gold since it was discovered in the early 1980's. Scientists concluded that the rich lode was produced by swarms of microbes that "concentrated" the gold from soils, rivers, and rocks (Broad, supra). Southam and associates made some excellent microscopic photos of gold octahedral crystals
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produced by microbes. In one study ionic gold was transformed in several steps by bacteria into crystalline octahedral gold containing 85% gold. In the latter two stages the gold increased from 75% to 85%, while sulfur declined from 9% to 1%, and phosphorus decreased from 14% to 10%. (Gordon Southam and Terrance J. Beveridge, "The occurrence of sulfur and phosphorus within bacterially derived crystalline and pseudocrystalline octahedral gold formed in vitro," Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 60, No. 22, pp. 4369-4376, 1966.) The roughly 13% increase in gold within a short period of time, accompanied by comparable decreases in S and P is an interesting finding that may reflect a complex transmutation into gold, possibly involving sulfur and phosphorus. When the experiment was extended to four weeks at room temperature, or when the temperature was raised from room temperature to 60 C or 90 C, the octahedral gold was increased. The ionic gold used at the start of the experiment killed the bacteria within seconds, and the bacteria had to be replenished. Octahedral gold is an important constituent of placer gold, which forms nuggets. The octahedral gold contains spheres representing the bacteria. The authors state: "The gold has increased in size one thousandfold and now dominates the bacterial cells they were once inside." Southam and Beveridge, "The in vitro formation of placer gold by bacteria", Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 58, No. 20, pp. 4527-4530, 1994. (p. 4528)
Southam is a biologist at Northern Arizona University, and Beveridge is a microbiologist at University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Thomas Gold points out that gold in mineral deposits is concentrated "a million or even a hundred million times greater than in the source of composite from which it came". (Ibid., p. 131). He says: Indeed the problem is so great that answers are promoted piecemeal-some chemical reactions are proposed for the solution and deposition of one metal, and a different set is proposed for another. Piecemeal answers are especially questionable when there is a group of metals involved, and a different path is proposed for each of them., yet they are often packed closely together. (p. 132) It appears that silver may also be produced by microbes. I took a photo of a rock at the Colorado School of Mines museum. The silver deposit in the rock is shaped like deposits produced by lichens or other microbes. That would be consistent with Ehrlich's and Southam's findings regarding gold deposits and microbes. Probably the high pressures (up to 265 atmospheres) and temperatures (up to 650 F) deep within the earth provide added energy that helps cause such reactions, as Gold believes, although he says that the cost to do studies at such pressures and temperatures is rather prohibitive. These pressures also allow water to be liquid at temperatures far exceeding the boiling point, and far exceeding 451 degrees F, which is the temperature at which a match will cause a piece of paper to catch on fire. Such a liquid or flow state appears to be essential for life, whereas temperatures and pressures may vary widely. Gold also says: It is generally believed that microbes can build concentrated deposits of a wide variety of minerals. (ibid., p. 138, citing Barry S.C. Leadbeater and Robert Riding, eds. Biomineralization in Lower Plants and Animals.", Clarendon, Oxford, England, p. 4; also Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Life? Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 1995. Here are a few more examples of the hundreds of other mineral deposits that the evidence indicates were formed by microbes:
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Magnetite; phosphates; carbonates; sulfates; metal sulfides (pyrite, galena [lead sulfide]); quartz; clay; graphite; etc., copper ores, iron ore, vanadium, nickel, etc. Natural gas, hydrocarbons, and petroleum. Anna M. Martini and coworkers at the University of Michigan and Martin Schoell of Chevron studied deposits of methane in the Antrim shale along the northern margin of the Michigan basin at depths of less than 600 meters and found evidence that significant volumes of bacterial gas were generated, supplementing previous findings that methane of bacterial origin is "ubiquitous in marine and fresh water sediments," though mainly at depths of several kilometres in basins that had high sedimentation rates. Anna M. Martini, et al., "Microbial generation of economic accumulations of methane within a shallow organic-rich shale," (Nature, Vol. 383, 155-158, Sept. 12, 1996). The gases from the Antrim shale vary from pure methane to approximately 5% hydrocarbons with two or more carbon atoms. The authors conclude: Non-conventional gas resources, such as coal beds and organic rich shales have largely been attributed to thermogenic (i.e. non-microbial) processes, yet they may contain far more microbial gas than previously believed (ibid., p. 157). (that is, microbes produce a lot of methane and some longer chain hydrocarbons)
RADIOACTIVITY.
Scientists have found bacteria that can withstand lethal levels of radioactivity. One example is a bacterium that can support ten million roentgens (x-ray units of measure) for eight hours, or 20,000 times the mortal dose for humans of 500 roentgens. This bacterium, of the Pseudomonas type, was discovered in 1958 in Los Alamos in the water of a nuclear reactor. "It liked the medium so much that it reproduced every twenty minutes." (Kervran, Swan House Pub., p. 111). In a reactor in Lucas Heights, Australia, there were two million bacteria per cubic cm. However, only 1,000 of these bacteria were left when the heavy water came out of the reactor. Micrococcus radiodurans resists 3,000 times the mortal dose for mammals (ibid., p. 113). A research study showed that radioactive mercury 203 diminished much more rapidly than expected due to the action of bacteria. Radioactive mercury 203 has a half life of 46 days. However, Magos and coworkers showed that after a period of 16 hours of normal degradation there was thereafter a much more rapid disappearance of mercury 203 which was very great at 48 hours. The researchers reasoned that microbes might have caused the excess diminution because the great increase only occurred after an "incubation" period of about 16 hours. (Kervran, Beekman Pub., pp. 78-79; L. Magos, Tuffrey and T.W. Clarkson, "Volatilization of Mercury by Bacteria," Brit. J. Ind. Med., Oct. 1964, pp. 294-98). Kervran notes that including toluene or penicillin in the medium prevents any excess diminution of mercury, and that the term "volatilization" that was assumed by the researchers to explain the diminution is unlikely given that mercury boils at 360 degrees C and its vapor pressure is very low at even at 40 to 50 degrees C, whereas the experiments were conducted at 20 degrees C (68 F). Also, certain bacteria were very active in the media (Kervran, Beekman Pub. pp. 78-81; Swan House Pub., 111-113). The fact that bacteria can withstand enormous temperatures, pressures, and levels of radioactivity makes it more probable that bacteria may be found in comparable conditions on other planets, meteorites, comets, and moons, thus supporting the conclusions of some scientists that microbes were found on rocks from Mars, the Allende meteorite that fell in Mexico in 1967, and rocks from the moon, as Thomas Gold asserts. Actually, the eminent Fred Hoyle long ago advanced the position that microbes live in such conditions and may be transported to other bodies by comets, etc. A microscopic photo was taken of apparent bacteria in the Allende meteorite in Mexico. To be continued
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Earl Staelin
WATER ON MARS?
By Wal Thornhill
Planetary scientists are busy looking for evidence of water on Mars in support of plans to send robotic and, eventually, manned missions to the red planet. Water is a key ingredient in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Some scientists speculate that life may have once existed on Mars because a few massive channels there suggest floods of copious liquid surface water in the planet's dim past. Also, the possibility of life is suggested by the presence of carbon dioxide as a major constituent of the thin atmosphere. The scientific community has shifted its earlier view of Mars dramatically. Instead of stories about the cold desert planet, the popular press now prints headlines such as: Flood Carves Instant Grand Canyon. The situation is ripe for seeing only what is already believed. This bias shows in the language when channels are identified unequivocally as fluvial (carved by flowing water) and of late Noachian age (between 3.5 and 3.7 billion years old), the very name invoking images of a universal flood. The thesis presented on this website tells a completely different history of Mars, based upon the electrical nature of the solar system and recent chaotic orbital behavior. It may seem outrageous to propose a completely different Mars about 10,000 years ago, instead of 3,500 million years ago in the conventional story. However, the dating techniques used by geologists rely on a belief in fictional and endlessly adjustable planetary evolution stories a different story for each planet. These stories have proven to be totally non-predictive. Good science requires accounting for as much of the relevant evidence as possible. Instead of working forward from a set of beliefs about the past, we should first assemble all the data we can, including that from the stories told by ancient people about the behavior of objects they saw in the sky. A forensic method can glean useful information from these archaic stories, rituals, and art that can help distinguish between alternative explanations for present conditions. The results of this forensic research by a very few adventurous scholars are unequivocal, unexpected and disturbing. If we could see it, our prehistoric sky would stupefy us with its unfamiliarity. Mars and Venus moved close to the Earth and met in apparent combat wielding thunderbolts. The spectacular patterns of interplanetary lightning were commemorated globally in petroglyphs, monumental works and cultural traditions. Our prehistoric ancestors remembered the Earth's encounters with a furious Mars, "the god of war," as the archetypal "doomsday." That memory survives to this day in our cultures and religions, its true meaning almost universally unrecognized. We do not want to know that our beautiful Earth can be unsafe. We accept palaeontologists' stories about global extinction events provided they happened in the dim and distant past. Modern doomsayers, as if tuned into the ancient fears, try to arouse us by stories of imminent impacts. But those stories are based on the geologists' misunderstanding of impacts. Global devastation requires an encounter between planets, not puny asteroid impacts. The evidence for planetary electrical encounters is sufficiently detailed and extensive to fill several forthcoming books. Being a small body, Mars suffered terribly in its planetary electrical exchanges. It lost most of its atmosphere in the process and gained a little in return. So present day measures of water and carbon dioxide on Mars do not represent billions of years of evolution. Indeed, the dominant constituents of its atmosphere, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, could have been predicted from the global accounts of the entanglement of Mars with the distended atmosphere of Venus. Also, it has been known since the first
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space probes descended into the infernal atmosphere of Venus that the measurements of isotopic ratios in its atmospheric gases contradict the standard evolutionary model of planet formation. The reason is that interplanetary discharges are powerful enough to cause nuclear transformations. In particular, they are copious generators of neutrons. So the anomalously high levels of the heavy isotopes of carbon (13C), nitrogen (15N) and hydrogen 2H, in the Martian atmosphere may be understood simply as due to neutron capture in the gases stretching between Mars and Venus during one of their celebrated battles. So, what are we to make of the orthodox dating of the channels on Mars to almost 4 billion years ago? Relative dating of surface features relies upon comparisons of crater counts on the surfaces of Mars and other bodies. Radioactive clocks are then used to pin down the age of surface rocks. We have for that purpose rock samples from the Moon and a small number of meteorites identified as originating from Mars. But if the initial states of the rocks are unknown and the clocks can be upset by energetic electrical discharges, geologists are left with little else to date the surface features of Mars other than to count craters. And that is a method based on two crucial and erroneous assumptions: The first assumption is that the solar system has run like clockwork for 5 billion years. That has allowed a fictitious early history to be written about planets being hit by leftovers from their afterbirth. The impacts had to be late enough that the planets could record them on a solid surface, so it is called the "late heavy bombardment." Crater statistics led to a need for another episode, called the "post late heavy bombardment." This "history" is a complex fiction because (1) the "accretion by impact" model of planet development has not been shown to work; (2) the source of objects responsible for the cratering record observed on solar system bodies remains an unsolved problem. (The "Oort cloud" of comets is postulated as one source of ammunition for pockmarking planets. However, the number of comets seen does not support the existence of such hypothetical "builder's rubble" of the solar system. Nor does the theory make any sense.); and (3) random impacts do not explain either the detailed pattern of cratering nor the heavily cratered southern hemisphere and much smoother northern hemisphere of Mars. The second assumption is that planetary craters are caused by the impacts of comets and asteroids. This assumption is clung to in the face of contradictory evidence. Researchers have admitted that it has not been possible to reproduce the features of most planetary craters with either impacts or explosions. So it is simply assumed that the craters are a result of impacts, and their features are used in an attempt to understand impact cratering! That is circular thinking, not science. So what can be said of water on Mars in its earlier history? In the real story of Mars, the god of war, its pre-battle surface environment was likely to have been much more benign and Earth- like than it is today. On that basis I predict there was liquid water on the surface of Mars within the time of modern homo sapiens and that there is a good chance of finding fossils of complex life forms on Mars. Keeping this in mind, let us look critically at this report from the Smithsonian researchers:
Large Former Lake, Catastrophic Flood Identified on Mars

June 20, 2002 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Geologists at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum have discovered a large former lake in the highlands of Mars that would cover an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined, and which overflowed to carve one of that planet's largest valleys. The findings will appear in the June 21 issue of the journal Science. The flood channel, Ma'adim Vallis, is more than 550 miles long and up to 6,900 feet deep, making it larger than Earth's Grand Canyon.
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"Imagine more than five times the volume of water in the Great Lakes being released in a single flood, and you'll have a sense of the scale of this event," said Ross Irwin, a geologist in the museum's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) and the paper's lead author. Mars is now a cold desert planet but its many dry valleys could indicate that water once flowed on its surface. Recent results from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft have found evidence of water trapped in the near surface of the polar regions. The size of this lake -- 1,400 miles long -- suggests Mars was warmer and wetter than previously thought," said Robert Craddock, a CEPS geologist and co-author of the paper. Former lakes are considered the most likely places to preserve the record of any past Martian life. Calm water would allow sediments to be deposited slowly, preventing small organisms from being destroyed. The source of water to carve the flood channel had long been a mystery to scientists, who had known very little about Mars' topography prior to the Mars Global Surveyor mission, which has been orbiting Mars since 1997. Detailed elevation data from the Mars Global Surveyor shows the large valley originated nearly full-size at a ridge, much like the spillway of a dam. Late in the lake's history, rising water levels overflowed the lake basin rim, releasing the huge flood as the river cut into this former dividing ridge. What remained was "some of the best geological evidence for a lake found to date on Mars, including clear indications of the former shoreline," Irwin says. Two other smaller lake basins were identified in the region by paper co-author Alan Howard, a geologist at the University of Virginia. All three lakes shared the same water level prior to the flood, indicating the possibility of an ancient water table and suggesting the locations of other dry lake basins on Mars. Such information could be important in determining where to land robotic probes in coming years. CEPS is the scientific research unit within the Collections and Research Department of the National Air and Space Museum. CEPS performs original research and outreach activities on topics covering planetary science, terrestrial geophysics, and the remote sensing of environmental change. END OF REPORT Comment: The geologists have not "discovered" a lake on Mars in the real sense of the word. They have discovered a cutoff level of valley networks, based on topographical maps derived from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data. There appears to be an "abrupt transition from bedrock to less resistant sedimentary materials" at the 1100-metre contour. So this "shoreline" need only be reflecting the different response of the surface material to whatever erosive force shaped the area. The major problem faced by geologists trying to explain huge valleys on dry and freezing Mars is to find a prodigious source of liquid water. With few signs of feeder streams or catchment areas, the various proposals have all required an underground source of water with unexplained episodes of heating. This paper is the first detailed proposal for a large surface reservoir of liquid water, and it requires a completely different atmospheric and temperature regime on Mars from that found today. For that reason, geologists push the event back into some imagined past epoch, called the "Noachian" era, ignoring the fact that the channels look new. It is surely premature to declare that a former lake has been discovered on the basis of a "shoreline" and the identification of a single channel, Ma'adim Vallis, as an overflow channel that was carved by a catastrophic flood from that putative lake. An overflow of such magnitude over sedimentary material would usually be expected to produce a braided stream of many channels. This is particularly so given the cratered terrain, where crater ramparts should divert the flood. Instead of that, Ma'adim Vallis is noteworthy for the way it breaches crater walls as if they never existed. Even more damaging for the
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water erosion story is the fact that the channel bed itself does not show the forms expected of flowing water! Shown here in greater detail is Ma'adim Vallis, the channel picked out in blue in the earlier picture. It is about 900 km long and varies in width from about 8 km to some 25 km near the mouth. Note that the flood is said to have originated at the bottom of the picture, where the lake is supposed to have breached an ancient crater rim. The expectation would be that the channel would be largest there but that is not the case. In fact it widens and deepens "downstream." The morphology of Ma'adim Vallis is precisely that of a sinuous rille. See also 'Mars and the Grand Canyon.' at Ma'adim Vallis was formed by surface lightning, streaking across Mars toward Gusev Crater. Gusev crater is the 150 km diameter crater at the top of the valley. This channel is supposed to be incredibly old -- 3,500 million years! Yet it looks as if it was carved yesterday. If the craters are formed in the same flurry of electrical discharge activity across this hemisphere of Mars then the large crater seen straddling the channel may have been formed shortly before the rille was carved through it by the surface discharge. Full article with photos of Martian rilles and laboratory experiments can be found at: Cathode arcs focus on local sharp high points. Having formed a crater, the tendency is then for the arc to jump to the rim of the new crater. By this means, continuous channels, composed of overlapping circular craters, may be cut into a surface. The edges of such a channel have a characteristic "cookie cutter" or scalloped appearance. This effect can be seen in the Ma'adim Vallis tributaries at lower center and top center in the picture. A small crater centered on the rim of a large crater is seen at a glance in images of any cratered planetary surface. It is an observation that impacts cannot explain. The two dissected craters at the entrance point of Ma'adim Vallis to Gusev crater show this hierarchical effect in relation to the Gusev crater. So, what is the story of the formation of Ma'adim Vallis? An arc cutting Gusev crater will sap electrons from the surrounding terrain by creating a strong radial electric field that begins to rip electrons from the solid surface. When breakdown begins, a lightning bolt tears across the surface, blasting soil and rock to either side of its sinuous path. A large proportion of the excavated material is impelled electrostatically to follow the main discharge toward space. Pieces not pulled into space would fall back in a more or less random scattering all over Mars. That explains why there is little evidence of deposition inside Gusev Crater from a channel that is larger than the Grand Canyon. It is also the reason why every Mars lander has returned a vista of rubble that extends to the horizon. Mars has many giant channels like Ma'adim Vallis. One of the mysteries of these channels is the prevalence of transverse ridges, or so-called "sand dunes." On a planet with practically no atmosphere that description seems far-fetched. Here we show an excellent example from the floor of the 700 km long Nirgal Vallis. On another Martial rille, Nirgal Vallis, the inner channel is the path followed by the lightning discharge and is somewhat more sinuous than the excavated channel. The floor of the main channel is crisscrossed with lines conventionally interpreted as "dunes". These "dunes" turn the bend to follow the inner channel. Wind would not be expected to do that. The "exploding wire" experiment is deemed to be the closest thing to real lightning achievable in the laboratory. A thin wire is suspended and a powerful electric discharge sent through it. The wire is instantly vaporized and coronal filaments radiate into the air from the plasma discharge channel. It is the radial discharges of the corona that provide the clue to the origin of the "sand dunes" on Mars. It is well known that lightning passing through dry sand will form crumbly, glassy tubes of welded sand, known as fulgurites. It seems likely that the sand dunes in the Martian valleys are ridges of glass! They were formed by a corona discharge from the main lightning stroke.
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Photo of exploding wire experiment at. Courtesy of Ed Bondarenko, Telstra Labs, Melbourne, Australia. The width of the Martian channel seems to be influenced by the width of the corona and depth of the discharge, which in turn is dependent on the conductivity and nature of the near-surface rock. [Photo caption] A "gully" in Gorgonum Chaos. The image is about 3 km square. Notice that a little liquid seems to have seeped from a stratum near the top of the south-facing channel wall. A narrow lightning stroke at depth produces a V-shaped explosion channel. A broad corona in poorly conducting soil seems to produce a flatter floored channel. There are a few examples where a little water seems to have trickled down channel walls from a near- surface layer. That may be misleading because it could be an artifact of the electrical discharge, which seems to introduce an asymmetry in the pattern of erosion in opposite walls. See Gorgonum Chasma and also the asymmetric erosion of the north and south walls of Valles Marineris. So if the huge channels on Mars were not carved by catastrophic floods in the remote past, what are the chances of finding subsurface water on Mars now? Although the giant channels on Mars were not carved by water, there is better evidence, apart from the small seepage channels, that Mars had more water in the past. It comes from the peculiar appearance of some Martian craters, where mud seems to have flowed away from the crater's rim. It is not the sort of thing that can be explained by an explosive impact. However, it is expected from an electric arc impinging on a moist anode surface. In the experiment shown here, an arc from a suspended cathode has struck a moist clay anode, representing the Martian surface. Unlike the jumping cathode arc, the anode arc "sticks" to the spot and rotates to form a circular scar, while water comes to the clay surface and flows gently away from the rim of the scar. [photo caption] An arc striking a moist clay anode. The clay has become quite wet surrounding the arc scar. Experiment courtesy of Rod Browitt. [photo caption] Here is an example from Mars. The larger, unnamed crater is 10 km across. Notice the rotary terracing effects of the spinning arc in the crater floor and the tendency in large craters to leave a central peak relatively untouched. An impact cannot explain these features, nor the lack of damage caused by one crater to the other. Ballistic emplacement of the ejecta has been ruled out by geologists. These "rampart" craters are widely distributed on Mars, which indicates a former "moist" environment over the entire planet. Recently, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been measuring neutrons from the atomic debris caused by cosmic rays smashing atoms as they penetrate the Martian crust. From the neutron energies it is possible to determine the presence and rough depth of hydrogen atoms beneath the surface. The assumption is made that any hydrogen signal is due to subsurface mineral-bound water. In the diagram below, the blue areas returned the stronger hydrogen signals. As expected from the (as yet untold) recent history of Mars, the south Polar Regions have the highest abundance. There is a caution to be added however. As a report in Science* noted, "The hydrogen signature extends willy-nilly beyond the lander targets across any number of geologic terrains." The regions are "very hard to reconcile with what we know about geology or topography," says planetary scientist James Bell of Cornell University. "They don't fit the distribution of particular rock types, rock abundance, dust, or even atmospheric water vapor, notes planetary scientist Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, Boulder." Plasma arcs are the most efficient means known for implanting ions into a solid surface. That could account for the lack of correlation with the geology. The problem facing NASA may well be that the hydrogen signature in the lower latitudes is mainly from implanted hydrogen ions and not from water.
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Summing up: With the available evidence and some insights into the recent history of the solar system it is possible to confidently answer some of the questions about Mars: * YES, there was some water, and probably life too, on Mars in the recent past. However, the water was mostly stripped off along with the atmosphere. There is abundant evidence of catastrophic winds, electrical erosion and hemispheric differences arising from that process. * The carbon dioxide "ice caps" and remnant atmosphere are from an exogenous source - Venus. * And NO, the giant channels on Mars cannot be used as evidence of a "Noachian" flood time on early Mars. When the history of Mars is finally told, the irony in the use of that name will become clear. In an editorial, "Where's the sparkle?" in New Scientist 8 June 2002, NASA is accused of having run out of things to say. The story of water on Mars has been heard too many times, even though there was some new information. It "only served to strengthen the cynical view of NASA as an agency obsessed with spin and devoid of new ideas and goals." But to have really new ideas and goals requires new people and NASA is firmly in the grip of "old" experts. As Max Plank wrote ruefully: An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning.** Meanwhile, NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn is due to arrive there in 2004. Be prepared for some BIG surprises, particularly concerning Saturn's giant moon, Titan. You see, the primordial and greatest god of old was Saturn, not the Sun. Titan is a very close relative of the Earth, Mars and Venus. Sorry NASA, life's too short to wait for you! *Science 2002 June 14; 296: 1962 ** Max Planck, (1858-1947) from Scientific Autobiography, 1949. (c) Wal Thornhill 2002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 6 (September 30, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: A SPECULATIVE ENTERPRISE MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (2) MEMO TO EARL STAELIN
Mel Acheson Earl Staelin Wal Thornhill
A SPECULATIVE ENTERPRISE
By Mel Acheson Science doesn't have much to do with truth, at least not the absolute, certain kind. Science is more about selecting sets of data, thinking up possible explanations for those sets of data, and testing deductions from those explanations against more data. It's methodical problem-solving, really. One problem almost always leads to a dozen more, and eventually you come up with data that demolishes your pet theory. But that's what's called progress. Truth in science is provisional, which is not to be confused with relativism. Scientists know all too well that truth isn't relative because their chief -- or at least most memorable-experiences with chasing after it are when it turns around and bites them. Relativism is just another kind of absolutism, an absolutism with a negative sign. The biggest problem with science -- or, rather, with scientists -- arises when they become complacent or proud and forget their roots in provisionality. They imagine their pet theory is true for sure, and they compete with the churches to be the sole path to divine revelation. But that only transforms science into a pseudoreligion. Science is mostly about testing. Sure, thinking up a theory that hangs together and fits what facts you've dug up is not easy. And digging up more facts that fit can wear you out. But that's only verification and really proves nothing. Every meaningful intellectual endeavor does that. You can send your results off to engineering and hope they sell enough widgets with it to pay for your next test. Verification only tells you where your theory works. But you want to make progress. You want to discover something new. That means you need to find the limits of the theory. You need failure. Phlogiston was a good idea. It brought chemistry out of the dark age of alchemy, which was actually pretty successful compared to what preceded it. But one day Joe Priestly was playing around with his chemistry set, and he produced some oxygen. Most people recognized that was the end of phlogiston and the beginning of atomic theory. Priestly was hailed as the discoverer of oxygen, but he would have nothing to do with it. He died insisting he had discovered "dephlogisticated air". Provisional truth handed him the failure he needed, but he didn't know what to do with it. He hung on to the old theory and missed the opportunity to invent a new one. The physical sciences today are in much the same position. There's been a gradual accumulation of evidence from the late 1800s to the space age, and a blizzard of it since the space age, that's threatening
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to bury all currently accepted theories. That evidence points to electrically active plasma as the biggest new kid in the universe. No popular theory even recognizes its existence. Some use the word plasma, but they're not talking electricity. The few guys on the fringes who discovered and played around with the real plasma warned their buddies that the real stuff doesn't act the way theories say it should. That can only mean one thing: The theories gotta go. And this is rather serious, considering that the theories to be trashed are gravity, relativity, the Big Bang, stellar evolution, plate tectonics, and every theory that rubs shoulders with them. Probably atomic theory and quantum mechanics can't survive. It will likely reach out to strangle evolution in biology and raise hell in history and archeology. Because, you see, practically everything in the universe is plasma, except for the surfaces of rocky planets like the Earth. And even there we may be fooling ourselves because we've grown accustomed to seeing what we believe, which is not plasma. Contrary to the popular slogan "nothing succeeds like success", in science "nothing succeeds like failure." And, conversely, nothing fails like success. The success of conventional theories in producing the technology of the space age has led to complacency about scientific methods. Instead of seeking out facts that contradict the theories and going back to the drawing boards to dream up new ones, modern scientists have hunkered down to protect their pet theories with ad hoc amendments and fudged tests and ignored facts. They've apotheosized their theories into scientisms. Julian Jaynes describes the situation in the final pages of The Origin of Consciousness... : And they share with religions many of their most obvious characteristics: a rational splendor that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism, a series of canonical texts which are somehow outside the usual arena of scientific criticism, certain gestures of idea and rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment. In return the adherent receives what the religions had once given him more universally: a world view, a hierarchy of importances, and an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in short, a total explanation of man. And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view. Speculation, which is another word for thinking, is where theories come from. Testing only selects among the competitors. One effect of scientism is the suppression of speculation. After all, if you've got the real thing, why waste time looking at alternatives. Conspiring with scientism is centralization of funding in government sources. Funding seeks success, and most speculations will fail. Scientific journals today don't publish speculations. The myriad controversies in scientific circles are in the nature of arguing over variations of lightness in the one accepted hue. Without speculation, testing becomes self- congratulation. Modern science is suffocating for lack of bold new speculations. And this seems to be the bottom line: Engineers are using the successful theories of the past to build spacecraft that boldly go where no man has gone before. But scientists have lost their nerve. We need new theories to boldly go where no thought has gone before. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
MICROBES IN GEOLOGY (2)

By Earl Staelin Part 2: How do microbes concentrate minerals to levels vastly exceeding the surrounding medium? The theory of biological transmutations.
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The next question, is HOW DO microbes concentrate minerals to levels much higher than the medium in which they live? Do they make limestone out of sandstone or mud containing mostly silica and little calcium? How do they concentrate gold up to 100 million times the surrounding medium? How do they concentrate manganese, iron, magnesium, etc.? Where do the elements that dominate the crust of the earth come from, since they were apparently not present during the pre-Cambrian era? Actually, most prominent scientists often admit that they do not yet understand how microbes concentrate minerals and elements to such a high degree. In this uncertainty I believe that it is wise to keep an open mind, and to be willing to investigate new theories that may explain such puzzling phenomena. One expert who devoted a great deal of attention to the question of how microbes or living organisms concentrate elements was a French biologist named Louis Kervran, whose exceptional work I believe is worth careful examination. After many years of investigation he published a theory in 1960 which he called biological transmutations. His theory contends that living organisms are actually able to transmute one element to another. He concluded that they do this through a catalytic effect caused by enzymes and hormones, and by several routes -- such as by combining two elements, by splitting an element, or by the movement of a proton and neutron from one atom to another atom within a molecule. He published meticulous experiments that supported his position. In 1975 he was nominated for and nearly won the Nobel Prize for his work. However, he died in 1983 at the age of 82, and therefore under the rules for the Nobel, could no longer receive it. A number of his findings and one of his books dealt primarily with geology. Let's see how he proved his theory as applied to the problem of the formation of limestone, and the problem of the "concentration" of minerals. Kervran performed studies that showed an unsuspected formation of limestone in the sandstone monuments in Ankhor, Cambodia, including Ankhor Wat. Kervran, as a high government official in France, had access to a multidisciplinary team of experts. The original pink sandstone at Ankhor Wat contains substantial quantities of silica in the form of quartz and feldspar, but little calcium. However, some portions were found to be infected with bacteria. The infected sandstone appeared to be turning into limestone. Here are some of their research findings based upon 120 samples: SiO2 CaO Normal stone 63.0% 1.40% Deteriorated stone 35.8 17.34 (Angkor Wat, external facing; Kervran, Beekman Pub, pp. 48-49) Thus, as silica disappears, calcium appears, the decrease in silica from 63 to 36 being equivalent to the increase in calcium from 1.4 to 17.34. As Kervran shows, if silica can combine with carbon at the level of the nucleus, then calcium could be formed. In other words: Si28 + C12 = Ca40. Kervran's group analyzed the rainwater on the monument to test whether this increase in calcium had come from rainwater, which trickled down the lower west face of the monument, and found that it did not because the calcium ions in rainwater and in the water dripping from the lower west face were the same. Thus, the rain in washing over the facade had not taken away any calcium. Kervran also analyzed the magnesium and potassium in the stone, which could also be transmuted into calcium based upon his previous studies. However, he found that MgO in normal stone was 2.50%, and in deteriorated stone was 2.64%, and the K2O was 1.2% in both normal and deteriorated stone, so the calcium "could not have come from these two minerals", and only the silica had significantly decreased. An investigation was made of the micro-organisms present on the monument. Out of 120 samples taken, 83 contained actinomycetes, all of which were in the deteriorated stone, whereas there was none in the samples from the healthy stone. The authors reported identification of seven species of actinomycetes, all belonging to the genus Streptomyces (from one of which streptomycin is produced). 'We have observed these actinomycetes to be much more abundant in the stones which showed most deterioration ... The almost constant presence of these microorganisms in lesions of the stones permits the view that they have an important role in the process of deterioration.'
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In a paper, published by the (French) Academy of Sciences, it is established that there is a marked increase in calcium (varying at 1158% [i.e. increased nearly 12-fold] without any detectable amount of the element being supplied externally by water. On the other hand, the silica alone decreases in considerable proportion. This change in the siliceous stone and the accompanying increase of lime is linked to the presence of micro-organisms. If instead of giving relative values for SiO2 and CaO we only consider absolute weight variations of Si and Ca, we find they are almost in equilibrium at 9.8 1.5 (the variation is because there is no Si = Ca, but Si + C = Ca). This occurs because Si (28) + C (12) = Ca (40). (Complete details may be found in Proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences (Book 258, Section 13, pp. 6573-75, 6/29/64) and in the 1965 French edition of Kervran's Biological Transmutations.) Limestone has variable amounts of magnesium in it, which may be explained by Kervran's discovery that microbes can transmute calcium into magnesium by taking oxygen from it (Ca - O = Mg). The theory of biological transmutations appears to contradict a basic theory in chemistry proposed 200 years ago by Lavoisier that atoms or elements cannot be combined or split to make other elements. Later it was shown that such changes could occur at very high energies, although none of those experiments involved living organisms. Because Kervran's theory is based upon many reproducible experiments, we should heed the advice of the great French physician, Claude Bernard, who said: When one is confronted with a fact which is in opposition with a prevalent theory, one must accept this fact and abandon the theory, even though the latter, supported by great men, may be generally subscribed to. (Kervran, Swan House Pub. Co., p. 154) Louie de Broglie, Nobel Prize laureate in physics said: It is premature to reduce the vital (i.e. living) processes to the quite insufficiently developed conceptions of 19th and even 20th century physics and chemistry. (Kervran, supra, p. 1). Kervran first published his theory and the evidence in 1960. The response in France by medical doctors and scientists was highly favorable. For example, M. Camberfort, Professor of Geotechnics, in 1974 said: I have spoken of your work in my most recent book, because I consider that your hypotheses, largely confirmed in certain cases, are the only ones susceptible of explaining a number of facts noted by geologists, and so far explained (in geological circles) by fairy tales and old wives' tales. Debra S. Stakes, a geochemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, said: Most geological processes at their more fundamental stages could be biologically mediated, which challenges our models for inorganic thermodynamics, for driving reactions. (Broad, ibid.) General relativity and quantum mechanics are two systems that are to some extent mutually inconsistent, and each of them has difficulty explaining certain phenomena, implying that both may be inadequate in some key respects. Kervran believes that transmutations fall in the class of forces in physics called "weak nuclear reactions". Some scientists suspect that the dipole character of the electrical force or electromagnetic force may play a significant role in the explanation. The weak nuclear force (electro-weak force) of the atom was related to the electromagnetic force in the 1960's by 1979 Nobel Laureates in physics, Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Lee Glashow and Abdus Salam. Kervran was convinced that a better understanding of the electro- weak force would probably explain biological transmutations. If a successful
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electrical explanation can be found for biological transmutations it would move science closer to the grand unified theory that scientists seek, and would better satisfy the Occam's razor principle: Simpler is better. Most scientists do not have an informed opinion about biological transmutations because they either have not heard of it, or have not investigated it, despite significant published literature proving that biological transmutations occur. In fact, I one well-known biologist told me he had never heard of biological transmutations. Usually scientists try to explain their unexpected and anomalous results by saying that the microbes "concentrate", or "preferentially fix" minerals, or that the minerals "migrate". However, as Kervran has said: (T)hose who employ (such) terms have never measured the total content of the element in question-neither in the experimental jar nor in the soil -- before or after cultivation. (Kervran, Swan House, pp. 4-5). Often these scientists admit that they don't understand how microbes concentrate minerals. As shown, Kervran provides strong empirical evidence that limestone may be formed from sandstone or silica through the action of several species of streptomyces (order of actinomycetes), which transmute silica into calcium. (Si + C = Ca). Biological transmutations might also explain the creation of geological formations of limestone from large deposits of fossils which often appear to have been buried originally in sand, gravel and clay, each of which contains a large amount of silica. Transmutations appear to require the presence of sufficient water in liquid form to sustain the bacteria. Biological organisms appear to be involved in the formation of chalk, such as the white cliffs of Dover in England, which like limestone, also consist of calcium carbonate. (Broad, ibid.) Many other anomalies consistent with transmutation occur in the biochemistry of calcium: 1. Americans consume more calcium and milk products than just about any country in the world, yet we have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis. (The Harvard study of 77,761 nurses found that persons with a high dietary calcium intake actually had 45% more hip fractures over 12 years than those with the lowest intake. (Diane Feskanich, Sc.D., et al. "Milk, Dietary Calcium, and Bone Fractures in Women: A 12-Year Prospective Study", Am. J. Pub. Health, 87:6; 992-997, June 1997). A 1994 study of elderly men and women in Sidney, Australia found that those with the highest milk product consumption had approximately double the risk of hip fracture compared to those with the lowest consumption, Cumming RG, Klineberg RJ, "Case-control study of risk factors for hip fractures in the elderly", Am. J. Epidemiol., 1994; 139:493- 50. 2. Rural Chinese do not consume milk products or take calcium supplements, and their average calcium intake was 544 mg. per day (approximately half that of the RDA in the U.S.). Among these Chinese women over age 50, the rate of bone fractures is about one fifth as high as in Western nations. (T. Colin Campbell, Hunshi Chen, Diet in Rural China, Lippincott/Williams & Wilkins, 1999; Hu, J-F, Zhao, X-H, Hia, J-B, Parpi, B., Campbell, T.C., "Dietary calcium and bone density among middle-aged and elderly women in China,", Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 1993; 58: 219-217). 3. Milking cows experience a daily "deficit" of calcium (and phosphorus) at such a great rate that in one year's time, its bones would be seriously depleted if it got its calcium from calcium. (Kervran, Swan House Pub., pp. 57, 67-68; A. Demolon and A. Marquet, Le Phosphore et la Vie, P.U.F. Pub., Paris 1949). However, if silica and magnesium (Mg + O = Ca) in the grass are considered as sources of calcium through transmutation, as shown by Kervran, there is no mystery and no deficit because grass contains large amounts of silica and magnesium. 4. Broken bones have been shown to heal much more quickly when a source of organic silica such as the herb horsetail is provided. (Kervran has excellent photos of x-rays showing rapid healing with horsetail, (Kervran, Swan House Pub., p. 137)
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5. Broken bones have been shown to heal much more quickly when foods high in calcium such as milk products are withheld. (E. Plisnier, Sauvez votre sante, Edit. P.I.C. Bruxelles, 1966; Kervran, Swan House Pub., pp. 145-146) 6. The oak tree "grows best in soils rich in silica, where lime may be totally absent, but the tree can have large amounts of calcium in its wood and bark (up to 60% lime in the ash)" (Kervran, Biological Transmutations, Beekman Press [hereinafter "BP"], 1972, p. 26). 7. Grass grows best on soil high in calcium, yet its ash contains large quantities of silica and magnesium but little calcium. However, it is not necessary to add magnesium to the soil, despite removal of much greater quantities of magnesium year after year than the soil could possibly have contained. Yet, when the soil becomes depleted in calcium, daisies spring up in the lawn, and daisies have an ash that is high in calcium, thus restoring the soil (Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Fecondite de la Terre, Edit. Les Triades. Paris, 1949 (reedit. 1960, avec preface de A. Louis). "When lime is lacking, silicon loving plants grow, and their ash is rich in lime" (Kervran, BP, p. 25). 8. The skeleton of a chicken just hatched has four times more calcium in it than was in the egg. The calcium did not come from the shell because on the 10th day the outer leaf separates from the shell enlarging the air chamber, and the calcium only increases from the 10th day to the 20th day. The outer leaf of the membrane inside the shell contains about .5% silica, however, and the inner leaf contains less (Kervran, Swan House Pub., pp. 46-47). 9. Kervran once tested a crab that was molting, and was a soft mass without a shell. It was placed in a container with a little seawater and by the second day its shell was fully formed, which weighs about 350 g. Seawater has only .042% calcium in it, so that the shell's calcium could not have come from the water. However, seawater has 5% magnesium salts, which could have produced the calcium: Mg + O Ca. (Kervran, Swan House Pub., p. 58) Dr. Charruyer, Chairman of the Department of Physics at the Medical School of Limoges, France mentioned to Kervran "...that he had found in primitive grounds geodes of calcite in slaty rocks which were very hard, compact, and absolutely impermeable. These rhomboidal forms of calcium carbonate can be very big and weight many kilos, but due to their impermeability, there is no possibility that they could have come by migration. They could only have had an endogenous origin in one of the components of the schists. In my opinion they could only have come from the reaction (Si + C = Ca) since C also comes from the schists in the reaction Si = C + O." (Kervran, Beekman, p. 73)
Despite these anomalies, chemists generally have never tested for the source of all the calcium. Instead they ASSUMED it was "concentrated" or "precipitated" from calcium already in the vicinity, despite general indications weighing against such assumption, and despite published evidence by Kervran and others proving that there was no adequate source of calcium and that other elements were the probable source. Let's look at the experiments that led Kervran to publish his theory of biological transmutations in 1960. The experiments arose from numerous unexplained carbon monoxide poisonings in acetylene torch welders going back 25 years (See Kervran, Beekman, pp. 17-23). In 1935 Kervran investigated for the French government the carbon monoxide poisoning death of an acetylene torch welder welding steel for the French government. After careful investigation of the air breathed by the welder no source of carbon monoxide could be found. In subsequent years Kervran investigated numerous other deaths of welders from C-O poisoning and no source of C-O was ever found. Finally, in 1955 Kervran again was called upon to investigate the deaths of three more welders by C-O poisoning. This time an extremely thorough investigation was performed involving numerous specialists from different fields over a period of four years. Again no source of carbon monoxide could be found. This finding is not surprising since the great heat of red-hot iron (or steel) should cause complete combustion of all carbon. Numerous tests were performed to consider all conventional explanations. Such C-O poisonings of welders and failure to find the a source of C-O were by no means confined to France. In England and especially Germany detailed studies were done to determine the cause of the C-
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O poisonings. Careful measurements of the air near red-hot welding operations were unable to find a trace of C-O (Kervran, BP, p. 20). Not long ago I talked with a retired former director of maintenance at the Gates Tire Co. in Denver, Colorado and he told me that they also had a problem with C-O poisoning among welders but had never been able to discover the source of C-O. He said the problem was solved once they supplied air to the welders through tubes from a source away from the welding itself. Based upon all the evidence Kervran finally concluded that nitrogen in the air when heated by red hot iron or steel had been transmuted in the body to carbon monoxide. Thus, N2 = CO, which involves the movement of one proton and one neutron from the nucleus of one nitrogen atom to the other, thereby changing one atom to carbon, and the other to oxygen. After over four years of painstaking research into the welders' C-O poisoning, Kervran published his results and theory of biological transmutations in 1960. The findings that led him to this conclusion were as follows: 1. No source of carbon monoxide was ever found. 2. Every surviving welder in the workplace was tested, and the blood of all tested high in carbon monoxide, some approaching a fatal level. 3. The helpers who worked nearby the welders but not in the immediate vicinity of the red hot steel were also tested. None of the helpers had elevated levels of carbon monoxide in their blood. 4. When helium was tested in place of nitrogen, the welders no longer got carbon monoxide poisoning. (Kervran, BP p. 21) 5. When the welders' air supply was provided through tubes from nearby air that was not exposed to the red hot metal, carbon- monoxide poisoning no longer occurred. 6. It was later determined that the iron must be heated to a deep red or hotter, or to a temperature of more than 400 C (752 F) (experiments on rabbits and humans; Kervran, 1964, BP, pp. 20-21; Swan House Pub., pp. 18-19). When the iron is bright red (considerably hotter) the effect is quick (Kervran, Swan House Pub., p. 19). 7. An argument that the carbon monoxide could have been produced as a result of increased oxygen pressure was disproved in 1963, showing that the production of C-O occurs independently of oxygen pressure. (Desoille, H. and Truffert, "Absence de correlation entre la pression de l'oxygene et l'oxyde de Carbone dans le sang," Arch. Mal. Prof., July, 1963.) Kervran reasoned from these facts as follows: The nitrogen molecule in air has two nitrogen atoms which are 1.12 Angstroms apart. The electrons circulate in a common orbit around both. The carbon monoxide molecule's nuclei are 1.09 Angstroms apart. One proton and one neutron move from one nitrogen atom over to the other nitrogen atom, changing one N atom into carbon and the other into oxygen. The electrons stay in the same orbit as the nuclei move slightly closer together. Kervran states that the first five protons in an atom (as in boron) are in an inner orbit (Kervran, BP, p. 102), while elements with more protons, such as carbon and nitrogen have additional protons in a larger orbit. Kervran states that it appears that the protons in this second orbit are not as tightly bound, requiring less energy to dislodge them. Kervran believes that a proton and neutron in the second orbit of one of the nitrogen atoms in a nitrogen molecule are energized and resonate with the nitrogen activated by the infrared wavelengths generated by the red hot iron and under the influence of an (as yet) unidentified catalyst, probably present in the lungs or blood, the proton and neutron move from one nitrogen atom to the other, changing nitrogen into carbon monoxide (whose spectral pattern has two peaks at 8 and 9 microns in the infrared) instead. The energy from iron at 1100 C to 1300 C resonates in the infrared at 6 to 8 microns. (Kervran, Beekman, p. 40). Thus, red hot iron and C-O have a common resonance at 8 microns in the infrared. Further evidence that a transmutation occurred is afforded by the fact that the C-O poisonings stopped completely once the welders were provided with air to breathe through tubes from a location away from the red hot iron. This revolutionary theory is supported by the fact that there is now sound evidence that numerous other biological transmutations take place in nature, many of which were verified by Kervran and other scientists.
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In urging you to keep an open mind, I will quote Alexis Carrel, eminent French surgeon and 1912 Nobel Prize winner, who wrote: The mind has a natural tendency to reject what does not come within the framework of the scientific expectations of our epoch. Scientists are men after all. They are impregnated with the prejudice of their class and times. They readily believe that what is not explainable in current theory does not exist.
MANGANESE AND IRON.

Another geological process investigated by Kervran involved a "black disease" on the cave walls and temples of Banteay Srei in Cambodia. The surface of the rocks becomes black and this black layer consists of 5% manganese (Mn), which causes the black color. But there is only .05% manganese in the stone (100X less). There is more Mn in the black surface layer than in the entire rock, so the Mn could not have come from the rock. However, an analysis of the pink sandstone revealed 5-15% iron (Fe). So the Fe could be the source of the Mn: Fe(56) - H(1) = Mn(55). So they tested to see if this was true, using actinomycetes and bacteria, which were set apart and cultured on FeSO(4). Mn was produced. (Kervran, HP, p. 92-94). In the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans manganese nodules are found, which are "fished" on a large scale. Many investigations have been done which show that bacteria are heavily involved in the production of manganese, including research by Henry Ehrlich. The conventional explanation is that the nodules are formed by bacteria which oxidize the Mn to allow it to fix itself onto the nodule. However, as Kervran says: ...no one has thought to make a systematic experiment without manganese, in ferrous solution. However, industrial studies demonstrated enrichment of the Mn in the presence of actinomycetes bacteria in ores poor in Mn but rich in Fe. (Kervran, Swan House Pub. p. 98). The proliferation and activity can be considerably increased by controlling the temperature and pH and by adding 0.1% peptone to the solution. Kervran observes that mangano-bacteria are found in significant quantities in all types of soil (e.g. 315,000- 255,000,000 per gram), along with other microbes. Iron ores normally contain 0-20% manganese, and vice versa. Kervran made a related study of a reverse reaction, or Mn to Fe. This was done in a Petri dish in which selected bacteria were cultured in a mineral solution to which a Mn powder is added. After a certain time (for incubation) a "rapid proliferation is established and the ferro-bacteria transmute the Mn into Fe." (Kervran, Swan House Pub., p. 98, see photo). To the objection that "nuclear" energies must be involved in such reactions, and that the reactions are thus impossible, Kervran points out that the basic nuclei for constructing the atom are not split. The binding energy between protons and neutrons in the "sub-nuclei" does not change; the only energy involved is that which either separates the two nuclei or draws them closer. He states: The studies which we have made show that only energies measured in keV are involved, whereas in nuclear physics energies are expressed in MeV, therefore a thousand times greater. (I would point out that 1MeV = 1.6 million ergs; therefore 1 erg = 625 billion electron-volts. These are therefore very low values, but they are applicable to a single atom; the energy of 1 MeV = 3.82 X 10^14 small calories.) In chemistry the bonding energies are usually electron-volts, sometimes even less than 1eV, which is 1000 times less than in the new science where we are establishing our first facts.
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An appendix in Low Energy Transmutations gives part of a study made by the physicist L. Romani, showing that a drawing nearer of nuclei of a molecule could explain the mechanism we have proposed, and that the energy needed to set it in motion is at the rate of keV. This confirms our findings. (Kervran, BP, p. 39). As he says however, the energy required to change N2 to C-O is only 112 eV. (Kervran, BP, p. 41), which may require some revision of our laws of thermodynamics as applied to living organisms. Kervran points out that considerably greater energy is needed for the greater change required for the combination of elements to make a third element, such as Si + C = Ca. It is suggested that experimenters test these energies. One interesting theory that ought to be investigated has been presented by Ralph Sansbury, who has reanalyzed tests of the speed of light and other tests and has done some of his own experiments which together suggest that light travels much faster than conventional theory, and that a modified understanding of electromagnetism may be needed to replace general and special relativity and quantum mechanics and to explain many phenomena that defy these theories. Wal Thornhill shares this opinion although he has different ideas about some of Sansbury's conclusions, and he accepts biological transmutations as a reality. Sansbury has presented his ideas in his book: Gravity, Magnetism and Light: Charge Polarization Inside Electrons and Atomic Nuclei, 1998, 128 pages, available on Internet at: http://users.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdf. Now, let's look at another remarkable experiment, this time with sodium and potassium. Some experiments strongly confirming a biological transmutation from sodium to potassium were performed by Hisatoli Komaki, a Japanese professor of science and director of a microbiology laboratory, who was later co-nominated for the Nobel Prize with Kervran. His replication of Kervran's work involved a rapid production of potassium from sodium by molds and yeast in just 72 hours. (Na23 + O16 = K39). He used several species of mold: aspergillus niger and penicillium chrysogenum, and two species of yeast, saccharomyces cerevisiae (spore-forming) and torulopsis utilis (non spore-forming). The experiment was performed using a sodium and bacteria solution and medium with and without .01 mg added potassium (Na23 + O16 = K39.) There was 0.4 mg of K in the flask and from the glass before the experiment. After 72 hours at 30 C (86 F) the K results were as follows: Cultured with K Cultured without K Species 5.35 mg. K 0.901 mg. K Aspergillus niger 10.27 1.049 Penicillium chrysogenum 15.84 1.749 Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer's yeast) 22.37 2.017 Torulopsis utilis (wild yeast) Thus, K increased from 0.41 mg up to a range of 5.35 to 22.37 mg (13X to 54X) in just 72 hours. A considerably smaller but still substantial increase in K occurred where no K was provided at the outset. The non-inoculated control flasks showed just 0.4 mg K at the end of the experiment, or no increase at all. (K, BP, pp. 42- 44). Detailed experiments supporting biological transmutations from sodium to potassium, including in humans, were previously performed and published by Kervran and are also detailed in his work. The fact that K production is greatly increased when a tiny amount of K (.01 mg.) is added at the start of the experiment is explained by research by Monod and Jacob, Nobel Prize winners in 1965. Kervran states: There is a specific gene for the enzyme which induces formation of potassium from sodium, but this gene is inactive if blocked by an inhibitory agent whose action may be canceled by a sufficient rate of K. Below this rate the inhibitor is active and blocks the gene, with the result that the enzyme is not synthesized (in man it is aldosterone that is synthesized). It is evident,
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therefore, that experiments in biological transmutations may not succeed with highly purified substances. (Kervran, Beekman, p. 44).
A similar finding by someone not familiar with the theory of biological transmutations is that Henry Ehrlich reported a rapid increase or "concentration" of manganese by microbes. However, he found that the accumulation (or production) of manganese was increased by up to 2,000 times more when a small amount of manganese (.1%) was added at the start of the experiment (Ehrlich, op. cit., p. 418). A number of experiments were performed by Kervran beginning in the 1930's in which he demonstrated a probable transmutation of sodium to potassium in oil derrick workers in the high heat of the Sahara desert. He showed marked imbalances in sodium and potassium and calorie consumption and loss during the hot summer months, in which workers consumed large amounts of sodium but excreted large amount of potassium and magnesium. Kervran suggests that the transmutation of Na23 + O16 = K39 absorbs significant body heat and that perspiration is inadequate to the task. Time will not allow me to discuss these studies in detail here but they are presented at length in Kervran's books (Kervran, BP., pp. 51-61; Swan House Pub., pp. 27-35). Pannos T. Pappas, physicist at the Technological Institute at Piraeus, Greece, performed research supporting the theory that a transmutation of sodium to potassium occurs within the cell. He discusses serious flaws in the conventional theory of the sodium- potassium pump in human physiology, and shows how a transmutation of sodium to potassium provides a much better explanation for the phenomena observed. (Pannos T. Pappas, "Electrically Induced Nuclear Fusion", Journal of New Energy Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 5-9, spring, 1998. The article also available at www.papimi.gr/eqoflif.htm.) Kervran and others have demonstrated transmutations of substantial quantities of various elements by living organisms within a few days. For example, these experiments can be easily performed on dried fruits, sprouting seeds, bacteria, and yeasts in various media. One plant, the tilandsia, commonly known as Spanish Moss (a Bromacea), will grow on copper fibres without roots or contact with the soil. Its ash contains no copper, but has 17% of iron oxides in addition to various other elements which could not have come from the rainwater supplied to the plant. (Ibid. p. 26). Kervran, who also discusses and has researched numerous other mineral changes in rock that seem explainable only by biological transmutations, states: I should say at once that changes in rock are due to microorganisms; fungi, often of the family aspergillacae and other moulds; microscopic algae; bacteria; actinomycetes such as streptomyces which live like bacteria but reproduce like fungi. In these phenomena there is therefore an interaction of living organisms followed by various chemical reactions between the elements set up by biological transmutation. (Ibid. p. 28) Another geological action based upon bacterial action is reflected in various salt deposits. Through a number of studies Kervran has verified that sodium may be transmuted to potassium (Na23 + O16 = K39), and to magnesium (Na23 +H1 = Mg24). Thus, the oldest salt deposits have the highest proportion of magnesium and potassium, and the most recent ones have the highest sodium content and relatively less potassium and magnesium. (Kervran, BP, pp. 56-59) I also suspect that lichens may perform some transmutations. Lichens are combinations of algae and fungi which break down rocks. I have seen in Texas and in Colorado limestone on which lichens are growing and bear the characteristic orange-red coloration of iron oxide, as though the lichens are making iron out of the calcium. This would make sense if the calcium combines with carbon, as Ca(44) + C(12) = Fe(56). And it might explain my friend's very heavy petrified rock with the grain of an oak tree assuming
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some of the Ca (which may be up to 60% in oak ash) may have "turned" into Fe. I believe it would be worth investigating these rocks for iron content and a possible transmutation.
Additional biological roles of microbes:

Kervran has discovered some biological transmutations involving elements that suggest a possible pathway for silification without introducing silica from outside. These involve the production of Si from C and O, or from N2. Leo says that Scurfield et al. (1974) "observed that silica particles often occur with starch grains or with polyphenolic material in the same cell, and suggested a causal relationship to be operative" (Leo, supra, p. 47). This is consistent with the idea that carbon and oxygen in the cell in the form of starch grains (carbohydrates) and polyphenolic material (hydrocarbons with oxygen) combine to form silica. (N2 C + O; C+O Si). Such transmutations occurring locally within the cell, each of them in a nano-space, seems more consistent with the preservation of microscopic cell structure that often occurs in silification and petrification, than if the silica came in from outside the dead tree cell to replace carbohydrates in the cell that are somehow driven out of the dead cell. Other more recent experiments using bacteria or yeasts to cause petrification have reported petrification within a period of about three years using wood soaked in the residue from making beer, and embedded in sand. Here the silica in sand may play a role mentioned above by Kervran of assisting the transmutation by overcoming an enzyme that otherwise would block the transmutation, as explained by Monod and Jacob. In conclusion, there is now extensive evidence that microbes are ubiquitous through the crust of the earth, and that they play a major role in a great many geological processes and formations. There is also excellent experimental evidence that microbes in numerous cases perform transmutations of elements so as to produce such formations. Most microbiologists are not aware of the theory, even though the evidence unmistakably favors the theory as the only reasonable explanation. However, biological transmutations is like the elephant in a room that no one will talk about because the theory appears to violate the laws of physics. Yet when consistently reproducible facts violate a theory, it is time to reexamine the theory. Microbiologists and geomicrobiologists do often admit that the phenomena they are describing defy an explanation, and they generally come up with speculative solutions, such as the theory that microbes "concentrate" minerals, or the minerals "migrate", and other unproven statements. In my opinion, these phenomena should be studied thoroughly with an open mind, and a concerted effort should be made to reexamine our theories of the atom to see if one might be devised that could explain the facts of transmutations as well as other natural phenomena. Earl Staelin
MEMO TO EARL STAELIN

Wal Thornhill The main thing to remember about biological mutations is that there is no physical explanation for the very successful quantum theory of matter. One of the quantum effects is "tunnelling" through a potential barrier. It is as if a car rolled down a hill and when confronted with a bigger hill, when it got to the bottom, it disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the bigger hill - as if a tunnel had magically and momentarily appeared. With the aid of Sansbury's model of an atom, we see that quantum states and quantum tunnelling are a result of electrostatic resonances between the charged particles that make up electrons, protons and neutrons. It is important to stress that the electrostatic force operates with near infinite speed, otherwise there would be no stable resonances. These resonances mean that the positive nuclear coulomb force is not a static field but instead an oscillating field. In that case, if two nuclei can be brought close together in a molecule, and a catalyst
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(radiation or a resonant atom) can provide a resonant electric field, then the coulomb force may be instantaneously attractive instead of repulsive and a nuclear transmutation effected (the magic tunnel through the hill). The difficulty we face in performing the same feat is because we use brute force and ignorance; we simply smash nuclei together sufficiently violently to overcome the coulomb force (go over the hill). Nature is far more subtle. There is a company called Black Light Power who have used (unwittingly it seems) resonant catalysis of hydrogen to drop the electron into an orbit below its normal ground state. Of course, the energy released is very high (in the UV, hence the name of the company) and is only one step removed from Louis Kervran's resonant tapping of nuclear energy. The principle has been shown industrially now, so it should not be too difficult to imagine the next step. The possibilities are mind boggling. See http://www.blacklightpower.com/process.shtml I agree with Ralph's model of matter, gravity and magnetism, but I take issue with his view of instantaneous electromagnetic radiation. In my view there is an ether, in the form of a plenum of neutrinos, and em radiation is simply an electrostatic disturbance in the ether. The characteristic velocity of the disturbance in that medium is c. As we know, other media have different characteristic velocities of propagation. My view of external influences of biological systems is aligned with Bruce Lipton and Rupert Sheldrake, but I have a model to explain it, based on resonant signalling between structured atomic systems. It works for ordered crystals, and all the way up to living creatures. Have you ever wondered how the slow nerve impulses in a top tennis player allow him/her to play shots that should be totally impossible? Our electromechanical view of living systems is woefully inadequate to explain anything like that. It seems there is such a thing as the bodymind, in which information is communicated nearinstantaneously throughout the body (and beyond), and stored nonlocally. We have all heard of organ transplant recipients who take on some of the characteristics of the dead donor. Who we are is more than meets the eye. Living systems are not restricted to simply rearranging electrons in molecules to exchange energy with the environment, they are able to resonantly restructure atomic nuclei as well. Kervran is right. This ability is at the very heart of the difference between living, organized matter, and nonliving, disorganized matter. When it comes to the philosophical question of what organizes this beautiful system, we are left to armwave about Sheldrake's morphic fields and the inherent intelligence of the universe. It leads to the idea that we are manifestations of some higher order in the universe. (c) Wal Thornhill 2002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 7 (Oct 31, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SPARKING IMAGINATION SERPENTS OF CREATION ABSORPTION LINES IN STELLAR SPECTRA
Mel Acheson Dave Talbott Don Scott
SPARKING IMAGINATION
By Mel Acheson The world of human experience is primarily one of plants, animals, air, water, and rocks. Oh, yes, there are those sparkles of light in the night sky, but for most of human history they have been practically insignificant. Only in the recent few centuries have we come to understand that those little sparks represent the overwhelming constituent of the universe. It's the world of our experience that's insignificant. And only in the recent few decades have we come to understand that the overwhelming constituent of the universe is composed almost entirely of plasma, a mixture of gas and electrical charges. We think of those charges as "particles" because we know from experience that pieces of rock are "parts" and tiny parts are "particles". When confronted with things smaller, our imaginations and our languages fail, and we merely repeat ourselves. Beneath the mathematical metaphors of atomic theory lies our experience with broken rock. It's not readily imaginable that electrical charges might be something other than specks of that experience. Having been confined to the Earth until recently in our history, we have had little experience with plasma. Lightning is about the sum of it, and that has not received much study. Lightning comes and goes in the blink of an eye, and if the eye is close enough to get a good look, it's likely the last thing that eye ever sees. A few theoreticians have developed models of plasma behavior derived from the assumption that specks of rock, sufficiently heated, become a special case of really hot air. A handful of scientists over the past century have found ways to experiment with low energy plasma. They claim that the theoreticians are seriously mistaken, that plasma does not behave as do specks of rock and hot air. But few people have taken notice. The overwhelming constituent of the universe is still of little significance in our practical experience, where the mechanical properties of rock particles and air temperatures predominate. And most astronomers are practical people. Although their object of study is the realm in which plasma predominates, their imaginations remain anchored to rocks, water, and air. It is, after all, human nature to try to explain an unfamiliar phenomenon by relating it to what is familiar, by adapting what is already known. On one hand, we are reluctant to admit ignorance. We prefer to repeat ourselves, to hide from the unknown under a blanket of dogma. On the other hand, our curiosity prods us to peek from under the blanket at what we can't imagine. Our recent technologically enhanced peeking with space probes has uncovered an eyeful of previously unimagined sights: axial beams and equatorial wheels emitting x-rays, invisible bubbles broadcasting
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radio noises, lightning-like filaments twisting across space. Our first response has been to adapt what we know about rocks and water and air. We've imagined these sights to be meteorological phenomena in the atmospheres of gravitating bodies, and we've described them in meteorological terms: stellar winds; magnetospheric shock fronts; rains of charged particles; and most recently, rivers of hot gas. We know that somehow wind separates charged particles of water in thunderstorms, and lightning is the result, restoring a presumed neutral condition. Having imagined wind among the stars, we find it easier to imagine lightning-like structures in space. But our imagination is still circumscribed by our geocentric experience. Combining that presumption of initial neutrality with our ignorance and our experientially bounded imagination predisposes us to disallow a larger possibility: The wind isn't buffeting ions and separating charges; separated charges at a larger scale are driving ions to generate wind. The sights uncovered by our recent peeking may be more than isolated lightning bolts in the plasma atmospheres of gravitating bodies. The past century's meager experience with plasma not only raises the possibility but compels the consideration that individual bodies are elements in larger circuits that connect the bodies with transmission lines of plasma. Gravitation is secondary or irrelevant. Motion is not the inertial remnant of some initial "big bump", an imagined deistic "creation event" that imparted energy and left the system to run down. Rather, most phenomena are "driven" by an external power source. It's the difference between the rotation of an electric motor with the switch on and the inertial "coasting" after the switch is turned off. Simple mechanical observation of the motor is unable to tell whether the switch is on or off: The shaft turns in both cases. The difference between imagining cosmic weather and imagining cosmic circuits is more fundamental than the images. It's a difference of visions. The first vision looks at things from the bottom up. It thinks composite phenomena are aggregated from repetition of fundamental elements. The universe is a collection of isolated bodies built up from specks of rock and water and air. The second vision looks at things from the top down. It thinks of phenomena more in terms of relationships or properties than in terms of bodies or specks. The universe is a tangle of interacting nested hierarchies. (Perhaps "lowerarchies" would better describe the direction of explanation.) In this case, they are hierarchies of inductively connected circuits. This top-down vision presumes an initial non-neutral condition. What we see is a cascade of sparks at all scales dissipating that energy. This vision logically extends to the atomic and subatomic scales. The "particle" vision looks for fundamental, indivisible building blocks of the universe. Its expectations for simplicity have been frustrated by the discovery of a "zoo" of particles with diverse behaviors. The "non-fundamentalist" vision imagines tiny lightning bolts whose diverse observed behaviors display the scale-adjusted properties of plasma discharges at various energy levels. It sees sparks instead of quarks. As we gain experience with plasma, we will find it easier to imagine the universe in terms other than wind and rivers and rocks. We will begin to understand the structure of the universe, from galaxies to atoms, not as being like lightning, but as being the archetype which lightning is like. Our growing experience with sparks at all scales will spark our imagination to grow out of its geocentric provincialism into a universal cosmopolitanism. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE SERPENTS OF CREATION

By Dave Talbott EDITOR'S NOTE: The following text is excerpted from a chapter of the forthcoming THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS, by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill.
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ENVISIONING THE ANCIENT SKY

Were it possible for you, the reader, to stand alongside our early ancestors, to witness the events that provoked the age of myth-making, you would see celestial dramas on a scale virtually inconceivable today. You would see an electric sky filled with luminous clouds, threads of light, and undulating rivers of fire. And you would see great spheres joined in a cosmic performance--events seemingly too vast, too improbable for anything but a dream. Observe this celestial theater, and your first thought will be: This could not have happened! Yet allow events to unfold, and that first response will give way to a contradiction--a sense of the eerily familiar: Where have I seen this before? Our answer is that you HAVE seen these events before--through their universal reflection in art and storytelling. These reflections are, in fact, the core images of the ancient world, recorded on papyrus and stone, mirrored in the sacred symbols of the great religions, reenacted in mystery plays, and embodied in monumental construction on every habitable continent. Once recognized, the images leap out from every page of world mythology.
SERPENTS IN THE SKY

The pervasive role of cosmic "serpents" in world mythology is a mystery often mentioned in historical and astronomical studies, but never satisfactorily explained. Frequently adorned with feathers or wings, sprouting long-flowing hair, or breathing fire, these monsters rank among the most enigmatic and outrageous cultural icons, invariably eluding the grasp of the researchers attempting to explain them. Yet around the world, these biologically absurd serpents reveal numerous features in common--the clearest indication that the monsters DO have an explanation. But when investigators, exploring every possibility they can imagine, still find no answer, it becomes increasingly likely that the truth is simply "off the map"-outside the limits of current thinking. The boundaries of perception have excluded a memory so powerful that it influenced every ancient culture. From the infancy of civilization through all prior epochs of human history, world-altering serpents were claimed to have once moved in the heavens. In most great mysteries, recurring patterns are the key to discovery. Is it significant, for example, that wherever the theme of Doomsday or celestial chaos occurs, a great serpent or dragon (mythic alter ego of the serpent) presides over the disaster? The connection is as old as the earliest civilizations. In ancient Egypt, the serpent Apep, whom the Greeks called Apophis, was the arch-enemy of the creator and of celestial order. His plotting against the supreme god Ra produced an earthshaking tempest in the heavens, and numerous Egyptian rites commemorated the victory of Ra over Apep, whose hideous forms and terrible roar haunted the Egyptians throughout their history. At the temple of Ra in Heliopolis the priests ritually trod underfoot images of Apep to represent his defeat at the hands of Ra. At the temple of Edfu, a long series of reliefs depict the warrior Horus and his followers vanquishing Apep or his counterpart Set, cutting to pieces the monster's companions, the "fiends of darkness." Comparative investigation confirms that every well-documented culture possessed its own names and images of the serpent or dragon of chaos--the monster whom the Babylonians called Tiamat, the Greeks knew as Typhon or Python, and the Hindus called Vritra or Ahi. In Australia it was the Bunyip-monster, sometimes identified as the "Rainbow Serpent," that once decimated the earth. And in North America remarkably similar stories were told of the "Great Horned Serpent." Hundreds of mythic counterparts to these serpents or dragons could be named as well. But what useful information do such monsters offer the modern world? Their contribution lies in a collective memory too consistent to be denied, including agreement on numerous, highly improbable details.
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These monsters also provide a bridge connecting mythology to the tangible world of plasma physics. Until very recently historical researchers have had no reason to think of PLASMA when considering the mysteries of the cosmic serpent. Yet, as we shall attempt to demonstrate, everything known about the serpent-archetype finds a corollary in the recently documented behavior of electric plasma. And from this new vantage point, ancient reverence and fear take on astonishing clarity.
THE COSMIC SERPENT IN CREATION MYTHOLOGY

Though serpent images pervade world mythology, few investigators have realized that the diverse--and always preposterous--mythic claims about serpents are the echoes of a universal story. The first chapters of the story trace to the beginnings of human memory, prior to the rise of the great civilizations. Before there was an "evil" monster-- a serpent or dragon of chaos--there was a serpent that called forth no moral judgment at all. The myths describe it as prodigious and awe-inspiring, even frightful in its countenance, but its appearance occurred before disaster. In fact, the serpent of chaos is but the alter ego of the serpent of LIFE, a creature well represented around the world. Chinese serpents and dragon are frequent bearers of the life elements. The Mexican "feathered serpent" was the giver of life. For the ancient Egyptians, the Uraeus serpent was the soul or "life" of the creator himself. The Chaldean word for "serpent" meant also "life." And while the Arabic word for "serpent" is el-hayyah, the word for "life" is elhayat. Thus, El-Hay, one of the common Arabic names for the creator (betraying an archaic but unrecognized relationship to the cosmic serpent), means "the giver of life," or the "principle of life itself." To find the original meaning of the serpent-image in world mythology we must consider a mythic theme that is profoundly misunderstood today-- the story of "creation." It is in the ancient accounts of creation that we find the cosmic serpent in both its life-giving and destructive aspects. But if scholars do not recognize the "serpent of creation," the reason is that a misperception of vast historic consequence is shared today by orthodox religious teachers and secular experts alike. All have failed to see the true meaning of the creation theme, whose origins predate most modern religious traditions by thousands of years. The first creation stories did NOT answer the question--"How did we get here?" These accounts did not speak of the origin of our earth, the appearance of the distant stars, or the birth of human beings. In fact, the creation myth was not "speculation" at all. The described events WERE NOT IMAGINED. They were WITNESSED by human beings on earth and then INTERPRETED IMAGINATIVELY. That distinction will prove to be of sweeping significance. It is not an accident that archaic "creator" gods appear as visible powers. They are seen and they are heard, a fact still evident in the biblical narrative, with its many references to the frightful countenance of Yahweh surrounded by cosmic waters. "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook." "The pillars of heaven shook and were astounded at his roar." Such language is, of course, quite abundant in the biblical texts, though the modern reader naturally assumes that all references to the sights and sounds of the creation are metaphorical. We see the commotion and upheaval of creation in one religious tradition after another. The oldest and most comprehensive Greek account, Hesiod's THEOGONY ("the Origin of the Gods"), tells of earthdisturbing catastrophe, including the famous attack of the serpent Typhon, when the world teetered on the edge of complete destruction. The birth of the gods in the more archaic Babylonian creation epic, ENUMA ELISH, is accompanied by frightful noise and tumult, as the serpent Tiamat rebelled against the gods, and chaos overtook the world. The Egyptian PYRAMID TEXTS recall the terrifying occasion of the great god's birth: Hearts were pervaded with fear, hearts were pervaded with terror when I was born in the abyss.
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The theme is repeated in the oldest Hindu texts, the RIG VEDA, in connection with the birth of Indra, most famous for his defeat of the world-threatening serpent Vritra: ...When thou first wast born, o Indra, thou struckest terror into all the people. Yet in popular imagination, the birth of the gods could have nothing to do with human terror, because human beings had not been "created" yet. What, then, was the true subject of the original creation myth? It told how gods and goddesses, monsters and heroes ruled the world for a time and then went away. The story described how these powers fashioned a prodigious dwelling in the heavens, the celebrated home of the gods. It also recounted how this dwelling was overwhelmed in a great uprising or revolt led by a monstrous serpent or chaos-power, as celestial armies fought over the fate of the world, the conflagration ending in the defeat of the monster, the vanquishing of the rebel. And finally, the story told how the gods eventually retreated from the world or were translated into distant stars or planets. We offer a radically new perspective on the creation theme. With the rise of the first civilizations, ALL commemorative activity pointed back to the events of "creation" and to nothing else. For this striking fact, no scholarly rationalization will suffice, and the answer can only lie in intensely experienced events-events of sufficient magnitude to account for both the global pattern and the extraordinary power over human imagination. The point was duly emphasized by professor Irving Wolfe in a recently published compendium of catastrophist inquiry-Nature produces Culture and the natural cataclysms which our ancestors have collectively experienced have influenced and shaped the cultural artifacts created afterwards. To put it simply, cultures are what they have gone through. The past determines the present, and the cosmic past exerts the greatest influence. A culture, if properly interpreted, therefore becomes a mirror of what preceded it. It is in the recurrent details that we find the most compelling clues. At the core of the creation story is the activity of a cosmic serpent or dragon, whose biography embraces the mythic age of the gods from start to finish. The serpent's masks are many, and often the creature will present itself in unfamiliar garb, only to reappear in its serpentine aspect. But the creature has a story to tell and it is only necessary that we trace the theme back to the beginning, when the serpent first appears as a CONSTRUCTIVE power in the events of creation. It is a well-established fact that the great creator-gods of antiquity possessed serpentine features or serpent companions, and the two notions often merge. What we shall ask the reader to consider is a new possibility--that these serpentine associations answer to things once seen in the heavens. In Egyptian sources the creator Atum received his visible "form" from the serpent Neheb Kau, arising from the cosmic waters. The name means "Provider of Attributes": the serpent's coils were the god's own external form or body. "I was encircled in my coils," the god declares, "one who made a place for himself in the midst of his coils." Muslim legends recall a brilliant serpent around the throne of the creator Allah: Then Allah surrounded it by a serpent ... this serpent wound itself around the throne. Much the same image occurs in Hebrew traditions: And a silver dragon was on the machinery of the throne. ... And a silver serpent bore the wheel of the throne. The Orphic creator Chronos held in his hands a snake which formed a ring by holding its tail in its mouth. The Hindu great god Vishnu rested upon the coils of a serpent Ananta, floating on the cosmic waters.
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Australian aboriginal myths celebrate the Rainbow Serpent, Aido Hwedo, said to have "assisted" in the creation. Natives of the African Sahara say that God utilized the body of the serpent Minia in the creation. In numerous Polynesian traditions, the "creator" appears as a serpent or the "Great Serpent." The male and female aspects of the Chinese creator were depicted as two human beings--Fu Xi and N* Wa--with entwining serpentine bodies. And throughout the Americas, from Alaska to Peru, native traditions portrayed various creator gods as "the Great Serpent" or insisted that the creator possessed serpentine attributes. It is not enough to simply observe that the "serpent of creation" is a primitive or irrational idea. The mystery arises from the fact that the archetype is preposterous--simply inconceivable under any assumption that the biological snake must account for the creature's prominence in world mythology. No snake on earth will inspire the notion of a primeval "creator"! Hence, the remarkable fact that EVERY culture honored the "serpent of creation" demands an explanation far more direct than any appeal to primitive "speculation" or make believe. Moreover, both the life-supporting and destructive aspects of the serpent require investigation, for enigmatically they stand side by side as the two great polarities of creation mythology--on the one hand, the vehicle of an exemplary cosmic order; on the other hand, the agent of primeval chaos. In fact the two cannot be separated, for a vast reservoir of evidence makes clear that the chaos serpent was, in fact, nothing else than the terrible aspect of the life-giving serpent. But how did such an outrageous polarity take hold around the world? As the parent of catastrophe, the serpent became the symbol of collective fear --the Doomsday anxiety--hanging like a cloud over the ancient cultures. It was within the context of this cultural memory that priests and poets and philosopher strove for moral clarity, separating the monster into distinctive personalities, a host of alter egos appearing as the serpent's good and evil aspects. Though the different forms of the mythic serpent can easily mask its origins, certain conclusions follow inescapably from a cross-cultural inquiry into the origins of the serpent theme. As suggested above, when human memory repeatedly converges on highly specific but "preposterous" claims, onecan be certain that the convergence is not accidental: Serpent mythology arose from a common human experience. Though this conclusion is logically inescapable, it is neither recognized nor acknowledged by mainstream historians of ancient myth and religion. While specialists propose countless "explanations" for the different regional variations, we are really dealing with a single mystery here, but one having wide-ranging textures and subplots. Moreover, to simply observe the cosmic serpent's effect on cultures the world over is to realize that the cause was far more catastrophic and fundamentally disturbing than anything surmised in traditional treatments of the theme.
THE "LIVING" POWERS OF HEAVEN

The cosmic serpent was an ancient and powerful symbol of things once seen in the heavens but no longer present: that is the hypothesis we intend to support with evidence from wide ranging fields of study. The serpent was a metaphor filled with meaning, and it must be counted among the most "logical" and appropriate metaphors in the ancient world. Moreover, this metaphor points directly to electrical phenomena that can no longer be ignored. The serpent's every nuance is a feature of PLASMA DISCHARGE. Without the plasma formations, the mythic serpent is an effect without a cause. But if such structures once enchanted ancient observers the world over, the serpent metaphor is redeemed: it will explain what has been left unexplained through all of human history. Since the forms of plasma discharge are now well documented, the question is susceptible to rigorous investigation, detail by detail. Plasma science invites us to compare the "serpent of creation" to known plasma structures, including the violently evolving Peratt Instabilities (discussed in Chapter II). In following this comparison, we must proceed from general to specific observations. We propose a vantage point
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outside all of modern theory. We are challenging the accepted history of the solar system and all commonly held ideas about the origins of human thought in prehistoric and early historic times Planets and moons were once seen in the sky close to the earth. Between these bodies stretched heaven-spanning plasma formations, giving rise to distinctive, evolving structure--the exclusive subject of the worldwide creation legends. The fact that the filamentary, spiraling, twisting, undulating aspects of these plasma configurations were identified as serpentine is fundamentally reasonable under this hypothesis. And thus we shall welcome all appropriate tests, while urging scholarly and scientific review of possibilities never before considered. Certain patterns of ancient belief are so common that scholars rarely pause to wonder about the cause. How did it happen, for example, that every ancient tribe on our planet came to see celestial bodies as living entities? Is there something inherent in the appearance of the Sun or Moon, or in the character of distant stars, to support the notion that celestial bodies are alive? Is it the daily or seasonal cycle of the Sun, perhaps, or the phases of the Moon? Is it the movement of the stars across the sky? Celestial bodies now seen from Earth offer very little to suggest animated and intelligent powers--and even less do they suggest a cosmic serpent, or help to explain the serpent's violent or raging aspect in worldwide traditions. Perhaps it is too easy to suppose that universal beliefs need no explanation. If we encounter a primitive idea everywhere, we assume it to be a perfectly "natural" mistake of pre-rational minds. In fact, precisely such a claim was made by the student of comparative myth and religion, T. W. Doane, in the nineteenth century: When a marvelous occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that it never happened anywhere. By such reasoning, the theorist allows himself to sidestep the obvious challenge: why did every race make the same irrational mistake? An animated, living entity possesses self-organizing, regenerative, and procreative abilities. As a rule, inert matter does not mimic living organisms. But as we earlier observed, plasma behavior is a notable exception. Irving Langmuir borrowed the name "plasma" from physiology (blood plasma) because, in the presence of electric fields, this state of matter takes on life-like attributes. The analogy is quite fitting. The Greek plasma is akin to plassein, "to form, to mold," a concept that is also fundamental to creation mythology. Electric plasma produces distinctive structure, and our contention will be that the plasma configurations of ancient times implied the presence of animated and intelligent powers in the heavens. To primitive observers, these powers certainly seemed alive--they acquired shape, moved with apparent intent, grew to prodigious size, changed shape, and "intelligently" organized their surroundings, even reproduced secondary versions of themselves. These life-like powers emitted unearthly sounds, "spoke" to ancient witnesses in unknown tongues, and produced celestial harmonies or "music of the spheres." In the more energetic and unstable phases, monsters in the sky shrieked and bellowed and roared. They displayed undulating tails or tentacles, their throats breathed fire, and they raged about the sky with long-flowing "manes" or flaming "hair." In their presence the earth shook, lightning blazed in the heavens, and great tempests nearly overwhelmed the world. In remarkable agreement with the "animated" qualities of electric plasma, the mythic serpent typically reveals two complementary ideas. The monster undergoes metamorphosis--as when a "serpent" becomes a "lion"--and it incessantly appears as a hybrid form, a composite of two or more animal types, such as a lion headed serpent. That this remarkable pattern occurs universally is surely significant, and the pattern is observed among the earliest civilizations. The "contradictory" language is telling. It implies that one-dimensional symbolism could not capture the range of the experience, the sights and sounds of the earth-disturbing occurrences. Clues are plentiful, however. Why, for example, did ancient symbolists so frequently combine serpent and leonine features in
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a single monster? We see this juxtaposition in the Greek Chimera, with the head of a lion and a tail in the form of a serpent. The Chinese "lion" has the countenance of a dragon, while the Chinese "dragon" possesses a distinctively leonine mane. The Egyptian goddess Tefnut appears as the Uraeus serpent, but in her terrible aspect becomes a giant lion head, with "smoking mane." The Mesopotamian dragon Labbu was a snake, but its name means "lion". The Sumerian goddess Inanna was the "lioness" of heaven, but in her rage became a fire-spitting serpent or dragon devastating the land. In Orphic theology, the god Phanes was born from an egg as a winged snake, though he grew the head of lion. "Snake of the Lion" was the name of a Mixtec creator god. The connection also shows up in the formulations of the early languages. The Hebrew nahash, "serpent," is cognate with Akkadian neshu "lion," and Ethiopic arwe, "serpent," is cognate with Hebrew aryeh, ari, "lion." Accordingly, it can be shown that the metamorphosing and hybrid forms of the cosmic serpent include all of the phases of plasma discharging listed in Chapter II (pages 27-32). Each of the cited discharging phases lends a distinguishing attribute to the cosmic serpent in the creation myth- Plasma FILAMENTATION gave the serpent its "hair" and "beard." The plasma CORKSCREW produced the undulating body of the serpent. The two filaments of the plasma ROPE produced the entwining serpent-twins. The plasma STRING OF PEARLS was the serpent's treasure, represented by gems or beads on a string. And the plasma SPIRAL was the winding tail of the serpent.
These structures are, of course, abundantly present in the global symbolism of the serpent, but there is a great deal more. Certain plasma forms such as the "horns" and the "wings" of the plasma column (phases of the violently evolving Peratt Instability) lack any obvious connection to "serpentine" attributes. Yet these forms repeatedly appear as features of the cosmic serpent, confirming that the inspiration did not come from any characteristic of a terrestrial snake. To reinforce this point we list below some of the more prominent features of the serpent or dragon in the universal tradition, all of them appearing to mock natural experience.
THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS A BEARD.

The Greek Typhon was bearded, and even the universal sovereign Zeus was said to have taken the form of a "bearded serpent." Numerous Egyptian serpent-powers displayed flowing beards. The Chinese dragon typically displays long whiskers and tufted beards. So also the Maya "Great Bearded dragon," the Maya serpent god Itzamna, the Aztec bearded dragon Xiuhcoatl, and the most famous Aztec serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, with his "long-flowing beard."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS LONG-FLOWING HAIR.

The hair of the monster, typically long and disheveled, is among its most distinctive attributes. In ceremonial reenactments, this "hair" may be represented by paper streamers or by other artificial means capturing the effusion of luminous hair-like filaments. Of the serpent Typhon, Apollodorus writes: ...unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks. In the Egyptian language, word roots meaning "serpent" typically overlap with words meaning "hair." Set, the "Egyptian Typhon," is called also Thebeh, from theb, "lock of hair," and the COFFIN TEXTS celebrate the "bright hair of Set" or the "tuft of hair" on the tail of Set. The name of the serpent Nebet means 'lock of hair.' The serpent aspect of Atum, the original sovereign of the sky, is Seshem, while the root sesh also means "hair" or "lock of hair." A serpent Tcha was also said to have issued from Atum's alter ego, Ra; one meaning of the word is "hair." The name of the serpent Nesh, 'terrifier', cannot be separated from nesh,
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"raised hair". Similarly the Chinese and numerous Oriental variation of the dragon are commonly presented with streaming hair. The Maya "sky serpent" displays along the length of its body the sacred lock of hair, the Caban-curl. Inca chroniclers tell of the horned rattlesnake-god that descended from the sky, its body "hairy, with a tail of gold."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS WINGED OR FEATHERED.

The mystery was stated by Robert Briffault more than 75 years ago. "Snakes have the power to put forth wings and to become converted into flying dragons." That preposterous idea is global. Indeed, the winged or feathered serpent is so familiar that we are easily desensitized to the enigma. Apollodorus says of the serpent Typhon that "his body was all feathered." The "feathered serpent" was particularly well known in the Americas. Quetzalcoatl's name means "feathered serpent." The great serpents and dragons of Mesopotamia possess wings or wear feathers. In her terrible aspect, the Sumerian goddess Inanna became a "winged dragon": Propelled on your own wings you peck away at the land. With a roaring storm you roar; with thunder you continually thunder. Upon their death Egyptian kings expected to meet the winged serpent of heaven, a serpent frequently depicted in Egyptian books of the afterworld. Chinese chroniclers recalled the "winged serpent" associated with immortality. Even the natives of San Cristoval, near the Solomon Islands, revered the "winged serpent" Hatuibwari.
THE SERPENT-DRAGON DISPLAYS HORNS.

A few of the many examples would include the Mesopotamian horned serpent Basmu, child of Tiamat, the Greek horned serpent Ladon, killed by Heracles in his twelfth labor, the "great horned serpent," "longhorned serpent," "great water serpent," or "Horned Alligator" remembered across North America, and the Australian horned Rainbow Serpent. Like so many Native American versions of the Horned Serpent, the Chinese Dragon, with its reptilian head and serpentine, scaly neck wears the horns of a stag. Cerastes, the horned serpent of medieval European tradition, was also called "Hornworm." British folklore speaks of the "Horned Worm" (derived from the Norse word for "dragon"), which can be compared to the Kraken, a huge horned sea monster occurring in the folk tales of Norway and northern Scandinavia. Monoceros Marinus, a monstrous fish-like being with a gigantic horn, appears in German and Austrian legend. The famous cosmic dragon Mushussu of Babylonian myth, had the head and tail of a serpent, but with horns projecting from its head. Inhabitants of West Malaysia remember the reptilian dragon Tioman, formerly the daughter of a famous king, "with horns on her head and a vast swirling tail."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS A TWIN-FORM.

Though this theme has far too many nuances to be adequately presented in a single paragraph, the twin aspect of the serpent will prove of great significance, pointing directly to celestial phenomena no longer seen in the heaven. The dragon Typhon's trunk is two entwined serpent-tails, and the same is either stated or implied in connection with other Greek monsters and giants.
DUSTY PLASMA: THE PRIMA MATERIAL OF CREATION

Data from plasma science suggest that the cosmic medium in which the anciently-recorded formations appeared was a "dusty plasma." In the interplanetary space through which Earth formerly moved,
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dissociated electrons and positively charged ions combined with neutral gases and dust particles, all subject to electrical forces. In such a plasma, the dust particles have a strong tendency to capture electrons and become negatively charged, adding features to plasma configurations that would not otherwise be present. The particles will tend to space themselves at equal distances from each other within discrete regions of a plasma configuration, and this gathered dust can produce light reflecting characteristics that would not occur in a dust-free discharge formation. One must also keep in mind that the analogy in space for the microscopic "dust" of laboratory plasma experiments could well have included fields of sand, gravel, ice, or rock. Additionally, it bears emphasizing that the formation of the heaven-spanning configurations requires the presence of charged bodies in the vicinity of Earth, the anodes and cathodes in discharge sequences. Based on a comprehensive survey of ancient testimony, cross-referenced with data from space, we contend that electrical discharges occurred between celestial bodies moving in close congregation. This electrical arcing cast huge volumes of material into surrounding space, ranging in size from microscopic particles to asteroid-sized rocks. It was this material within the dusty plasma that gave the celestial configurations their appearance of solidity in relatively stable phases, including light-reflecting characteristics that could only emphasize the three-dimensional look of the configurations. When seen from this perspective, the many mysteries of the serpent become aspects of one mystery: What was the serpent of creation? Plasma science suggests that the creature signified both the RAW MATERIAL of celestial construction and its evolving FORM. The serpent was constituted by the medium--a dusty, electric plasma--and its metamorphosing form could only be the evolving, visible STRUCTURE resulting from the electrical interaction of charged bodies across a plasma. As to this identity, ancient sources offer a huge reservoir of support. Virtually all creation mythology speaks of an irreducible RAW MATERIAL used to fashion the cosmic dwelling, the habitation of the gods. Such mythic "elements" as water, wind, or fire typically provide this universal substance, though ancient sources repeatedly bring the "elements" together in ways that may seem to obscure any concrete meaning. From ancient Egypt to Mesoamerica, for example, water and fire frequently appear together as a "sea of flame" or "fire water." But if we are on the right track, the original subject of the myths DID look like water and fire. Nor should it surprise us that the sky worshippers saw in this elementary material the luminous soul-substance of the gods, their living essence. It ANIMATED the heavens. It was both the gods' own creative outflow and the medium in which they lived. And it was the raw "stuff" of creation. We see this meaning, for example, in the early Egyptian language of the pautti (using Budge's transliteration), the "primeval matter" fashioned into the dwelling of the gods. It was the soul-material of the gods themselves, exploding from the creator Atum or Ra to form a fiery, watery mass. Thousands of years later, the alchemists named it the prima materia, the universal substance from which all else originated. Mythic images of this raw material--the wind-blown waters of heaven, the luminous breath of the gods, the flaming aether--simply drew upon the different ways of seeing the celestial medium we recognize as dusty plasma. And not surprisingly, the cosmic serpent is entirely bound up with this stuff of creation. It is at once the carrier and the form of the "soul-substance." In its root identity the serpent is elemental. It is water. It is wind. It is fire. Surely the most common "element" in creation mythology is water, since every well-documented culture depicted its creator gods immersed within a watery abyss or floating upon a primordial sea. That electrified dusty plasma could create this appearance of cosmic "waters" is certain. And the inherent tendency of electric plasma to form spiraling and filamentary configurations cannot be ignored when considering either the serpentine aspect of the creator gods or the cosmic serpent's own embodiment of the primordial waters. Additionally, from this unique vantage point, it is easy to recognize the serpent of creation as the prototype of the mythic "sea-serpent" or dragon arising from watery depths to threaten the creation--a theme of universal distribution.
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The same can be said of the serpent's identity as wind or life-breath. Serpents and dragons are the celestial soul-essence, the living "breath" of the gods, as exemplified by the serpentine pneuma of the Greeks, the World Soul or divine life-breath, organizing and animating the heavens. Egyptian texts identify the Uraeus-serpent, the out-breathing of the gods, as the soul of Ra, whose activity produced the tangible, external form of Ra in the heavens. Indeed the "souls" of numerous ancient gods appear in the form of a serpent. The heart-soul of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl rose in the sky as a fiery serpent. In the Egyptian Coffin Texts, the deceased travels the sky "by means of this soul of the horned serpent." And one culture after another declared that, in its violent aspect, the cosmic serpent was the "stormwind," appearing as a tornado or whirlwind assaulting the land of the gods. Consider also the serpent's elemental identity as fire. Throughout the ancient world serpent and flame are inseparably linked archetypes, despite the outrageous incongruity of the idea. The cosmic serpent's venom, blood, breath, or spittle is most frequently depicted as fire. Fire flew from the monster Typhon. The Greek Chimera, Typhon's own progeny, was a composite of serpent, goat, and lion destroying the land with its fiery breath. The Egyptian Uraeus-serpent spit fire, appearing in the sky as "the Great Flame," destroying the enemies of Ra. In Chinese imagery: ...a strange fire plays about the body of the dragon. The Aztec Xiuhcoatl was a dragon of fire, this "fire-serpent" being depicted in ritual re-enactments by a fire-breathing mask. The serpent or dragon form of the Sumerian Inanna spewed fire: Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land...Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation... Of the biblical dragon, Job declares: Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke ... His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. Taken as a whole, the evidence demands a sweeping shift in perception. The dramas of the myth-making epoch were extraordinary, and they are not occurring today. Hence, they are not familiar to us. But the analogies utilized by the myth-makers ARE familiar, and these analogies constitute the primary language of world mythology. To simply recognize this fact is to see that a combination of analogies (such as the hybrid or metamorphosing leonine and serpentine monsters) will often point to the same phenomenon, each symbol adding vital nuances that would be less apparent, or not apparent at all, without the others. Together with more archaic and more literal drawings of things seen in the heavens--all pointing to an alien sky--the symbolic language of myth is a storehouse of information, encouraging rigorous crosscultural comparison. Dave Talbott
ABSORPTION LINES IN STELLAR SPECTRA

By Don Scott Although we owe the major credit for originating the Electric Sun (ES) hypothesis to Ralph Juergens, the late Earl R. Milton, Professor of Physics, University of Lethbridge, Canada furthered this work in several areas. In a paper entitled "Stellar Spectra" (Aeon, Vol. V, No. 5, Jan. 2000, p. 37.) Milton reported on research he had performed on spectral line broadening in 1971 while at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Vancouver, British Columbia. This work supplies strong evidence in support of the Electric Sun model. The following paragraphs are intended to emphasize how Milton's paper relates to and supports the Electric Sun model.
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If a relatively cool gas comes between a wide-band light source and an observer, absorption lines will appear in the light's spectrum. These lines arise because of the absorption of (light) energy by the atoms of the gas. Electrons in those atoms jump from lower to higher discrete quantum energy states--they get the energy to make that jump from the light (having exactly the frequency that corresponds to that energy gap) that is passing through the gas. Each element in the gas produces its own signature pattern of lines. By recognizing the line patterns, we can identify the gas that is causing those lines. This method is used to discern what elements and molecules are present in the upper atmospheres of stars. Spectra from the cooler stars (such as types G and K) are dominated by molecular bands arising from oxides (like ZrO and TiO) and from compounds of carbon like CH, CN, CO, and C2. Stars like the Sun (type G) show "metal" lines. In fact the Sun shows the presence of 68 of the known elements. The spectra of hot O and B type stars show few lines, and what lines they do have appear quite blurred or "broadened". There are a few possible causes of this broadening. If the absorbing gas is in a magnetic field, each line may split, symmetrically, into multiple, closely spaced lines. This is called the Zeeman effect--named for its discoverer, Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943). If the gas is in an electric E-field, then lines split unsymmetrically-- this is called the Stark effect named for Johannes Stark (1874-1957). These secondary lines are very closely spaced in frequency (wavelength) and the effect is sometimes called line-broadening or blurring. A most important property is that thedegree of Stark (electric field) broadening depends on the atomic mass of the affected gas. The lines of heavy elements are only slightly broadened whereas those of lighter atoms and ions are quite smeared out. This effect is not noted in Zeeman (magnetic field) broadening. As we progress from right to left up the "main sequence" in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram - from the less electrically stressed stars toward those experiencing higher current input, we see an increasing broadening of spectral lines. In fact at the upper left end (O-type stars) there is so much blurring that we can distinguish very little structure in the line spectra. Is this caused by the increasing strengths of the Efields in the stars' DL tufts as electrical stress increases? And, is increased E-field strengththe only possible explanation for this line broadening? Two pieces of evidence suggest that the answer is yes. In highly stressed B-type stars: 1. A line at 4471.6 Angstroms is accompanied by a "forbidden" partner at 4469.9 Angstroms. It is well known that this latter line can only occur when an electric field is present. 2. There is an extreme difference between the degree of broadening of the lines from hydrogen and helium (light elements) and those arising from sodium and ionized calcium (heavier elements). This effect is only noted in Stark effect broadening. The usual mainstream explanation of line broadening is that the star must be rotating rapidly - light from the limb going away from us is redshifted, and light from the limb coming at us is blue shifted - the total effect being to smear out the line widths. BUT, if that were the true explanation, the lines from hydrogen should be no more smeared out than those from calcium. Both of these observations (1 and 2 above) strongly suggest that it is the Stark effect that is selectively broadening the spectral lines in B-type stars. And that indicates the presence of strong electric fields at the surface of B-type stars. There is no simple explanation of these spectral effects via the (non-electrical) thermonuclear core model. So, let us ask whether this phenomenon--the existence of spectral absorption lines and their selective broadening--is consistent with the Electric Sun model. In the Electric Sun model it is clear that the photosphere is the site of a strong plasma arc discharge. This produces the Sun's continuous visible light spectrum. Immediately above this in the Sun's atmosphere there is the Double Layer (DL) in which an intense, outwardly directed electric field resides. It is within this strong E-field that many heavy elements are created by z-pinch fusion. Recall that the strong E-field dethermalizes the ions in that region and thus it is the (relatively) coolest layer of the Sun's atmosphere. Light that originates in the photosphere passes through the relatively cool, newly formed heavier
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elements in the DL. These heavier elements selectively absorb energy from the light's spectrum and thus the absorption lines are created. In fact they are created in exactly the place where the Sun's E-field is strongest. Thus we have the ideal situation for selective broadening of those lines due to the Stark effect. So, once again, we see a stellar phenomenon that is more consistent with the Electric Sun model than it is with the "fusion core" model in which no mention is made of electric fields. Don Scott
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VI, No 8 (Dec 15, 2002)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: MEASURING THINGS Mel Acheson BIRTH OF VENUS discussion with Ken Moss, Dwardu Cardona, and Wal Thornhill PARADIGM PORTRAIT (11): NOBEL PRIZE 2002 Amy Acheson THE REMARKABLE SLOWNESS OF LIGHT Wal Thornhill
MEASURING THINGS
It's easier to take measurements than to know what you're measuring. ~Plaque on wall of medical lab. "Taking measurements" is the aligning of marks. A physicist rolls balls down an inclined plane and marks their locations at various times. An astronomer photographs the spectrum of a galaxy and marks the location of the K line in a comparison spectrum. Scientists spend a lot of time and effort aligning marks. But they're not interested in the marks alone. Their interest lies in the "knowing what". The physicist is not seeking marks on a board; he's seeking an insight into a pattern of orderly behavior. The astronomer is not seeking displacements of spectral lines; he's seeking an intelligibility discernible in the displacements. Scientists are not so much interested in results as in the interpretation of results. Measurements are seldom presented as raw data: The K line in the galaxy's spectrum is displaced 0.2 mm toward the red from the K line in the comparison spectrum. Instead, we read: "The galaxy has a redshift of 6800 kilometers per second," or "The galaxy is 300 million light years away." Measurements are an essential part of "knowing what", but they are not the knowing and they are not the what. Measurements are only taken in the context of some idea of what's being measured. That idea is, strictly speaking, a "pre-conception", a presumption. The measurement of K-line displacement has been supplemented with -- one could almost say, buried under -- presumptions about doppler interpretations of redshift, expanding universe interpretations of doppler interpretations, and big bang interpretations of expanding universe interpretations of doppler interpretations. A geologist drives her jeep toward a mountain, stopping to take measurements along the way. She claims to measure the gravitational force of the mountain. What she actually measures is the alignment of a needle with a mark on the scale of a meter. But interpretation stands alongside the mountain as the object of her inquiry. She presumes gravity rules the universe, or at least the mountain. But even prior to that, she has presumed that the concept of gravity will explain adequately the constellation of data she has in mind when she invokes the presumption of gravity's rule. Between turning on the instrument and noting the deflection of the needle, she has unconsciously answered the question:

What else could it be? The "what" of gravity is a judgement, a choice, a selection from the bag of "what else".
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Insofar as the geologist has presumed an answer to "What else could it be?" her measure of the mountain's gravity is also a measure of the extent of her presumption. Because interpretation depends on both presumption and measurement, errors in either will produce an erroneous interpretation. The errors in measuring the meter's needle can be compensated for with statistical methods. But how are errors in presumption to be compensated for? How can presumption be calibrated or checked? How is it even to be noticed when it's taken so much for granted that it goes unnoticed? One clue that interpretation is deficient in presumption is the rhetorical use of the question, "What else could it be but ...?" This defensive exclamation is hiding a failure of imagination, a surreptitious petitio principii. It's a measure of the need to stop measuring meter needles and to increase the measure of presumptions, speculations, and possibilities from which to choose, to test, and to judge. The question, "What else could it be?" should always be taken seriously. The astronomer who questions the doppler interpretation of redshift is dismissed with "What else could it be but doppler!" Halton Arp and a small cluster of colleagues amassed data indicating statistical and physical connections among objects with large differences in redshift. The additional discovery that redshifts occur at preferred values in a regular sequence defied conventional interpretations. Finding themselves unable to imagine a non-doppler mechanism to explain these recalcitrant facts, most astronomers simply turned away: What else could it be but doppler? The geologist who questions the impact interpretation of craters is dismissed with "What else could it be but impact!" Astronomers used to prefer to call craters volcanoes because they knew artificially generated impact craters bore little resemblance to celestial craters. Geologists rejected such a notion because the celestial craters bore even less resemblance to volcanoes. Finding themselves unable to imagine a nonimpact mechanism for craters, geologists and astronomers alike simply turned away from the intractable details: What else could it be but impact? The mythologist who questions the conventional explanations of myths and legends is dismissed with "What else could it be but supernatural fantasies or psychological parables!" The references to Saturn and to a celestial configuration unrecognizably different from that proclaimed original by astronomers make no sense. The occurrence of the same references in societies separated by oceans is dumbfounding. Being unable to imagine a physical basis for the references, mythologists turned away from them: What else could it be but superstition? This turning away from the unexplained and the underexplained provides a second clue to compensating for errors in presumptions. Instead of retreating to the safety of supposedly "secure knowledge"?of the "What else could it be but!"?you can look for alternatives to the presumptions underlying that "secure knowledge." You can design tests not so much to confirm or to falsify a theory but to distinguish among the implications of various presumptions. It's a method Douglas Allchin calls an "error probe." He writes in "The Epistemology of Error:" "[S]everity [of tests] is contingent upon the possible alternative explanations of results?on, colloquially, sources of error. Reliable conclusions, accordingly, depend partly on a suite of experimental results that invalidates different errors." The criterion of reliability avoids basing judgements on feelings of confidence arising from what may be self-congratulatory confirmations. Confirmation, after all, only confirms presumptions. A long list of confirmations of a theory's predictions can give you a strong feeling of confidence in the theory. But that
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only tells you the theory works where it works. It can't tell you whether an alternative might work better. Confidence can be generated at will simply by not considering or testing possible alternatives. An illustrative case from plasma physics was Chapman's refusal to look?or even to acknowledge the invitation to look?at Alfven's demonstration of the electrical properties of plasma. "[R]eliability hinges on a dual process of confirmation and ruling out error," Allchin writes. Reliability deepens by investigating and excluding possible error. It requires systematic conjecture, methodical speculation. He even suggests a slogan that could be mounted under the one in the medical lab: \ Check for flaws before declaring laws. Checking presumptions with error probes is especially important when new and unforeseen measurements flood the previous data base. At such times, it's easier to imagine that what's being measured might be different from what's presumed. We live in such a time: All currently accepted theories were developed from measurements and presumptions confined to the Earth. Now we have sensors in space taking measurements of plasma. The "what" of our geocentric measuring and anthropocentric presuming were solids, liquids, and gasses. The "what" of plasma is different. It's an opportune time to conduct error probes of such presumptions as the universality of gravity and the velocity cause of redshift and the hot gas behavior of plasma. Especially we need to probe the presumption that humans have never had any more experience of plasma than we have had in recent centuries. The congruence of ancient images with modern images of plasma should raise the eyebrows of every presumption. What else could it be? Probing presumptions is the only reliable way to find out. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
BIRTH OF VENUS
A discussion Ken Moss began: It is my that Tony Peratt thinks Venus was always part of the Saturnian configuration, which I tend to agree with myself. However, Wal Thornhill and Dwardu Cardona claim Venus was, or may have been, born out of Saturn within man's memory. DWARDU CARDONA replied: Speaking for my own position on this, "may have been," rather than "was," is where I now stand. The problem here is that both hypotheses, Peratt's and mine, raise problems. See more below. MOSS: That is, Venus was the core of Saturn that was pulled out or ejected by some means when the Saturn system came in 'contact' with the solar system. But there is an important difference between the two ejection scenarios. Wal says Venus came out equatorially and Dwardu thinks it came out Saturn's pole, the same one Mars and Earth was 'under.' CARDONA: ...Yes, I do hold that *IF* Venus was ejected from Saturn, it would have been ejected poleward. MOSS: Can mythology and physics combine to show what really happened?
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CARDONA: Seeing as the mytho-historical record is limited to what was seen from Earth's perspective, its value in correctly surmising what really took place in space is limited in this particular instance. All that we can glean from the record is that VISUALLY Venus had not always been there. So that, if it WAS there, it was not visible to Earth-bound eyes. The record implies that Venus appeared SUDDENLY after long ages of proto-Saturnian stability. As for physics, as Peratt has stated, the implication seems to be that all of the configuration planets were formed at the same time. Personally, I have problems with this, DESPITE LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS. MOSS: My recent reading of Egyptian myth supports Tony in that the appearance of Venus is treated in a rather low-key way. The sun- god One is alone in the heavens then Tefnut/Venus and Shu/Mars are either quietly spit out (no sense of real force is implied) or they simply become visible at some point, one in front of the other and both in front of the disk of Saturn, from Earth's perspective. CARDONA: But there you have it. Whether forcefully or not, Venus IS said to have been "spat out." In other words, it had not been visually apparent before that event. And as for whether the "spitting" was violent or not, we have to analyze other than just the Egyptian myth. From my own study of this subject, I can safely say (without being adamant) that the first appearance of Venus WAS a violent event. MOSS: On the other hand, Wal's view is supported by the birth myth of Athena/Venus who suddenly burst out of the forehead of Zeus fully armed and ready for battle. This does sound like a far more dramatic appearance and fits the equator ejection model as Venus would have been seen to suddenly appear out to the side of Saturn and not between Mars and Saturn. CARDONA: The correct translation is "skull" not "forehead." Even so, I do not see how that necessarily translates as an EQUATORIAL ejection. And, in any case, that was Hesiod's take. There are other Greek versions of the birth of Athena. WAL THORNHILL adds: The equatorial ejection model is supported by Venus' retrograde spin. As Eric Crew made clear in his electrical core expulsion model, the ejected matter is given a retrograde spin by the very nature of its birth. If Venus had been born from the pole of Saturn in some unspecified manner, then it would be expected to mimic Saturn's axial alignment and spin rate. It does neither. CARDONA: You are here assuming that Venus spun retrogradely from its very inception. I can argue that it did not. And, no, I am not saying that Venus stopped spinning and then resumed in the opposite direction. It's spin did not change. But it did go through a tippe-top inversion, very much in the manner that Warlow hypothesized for Earth. As seen from Earth, the effect would have been the same as if Venus changed its direction of spin. MOSS: The more contentious scenario, to me, is Dwardu's and the problem has more to do with the physics than any mythology. If Wal is right, that it was a combination of attraction (between the sun and the core) and sudden electric charge difference (between Saturn's outer shell and core) that drove the ejection, how could that happen in the already-aligned configuration consisting of Saturn, Mars and the Earth? For the core to come out of the pole that Mars and the Earth were
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'under' it would mean that the configuration came into the solar system TAIL FIRST (Saturn being the head and Earth the tail of the string of planets).
CARDONA: The problem here, as in many other cases, is the Sun. Why are we assuming that Venus was "pulled out" of proto-Saturn by the gravitational pull of the Sun? That, surely, is NOT the manner in which planets are born. So that whether the proto-Saturnian systems entered the Sun's domain tail-first or head-first has no bearing on THIS particular issue. (To be sure, this question HAS to be answered, but in relation to an entirely different problem.) MOSS: And if this were so, surely the Earth, being the closest body to the sun, would have been subject to tremendous forces. Surely these forces would not have left us in peace while reaching over us (and Mars), so to speak, in order to pull out Saturn's core? CARDONA: Saturn's core, IF THAT IS WHAT VENUS WAS, was not "pulled out" by anything. Again, that is not the way in which planets are born. THORNHILL agrees: See my article in Aeon VI:1. The gravitational attraction of the Sun had little to do with the birth of Venus. It might have contributed an offset in the expulsion from proto-Saturn's equatorial plane -- which may be reflected in the fact that Venus' spin axis does not line up with any of Earth, Mars and Saturn. But the major effects would have been felt when crossing the Sun's plasma sheath at some great distance from the Sun and well beneath the ecliptic. (That accords with the shared axial alignments of Earth, Mars and Saturn, together with the observed revolving crescent of sunlight seen from Earth on the body of Saturn). The plasma sheath is the region of the Sun's virtual-cathode where almost the entire voltage difference between the Sun and the galactic plasma exists. The effect upon Saturn would have been, I imagine, spectacular and catastrophic, leading to the expulsion of Venus in an effort to adjust electrically. A part of the process would see Saturn accelerated from the center of its small planetary system, leaving the more distantly orbiting satellites to trail behind. That is the only way, dynamically, that I can see a close polar configuration forming. BTW, the preferential constant acceleration of Saturn, as the most highly charged body in the assembly, toward the Sun fits perfectly with the observed constant deceleration of charged spacecraft moving away from the Sun. A dynamic polar equilibrium could only be sustained by such a constant tug on protoSaturn.
PARADIGM PORTRAIT (11): NOBEL PRIZE 2002

By Amy Acheson On Oct 8, 2002, space.com posted an article about the winners of this year's Nobel prize in physics. The prize was split three ways -- half of the million dollar award was split between Raymond Davis Jr., 87, and Masatoshi Koshiba, 76, for their roles in the development of neutrino detectors and the other half went to Riccardo Giacconi, 71, for his role in the development of the x- ray telescope. See article here: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/nobel_astrophysics_021008.html COMMENT: At first glance, these winners appear to be the strongest opponents of the Electric Universe paradigm. As described in the article, the instruments designed by this year's Nobel Laureates are
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praised for adding new insights about the nuclear fusion which power the sun and the black holes at the cores of galaxies. Electric Universe theory opposes both. But let's look at these Prize-winning inventions from a future viewpoint, after the paradigm has shifted to acceptance of the Electric Universe theory. From this new vantage point, everybody will know there are no nuclear stars or black holes, especially not the big bang -- a theoretical black hole from which the whole universe exploded. Everyone will understand that the sun and galaxy are both powered by plasma and that the universe goes on farther than we can measure in time and space. What will become of this year's Nobel Prize-winners in light of the new viewpoint? Will they be laughed at because they didn't have a clue? No. The instruments they developed are data collectors. The paradigm they claim to support is theoretical. If the paradigm shifts, it will be because the data collected by these instruments supports the new paradigm better than it supports the old. The choice of the Nobel committee will be a wise one, no matter which way the paradigm pendulum swings. And if these elderly Laureates live to see the paradigm shift, they may not approve. Similarly, Joseph Priestly objected violently to his name being connected to the discovery of oxygen. But under an Electric Universe paradigm Davis and Koshiba's neutrino detectors will be honored for its role as "a definitive falsification" of the nuclear fusion model of stars. And Giacconi's X-ray telescopes will be praised for discovering the electrical nature of nebulae, stars, planets, comets, and galaxies. And they will be honored for supporting connections between active galaxies and their quasar offspring, which will lead to the overthrow of today's Big Bang universe. Is it significant that this year's Nobel Prize in physics went to the people who built data-collectors instead of the ones who used the data to support today's theories? Without asking the nominating committee, there's no way to know. But I'm hoping that the ambiguity of this year's awards is a sign that the paradigm is poised for a major shift toward the Electrical Universe. ~Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE REMARKABLE SLOWNESS OF LIGHT

By Wal Thornhill The more one reflects on the nature of light, matter and gravitation, the more he realizes that there are problems connected with them that are quite insoluble in terms of our current notions. But we no longer reflect intelligently on these things. ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads. The following report comes from the BBC, 8 August, 2002: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2181455.stm ]
EINSTEIN'S THEORY 'MAY BE WRONG'

The theory that the speed of light is always constant has come under fire. Australian physicists propose that it may have slowed over the course of billions of years. It's entirely possible that the speed of light would have got greater and greater as you go back towards the Big Bang. Paul Davies, the theoretical physicist said: If true, it would mean a rethink of Einstein's theory of relativity. The idea is floated in a brief communication in the journal Nature.
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It is based on astronomical data involving light from a quasar, a very distant star-like object. Observations suggest the light has taken about 10 billion years to reach the Earth. What is more, a key constant involving the interaction of light photons and electron particles seems to have changed. It appears to have been smaller 10 billion years ago. According to Paul Davies, a physicist at Macquarie University, Sydney, this can be explained only if the speed of light or electron charge has changed since then. "But two of the cherished laws of the Universe are the law that electron charge shall not change and that the speed of light shall not change, so whichever way you look at it we're in trouble," he says.
Star Trek hope

Studies on black holes suggest that the second option is more likely, according to Davies' team. The theoretical physicist believes the speed of light was faster six to 10 billion years ago than its current value - 300,000 km (186,300 miles) per second. "It's entirely possible that the speed of light would have got greater and greater as you go back (through time) towards the Big Bang and if so it could explain some of the great mysteries of cosmology," he says. He admits that further work on light from quasars is needed to firm up the theory. In addition, the physics of black holes are known to be extremely shaky. But there are startling implications if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned. "Maybe it's possible to get around that restriction, in which case it would enthral Star Trek fans because at the moment even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy," says Davies. It's a bit of a bore really and if the speed of light limit could go, then who knows? All bets are off." HERBERT DINGLE writes: It is usually taken for granted that the processes of mathematics are identical with the processes of reasoning, whereas they are quite different. The mathematician is more akin to a spider than to a civil engineer, to a chess player than to one endowed with exceptional critical power. The faculty by which a chess expert intuitively sees the possibilities that lie in a particular configuration of pieces on the board is paralleled by that which shows the mathematician the much more general possibilities latent in an array of symbols. He proceeds automatically and faultlessly to bring them to light, but his subsequent correlation of his symbols with facts of experience, which has nothing to do with his special gift, is anything but faultless, and is only too often of the same nature as Lewis Carroll's correlation of his pieces with the Red Knight and the White Queen - with the difference whereas Dodgson recognised the products of his imagination to be wholly fanciful, the modern mathematician imagines, and persuades others, that he is discovering the secrets of nature. ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, (1972) pp. 127-8. WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: For many years Prof. Dingle wrote the entry for special relativity in the Encyclopedia Brittannica -- until he notoriously recanted. The nonsensical responses to his simple argument against Einstein led him to publish the book from which the quotes are taken. Einstein's legacy lives on. There are so many assumptions hidden beneath the thinking in the above report that it should have been published in the Star Trek Manual, not the science journal, Nature. It is the second "scientific" report to refer to Star Trek in recent months. The other, also from Australia, raised the future possibility of teleportation ("Beam me up Scottie"). Both reports exhibit the malaise in physics brought about by its disconnection from reality and the modern need to indulge in show business to gain recognition and funding. We still have no idea what light is. Our confusion is evident when we talk about a photon in one experiment and an electromagnetic wave in another. Maxwell is supposed to have mathematically described the electromagnetic wave, but he required a medium -- the ether -- for its transmission. Einstein
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'thought' the ether away but no one is quite sure how he did that, even though the Michelson-Morley experiment was supposed to have clinched it. HERBERT DINGLE: ...Lorentz, in order to justify his transformation equations, saw the necessity of postulating a physical effect of interaction between moving matter and ether, to give the mathematics meaning. Physics still had de jure authority over mathematics: it was Einstein, who had no qualms about abolishing the ether and still retaining light waves whose properties were expressed by formulae that were meaningless without it, who was the first to discard physics altogether and propose a wholly mathematical theory. ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, pp. 165-6. THORNHILL: The fact remains that everything we know about electric and magnetic fields requires electric charges, in other words, a medium, as a focus for the fields. If there is to be a wave, there must be something to wave! We know that the 'vacuum' of space is teeming with neutrinos. Countless trillions of the ghostly particles pass through each square centimetre every second. Maybe neutrinos constitute the medium of 'empty' space? It makes sense if, as I suggest elsewhere on this site, all particles are composed of orbiting massless electric charges. And neutrinos are the most collapsed form of particle. ETIENNE KLEIN AND MARC LACHIEZE-REY: All hope to restore some unity is not lost, though. To start with, even in the absence of any theoretical or experimental proof, it is not unreasonable to assume that the particles known today are actually composites, and that their eventual description (which remains to be discovered) will involve a smaller number of new and truly elementary constituents. ~ Etienne Klein & Marc Lachize-Rey, The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics. THORNHILL: This brings us to the speed of light, 'c.' We know from experiment that 'c' varies depending on the medium. More particularly, 'c' varies depending on the electrical characteristics of the medium. The speed of light in a vacuum cannot then be simply declared a universal constant, because a vacuum is not empty space -- it is filled with vast but varying numbers of neutrinos and some other particles. It seems more reasonable to suggest that the speed of light is the speed with which an oscillating electrical disturbance is transmitted through a dielectric medium. The speed of light is highest in a medium where the rate of charge polarization in the particles of that medium is greatest. Neutrinos, having the lowest mass, or inertia, of any particle, have the fastest rate of internal charge polarization and response to an electric field. Therefore 'c' is a maximum in a vacuum, paradoxically full of neutrinos. The notion that c was considerably faster in the past has appeal to both cosmologists and creationists. Both camps have severe difficulties in explaining the observed universe, even with their vastly different time frames, unless things happened much faster initially. Cosmologists would like to see a near infinite speed of light immediately following the big bang and creationists about 10^11 times 'c.' Both are misled by their misunderstanding of the creation myths. It was no accident that a Belgian priest, Georges LeMaitre, proposed the big bang theory, as it came to be known. Science is as much driven by culture and religion as any other human activity. Proof that the cosmologists are mistaken both in their speculations about light-speed and the big bang hypothesis comes from the very source referred to in the above report -- the light from a quasar. The above-quoted article says that the quasar is 10 billion light years distant. That is based on the most peculiar big bang theory that the volume of the universe is increasing. It follows the observation that faint objects have their spectrum shifted towards the red. The discoverer of this phenomenon, Edwin Hubble, was careful to not attribute this 'redshift' to the Doppler effect of the velocity of recession of the object, but
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theorists were not so circumspect. The redshift -- velocity - distance equation quickly became another of the many dogmatic assumptions of cosmology. The astronomer, Halton Arp, plays the role of a modern Galileo in this story. He discovered that redshift is largely intrinsic to a quasar and is a measure of its youth, not its distance. The faint, unresolved star-like quality of a quasar is because it is a baby galaxy, recently born with high-redshift and low brightness from a nearby low-redshift active galaxy. The quasar referred to by Davies is nearby and faint, not 10 billion light years distant. He is not looking at 10 billion-years-old light. Such a discovery lays waste to big bang cosmology. The response of the cardinals of astronomy, now as in Galileo's time, was to refuse to see what Arp had discovered and, in effect, to take his telescope away from him. HALTON ARP: The greatest part of the progress independent researchers have made in the past decades, in my opinion, is to break free of the observationally disproved dogma of curved space time, dark matter, Big Bang, no primary reference frame and no faster than light information. ~Halton Arp, The Observational Impetus For Le Sage Gravity. THORNHILL: The picture of the universe given to us by Arp makes far more sense than the big bang. We see only a small part of an immensity of unknown extent and origin. The objects around us are almost static and form discernible families with parent active galaxies giving birth to quasars in the jets from their cores. The quasars grow more massive with time and slow down to become companion galaxies. Their redshift decreases as they age. The plasma cosmologists further show us that the entire process is driven electrically, the power being delivered by a vast cosmic web of power lines originating from beyond the visible universe. The galaxies are strung like beads on a string along those power lines. Full text with photos available at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/slow_light.html Be aware that this image (see website) is highly distorted because the galaxies have been placed by the computer at their redshift distances. It has been responsible for the 'fingers of God,' illusion, where echelons of galaxies appear to point toward us. Commonsense should have sounded the alarm bells immediately for theorists, instead of reverential awe. Nonetheless galaxies do form linear chains. Such structure is not expected from a gravity- driven formation of the Universe. However, it is expected from plasma cosmology, where galaxies form at the intersection of two intergalactic Birkeland current filaments. Something else that is never mentioned in polite scientific company is the astounding discovery by Arp and William Tifft that the redshift of quasars and galaxies is quantized! It has led to the false impression of 'great walls' of galaxies at various distances from us. That too, should have set off another loud alarm. It spotlights the inadequacy of a purely mathematical quantum theory, divorced from any classical physics underpinning, and the nonsense that it only applies to the subatomic realm. If Einstein got anything right, it was his suggestion that quantum theory pointed to some lower level of complexity in particle physics, instead of requiring the removal of the foundation stone of physics -- causality. His god was not a gambler. I agree with Davies that the charge on the electron has not changed. But neither has the speed of light. Unlike Davies, it seems to me that the basis of the physical universe is electric charge, governed by a near-instantaneous electrostatic force. All forms of matter and its interactions spring from that simple basis. Every particle and collection of particles is a resonant system of orbiting charges, from which comes resonant quantum effects and the manifestation of inertial mass. Resonance explains the puzzling non-radiating ground-state of an atom. Gravity, magnetism and nuclear forces can all be understood in terms of electric dipole forces between distorted systems of orbiting charge. Einstein is not required.
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Space cannot be warped or expand. Time is effectively universal and has nothing to do with space. Black holes do not exist. It is an Electric Universe. There is no crisis of theory in an Electric Universe. The speed of light in a vacuum depends only upon the nature of the vacuum. A vacuum is not empty space. However, 'c' is unlikely to vary significantly in space. 'c' has no connection with the size or age of the universe. Size and age are meaningless concepts anyway, given Arp's clear-sighted view of the cosmos. But can the Electric Universe offer any explanation for the redshifts? I think so. We know from Arp's careful observations that quasars are episodically ejected in pairs in opposite directions along the spin axis of an active galaxy. The brightness of the quasars is higher and their redshift lower the further away we find them from their parent active galaxy, and therefore the older they are. Their mass seems to increase with age and they slow down to eventually go into orbit about the parent as a companion galaxy. Plasma cosmology provides the insights into what is going on in the centers of active galaxies. It does not require a mythical black hole, merely a plasma focus effect. A plasma focus effect is the result of a cylindrically symmetrical electrical discharge. It provides the most concentrated form of electrical energy known. It takes the shape of a tiny plasma donut, or plasmoid, lying in the plane of the spiral galaxy and at its center. The plasmoid accumulates electrical energy from along the spiral arms until it suddenly begins to break down, forming an intense jet of neutrons, particles and radiation along its axis. Electrons, being much lighter, are trapped in the focus for a longer time. The neutrons in the jet begin to decay into protons and electrons, forming hydrogen atoms and some heavier elements, by neutron capture. (Given the extreme electromagnetic environment, we should not expect the neutron decay characteristics to mimic those seen on Earth). The material in the jet forms a 'knot' and becomes an electron deficient (positively charged) quasar. Meanwhile, electrons are being slowly released by the decaying galactic plasmoid and they stream in a thin beam after the quasar. They form the great radio jets seen emanating from the nuclei of active galaxies. It seems that as the quasar attracts electrons its matter becomes progressively more polarized, or massive, as Arp found. It is similar to what we observe in particle accelerators -- the more a particle is distorted, or polarized, in an electric field, the more massive it appears to become. If an electron orbiting a nucleus becomes progressively more massive in a globally changing electrical environment, it will require to compensate at intervals by executing small quantum jumps to new resonant orbits closer to the nucleus. The energy of those orbits will be higher and the result is a quantized shift away from the red end of the spectrum. The quasar becomes brighter and less redshifted. It is not closer. DINGLE: The idea then arose that it [the electron] was a sort of mist of electricity, and Eddington probably gave it the most candid description as 'something unknown doing we don't know what.' We are no wiser today; nevertheless, we speak of the mass of an electron as though it were equivalent to the mass of a lump of lead. ~Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, pp. 141-2. THORNHILL: It is the lower energy electron orbits in new quasar atoms that may give rise to the effect remarked upon by Davies and his coworkers. If so, it is due to a different inertial mass of an electron in a quasar atom, not a different speed of light 10 billion years ago. The result is simply that Planck's constant and consequently the fine structure constant will differ by a very small amount from that measured on Earth. Once again we see the trouble caused by arbitrarily assuming universality of physical constants measured on Earth. Another serious problem faced by conventional thinking is that the quantum shifts seem to occur galaxywide without delay. No object has been found with two different redshifts. Yet a change propagating at the
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speed of light would take something like 100,000 years to traverse a galaxy. It seems that the kind of particle dipole distortions that create inertial mass and gravity propagate at the near infinite speed of the electrostatic force. So, once begun, the quantum shift in atomic orbitals could spread across a galaxy in less than a second. I suppose it could be termed 'galactic quantum entanglement.' So, the good news for Star Trek fans is that Einstein's speed limit is repealed. But the Warp Drive and Teleporter are out, I'm sorry. They are illogical. Space cannot be warped. And matter can neither be destroyed nor created, despite the widespread misconception that the 'm' in E = mc^2 means matter, and that antimatter annihilates matter. [The only possibility that I can imagine for a Teleporter would be to create an identical physical copy from materials already to hand at the receiver. But there is far more to biology than meets the scientific reductionist eye. Would the copy be alive? And if so, who, if anyone, would it be? And what do you do with the original -- kill it and dispose of the body in the process?] Despite all of these absurdities, gravitational big bang cosmology still comes out the clear winner in the science fiction category. As for Prof. Davies recent book, How to Build a Time Machine -- save your money, space fans, and put it into antigravity research! As taxpayers we pay dearly for this fiction anyway. It is incredible that we entered the 21st century with an advanced technology that is crucially dependent upon electricity and yet a cosmology where the powerful electrical force has no role, when we know that electric charge is the foundation of all the matter in the universe. Davies' bewilderment is understandable: If what we're seeing is the beginnings of a paradigm shift in physics like what happened 100 years ago with the theory of relativity and quantum theory, it is very hard to know what sort of reasoning to bring to bear. Precisely. The revolution in thinking will not come from the present generation of theoretical cosmologists. It must come from the next generation of practical electrical engineers, plasma physicists and observational astronomers. ARTHUR LYNCH: I have no doubt that there will arise a new generation who will look with a wonder and amazement, deeper than now accompany Einstein, at our galaxy of thinkers, men of science, popular critics, authoritative professors, and witty dramatists, who have been satisfied to waive their common sense in view of Einstein's absurdities. Then to these will succeed another generation, whose interest will be that of a detached and half-amused contemplation; and in the limbo of forgotten philosophies they may search for the cenotaph of Relativity. ~Arthur Lynch, The Case Against Einstein, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1933. (c) Wal Thornhill 2002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 1 (February 28, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: BEYOND DARK AND EMPTY DEFINING SCIENCE SUNSPOT MYSTERIES
Mel Acheson Jason Goodman Wal Thornhill
BEYOND DARK AND EMPTY

By Mel Acheson Before the space age, astronomers looked up at the night sky and saw points and patches of light. With the aid of telescopes they could see more points and patches, and with the aid of spectroscopes they could discover what the points and patches were made of and how they moved. But the points and patches were few and far away. The universe appeared dark and empty. Astronomers assumed that if they detected nothing, nothing was there. They conceived theories to explain how those points of light could be lumps of familiar solids, liquids, and gasses that persisted and moved in the darkness and emptiness. The theory of gravity explained how a cloud of hydrogen could squeeze itself together and heat up. The atomic theory explained how that hot hydrogen could start nuclear reactions and produce more heat. The kinetic theory of gasses explained how the pressure from the heat could balance the pressure from the gravity to create a star. The explanations fit together precisely into a theory of stellar evolution that described everything (or almost everything) seen in the dark and empty universe. Then the space age extended our sense of sight to include the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. It extended our sense of touch to the planets and asteroids and comets, even to the Sun. We stuck the fingers of our probes into the dark and empty spaces. Our sensory sampling of the universe was liberated from the limitations of our biological niche on the surface of a wet and rocky planet. We could sniff the solar wind, taste the rocks on Mars, and see the x-rays from the comets. We discovered the universe is bursting with plasma, a state of matter almost unknown to our previous geocentric and anthropocentric condition. Plasma is often mistaken for a hot gas, but it doesn't behave as familiar gasses do. Instead of merely expanding when heated, it pinches into filaments and cells and jets and donuts. It generates magnetic fields and microwave noise and x-ray bursts. It accelerates particles to relativistic velocities and polarizes radiation. It conducts electric currents and transmits power across large distances. It gathers matter from the surrounding space and separates it into shells of like composition. Now the universe appears bright and full. Jupiter's magnetosphere, shining in radio frequencies, looks twice the size of the sun or moon. Saturn's magnetosphere appears a quarter the size of the sun. Venus looks like a monstrous comet whose tail sweeps by us every time it passes between Earth and Sun. Mars sparkles with x-rays.
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The Veil Nebula stretches six times the width of the full moon. It's glowing filaments corkscrew around each other to form a celestial caduceus. The Rosette Nebula covers six times the area of the full moon. Flaming tridents thrust out of incandescent undulations that wrap themselves into an interstellar Ouroborous. The telescopic dot of a galaxy we call M49 is the invisible center of a cloud of radio emission connecting thousands of galaxies and filling a quarter of the sky. The cloud swirls into the north throwing out knots of x- ray brilliance like astronomical fireworks. The cloud also swirls into the southern sky, where another spray of brilliance erupts. On the other side of the sky swirls a similar cloud. Even the spaces between these glowing plasma cells are filled with the electromagnetic fields of Birkeland "transmission lines." We have stumbled into this bright and full universe with minds still adapted to dark and empty theories. We squint our imaginations and shade our thoughts with dogma. We try to adapt our dark and empty theories to these new sensory experiences. The assumption that detecting nothing means nothing is there is the assumption of a man standing in a dark room: But when he moves, he detects the furniture with his shins. Space probes are the shins of astronomy: They have moved away from the Earth and away from biological senses. They have detected the electrical furniture in space by getting blasted with unexpected radiation and shocked with unforeseen currents. Moving vicariously through the dark spaces with technologically enhanced senses, astronomers who can't see the light can feel the heat. Space is not the only domain of experience that has appeared dark and empty. Ancient history, myths, art, and rituals contain much that is obscure. They describe fantastical objects. They depict images devoid of mundane designations. They seem to have little coherent relation to the world of our geocentric and anthropocentric senses. Many modern social structures and behaviors appear irrational and senseless as well. Wars and oppressions trace their motivations into the shadows of the past. Institutions perpetuate arbitrary yet orderly traditions. The shins of astronomy have also stumbled into the furniture in this social room. The patterns of human expression now appear to emanate from an archaic spectacle of plasma discharges not seen again until space probes detected them in other stars and plasma physicists reproduced them in laboratories. Our history looks back to an origin in a primordial experience of celestial plasma on Earth. That experience was both traumatic and galvanic. It brought us both scotoma and lucidity, depravity and nobility. It may have been the genesis of consciousness. We have been obsessed to memorialize it in art and rituals and institutions. We have been compelled to repress it and to deny it but also to imitate it in battles and genocides. But we have also transformed it. Artistic imagination turned that experience of suprahuman events into human expression and meaningfulness. Scientific curiosity turned it into understandings of the nature of things, which empowered development of technologies. Economic inventiveness turned it into the production of wealth through trade and the division of labor. Political conation turned it into diplomacy, social organization, and statesmanship. Religious meditation turned it into spiritual enlightenment. The space age brings us a vision not only of a cosmos bright with new senses and full of new phenomena but also a history bright with new sensibilities and full of new self-identity. Our ancestors, and therefore we, are neither the victims of dark ignorance nor the dupes of empty superstition but the creators of a developing lucidity and meaningfulness. We are not merely survivors, but heirs. Our opportunity and our responsibility is to invest the profits of the inherited dark and empty theories in new bright and full ventures. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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DEFINING SCIENCE: SCIENCE, PSEUDOSCIENCE, CRACKPOTS AND SKEPTICISM: WHAT ARE THEY?
Jason Goodman
INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE

This will serve as an introduction to what the various concepts in the title are. In the scientific community, these terms are quite often thrown around in a manner that reeks of subjectivity. It is, then, my intent here to present to you these things in an objective manner. A logical analysis of these terms--their common usages, their actual meaning, etc.--will be given, culminating with concrete definitions that (hopefully) can never be used in a subjective manner. I will be drawing lots of material from a natural science lecture. (Note: The page with the lecture is now defunct, but still cached in the Google search engine. Just type "natural sciences tier" and it should come up).
WHAT IS SCIENCE?
Science has long been an activity that has been under more scrutiny than almost any other in history. While there have been various religious (e.g., persecution of supporters of Copernicus by the medieval church), philosophical (e.g., postmodernists and others who consider science as just another arbitrary social construct), and social (scientific illiteracy and suspicion of science by the public) objections to the scientific enterprise, there are still other dangers to science. A noticeable portion of modern mainstream science, primarily in the fields of cosmology and fundamental physics, is a potential danger to its own community--possibly just as much so as groups like those mentioned above. Many alternative (read: nonmainstream) theories have been labeled as "unscientific" and their proponents called "crackpots." While a handful of theories and their advocates have been appropriately labeled as such, many others have been wrongly labeled. This probably is the result of many scientists in the astronomy and physics community either having a highly subjective definition of "science" or still not having a full grasp of what science is. It is thus imperative that we construct a foolproof definition of science. Here are a few great examples of usages of the word "science" to see how it relates to the nature of science and/or what science is: ...the goal of science is to seek naturalistic explanations for phenomena... within the framework of natural laws and principles and the operational rule of testability. ~The National Academy of Sciences Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. ~from the original draft of the Kansas State Science Education Standards that was written by a 27 member committee of scientists and educators The systematic pursuit of useful, reliable, quantitative knowledge through the scientific method. ~quoted from the above mentioned natural sciences lecture The study of the physical world and its manifestations, especially by using systematic observation and experiment. ~ Encarta Dictionary
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The second to last usage of the word "science" mentions the scientific method. Don Scott gives an excellent overview of the method on the "Introduction" page on his website. [ed note -- see it here: http://www.electric-cosmos.org/introduction.htm ] What can we determine from the above definitions? Simple. Science can be simply defined as "the practice of seeking naturalistic explanations for the world around us through the scientific method, which is a systematic search for useful generalizations about nature." It is a simple definition. It works. So, a scientist can be defined as: Any person who engages in the practice of science. Mainstreamers often complain about non-specialists try to "invade" another field (like plasma physicists and electrical engineers developing a cosmological theory), as well as basically saying that amateurs (especially those who don't have advanced degrees in a field) have no business "siding" with alternative theories as they "wouldn't know what they were talking about," or other similar comments. Despite the complaints: Scientists may be professional or amateur; so long as they adhere to the scientific method, they are scientists. It's not a matter of university degrees; It's a question of method. However, these definitions of "science" and "scientist" are still disregarded by large parts of mainstream science. Most alternative theories are still constantly referred to as "pseudoscience." Well, let us examine that term then, shall we?
WHAT IS PSEUDOSCIENCE?
This is a term that is thrown around a lot. Usually, it is used to connote any theory that does not fit with mainstream science. However, this definition is hopelessly flawed and does nothing more than promote bias towards or against particular theories. It is then necessary to construct a foolproof definition of the term "pseudoscience." This is somewhat more difficult to define than science is, though. We should break down the word into its two word roots. The second word root is "science." We have already gone over this, of course. So let's proceed to the other word root, which is the prefix "pseudo-". This prefix is used to denote things that are either false (e.g. a "pseudonym" is a false name) or appear to be similar to something but isn't (e.g. a cellular "pseudopod" appears to be a foot of sorts, but isn't actually a foot). "Pseudoscience" is then easy to define. It can be defined as "Something that pretends to be science but is not subject to testing (and falsification) by the scientific method...," to once again quote the above mentioned natural sciences lecture. It is, quite simply, something that isn't science. It is something that is not empirical; that is, it is unanswerable to data. That says some things about quite a few ideas in mainstream cosmology and physics (things like "multiverse theories" come to mind).
WHAT IS A CRACKPOT?
This is another frequently heard term. It is almost always used to label proponents of non-mainstream theories. A crackpot is defined as "somebody who is regarded as having unconventional or wild ideas (informal insult)," to quote the entry in the Encarta Dictionary. Roget's thesaurus has the following entry: A person regarded as strange, eccentric, or crazy: crazy, eccentric, lunatic. Informal : crank, loon, loony. Slang : cuckoo, ding-a-ling, dingbat, kook, nut, screwball, weirdie, weirdo.
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This is, of course, an entirely subjective term. The term "crackpot" is nothing more than an insult, used to denigrate those whose theories they disagree with. Is Halton Arp "crazy"? Was Hannes Alfv=C3=83=C2=A9n "eccentric"? Was Ralph Juergens a "lunatic"? Are the proponents of plasma cosmology, catastrophism, or non-expanding universe models nothing but a bunch of "cranky loons"? It all depends on who you ask. A long time ago, scientists like Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Wegener and many others were considered crackpots. Yet they were eventually vindicated. Of course, not all of their ideas were perfect, but these people all made important contributions to science. Conversely, many mainstream scientists of the past like Kelvin, Chapman, and especially Ptolemy, turned out to be wrong. Saying "You are a crackpot" is no different than saying "You are a bad artist." It is a subjective term that doesn't need to be used by responsible scientists. If anything, the term "crackpot" would best be reserved for scientists whose personalities and/or practices resemble those of fictional characters such as Frankenstein, Moreau, or anyone else that psychologists would consider insane.
WHAT ARE SKEPTICS AND SKEPTICISM?

Michael Shermer, Martin Gardner, and many other advocates of mainstream science refer to themselves as "skeptics." They usually refer to a "skeptic" as a person who doubts "crackpot pseudoscientists." Well, let's take a look at this word. "Skeptic," which comes from the Greek skeptikos (skeptikos), means "somebody who questions the validity or truth of things that most people accept." Skepticism is "an attitude marked by a tendency to doubt what others accept to be true." We learn something immediately from this. A skeptic is, quite simply, somebody who doubts what others accept to be true. Shermer, et al., are skeptics because they doubt the conclusions of alternative science. Arp, Thornhill, Scott, the Achesons, and myself, among others, are skeptics as well. We doubt what the mainstream cosmological and physics community accept to be true (e.g., the BBT, Standard Model, relativity, etc.). In fact, since everybody on Earth will doubt what some other person holds to be true, every single individual is, by definition, a skeptic. That leaves very little special meaning left for the term "skeptic" for mainstream supporters like Shermer. Personally, I think that Shermer has the right idea, and I respect many of his general outlines, but, like many other mainstreamers, he just goes about it the wrong way.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

Science is a realm of inquiry devoted to explaining the natural world through naturalistic means. "Pseudoscience" can be reduced to a term that can be used to describe things that aren't science but pretend to be. What can we draw from this? Things that employ the scientific method can be called "science", while things that employ unscientific methods while trying to appear as science can be called "pseudoscience." Simple as that. Pseudosciences are, in essence, theories and fields that employ such things as supernatural or paranormal causation. Supernatural forces are by definition beyond the realm of nature, and thus beyond the realm of science. Therefore, something that is reliant on supernatural causation cannot be science. To quote philosopher of science Arthur Strahler:
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Supernatural forces, if they exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science - that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up from "nowhere.
Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore "claims" of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of processing information will collapse. To put it another way, if science must include a supernatural realm, it will be forced into a game where there are no rules. Without rules, no scientific observation, explanation, or prediction can enjoy a high probability of being a correct picture of the real world." Pseudosciences are, in actuality, not quite as common as the mainstream lets on. However, such pseudosciences can be rather prominent. A great example of a pseudoscience is astrology, which claims that the position of the planets and stars at the time of a person's birth tells them their fortunes. The BBT, Standard Model, fusion star theory, and most other mainstream theories--problematic, false, correct, or whatever they may be in someone's particular professional opinion--are scientific, actually, because they rely on naturalistic explanations. But so are plasma cosmology, non-expanding universe scenarios, electrical catastrophism, and a plethora of other non-mainstream theories. Granted, many alternative theories have problems or are, for all intents and purposes, doubtful or just not good enough, but many are also right. It doesn't change the fact that, if they fit the description of science as has been outlined, then they are scientific. It is, then, a matter of which theory is simpler (as per Occam's Razor) and which fits the observations better. As far as subjective terms or special titles like "crackpot" or "skeptic" go, we can all do without them, especially those of us in the scientific community. It will not suffice to force everything into--or disregard it if it can't fit with--, preexisting theory, either. A real scientific debate between the various theories cannot ensue within the current system. That inspires more conflict than debate. Science has enough dangerous enemies without such friction. We need an atmosphere more tolerant of alternative science. I think this is the best general advice for people who value scientific research and the scientific method. Jason Goodman
SUNSPOT MYSTERIES
Wal Thornhill If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~Rene Descartes The following report appeared in SPACE.com
NEW PHOTOS AF THE SUN ARE MOST DETAILED EVER

By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer 13 November 2002 The most detailed pictures ever taken of the Sun reveal the insides of striking snake-like filaments that reach from bright portions of the solar surface into the dark hearts of sunspots. The images
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promise astronomers a new way to reach deep into these magnetic beasts and extract their operational secrets. Made with a specially equipped ground-based telescope, the photographs reveal features never before seen on the solar surface. The images themselves, and more important the technique used to make them, promise a fuller understanding of the complex and poorly understood interplay of matter and energy that roil the hot surface, all driven by the thermonuclear reactions at the Sun's core. Thornhill Comments: Expressions of surprise and puzzlement are commonplace at new discoveries in astrophysics and the detailed sunspot photos provide their share. It is because accepted theories have proven to be spectacularly non-predictive. It is a clear signal for independent minds that an opportunity exists to clear up mysteries that have dogged our finest scientists for most of the 20th century. As Fred Hoyle long ago pointed out; the Sun does not conform to the expected behavior of an internally heated ball of gas, simply radiating its energy into space. Instead, its behavior at every level is complex and baffling. Nowhere is it more mysterious than in a sunspot. So, without any direct evidence that the thermonuclear powered model of the Sun is correct, and with strong evidence against it, we should begin by heeding Descartes advice and doubt it. Unfortunately it is a difficult path to take because science is a powerfully consensual organization. Yet it is consensus, or general agreement, that can delay new ideas for centuries and sometimes, millennia. [Ed note: Wal Thornhill's full article along with solar images can be found here: http://www.holoscience.com/news/sunspot_mysteries.html] Researchers at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, led by Goran Scharmer, discuss the images in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Nature Team member Dan Kiselman told what he sees in the new views of the Sun: "A dark-cored filament looks like a glowing snake with a dark stripe painted along its back," Kiselman said. "The 'head' of the snake is often a complicated feature where the stripe splits up among many bright points." The pictures were taken with academy's recently installed solar telescope at La Palma, in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Movies made by putting sequential images together show that that the dark cores of the filaments are long-lived and possibly more stable than the brighter portions. The scientists also identified canal-like structures in the so-called penumbra of sunspots that "could also be described as a pattern of cracks," Kiselman said. The penumbra straddles a sunspots dark core and brighter regions elsewhere on the solar surface. "Whatever metaphors we use for these features, one should remember that everything is just glowing gas." The photos were taken on July 15 and were colorized to highlight details. MYSTERIES REMAIN Despite the detail [... ?] the photos resolve things down to 62 miles (100 kilometers) -researchers still don't know the details of how sunspots work. "It is clear that everything we see is the result of fields and the solar gas, or plasma," Kiselman explained. "The heat of the Sun tries to push through, carried by convection currents which are hindered by the magnetic fields. But exactly what happens and why these kind of structures are formed, we don't know." Sunspots are cooler and darker than the rest of the Sun. They are launch pads for complex expulsions of plasma that race through the solar system, sometimes fueling the colorful lights near Earth1s poles known as aurora. Thornhill Comments: Is it likely that the poor understanding of sunspot phenomena arises from the incorrect assumption that we know most of what goes on inside the Sun? I think so. To have any confidence in our understanding
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of the Sun, and stars in general, we must first be able to explain simply the things we can see. Therefore it is crucially important to understand a sunspot because it is the only place on the Sun that gives a glimpse below the bright photosphere. And what do we see? It is cooler down there by thousands of degrees! That is not expected at all if the Sun is trying to rid itself of heat. The sunspot center should be much hotter and brighter than its surroundings. And what of the penumbral filaments? They and their behavior bear no resemblance to any known form of convection in a hot gas, magnetic fields or no. There are many crippling agreements that hold up progress in astrophysics. One was succinctly expressed at a recent public meeting by a professor of astrophysics who admitted: When we don't understand something we blame it on magnetism. The Sun has had more features blamed on magnetism than any other celestial object. The cool sunspot center is a classic example. Certainly, strong magnetic fields are measured there but that raises questions of cause and effect. Magnetic fields are only produced by electric currents. Is there any other evidence of electrical activity on the Sun? Yes, practically every feature of the Sun can be understood in terms of electric discharge activity in plasma. The penumbral filaments are a case in point. Electric discharges in plasma take the form of long thin filaments. Just like a neon tube, it is simply the discharge that causes the gases to glow. The penumbral filaments were observed to split near their "footprints" in the dark umbra and to move around. It is typical behavior of plasma filaments and can be observed in novelty plasma balls. But the greatest shock is that the penumbral filaments have dark cores! How could this be so if they are convecting gas? In that case, the filament center should be hottest and brightest. An electric discharge offers a simple explanation. In an electric universe all bodies may receive electric current from the environment in a cosmic charging process associated with the normal development of a galaxy. And because electrical phenomena are scalable over at least 14 orders of magnitude, we may look to electric discharge phenomena in other atmospheres to gain insights into what may be happening in the Sun's atmosphere. There is a temptation to simply equate the penumbral filaments with gargantuan lightning bolts, but the features do not match all that well. A typical lightning flash lasts for 0.2 seconds and covers a distance of about 10 km. The penumbral filaments last for at least one hour and are of the order of 1000 km long. If we could scale a lightning bolt 100 times we might have a flash that lasted between 20 and 200 seconds and was 1000 km long. The lifetime is too short. Also, measurements of scars on lightning conductors show that the lightning channel is only about 5 mm wide. Scaling that by 100 times would have solar lightning channels far below the limit of telescopic resolution. However, there is another familiar form of atmospheric electric discharge that does scale appropriately and could explain the mysterious dark cores of penumbral filaments. It is the tornado! Tornadoes, like the one pictured here, last for minutes and can have a diameter of the order of one kilometre. Scale those figures up 100 times and we match penumbral filaments very well. And if the circulating cylinder of plasma is radiating heat and light, as we see on the Sun, then the solar "tornado" will appear, side on, to have a dark core. Meteorologists are not sure how tornadoes form but they do know that they are often associated with severe electrical storms. The key to understanding tornadoes is that they are the result of rapidly rotating electric charge. Just as electrons are the current carriers in the copper wires we use for power transmission, so they are in the tornado. The BIG difference is that the electrons are moving at many metres per second in the tornado while they take several hours to move one metre in copper wire! The result is that enormously powerful electromagnetic forces are in control of the tornado. The result has been called a "charged sheath vortex." [ed note: Thornhill1s website references the tornado theories of Peter Thompson.]
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Public science displays give the wrong impression when they equate a simple mechanical fluid vortex like this one with a tornado. A tornado is an electrical phenomenon subject to far more powerful forces created by swiftly rotating charge. If this were a true miniature tornado the young lad would be advised to not go anywhere near it. The possible damage caused by electromagnetic forces is far greater than that of a simple wind. The shape of the vortex is strongly constrained to be long and thin with a circular cross-section. This true shape of the vortex is usually hidden in tornadoes because of the obscuring dust and clouds. The vortex itself will only be visible if it has sufficient electrical energy to ionise atoms in the atmosphere. That is clearly the case on the Sun. And some people who have survived the experience of being "run over" by a tornado have reported an electrical glow in the inner wall of the tornado. It is commonly thought that a tornado is a means for mechanical energy in the storm to be converted somehow to electrical power, which is then transmitted very effectively to ground by the electrical conduit of the charged sheath vortex inside the tornado. The "somehow" arises only because no-one visualizes the electrical dimension of the solar system. Electrical power from space is partially dissipated in the mechanical energy of the encircling winds. Instead of generating the electrical effects, the tornadic winds are driven by the charge sheath vortex. The Earth and other planets receive electrical power from space in the same way as the Sun. Obviously, we receive far less than does the Sun, which seems to be covered with tornadic charge sheath vortexes. The solar tornadoes are seen most clearly at the edge of sunspots in the form of penumbral filaments. The strong solenoidal magnetic field created by each vortex gives rise to the observed filamentary magnetic field in the penumbra. The Martian dust devils, too, are tornadoes that dwarf their earthly counterpart. Clouds are not required to generate them. They are an atmospheric electric discharge phenomenon.
WHY IS THE SUN COVERED IN BRIGHT "GRANULES"?

In his seminal papers of the 1970's on the Electric Sun, Ralph Juergens noted the possible identity of solar granules with something that the pioneering plasma physicist, Irving Langmuir, termed "anode tufts." Anode tufts are small, bright, secondary plasmas that form above an anode that is otherwise too small to handle the current flow into it. In his experiments, Langmuir reported the tufts as small bright spheres moving above the anode surface. It seems possible that in the stratified atmosphere of the Sun those bright discharges rather take the distinct form of the charge sheath vortex. The granules are bright because the gases inside the charge sheath vortex have been heated by compression and radiation from the walls of the vortex. Those hot gases fountain out of the tops of the vortexes to form the granules. Also, lightning in some form will deliver power to the top of the granule, creating unresolved bright spots. Above the granules the ions recombine with electrons to form neutral gas, which absorbs light. The gas would be constrained to flow down between the granules, its motion modified by collisions with ions moving under electromagnetic influences. This may create the dark "canals", which have the branched pattern of electric discharges. There would be a powerful influence from the strong electric fields of the plasma sheaths (double-layers) of the anode tufts. Varying levels of lightning activity above each granule could explain the observed variation in brightness of solar granules. It is noteworthy that large faint granules have never been seen. They would not be expected on this model.
WHAT CAUSES A SUNSPOT?
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In the electrical model, the Sun receives electrical energy from interstellar space in the form of a glow discharge. Plasma experiments show that some energy will be stored in a donut shaped "plasmoid" above the Sun's equator. The solar plasmoid (Seen here from above the pole) has been imaged in ultra-violet light using data from the SOHO spacecraft). The energy is released sporadically from the plasmoid to the mid-latitudes of the Sun. (Incidentally, plasmoid resonances may give rise to simultaneous flares on opposite sides of the central body, as recently reported on the Sun). The global tornado storm is pushed aside by more powerful charge sheath vortexes that deliver electrical energy from the plasmoid to much lower levels. The resulting holes in the tornado level, or photosphere, are what we call sunspots. Rather than being a site where energy flow has been restricted, a sunspot is a site where it is enhanced. That explains why "they are launch pads for complex expulsions of plasma that race through the solar system." The giant electrical tornadoes that form sunspots accelerate particles in their powerful electromagnetic fields, generating UV light and x-rays instead of visible light. However, because temperature is a measure of random motion, the field-directed motion of the particles within the sunspot vortex appears "cool." This model can explain why sunspots of the same magnetic polarity are strangely attracted toward each other instead of being repelled. (Try pushing together two similar poles of two magnets). The sunspots are receiving electric current flowing in parallel rotating streams, which results in their being mutually attracted over long distances and repelled at short distances. That, in turn, explains why sunspots often seem to maintain their identity even if they come close enough to merge. There is also other evidence that suggests the presence of electric currents aligned with the magnetic field in a sunspot. Granulation has been observed in the umbra, or dark centers of sunspots, by overexposing sunspot images. The umbral granules are more closely packed than photospheric granules. That is to be expected on this model because the current in the large charge sheath vortex forming the sunspot is being delivered to denser atmosphere at lower depths. Umbral granules should not be there if sunspots are formed by magnetic throttling of the convection process. The Nature article also mentions "fainter structures in the umbraS These features are associated with the inward migration of a bright dot followed by repeated brightening and fading on a timescale of minutes. This suggests that a larger fraction of umbrae than observed so far could have faint or small-scale filamentary structure." The nature of a charge sheath vortex is to tend to compress material inside and lengthen the tube in both directions. Since it is also acting as a conduit for electrical energy, it seems that the moving bright dots are small-scale filamentary lightning emanating from the lower ends of the penumbral filament vortex. One might expect astronomers to have a firm grasp of the mechanics of our own Sun, it being by far the closest star around. "Compared to other stars, one may say that it is true," Kiselman said. "But the amazing zoo of structures and dynamic phenomena on the Sun are not well understood in general, though they have been observed for a very long time." So imagine how little is really known about other stars. "We will never understand any other star better than the Sun," he said. Thornhill Comments: This is a remarkably candid admission from an expert. If only the true state of our ignorance were more widely publicized instead of the hubristic pronouncements that we practically know everything, then we might find curiosity about science rekindled in our schools. It is a fact that we do not understand the Sun. So we do not understand stars in general. Yes, we have complicated stories about them that have kept theoreticians happily engaged for centuries. But for so long as they convince themselves that they can ignore the electrical nature of all things in the universe their stories will be fiction. The electric force is the most powerful force in the universe, from which all other
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forces are derived, and it operates at all levels, from the subatomic to the galactic. When we understand the true electrical nature of our own star we will begin to understand the universe as it really is. Wal Thornhill 2002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 2 (March 15, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: RHINOMORPHIC LACUNAE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND COLUMBIA: QUESTIONS OF SOME GRAVITY
Mel Acheson Amy Acheson Wal Thornhill
RHINOMORPHIC LACUNAE
Mel Acheson Long ago, a flood of molten basalt spread over eastern Washington State and down the Columbia River valley to the sea. Later, the river cut a new channel (or flowed into a new channel), resulting in today's Columbia River Gorge, with high lava cliffs on each side. In one of those cliffs, a group of geologists discovered a cavity with bones at the bottom. The bones, they found, were those of an extinct species of rhinoceros. It was then they realized the cavity bore the shape of that rhino. The flooding basalt had overrun the rhino and had solidified around its body. The body had decayed, leaving the bones, and erosion later had exposed the cavity. The moral of this story is that you shouldn't leave the rhinoceroses of assumption to graze in the meadow of the unconscious when the flood of molten imagination lays down a new theory. When the new ideas crystallize, they will encase the old assumptions, which will leave rhinoceros-shaped voids of explanation in the new theory. Not so long ago, astronomers assumed the craters on the Moon were extinct volcanoes. This assumption led naturally to the conclusion that the river-like channels, called rilles, often extending away from craters, were lava tubes whose roofs had collapsed. Later, Gene Shoemaker studied crater-like features on Earth and showed that they couldn't be volcanic; they must therefore be the result of impacts. Astronomers immediately adopted this impact theory of crater formation. But they retained the lava-tube theory of rilles, creating an ideational landscape in which impact craters were the source of rhinoceros-shaped lava tubes. Another long-standing assumption in astronomy is that the redshift observed in the spectra of galaxies arises from a velocity of recession proportional to the galaxies' distances. This assumption, called the cosmological redshift distance, lies at the heart of the Big Bang cosmology. When quasars were discovered and it was found their spectra were redshifted much more than most galaxies', the quasars were thought to be situated in the outback of the universe and therefore unrelated to the foreground galaxies. Then Halton Arp discovered statistical and physical connections between quasars and galaxies. The assumption that redshift was an indicator of distance was undermined. But proponents of a noncosmological redshift sometimes continued to place the galaxies and their connected quasars at the
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galaxies' cosmological redshift distances, exposing a cosmological-sized cavity of consonance, with quasars and their parent galaxies at the bottom. Geologists since the time of Lyell have strung together rocks and fossils on a thread of assumptions about the constancy and uniformity of tectonic and erosional forces. The resulting bracelet of explanatory charms has been put on display as the Chronology of the Earth. Each stratum is tied to a particular date with a knot of radioisotope dating, which in turn assumes constancy of decay rates and uniformity of isotope ratios. But when various theories of catastrophic change were accepted by several schools of geological theorists, such assumptions of constancy and uniformity were discarded. Nevertheless, the Chronology of the Earth continued to be used to date the catastrophes which disrupted that chronology, creating a catastrophic timeline punctuated by rhinoceros-shaped cavities of continuity. These stories are meant to illustrate three imperatives of speculative thought: First, we need not only to seek the novel experiences and ideas that lie before us in our own time, but we need to see our own seeking. We must not only pay attention to the answers which the universe gives to our questions, we must also pay attention to the limits, to the blind spots, to the rhinoceros-shaped cavities inherent in the questions. The internal tyrannies of assumptions can ossify imagination. The dead hand of continuity with past knowledge can choke the spontaneous speculations of present vitality, curiosity, and insight. Sensation-sensibility coordination is disrupted. We need to wake ourselves to the rituals of words and to the catechisms of terminology that have alienated us from the immediacy and the intimacy of experience with mystified and reified concepts which are mistaken for facts. Second, we need to recognize that knowledge is not a destination but the footprints we leave behind during our journey of learning. Knowledge is not an end in itself but a by-product of human learning activity, just as a nest is a by-product of avian reproductive activity. We produce knowledge as needed in learning to co-adapt with new and changing environments, physical, social, and cognitive. The knowledge of the past deserves our respect: It's how we got here. And the knowledge of the present is not some Final Truth that justifies spurning the past or blockading the future. Third, we need to reevaluate all our fondest theories in the face of the present transition in learning environments. Most currently accepted theories were produced in an electrically inactive environment of solids, liquids, and gasses, with mental machinery geared to mechanical metaphors. Now we have stepped off the Earth with technologically enhanced senses and out of our previous geocentric and anthropocentric context. We recognize the realms both of space and of the mythic gods are environments of electrically active plasma, with properties unlike those of familiar matter. The metaphors with which we understand it must be non-mechanistic and non-local, organic and emergent, adaptive and innovative. Cognitive knowledge must be reconceived and reborn in forms appropriate to our new domain of sensation and sensibility. Failing to chase away the rhinoceroses of "secure knowledge" will trap us in cavities of undiscerningness as the Age of Plasma floods over us. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

A Discussion with Amy Acheson Hi Amy and all, I'm giving a series of lectures to our physics class about general relativity and cosmology. In the last lecture, I'll describe the electric universe theory as an alternative to the standard big-bang model.
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Can someone tell me how the electric universe theorists interpret the 3 Kelvin microwave radiation? Before Monday, please? Thanks! Mark Korsky Mark, As it happens, I recently discussed this with another amateur astronomer, and I can clean up the discussion we had for your benefit. At this time, it1s more arguments against the mainstream interpretation than counter proposals. Did you read AEON Vol. VI #3? My "Intersect 2001" article is printed there. I devoted a brief section to the CMB. Jason Goodman (the most active poster on the young people's catastrophism list) offers some great CMB arguments against Big Bang Theory on his web site here: http://www.geocities.com/kingvegeta80/BBT.html The claim that the CMB proves the Big Bang is a logical fallacy, and intellectually dishonest, as well. A correct prediction is NOT proof of a theory, ever! [Although an incorrect prediction, if the prediction is true to the theory, can disprove it.] All a correct prediction can offer is verification, which is "evidence in favor of", not proof. Now let's look at the specifics of the CMB. If the "prize" goes to the first theory to correctly predict it, then it will have to go to the 3Heating by Starlight2 theory. Birkeland's colleague, Charles Edouard Guillaume calculated the temperature of space from starlight at 5.6 degrees Kelvin in 1896. You can see his article here (it's in French) Go to Tony Peratt's page of downloadable papers and scroll down to Guillaume's article "The Temperature of Space": http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/papers.html (There are several other articles on the same page about CMB, all dated 1990 or earlier, before they finally discovered irregularities in the CMB, so the articles mostly focus on the lack of predicted irregularities. When they "finally found" irregularities, they were 100 times smaller than those predicted by the Big Bang theory -- but that doesn't stop them from counting the irregularities as another proof of the Big Bang.) If the "prize" goes to the most prestigious astronomer to predict the CMB, then you'll have to give it to Eddington, who calculated the CMB at 3 degrees K (for an infinite steady-state universe) as early as 1926 (this came from Halton Arp's article "Fitting Theory to Observation" in Progress in New Cosmologies 1993, pg 25. MORE CMB TIDBITS FROM ARP's ARTICLE: [Amy says: I find #2 a very important point that is seldom mentioned.] 1) "In April 1992, enormous publicity was given to the announcement that a satellite observing in the microwave region ... had detected irregularities in the sky ... said to have proved (once again) the correctness of Big Bang theory." 2) " ... there was never any discussion of how the evidence is very difficult to reconcile with the Big Bang model. The point is that in a universe expanding faster at each further distance observed, the 2.7 K black body energy curve would be smeared out unrecognizably by Doppler recession velocities." 3) " ... In the nonexpanding universe an obvious, and much simpler, explanation of the observation is that we are simply seeing the temperature of the underlying intergalactic medium."

AMY AGAIN:
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If the prize goes to the first one to see and report the CMB, then once again the steady-state wins. It was observed in the late 1930's and early 1940's. McKellar published a paper identifying the background radiation in 1941. But it was war-time and the observatory publication was a minor one -- the Dominican Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The discovery was ignored by the astronomical community. (reference for this story: Hoyle Burbidge and Narlikar's A Different Approach to Cosmology) If the prize goes to the theory that predicted the CMB last and was farthest off the exact calculation, then the CMB proves the Big Bang. The Big Bang prediction started about the same temperature as the others in the late 1940's, but they (i.e., primarily George Gamow) kept "upping" the energy level of their prediction until, just before the actual discovery, they were predicting a background temperature of 50 K. After the discovery, they immediately reverted to their earliest predictions, then obnoxiously claimed they were the only ones to get it right. Which doesn't disprove their theory -- it only shows what incredible poor sports they are. The CMB doesn't prove our theory, either. Both theories need closer investigation and less political haggles. Joy Perry noted a recent press release about the CMB: From the press release: Scientists using a radio telescope atop the 10,000-foot-high Antarctic ice sheet have detected a 14-billion-year-old pattern from the Big Bang. The findings, announced in September by researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley, support the leading theory of how the universe came to be... Large-scale flows in the early universe should have polarized the last round of scattered radiation, causing the waves preferentially to line up. That radiation, now seen as microwaves, should still show traces of alignment in some spots of the sky. Pryke searched for polarized waves with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, a microwave telescope near the South Pole. He and his team examined two patches of sky, each about seven times as wide as the full moon. They found a faint but unmistakable signal. The discovery came as a relief to cosmologists, whose theories increasingly incorporate such speculative elements as invisible matter and energy. 'Even though we don't know what dark matter and dark energy are, we've made assumptions about the way they behave and put that into our model,' says Pryke. 'So measuring the polarization we expected from the model says we know what we are talking about. Had we not found it, cosmology would have been thrown into chaos.' AMY COMMENTS: They are still playing the same old game. They make a prediction that fits better in plasma cosmology and call it their own. Then when it's found, Viol! their theory has been verified again. Polarized is certainly what's expected with magnetic fields and electric currents.
Another press release that came out recently about the CMB. It was picked up by APOD Feb 12: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030212.html EXERPTS FROM THE APOD CAPTION: WMAP Resolves the Universe Explanation: ... present analyses of above WMAP all-sky image indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (accurate to 1 percent), composed of 73 percent dark energy, 23 percent cold
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dark matter, and only 4 percent atoms, is currently expanding at the rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc (accurate to 5 percent), underwent episodes of rapid expansion called inflation, and will expand forever.
AMY COMMENTS: As far as I'm concerned, this is the most intellectually dishonest report I have ever seen about the CMB. The photo referred to is data from the new WMAP satellite which is in orbit at the Lagrange 2 point (the point beyond the earth's orbit where the earth's and sun's gravity are balanced.) From this orbit, they are always near enough to return data to earth, while not actually going around the earth. Why do I think the press release is dishonest? See for yourself. The data shows variations in background temperature at 380,000 years after the Big Bang (the variations are 100 times weaker than they first predicted, but nobody mentions that.) And from this photo, without bothering us by telling us anything about the observations, they make a whole bunch of outrageous claims. That the BB theory is right, that they know the exact Hubble constant and age of the universe, that stars formed by 200,000 years after the BB. In short, they have completely nailed down the universe. Time to close up astronomy and go home. We have it solved. Of course, only 4% of what they think they are seeing is "real atoms". 23% is dark matter, and 73% mysterious dark energy. They neglect to mention that both of these concepts were invented to patch up inconsistencies that would simply vanish if they rejected the recessional velocity and redshift/distance yardstick. Neither have actually been observed. The 1 and 5 percent errors that they calculate come AFTER the 96% fudge-factor they use to explain away discrepancies. One of the reference links shows the flaw in their argument (click on the phrase "above WMAP all-sky image" at the APOD website and scroll down to "Cosmic History."). This diagram is an artist's conception of the Big Bang universe at 4 different epochs. First, the Big Bang. Second, inflation, which happened in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang and changed what the Big Bang universe was "predicted to look like" into "what it actually looks like." [Or, as one famous scientist put it ... "Here's where the frog jumps in the pond." or "Here a miracle occurs."] Third, we see the universe as observed by WMAP, and fourth, the universe evolves into what we see today. It doesn't really matter what happened "in the beginning". That second magic step can be adjusted to fix any discrepancy between observation and prediction, especially if you have dark matter and dark energy to patch up the chinks. Caption on reference page diagram: Cosmic History WMAP observer the first light to break free in the infant Universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light emerged 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Patterns imprinted on this light reflect the conditions set in motion a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In turn, the patterns are the seeds of the development of the structures of galaxies we now see billions of years after the Big Bang. AMY AGAIN: As Arp pointed out above, the very thing they are claiming as proof of their interpretation (the clarity of the observations) is itself evidence against an expanding universe and the Big Bang. So what does the CMB mean in an electric universe? According to Arp, the simplest explanation is background starlight. The calculations work.
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But there is another mystery that needs explanation. The spectral shift of the CMB is anomalous. It appears as if "we" (the observers) are moving through the CMB at a rate 3 times as fast as the sun is orbiting the Milky Way. The blank-check mainstream explanation is that somewhere between us and the Virgo Cluster there is an enormous "great attractor" made of undetectable dark matter pulling both "us" (Milky Way, Local Group? Solar System? Earth?) and the Virgo Cluster in. Here's an all-sky view of the anomaly: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030209.html What do I think it is? I don't know. Perhaps it's the glow of the Milky Way's jets, or the connection between the Local Group and its parent (Virgo Cluster? One of the active galaxies or quasars in the Virgo Cluster?) Or the orbital motion of our Local Group of galaxies around the Virgo Supercluster. That's a mystery that Arp and his colleagues should be paid well to investigate. The rest of astronomy lost a valuable sanity check when they elbowed him out.
~Amy Acheson thoth@Whidbey.com
COLUMBIA: QUESTIONS OF SOME GRAVITY

Wal Thornhill [ed note: this full article, with pictures, can be found on Wal Thornhill's website at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/columbia.html On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle, Columbia, met its fiery end in the dangerous manoeuvre of supersonic re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Sadly, the crew of seven was lost. U.S. President Bush said: In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth. This is a prime example of the difficulties we must endure while technology far outpaces science. In fact a faulty understanding of the electrical nature of the cosmos may have been responsible for the tragedy. In that context, a report, published on the west coast in the San Francisco Chronicle, makes interesting reading: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/05/MN192153.DTL&am p;type=science FROM THE CHRONICLE ARTICLE: Top investigators of the Columbia space shuttle disaster are analyzing a startling photograph -snapped by an amateur astronomer from a San Francisco hillside -- that appears to show a purplish electrical bolt striking the craft as it streaked across the California sky. The digital image is one of five snapped by the shuttle buff at roughly 5: 53 a.m. Saturday as sensors on the doomed orbiter began showing the first indications of trouble. Seven minutes later, the craft broke up in flames over Texas.
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In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades.
WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: It is not a surprise in an electric universe to have lightning from space follow the ionised trail of Columbia. The Earth is enveloped in a cosmic discharge, centered on the Sun. [See more in Thornhill's newsbreak at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/balloon.html] Further evidence about discharges from space was actually provided by the ill-fated astronauts when they photographed a huge arc of light above thunderstorms in Africa. It is quite possible that conditions in the ionosphere led to a lightning discharge to Columbia, which may have damaged a critical component or surface of the space shuttle. The lightning would be silent and burn like a plasma torch. I agree with NASA experts who discount the possibility of damage to the wing upon takeoff from a piece of lightweight foam. The Columbia disaster seems to have prompted an opportunistic article in WIRED magazine. The article highlights a new technology that is said to make possible a science-fiction idea publicized by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1978 novel, Fountains of Paradise ? the space elevator. Theoretically, it could provide a far cheaper method of reaching space. But is this technology too far ahead of the science? FROM THE WIRED ARTICLE:
TO THE MOON IN A SPACE ELEVATOR?

By Steve Kettmann Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html 02:00 AM Feb. 04, 2003 PT The COLUMBIA disaster could spur faster development of a radically different approach to reaching outer space: the space elevator. More information about the space elevator at: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm <http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm> ] Long imagined by science-fiction writers but seen by others as hopelessly far-fetched, the spaceelevator concept has advanced dramatically in recent years along with leaps forward in the design of carbon nanotubes. Using the lightweight, strong carbon material, it's feasible to talk of building a meter-wide "ribbon" that would start on a mobile ocean platform at the equator, west of Ecuador, and extend 62,000 miles up into space. An elevator could be attached to this ribbon to ferry materials such as satellites and replacement parts for space stations -- or even people -- up into space. The project could become a reality as soon as 15 years from now, experts say. "Technically it's feasible," said Robert Cassanova, director of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. "There's nothing wrong with the physics." THORNHILL COMMENTS:
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Here we have another example where technology has outstripped science. So, when Robert Cassanova says "There's nothing wrong with the physics" we may be sure that he means the old, electrically sterile physics applied to the cosmos. The continual cosmic discharge, which powers the storms on Earth, must be considered when placing long conductors radial to the Earth. Some years ago, the tethered satellite experiment suffered a plasma discharge that severed the tether cable as it was being reeled out from the space shuttle. That phenomenon will be repeated on a grand scale in any attempt to stretch a conducting elevator cable from Earth into space. The power that drives regional thunderstorms will be concentrated into a single cataclysmic thunderbolt, destroying the elevator cable like a thin fuse wire. In the worst scenario, the 50km high ground station will be replaced by a neat, circular crater, like those seen elsewhere in the solar system and attributed, erroneously, to meteoric impacts.
GRAVITY IS THE PROBLEM: UNDERSTANDING IT IS THE SOLUTION.

The space shuttle is a technological marvel that must harness brute chemical and aerodynamic forces in order to overcome the weak force of gravity. The reason for such an approach is that we do not understand gravity. When we finally understand it, it is likely that we will find much gentler means of leaving the Earth and returning. Until that time, manned space travel will remain ridiculously expensive and hazardous. But wait a minute, didn't Einstein give us our understanding of gravity? No. The physicist, Herman Bondi, put it most succinctly: Wherever gravitation can be seen in action, it is well described by the theory, but its logical contact with the rest of physics is dubious. Bondi also asked a crucial question: ...if it [gravitation] is something so fundamental to matter, one might hope that one day it will throw light on the constitution of matter and on the nature of the elementary particles and forces from which it is composed. However, no relevant experiments are possible because the gravitational forces due to minute particles are so utterly minute. That is a curious insight, given that Einstein's theory of gravitation makes the gravitational field a property of space, rather than matter. It is little wonder that after close to a century of concentrated effort, including that of Einstein himself, no connection has been possible between gravity and the quantum behavior of matter or between gravity and the electromagnetic atomic forces. Einstein's view dismisses the idea that anti-gravity is possible and has powerfully discouraged serious investigation of the subject. I believe Bondi was both right and wrong. He was right in that we should look to a fundamental property of matter for the origin of the gravitational force. He was wrong when he wrote that no relevant experiments are possible. The famous Millikan oil drop experiment was one in which the gravitational force of the entire Earth upon a tiny oil drop was balanced by the electrical force on a single electron. Sensitive gravitational experiments on atomic particles are possible when we use the entire mass of the Earth as the source of the test gravitational field. This is essentially what is done in anti-gravity experiments. Einstein published his theory of gravitation, or general theory of relativity, in 1916. And so a new paradigm, or set of beliefs, was established. It was not until 1930 that Fritz London explained the weak, attractive dipolar electric bonding force (known as Van der Waals' dispersion force or the "London force") that causes gas molecules to condense and form liquids and solids. Like gravity, the London force is
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always attractive and operates between electrically neutral molecules. And that precise property has been the most puzzling distinction between gravity and the powerful electromagnetic forces, which may repel as well as attract. So it seems the clue about the true nature of gravity has been available to chemists ? who are not interested in gravity ? and unavailable to physicists ? who are not interested in physical chemistry (and view the world through Einstein's distorting spectacles). Look at any average general physics textbook and you will find no reference to Van der Waals' or London forces. What a different story might have been told if London's insight had come a few decades earlier? Physics could, by now, have advanced by a century instead of being bogged in a mire of metaphysics. An excellent illustrated lesson on the London force, or Van der Waals' dispersion force is given at: http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/bonding/vdw.html The London force originates in fluctuating electric dipoles caused by slight distortion of otherwise electrically neutral atoms and molecules. The tiny electric dipoles arise because the orbiting electrons, at any given instant, cannot shield the positive charge of the nucleus equally in all directions. The result, amongst a group of similar atoms or molecules is that the electric dipoles tend to resonate and line up so that they attract each other. Obviously, gravity is distinct from the London force. It is much, much weaker. That should be a clue. What if we are looking at gravity being due to a similar electrostatic distortion effect in the far smaller constituents of each atom? Of course, this is heresy because the electron is supposed to be a fundamental particle, with no smaller constituent particles. However, there are experiments that challenge this belief. What is more, this model of an electron offers a simple mechanism to explain quantum theory and the relationship between magnetism and the electric force. This explains the puzzling observation that electrons don't simply radiate their orbital energy away and crash into the nucleus. It is because electrons in an atom store and release internal energy during each orbit in the form of varying electric dipole distortion. So a stable orbit is achieved simply when the energy exchange between the electron and the nucleus sums to zero over each orbit. It is the resonant electron orbits that determine the quantum nature of atomic interactions. The same resonances apply within the compound atomic nucleus. If we apply the London force model, both protons and neutrons form resonant structures of electrostatic dipoles that are powerfully attractive because of their closeness, unlike a simple Coulomb electrostatic model that would have the positively charged nucleus fly apart. It explains the need for neutrons to give stability to a compound nucleus. And in the process, it allows the normally unstable neutron to adopt a stable resonant configuration. Such a model suggests that a neutron star is a theoretical figment of overzealous mathematicians. If gravity is an electrostatic induced dipole-dipole force between the fundamental particles of normal matter, then it cannot be shielded because all matter, whether charged or not, will participate. And herein lies the difficulty for antigravity devices. How to modify the strength of those fundamental particle dipoles, or better, to invert them? I have discussed some attempts that seem to have succeeded in offsetting the dipoles slightly from the Earth's radius. See "Antigravity?" at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/antigravity.html There is another important consequence of taking into account atomic electric dipole effects. A ponderous body will introduce an additional dipole effect, that of the gravitational offset of the heavy nucleus from the centre of the atom. This effect can set up a radial electric field that may lead to charge separation and stratification in the conducting interior of a body, particularly stars and gas giants. In that case, electrostatic repulsion between similar charges will serve to offset compression due to gravity. The usual determination of density will therefore tell us nothing about the internal structure and composition of such a body. Certainly, such powerful electrical forces will prevent gravitational collapse and the formation of
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mythical neutron stars and black holes. The evidence presented for the existence of such objects is already explained by cosmic electric discharge activity. A new technology based on the obvious electrical nature of matter will look quite different from our Victorian vintage science. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We are long overdue for some magic! Wal Thornhill 2002
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 3 (April 30, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart
CONTENTS: THE MYTHS OF THE ANCESTORS WOLFE CREEK CRATER STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO HOW TO SEARCH FOR ALIENS
Mel Acheson Louis A G Hissink Don Scott Wal Thornhill
THE MYTHS OF THE ANCESTORS

By Mel Acheson The Saturn Thesis interprets myths as eyewitness accounts of a celestial spectacle which people around the world experienced before the dawn of history. In that Age of Myth, certain planetary gods were palpable and active. The spectacle had its opening act (the Creation of the Gods), its dramatic development (the War of the Gods), and its denouement (the Death of the Gods). The mythmakers memorialized that spectacle in literature, art, architecture, institutions, political conventions, and religious rituals. The creation myths are interpreted not as the generation of the universe we think of today but as the formation of a celestial Earth seen from the terrestrial earth. In consequence, the question "What was before creation?" has a non-trivial answer. It leads to this first insight: The mythmakers had ancestors. The creation myths of the mythmakers would have been the Armageddon of those ancestors. The appearance of the celestial spectacle that opened the Age of Myth and fixed the attention of subsequent generations marked the end of whatever order?celestial, terrestrial, social, psychic?prevailed before. The definition of 'natural' was erased and redefined. The sky and the objects in it were reconfigured. Weather and climate shifted. (See, e.g., the discontinuity of variation in isotope ratios around 11000 layers down in cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet and from ocean floor sediments.) The force of gravity may have increased. Social and environmental relationships were transformed. New cultures arose from a new way of thinking. What were the myths of the mythmakers' ancestors? If they were not inspired by a spectacle in the sky, perhaps they shouldn't be called myths. Perhaps they were merely stories of explanation, analogous to what we call folk wisdom or common sense, metaphors of mundane experience that enabled the ancestors to live more comfortable lives. Either the ancestors left few records or their descendants, the mythmakers, judged the records not worth preserving. We know of only a few paintings on cave walls and some flower-strewn graves. Almost any speculation can be hung on those sparse pegs of evidence. But the paintings and the graves show no Saturnian symbology. Their style and content is entirely different from that of the later age. The paintings show realistic representations of terrestrial fauna instead of totemic reproductions of sacred forms. They also demonstrate artistic talent comparable with artists today. This implies constancy of artistic nature
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within a changing environment. Furthermore, it suggests that the forms produced in the Age of Myth, such as those depicted in petroglyphs, are also realistic representations of objects in the artists' environments?objects that therefore cannot be the stick-figure people and animals of popular interpretation. Thus it comes as no surprise that the forms of petroglyphs correspond exactly to the forms of high-energy discharge instabilities observed in plasma labs. But this is only a curiosity. The myths of the mythmakers' ancestors may never be reconstructed. The spectacle that inspired the myths we know today pretty much wiped clean both the factual and the artifactual records. The importance of asking what were the myths of the ancestors lies in a second insight: The mythmakers were OUR ancestors. The Armageddon of the mythmakers was our opening scene. The spectacular sky disintegrated. The gods went away. The story ended. Our age began with sacred hearsay and institutionalized ceremonies. There is no spectacle in our sky. There are no thunderbolts flying among our planets. There are no palpable gods decreeing an irresistible and inscrutable Truth that preempts our lives. Ours is a time of cycles, not of spectacles; of stability, not of novelty; of human scale, not of the scale of gods. We work toward self-chosen goals rather than commemorate the works of the gods. We accumulate knowledge from the operation of our cognitive abilities rather than parse revelations from the gods. We love the objects and beings of this Earth rather than venerate the gods. The Truth of the Age of Myth was a non-empirical fiat Truth to which people could only submit. The truths of our age are characterized by a provisional, testable, criticisable truthfulness that is relative to human senses and understanding. It's not that the gods are dead: The death of the gods is a theme from the mythmakers' mythology. It's that the very idea of "the gods" is alien in our world. The imposing, creating, warring, dying gods of the Age of Myth are now tiny points of light following distant and stable orbits. They are irrelevant nonparticipants in our lives and in our story. Our natural order is altogether different from the natural order of the Age of Myth. Yet the mythmakers were our ancestors. We have inherited from them a legacy with many benefits. But that legacy has also created a conflict. We have accepted our ancestors' story as the one true exemplary story. We have repeated it, emulated it, worshipped it, inverted it, parodied it, denied it. But we have not asked if it is OUR story. We have internalized the mythmakers' final judgment that we inhabit a fallen and defective world. We identify ourselves as the children of mythic heroes; and then we strike out with the rancor and resentment of disappointed expectations. We build a world of increasing comforts, physical, financial, and cultural; and then we flounder in the unredeemable guilt of survivors. We have not thought to view our world with lucidity apart from mythic narratives and categories. For example, does our propensity to view our world in terms of dichotomies derive from the mythical creation that divided the sky into the land of the gods inside the sacred circle and the domain of chaos outside it? Sacred/profane, good/evil, moral/immoral, true/false, correct/incorrect?these are not categories grounded in our nature or in our experience. The act of dividing permeates every aspect of our lives: compatriot/foreigner, believer/infidel, science/religion, creationism/evolutionism. But often the opposing categories are subsets of each other and cannot clearly be distinguished in the real world. The nature of our world is adaptable, uncertain, incidental, practical?qualities that are ambiguous and alive with possibilities. For millennia we have been adapting an adamantine patrimony to a growing awareness of our distinctness. The insights of the Saturn Thesis enable us to compose our own story from our own original ground without either rejecting or acquiescing to our mythic heritage. We can paint on our cave walls pictures neither of gods nor of animals but of the changing worlds of human understanding. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
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Wolfe Creek Crater

By Louis A G Hissink MSc. Wolfe Creek Crater was first discovered in 1947 from an aerial survey, but was previously known to the local Aborigines as "Kandimalal". The crater is circular and has a diameter of 880 metres, with the floor of the crater some 60 meters below the rim. It lies 90 kilometres south of Halls Creek on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. Figure 1 is an aerial image of the crater while Figure 2 is a recent satellite image of the crater, showing the nearby Wolfe Creek drainage system. The satellite image is skewed to the right. Photos and diagrams can be http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/ljurrasic/WolfeCreekCrater_int.htm found here:
It is conventionally interpreted as a classic meteorite crater and dated some 300,000 years BP. Fragments of the meteorite which created the crater have been found and unusual iron rich shale balls also occur around the crater rim, containing fragments and veins of iron-nickel metal and an ironphosphide, Schreibersite. In July 2002 UTS Geophysics flew a geophysical survey over Wolfe Creek Crater for Geoscience Australia. Airborne Magnetic, radiometric and digital terrain data were collected. The author purchased the final digital data from the Department of Minerals and Resources of Western Australia, and which is also displayed on the Department1s web site. The data were manipulated with the Goldensoftware Surfer contouring program and the Mapinfo plugin Mapimagery, as well as Encom Technology's Mapinfo Discover package. The magnetic response of the crater is fairly weak, with a thin annulus magnetic high corresponding to the crater rim, and a very small high in the centre or the bull1s eye in the crater. The regional magnetic field slopes from west to east. The next image (Figure 4) is a composite of the Radiometric Total count, the Digital terrain contours, and the position of the section line AB. The most striking feature here is the concentration of the radioactive elements (Uranium, Thorium and Potassium) around the crater rim together with a south west-to-west concentration away from the crater itself. However closer inspection of the elevation contours shows that the crater rim is somewhat asymmetric in shape in that the south west crater rim is thicker and of a shallower slope than the steeper north-eastern part of the rim. This, coupled with the regional topographical slope to the southwest, suggests that the splay of radiometric material is probably related to subsequent erosion of the crater rim towards Wolfe Creek to the west. There is however a strong correlation between the radiometric counts with the crater rim. Figure 5 below is a composite profile along section AB showing the topography from the DTM data, (bottom profile), the Total count of the radiometric data and the RTP (Reduced to Pole) magnetic data over Wolfe Creek crater. There is good correlation between the geophysics and crater rim, and the radiometric total count is quite anomalous. Photos and diagrams can be found here: http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/ljurrasic/WolfeCreekCrater_int.htm The meteorite inferred to have formed the Wolfe Creek Crater has been described as an iron meteorite and the shale balls interpreted as deeply rusted (or highly weathered) remains of the iron meteorite. The
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structural relationship of the country rock to the crater is typical for an impact crater. The country rock is a quartzite capped with laterite, and often layers of laterite can be seen sandwiched in between the contorted quartzite, putting the impact as post laterite development. This has been confirmed in the field by the author in 1999 and 2000. The uranium abundance in meteorites is typically as 0.008 ppm, and that for the earth's crust 1.4 ppm, and often 50 ppm in some granites, and in the percent range for uranium ore deposits (Briefing paper No 78, 2002, The Cosmic Origins & Geological Role of Uranium, Uranium Information Centre, Melbourne Victoria, Australia). It is difficult to explain the anomalous concentration of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium as the result of the catastrophic melting of the Wolfe Creek Meteorite itself on impact, given the extremely low abundance of uranium in meteorites. Experience elsewhere in this region shows that elevated radiometric counts are often associated with surface laterite deposits, one such example occurring on Nookanbah Station hundreds of kilometres to the west where a similar geophysical survey was conducted by the author on behalf of a client over a tenement hosting igneous intrusions known as lamproites during 2001. However the clear association of the radiometric anomaly at Wolfe Creek Crater with the crater rim itself, discounts any association with the known laterite at the crater. All that could be said is that the radiometric anomaly is associated with the crater rim, but is not derived from the meteorite itself since these meteorites don't have enough uranium in the first instance to create the measured anomaly. Unless the Wolfe Creek Crater meteorite was a rare one, which did have elevated levels of uranium, but there is little data to form this interpretation, if any. Aboriginal myths about Wolfe Creek Crater are unusual and the one published by the West Australian Museum mentions the local story of two rainbow snakes, whose sinuous paths across the desert formed the nearby Sturt and Wolfe Creeks, and the crater marks the place where one of those rainbow snakes emerged from the ground. Another aboriginal myth relates this crater to the morning star, though the reference is anecdotal. None the less if ancestral Aborigines had observed this crater being formed then either it is sheer coincidence as the aborigines are assumed to have arrived 40,000 years ago, or the geological dating is problematical. Giving the Aboriginal myth some credence, it is possible that what their ancestors could have described was an enormous electrical discharge between the earth and some other cosmic body. Such electrical discharges would have occurred over some hours of duration, and such a novel physical phenomenon would tend to be described by technologically unsophisticated nomadic hunter-gatherers in terms of an aboriginal metaphor, or a snake, hence the term "rainbow snake". This suggests that the Wolfe Creek Crater is an electrical discharge crater, not a meteoritic impact crater. References: 1. Australia's Meteorite craters, Alex Bevan and Ken McNamara, West Australian Museum, December 1993 2. Logistics report for a Detailed Airborne Magnetic, Radiometric and Digital Elevation survey for the Wolfe Creek Crater Project, July 2002, UTS Geophysics, for Geoscience Australia. Louis A G Hissink MSc. Consulting Diamond Geologist December 2002
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STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO

Don Scott The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site has run several discussions of the "variable star" V838 Monocerotis. Today they have another one. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021003.html but also see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030402.html They include comments like: V838 Mon may be a totally new addition to the astronomical zoo. I object to this "new" characterization. This zoo animal disproves standard fusion models. In fact this star (together with several others) simply demonstrates stellar evolution wholly NOT in keeping with thermonuclear stellar theory. To paraphrase my web page: FG Sagittae breaks all the rules of accepted stellar evolution. FG Sagittae has changed from blue to yellow since 1955! V605 Aquilae: Examination of old images and spectrograms reveal that V 605 Aquilae, studied by Knut Lundmark in the 1920's was a similar sort of beast,... V4334 Sagittarii is better known as Sakurai's object, for its 1994 discoverer. It, too, changed both spectral type and surface composition very rapidly, and is now hydrogen-poor and carbon-rich, and well on its way to becoming the century's third new R CrB star. So now there are at least four prime examples of stars that do not evolve according to the accepted thermonuclear model of how stars are powered. THESE CHANGES HAVE ALL BEEN OBSERVED DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS. These are stars that falsify the conventional understanding of stellar life cycles. All of them act in a manner predicted by the Electric Star hypothesis. If we trust ancient observers of the sky (our group is based on doing exactly that, is it not?), then there are three additional stars that have changed ("evolved") during the last couple of millennia. Sirius is a main sequence, brilliant white A-type star. The ancients (among them: Cicero, Horace, Ptolemy, and Seneca) called it red or "coppery" in color. Seneca, in the days of Nero, called it "redder than Mars", whereas he described Jupiter as "not at all red." Castor is designated as the alpha star in the constellation of Gemini, but it is not as brilliant as the beta star, Pollux. Stars in constellations are always named alpha, beta, gamma, etc., in decreasing order of apparent brilliance. Castor is the 23rd brightest star in the sky while Pollux is the 17th brightest. It has been suggested therefore that since the time of the ancients, Castor has lost luminosity. Capella was described as being a "red star" (we would call it M-type) by several ancient and medieval writers including Ptolemy and Riccioli. It has now been confirmed to be a binary - one G-type and one Ftype. Not M-type. In the Electric Star version of "stellar evolution" things can happen quickly. If the fusion model were correct, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for a star to change from one place in the HR diagram to another. It would not be observed within a "human lifetime", or have been observed over an astronomically relatively short period of a mere, say, 2000 years. It didn't take FG Sagittae hundreds of thousands of years to "run down." The star V838 Monocerotis has moved half way across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram in a few months. Migrating across the HR
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diagram can happen very rapidly - and apparently does! How many such counter-examples does it take for astrophysicists to realize their stellar fusion theory has been falsified? Don Scott http://www.electric-cosmos.org/
HOW TO SEARCH FOR ALIENS

Wal Thornhill Next we come to a question that everyone, scientist and non-scientist alike, must have asked at some time. What is man1s place in the Universe? ~Fred Hoyle , The Nature of the Universe In March this year 13,000 people from across the U.S converged on Philadelphia for the largest meeting of science educators in the world. Many teachers there remarked that their students are always asking about SETI and astronomy. Kids have a keen interest in astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. What's out there? Are we alone? The first question we need to ask before we look for life on other worlds is how did intelligent life come to form on this planet? Are these unique circumstances, or are they common? Which stars are most likely to harbour worlds like ours? It is a question involving a broad mix of cosmology, mythology, geology and biology. Unfortunately, viewpoints today are polarized into only two choices, both requiring miracles. These choices are the creationist story and the evolutionist story. Subscribers to each camp have dug in for a fight to the death. Each side has quite sound arguments against the dogma of the other. Neither side allows the possibility that the answer may be found in no-man's land. Religions have adopted a literal belief that the creation stories of myth explain the origin of the Earth and the universe. However, mythical creation stories required human observers. They have nothing to do with the question of how the Earth began, much less how the universe was formed. Nor are they about how life and intelligent life originated. They are the story of the most recent in a series of cosmic cataclysms that have visited the Earth in its long and chequered career. Those cataclysms are recorded in the tortured strata and buried flora and fauna of the Earth. Science has adopted its own evolutionary mythology of Earth's history that largely discounts cosmic cataclysms unless they happened in the remote, unfathomable past (although in recent years there has been a grudging acceptance that the dinosaurs may have been wiped out by a hypothetical asteroid impact). The dogma has been expressed by Dr. Maxine Singer, President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, when she wrote "Evolution is the framework that makes sense of the whole natural world from the formation of atoms, galaxies, stars and planetsS " The religious story gives us no clue about where to look for extraterrestrial life. But the dogma of evolution also limits our thinking about SETI. Success is unlikely if our beliefs about our origin and place in the universe are wrong. This is demonstrated clearly in the following bleak excerpt from New Scientist.
Earth was a freak

New Scientist 29 March 2003 HAZEL MUIR
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BAD news for people hunting extraterrestrials: the cosy, rocky planets that are essential for supporting life might be rare, cosmological freaks. The only reason we are here is because a nearby star happened to explode next to our young Sun just as the Solar System was forming, claims an applied mathematician. Thomas Clarke at the University of Central Florida in Orlando predicts that the vast majority of planets in the Milky Way are frigid gas giants like Jupiter, with hostile atmospheres and no solid surfaces to walk around on. "On average, a solar system will consist of an extensive rocky asteroid belt and some gas giant planets and moons," says Clarke. "It's kind of a dismal conclusion." Astronomers agree that the planets and moons of our Solar System formed in a swirling disc of gas and dust around the Sun. In the outer regions, cold, slushy gases condensed into the giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. And in the inner regions, dusty particles melted and stuck together, forming hot blobs of rock that cooled and merged to make Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. TYPICAL SOLAR SYSTEM: Debris in the asteroid belt will not form rocky and potentially hospitable planets unless there is an additional heat source. But it is not clear why the rock melted - the Sun then was not much hotter than it is now. Astronomers believe that the extra heat may have come from radioactive aluminium-26 that was sprayed out of a star that exploded up to 50 light years away when the planets were forming. Decay products of the isotope, which has a half-life of 720,000 years, have been found in meteorites. At last week's Lunar and Planetary Science conference near Houston, in Texas, Clarke suggested that without the heat from the aluminium, the Earth would not have formed. While asteroid-sized rocks would have aggregated in the inner Solar System, they would not have melted and clumped together to form planets. According to Clarke's calculations, the solid rocks would simply zoom past each other or collide and recoil like snooker balls. Only molten, squidgy rocks would deform and lose energy in a collision, he says, allowing them to stick together and grow. Debris in the asteroid belt will not form rocky and potentially hospitable planets unless there is an additional heat source But the chance of a star exploding at just the right time and place is very much against the odds. Stars only explode three or four times a century in our Galaxy. Clarke estimates that the probability of a supernova happening within 50 light years of any new solar system that is busy forming planets is only about 1 in 100. "So only a small fraction of planetary systems would be expected to have terrestrial planets," says Clarke. Trouble comes, however, when what we think to be knowledge is actually no more than illusion. Education then serves to transmit illusions from generation to generation, with the situation getting worse all the time ... wrong ideas eventually become so deeply entrenched as to become unshakeable dogma.
Our Place in the Cosmos ? Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe. The failure of the SETI project to find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence may indicate the Earth is a freak. Or it might indicate that many of the things confidently asserted by scholars like Thomas Clarke are far from the truth. For example, the fact that "astronomers agree that the planets and moons of our Solar System formed in a swirling disc of gas and dust around the Sun," does not make it so. It is probable that consensus about the so-called "nebular hypothesis" has been achieved simply because no astronomer has come up with a more plausible alternative. Clarke indicates one of the problems ? how do you form a planet from a ring of dust stretching clear around the solar system? Astronomers were surprised to find
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that moonlets in Saturn's rings on commensurate orbits merely swap orbits without colliding. So the ad hoc proposal making objects like that hot and "squidgy" will not help them to stick together if they never come into contact. In an electric universe there is a far more plausible explanation for the genesis of planets. It has almost biological overtones and is appealing in its simplicity ? one measure of a good theory. It explains why gas giants have been found recently in large numbers orbiting their parent star far closer than expected by the nebular hypothesis. But first we must deal with the origin of the parent stars
ELECTRIC STARS
The electric universe model assumes, based on good evidence, that the universe is not electrically neutral. So electric currents flow through the thin plasma of deep space in the form of giant filaments, detectable by their magnetic fields. These cosmic filaments take the form of "twisted pairs," well known to electrical engineers. Plasma physicists call them "Birkeland currents," after a pioneering scientist in the field. Observations and experiments support this model. Birkeland currents are ultimately responsible for the formation of stars. These cosmic electric currents are the most efficient scavengers of dust and gas in space. Matter is squeezed or "pinched" toward the current axis by a strong force that varies inversely with radial distance from the axis. Contrast that with the weak force of gravity, which falls off rapidly with the square of distance. Stars are formed like beads strung along a cosmic power line with their rotation axes aligned along the current filaments. Evidence for that model comes from the alignment of the spin axes of stars with the magnetic field in giant molecular clouds. The effect is rather like the old toy spinning tops, with the helical thread plunger passed through them to impart spin. The strong electromagnetic coupling between the proto-star and its environment is also capable of removing angular momentum during collapse - a severe problem for the gravitational collapse model of stars. The Hubble telescope offers a stunning unprecedented close-up view of a turbulent firestorm of star birth along a nearly edge-on dust disk girdling Centaurus A, the nearest active galaxy to Earth. It shows spectacularly the filamentary nature of molecular clouds from which stars are born. Full article with photos can be found here: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9r90r78d The electric universe model is a major departure from conventional views about how stars shine. It proposes that stars, after they have formed, continue to receive power from galactic Birkeland currents. Eddington wrote in his famous work, The Internal Constitution of the Stars: In seeking a source of energy other than contraction the first question is whether the energy to be radiated in future is now hidden in the star or whether it is being picked up continuously from outside. Suggestions have been made that the impact of meteoric matter provides the heat, or that there is some subtle radiation traversing space which the star picks up. It is the second possibility that is true in an electric universe model. But Eddington did not pursue it because he was convinced that a star must collapse under its own gravity unless supported from within by an energy source. That was an incorrect assumption because gravity induces charge separation and electrical repulsion effects within a star ? something that Eddington dismissed. The simple fact that a proton weighs almost 2000 times as much as an electron ensures that this will occur. Each hydrogen atom in a star will be distorted by gravity to form a tiny radial electric dipole. The resulting electric field will ensure charge separation inside the star. Free electrons will drift toward the surface and leave behind a positively charged core. (This simple fact exposes the nonsense of collapsed
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stars ? that is, neutron stars and black holes. The phenomena attributed to them are simply explained electrically). The resulting internal electric forces counterbalance compression due to gravity more or less uniformly throughout the star. As the gadfly British physicist, Dr. Harold Aspden, had the temerity to remark, knowing the volume of a hydrogen atom and the mass of the Sun 19th century physicists could have calculated this. He wrote: ...the mass density within a star is not concentrated into a non-uniform distribution by the force of gravitation. The importance of this to cosmological science cannot be overestimated. It bears upon that question of how a nuclear fusion reaction can be initiated to feed the star's energy output. It obliges one to consider the prospect of a cold fusion process or to look for other explanations for the stellar energy source. Precisely! ? the simplest of observations about the Sun supports the electric star model. By the way, the problem of short-lived radioactive isotopes is solved by the fact that stellar electric discharges manufacture all of the heavy elements seen in their spectra. A supernova is not required. Then there is the Sun's strange atmosphere. Fred Hoyle wrote in 1955: We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three thousand kilometres up. Instead, the planets orbit inside its "huge bloated envelope." The Sun's atmosphere matches that expected from an electric discharge in a very low pressure gas ? the solar "wind" accelerating away from the Sun, the million degree temperature of the solar corona above a "cool" photosphere at 6000 degrees, and the magnetic fields that reveal electric currents in space.
Where do planets fit into this picture?

Companion stars and gas giants may be formed in the initial string of stellar "beads." Or they may be "born" later from a star when electrical stresses cause the expulsion of some of its positively charged core. It is an effective way to increase surface area to relieve electrical stress. A gargantuan stellar "lightning flash," called a nova, accompanies the birth. The result is generally a close-orbiting binary system and an "expulsion disk" ? in contradistinction to an accretion disk. The new companion can be a star or a gas giant. Gas giants may also undergo the same process, albeit less violently, giving birth to their rocky moons and planets. Notably, Saturn still has an ephemeral expulsion disk. With such an unconventional scenario, where is the best place to look for extraterrestrial intelligence? The immediate answer is ? not near a star like the Sun! Our situation is quite precarious ? almost freakish. A small difference in Earth's orbit or radiation from the Sun could extinguish intelligent life on this planet. Earth is highly unlikely to have supported life for hundreds of millions of years in its present situation. So SETI is mistaken to concentrate its search on Earth-like planets orbiting energetic stars like the Sun. A more helpful answer is that Earth-like planets and intelligent life are most likely to be found very close to less energetic, dim red stars. That is good news because they are the most numerous in the galaxy. It should be clear that there is no such thing as a "failed star" in an electric universe because internal nuclear energy is not the source of their radiance. It is also important to recognize that the term "dwarf" is a misnomer when applied to a dim red star. All red stars will appear much larger than the central physical body because their colour and size is largely due to a spherical anode glow at a great height above the
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surface. Many satellites will orbit within the glowing shell and diffuse atmosphere of a red star. That is the ideal place for life to take hold. Radiant energy falls equally over the surface of such a satellite, or planet, regardless of orbit, rotation and axial tilt. There are neither seasons nor day and night. And life-giving molecules, including water, will mist down through an atmosphere drawn from their parent star. The giant red star, Betelgeuse, sports unexpected hot spots. They may be stellar objects within, shining through an enveloping anode glow. The glowing sheath is so huge that if Betelguese replaced our Sun then Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter would be orbiting within it. Astronomers recognize that the plasma envelope of such stars is so tenuous that it would not impede planets in their orbits. There is a catch however for SETI enthusiasts. Intelligent beings living on a planet in this benign environment would not see a dark, star spangled heaven. If the misty atmosphere cleared sufficiently they might see a diffuse, brighter light from their primary or possibly a nearby binary partner shining through the glowing cocoon that surrounds them. If intelligent beings living on these protected planets have learned to use radio signals, we would not detect them, because the plasma of the anode glow would act as an impenetrable shield against radio signals. Nor would they be able to detect our radio signals, for the same reason. In fact, there would be nothing to suggest the existence of an immense universe beyond the plasma glow that surrounds them. There would be no reason for them to search for extraplanetary intelligence. UnlessS they discovered a way to communicate over cosmic distances that does not involve radio signals. In any case, radio signals are far too slow for sensible communication over the gulf of deep space. Having intelligent civilizations electrically "quarantined" inside their stellar wombs would satisfy the so-called "Fermi paradox," which is the question: If the universe is teeming with aliens, where is everybody? We are the freaks who have been given the opportunity to see the immensity of the universe and to live to ask the question. Our creation myths seem to be a human memory of Earth's expulsion from the maternal womb. Surely we should mine them for insights into the real history of the Earth and the only intelligent life we know, before letting our imagination run riot. If we appear to be alone it might simply be due to our primitive understanding of the universe, which is leading us to look in the wrong places and maybe with the wrong tools. I believe that if SETI is to succeed we must challenge our kids with possibilities and questions, not with the overwhelming "illusion of knowledge" that modern science portrays. Because, contrary to the bleak conventional outlook, the electric universe seems designed to produce intelligent life. The search must ultimately succeed! (c) Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 4 (June 15, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHAT MOVES? PLANET FORMATION
Mel Acheson Wal Thornhill
WHAT MOVES?
By Mel Acheson When you're in a boat, you see waves of water lap against the hull. If you could tie a flag to a molecule of water, you could see that molecule move up and down. When you're at a concert, you hear waves of sound press against your ear. If you could tie a flag to a molecule of air, you could see that molecule move back and forth. When you tune your radio to your favorite station, you set its sensory organ--the antenna and tuning circuit--to respond to waves of electromagnetic potential energy. If you could tie a flag to ... um, what exactly could you tie a flag to? The water or air molecule moves. You can measure its spatial displacement as it varies with time, and you can plot those measurements on a graph with displacement along one axis and time along the other. The result is a sinusoidal curve that resembles the form of the water's surface which we call a wave. Hence we speak of water waves, usually without distinguishing the "real" surface feature from the metaphorical mathematical form. And we speak of sound waves, usually without being aware that the term is, in this instance, entirely metaphorical. We have developed mathematical manipulations that enable us, on the basis of metaphorical resemblances, to predict and to utilize various attributes of periodically moving water and air molecules. The wave theory of water and the wave theory of sound have been wondrously productive cognitive tools. So, too, we speak of electromagnetic waves. And we have developed mathematical manipulations that have been wondrously productive. We measure voltages or currents; we graph their variation with time; and the graphs have the form of a wave. But what moves? The variation is a changing potential, not a changing location. I could plot the changes in my thinking against time and produce a wave of opinion. Would Quantum Mechanics then apply? Opinions do become entangled and they frequently collapse, but this is hardly what Dr. Schrodinger had in mind with his wave equation. He was thinking of something material that moved. The assumption that light is something that moves from one place to another goes beyond even the analogy with water: In water and sound waves, the particles only move back and forth in place. The water molecule doesn't move from the boat to the beach; the air molecule doesn't move from the horn to your ear. The apparent movement "from- to" is a sequential periodicity in the oscillations of the molecules.
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The idea that light is something that moves from one location to another gives rise to the further ideas of a "ray" of light and, if interrupted into segments, a "bullet" of light. The shortest segment imaginable we imagine to be a tiny particle, a photon, shot out of an emitting atom, traveling to another atom, and being absorbed. The analogous image with water or sound is not associated with waves but with such things as fire hoses and jet engines--"streams" of water or air. The question of what, if anything, moves with light is an open one. This question goes back 300 years. And-- surprise!--it was never settled. It was decided, but not settled: A Danish astronomer, Olaus Roemer, measured variations in the times of occultations of Jupiter's innermost moon, Io, when the Earth was at opposite points in its orbit. He attributed the differences to the travel time of something that moved from Io to the Earth, i.e., to the speed of light. The director of the Royal Observatory in Paris, Gian Domenico Cassini, the first of four generations of Royal astronomers, disagreed. He thought light might instead be a cumulative response of the eye, perhaps to variations in some force acting instantaneously at a distance like Newton's gravity. He noted that Roemer's measurements were dependent on a great many variables--different velocities of Earth and Io, different angles of view, different intensities of light, different observing conditions, etc.--any one of which, or some combination of which, could account for the variations in his (Roemer's) observations. Cassini also took measurements, not only of Io but of the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter. And the other satellites did not show the same variations as Io. Edmund Halley, of Halley's Comet fame, who had helped publish and promote Newton's Principia, became enamored with Roemer's idea (that light was something that moved) and promoted it in the scientific press of the time. Roemer and Cassini died. Halley carried the torch, and Roemer's idea caught on. The mob of scientists rushed down Something That Moves Street and vacated Cumulative Response Street. No one even thought to look for other streets of explanation in the Village of Electromagnetism. Even Cassini's son, who succeeded him at the Royal Observatory, abandoned his objections. [See http://users.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdf pp. 51-7] As I said, the issue was decided--by mob rule--but not settled. What really is the case? Light might be something that moves--but what else could it be? That light is something that moves is plausible. That assumption explains many observations--though not all. But plausibility is not reliability: Unless a systematic effort is made to seek out what else light might be and to devise tests that will distinguish among the various plausibilities, no one will ever know if "something moving" is the truth or merely a plausible artifact of selected data. Roemer simply reversed the older intuitive idea that understood seeing as analogous to touching: something--an "ocular ray"--reaches out like a finger and touches/sees the object seen. Roemer assumed rays come not from the eye but to the eye, and that too is intuitive. But as more observations accumulated, things got more complicated. Today, Quantum Mechanics has had to abandon intuitiveness altogether and embrace "Quantum weirdness". Its justification is that it gets results: The math goes from an empirical start to an empirical finish. It's predictive to a very, very, very great degree of accuracy.* Who could doubt that? The mob must have gone down the Street of Truth after all. What else could light be! That exclamation mark begs a question that should be taken seriously. It's a question that lies at the heart of reliability. It lies at the heart of scientific discovery. What else, indeed, could light be? The math (of Quantum Mechanics) goes from 1, which we observe, to 4, which we also observe: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. But there's no guarantee reality goes that way: Maybe the real path is 1 + 3 = 4. Quantum weirdness may only be ambiguity in our categories (of waves/particles that move) rather than in light. What if light is a "cumulative response"? No one has bothered to develop a mathematical theory for that ... yet. What if light is something else? No one has bothered to peer down the cognitive alleyways for a third or fourth possibility: Consider that plasma discharge phenomena are scalable over at least 14 orders of magnitude, from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms. Why stop with "fundamental" subatomic
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particles? What if the "zoo" of subatomic particles are merely tiny electrical sparks--plasmoids--observed at different stages of their evolution or under different discharge conditions? (Imagine a subatomic-sized Herbig-Haro star or active Seyfert galaxy--the "doughnut on a stick" form typical of so many plasma discharge phenomena.) What if reality consists of larger sparks driving smaller sparks all the way down the scales, and there is no such thing as a "particle" or a "wave"? With electromagnetism, the electric and magnetic fields vary in strength and polarity. It's not immediately obvious that anything moves--except scientists' opinions about it. And they move more like a mob: Fervency of belief so easily obscures enlightenment. It's been 300 years, and the question is still open: What moves? Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com *Accurate prediction is a sign of a theory's usefulness, not its truthfulness. The theory could be merely instrumental.
PLANET BIRTHING
By Wal Thornhill [ed note: Wal Thornhill's full essay with photos can be found on his website: www.holoscience.com] Dan Falk prefaced a recent news report in Nature, on the subject of planet formation, with these words: Our knowledge of planets outside our Solar System has been transformed in the past few years. But these new-found worlds don't look much like our planetary neighbours, and no one is quite sure why. At a rough glance the traditional nebular disk model used to explain the formation of planets in our solar system seems plausible. After all, the orbits of the planets do describe a thick disk about the Sun. But could this model be wrong? It requires that the planetary orbits be in the same plane. Instead we find them tilted at substantial angles to the Sun's equator. Now that new discoveries challenge our cherished notions it is time to revisit the basic questions: Are planets formed slowly by accretion over millions of years or 3born2 suddenly and violently from a larger body? Does the solar system have a more complex history? The likelihood is extremely high that planets do not form slowly. The accretion disk model is riddled with assumptions about initial conditions and glosses over many problems that have remained stubbornly unsolved. For example, there are severe problems in getting a rotating nebula to collapse gravitationally to form a star in the first place. The large rotational momentum of a cosmic nebula has somehow to be dissipated. And an embedded magnetic field conspires to prevent collapse. The Nobel Prize winner, the late Hannes Alfvn, wrote in Evolution of the Solar System: ...the 'generally accepted' theory of stellar formation may be one of a hundred unsupported dogmas which constitute a large part of present-day astrophysics. The protoplanetary disk model assumes that the planets were formed largely where we find them now. That seems not to be true. Long-term computer integrations of physically different models of the solar system show chaotic behavior (that can mean planets being thrown out of the solar system) in an interval of 3 to 30 million years ? a blink of the eye in the accepted age of the system. The authors of one study
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described this result as 3very striking and disturbing.2 ("Chaotic Evolution of the Solar System," Sussman & Wisdom, Science, Vol. 257, 3 July 1992, pp. 56-62). If this is so we cannot use the present plan of the solar system to say anything about the initial plan or its evolution. The protoplanetary disk model also assumes that planets can accrete by collisions of particles in the disk. A recent study of hyper-velocity impacts between small objects, which assumes very different orbits of those particles, showed that the crater formed was larger than the impactor with the result that fragmentation rather than accretion is the rule. Also, objects in similar orbits about a central mass merely swap places without colliding. For example, two moons of Saturn, Epimetheus and Janus, swap orbits every 4 years or so. These problems have resulted in a spate of additional ad hoc requirements to be added to computer models. For example, the matter in the disk must have been hot and "squidgy" to allow particles to stick together. In fact, the very term "accretion disk" used by computer modellers begs the question about the origin of such disks observed elsewhere in the galaxy. When we see objects with strong gravitational fields ejecting huge masses of material at great speeds we must consider the possibility that we are observing "expulsion" disks. After all, it is not clear what is responsible for energetic expulsions if we are looking at systems governed solely by gravity. Explanations based upon magically conjured and trapped magnetic fields merely shove the problem out of sight within the central star or hypothetical black hole. And without exception they ignore the electrical origin of magnetic fields. When it comes to detailed examination of the planets, theories go from bad to worse. No plausible model exists to explain the fruit salad of characteristics we find. A good theory should explain the obvious dichotomy between the rocky planets and the gas giants without requiring more ad hoc early conditions. It must explain the odd axial tilts of the planets. After all, they behave as giant gyroscopes whose spin axes will merely wobble when struck by another sizeable object. We should expect the giant planets to have their equators in the plane of the ecliptic but we have Saturn tipped over by 27 degrees and Uranus by 98 degrees! If we are ever to be satisfied that we understand the basic principles of planet formation we must include all of the information available to us from human observations of the sky. As Alfvn wrote: Because no one can know a priori what happened four to five billion years ago, we must start from the present state of the solar system and, step by step, reconstruct increasingly older periods. This actualistic principle, which emphasizes reliance on observed phenomena, is the basis for the modern approach to the geological evolution of the Earth; 'the present is the key to the past.' This principle should also be used in the study of the solar system. Even in this wise advice there is an assumption that the sky we see today is the same as that seen by our prehistoric ancestors. Recent forensic examinations of astronomical petroglyphs and global creation myths argue strongly against such a cosy assumption. THE PRESENT MAY NOT BE THE KEY TO THE PAST. It should be remembered that theories of evolution, both geological and biological, are easily demonstrated by their effects but remain without plausible causes. We have progressed to the point of accepting the possibility of cosmic impacts but even they cannot explain all of the evidence. Perhaps there is a common mechanism for evolution on Earth that includes evolution of the solar system? Perhaps the solar system has a recent history? If so, attempts to explain the solar system by modelling theoretical initial conditions based on modern observations must fail. It is worth highlighting some of the unconscious assumptions with reference to Falk1s report, which follows in part. The electric universe alternative will be outlined to give an impression of its relative simplicity. FROM ARTICLE IN NATURE:
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Planet formation: Worlds apart

(Nature 422, 659 ? 660, 2003) ...computer simulations have yet to nail down the finer points of planetary evolution. ~L. Mayer, T. Quinn, J. Wadsley, J. Stadel/Pittsburgh Supercomp. Cen. THORNHILL COMMENTS: This remark is disingenuous and demonstrates a disturbing trend to believe that computer "game playing" can reveal the truth of a theory. Even the evolution of the gross characteristics of the solar system remains to be "nailed down." Computer simulations can only help to eliminate some models if all of the variables are known. But that is practically never the case in complex, real-world situations. MORE FROM THE ARTICLE: Less than a decade ago, planetary scientists were working with a tiny data set: the nine members of our Solar System. But the past few years have been a boom time for planet hunters more than 100 planets orbiting other stars have now been logged. As new detection methods come into use, this tally is certain to climb higher. Not everyone is celebrating, however. Extrasolar planets have peculiar properties, and our understanding of how planets form, which was incomplete even before the new data became available, now looks even shakier. The newly discovered bodies have strange, highly elliptical orbits. They are also far closer to their stars than equivalent planets in our Solar System. Amid the thrill of discovery, planetary scientists are wondering how to make sense of the processes that shaped these strange new worlds. In terms of mass, the new planets are similar to Jupiter, weighing between one-tenth and ten times as much the majority fall between 0.75 and 3.0 jovian masses. Measuring size is more difficult, as only transit studies can provide information on the object's radius. The planet observed using the transit method an object orbiting a star in the constellation of Pegasus is slightly larger than Jupiter. But that's where the similarities end. The orbits of most extrasolar planets follow elliptical paths, in contrast to the near-circular orbits of our Solar System's giant planets. They also orbit much closer to their parent stars, most at a distance of less than 2 astronomical units (1 AU being the distance between Earth and the Sun), compared with more than 5 AU for Jupiter. It is these properties that seem to defy popular models of planetary formation. The two main theories each start with a slowly spinning ball of gas. The hot, central part becomes a star, while the material farther out is flattened by its rotation into a cloud known as a protoplanetary accretion disk. This provides the raw materials from which planets form. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Here are two fundamental assumptions that drive all current models of stellar and planet genesis. The first is that stars form simply by gravitation from a rotating "accretion disk" of neutral matter. The second is that planets accrete later from the widely scattered leftovers. Both processes have theoretical difficulties and are the most inefficient imaginable - only 1% of the proposed nebula "leftovers" remains in the planets. Neither process has been observed in action, merely inferred. The idea of what goes on inside a star stems from the work of Sir Arthur Eddington in his famous 1926 work, The Internal Constitution of Stars. He made a serious error of judgment when he applied mechanical ideal gas laws to the Sun1s interior. On that basis he calculated that there would be "no appreciable separation of the [electrical] charges." It was a convenient conclusion because it simplifies the standard solar model so that it is "do-able." It seems not to have been questioned since.
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In fact, atoms in the Sun's strong gravitational field will distort to form small electric dipoles, with the positive nucleus offset within each atom toward the center of the Sun. The aligned dipoles will create a radial electric field that will tend to separate charge - free electrons moving toward the surface and positive ions toward the core. Gravitational compression inside the Sun is therefore offset by electrical expansion because like charges repel. Stars do not require a central furnace to maintain their size. The result is that the Sun is much the same density throughout. This was discovered decades ago by pioneering helioseismologists but not announced because it was believed that eventually a more acceptable explanation would be found in terms of the standard model! The enigma remains to this day. To accept the obvious conclusion would destroy the elaborate story of the evolution and death of stars. And another source of stellar energy would be required because nuclear fusion would be impossible in the core of an isodense star. Ah well, that's the price of progress. However, it is acknowledged that stars can explode in a nova or supernova event because such things are regularly observed. But the explosion mechanism remains obscure. An explosion originating in the core was always expected to be spherically symmetric. But we observe stellar explosions to be highly directional, often forming bipolar cones or even collimated jets. Plasma physicists are well aware that powerful electric discharges form thin jets, often with condensations/knots of matter along them. And a collimated jet is a prime requirement for the birth of a planet from a star. Significantly, the light curve from stellar explosions is the same as that of lightning. There is a more simple and efficient process that fits the latest discoveries. It requires the expulsion, or "birth" of a fully formed proto-planet from the core of a star or gas giant. Astrophysicists have not seriously considered it because of their strongly held views about the internal nature of stars and the forces at work there. IMAGE AT: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=rbkq9dj2 Image caption: HD 141569A is a fivemillion-year-old star 320 light- years away in the constellation Libra. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys captured this visible-light image on July 21, 2002, with a coronagraph, which blocked light from the star, creating the black area in the center. Surrounding the star is a tightly wound spiral-structured dust disk with two faint arms in the outer part of the disk. One of these arms reaches toward a binary star in the upper left of the image. NASA / M. Clampin (STScI) et al. / ACS Science Team / ESA This is the best image of a so-called accretion disk. It was produced on January 6 by a team headed by Mark Clampin of the Space Telescope Science Institute. The disk contains a tight spiral structure with two diffuse arms reaching outward like those of a spiral galaxy. It is excellent evidence for the electrical discharge nature of these disks since plasma physicists have successfully modelled galaxy formation and produced the classic spiral formation. That modelling requires electric currents flowing along the spiral arms. Notably it doesn't require invisible dark matter! The physicist, Peter Warlow, made the colorful comment in 1982 that we assume that planets are formed outside stars "for the 'obvious' reason - that's where we find them." However: We humans, equally 'obviously,' are outside our mothers - yet we did not start there! It is far simpler and infinitely more efficient if planets are "born" at intervals by the electrical ejection of charged material from the similarly charged interiors of larger bodies ? gas giants from stars, and rocky planets from gas giants. We have circumstantial evidence for such a proposal in the binary stars found after a nova outburst. Also most of the rocky bodies in the solar system closely orbit a gas giant. Electrical ejection in a massive internal lightning flash answers the question of the source of the energy. It is not dispersive like an explosion. The electromagnetic pinch effect will produce a jet of matter, rather like a coronal mass ejection, only on a much grander scale. The result is a proto-planet plus a stream of gases and meteoric debris. The electrical expulsion model solves the many riddles of meteorites. They are the afterbirth of a new planet, not a star. What is the origin of tiny melted spheres of silica, called chondrules, found in many meteorites? How were they flash-heated and just as suddenly cooled? How did radioactive isotopes with
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half-lives measured in hours and days become trapped in meteorites? A powerful cosmic electric discharge provides simple answers. Astrophysicists in the past have suggested lightning in the accretion disk as an explanation for chondrules, but without understanding what causes lightning the idea died. The May 17 issue of New Scientist reports a new idea from astrophysicist Frank Shu. He argues that meteorites were formed in "furious winds that blew red- hot rock out from the Sun at hundreds of kilometres per second." Lightning creates just such "furious winds" of heated matter along the discharge channel. Shu's explanation, on the other hand, suffers the usual lack of understanding of plasma electrical behavior and relies, once more, on magnetic fields to perform the necessary miracles. Falk's report notes that extrasolar giant planets are too close to their stars to have formed there from a protoplanetary accretion disk. Rather than question the protoplanetary accretion disk model, the obvious proposal is to have the giant planets migrate after their formation elsewhere. However, it does not explain the orbital eccentricities. In our solar system, Uranus and Neptune are too far from the Sun to have formed where we find them. Why have our giant planets seemingly migrated outward and the extrasolar planets inward? When theoretical expectations fail scientists are required to re-examine all of the assumptions in their models. However, that is not done when some assumptions have become selfevident truths. MORE FROM THE NATURE ARTICLE: ROCKY START From there on, the process is open to debate, with the answer partly depending on the size of the disk. The core-accretion model, which dates from the 1960s, argues that planets start life as small chunks of rock, dust and sand-grain-sized debris that come together through collisions. As the rocky core grows, its gravitational pull scoops up more dust and gas from the disk. If the core is heavier than a few Earth masses, it accretes enough gas over a few million years to become a gas giant like Jupiter and Saturn. Less-massive cores result in rocky planets like Earth. This model ran into problems even before extrasolar planets were identified. For one thing, it seems to take too long. Accretion disks are thought to evaporate within a million years or so, probably as a result of the stream of electrically charged particles that all stars emit, or of bombardment from high-energy ultraviolet photons from other nearby stars. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Here is an additional assumption. Having somehow gravitationally formed an accretion disk we must follow that with a special active stellar condition to blow it away after a convenient time interval. Studies have shown that the stellar wind would merely shift the disk further away and not disperse it. Alfvn argued that the most efficient (and Nature is nothing if not efficient) method to accrete matter over cosmic distances is that of the electromagnetic "pinch effect" caused by parallel electric current filaments in plasma. The electromagnetic accretion force diminishes slowly with distance from the filament axis, rather than rapidly with the square of the distance as we find with gravity. The result is condensed, rotating objects strung along the dusty current filaments. The spin axes of stars formed in this manner are aligned with the filaments. Such alignments have been discovered in groups of stars. FROM THE NATURE ARTICLE: The main rival theory, which also surfaced in the 1960s, avoids this problem. Known as the diskinstability model, it proposes that, in larger disks, patches of denser gas can form and pull in more gas leading, in some cases, to a sudden collapse that forms one or more planets. Such collapses do not occur in the core-accretion model, either because the disk is not large enough to produce them, or because any small instability that forms will tend to spread throughout the disk, restoring stability. Planets are thought to form more rapidly in the diskinstability scenario. Last autumn, Lucio Mayer, a theoretical astronomer then at the University of Washington in Seattle, described highresolution computer simulations of protoplanetary disks using the diskinstability model. Together with colleagues elsewhere in North America, Mayer showed that giant planets could form in as little as 1,000 years. The difference in planet- forming rates is probably the most important
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distinguishing characteristic between the two models, and is a boost for the disk-instability idea, says Alan Boss, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Others urge caution. Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, says that the resolution of the computer models is still too poor to give conclusive results. Perhaps more importantly, the new data on extrasolar planets do not sit happily with either theory. The models have trouble explaining, for example, why Jupiter-sized planets are created rather than brown dwarfs objects that are intermediate in size between planets and stars. "You would expect the mass of planets to range from Jupiter mass up to stellar masses," says Douglas Lin, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There ought to be just as many brown dwarfs as Jupiters orbiting Sun-like stars something that observations have not turned up. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Computer simulations are fun but they have no significance if the models are wrong. The lack of brown dwarf stars is expected in the electric universe model. In that model, stars are essentially a plasma discharge phenomenon. A bright star usurps almost the entire electrical power in its vicinity. Hypothetically, if Jupiter were to be removed beyond the Sun1s electrical influence it would become a more electrically active brown dwarf star. Its moons would become a small planetary system orbiting a dim star. The dull red shell, or "anode glow," of a brown dwarf would surround most of the moons. The conditions for establishment of atmospheres and life on those satellites within the glowing shell would likely be fulfilled. Just like real estate, the prime requirement to become a star is LOCATION. A brown dwarf simply won't shine when placed close to a bright star. Unfortunately, astrophysicists and most plasma physicists never contemplate an electrically driven model because they assume strict electrical neutrality throughout the universe. Meanwhile the observational evidence shrieks of electric discharge effects in plasma. A few examples are: all X-ray sources; stupendously long glowing filaments and jets; radiant nebulae with no effective internal energy source; and compact pulsating radiation sources. BACK TO THE NATURE ARTICLE: INNER WORKINGS Other aspects of the new data are causing problems for both models. Neither, for example, accounts for the proximity of the extrasolar planets to their stars. There isn't much material in the inner region of the disk, and the particles there should have enough energy to resist clumping. The solution, astronomers suggest, is that giant planets form farther out and then migrate inwards as a result of interactions between the disk and the planet. The mechanism differs in the two models, but the end result is that young planets sail through the disk towards the star. But this raises another question: what stops the planet from ploughing into its parent star? Several mechanisms have been suggested. One option is that the migration ends when the disk evaporates but it's not clear whether this can happen quickly enough, as migration occurs on a roughly million-year time scale. Another option is that the planet's gravitational pull distorts the shape of the star, and that this in turn affects the pull of the star on the planet in such a way as to balance the planet's inward movement. Finally, it could be that the star's magnetic field clears out the inner disk by repelling electrically charged particles. In this situation, says Boss, the inner 0.5 AU of the disk would be empty and few extrasolar planets have orbital radii much smaller than this. "It's attractively simple," says Boss. THORNHILL COMMENTS: If that's simple I would not like to see a complicated explanation! There comes a time when attempts should be abandoned to reverse-engineer a doubtful model of the solar system to fit data from other planetary systems. A far simpler explanation is that gas giant planets are born by electrical expulsion from a star in a nova outburst. How else should we expect to find an extrasolar planet whipping around its parent in a few days or in an eccentric orbit? Eccentric orbits should be short-lived. They hint at recent
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events in those distant planetary systems; perhaps the birth of a new planet. Perhaps clockwork planetary systems that endure unchanged for billions of years do not exist? FROM THE ARTICLE: Such explanations are plausible, but there is no way of knowing which is correct. Even if this issue is resolved, it is still unclear whether planets form by disk instability or by core accretion before they begin their migration. And on top of that, astronomers are struggling to explain why so many extrasolar planets follow elliptical paths, as both formation models predict roughly circular orbits. The best explanation so far proposed is based on the gravitational tug-of-war between different planets in a multi-planet system. THORNHILL COMMENTS: The problems arise because an inappropriate gravitational model is used in both cases. Granted that a multi-planet system is inherently chaotic if gravity is the only force operating. But in an electric universe there is a damping mechanism to limit wild excursions. It seems that exchange of charge between planets via their magnetotails (plasma sheaths) is capable of maintaining orbital spacing so as to limit further electrical interaction. This mechanism may provide a physical basis for Bode1s relationship. And a planet moving eccentrically in the weak electric field of a star suffers a cometary discharge that acts to reduce the eccentricity of its orbit. The effect has been noted for tiny solar comets and mysteriously termed a "non-gravitational" force. It is more effective than tidal interactions at circularising orbits.
SCIENCE REWRITES GENESIS

Present theories of the origin of the universe and the Earth have taken on the mantle of religious truth. It is as if scientists feel obliged to provide an alternative "scientific" Genesis story to replace the biblical one. All that has been achieved is a Hollywood rewrite complete with the obligatory stupendous explosion, an imaginary hell of black holes and the occasional miracle to allow the plot to continue. The story has been limited by cultural preconceptions and by restricting the "writers" to experts in one narrow specialty. The story is overdue for a shake-up. The irony is that Genesis is only one version among many of a major evolutionary event in the history of the solar system; a "re-creation" event witnessed by prehistoric man and memorialised by all of the earliest civilizations. It has much to offer in a more general approach to discovering the real history of the Earth and the origin of planets. Meanwhile the astronomers' script for Earth history is showing its age. It comes straight from the early Industrial Revolution ? it is purely mechanical and clockwork-like with nary a hint of new-fangled electrics. Indeed there are no electric lights at all! Dissenting electrical engineers and plasma physicists have been practically ignored. It has fallen to the IEEE to establish a separate chapter of Plasma Cosmology, which now holds separate meetings. It has not been felt necessary to check the fundamental assumption that 'the present is the key to the past.' No astronomer is qualified to do a forensic examination of the earliest planetary mythologies and depictions of the sky to see if that sky looks familiar. The fact is it doesn't! That renders all of the comfortable armchair theorizing and computer simulations a nonsense. Mark Twain was right: There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. Computer modelling is usually only possible with "a trifling investment of fact."
THE PREHISTORIC SKY

A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe. ~Henry D. Thoreau
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Throughout the ancient world the star between the horns of a crescent was an important religious symbol. Yet it is physically impossible if the crescent represented the Moon. What is more, the apparition was universally reported to have occupied the top of a tapering column of light in the motionless center of the northern sky ? the north celestial pole ? where the Moon never goes. It was often pictured as a figure with arms stretching upwards. The north celestial "pole" was commemorated by all ancient cultures as the home of the prehistoric sun and the planetary gods. A true history of the Earth must explain these astronomical enigmas. And a true history of the Earth is necessary before we can speculate meaningfully about planet origins. Like a man was the sun when it showed itself, and its face glowed when it dried the surface of the earth ... It showed itself when it was born and remained fixed in the sky like a mirror. Certainly it was not the same sun which we see, it is said in their old tales. ~D. Goetz & S. Morley, Popol Vuh, 1972, p. 188. The detail (left) in these early renditions shows a raised central hemisphere in front of another radiating star-like body, superimposed upon a crescent.
THE BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line is that a better theory of the formation of planets requires the observational skills of astronomers, the forensic input of comparative mythologists, the theoretical input from plasma physicists and the practical experimental capabilities of electrical engineers. Most importantly, the common thread for this interdisciplinary approach is provided by the new paradigm of an Electric Universe. But we should keep in mind that the odd natures of the planets in our solar system argue for a complex history that may never be entirely amenable to computer modelling. The orbital and axial tilts of the giant planets are strong evidence for one or more capture events. Perhaps we may be able to determine a planetary genealogy? HANNES ALFVN SAID: It is possible that this new era also means a partial return to more understandable physics. For the nonspecialists, four-dimensional relativity theory and the indeterminism of atom structure have always been mystic and difficult to understand. I believe that it is easier to explain the 33 instabilities in plasma physics or the resonance structure of the solar system. The increased emphasis on the new fields means a certain demystification of physics. In the spiral or trochoidal motion which science makes during the centuries, its guiding center has returned to these regions from where it started. It was the wonders of the night sky, observed by Indians, Sumerians, or Egyptians, that started science several thousand years ago. It was the question why the wanderers - the planets - moved as they did that triggered off the scientific avalanche several hundred years ago. The same objects are now again in the center of science - only the questions we ask are different. We now ask how to go there, and we also ask how these bodies once were formed. And if the night sky on which we observe them is at a high latitude, outside this lecture hall - perhaps over a small island in the archipelago of Stockholm - we may also see in the sky an aurora, which is a cosmic plasma, reminding us of the time when our world was born out of plasma. Because in the beginning was the plasma. ~H. Alfvn, Science 4 June 1971. From a lecture he delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, on 11 Dec 1970 when he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 5 (July 31, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: WHAT IS ACTUALLY THE CASE? PLANET BIRTHING - MORE EVIDENCE SQUASHED STAR FLATTENS SOLAR THEORY
Mel Acheson Wal Thornhill Wal Thornhill
WHAT IS ACTUALLY THE CASE?

Mel Acheson Everything I know I've read in a book. You may then ask, How is this knowing different from reading? I see the words; I understand the sentences; I make sense of the ideas; I comprehend what the author is proposing. But is the proposal actually the case? How do I know it is or isn't? The same question arises with the philosophy of physics. In its most simplistic form, that philosophy assumes knowing is looking and knowing more is looking more closely. At first look, this appears to be the case. But looking more closely at looking and knowing reveals surprises and raises doubts. Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera, photographed an arrangement of flowers with blackand- white transparencies. One transparency was taken in yellow light, another in orange light. He then projected the images simultaneously, each in the same light with which it was taken. The audience expected to see a yellow-orange bouquet of flowers. They saw instead reds and blues and greens and purples, as well as yellow and orange. Perception of color is not a simple response of the eye to each wavelength of light but a complex of activities that converge on a judgment of color. After cataract surgery was perfected, many people who had been blind from birth suddenly were enabled to see. But they saw only senseless patches of color. The doctors were surprised to learn the patients had to learn to see. It took great effort for the patients to make the patches make sense. Not only did they have to learn to interpret the new ocular stimuli, they had to reinterpret the old stimuli of touch and hearing and smell and taste. They weren't simply adding knowledge to what they already knew, they had to learn to know a different and unfamiliar world. Some gave up, closed their eyes, and retreated to their familiar world of sensation and interpretation that omitted the new ocular stimuli. Most people learn to see in the first few weeks of life. By the time they've learned to speak and can tell someone about the experience, they've forgotten it. The linking of stimuli and concepts comes to be taken for granted, the composite nature of perception is overlooked, and people assume that sensory stimuli come pre-assembled into intelligible configurations. Those who become physicists mistake "seeing what's there" for "knowing what's there". This lapse of awareness leads them to reify their preconceptions and to betray their empirical principles for a blind idealism that leaps from fervent faith to foregone conclusions. The irony of modern physics is that the more its theories have achieved, the less its philosophy has been supported by discoveries of how perception and cognition work. (Or maybe, as my astronomy advisor warned me, this just means philosophy is irrelevant.)
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Reading is the linking of ideas with ocular stimuli. An astronomer looking at the spectrum of a quasar is also linking ideas with ocular stimuli. How does he know the redshifted lines in the spectrum are those of a superluminous object on the frontier of the observable universe? How do I know the words in the textbook that describe the astronomer's linkage of idea and looking are what the quasar is? What assurance does either of us have that the ideas we link with the particular ocular stimuli we experience are what's happening? At first look, it appears we can be assured by ideas that have been verified. Many associated stimuli have been linked repeatedly with the same ideas by many investigators, forming a web among several disciplines of interlocking ideas and lookings. The intensity of light decreases as distance increases. The frequency of light decreases as velocity of separation increases. The angular size of an object decreases as distance increases. The angular sizes of galaxies decrease as their luminosities and the frequencies of their light decrease. Therefore quasars must be bright and distant. It all fits together assuringly. But this web of verification only confirms that I've understood my reading, made sense of my looking. It doesn't answer the question, Is my understanding and sense-making actually the case? Fantasies also make sense and can be verified. The history of science is the story of linkages that came unlinked. Remember Eijkman and Grijns: Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Dr. Eijkman proved that beri-beri was caused by a bacterium in rice kernels and could be cured by an antitoxin in the polishings. In the largest case study ever conducted, he ruled out every other imaginable cause. He demonstrated that eating polished rice caused the disease and eating the polishings cured it. He was awarded a Nobel Prize. Not long after, Dr. Grijns imagined something Dr. Eijkman had not: Perhaps beri-beri was caused not by something in the rice but by something not in the rice. The idea of 'bacterial infection' was severed from the experience of beri-beri and the idea of 'nutritional deficiency' became linked instead. If sensory stimuli give no IDEA of what's the case, and theories give no ASSURANCE of what's the case, and verification can't PRECLUDE that something else might be the case, how can we KNOW what's the case? After the stimuli and the ideas have been linked, after the observations have been classified and the experiments replicated, after the theory has been formulated and verified, the critical question still guards the door to knowledge: Is it actually the case? This is a question for judgment. But how are we to judge? To remain scientific, the judgment must arise from the cognitive activities that define science: from sensory observations and intellectual hypotheses. There can be no appeal to the revelation of religion or to the intuition of mystical or spiritual realities, even though creative insights may be revealed or intuited. Because this judgment arises from and is reflected back into the data and ideas that are judged, it appears to be circular. But ideas have implications that can lead to new data; data contain anomalies that can lead to new ideas. Instead of a closed and static circle of certain knowledge, we have a spiraling process of knowledge production that is inherently uncertain and evolving. Knowing is not simply taking a look as a camera takes a snapshot but a constructive struggle of cognitive artistry. This view of knowledge as dynamic, provisional, and adaptive provokes another question: What else could be the case? What other theories might make better sense of the same observations? What other observations might verify a bolder theory? Anomalies and impossibilities are the soil in which the answers to these questions grow. Oliver Sacks notes, in an essay on "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science": The first difficulty, the first barrier, lies in one's own mind, in allowing oneself to encounter new ideas and then to bring them into full and stable consciousness, and to give them conceptual form, holding them in mind even if they do not fit, or contradict, one's existing concepts, beliefs, or categories. Darwin remarks on the importance of 'negative instances' or 'exceptions,' and how crucial it is to make immediate note of them, for otherwise they are 'sure to be forgotten.'
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Grijns couldn't find the bacterium that Eijkman had proved must cause beri-beri. This anomaly caused Grijns to doubt what was accepted as secure knowledge: the germ theory of disease. He wondered what else might be the case and came up with nutritional deficiencies. Arp found connections among quasars and nearby galaxies that almost any astronomer can prove is impossible. This anomaly caused Arp to doubt what is currently accepted as secure knowledge: the expanding universe theory of cosmology. He and his colleagues are wondering what else might be the case and are exploring such ideas as mass variability and plasma cosmology. Anomalies and doubts such as these keep knowledge on the move. The question of what is actually the case is actually defective: To be answered scientifically, it must be asked in the context of human senses, human intelligence, and human judgment--in the context of adaptive knowledge. We can only observe those parts of 'the case' to which our senses and instruments respond, can only hypothesize from insights and inspirations that are circumscribed by history and culture, can only judge as those observations and hypotheses evolve. The question of what is actually the case must be conceived on a higher level of abstraction than that of the content of particular theories. A more accurate question is, What do WE KNOW is the case? What is actually the case with human knowing of mutable groupings of experiences and ideas? Scientific truth is not written once and for all on the sky, despite its descent from mytho-religious fiat, but in the cognitive functioning of the human brain. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
PLANET BIRTHING - MORE EVIDENCE

By Wal Thornhill In my May news item I wrote: It is far simpler and infinitely more efficient if planets are 'born' at intervals by the electrical ejection of charged material from the similarly charged interiors of larger bodies -- gas giants from stars, and rocky planets from gas giants. [Ed note: This article is a supplement to the May 2003 holoscience news item. The article appeared in VII-4 and can be found on Wal Thornhill's webpage here: THOTH http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=rbkq9dj2] The following report is from Astronomy.com of July 23 and provides further evidence in favor of such a model:
Planets Prefer Metal: Stars with high metal content are most likely to harbor planets.
by Vanessa Thomas When looking for planets beyond our solar system, astronomers often target stars like the sun. But they may want to refocus their attention on stars that hold more metals than our own. A new study reveals that the more metal-rich a star is, the better the chance it hosts a planet. Extrasolar-planet hunter Debra Fischer of the University of California, Berkeley, and astronomer Jeff Valenti of the Space Telescope Science Institute analyzed the composition of 754 nearby
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stars and looked to see which stars had planets. They found a strong, nearly linear correlation between a star's metal content and the likelihood that it has a planet. "We now know that stars which are abundant in heavy metals are five times more likely to harbor orbiting planets than are stars deficient in metals," says Fischer, who presented the results Monday at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Sydney, Australia. "If you look at the metal-rich stars, twenty percent have planets. That's stunning." Fischer and Valenti examined the abundances of iron, nickel, titanium, silicon, and sodium in the spectra of more than 1,000 stars. (In astronomy, all elements heavier than helium are considered "metals.") Of these, 754 were monitored for at least two years, so the astronomers could tell whether the stars had any close- orbiting gas giant planets. (A large, orbiting planet exerts a gravitational force on a star, causing a "wobble" that's detectable in the star's spectrum.) Planets orbit 61 of the studied stars while the other 693 have no known planets. After grouping the stars by metal content, the pair compared how many stars of each type had planets. Stars with sun-like metal abundances have a 5 to 10 percent chance of having planets. Those with three times more metals than the sun have a 20 percent chance. Metal-poor stars with only one-third as much as the sun have just a 3 percent probability. None of the 29 most metal- deficient stars of the study had planets. "These data suggest that there is a threshold metallicity, and thus not all stars in our galaxy have the same chance of forming planetary systems," Fischer says. "Whether a star has planetary companions or not is a condition of its birth. Those with a larger initial allotment of metals have an advantage over those without." The findings also suggest that younger stars are more likely to have planets. That's because stars born in the galaxy's early days formed from nebulae that included fewer heavy elements. As time passed, more stars exploded as supernova and heavier elements fused in their cores were scattered into the interstellar medium. "Stars forming today are much more likely to have planets than early generations of stars," comments Valenti. "It's a planetary baby boom." THORNHILL COMMENTS ABOUT THE ARTICLE: Given the orthodox notion of how planets form, it is not clear why we should expect more gas giant planets about a star simply because it has more heavy elements in its spectrum. However, I argued in my earlier news item that stars "give birth" from time to time by electrical parturition. It occurs in a nova-type discharge from their charged interior. Unlike the hydrogen-bomb model of stars, there is no internal heating. Intense plasma discharges at the stellar surface give rise to starshine. Those discharges synthesize "metals" that continually rain into the star's depths. The heavy element abundance in a star's spectrum is not just an inheritance from old supernovae. Stellar interiors become enriched in heavy elements. The star "children" are gas giants or binary partners formed from those heavier elements after expulsion from the star. Therefore we should simply expect from the electric star model that the longer a star has been shining the more heavy elements it will show in its spectrum and the more time it has had to "give birth." So stars forming today are not more likely to have planets than earlier generations. They probably have not had time to have planetary "children." Whether a star has planetary companions or not is NOT a condition of its birth. We should expect that below a certain metallicity (that is, age) a star will not have planets. We do not expect babies to give birth! Planet formation has more to do with the growth of internal electrical stress in a star. It can be enhanced by episodes of unusual electric stress in its environment. We should be looking closely at stars that have undergone nova outbursts.
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It should be noted that plasma cosmologists have a view of star formation that allows for a number of condensed bodies to be formed in close proximity at the same time. And the separation of elements by their "critical ionization velocity" in a plasma pinch may offer an alternative explanation for differences in metallicity between the bodies. However, it is not clear to what extent this mechanism plays a role in the development of planets about a star. Certainly, it does not explain the propensity for planets to be found in higher numbers near stars of higher metallicity. The stellar parturition model seems to offer a simple solution to: a) the presence of heavy elements in gas giants, b) a greater number of gas giants being found around stars of high metallicity, and c) the propensity for close orbits of the gas giants about their parent star. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003 author of The Electric Universe: A Holistic Science for the New Millennium See www.electric-universe.org
SQUASHED STAR FLATTENS SOLAR THEORY

By Wal Thornhill From New Scientist for 12 June 2003:
Flattest star puts astronomers in a spin

Danny Penman The flattest star yet seen is forcing researchers to revise their ideas on the dynamics and structure of celestial bodies. The star, called Achernar, was observed by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. According to standard celestial theories, the fast spinning star should be only 20 to 30 per cent wider across its equator than from pole to pole. But Achernar, which spins at 225 km per second, has a colossal bulge around its equator and is 50 per cent wider. [ed note: artist's conception available at Thornhill's http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=x50hfzxa#top electric universe website]
Brilliant blue Achernar, (Alpha Eridani), the ninth brightest star in the sky, lies at the southern tip of the star-river Eridanus. It has a belt of emitting gas circling its equator. It is a member of a peculiar class of stars known as "Lambda Eridani" stars that show tiny but very regular periodic light variations. All stars and planets that reach a critical spin velocity bulge slightly at the equator. The Earth is 40 kilometres, or 0.3 per cent, wider from east to west than from north to south. Astronomers had been confident that their calculations of this oblateness were fairly accurate. "But the new observation means that the model for fast rotating stars is not complete," says astronomer Pierre Kervella, one of the team at the European Southern Observatory. "We clearly do not know enough." "Either the core is rotating faster than the surface or the star's matter is circulating in an unexpected way. We're not sure which possibility is correct at the moment," he told New Scientist. The discovery was made by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at ESO's Paranal site in Chile. This uses two 40-centimetre reflecting telescopes to produce images
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which are then combined and passed through an interferometer. This permits extremely accurate measurements - the instrument could spot a one euro coin at 2500 kilometres distance. The astronomers now plan to gather even higher resolution images using a trio of 1.8 metre telescopes. "But our immediate task will be to re-design our computer models," says Kervella. The team hopes to use the models to distinguish between the two possible explanations for the star's extraordinary flatness. THORNHILL COMMENTS ABOUT THE ARTICLE: There is a third important alternative, notable for its absence from the discussion. Perhaps we don't know how stars work! The simplest way to explain stellar flattening due to swift rotation would be if the star were more homogeneous in density. But that would require giving up the notion of a central thermonuclear fire. Predictive success is a key indicator of the correctness of a theoretical model. The above report demonstrates once more the predictive failure of present astrophysical models. The recommended scientific approach to such a dilemma is to question all of the assumptions that go into the failing model. However, when it comes to the question of how stars work, embodied in the "standard solar model," there is no question. Stars shine, so obviously something must be burning within the star. But electric lights shine without consuming themselves. In the above report, two ad hoc solutions are offered to complicate things. But this is merely tinkering with a model that is already in deep trouble according to other fundamental observations. Unfortunately it seems scientists are encouraged by their training to indulge in "confirmatory bias." That is, "the tendency for humans to seek out, attend to, and sometimes embellish experiences that support or 'confirm' their beliefs." One study found that the vast majority of scientists drawn from a national sample showed a strong preference for "confirmatory" experiments. Over half of these scientists did not even recognize disconfirmation (modus tollens) as a valid reasoning form! In another study the logical reasoning skills of 30 scientists were compared to those of 15 relatively uneducated Protestant ministers. Where there were performance differences, they tended to favor the ministers. Confirmatory bias was prevalent in both groups, but the ministers used disconfirmatory logic almost twice as often as the scientists did. ~Michael J. Mahoney, Publication Prejudices: An Experimental Study of Confirmatory Bias in the Peer Review System Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1977, pp. 161-175. Two fundamental observations about the Sun do not support the standard solar model but they have been minimised or ignored. The first is the celebrated "neutrino problem" where the neutrinos arriving from the Sun are far too few to account for the Sun's presumed thermonuclear energy output. No scientist could contemplate trashing the standard solar model so the problem had to be with the neutrinos. After decades of expensive research it was shown by the "KamLAND" experiment [see below] that neutrinos can oscillate between different forms, known whimsically as 'flavors.' Following the habit of confirmatory bias, this notion was seized upon as "proof" that the standard solar model was correct. A report in Physics Today, March 2003, put it this way: After 36 years of solar neutrino experiments, the inescapable conclusion is that a large fraction of the electron neutrinos produced by nuclear processes in the Sun's core are metamorphosing into other neutrino varieties somewhere en route to the detectors on Earth. The report came to the conclusion that neutrinos were not undergoing any significant change of flavor in the vacuum of space between the Sun and Earth. Instead they were performing "an irreversible flavor
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change that takes place in high-density regions of the Sun." So not only does the Sun need a hypothetical hot, high-density core to have any hope of generating thermonuclear energy, it now needs a hypothetical "critical-electron-density Region" as well, to fudge the neutrino results. No doubt this will give rise to a flurry of theoretical activity using neutrinos to probe the imagined interior of the Sun. A widely viewed site on the Internet reported the KamLAND experiment in triumphal terms: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030623.html "A large sphere beneath Japan has helped verify humanity's understanding of the inner workings of the Sun ... leading astrophysicists now consider the long standing solar neutrino deficit problem as finally solved." But neutrino metamorphosis is not an "inescapable conclusion." It is confirmatory bias with bells on! Conflicting evidence about the source region of the neutrinos is being ignored. There have been several reports of a correlation between the neutrino count, the sunspot number and solar wind strength. These are solar surface effects that should have no connection with what is going on in the Sun's core, where the hidden energy of the nuclear furnace is supposed to take hundreds of thousands of years to "leak out" to the surface. The electric star model suggests a simpler explanation of solar neutrino observations. The Sun produces all of the neutrino flavors on the surface in more complex nuclear reactions than mere heat and pressure allows. The nuclear reactions are ignited by the plasma pinch effect in the gigantic electrical discharges that cover the star and produce starlight. Ironically, it is the same phenomenon as that employed in some laboratories attempting to mimic the Sun's energy production! In this model, the connection between neutrino count, sunspot number and solar wind is expected, because the driver for them all is the same galactic electrical power. The second serious challenge to the standard solar model comes from solar oscillations. In the 1970's, the Sun was unexpectedly found to ring like a bell. In 1976 Severny, Kotov & Tsap discovered a dominant 160-minute ringing mode of the Sun. They wrote: The simplest interpretation is that we observed purely radial pulsations. The most striking fact is that the observed period is almost precisely... the value if the Sun were to be an homogeneous sphere ... We have investigated two possible solutions to this dilemma. The first alternative is that nuclear... reactions are not responsible for energy generation in the Sun. Such a conclusion, although rather extravagant, is quite consistent with the observed absence of appreciable neutrino flux from the Sun, and with the observed abundance of Li and Be in the solar atmosphere. The second alternative involved force fitting the data to the standard solar model by assuming that the oscillations were not simply radial but of a more complicated form. However, the implications were so disturbing for theorists that the work was repeated in various locations and all sources of error considered. The result in 1981 was that the original oscillation was found to be the highest peak in the power spectrum, and "one may conclude that 160-min oscillation shows mostly radial motion." In reporting the status of solar oscillation observations in 1991 in "Solar Interior and Atmosphere", F. Hill et al mention the 160-minute oscillation without any reference to the implied homogeneous Sun. Rather, they spend half a page casting suspicion on the extensive observations and attempting to minimize its significance. The reason is only thinly veiled: Additional doubt comes from the difficulty of theoretically describing the nature of the oscillation... The authors were merely behaving with the usual confirmatory bias. The question of what is ringing the stellar bell has not been satisfactorily answered. It should be noted that the size of an electric star is determined by the degree of electric stress it suffers. And since the electric Sun forms part of a galactic circuit, it will exhibit resonant effects. The Sun is an electric bell as
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well as an electric light! It seems particularly significant that the 160-minute oscillation also appears with high statistical significance in the solar intensity, infrared, radio and radio polarization (connected with the solar magnetic field). All of these effects are to be expected in an electric star model because they are driven by the same resonant electrical power circuit. Kotov went on to publish a paper in 1985 that detailed a number of other significant astrophysical manifestations of this basic 160-minute resonance in the solar system, binary stars and RR-Lyrae variable stars in globular clusters. He concluded: ...beyond doubt, ..the nature of the 160-min oscillation, firstly found in the Sun and then in the solar system as a whole and then among the stars, does present a new challenging problem for astrophysics ... the next thing to suggest is that a fundamental aspect of the physics of gravitation is not yet understood(?). I suggest that the problem has nothing to do with gravity. Instead, problems arise because incorrect gravitational models are used in astrophysics. The correct electrical models are much simpler and can be verified by direct observations instead of inferences about the hidden interiors of stars. As outlined in THOTH VII-4 article and Thornhill's May 2003 holoscience news item about planet formation, and in an Aug 2001 article about neutrinos, an electric star is expected to be much the same density throughout. So the peculiar flattening of fast-spinning Achernar is easily understood. SEE EARLIER ARTICLES HERE: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=rbkq9dj2 http://www.holoscience.com/news/puzzle.html In the not-too-distant future we will look back on attempts to explain the Sun in terms of a central fire with the same dismissive humor that we use for earlier notions of the Sun as some sort of fire in the sky, steadily consuming itself. What appears at first glance a perfectly natural and simple explanation fails to explain almost all of the strange solar phenomena we see. Our old fiery model of the Sun, and consequently of all stars, has become a complicated theoretical nightmare. It seems that the leap from an old worldview to a new one is difficult for the human mind. But once achieved we can teach young children ideas that defeated the greatest minds for centuries. Our grandchildren will view it as perfectly obvious that Nature should provide us with an electric light, the Sun, powered over galactic distances by a vast network of invisible transmission lines, humming at an ultra-low frequency. Plasma physicists already know those transmission lines as Birkeland currents. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 6 (September 30, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: A MATTER OF DEFINITION GRAND CANYON REVISITED MYSTERIOUS MARS
Mel Acheson Amy Acheson Wal Thornhill
A MATTER OF DEFINITION
Mel Acheson Is plasma an ionized gas or is gas a neutralized plasma? Can we understand plasma by adding a few magnetic properties to what we already know about a gas, or is a gas a degenerate plasma that provides scarcely a clue toward understanding most plasma behavior? This is a matter of definition, but the dictionary in which we might look up the definiens has yet to be written. We can anticipate a possible answer from a similar matter of definition that was resolved a couple of centuries ago: Is a substance defined by its composition or by its development? A century before John Dalton resurrected the atomic theory first proposed by ancient Greek philosophers, Isaac Newton wrote an essay on chemistry: All Bodies have Particles which do mutually attract one another... He went on to describe what we recognize today as nucleons aggregating into atoms, atoms aggregating into molecules, and so forth. But he concluded: And if Gold could be brought once to ferment and putrefy, it might be turn'd into any other Body whatsoever...; as common Nourishment is turn'd into the Bodies of Animals and Vegetables. We are so imbued today with the atomic theory of matter that the idea of substance defined by development hardly makes sense. But in Newton's time, it was taken for granted that physiology underlay chemistry and that composition depended on past transformations. The accumulation of data, doubts, and speculations in the years between Newton and Dalton engendered a redefinition of substance. The truth of physiology was still true, but it came to be considered more limited in applicability than the truth of chemistry. The transformation of matter was redefined as subsidiary to the more inclusive and fundamental composition of matter. In a similar manner, the flood of surprising data in the space age has surged over the explanatory channels of gas theory. The attempts to explain filaments, jets, magnetic fields, and radiations of celestial objects with conventional theories have been idiosyncratic and reactive. A more inclusive and fundamental definiendum is needed, to which the physics of gasses will be subsidiary: Plasma.
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Plasma is not hot gas. Just as Newton could never understand gold by tracing its development and overlooking its composition, modern physicists can never understand plasma by plugging higher temperatures into the equations of gas kinetics and overlooking plasma's electrical foundation. Leon Rosenfeld, a coworker of Neils Bohr, commented that a theory is not "sufficiently defined without the knowledge of its domain of validity." This domain is a matter of discovering limits of truth and establishing boundaries of meaning. The domain of validity answers the question, For which data, ideas, uses, relationships, etc. is this theory true? The answer must be marked out empirically. It requires speculating, testing, probing for alternatives. The concept of domains of validity circumvents the pseudoreligious wrangling over whether a theory is True or False in some unspecified absolute sense: It allows for geocentrism being true for architecture (where the domain is such matters as whether the sun shines through bedroom windows on winter mornings); heliocentrism being true for interplanetary space travel (where the domain is such matters as how long to burn the rocket to intercept Mars in two years); and galactocentrism being true for mapping spiral arms. It allows for gas theory being true in situations where electrical forces can be ignored and for plasma cosmology being true where electrical forces must be taken into account. It requires an empirical investigation to determine the "where". Insisting a theory is somehow absolutely true "in itself" or that there can be only one 'true' theory is an extrapolation of verification to the point of sanctimony. Verification can only confirm the truth of one datum at a time in relation to one theory, proving that a theory is true where it's true. It overlooks or disparages the instances where the theory is not true, and it provides no basis for judging different theories. With verification, one can only note that a different theory is different. People often insist that verifying one theory 'proves' others wrong, but this insistence can only be maintained with a domineering dogmatism. The recognition of domains of validity can also explain the competition of theories. Kuhn noted the "incommensurability of paradigms." Fundamentally different theories have no common ground. Their terms, even where the same, have different meanings (e.g., 'plasma' as hot gas or as electrical discharge.) Their practitioners "live in different worlds." There is no metatheory, no overarching principle, with which the different theories can be compared and judged. Some postmodernists have concluded from this that all theories are equal, that there's no justification for choosing one over another. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But apples and oranges can be compared: They compete in a marketplace. The price system allows comparison of the relative values of apples and oranges to the consumers of apples and oranges. So theories compete in a kind of cultural marketplace: Incommensurable theories can sit on the same bookshelf or have URLs on the internet, and the number of times they are checked out or hit can be compared. The basis of this number will be some combination of the browsers' values regarding size of domain (how much data is or might be explained), coherence, fruitfulness, promise, interesting questions raised, etc. Definition and domain are similar. Both are mechanisms of limitation. Because larger domains are often more useful and more pleasing than smaller ones, people tend to polish generalities until they glitter. The domain of validity of geocentrism is pretty much limited to architecture. Heliocentrism has a much more extensive domain of explanation and use. And it's reasonable, in a trial and error sense, to push the explanatory power of a theory as far as it will go. That's how you come to know the boundaries of a theory's domain: when you sail over the edge of its explanatory world. So how do the two definitions of plasma compare? While we're on the way to the checkout desk, I can only say why I choose the electrical one: Conventional theories must be contrived to explain each space age datum, resulting in the present potpourri of ad hoc special cases that is a monument to the failure of generality. Browsing through the blurbs on the APOD or ESA websites discloses an unlovely view of theories drowning in data.
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Plasma, defined as electrical discharge phenomena, explains most of the "surprising" features of space age data directly, unitarily, coherently, and concisely. Furthermore, it explains ancient descriptions and depictions of high-energy events within the Solar system. And it promises to shed light on the geological data assembled by S. Warren Carey that suggests the Earth is or was expanding. Plus, it can go beyond the astronomical extrapolation of mathematical formulas that must be taken on faith (how can you test a black hole?): Plasma phenomena can be generated and tested in labs--jets, toruses, spiral arms, petroglyph forms, myth themes (Axis Mundi, Columns of Shu), formation of planetary systems. The lab investigation in turn reflects back on petroglyphs and myth themes to enable a diachronic sequencing and a synchronic locating of events. I say hoist the sails and let's find the edge of plasma. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
GRAND CANYON REVISISTED

by Amy Acheson Ralph Juergens and Wal Thornhill introduced the hypothesis that Valles Marineris on Mars and the Grand Canyon on Earth are primarily electrical scars. In both canyons, water erosion (if any) is only coincidental. See Thornhill's article here: http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_mars.htm Since then, I've been reading geology books and websites about the Grand Canyon to see for myself how the electrical hypothesis compares with more traditional theories. Let's begin at the end, with conclusions taken from Appendix 1 of W. Kenneth Hamblin's Late Cenozoic Lava Dams in the Western Grand Canyon (hence called LCLD): CONCLUSIONS: 1) Erosion does not take place at a constant, imperceptibly slow rate ... 2) ...stream gradients and slopes are at a state of dynamic equilibrium unless disturbed ... If no ... disturbance occurs, the Colorado River will not cut significantly deeper... 3) The question of the age of the Grand Canyon and how long it took the Colorado River to cut the canyon is not a question of how fast the river can cut... AMY COMMENTS: To be fair, these conclusions are taken completely out of context. I deleted the hypotheses that modern geologists use to account for the data in order to emphasize the fact that Juergens' and Thornhill's electrical scarring hypothesis also fits the data: A celestial thunderbolt would be expected to 1) carve the Grand Canyon quickly and 2) come to equilibrium quickly because 3) the age and depth of the Canyon have very little to do with the flow of the Colorado River. Now that we know the conclusions, let's scroll back to the beginning: The problems. A news story about the Grand Canyon Symposium of June 2000 stated these problems clearly: Although the Grand Canyon is the United States' most famous geological feature, geologists do not know for certain how it was formed. Plus: ...instead of providing an answer, the June symposium actually may have expanded the controversy over the Canyon's origins...
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SEE ARTICLE HERE: http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2000/08aug/grandcanyonbeginning.html According to this article, conventional geologists are divided into two warring camps. They both agree that the Grand Canyon is young, geologically speaking. The evidence has been building since the 1930's and 1940's that the Colorado River did not flow out of the Canyon nor across the ridges and valleys of Nevada/California before 5.5 million years ago. It didn't dump into Baha California until after 4.3 million years ago at the very earliest. The first camp thinks that a proto-canyon completed most of the excavation of the Canyon first. Later, the Colorado River flowed into this pre-existing proto-canyon. The second camp says evidence for a protocanyon is inadequate, and the whole canyon was carved quickly. One of the comments in the news story has an eyebrow-raising twist for those familiar with Juergens' and Thornhill's electrical scarring theory: A "proto-canyon" advocate expressed his objections to the "quickly carved" group in these words: [I]f you don't have a pre-existing eastern Canyon, you have to start the Colorado River way up in the sky. He obviously felt that this possibility was so absurd that his side won the debate. But if you allow Juergens and Thornhill's hypothesis -- celestial thunderbolts carving canyons on Earth as well as on waterless moons, comets, asteroids and planets -- the accusation ceases to be so absurd. Which brings us to the middle of my story: the data. Why so much confusion? What are these studies finding? The Western Grand Canyon intersects the southern tip of a 50-mile long double string of recent volcanoes (less than 1.8 million years old.) W.K. Hamlin considers this intersection a lucky coincidence. He says (LCLD, page 5) "If the canyon had been located 10 km [6.2 miles] farther south, there would probably be no volcanic activity within the canyon at all." From an electrical scarring point of view, this placement of this string of volcanoes may not be coincidental. The volcanoes themselves may be one of the many side effects of thunderbolts uplifting the plateau and carving the lower part of the Grand Canyon. Coincidence or not, the volcanoes provide useful information about the Grand Canyon and the eroding power of the Colorado River. Many of the volcanoes erupted within the inner canyon. The lava from other volcanoes erupted onto the wider outer canyon and spilled into the inner canyon. These lavas dammed the inner canyon of the Colorado at least 13 times, beginning no earlier than 1.8 million years ago (conventional dating.) Because remnants of these lava dams reach all the way to the present floor of the inner canyon, we know that the inner canyon was approximately the same size when the first lava flows filled it as it is today. And before the next channel-filling volcano erupted, the river quickly eroded each dam to a channel approximately the same depth and width that the canyon is today. Hamlin says (LCLD, page 110): All available information indicates that prior to the extrusions of lava into the Grand Canyon, ... the Colorado River had cut down to its present gradient and stratigraphic position. The size and shape of the canyon walls were essentially the same as those we see today... He concludes this paragraph with: ...Thus, it is quite clear that when the first lava dam formed the canyon was cut essentially to its present depth, and after each dam was eroded, the Colorado River returned to its former gradient (i.e., its present gradient.)
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The above idea is repeated in almost every paragraph of Appendix One. The language (with author's emphasis) is so strong that I am quoting it here. Paragraph 1: This important fact indicates that slope retreat occurred from the river channel to the original canyon profile, BUT NO MORE. Paragraph 2: With the destruction of each dam, and the reestablishment of the river gradient to its original profile by downcutting, there was also a rapid, contemporaneous retreat of the canyon slopes back to their original profile BUT NO MORE! Paragraph 3: In each case, after a lava dam eroded, the basalt retreated to within a few meters of the original canyon wall. Then the process of slope retreat essentially stopped. In many places, the processes of slope retreat completely removed the basaltic flows, BUT SLOPE RETREAT DID NOT SIGNIFICANTLY ENLARGE THE CANYON AND GO BEYOND THE ORIGINAL CANYON WALLS. This mechanism of restoring equilibrium by rapid erosion of obstructions is driven by the large supply of water that builds up behind the obstruction. For this mechanism to carve the canyon in the first place, there must have been a large lake to the east of it -- or, as quoted above: [Y]ou have to start the Colorado River way up in the sky. But the data from the lava dams only addresses the inner gorge. The Grand Canyon is really a two-part canyon -- a broad, flat- bottomed outer canyon incised by a more-curved steep-walled inner canyon in which the Colorado River flows today. What the volcanic dams tell us is that today's Colorado River is only capable of eroding the inner canyon. What carved the outer canyon? Was it there before the Colorado flowed into it? These are the questions that geologists are currently debating. The electrical scarring hypothesis has an easy answer for these question. When lightning carves a channel on Earth, it creates a broad outer channel with a narrow more sinuous inner channel. Celestial lightning does the same thing on a much grander scale. After celestial lightning uplifted the plateau and carved the basic skeleton of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River spilled into the inner channel. This reversed the previously northern drainage of the Southwestern States, allowing them to drain, for the first time, across Nevada and California to the Gulf of Mexico. The Colorado River quickly altered the inner channel from its lightning scar profile to a water-carved canyon in equilibrium. And every time that profile was blocked by a lava dam, the river demonstrated how quickly it can return the Canyon to equilibrium. Earth's rivers make it easy to confuse a canyon eroded by water with a canyon carved by electricity. But what about similar canyons on Mars? Did Mars once have liquid water flowing on its surface to carve its canyons? Astronomers answer that question with a strong "maybe." Four spacecraft, including landers, are currently en route to Mars with the goal of learning if Mars once had water. But, like the Grand Canyon on Earth, even a "yes" to the question of whether there was once liquid water on Mars won't solve the problem of what carved the canyons of Mars. It leaves astronomers with more unanswered questions: What carved similar canyons on our own airless moon? On tiny asteroids? Or on the scorched surface of Venus? ~Amy Acheson editor of THOTH thoth@whidbey.com
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MYSTERIOUS MARS
By Wal Thornhill www.holoscience.com Copyright 2003 27 August 2003, at 9.51 am GMT, Mars was a mere 56 million kilometres from Earth, the closest it has been since 57,617 BC. [ed note: full article with photos can be found http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=3D0414prqf] on Wal Thornhill's website:
The claim that Neanderthals 60 millennia ago witnessed a Mars approach similar to what we are seeing today should be re- evaluated on two counts, one astronomical and one historical. First: the equations used by astronomers produce the numbers which tell us where the planets have been (or will be) for millions of years, provided nothing has changed. Mathematically, these equations can be trusted for only a few centuries into the past, and not at all into the future. It is only the astronomers faith in the unchanged orbits of the planets that allows them to assume that the equations will yield accurate records of where the planets were tens of thousands of years ago. Second: to solve the mysteries of Mars astronomers must first answer the following historical questions posed by Ev Cochrane in Martian Metamorphoses: The Planet Mars in Ancient Myth and Religion: Earthlings have long been fascinated by the planet Mars. Well before modern science fiction speculated about advanced civilizations upon Mars and the dire threat of invasion by little green men, the red planet was regarded as a malevolent agent of war, pestilence, and apocalyptic disaster. In an attempt to appease the capricious planet-god, various ancient cultures offered it human sacrifices. What is there about this distant speck of light that could inspire such bizarre conceptions culminating in ritual murder? And how do we account for the fact that virtually identical beliefs are to be found around the globe, in the New World as well as the Old? COCHRANE CONTINUES: For untold millennia prior to the advent of scientific astronomy and well before there were any records which could properly be called historical, human beings recounted myths surrounding their favorite heroes and gods. Prominent themes in these sacred traditions include the Creation, the Deluge, the wars of the gods, and the dragon-combat. Despite the passage of eons and the destruction of countless cultures, such myths were committed to memory and told again and again primarily because they represented sacred knowledge regarding the history of the world. Until recently, however, such traditions have been given short shrift by scholars in general and all but ignored by mainstream science. This is most apparent, perhaps, in the modern astronomer's faith that more can be learned about the recent history of our solar system from running computer simulations than from considering what our ancestors had to say on the matter. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Precisely. The date given with computer generated accuracy for Mars' last closest approach to Earth is worthless. The computer has not been programmed with the real history of this world or that of Mars. Astronomers simply assume that the solar system is a Newtonian timepiece with no real history for billions of years. If that is wrong ? and our ancestors obsessively repeat a different story ? then the first law of computing applies to the computed date: Garbage in = garbage out. COCHRANE AGAIN: ...many of the greatest mythical themes reflect ancient man's obsession with the red planet. Indeed, we will attempt to show that Mars' prominence in ancient consciousness is directly
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attributable to the peculiar behavior of the red planet, which only recently participated in a series of spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth and various neighboring planetary bodies. If our thesis has any validity, it follows that the orthodox version of the recent history of the solar system is itself little more than a modern 'myth' and stands in dire need of revision. With implications this far-reaching, the ancient traditions surrounding the planet Mars suddenly take on new significance.
THORNHILL: Science is supposed to consider all relevant data in attempting to find the truth. It is unscientific to ignore the references to Mars passed down by our ancestors worldwide, and which they considered of paramount significance. We instinctively dismiss the idea that five or ten thousand years ago there may very well have been thinkers of the order of Kepler, Gauss or Einstein, working with the means at hand, ... ~De Santillana & Von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill. In addition, it is naive to think that our infinitesimally small time window of modern scientific investigation can be extrapolated back over 60,000 years, let alone over millions or billions of years. Mars is a mystery simply because of our unscientific and naive approach. In New Scientist of 23 August 2003, in an article by David L. Chandler titled "All eyes on Mars," some of the mysteries faced by experts were outlined: Mars is proving more enigmatic than ever at the moment. The latest images of the Martian surface taken by NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) have revealed profoundly mysterious landforms that have left geologists scratching their heads. The features include a combination of surprisingly stable dunes, canyons without craters and rapidly eroding ice caps. All point to amazingly fast processes taking place on the surface. Mars has changed considerably in the past few thousand years - in some places, even the past two years. Yet nobody knows why. Unraveling the mystery will require a radical leap in theoretical thinking, says Michael Malin, the geologist in charge of the MGS camera. No amount of theorizing based on slow evolutionary geological principles will explain how the giant canyons on Mars are so young that they have no craters in their walls. The very formation mechanism of Valles Marineris is a mystery to geologists. However, if we make use of the forensic evidence from the past, the formation of Valles Marineris was witnessed by modern humans in late prehistory. We don't need to theorize. Mars, the god of war, was memorialized as the heroic figure in a celestial battle fought with thunderbolts. Mars was struck and a visible scar remained. For the scar of Valles Marineris to be seen by the naked eye requires that Mars was about one hundred times closer to the Earth than it is on this closest approach! Unfortunately, such a radical overhaul of astronomy and geology are implied by such information that it's just not going to happen any day soon. Arthur Koestler wrote, in The Ghost in the Machine: The revolutions in the history of science are successful escapes from blind alleys. The evolution of knowledge is continuous only during those periods of consolidation and elaboration which follow a major breakthrough. Sooner or later, however, consolidation leads to increasing rigidity, orthodoxy, and so into the dead end of overspecialization -- to the koala bear. So it is left to a few adventurous seekers after the truth to scout far ahead and to find the way out of the blind alley into which science has led us. Based on an interdisciplinary approach to the mysteries of Mars, some suggested solutions to the problems follow the excerpts from the New Scientist article. FROM NEW SCIENTIST:
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On Mars today, it looks as if glaciers are receding after an ice age. At the planet's south pole, alternate layers of ice and dust are vanishing before our eyes. These long, sweeping, arm-like peninsulas were deposited as a result of past climate oscillations. According to MGS images from 1999 and 2001, they are eroding at a rate of 3 metres per year or more. The images show peninsulas of ice narrowing, and occasionally being pinched off into islands, with some islands disappearing altogether. By measuring the amount of erosion seen over two years, Malin calculates one entire layer will disappear within 20 years. "We were absolutely shocked by that," said Malin when he presented his results at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado, in February. The magnitude of the changes implies an enormous amount of energy is being pumped into the ice to melt and vaporise it. And the speed of the vaporisation has helped to resolve a long-standing controversy over whether the ice is frozen water or carbon dioxide. "Calculations showed the only material that could have changed that rapidly is carbon dioxide," says Malin. It is hard to tell from above how thick each layer of ice is, but best estimates are that with every layer eroded, the thickness of the Martian atmosphere increases by 1 per cent. More questions remain. How many layers were there in the first place, before the erosion started? How many remain below? Nobody knows. But the implications for one of Mars's best-known surface features are astounding. "All the visible ice, all the carbon dioxide that we see in this 'permanent' ice cap could be eroded in less than a century," Malin says.2 COMMENT: The fact that thunderbolts were remembered by the ancients as a cause of surface scarring on Mars opens a whole new realm of rapid electrical deposition and erosion to explain surface features. It happened yesterday in geological terms so that we may expect faster adjustments today than otherwise expected. Electric discharges tend to remove matter from the cathode and transfer it to the anode. Electrical deposition from another body would explain the global layering seen on Mars. Electric discharge machining would tend to remove surface material by an etching process. That has resulted in many weird surface features. See photos on-line at: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=3D0414prqf PHOTO CAPTION: This enigmatic landform on Mars shows the extensive layering followed by powerful electric discharge etching of the surface. On the right is an electric discharge machined surface viewed under an electron microscope. The scalability law of plasma phenomena allows a direct comparison. THORNHILL: The Earth today suffers minor electrical interaction with the solar plasma, which results in lightning at mid to lower latitudes and a diffuse auroral discharge at the poles. Another form of diffuse atmospheric electric discharge is the more energetic tornado. Mars was also depicted by the ancients as sitting within a glowing tornadic column for a period. That would explain the huge swirling erosion patterns at both of the Martian poles. It also means that the polar caps are only about 10,000 years old and probably still accommodating to Mars' "new" environment. The puzzling difference between the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars is explained simply if the north pole was the cathode in the tornadic electrical exchange. Material would then have been removed from the northern hemisphere to give the low, flat and relatively uncratered terrain found there. PHOTO CAPTION: On the left is the raised swirling terrain at the Martian north pole. At right, we see that the layers of the Martian north polar cap are divided into upper, light-toned layers and lower, darker layers. It shows the deposition process to have been discontinuous. Streamers of dark sand join a nearby "dune field" a few kilometers away. Erosion of the lower layered unit liberates sand that was long ago deposited in these layers. The upper unit, by contrast, contains almost no sand. Wind may have created the dunes or they may have been shaped by earlier spark "pitting" of the surface. Mars Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
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PHOTO CAPTION: For comparison, this surface has been pitted by the process of electric spark machining. NEW SCIENTIST ARTICLE: Other features indicate a [recently] changing world, too. For example, huge fields of granular dunes preserve detailed features that show that they once marched across the landscape like sand dunes on Earth, blown by the wind. Yet these dunes are frozen in place, without a trace of motion over a two-year interval. The only plausible explanation is, again, climate change. If the atmosphere was much thicker in the recent past, its winds may have been able to push along dunes that today's winds can no longer even ruffle. Mars may have lost much of that thicker atmosphere in the past and perhaps it is now regaining it from the evaporation of its polar caps. COMMENT: It was the most catastrophic climate change imaginable involving a drastic shift of orbit as a result of the close electrical and gravitational encounters with other planets. Electrical forces in an essentially chaotic gravitational system can quickly change and stabilize planetary orbits. It renders computer orbital retro-calculations invalid. No such computation will place Mars near the Earth only 10,000 years ago! The tornadic circumpolar winds mentioned above were capable of moving heavy sand grains and forming vast fields of sand dunes around the polar caps. However, the electrical interactions were capable of stripping much of Mars1 atmosphere too. The final result was a tenuous atmosphere no longer capable of moving sand dunes. NEW SCIENTIST ARTICLE: Perhaps the most mysterious new-found feature on Mars lies inside its version of the Grand Canyon, the huge Valles Marineris, a 2000-kilometre-long canyon near the equator. In a side canyon called Candor Chasma, the floor lies 3.5 kilometres below the surrounding plateau and the walls are spectacularly layered. But there are few impact craters on Candor Chasma's floor, implying that it is less than a million years old, as it has not had time to be bombarded by many meteorites. But if it is that young, Malin asks, ...how did it get exposed from under three and a half kilometres of material? So far, there is no answer. COMMENT: I have explained how a powerful cosmic thunderbolt tore out the canyons of Valles Marineris and the event was witnessed by humans. As for dating surfaces by crater counting, almost all of the craters on Mars are electrical. Impacts do not form such neat circular craters. Because they are electrical craters they tend to form on high points. That is why they are often seen perched on the raised rims of earlier craters (earlier possibly only by minutes) and the edges of canyons and not on the walls of existing craters and canyons. NEW SCIENTIST ARTICLE: 'Altogether,' says Malin, 'we have maybe eight to ten landforms that indicate that what you see on Mars today, in terms of the environment, is not what formed the features we see.' That points to climate change, agrees planetary scientist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, who viewed Malin's images at a Mars conference in Pasadena, California, last month. But until scientists develop a detailed hypothesis that describes the type of climate change and links it to the features observed, the images don't make sense, says McKay. 'We've reached a point of diminishing returns from orbital imaging,' he says. Malin and McKay aren't the only ones feeling puzzled. 'The problems are becoming more difficult, instead of becoming easier,' said Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who was at the meeting in Pasadena. 'People are seeing things they just
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don't understand, and coming up with wild ideas to try to explain them,' he says. Many suggestions invoke glaciation, but none can explain all the enigmatic features. COMMENT: Malin is correct. The present environment of Mars did not form the features on Mars. Unfortunately, as specialists, geologists have little else to work with other than climate change to explain recent surface changes. For Koestler1s "koala bears," more orbital imaging just adds to the confusion. However, continued orbital imaging remains valuable for interdisciplinary advance scouts. They have the entire remembered experience of the human race to assist their understanding of the images. They are not limited by the myths created by modern science. They can see beyond to an interdisciplinary science created by the study of myths. We must use myths to create a new science, not science to create new myths. The most 'ancient treasure' -in Aristotle's words -- that was left to us by our predecessors of the High and Far-off Times was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces reside in the starry heavens, and all the stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are planets. ~Giorgio Di Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 7 (October 31, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: MYTH WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY SPIRAL GALAXIES & GRAND CANYONS
Ev Cochrane Marinus Anthony Van der Sliujs Wal Thornhill
MYTH
By Ev Cochrane Why should anyone care about ancient myth? The answer, quite simply, is that for untold centuries myth served as the primary means of recording and communicating man's fundamental ideas regarding the nature of the cosmos and the sacred. In this sense, ancient myth represents an intellectual heirloom encapsulating the history of our species and is thus a ripe field of study for all students of evolutionary psychology. If, as appears to be the case, myth also preserves important clues for reconstructing the recent history of our solar system its study becomes all the more essential. Modern scholars have defined myth as a sacred history purporting to describe the origin of the world and mankind's various cultural institutions. Mircea Eliade would emphasize myth's central function in ancient (and so-called primitive) cultures: One fact strikes us immediately: in such societies the myth is thought to express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred history; that is, a transhuman experience revelation which took place at the dawn of the Great Time, in the holy time of the beginnings (in illo tempore). Being real and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token as a justification, for all human actions. In other words, a myth is a true history of what came to pass at the beginning of Time, and one which provides the pattern for human behaviourSClearly, what we are dealing with here is a complete reversal of values; whilst current language confuses the myth with 'fables', a man of the traditional societies sees it as the only valid revelation of reality. Countless myths, according to Eliade, commemorate the Creation, the latter regarded by ancient man as something that "really happened, as an event that took place, in the plain sense of the term." Intimately related to this widespread idea that Creation was something actually experienced and witnessed is a corollary belief -- that a great catastrophe brought down the curtain on the paradisiacal conditions which formerly prevailed during a remembered Golden Age. Yet as insightful and compelling as Eliade's analysis of myth proves to be, there is one gaping hole in the argument: No explanation is offered for the origin of the specific mythical themes uncovered -- e.g., Creation, the Golden Age, epoch-ending catastrophe, the primeval hieros gamos, etc. This question is directly related to another major flaw plaguing most modern theories of ancient myth; namely, their general inability to explain the recurrence of mythical themes around the globe. Levi-Strauss emphasized this problem in an essay on myth many years ago:
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How are we going to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar? Particularly troubling are those bizarre details of ancient myth that don't make sense in the real world: flying, fire-breathing dragons, for example; the dwarf-like hero who suddenly assumes a gigantic form; the birth of the warrior-hero from the "heart" of the mother goddess; and countless others. One is naturally inclined to attribute such motifs to creative imagination and fictional storytelling, but this "explanation" runs up against an insuperable difficulty: These seemingly meaningless and impossible motifs are likewise to be found around the globe. As Levi-Strauss emphasized, it is very difficult to understand how creative imagination could explain such recurring motifs: Mythic stories are, or seem, arbitrary, meaningless, absurd, yet nevertheless they seem to reappear all over the world. A 'fanciful' creation of the mind in one place would be unique -- you would not find the same creation in a completely different place. There would appear to be but three possible explanations for the presence of such recurring motifs: 1) They originated in creative imagination and subsequently became diffused around the globe; 2) They are natural products of the human mind; 3) They have some reference to celestial phenomena, observed and commemorated in mythical language by ancient man the world over. For reasons which will become clear, the third explanation is the only one which is compatible with the evidence and, indeed, it forms the cornerstone of the Saturn theory. [ed note: visit Cochrane's recently up-dated website for this introduction to myth and links (at the bottom of the page) to further articles about the Saturn theory. Buttons at the top of the page connect you to sections from Cochrane's Mars and Venus books, and information for purchasing them.] THE WEBSITE: http://www.maverickscience.com/Myth/myth.html ARTICLE LINKS INCLUDE: The Stairway to Heaven Samson Revealed On Thundergods and Thunderbolts Ev Cochrane www.maverickscience.com/
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

By Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs [ed note: The following is a sampling of quotations by modern scientists and others about the connection between myth and early disasters in the sky. The full collection of quotations, with references, can be found on van der Sluijs' Mythopedia website at: http://mythopedia.info/experts.htm ] MARK BAILEY astronomer at the Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland:
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The conjunction of these ideas, linking astronomy and history, therefore suggests that human societies may have been witness to a somewhat more active celestial environment during past millennia. In fact, the extreme preoccupation of most early societies with celestial imagery and the making of astronomical observations appears to be part of a world-wide phenomenon during the period leading up to and including the Bronze age ... This would be consistent with the presence of a once powerful extraterrestrial source with the capacity to cause both local and global destruction and to trigger a common social response. Further arguments for a possibly more active sky in the past include ... the fact that iron was apparently first known through its occurrence in meteorites ... and ... the fact that flood myths and related ceremonies from around the world frequently seem to have a common historical basis ... ...indirect support for such a picture comes from a wide range of historical arguments ... which suggests that there was indeed more astronomical activity in the past than now. Episodes of bombardment ... may provide an explanation for periods of global cooling as registered in the historical record, even for the strong interest displayed by most early civilizations in celestial phenomena, providing a possible common origin for myths and legends from around the world.
BILL NAPIER astronomer at the Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland: ...modern astronomical evidence does not support the common supposition that the night sky has been unchanging for 5,000 years. There are likely to have been epochs when the sky contained one or more visible, periodic comets, associated with annual fireball storms of huge intensity, and perhaps also with devastating impact. Such phenomena, enduring for centuries, surely had a profound effect on the minds of early peoples. At a minimum, traces of this ancient sky should still be detectable in the artefacts and belief systems of the earliest cultures. VICTOR CLUBE Astronomer: This leads us to recognise the relatively sudden flowering and foundering of civilizations during interglacials as the principal signatures of punctuational crises that arise as the corresponding debris of a giant comet in a short-period, Earth-crossing orbit passes through the final stages (splittings) of its evolution and decline. Astronomers at the dawn of civilisation perceived danger in the sky and society was notably unsettled. Later, astronomers were to perceive order in the cosmos and society was to become notably less unsettled. MARK BAILEY, VICTOR CLUBE, and BILL NAPIER Astronomers: Indeed, recent researches in modern cometary astronomy now independently suggest that the civilizations of antiquity may have experienced happenings in the sky which have not since been repeated on the same scale ... Many of the legends of mythology can thus be interpreted as highly embellished accounts of the evolution of one, or perhaps a few, very large comets during the last 2,000 years of prehistory.
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This enables us to place the facts of mythology in a new light and it is concluded that many myths have a common core reflecting world-wide observations of a large active short-period comet. The genealogy of the gods is interpreted as a history of fragmentation. DUNCAN STEEL astronomer at Spaceguard Australia, Adelaide, Australia: Indeed this is the whole crux of what I perceive as being the limitation in previous interpretational work in archaeoastronomy: the assumption that the phenomena seen in the sky by the ancients were the same as those which we see now ... To the contrary, in my opinion their execution of exceptional feats of engineering or other endeavour might rather be viewed as an indication that exceptional phenomena were being experienced. In astro-archaeological investigations I believe that it should be kept firmly in mind that the celestial phenomena which ancient man would have been most concerned with ? objects which moved around the sky relative to the background of stars ? may have been quite different to those observed now. GERRIT VERSCHUUR astronomer at University of Memphis, USA: It is certain that some of those impactors splashed into the oceans to trigger tsunamis and flooding along coast lines and instilling terror in the minds of survivors, a terror so powerful that legends about such floods persist to this day. This possible link between flood legends and impact events is now beginning to fascinate more than just the pseudo-scientist. The issue is entering the mainstream of thought ... CHANDRA WICKRAMASINGHE Astronomer: There can be little doubt that myths and legends would have evolved in response to such experiences, experiences that must surely have been shared by many nomadic tribes scattered widely across our planet. FRED HALL Engineer: The known comets of the past have generally had extremely short and uneventful appearances, and it does not seem likely that any of these would have involved sufficient drama to produce lasting myths. Nevertheless, no one can dispute that comets did arouse utter terror among ancient populations on all continents, and they are still feared today by some cultures. This is not well understood by those savants who do not believe the ancients could have ever seen a comet at closer range than we see them now. If, on the other hand, the fears of comets can be traced to a more spectacular and destructive comet than ever documented in our time, then the enigma is removed. BRUCE MASSE environmental archaeologist at the US Department of Air Force and the University of Hawaii: Mythology to date has been largely under exploited as a resource because of our failure to understand its meaning and logic, and our failure to realize that the data contained in mythologies can be retrieved by systematic scientific methodology. Mythology, rather than being fanciful as is commonly believed in Western science, is actually a large multifaceted window on the major natural environmental events and processes that have shaped human history.
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An equally important goal of cosmography is that of the reconstruction of past environmental events and processes not presently known, or at least poorly known to science as determined from patterns elicited from the archaeological, documentary, oral historical, and palaeoenvironmental record. Chief among these are cosmic impacts. Due to my familiarity with the literature on volcanic eruptions, I also realized that many myths did not well reflect volcanic eruptions or other known physical processes on Earth, but rather seemed to reflect disasters of cosmic origin. ...mythologies, at least in part, represent cosmographic records of real environmental events, especially temporary celestial events ... some iconographic images of gods, demigods, supernatural beings, and legendary rulers portray specific celestial phenomena and events ... environmental events such as floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and droughts, are often cognitively linked with unusual celestial events (e. g., comets, meteor storms, supernovae, planetary conjunctions, eclipses, cosmic impacts) that may have occurred within a few years of the earthly environmental event. ...the birth names of chiefs and royalty can encode spectacular temporary celestial events as is also true for names acquired during the reigns of these individuals ... at least some cosmogonic myths, as well as myths about demigods and culture heroes, encode temporary celestial events ... at least some legendary stories about epic battles and voyages encode temporary celestial events, especially the passage of spectacular comets ... art, iconography, architecture, and chiefly or royal symbols of power are sometimes used to encode temporary celestial events. The secret of humankind's past has long been locked within the fabric of our cultural traditions ... within our mythologies ... within the iconography, art, and architecture of past societies ... within the patterns of social behavior that can be elicited from the archaeological record ... and within the corpus of wisdom so zealously shepherded and preserved by our various religions. It is sobering to realize that until now the most visually and intellectually stimulating part of humankind's overall environment, that of the processes and events in the celestial heavens, has been virtually ignored in nearly all studies of human history and human behavior. With the realization of just how important temporary celestial events were to past cultures, we now have a key that can unlock many of the biggest mysteries of our past. However, in order for us to most effectively use this key we must break down the artificial barriers that presently exist between the social sciences, the physical sciences, and the humanities, and indeed the barriers between science and religion. Past cultures worldwide often shared in a single cosmic vision, and we must not let our own present fragmented fields of knowledge hinder our attempt to recapture that vision.
LEWIS FARNELL professor of Greek religion: What is normal in nature and society rarely excites the myth-making imagination, which is more likely to be kindled by the abnormal, some startling catastrophe, some terrible violation of the social code. DAVID PANKENIER Lehigh University, Philadelphia, USA: ...the broad spectrum of cultural responses to cataclysmic events ? from deep-seated fear and dread, to intense efforts to mediate what they saw through ritual reenactment, mythic recounting, and sacrifice, to the ultimate domestication of the frightening implications of chaotic intrusions into their lives through various forms of deep-play all attest to the profoundly unsettling impact chaotic events in the skies may have had on the minds of those ancient Chinese.

ADRIAN BAILEY comparative mythologist and author:
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Could our failure to understand our distant past be due to our method of approach and a strange reluctance to pursue a line of enquiry ? well signposted with clues ? to its conclusion? Can there be any doubt that, in the absence of written records, myths and symbols, legends and folklore, passed down from generation to generation, and migrating through diverse cultures and societies while retaining their original meaning, provide us with the most reliable clues to the mysteries of the past? Anonymous editor of the Larousse encyclopedia of mythology: ...are all these legends a confused account of great events on a planetary scale which were beheld in terror simultaneously by the men scattered everywhere over the world? HANS BELLAMY comparative mythologist: Chance and luck allowed a remnant of mankind to get through the cataclysm of the former satellite. These survivors treasured their memories in those reports which we now call 'cosmological myths'. They recorded the terrors from which they had escaped, and they told of the time of calm which followed the great upheaval. IRVING WOLFE professor of English literature, University of Montral, Canada: Nature produces Culture and the natural cataclysms which our ancestors have collectively experienced have influenced and shaped the cultural artifacts created afterwards. To put it simply, cultures are what they have gone through. The past determines the present, and the cosmic past exerts the greatest influence. A culture, if properly interpreted, therefore becomes a mirror of what preceded it. ...catastrophe leads to new civilisation: revolutions in Culture arise from the behaviour of Nature. The catastrophe would nevertheless have to be large enough to cause violent and sensational spectacles in the sky and correspondingly sensational effects on nature and culture. What is important for our purposes is the agreement among many researchers that the Ur-story behind the combat myths is cosmic, for this is what allows us to propose that it may refer to a real historical event. ...if humankind for the first time began to look for and find objective order in the heavens during the pre-Socratic period, it did not happen because there was a sudden increase in Greek brainpower, or because of a sudden and unexplainable desire to perceive the heavens as they were rather than invent things that were not there in the sky. I think it occurred because for the first time the heavens displayed an objective order which could be observed. If there was a catastrophe around 700 BC, the skies might have settled down sufficiently by 600 BC or slightly later to permit recurrent observation of the year-length, the solstices and equinoxes and lunar cycles and even the Venus-Earth interlock, such that it would be apparent that the heavens were orderly. ...most of the creations of our culture (idea systems, religions, cosmologies, sports, works of art) are unconsciously-directed denials of catastrophe, self-delusions designed to make us believe that cosmically-induced natural destructions did not occur and therefore will not.
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...the Games served a therapeutic purpose, in that the athletes emulated the actions of the cosmic forces which had been seen on the screen of the sky, with the winners representing the original divine sky champion, able to defeat all enemies at cosmically symbolic feats ... The Games therefore re-enacted in safe and re-assuring imitation the victory of stability over chaos in the sky. If we accept the hypothesis that Culture follows Nature, then ... we have no choice but to guess that something drastic happened in the skies not too long before the cultural upheaval, which leads us to ask of course when it occurred and what was its cause.
E. TRIPP classical mythologist: The mythical battle is generally believed to have been a personification of terrifying natural phenomena S of cataclysmic proportions. BARBARA HAND CLOW Writer: The marauding cosmic agencies responsible for such dire devastation are now identifiable with reasonable accuracy and are still graphically remembered as the hydras, griffins, dragons, and Medusas, the world encircling serpents and vast 'monsters' of popular mythology ... actually symbolized cosmic phenomena. The sky did fall within recent memory, and then the recovery period from 9000 to 1500 B. C. was filled with periodic upheaval. R. M. SINCLAIR National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia: When we talk of astronomical phenomena, we usually make an assumption of uniformity in the past, that the long-term average of these phenomena has always been much the same. We can say with certainty that this is true for the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars because we can track their motions back for millennia S But we do not know with the same certainty that the bombardment of Earth from space has been the same as we now observe it to be S The present rarity of sizable 'hits' may not always have been the case. Some of the evidence comes from old records and traditions, that suggest strongly that the sky some millennia ago was so different as to lie completely outside our present experience. Early records speak fearfully of the sky being alive with meteors, much as we have occasionally seen during rare showers; were there many more small ones, there could be as many more big ones. At those times bombardment from the sky would have been a real hazard. Tunguska-sized events may have been common enough, to make people fear the skies as something to watch with dread, to worship, and to propitiate. The idea of repeated passage through 'danger zones' in the Solar System would explain much of the fear and worship of the sky that we still see in place today, albeit diluted. It is otherwise hard to understand this dread of the sky, since there is no historical record of anyone actually being killed by a meteorite or threatened physically by a comet. Those studying myths and legends, and early art, could profitably work with astronomers (and vice versa) to learn more about this little-understood aspect of the history of mankind and of the Solar System. Historians and anthropologists who do not include astronomical phenomena in their work, and who do not understand how dangerous the Solar System can be, are likely to interpret texts or traditions about things 'seen in the sky' or 'falling to Earth' as references to 'heavens' or 'warfare of the gods' rather than descriptions of actual physical events. When used with understandable caution, human history does offer a way to probe the astronomical record on a time scale of millennia.
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C. L. N. RUGGLES & H. A. W. BURL: We can be sure that the actions of prehistoric people were very strongly dependent upon their perceptions of the world, expressed in systems of belief and ritual, and that celestial phenomena were an integral part of this perception ... MIKE BAILLIE Dendrochronologist: We now have a set of environmental events at 2354-2345 BC, 1628-1623 BC, 1159-1141 BC, 208-204 BC and AD 536-45 ... There are connections between the events in that all now seem to have references to extraterrestrial occurrences. Mythology links several of them quite explicitly, and the mythological connections suggest some cosmic linkages to the same events. It appears that there may have been a catastrophic set of happenings in or around 1628 BC involving a close-pass comet and volcanic activity. We have what may be some reasonably accurate descriptions of what it was like at the time with incredible coloured sky displays, assorted impacts and general mayhem. It is not impossible that versions of this may have happened more than once, especially if the responsible body exhibited even temporary periodic behaviour. W. MULLEN: It is necessary to rethink the 'Axial Age', connecting cultures from Greece to China in the 6th and 5th century BCE: The assumption on which this rethinking is based is that these cultures' simultaneous activities in rewriting the mythical accounts of world-destructions bequeathed to them by immediately preceding generations was essentially conditioned by the fact that human consciousness had only recently emerged from such events into a period of relative celestial and terrestrial stability. Erratic events in the heavens are terrifying; predictable events need not be so. The former belief is the heritage of the traumatizing catastrophes of the past; the latter is the product of a new determination to survey the heavens as an orderly system. Collected by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs
SPIRAL GALAXIES & GRAND CANYONS

By Wal Thornhill www.holoscience.com.au (c)Copyright 2003 The grandest canyon in the solar system is Valles Marineris on Mars. It stretches a third of the way around the planet. But what in heaven can spiral galaxies have to do with the geology of Mars? [Ed note: The full article with photos can be found on Wal Thornhill's website: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=rnde0zza PHOTO CAPTION: The great scar of Valles Marineris looks as if it has been burnt into the planet's face. Behind, a barred spiral galaxy glows from the depths of space.
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In October 2001, I wrote "In light of more than a century's research in the field of plasma cosmology and the 20th century discoveries of the space age, we can confidently propose the celestial thunderbolt as a common cause of the formation of canyons and rilles on rocky planets and moons." At that time I had not come to any conclusion about the details of the electrical event that created the colossal Valles Marineris canyons on Mars. Like geologists, I use a process of pattern matching when attempting to understand the processes that may have formed a feature seen on the surfaces of planets and moons. But unlike geologists, who have been seriously misled by astrophysicists and are now confused by what they see on Mars, I have the luxury of contemplating the effects of the most powerful erosion force in the universe -- that of the electric arc. Following the lead provided by Ralph Juergens in the 1970's I looked at the detailed morphology of Valles Marineris to conclude that it was a scar caused by a cosmic discharge. But the question remained: how did the arc move to create a chasm at least 4000 kilometres long? There is no obvious start or finish to the canyons. Indeed there is a kind of symmetry about the central region of Melas Chasma. Electrical effects offer a unique advantage in being scalable over more than 14 orders of magnitude. In other words, erosion effects observed under an electron microscope provide direct insights into planetary features on a scale of hundreds or thousands of kilometres. However, I had limited my perspective by not looking at large scale galactic objects to see if there were any clues in their patterns to the much smaller features on planetary surfaces. THE CONNECTION LIES IN THE FACT THAT GALAXIES ARE THE LARGEST VISIBLE ELECTRIC DISCHARGE PHENOMENON IN THE UNIVERSE. That may be a controversial statement when conventional astrophysics uses the weakest force in the universe, gravity, in a fruitless attempt to explain the dynamics of galaxies. It is a glaring indictment of the way science works when a compelling competing theory is neither mentioned nor tested against an accepted theory that requires ad hoc and mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" in order to appear to work. It has forced plasma physicists and the IEEE to hold separate meetings and to publish papers on plasma cosmology. With a very few notable exceptions, the astronomical community ignores the subject. The strongest support for plasma cosmology comes from the close correspondence between observations, supercomputer simulations and experiment. It does not require any new forces, new physics or phantom particles to force a match with observations. It explains why galaxies naturally favor the beautiful spiral form. Gravity alone can only produce featureless disks. The current theory of planet formation relies on this fact. PHOTO CAPTION: On the left is a series of single frame stills from a computer animation of a crosssection through two interacting Birkeland current filaments. Not shown is the elliptical core of plasma trapped at the geometric center of the simulation. Top right is the form taken by two interacting plasmoids fired at each other across a magnetic field (courtesy of W. Bostik). Below that, side by side to show the striking correspondence between lab experiment and computer simulation in plasma cosmology, are the development of auroral instabilities as current increases from top to bottom. All images are from Physics of the Plasma Universe by Anthony Peratt. THORNHILL CONTINUES: In the simulation of the electrical formation of a spiral galaxy the two fuzzy spots in the earlier frames show where two cosmic current filaments pass vertically through the plane of the developing galaxy. The force between these cosmic current filaments is more powerful and long-range than gravity, declining linearly with distance. It leads to a natural pairing of filaments when many filaments are present in plasmas in which the magnetic field plays a major role. I accounted for the pairing and rotation of plasma current filaments when explaining the formation of circular craters. However, it was not until I examined the MOLA topographic map of Mars (above) that I
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realized THE EXTENDED FORM OF VALLES MARINERIS AND CONNECTED CANYONS WAS IDENTICAL TO THAT OF A CLASSIC BARRED-SPIRAL GALAXY. PHOTO CAPTION: It seems that a cosmic thunderbolt has struck Mars with two huge filaments or plasmoids focussed on a spot now occupied by the deepest central canyons of Valles Marineris. Electromagnetic forces then constrained the discharge across the surface of Mars to the classic shape of a barred spiral. All of the enigmatic large-scale features of Valles Marineris then have a coherent and simple explanation. Note the tendency for Ius Chasma to be concave downwards and Coprates Chasma to be concave upward. That matches the effect seen in Bostik's lab experiment above. Also many odd details make sense. For example, for the aficionados of powerful plasma discharges, the 3bar2 is formed by Ius Chasma to the west and Coprates Chasma to the east. At their extremities they "pinch" down before entering large chaotic regions, Noctis Labyrinthus in the west and Capri Chasma and Eos Chasma in the east. This is typical of diocotron instabilities that sometimes occur in the arms of spiral galaxies. After pinching down, the discharge curves and balloons out. The surface damage is spread over a greater area, forming chaotic etched terrain in the east and a vast system of pitted trenches in the west. The act of pinching the discharge leads to filamentation, which may be seen in the thin parallel channels at the extremities of the main canyons. The filamentation instability occurs most readily at large currents. This effect could also explain the tendency to "doubling" of the canyons, to form a central ridge. Electrons rushed from remote regions along the outer "spiral arms" of Claritas Fossae in the west and a number of channels including Tiu Vallis in the east. In doing so they created the usual electrically scoured channels. As Michael Carr, leader of the Viking Orbiter imaging team noted: Canyons, chaos and outflow channels are thus physically connected, and their origins may be in some way related. There are some smaller parallel canyon systems, closed at both ends, to the north of Valles Marineris. They appear to be the result of smaller discharges of the same type as created Valles Marineris, probably immediately following the main stroke. Multiple strokes, decreasing in intensity, are a well-known characteristic of lightning.
THE ACCEPTED MODEL

No one was there to witness the evolution of the Earth, so geologists have constructed an elaborate story about the history of the Earth. It is founded upon a simple belief that the planets were all formed at about the same time and have remained for billions of years in their present orbits. It was inevitable that chapters of the Earth's story would be translated to Mars. The result is a succession of hypothetical Martian "ages" including a "Noachian" age of deluge. And remember that this is a story about a frozen desert planet! One of the most highly developed capabilities of the human mind is to concoct stories. Equally, we have a strong desire to be told stories and to believe them. If we believe a story to be true we have a strong tendency to accept confirming evidence and to ignore contrary evidence. Geologists are human and show the same tendencies when explaining planetary surface features. The idea of former oceans and rivers existing on Mars came from the many scoured channels and the flat, low terrain in the northern hemisphere. This marked hemispheric dichotomy is inexplicable by any known geological or astronomical effect. It has never occurred to geologists that the agent involved was electrified plasma. Why should it? Astrophysicists tell them that we live in an electrically neutral universe in which cosmic charge separation is impossible. But if that single assumption is incorrect everything changes. If the visible universe suffers cosmic charge separation then we have a source of energy to
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build and shape galaxies, light stars, give birth to planets, organize stable orbits and leave the resulting scars of electrical transactions on all solid bodies.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE PLASMA MODEL

Gigantic fresh scars show that Mars has suffered recently and terribly. Millions of cubic kilometres of jagged boulders were burnt and torn from its surface and strewn from horizon to horizon ? as all of the images relayed from the surface have shown. The implications for the search for life on Mars are profound. IF THERE WAS A PAST ENVIRONMENT CONDUCIVE TO LIFE ON MARS IT HAS BEEN WRECKED. Not only the surface suffered but also the atmosphere was stripped and exogenous gases and solids dumped on the hapless planet. Mars1 orbit and climate changed drastically. See the THEMIS website for the fullsize http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20030820a.html image of the eastern end of Ius Chasma:
It is interesting to compare a geological story of Mars with that of the electrical. The THEMIS image has the following explanation attached: The steep canyon walls and ridge forming layers of Valles Marineris are on display in this THEMIS picture. Landslides and gullies observed throughout the image are evidence to [sic] the continued mass wasting of the martian surface. Upon close examination of the canyon floor, small ripples that are likely migrating sand dunes are seen on the surface. Some slopes also display an interesting raked-like appearance that may be due to a combination of aeolian and gully forming processes. THORNHILL COMMENTS: The term "mass wasting" for Valles Marineris is a euphemism for the disappearance of millions of cubic kilometres of rock and soil. The two mechanisms proposed for the formation of Valles Marineris are underground water erosion or massive surface rifting. Neither stand up to scrutiny. There is no mechanism available to geologists to cause mass wasting, particularly on such a gargantuan scale. The minor features are merely explained in an ad hoc fashion. The electrical model now has a coherent explanation for the broadest features of five major and distinct landforms associated with Valles Marineris. The five features are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. the Valles Marineris canyons; Noctis Labyrinthus; Claritas Fossae; the eastern chaos region; the great eastern valley systems.
The missing mass (shades of the purely gravitational thinking of astronomers) was not transported or buried on Mars. It was lofted toward space by blast and electrical forces. The same kind of process operates far more quietly today on Io, lofting matter hundreds of kilometres into space. The fact that we receive martian meteorites today is solid evidence of the removal of rocks from the surface of Mars in the recent past. The electrical model also explains the detailed features. The small ripples on the canyon floor are not sand dunes but a solid reminder of the path of the arc that blasted the canyon. They are massive "fulgurites" - the glassified sand formed by underground lightning. They are transverse to the arc because they record the corona discharge filaments associated with lightning. The same effect seems to have solidified the soil along the ridge crests into "Lichtenberg figures," which is another characteristic pattern created by lightning. Ridge crests and canyon edges would be the focus of secondary discharges. The raked appearance of the slopes are probably the result of surface lightning feeding the ridge crests with
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electrons to satisfy the discharges there. We find such patterns of grooves on objects as diverse as asteroids, moons and planets. For reasons yet to be revealed, I think it likely that Mars in the recent past had an environment not much different to that of the Earth. But the extensive layering on Mars suggests the earlier environment was globally and episodically buried and electrically scarred when that changed . That could explain the detection of extensive subsurface ice, if the hydrogen signature found by the Odyssey spacecraft is due to water. Certainly, Martian craters with flow features away from their rims fit such a picture. The flows are due to electric heating of ices by subsurface currents flowing away from the arc that formed the crater. What about the Grand Canyon? As many geologists have pointed out, the Grand Canyon is the size of a mere tributary of Valles Marineris. The Grand Canyon shows detailed similarities to the canyons of Valles Marineris but the discharge that created it did not take the same striking shape. If forced to use a galactic analogy, it could be the equivalent of a dwarf irregular galaxy. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VII, No 8 (November 30, 2003)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: OCKHAM'S BEARD CATALOG OF DISCORDANT REDSHIFTS THE SUN ? Our Variable Star
Mel Acheson by Halton Arp book reviewed by Amy Acheson Wal Thornhill
OCKHAM'S BEARD
By Mel Acheson Imagine a volcano. Imagine a pyroclastic flow erupting from the volcano, surging into the valley, and swirling up the opposite mountainside. Focus your attention on the concept "pyroclastic flow." It's composed of a network of ideas about hot gasses and steam, pulverized and molten rock, magma pressure and gravity, fracturing and fluidization. If you're a vulcanologist, you may recall lab experiments with fracturing basalt under great pressure. If you're a layman, you may visualize an illustration of magma seeping into crevasses. Virtually no one will think of plasma and electricity. Expert and layman alike will find nonsensical the proposal that a pyroclastic flow could be an electrical discharge within the earth that dissociates rock into ions and dust, creating a plasma that's heated, suspended within a double layer, and jetted across the valley by electrical forces. (Thanks to Harold Tresman for getting ME to think of it.) After all, a pyroclastic flow is already explained by mechanical theories. Adding on electricity only complicates things, and the principle of Ockham's Razor dictates that unnecessary assumptions be cut off. All else being equal, the simpler explanation is preferable. But all else is not equal. Theories are not simply "after-thoughts," explanations appended to given facts. In the first place, a pyroclastic flow is not an incorrigible object of perception. The act of seeing a pyroclastic flow is not a simple matter of lenses and images, not a camera of the eye recording an image on the film of the mind. Stimuli on every 100 rods and cones in the retina are "zipped" into a stimulus on one optic nerve fiber.(1) So this first stage of perception already involves a process of classification. In the visual cortex, the classified stimuli are conflated with other stimuli and linked into networks of nervous activity. At this preconscious level the physiology of our nervous system has already determined in large part how we will understand what we see. The image of a pyroclastic flow that appears in the mind's eye is a gestalt whose relationship with the original stimuli is analogical and metaphorical.(2) Perception is both conceptual and creative. Facts are not so much "given" as "formed." We understand unities before we understand their parts. In the second place, a plasma assumption is not added on to the existing mechanical explanation. The plasma explanation DISPLACES the mechanical one, dispensing with mechanical assumptions and incorporating electrical ones. It's a unity of conception and perception that organizes our experience of what we call a pyroclastic flow in a different way from the mechanical unity. The unities of understanding are more fundamental than the parts into which they can be analyzed.
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With different facts, different assumptions, and different ways of understanding them, the blade of simplicity may cut the other way: Plasma may explain more with fewer assumptions than the familiar concretion of mechanical theories. But because most of the assumptions are unconscious, there's no way to count them and thus no measurable way to compare the two explanations: They are, in Thomas Kuhn's oft-repeated word, "incommensurable." Ockham's preference for simplicity consequently reduces to a bias for familiarity. The explanations we're familiar with work for the facts as we've come to know them in part because we've come to know the facts that work for the explanations we're familiar with. (Putting the situation in this circular form makes it sound whimsical, but the history of science demonstrates that developing workable circles of concepts and facts is actually difficult and rare.) What we really want to know is not which explanation is simplest but which is actually the case. Many painful and embarrassing experiences have taught us that our wanting can fool us with false answers. But this wanting to know the actual case fools us with a false question. We try to be dispassionate in asking our questions and to be attentive to nature's answers. But it will always be OUR questions that we ask, and OUR questions will always arise from and carry within themselves our cultural, historical, and biological determinants of what we can experience and imagine(3). As culture evolves, as history proceeds, as biology adapts, we discover new facts and imagine new ways to understand old facts. Mechanical theories that explained well the mechanically understood facts of an age familiar with mechanical things will become awkward and finally unimaginable as awareness of electricity throughout the cosmos renders plasma behavior familiar. There can be no final answers because there can be no final questions apart from our experience. There have been and will be times when it's appropriate for Ockham to shave theories to their most efficient expression. There have been and will be other times when it's necessary for Ockham to grow a beard of speculations that revolutionizes what we used to know. We are living in a time that calls for theoretical hirsuteness. Our familiar theories have enabled us to experience things that undermine those theories and expose their contradictions and limitations. With the discovery that the universe is composed almost entirely of plasma, and with the realization that conventional science knows almost nothing about the behavior of plasma, everything we thought we knew must be reexamined. We need to encourage speculations and to devise tests that will separate the promising from the disappointing. The institutions of funding and peer review need to acquire a little courage and loosen their terrified clinging to familiar theories. They need to regain confidence in empirical investigation. We are entering an age of exploration and discovery: The theoretical sciences should acquire an appropriate sense of adventure. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The human eye contains about 100 million light sensing cells. These are connected to the brain with only about 1 million nerve cells. This relationship is typical of neural ensembles connected to other ensembles. (2) See Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, or, more accessible but somewhat dated, Metaphors We Live By. The first two chapters of Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, are also enlightening. Hayek, The Sensory Order, reviews earlier research in perception, which has been all but forgotten but closely parallels recent discoveries (3) See Toulmin, Foresight and Understanding
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Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations

By Halton Arp, 2003 Reviewed by Amy Acheson This book is exactly what amateur astronomers have been waiting for. It's not the introductory book that Arp's Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies was, nor the heated polemic of his Seeing Red. It's a serious astronomy book that says to those willing to accept the challenge: Let's get to work and sort out the shape of the universe, one associated group of galaxies, quasars and galaxy clusters at a time. Plasma cosmologist Don Scott says, "It is MAGNIFICENT!" And "The evidence he presents is so well stated -- all in one place -- with images and data -- it's just overwhelming." The opening words of the book are these: Empirical evidence which is repeatable forms the indispensable basis of science. The following Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations applies this principle to the problem of extragalactic redshifts. The Catalogue entries establishes unequivocally that high redshift objects are often at the same distance as, and physically associated with, galaxies of much lower redshift. Arp follows with a 39-page review of how discordant redshifts were discovered and why they are important, using examples, pictures and diagrams taken from previous books and papers. He discusses the alignment of high redshift objects along the spin axis of low redshift active galaxies, and how in some cases the precession of a galaxy's spin axis can be traced by the distribution of associated objects. He summarizes the evidence of preferred redshift peaks. In the section titled "Cepheid distances and the Hubble Constant", Arp discusses why the results of the Hubble Key Project don't do what the Key Project claims (produce the "right" number for the Hubble constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding.) He points out that for the nearest galaxies the Hubble relationship between size and redshift seems to apply. But as we leave the local neighborhood and approach the nearest clusters, the relationship falls apart completely and in a systematic way. Yet mainstream press releases still claim to have confirmed the Hubble Constant at 72 plus or minus 8 km/sec/Mpc. How could they do that? Arp explains how. He doesn't accuse astronomers of being dishonest (I might), but instead he describes how the discrepancies "... have been overridden by stepping on the "dark energy" gas pedal or applying the "dark matter" brakes ...". Arp concludes that "the value of the Hubble constant has therefore become irrelevant in conventional cosmology." Or in my words -Astronomers aren't measuring anything -- they are adjusting fudge factors to match observations to their interpretation. BTW, there is a useful glossary at the end of the book, if you want to know that the abbreviation Mpc from the last paragraph stands for megaparsec, which is a million parsecs. (Parsecs are also defined: a unit of distance, equal to 3.26 light years. Light years are defined in both miles and kilometers.) If you look up "dark matter" you will find one of the simplest (and most damning) definitions I've ever heard: Matter invisible to astronomical instruments. The core of Arp's book consists of a catalogue of 41 examples of galaxy groupings with redshift discordance, listed on two-page spreads and organized according to the right ascension of the central
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object. He begins with NGC 7817 at 00h (hours) 03m (minutes) 59s (seconds) right ascension and ends at HCG 97 at 23h 47m 26s. Each entry to this catalogue follows a simple form. At the left top of the page, the central object of the discordant group is listed, along with co-ordinates, type, magnitude, redshift, etc., all on a grey-shaded header. Beneath the header, Arp describes the group and its discordant associations. Every association has a diagram (sky map) for locating the group. Black and white photos are included for some objects. Sometimes the photos are superimposed onto the sky maps. [There is also a small section of color plates at the end of the book illustrating some of the most spectacular associations.] At the end of most discussions, Arp inserts a section titled "Needed", where he lists what kinds of astronomical observations and studies are needed to confirm or disconfirm the association, and what we should be looking for next in this extragalactic neighborhood. To my point of view, this is the most exciting part of the book. Some of the "needed" items are available only to professional astronomers. Other items provide an opportunity for amateur astronomers who would like to do real work in the field. Some of the work can be done through on-line surveys and catalogs, without much more than an internet connection. Much of Arp's own work, especially since he was denied telescope time in the mid-1980's, was done this way. The preface to the catalogue section includes subheadings entitled "suggested use" and "what to look for" where he outlines how an interested amateur might tackle the research. A lot more observation is needed to sort out what the universe looks like. Without being explicit about it, the "needed" items point an accusing finger at mainstream astronomy. Most of the items could have been done by "funded" astronomers decades ago. If they had, today we would know a lot more about the shape of our extragalactic neighborhood and whether we live in a finite universe a few billion years old or in one whose limits are not determined (yet.) But the refusal of professional astronomers to even consider the possibility of Arp's universe is an open invitation for amateurs to step up and take on the burden. Arp adds: I hesitate to call this work a Catalogue because it is not complete. Indeed, whenever I look at the sky -- for example to discover where a certain active galaxy cluster, quasar or proposed gravitational lens came from -- I am likely to find its source, plus other families of extragalactic objects, with a large, low-redshift galaxy and associations of higher redshift companions. There are many more examples of this basic pattern to be discovered, so this is merely a sample. The number of objects (galaxies, quasars, galaxy clusters, etc.) in each catalogue entry varies. Some are as small as three (example, NGC 632, flanked by NGC 631 and the quasar PHL 1072). Others are huge groupings (example: the Perseus-Pisces filament centered on NGC 68 that covers almost a full quadrant of the sky.) Some of the catalogue entries show more than one discordant group, because more than one discordant group appears in the same observed field (example: NGC 622 and UM 341 starting on pg 58.) In this case, the parent galaxies are surrounded by about 20 high redshift quasars, all jumbled together. In the description, Arp explains how he can determine which quasar belongs to which parent galaxy by converting the redshifts of the quasars into the frame of reference of the parent galaxies. Like magic, when connected to the frame of redshift of the its parent galaxy, each of the quasars' redshifts converts from "random" to within a few hundredths of the quantized "preferred redshifts". This trick adds evidence supporting both the discordant redshift connection and the phenomenon of quantized redshifts. The book is a spiral-bound publication with a paperback cover that folds over to conceal the spiral binding. The pages are neatly arranged and the print is large and easy to read. A warning: be sure to double-check page numbers. In my copy, sheet 60/61 was inserted between pages 57 and 58, which caused all sorts of confusion when I was trying to locate the "jet in fig 3" that was mentioned on page 60.
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When I mentioned this to the publisher, he responded that he hasn't seen this problem in other copies of the book. For a cover picture, Arp has chosen the same discordant galaxy/quasar pair that graced the covers of previous books, NGC 4319/Markarian 205. He used a computer-enhanced Palomar photo on Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies and a satellite X-ray image on Seeing Red. The Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations features the much-discussed Hubble Space Telescope photo from Fall 2002: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021007.html . There are two appendices to the catalogue. They aren't really after-thoughts or references. They are important parts of the book. Appendix A is a 20-page discussion of the extended region around M101. Arp devotes extra attention to this region for two reasons. First, he's presenting an example of how a discordant redshift investigation should proceed, and second, because M101 is a bright nearby spiral galaxy, which means that the objects associated with it (regardless of their redshifts) are also among the brightest of their respective classes. How far away is M101? Its accepted distance is 6.7 Mpc, or less than halfway between us and the center of the Virgo Cluster at 15-16 Mpc. But Arp adds that there are some arguments supporting the possibility that M101 belongs to the M81 group, which is around 3.6 Mpc. This is one illustration of how the loss of the Hubble Law's redshift/distance relationship means that every galaxy in the sky needs to have its distance reassessed. Appendix B is called Filaments, Clusters of Galaxies and the Nature of Ejections From Galaxies. This appendix offers a deeper coverage of several important extragalactic objects than is presented in the twopage catalogue entries. Some of these are up-dates -- new discoveries about old favorite galaxy groupings from Arp's earlier works. One of these old favorites is NGC 1232. This beautiful spiral galaxy was featured as the back cover of Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies. See picture on-line here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010522.html The galaxy NGC 1232 was a critical turn in Arp's own early research. It was one of the first indications that discordant redshift occurs in galaxies as well as in quasars. The little yellow disk above the outer arm of the galaxy (directly up from the nucleus) in the picture above is a companion galaxy NGC 1232B with a much higher redshift than the main galaxy. Arp's appendix includes five new close-ups of the tiny companion galaxy along with a discussion of why this, too, is a disconfirmation of the redshift/distance relationship and the expanding universe/big bang. The cost of the Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations is higher than Arp's previous popular books, but this book is a must-have for amateur astronomers. Again from Don Scott: The Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations is the modern day equivalent of Galileo's 'The Starry Messenger.' [Halton Arp] is indeed today's Galileo. This book is available for $45 from the Apeiron Bookstore: http://redshift.vif.com/book_catalog.htm Also available on amazon.com Amy Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
THE SUN ? Our Variable Star

By Wal Thornhill
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Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the growth in our understanding of the universe is that we understand anything at all. ~Martin Harwit, from a talk given at the American Physical Society's meeting in Philadelphia in April 2003. Harwit is an emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell University and a former director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. But do astronomers really know what they say they know? The expressions of surprise at each new discovery hints that they don't. And their theories sound far-fetched. To make their models work they use invisible matter, invisible strange objects, dark energy, and magical magnetic fields that exist without any electrical activity. This suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the universe. Even the closest star, our Sun, defies their understanding. As if to highlight this fact, [the first week of November, 2003] has seen nine major solar flares ? a historically unprecedented outburst from the Sun. Moreover, this is a period of declining solar activity, when the sun should be experiencing fewer, less-energetic outbursts. With each flare billions of tons of solar matter, known as coronal mass ejections (CME1s), were hurled into space at millions of kilometres per hour in defiance of the Sun's powerful gravity. The energy released in these unusual outbursts is phenomenal. EXCERPT FROM SPACE.COM:
Solar super-flare amazes scientists

A flare released by the sun on Tuesday could be the most powerful ever witnessed, a monster Xray eruption twice as strong as anything detected since satellites were capable of spotting them starting in the mid-1970s. 'This is an R-5 extreme event,' said Bill Murtagh, a forecaster at the center. 'They don't get much bigger than this.'" ? Robert Roy Britt, Space.Com THORNHILL COMMENTS: No one has any basis for saying what the largest matter expulsions from the Sun may be. It is obvious from looking at powerful mass expulsion activity in active stars and galaxies that gravitational models are inadequate to explain what is going on. Gravity is an attractive force only. Recourse to magnetic field behavior magically divorced from electric currents serves merely to reinforce the mystical quality of modern physics without telling us anything about the true cause. A news item by Jenny Hogan on NewScientist.com of 2 November says: 'The Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. The realisation, which comes from a reconstruction of sunspots stretching back 1150 years, comes just as the Sun has thrown a tantrum. Over the last week, giant plumes of material have burst out from our star's surface and streamed into space, causing geomagnetic storms on Earth.' The history of solar activity was estimated from sunspot counts stretching back to the seventeenth century. Beyond that, the sunspot numbers were deduced from levels of radioactive beryllium-10 trapped in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. When Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, saw the results he said, 'It makes the conclusion very stark. We are living with a very unusual Sun at the moment.' See a chart of the Sun's variable sunspot behavior in the complete article on Wal Thornhill's holoscience news item at: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=by2r22xg The idea that the Sun is behaving unusually is based on an assumption about what is normal for stars like the Sun. We are told that such stars are self-consuming thermonuclear engines that have sufficient fuel (hydrogen) to maintain a steady output for millions or billions of years. However, while the Sun's visible light output varies by only tenths of a percent, its energy in UV and X-rays varies by a factor of 20!
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A series of X-ray images of the Sun captured 4 months apart between 1991 and 1995 by the Yohkoh spacecraft illustrate this variability. It can be found in the holoscience news item: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=by2r22xg There has never been a satisfactory explanation for this variable behavior of the Sun. The sunspot cycle remains a complex enigma that has no established connection with the thermonuclear model of the Sun. However, it has long been known that sunspots are sites of powerful magnetic fields. So theorists have spent decades unsuccessfully trying to model a hidden dynamo inside the Sun that can reproduce the complex tangle of magnetic fields seen above the Sun. This kind of thinking is reflected in the NewScientist.com report: The dark patches on the surface of the Sun that we call sunspots are a symptom of fierce magnetic activity inside. Notice there is no mention of the powerful electric currents required to generate the magnetic fields. It is pure speculation, stated as fact, that the magnetic field of a sunspot is generated by activity inside the star. The key to understanding our star, and the first stepping-stone to understanding the electric universe, is that stars are an electrical phenomenon! The thermonuclear model of stars is a product of its time ? the early 1900's. That it remains essentially unchanged into the new millennium is a measure of the rigidity of the peer structure and narrow focus within academia. We have since discovered that space is full of charged particles (plasma) and magnetic fields. The Sun is a ball of plasma and its behavior more complex than was dreamt a century ago. Eddington, who gave us the standard solar model, did so using gravity and ideal gas laws. He did not know that space is threaded with magnetic fields and flows of charged particles (electric currents), with the Sun as a focus. A beneficiary of Eddington1s model, George Gamow, was moved to write effusively, According to a Greek legend, Prometheus flew all the way to the Sun in order to bring back to mortals some of the heavenly fire. But even Prometheus would not risk diving into the Sun's photosphere to see what was under it. However, this feat was carried out by the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, who was able to find out everything about the interior of the Sun and other stars without leaving his comfortable study at Cambridge University. 'It should not be too difficult,' Sir Arthur used to say, 'to understand such a simple thing as a star.' And he had very good reasons for that statement. Indeed, while geophysicists are still unable to agree on the exact value of the temperature in the center of the Earth, which is only about four thousand miles below our feet, astronomers can tell the temperature of the central regions of the Sun and of many other stars within a few percentage points and be quite sure about the figures they quote. ~George Gamow, A Star Called the Sun (p.93). THORNHILL COMMENTS: I included Gamow's comments as an example of the hubris of mathematical physicists and as a warning. It can be argued that astrophysics is in worse shape than geophysics. There is absolutely no way that anyone can be sure about the temperature of the center of the Sun. Yet confident statements like this are reported daily in the media as fact. It has resulted in the science fiction cosmology of today. More caution would be welcome. The visible activity on the surface of the Sun remains a puzzle. Sunspots are an enigma. When we look through the centers of dark sunspots it is thousands of degrees cooler beneath the bright photosphere. If we do not understand the Sun, we know nothing about the universe. On pp. 124-5, of Science at the Cross-Roads, Herbert Dingle comments about the mathematical foundation of cosmology:
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What I believe to be the basic misconception of modern mathematical physicists - evident, as I say, not only in this problem but conspicuously so throughout the welter of wild speculations concerning cosmology and other departments of physical science -- is the idea that everything that is mathematically true must have a physical counterpart; and not only so, but must have the particular physical counterpart that happens to accord with the theory that the mathematician wishes to advocate. THORNHILL ADDS: Of course, Eddington the mathematician would see a star as a simple thing. Mathematicians require simple models to allow a mathematical solution. But as spacecraft have expanded our view of the Sun it is clear that that bright ball of plasma is not "a simple thing." Even so, Eddington seemed to intuit that stars exhibited electrical effects: If there is no other way out we may have to suppose that bright line spectra in the stars are produced by electric discharges similar to those producing bright line spectra in a vacuum tube... We conclude provisionally that bright lines in the spectrum of a static star indicate that either (a) the star is greatly disturbed by 'thunderstorms,' or (b) it is a nebulous star. [The Internal Constitution of the Stars, pp. 344-5]. THORNHILL AGAIN: The problem for Eddington was that the origin of electricity in thunderstorms was, and still is, not understood. Therefore, as a mathematician, he did not pursue the problem. The simple answer is that both the earthly and the solar phenomena are due to the electrical nature of the universe. An earthly thunderstorm is mere sparks beside the global electrical storm that constitutes a star. Eddington did momentarily consider an external source for a star's energy: In seeking a source of energy other than [gravitational] contraction the first question is whether the energy to be radiated in future is now hidden in the star or whether it is being picked up continuously from outside. Suggestions have been made that the impact of meteoric matter provides the heat, or that there is some subtle radiation traversing space that the star picks up. "Subtle radiation" sounds like the kind of explanation that might be favored by modern theorists but it was dismissed immediately by Eddington. Today we know there are streams of charged particles moving in space. But Eddington had already decided what must be inside the Sun: Strong objections may be urged against these hypotheses individually; but it is unnecessary to consider them in detail because they have arisen through a misunderstanding of the nature of the problem. No source of energy is of any avail unless it liberates energy in the deep interior of the star. It is not enough to provide for the external radiation of the star. We must provide for the maintenance of the high internal temperature, without which the star would collapse. There we have it. The thermonuclear engine inside stars is required to save Eddington's mechanical stellar model! Yet for decades the solar neutrino counts have been telling us that that model is incorrect. If we can find a reason why the Sun is the size we see, given its mass, without requiring internal heat, then an external source of energy is possible. A few pages earlier, Eddington seems to deal with electric charge in the interior of a star when he invokes the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law for a gas at uniform temperature in a gravitational field. It simply says that the lighter molecules will tend to rise to the top. He writes:
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In ionized material the electrons are far lighter than the ions and tend to rise to the top... But this separation is stopped almost before it has begun, because the minutest inequality creates a large electrostatic field which stops any further diffusion.
The calculated result is "...a deficiency of 1 electron in every million tons of matter ... The electric force, which varies in proportion to gravity in the interior, is absurdly weak, but it stops any diffusion of the electron outwards." Eddington's argument is too simplistic. It seems aimed to keep the model simple rather than realistic. Thermal ionization of hydrogen only becomes significant at a temperature of about 100,000K. Therefore, atoms and molecules will predominate through most of a star's volume, where the gravity is strongest. That applies to the entire star in the electric model. The nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than the electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the center of the atom. The result is that each atom becomes a small electric dipole. It is significant that if you want to discover the physics of atomic and molecular dipole forces you need to turn to chemistry texts. Such is the problem with specialization. The atomic and molecular dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than Eddington1s simple gravitational sorting allows. It leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive force of gravity without the need for a central heat source in the star. Important Consequences of the Electric Star Model for the Sun. 1. A star is formed electromagnetically, not gravitationally, and is powered thereafter electrically (by Eddington's "subtle radiation"). 2. Near the Sun, galactic transmission lines are in the form of 35 kiloparsecs wide rotating Birkeland filaments. Their motion relative to the Sun will produce a slowly varying magnetic field and current density ? in other words a solar activity cycle. To that extent, all stars are variable. And just like real estate, location is vital. 3. An electric star has an internal radial electric field. But because plasma is an outstanding conductor it cannot sustain a high electric field. So plasma self-organizes to form a protective sheath or "double layer" across which most of the electric field is concentrated and in which most of the electrical energy is stored. It is the release of that internal stored energy that causes nova outbursts, polar jets, and the birth of stellar companions. 4. In a ball of plasma like the Sun the radial electric field will tend to be concentrated in shells or double layers above and beneath the photosphere. A double layer exists above the solar photosphere, in the chromosphere. 5. The photosphere and chromosphere together act like a pnp transistor, modulating the current flow in the solar wind.* It has an effective negative feedback influence to steady the energy radiated by the photosphere so that astrophysicists can talk of a "solar constant," while the Sun's other external electrical activity (UV light and x-rays) is much more variable. Because the photosphere is an electrical plasma discharge phenomenon it also expands or contracts to adjust to its electrical environment. That explains why the Sun "rings" like an electric bell. 6. Double layers may break down with an explosive release of electrical energy. A nova outburst is a result of the breakdown of an internal stellar DL. Hannes Alfvn suggested that billions of volts could exist across a typical solar flare double layer. 7. A star is a resonant electrical load in a galactic circuit and naturally shows periodic behavior. Superimposed is the non-linear behavior of plasma discharges. Two stars close together can induce cataclysmic variability or pulsar behavior through such plasma discharges. 8. The correct model to apply to a star is that of a homopolar electric motor. It explains the puzzle of why the equator of the Sun rotates the fastest when it should be slowed by mass loss to the solar wind. (The same model applies to spiral galaxies and explains why outer stars orbit more rapidly than expected. The spiral arms of the galaxy and the spiral structure of the solar "wind" then have an obvious connection). 9. The current that powers the Sun can be viewed as flowing in along the wavy polar magnetic field lines (www.holoscience.com/news/kinks.htm), then from the poles toward the equator. That
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10.
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current flow manifests as huge sub-photospheric flows of gas. In the mid-latitudes, the circuit is completed as the current flows outward in a current sheet called incorrectly the solar "wind." The transfer of charge to the solar wind takes place through the photosphere. It occurs in the form of a tightly packed global tornadic electrical discharge. The importance of the tornadic form for us is that it is slower than lightning, being under the tight control of powerful electromagnetic forces, and less bright than lightning. The intense, equally spaced solenoidal magnetic fields of the photospheric tornadoes gives rise to the surprisingly evenly spaced magnetic field lines of the Sun. Encircling the Sun's equator is a ring current forming a doughnut-shaped plasmoid. It is visible in UV light and is a source of stored electromagnetic energy. Occasionally the plasmoid discharges directly to lower levels of the Sun, punching a hole, that we call a sunspot, through the photosphere. A sunspot group can be compared to regional lightning on Earth. Scientists were surprised when they discovered "awesome plasma hurricanes" just beneath a sunspot. Electric discharges in a plasma naturally drive such rotation. Sunspots of the same magnetic polarity are drawn toward each other, which is inexplicable if they are simply magnetic phenomena. However, two parallel electric current filaments following the magnetic field lines are naturally drawn together. Sometimes the slow discharge that forms a sunspot may trigger a stellar lightning flash, resulting in a more sudden and powerful release of stored electrical energy. An x-ray flash is the signature of such lightning. That arc may result in a CME. The corona often dims as power is withdrawn from the solar plasmoid. The conventional thermonuclear story of stellar evolution is incorrect so we do not know the age of the Sun, or its character in the past or future. The inexplicable and drastic global climate changes on Earth in the past may have found an answer at last in the variable nature of stars.
The Bottom Line

Our Sun, like all stars, is a variable star. We must learn to live with the uncertainty of a star that is a product of its environment. We can expect our Sun to change when it enters regions of interstellar space where there is more or less dust, which alters the plasma characteristics. In the meantime, we can only look for reassurance by closely examining the behavior of nearby stars. A few massive CME's are the least of our concerns. * I am indebted to Professor Don Scott for this insight. He points out that the complete shutdown of the solar wind for two days in May 1999 is understandable with his transistor model. It is inexplicable on the thermonuclear model since there was no change in the Sun's visible energy output that accompanied the phenomenon. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003 author of The Electric Universe: A Holistic Science for the New Millennium See www.electric-universe.org
Update 25 November 2003:

Louis Lanzerotti, of the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Bell Labs, released the following startling report on November 14, 2003. It is a result of observations from the Ulysses spacecraft, which is orbiting over the poles of the Sun. Data from Ulysses show that the solar wind originates in holes in the sun's corona, and the speed of the solar wind varies inversely with coronal temperature. "This was completely unexpected," said Lanzerotti. "Theorists had predicted the opposite. Now all models of the sun and the solar wind will have to explain this observation."
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I missed an opportunity. This finding could have been predicted from the electrical model of the Sun. The standard model of the solar wind has it "boiling off" the Sun so that you would expect a direct correlation between coronal temperature and solar wind speed. That is precisely the opposite of what the Ulysses spacecraft saw. In the electric model of the Sun, where the solar electric field is strong in the coronal holes, protons of the solar wind are being strongly accelerated away from the Sun. Their random motion becomes less significant in a process called de-thermalization. Outside the coronal holes, where the coronal electric field is weaker, the protons move more aimlessly. As a result they suffer more collisions and move more randomly. The degree of random movement of particles directly equates to temperature. So the solar wind is fastest where the corona appears coolest and the solar wind is slowest where the corona appears hottest ? as Ulysses found. (c) Wal Thornhill 2003
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VIII, No 1 (March 15, 2004)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: MOONWALKING SPIRIT CHASES A MARTIAN MIRAGE
Mel Acheson Wal Thornhill
MOONWALKING
By Mel Acheson Did Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon? Either he did or he didn1t. The answer will be absolutely true or absolutely false. We need only look at the appropriate evidence: a footprint in the dust of Mare Tranquillitatis. There may arise quibbles about that evidence, but at least there can be no doubt about the possibility of an absolute answer. My quibble is not with the evidence or with the answer or even with the possibility of an answer. My quibble is with the question. It's not a question we can answer honestly. It leaves out too much. It assumes too much. It's a beggar of a question. A better question is: Do we know if Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon? An answer to this question must incorporate an awareness of our cognitive processes and a theory of knowledge. It must advert not just to the readout but also to the instrument that's probing the question with particular sensors and circuitry. The appropriate evidence will be not only footprints in the dust but also the organization of synapses in our brains. Absolute truth is too small and too simplistic for the large and complex reality of which we and our cognitive instrumentation are a part. Absolute truth fails to account for the curiosity and the creativity that ask and answer the questions from which truth arises. An assertion of absolute truth stumbles over an assumption that's common especially in Western cultures: There exists an objective reality, independent of human perception, that can be known by way of perception. What could be more obvious? I'm thirsty for coffee, I grab my cup, I drink, and my thirst is satisfied. The proof of the hypothesis is in the successful completion of the task. The fact that the alleged objective reality was and remains a HYPOTHESIS, a supposition, a cognitive map to guide behavior is taken so much for granted that it's usually unconscious. Experiences naturally divide into things that are classified as "me" and things that are classified as "not me". These categories become linked with the categories of "inside" and "outside", "here" and "there". Before we know it, we've created a cognitive structure for understanding our experiences based on metaphors: "Objective reality is entities out there" and "subjective reality is entities in here." But an "entity" is an artifact of the way we classify our experiences. This metaphor of objective reality can be quite useful--as long as we don't push it to do work as a foundation for philosophy. If I want coffee, grasping my objective cup and sipping the objective liquid inside (rather than, say, dreaming about it) will satisfy my desire. But if I ask if my cup is really a ceramic container or an ensemble of atoms held in particular relationships with each other by molecular forces, I've changed the subject: I'm no longer drinking coffee from the cup, I'm fitting a cognitive structure
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around my experience. And in discussing it--or even in thinking to myself about it--I'm no longer talking about drinking coffee; I'm talking about talking about it. I'm using language and concepts, symbols and metaphors. I can't even conceive of an objective phenomenon without CONCEIVING of it. My cognitive formulations that I conceive as "relationships with objective phenomena" are themselves a PART of the objective phenomena. I meet my own subjectivity as an object in my objective world. These ideas that bite themselves on their ankles only seem confusing. It doesn't have to be this way. The objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy is useful for drinking coffee, but, as I said, it stumbles over itself when it's taken as a ground for thinking about drinking coffee. We need to add to our experiences of thinking about drinking coffee the experiences of cognitive scientists: They have examined the responses of nerves to stimuli and have noticed the resultant activity. The responses link into groups and the groups into coherent structures of gestalts following sensorimotor nerve connections established genetically or through repeated experiences. "Nerves that fire together wire together." This activity is not the direct perception of objects "out there" that objectivism assumes but the creation of an organized manifold of metaphors. This organization selects particular experiences, emphasizes certain aspects, de-emphasizes others, and makes them feel familiar by linking them (i.e., by generating metaphors) with basic experiences that are determined by the structure and functioning of our bodies. Lakoff and Johnson, for example, in PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH, demonstrate how abstract concepts are built up from assemblages of more basic and concrete metaphors. Objective reality--or subjective reality for that matter--is just one way we structure our experiences so we can live to do it again tomorrow. This answers the first half of my quibble with the question of Armstrong walking on the Moon. The second half concerns what we count as "knowing." There are a couple of difficulties with the concept of "knowing." In English, the word generally means only extreme states: You know (for sure) or you don't. It takes special effort to convey that you only "half know" something. Most of what we count as knowing lies in this conditioned region, but when we talk about it we sound more certain than we have any right to be. The second difficulty is a bias to count as knowledge only what's true. But knowing what's false can perform exactly the same function: It's true that I can't fly; it's false that I can fly; and knowing either one can save my life if I'm tempted to follow a bird off a cliff. Douglas Allchin writes: The key epistemological distinction is thus not between true and false, fact and artifact. Instead, it is between empirically unresolved questions, or uncertainty, and resolved questions, where fact and error have been differentiated. [K]nowledge is characterized by a resolved/uncertain distinction. His conclusion from this insight is that "fully resolving fact and error means probing for error in addition to developing confirmation." In other words, to develop RELIABLE knowledge--as distinct from merely VERIFIED knowledge, which is unreliable--you must take seriously the question, "What else could it be?" You must probe for alternative explanations and devise tests that will differentiate among them. Do we know if Armstrong's boot "really" left an impression in the moon dust? Anyone sufficiently motivated might raise the money to build a rocket to visit the southwest corner of the Sea of Tranquillity. His eyes could focus the reflection of light to generate impulses in his optic nerves that might link into a gestalt he thinks of as Armstrong's boot print (or not). If he calls that process "knowing," then he knows Armstrong did (or didn't) walk on the Moon. But pay close attention: "that process" is NOT what is usually meant by "objective knowledge." "Objective knowledge" is (aside from quibbles about the accuracy of senses) absolutely-incorrigibly-really-there True. "That process" is inherently vulnerable: New data or new ideas could drag the "resolved" distinction back into the ambiguous territory of the "uncertain." Cognitive knowledge is relatively true, not in the "absolute relativism" sense of some postmodernists, but in an empirical sense of being related to the morphologies of experiences and nerves. The manifolds of coherent metaphors we call theories are not
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of equal and incommensurable value. They compete for "optimal understandability" in a market-like dynamic that connects evolving experiences with evolving cognitive structures. Objectivism works well as a way of structuring practical experiences. But it has its dark side. When presumptions of objectivity are imported into more abstract thinking--say, about gravitation or the Big Bang--the ground of discourse imperceptibly shifts from the process of making metaphorical sense to a pseudo-religious affirmation of absolutely-incorrigibly-really-there Truth. No human nervous system need be around and, not unexpectedly, any who disagree are apt soon not to be around. Belief and conformity take the place of understanding and inquiry. The One Truth eclipses the awareness of metaphorical mapping. "What else could it be" becomes a declaration instead of a question. And if the audio is muted, the video of scientific activity becomes indistinguishable from that of an Inquisition. Stephen Toulmin wrote: For, though Nature must of course be left to answer to our interrogations for herself, it is always WE who frame the questions. And the questions we ask inevitably depend on prior theoretical considerations. Cognitive science can trace this dependency to the biological level of prior nerve linkages and tie abstract reasoning to sensorimotor inference structures. This should be welcomed as a foundational insight in the philosophy underlying the sciences. But the True Believers in the Absolute Truth of currently accepted theories are greeting the results with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Did Armstrong "really" walk on the Moon? Did the universe "really" explode 15 billion years ago? Or do the ideas "Armstrong walked on the Moon" and "the universe exploded" make sense of certain otherwise ambiguous experiences, which sense could be undone and reconfigured with different ideas in the flood tide of experiences? The choice between these questions will distinguish science as a cognitive activity or as a pseudo-religious ritual. ~Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
SPIRIT CHASES A MARTIAN MIRAGE

By Wal Thornhill [editor's note: This article was written as a day-by-day commentary while the Mars rover missions were in their early phases of exploration. It reflects only that data which has been released to the public to date. More will be added to the holoscience website later.] 23 January 2004 [Author's note: While this report was being written came worrying news that the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, is not functioning normally.] On January 21, 2004 ground controllers were able to send commands to Spirit and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them, but they did not receive expected scientific and engineering data during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day. Project managers have not yet determined the cause, but similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission. The team is examining a number of different scenarios, some of which would be resolved when the rover wakes up after powering down at the end of the martian day (around midday Pacific time Wednesday).
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As discussed later in this report, Spirit is moving about in an area where there are frequent dust devils. The dust devils are not simply rotating winds caused by rising warm air. They are the form lightning takes in the thin Martian atmosphere. So they are a great hazard to surface craft, with their powerful electrostatic and electromagnetic effects. Just as the Galileo spacecraft suffered repeated computer glitches when it flew too close above the plumes of the electrical jets on Io, it is possible that Spirit has become a lightning rod and suffered internal arcing ? with possibly serious consequences for its onboard electronics. I sincerely hope not! Full text of this article, with photos, is available http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=b50z4mj1. at Wal Thornhill's website,
PHOTO CAPTION: On the evening of January 3, the MER lander Spirit came to a safe landing right in the middle of Gusev Crater (shown by red arrow). This is an area riddled with dust devil tracks in the summertime (note the many dark streaks). With some luck those dust devils have scoured the surface clean of dust, exposing the underlying rocks which hold the secrets of Mars' past. NASA/JPL THORNHILL COMMENTS: The official caption shows the problem of perception facing scientists who are trained to believe that planets are electrically inert bodies and that weather is caused largely by solar heating. The MER engineers have done a great job within the limitations of what scientists have told them to expect. And therein lies the greatest weakness in our exploration of space. Postscript January 29, 2004: From Mars Mission News by Steve Squyres at Cornell University: We're back on track now, after getting a pretty serious scare from Spirit. Spirit's problems seem to have been caused by little more than a fouled-up computer file system... not too different from what can happen when you hit the power button on your computer accidentally and corrupt a bunch of files on your hard drive. The JPL flight software team is hot on the trail of this thing now, and I'm hoping that Spirit will make a full recovery. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Since no Martians have been spotted gazing into Spirit's cameras, we must assume there was no extraterrestrial digit to 'hit the power button.' But you can get the same effect on your home computer when lightning strikes in the neighborhood. Mars is not a hospitable planet. In August last year I wrote: Gigantic fresh scars show that Mars has suffered recently and terribly. Millions of cubic kilometres of jagged boulders were burnt and torn from its surface and strewn from horizon to horizon -- as all of the images relayed from the surface have shown. The implications for the search for life on Mars are profound. If there was a past environment conducive to life on Mars it has been wrecked. Not only the surface suffered but also the atmosphere was stripped and exogenous gases and solids dumped on the hapless planet. Mars' orbit and climate changed drastically. See: "Mysterious Mars" 27 August 2003, www.holoscience.com The Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, is adding to the weight of evidence for this catastrophic scenario. Once again we saw a rock-strewn vista when Spirit first "opened its eyes." Over the coming months, while Mars comes under intense investigation, both from orbit and from rovers on the surface, it is a great opportunity to predict what will be found and to compare the conventional view of Mars with that of the Electric Universe. Spirit is examining the floor of Gusev Crater, which terminates a large channel called Ma'adim Vallis. I wrote about Ma'adim Vallis in July 2002, in "Water on Mars?":
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...what is the story of the formation of Ma'adim Vallis? An arc cutting Gusev crater will sap electrons from the surrounding terrain by creating a strong radial electric field that begins to rip electrons from the solid surface. When breakdown begins, a lightning bolt tears across the surface, blasting soil and rock to either side of its sinuous path. A large proportion of the excavated material is impelled electrostatically to follow the main discharge toward space. Pieces not pulled into space would fall back in a more or less random scattering all over Mars. That explains why there is little evidence of deposition inside Gusev Crater from a channel that is larger than the Grand Canyon. It is also the reason why every Mars lander has returned a vista of rubble that extends to the horizon. See Astronomy Picture of the Day's "Carving Ma'adim Valles" for a conventional explanation: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020627.html THORNHILL COMMENTS: Already scientists have begun to express surprise at the information streaming back from Spirit. From the press release of 19 January: Scientists chose Adirondack to be Spirit's first target rock rather than another rock, called Sashimi, that would have been a shorter, straight-ahead drive. Rocks are time capsules containing evidence of the environmental conditions of the past, said Dr. Dave Des Marais, a rover science-team member from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We needed to decide which of these time capsules to open." Sashimi appears dustier than Adirondack. The dust layer could obscure good observations of the rock's surface, which may give information about chemical changes and other weathering from environmental conditions affecting the rock since its surface was fresh. Also, Sashimi is more pitted than Adirondack. That makes it a poorer candidate for the rover's rock abrasion tool, which scrapes away a rock's surface for a view of the interior evidence about environmental conditions when the rock first formed. Adirondack has a "nice, flat surface" well suited to trying out the rover's tools on their first martian rock, Des Marais said. "The hypothesis is that this is a volcanic rock, but we'll test that hypothesis," he said. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Most of the soil and rock found on Mars has been recently excavated from the depths of craters, canyons and channels, like Ma'adim Vallis, elsewhere on Mars. To gain some perspective, the Valles Marineris canyons are up to 9 kilometers deep. Mars is a major source of meteorites and asteroidal bodies (just two of the latter remain as Mars' tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos). If the rocks are "time capsules" from the past it is a very recent past. They have had no time to weather. And the story they have to tell will not fit any conventional geological theory. The scattered rocks are not likely to be volcanic. Many will have suffered plasma heating and shock effects from a cosmic electric discharge. The holes in some of the rock surfaces may be plasma arc craters or they may be due to trapped gases being explosively released by hot plasma.
Unweathered surface mineral

From the press release of 20 January: "We're starting to put together a picture of what the soil at this particular place in Gusev Crater is like. There are some puzzles and there are surprises," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the suite of instruments on Spirit and on Spirit's twin, Opportunity.
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One unexpected finding was the Moessbauer spectrometer's detection of a mineral called olivine, which does not survive weathering well. This spectrometer identifies different types of ironcontaining minerals; scientists believe many of the minerals on Mars contain iron. "This soil contains a mixture of minerals, and each mineral has its own distinctive Moessbauer pattern, like a fingerprint," said Dr. Goestar Klingelhoefer of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, lead scientist for this instrument. The lack of weathering suggested by the presence of olivine might be evidence that the soil particles are finely ground volcanic material, Squyres said. Another possible explanation is that the soil layer where the measurements were taken is extremely thin, and the olivine is actually in a rock under the soil. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Olivine is a common mineral found on Earth in recent lavas and meteorites. However, it rapidly breaks down when exposed to water and weathering. The soil and rocks on Mars have lain exposed for a mere few thousand years, not millions or billions of years. They have not been exposed to water or had time to weather.
Cohesive Soil
The news item continues: Scientists were also surprised by how little the soil was disturbed when Spirit's robotic arm pressed the Moessbauer spectrometer's contact plate directly onto the patch being examined. Microscopic images from before and after that pressing showed almost no change. "I thought it would scrunch down the soil particles," Squyres said. "Nothing collapsed. What is holding these grains together?" THORNHILL COMMENTS: Gusev crater is situated in the heavily cratered southern highlands of Mars. Crater floors are formed not by impact but by a rotating arc that neatly machines the circular crater, leaving a flat floor. Many smaller craters were subsequently burnt into the floor of Gusev crater. Today, the area where Spirit landed is covered with the trails of so-called "dust devils." Normal earthly lightning cannot occur in the thin atmosphere of Mars, Instead it takes the slower diffuse form of a tornado. We should expect the electrical activity on the Martian surface, both in the past and in the present, to produce glassified soil with the cohesive strength of a fulgurite (sand loosely fused by lightning). Electric discharges are sometimes used to immaculately clean a surface. The dark paths left by the Martian dust devils should show microscopic signs of having been cleaned by a corona discharge. I would urge the Spirit team, if possible, to include one of the dark trails in their traverse.
Chlorine and Sulfur

The news item continues: Information from another instrument on the arm, an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, may point to an answer. This instrument "measures X-ray radiation emitted by Mars samples, and from this data we can derive the elemental composition of martian soils and rocks," said Dr. Johannes Brueckner, rover science team member from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany. The instrument found the most prevalent elements in the soil patch were silicon and iron. It also found significant levels of chlorine and sulfur, characteristic of soils at previous martian landing sites but unlike soil composition on Earth.

Squyres said: There may be sulfates and chlorides binding the little particles together.
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Those types of salts could be left behind by evaporating water, or could come from volcanic eruptions, he said. The soil may not have even originated anywhere near Spirit's landing site, because Mars has dust storms that redistribute fine particles around the planet. The next target for use of the rover's full set of instruments is a rock, which is more likely to have originated nearby. THORNHILL COMMENTS: The presence of chlorine and sulfur in the Martian soil is of special interest because sulfur is commonly formed in cosmic discharges by fusing two oxygen atoms together. It is happening today on Io in cathodic arc jets (mistaken for volcanoes) so that its surface is buried in sulfur. (Io was probably an icy satellite originally, like the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter). But there was another more direct source of these elements for the Martian soil - the clouds of Venus! Venus was identified by the ancients as having discharged spectacularly to Mars for an extended period. For this reason the thin Martian atmosphere still has a whiff of the Venusian atmosphere, with its carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The Russian lander, Venera 12, found that the clouds of Venus hold 20 times as much chlorine as sulfur. This discovery was "so difficult to reconcile with other measurements that American researchers have tended to ignore or discount them, although no one has explained why they should be in error." [Venus Revealed, D Grinspoon, p. 120.] The Martian soil seems to retain a record of the encounter with Venus. It may also extend to the hematite deposits at the site of Spirit's twin, Opportunity. In addition there is a long-standing puzzle concerning the origin of the chlorine in our salty oceans. There is far too little chlorine in rocks to account for it. However, chlorine and sodium are strongly related in lowenergy nuclear transformations of light elements, so both Mars and the Earth must have had chlorine added to their surface inventory from external energetic plasma discharge events. Concentrated plasma discharges are known to produce large numbers of neutrons. We should therefore expect anomalous levels of heavy isotopes formed by neutron capture. So we find the deuterium to hydrogen ratio (D/H) on Venus is "phenomenally high" at 120 times greater than on Earth. On Mars it is enriched 6 times the terrestrial value. It may represent the varying exposures of the three planets to recent cosmic discharge activity. And as was found on the Moon, anomalous radioactivity on Mars may be found to be associated with the focal points of those discharges - recent craters and other electrical scars.
Spirit Finds Carbonates

On Earth, carbonates such as limestone often form in liquid water. But one of the biggest Mars mysteries deals with "missing carbonates." Orbital images show valleys that look like dry riverbeds, suggesting that liquid water existed on an early Mars that had a thicker atmosphere and a warmer climate. If true, large quantities of carbon dioxide should have dissolved out of Mars1s atmosphere into the water and chemically reacted with other materials to form carbonates. But orbital data from Mars Global Surveyor's instrument reveal much lower carbonate abundances than predicted. [From SkyandTelescope.com] THORNHILL COMMENTS: Spirit has found the telltale signature of carbonates. The problem is to know what tale it is telling. Mars has changed so drastically in the recent past that its story may be indecipherable. But it is certain that it
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cannot be used to prove that a hypothetical greenhouse existed on Mars aeons ago. Any exogenous interference with Mars' atmosphere and surface material would tear up this particular history book.
Hollow Mystery for Mars Rover

A close-up image of an undisturbed patch of Martian soil has revealed a large number of hollow spheres or tubes. The Mars rover Spirit has completed its first full set of scientific measurements with the instruments on its robotic arm, revealing mysterious hollow grains in the soil. The onemetre arm used its microscope to take a close-up image of an undisturbed patch of soil next to the NASA rover. It shows mostly sand-sized particles, but with a large number of apparently hollow spheres or tubes. Such grains were completely unexpected. But John Grotzinger, a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says they closely resemble formations he has seen in soils in the southwestern deserts of the US. "There are little tubes that build up by capillary action," he told New Scientist, as salty water evaporates from the nearly-dry soil. The Martian grains must also be strong enough to withstand the region's strong winds and perpetual scouring by dust devils tornado shaped vortexes that can tower to heights of kilometres. [From NewScientist.com] THORNHILL COMMENTS: The lunar surface has been subjected to electrical cratering and channel formation like that on Mars. (The only difference is that scientists have given up the idea that channels, or rilles, on the Moon were formed by water). A report by scientists studying a lunar dust sample remarked upon the large number of small glassy spherules and cylinders. It was their opinion that "they must have been formed free from restraints, perhaps blown from a melt as fine droplets or perhaps as a spray of molten glass; thus they were able to solidify in free flight under influence of surface tension forces ... it is safe to conjecture that the cylindrical object in its initial molten state was part of a breakup of a thin jet.. A number of the grayish metallic-like spherules exhibit vacuole regions within their otherwise solid interiors.." [Science, Vol. 167, No. 3918, pp. 742-3.] THORNHILL COMMENTS: A cathode arc melts a surface and forms a jet of the melted material. The first microscopic investigation of the Martian soil supports the Electric Universe model. As for the southwestern deserts of the US, they were formed by the same electrical erosion processes that shaped the surface of Mars. We should expect to find many parallels. The European Space Agency and Mars Express In the testing of hypotheses lies the prime difference between the investigator and the theorist. The one seeks diligently for the facts which may overthrow his tentative theory. The other closes his eyes to these, and searches only for those which will sustain it. ~Grove Karl Gilbert, Chief Geologist of the US Geological Survey, 1895. THORNHILL: In the search for water on Mars there is a powerful human tendency to see only what you expect to find. Contrary data is forgotten or dismissed from consideration. Mirages are easily mistaken for water. For example, while MER is trundling about the surface the European Space Agency (ESA) has Mars Express in orbit about the red planet. ESA has chosen to use one of the most spectacular sights in the solar system - the colossal canyons of Valles Marineris ? to publicize their success. Image data from Mars Express has been used to generate a perspective view that is like looking out of an aircraft window. ESA1s news report says:
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One looks at a landscape which has been predominantly shaped by the erosional action of water. Millions of cubic kilometres of rock have been removed, and the surface features seen now such as mountain ranges, valleys, and mesas, have been formed. THORNHILL: This offhanded statement from ESA is not supported by any of the geologists who have studied Valles Marineris. All now attribute the formation of its canyons to faulting of the Martian crust. The experts go on to admit: However, why the Valles Marineris were faulted to form deep troughs is not known. It is a mystery because the answer lies outside the expertise of geologists. It was explained in Mars and the Grand Canyon and Spiral Galaxies & Grand Canyons. (www.holoscience.com) News releases like the one above are untruthful and self-serving. It seems that both NASA and ESA are dominated by theorists with one eye on funding, not impartial investigators. The great canyons and channels on Mars were not carved by water. There is no need for large volumes of water hidden beneath the surface to explain their peculiar features. The few gullies found in crater walls look as if they have been etched into the wall, not eroded by water. Mars had surface moisture or ice in the recent past as shown by "sloppy" electrical craters but seems to have lost most of it in the energetic events that caused the cratering. See ESA images with this article at http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=b50z4mj1 On the left the caption reads: Crater formed in soft, probably water-logged ground. Note the splatter marks (lobate flows) around it. THORNHILL: Impact splatters do not form lobate flows. However, the heat from an electric discharge does cause moisture to 'sweat' to the surface and flow slowly away from the crater. On the right the caption reads: Channels in a Martian crater probably formed by relatively recent running water. THORNHILL: In this example the channels were not formed by running water. The close-up on the right shows clearly that the large channel is V-shaped in cross-section with a narrow channel at its base and has transverse striations. The narrow inner channel remains remarkably constant in width. And one channel has crossed another with no sign of any diversion of material into the earlier channel. These features are hallmarks of powerful near-surface electric discharges travelling up the wall of the crater. The fans at the bottom of the channels must then have an electrical origin too, taking the form of diffuse corona discharge streamers. Sadly, much of the educational information on the ESA website is theory not necessarily supported by observations. We need more people like geologist G.K. Gilbert, who understand the difference between investigator and theorizer. "The one seeks diligently for the facts which may overthrow his tentative theory. The other closes his eyes to these, and searches only for those which will sustain it." Potentially billions of dollars are about to be wasted chasing the mirage of hidden water on Mars. But the search for water is only the first step in a quest of mythical proportions ? to land humans on Mars. If only scientists understood the origin of the myths about Mars, the planetary god of war, they might begin to see parallels with earlier irrational human feats to reach the home of the gods - as witness the great
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pyramids. They might also perceive that the shrapnel covered and blasted hero "died" in a battle involving cosmic thunderbolts. Comparative mythology gives us precise clues about what we should be looking for on Mars and what to expect. It has been far more predictive and explanatory than speculative theories about an undisturbed planet and long-extinct oceans. It gives us a 'big picture' of the catastrophic forces that recently shaped the planet's surface. Meanwhile, bewildered geologists are crying out for a big picture to make sense of the images from Mars orbiters. More urgently, comparative mythology is the key to our dimly remembered astronomical past and offers clues about unanticipated physical and electrical hazards facing Mars explorers. Only with the broad interdisciplinary perspective of the electric universe will wisdom have a chance to prevail in our exploration of space. Wal Thornhill
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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL VIII, No 2 (March 31, 2004)

STAFF: EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: SCIENTIFIC INFIDELITIES OLBER'S PARADOX OPPORTUNITY FAVORS THE HERETIC
Mel Acheson Don Scott Wal Thornhill
SCIENTIFIC INFIDELITIES
Mel Acheson In the course of space age explorations, it has become apparent that the universe is not composed as we were taught in school. Quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) were thought to be the most distant and energetic objects in the universe. They were expected to be distributed randomly throughout the sky. Instead, they cluster around nearby active galaxies. The arms of spiral galaxies were thought to orbit the galaxies' dense nuclei. They were expected to move with velocities that decreased with distance, like the planets. Instead, they move with nearly constant velocity, independent of distance. Planetary nebulae were thought to be expanding shells of gas blown off by exploding stars. They were expected to be spherically symmetric and isotropic. Instead, they display intricate organizations of filaments, often with axial cylinders and cones or with equatorial toroids that emit x-rays. Comets were thought to be snowballs sublimating in the solar wind. Their tails were expected to be a tenuous mist of water vapor and dust blown away by the pressure of solar radiation. Instead, they are asteroid-like rocks with filamentary ion tails that sparkle with x-rays. The solar neutrino flux was thought to be produced by fusion reactions at the core of the Sun. It was expected to be large and constant. Instead, it's half what it should be and it varies with sunspot numbers. Nor are the surprises confined to astronomy. Speciation was thought to be fueled by random mutations of genes. Selection pressures were expected to push variations into novel species. But generations of fruit fly experiments (not to mention centuries of selective breeding of domestic animals) have backed Darwin to the wall with exclusive demonstrations of regression to the mean. DNA was thought to control the origin of form for organisms and their parts. Particular sequences of amino acids were expected to generate particular forms. But most DNA merely sits in the nucleus of cells like old journals in a library's archives. The cells of the gluteus maximus have the same DNA as the cells of the elbow, and molecular biologists can't tell one from the other. Macroscopic form flows from some other spigot.
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The crust of the Earth was thought to be cracked into several plates that floated on the churning magma below. Subduction trenches were expected to balance the growth of crust from ridges of sea floor spreading. But like the rivers that run to the sea without filling it, the ridges spread many times faster than the trenches can subduct. These vignettes merely illustrate the disappointment of theoretical expectations that is common throughout the sciences, from the finest details to the broadest generalities. The Big Bang can't explain the Large Scale Structure of the universe, nor can gravitational lensing explain the subtle details of the Einstein Cross. Darwinian evolution can't explain the quantized and stable structure of species, nor can genetic determinism explain adaptive mutations. In themselves, these disappointments don't detract from the value of science. In fact, they enhance it. The explanations work IN PART, for a certain set or level of data. Because some data surprise expectations, they provoke reexamination and revision--or replacement--of accepted theories. Many people find this dubious state exciting: It's an environment conducive to discovery. Other people find this state threatening. They crave certainty. Because human cognition can devise only provisional knowledge, it can never satisfy the craving. But the fervor of a pseudo-religious faith can. Doubt-free belief can maintain the illusion of certainty by disallowing troublesome questions, ignoring recalcitrant data, refusing to discuss or to publish alternative interpretations, and denying funding to speculative research projects. Because this pseudo-religious attitude is part of science as it is actually practiced, it validates the postmodernist critique of science as a social construct that perpetuates the power of the status quo. Theories come and go with the insights and conceits of each age. What seems not to change is people's propensity to believe in the theories. They believe the theories are more real than the concrete ambiguities of their experiences and observations. They stumble over those ambiguities and supplicate their imaginations to invent fantasies that will sustain their faith and explain away the infidelities of observations. Most celestial bodies don't conform to gravitational beliefs. But if the theory of gravity is more real than the observations of celestial bodies, the observations must be corrected. Therewith astronomers invent fantasies of black holes and dark matter, a universe of "things unseen," to sustain their faith in gravity. The archetypal evangelist of the Christian faith, Paul of Tarsus, set the cornerstone of fideism: Now faith is ... the evidence of things not seen. The faith of astronomers puts to shame the faith of the merely righteous. It's been over 2000 years since Democritus came up with the idea of atoms and Anaxagoras came up with the idea of heliocentrism. Ptolemy and Copernicus told different stories to explain the movements of the planets. But they all saw the same movements of the same points of light, and they all understood those movements in terms of mechanical metaphors. That was all right when there WAS nothing new. But now space age instruments ARE finding new things. When seen close up and in a literally different light, the twinkles in the night sky reveal forms and movements that neither Ptolemy nor Copernicus saw. And these new things are ambiguous, anomalous, even contradictory of accepted beliefs. They appear "unreal." They invite new ideas. But the primary preoccupation of astronomers and physicists today is amending their beliefs to excuse the observations they didn't predict. Knowledge is not observing what's there, because we have to interpret our observations in the context of some theory. Knowledge is not theorizing about what's there, because we have to verify our theories in the context of observations. Knowledge is what we JUDGE to be true in the context of particular theories and observations. It's the product of reason. And reason is sensitive to initial assumptions and to the
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evolution of context: What we know alters the environment of what we CAN know and extinguishes what we knew. It would seem reasonable to make the most of reason's sensitivity to initial assumptions. Especially now that circumstances have enabled us to observe more than we've ever observed and to hypothesize more than we've ever imagined, we should deliberately explore contrary initial assumptions and probe the possibilities of novel explanations. One recent contrary possibility is the nascent idea of plasma. Everyone seems to agree the universe is composed mostly of plasma--whatever that is. It's neither solid nor liquid nor gas, but how much it's not is debatable. It has something to do with ions: bits of matter that are charged with electricity--whatever that is. Sometimes it behaves differently under the same circumstances. Sometimes it behaves the same from the atomic scale to the galactic. It's a complex animal, and its investigators are like the blind men poking the elephant: Magnetohydrodynamicists examine a leg and think it's a hot gas. Plasma cosmologists examine the trunk and think it's an electrical current. Geneticists examine the cellular tail and think it's DNA. Semiconductor engineers examine the belly and think it's a crystal. Geologists examine the face and think it's magma. And each group is correct--until they presume to know it all and claim the others are mistaken. The blind men poking the elephant should keep in mind how much of the beast they can't poke: They've missed everything inside, i.e., everything outside the range of their senses. How much of the universe lies outside the range of our senses today? Compare what we observed before the space age with what we observe now with tech-enhanced senses. How much more will we observe with the enhancements of next century's instrumentation? That consideration alone should elicit a snicker at any boast of current certitude. Is our idea of truth compatible with how we come to know truth, or is it a reification of the truth we have come to know? People take for granted that our ideas of "what's there" derive from a "there" that contains the "what," in contradistinction to a "here" that contains the IDEA of the "what." But there have always been objections to this metaphor of objectivism. Twenty three hundred years ago, Pyrrho insisted we can know nothing with certainty. Kant demonstrated with logical rigor that the "here/there" chasm couldn't be crossed. Objectivism ends in this unknowable reality that's merely hypothetical. Of course, no one lives like that or does science like that. The reality of our lives and our sciences is not the hypothetical object of an abstract dichotomy but the actual occurrence of human experiences. We come to understand those experiences in various ways that emerge from the experiencing. It's a process that's profoundly metaphorical: Just as we use instruments to expand the domain of our senses, we use metaphor to expand the domain of our understanding. It's a process that's certainly not certain. The knowledge we were taught in school was at best only practice--practice at understanding prior experiences. Learning to understand is distinct from believing in prior understandings, and the dynamics of learning should lead us to expect not fidelity and conformity but dubiety and discovery. The infidelities and anomalies of unexpected experiences are the keys that unlock future understandings. Mel Acheson thoth@whidbey.com
OLBER'S PARADOX
By Don Scott Why is the sky dark at night?
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According to the following logical thought sequence (mathematical derivation), it should be horrendously bright. 1) The apparent intensity of a light source decreases with the square of its distance from the observer. (Assuming no interstellar dust absorption, this is true. Lumens received from a star will vary inversely as the square of the distance to that star.) 2) If the distribution of stars is uniform in space, then the number of stars at a particular distance, r, from the observer will be proportional to the surface area of a sphere whose radius is that distance. This area is directly proportional to the distance squared. A = (pi)r^2 3) Therefore, at each and every possible radial distance, r, the amount of light coming toward us should be both directly proportional to the radius squared (the number of stars) and inversely proportional to the radius squared (they get dimmer with distance). 4) These two effects cancel each other. 5) So every spherical shell of radius r should add the same additional amount of light. 6) Ergo: In an infinite universe, if we sum (integrate) the light coming from all the infinite number of possible values of r, the sky should be infinitely bright. But the sky is not infinitely bright. Why? The resolution of this paradox can be achieved by considering how astronomers solved the problem of defining the ABSOLUTE luminosity (brightness) of a star. Because of (1) above, the more distant a star is, the dimmer it appears to be. In order to set up a standard, astronomers arbitrarily agreed that if a star was placed at a distance of 10 parsecs (approximately 32 1*2 light-years) from us and if it looked like a magnitude 1.0 star at that distance, they would agree to say that its ABSOLUTE LUMINOSITY was 1.0. There is a well-known relationship between distance and apparent magnitude of a star. For example, if we put that same 1st magnitude star at a distance of 517 LY (light-years), its APPARENT MAGNITUDE would be only 6.0. Humans cannot see any star whose magnitude is higher (less luminous) than 6.4. The 200 inch Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar can see down to about magnitude 23 or so. There are approximately 8400 stars in our night sky that are brighter than magnitude 6.4. We do not see the others; they are too dim. Yes, yes, Carl Sagan used to talk about millions and millions of stars ? but we can only see about 8400 with our naked eyes. Carl was well known for his tendency to exaggerate. We get the impression of millions and millions when we look up at the Milky Way, but we can see only 8400 stars ? that's it ? and that1s under ideal conditions. Of course, some stars are VERY much brighter than absolute magnitude 1.0 and thus would be visible farther out than 517 LY. But, many are much dimmer too, so as a rough approximation let us consider the average star. If it is farther away than 517 LY, we cannot see it (AT ALL). So it might as well not be there AT ALL. The total light in our night sky (at least the way we can see it with our naked eyes) is not affected by much of anything that is dimmer than magnitude 6.4 (typical stars farther away than around 517 LY). Even for the blue-white giant stars whose absolute luminosity puts them at ?10 or ?12 (much brighter than absolute magnitude 1.0), there exists some finite distance beyond which they too become invisible to us ? their apparent magnitude slips down beyond 6.4. There are a very few vastly distant objects that we can see such as the Great Andromeda Galaxy M 31. It is over 3 million LYs away. But it is such a concentrated collection of stars and plasma that it looks to us about as bright as a single magnitude 4 star. The point is this ? the infinite sum implied in step (5), above, is incorrect. The sum STOPS (is truncated) at a distance of about 500+ light years for the typical star (and somewhere beyond that even for the brightest ones). There is an upper limit on the absolute brightness of a single star; there is no such thing as an infinitely brilliant star. So there is a finite upper limit to the integration process described in step (5) above. It doesn't go out to infinity.
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It may also help to remember that the human eye is different from photographic film or a CCD chip. It does not integrate over time. The longer we expose a photographic plate to starlight the brighter the image becomes. (There is a limit even to this process in film due to what is called reciprocity failure.) But, humans can stare at the night sky all night long and not see anything they didn't see after the first few minutes. Things don't get brighter for us the longer we look at them. So theoretically the longer we expose our CCD camera chip, the brighter the image (deeper into space we can see). This is not true for the human eye. We can see the 8400 or so stars that we can see, and all the zillions of others might as well not be there AT ALL as far as our humble naked human eyes are concerned. Olber's Paradox is not a paradox at all if you look at it correctly. It is yet another example of theoretical mathematics applied incorrectly to a real world phenomenon. Or a mathematician might say: They got the upper limit on the integral wrong. Don Scott http://www.electric-cosmos.org/
OPPORTUNITY FAVORS THE HERETIC

By Wal Thornhill 04 February 2004 [editor's note: This article was written as a day-by-day commentary while the Mars rover missions were in their early phases of exploration. It reflects only that data which has been released to the public to date. More will be added to the holoscience website later.] ...modern science seems to have exploded into a multitude of highly specialised areas and distinct disciplines that may at times be interconnected, but that by and large ignore one another. There appears to be an overwhelming trend toward a proliferation of distinct and autonomous 'subdivisions'. Researchers in different fields often experience great difficulties understanding each other. ~Etienne Klein & Marc Lachize-Rey, The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics. The Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, is about to begin its voyage of discovery on the surface of Mars. It is an opportunity for heretics to test their expectations in light of the new information pouring in from Mars. Otherwise, interpretations of new discoveries will be fashioned to fit stories created long ago and uncritically disseminated among separate disciplines. For example, astronomers tell geologists that the planets were formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Geologists tell astronomers that craters were formed primarily by impacts of comets, asteroids and meteors. Astronomers tell geologists that there is an invisible reservoir of objects that caused the impacts. Physicists tell geologists that the process of radioactive decay can be trusted as a reliable clock to date rocks. The geologists assure the particle physicists that nothing could have happened in the past to upset these radioactive clocks. Physicists tell astronomers that most of the stable elements which make up the planets and stars were formed primordially in a series of supernova events. These are all simply stories. Countless facts don't fit the stories but they are not allowed to spoil the telling. Astronomers have not been able to show theoretically or empirically that the elements came from supernovas or that the planets came from a collapsing nebula. Pointing to evidence of 'accretion disks' around some stars simply begs the question. We know from observation that stars can expel matter (which defies gravitational theory). The disks are therefore more likely to be 'expulsion disks.' Similarly, geologists have never witnessed a crater formed by cosmic impact. Their attempts to replicate the features of planetary craters by high-velocity impacts or explosions have failed ? but the story remains. Products of short-lived radioactive isotopes found in some meteorites contradict the 4.5 billion year story.
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The elements that would have formed primordially in supernovas don't match the elements found on solar system bodies. Supernovas are rare events that disperse matter. The resulting rickety edifice of fact and fiction is sold under the name of planetary science. Like the game in which a story is made up by adding disconnected sentences together, it does not make much sense and no one can predict where it is leading. In this 'Alice in Wonderland' environment each new discovery must be a surprise. Then the story is simply amended, not rewritten. It clearly demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of over-specialized science. The only recourse in this situation is to return to the empirical approach to science - that is, to work from the observable present back through time as far as reliable information can be extracted and to undertake laboratory experiments to test ideas. Do not assume old gravito-mechanical theories are relevant in a plasma universe. Accept that theorists do not understand gravity, or electrical effects in plasma. Unfortunately, to take this approach in the age of the theoretician and computer modeler is to brand oneself a heretic. From Astrobiology Magazine come the following report excerpts: DEPTH TO BEDROCK, ZERO by Astrobiology Magazine staff writer The first impression of the Opportunity landing site in color is the light, exposed area about ten meters from the rover's location inside a crater. The region has by now accumulated a plethora of adjectives and names: bizarre, alien, hummocky, layered, crater-rim, outcrop, stratigraphic slice, tabular, segmented, slabby. But what has scientists most intrigued is that the slabs are bedrock. Bedrock is the solid, intact part of the planet's crust ... To find bedrock is to know geologically that the history of this location is free from rock and boulder transport, mainly by wind, water, lava and impact debris. Whatever happened on Mars over billions of years, that hummocky slab bears its records. See photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs THORNHILL COMMENTS: The assumptions in the assured statements above are manifold. All we have is a terrestrial theory of how planetary crusts are formed that glosses over many questions and anomalies. Sediments accumulated by the action of wind and water are supposed to account for a great deal of the stratification seen on Earth. Patches visible in the layers of the Martian rocks appear to contain pebbles and other small stones. So scientists argue by analogy that the Martian layers could have formed in water. Drifting volcanic ash or wind-borne sediments also could have built up the thin layers. However, the great depths of layered material (up to 9 km in Valles Marineris) found on Mars, a desert planet with little atmosphere, must call into question conventional ideas about the origin of sedimentary material and its metamorphism into layered rock. The Moon and some asteroids, where wind and water never existed, also show evidence of layering. Back on Earth, many mineral deposits defy orthodox explanations. It is bold speculation that "..the history of this location is free from rock and boulder transport, mainly by wind, water, lava and impact debris." and that "whatever happened on Mars over billions of years, that hummocky slab bears its records." We live in the space age now. We must look beyond a terrestrial model for the formation of planetary surfaces, including the surface of our own planet, Earth. The Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, landed in a 20 meter wide crater in Planum Meridiani. The surrounding region has some of the most spectacular etched surfaces seen on Mars. Just east of Terra Meridiani is a 470-km diameter circular depression known as Schiaparelli Basin. In June 2003 Mars Global Surveyor imaged a small crater in that Basin that exhibits most of the strange Martian features that
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challenge geologists when using terrestrial analogies. If we can explain those features simply and coherently it should help us to understand the exposed bedrock that Opportunity is about to investigate. See photo at: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs Official caption: Schiaparelli sedimentary rocks. Some of the most important high resolution imaging results of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) experiment center on discoveries about the presence and nature of the sedimentary rock record on Mars. This old meteor impact crater in northwestern Schiaparelli Basin exhibits a spectacular view of layered, sedimentary rock. The 2.3 kilometer (1.4 miles) wide crater may have once been completely filled with sediment; the material was later eroded to its present form. Dozens of layers of similar thickness and physical properties are now expressed in a wedding cake-like stack in the middle of the crater. Sunlight illuminating the scene from the left shows that the circle, or mesa top, at the middle of the crater stands higher than the other stair-stepped layers. The uniform physical properties and bedding of these layers might indicate that they were originally deposited in a lake (it is possible that the crater was at the bottom of a much larger lake, filling Schiaparelli Basin); alternatively, the layers were deposited by settling out of the atmosphere in a dry environment. This picture was acquired on June 3, 2003, and is located near 0.9S, 346.2W. NASA/JPL THORNHILL COMMENTS: Sorry, the explanation above just doesn't hold water. It is a series of ad hoc mechanisms linked together with 'may' and 'might.' To begin, it is baldly stated that the feature is an 'old meteor impact crater.' That is an opinion, not a fact. The floor of an impact crater is supposed to be formed of shattered rock. This crater floor is layered rock. So the crater 'may have once been completely filled with sediment' - or else the assumption is mistaken. Regular, episodic sedimentation is called upon to produce such even layering. Some method of cementation is also required to form each distinct layer. Whatever happened had to have repeated more than 20 times with precision to give such a regular appearance. Finally, 'the material was ..eroded to its present form.' We should like to know how that miracle was performed. Neither wind nor water moving across the landscape could produce the circular symmetry seen here. And it does not attempt to explain the strange landscape surrounding the crater. There is a better explanation. In an electric universe, surfaces and atmospheres of rocky planets are exchanged in the process of their electrical 'birth' from a gas giant planet and in subsequent electrical interactions with other moons and planets in the process of achieving a stable orbit. Both Jupiter and Saturn have moons that would be classified as planets if they orbited the Sun. Saturn's moon, Titan, has an atmosphere heavier than Earth's. Later this year, when the Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe arrive to observe it first-hand, Titan may have much to teach us about a planet that didn1t manage to leave home. The birth of planets by expulsion, followed by accretion of the 'afterbirth,' leaves significant scars and layering on their surfaces, as does establishing a stable planetary orbit. Orbital dynamics tells us that two planets, which began in close association, will come together again at regular intervals. This would make the process of electrical deposition and erosion between the planets episodic and regular for a short time (geologically speaking). The result is a global 'onion skin' build up of crustal materials together with various erratic mineral deposits. Superimposed are the effects of electrical erosion that occurs only upon the closest approaches between two planets (the same electrical forces that caused the initial expulsion preclude impacts). Electrical erosion tends to be concentrated hemispherically because of the short duration of closest approach. It also leaves the most dramatic scars. They take characteristic forms of circular craters (universally mistaken for impact craters), raised blisters (often mistaken for volcanoes), sinuous channels (usually mistaken for water or lava erosion channels), and etched or 'fretted terrain' (no conventional explanation). The crater above can be explained simply by using the electric universe model. The layering predated the crater. The crater is electrical, not impact. The so-called erosion was an integral part of the formation of
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the crater, caused by rotating Birkeland filaments. Birkeland filaments twist in pairs to form a rope-like Birkeland current. It is the form in which electrical energy is transported across the cosmos. The current density is highest in the Birkeland filaments themselves so the erosion rate falls off toward their center of rotation ? the center of the crater. The result, in the sedimentary layers, is a neatly terraced central peak, the untouched remains of previously existing sedimentary layers. A note in passing: the small circular craters on the eastern lip of the large crater illustrate a recurring pattern in electrical cratering. Lightning is attracted to high points so subsequent discharges will tend to form craters centered on the rim of an existing crater. It is a pattern that is inexplicable by impacts. Also, in the upper right side of the image are some typical electrically etched, or "fretted" depressions with the circular 'cookie cutter' effect in the walls produced by cathode arcs. It is a pattern that the Galileo orbiter saw being formed on Jupiter's electrically active moon, Io. But that is not all that we can glean from this remarkable image. There is a procession of linear ridges running approximately north-south. They are given a feathered appearance by myriad short orthogonal ridges. The electrical explanation is simple. All of the ridges are soil metamorphosed and hardened by lightning coursing just below the surface. On Earth they would be classed as fulgurites. The north-south ridges show the direction of the global electric field that gave rise to the lightning. The stubby orthogonal ridges are the result of the corona discharges feeding the main lightning channels. The entire area then seems to have been electrostatically "cleaned" or etched free of loose soil, exposing the ridges of metamorphosed rock. Since the electric field was predominantly horizontal, the pattern shows the usual disregard for topography. The pattern can be traced down into the crater, up across the central peak and out the other side. Returning to the Mars Rover, Opportunity, we can see that it is sitting in a small electrically etched crater and the exposed 'bedrock' will be layered and show signs of modification by an electric arc. The vertical faces of some of the exposed rocks look as if they were cut. The kinds of things to watch for are pitting, surface glassification or a burnt appearance, damage caused by the explosive release of trapped gases, shock metamorphism, and isotopic and elemental anomalies. A few of these characteristics can also be produced by an impact explosion. However, these rocks are layered, not shattered. One thing to look for, if shocked crystals are found and their orientation determined, is the direction from which the blast originated. Electrical cratering has a blast center that moves below ground and around the crater's center. An impact has a stationary blast center above ground that coincides with the crater's center. An example on Earth of shocked minerals oriented to a subterranean moving blast center can be found in the giant Vredefort Dome structure in South Africa. THE REPORT CONTINUES: The rover will look at the fine soil nearby, in hopes of finding out why this particular region is rare on Mars in being rich with iron-oxides. The surface soil's top layer is grey, much more grey than anything seen on Mars before. On the surface, Meridiani is the darkest color yet visited. But this dark layer gave way when the airbags were retracted revealing a deep maroon layer underneath. Steve Squyres [principal investigator for rover science] described the competing theories as either we have soil with two distinct components of coarse, grey grains on top of fine red soil--or we have aggregates that are grey but when squished, the red comes out. THORNHILL COMMENTS: Since orbital images of the landing area shows three distinct color gradations, a first guess is that once outside this crater, the view will suddenly change to what is expected to be lighter colored soil. The brightest areas seen orbitally are the crater rims, followed by the flat plains, then the darkest interior to the craters, where Opportunity now is snapping charcoal-grey scenery. Since the horizon's range is mainly restricted to 10 meters for now, once outside this crater the startling picture of a dark grey Mars will likely change yet again. See http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs for diagram of hematite distribution in Sinus Meridiani, where Opportunity is located.
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THORNHILL COMMENTS: Researchers think the hematite could have formed on Mars by thermal oxidation of iron-rich volcanic eruptive products during eruption or it could have formed by chemical precipitation when iron-rich water circulated through the pre-existing layers of volcanic ash. No volcano has been identified as a possible source and the pattern does not look like wind-blown fallout. And why is hematite concentrated in this one small region on Mars? The Nobel nominee, the late Prof. Louis Kervran, had heretical views on the low-energy transmutation of common elements to form anomalous mineral deposits. He wrote: There is no need to look for iron's origin in the centre of our planet; it is a 'surface formation' at the level of the earth's crust. There is no connection between the core and the mineral strata; but all the classical theories speak of 'concentration,' of water-borne materials, of hydrothermal eruptions and of deposits. Even if all of this is accepted, these theories presuppose the existence of iron accumulated in certain locations. Therefore the iron existed but where did it come from? Without necessarily subscribing to Kervran's ideas about the origin of the earthly iron deposits, powerful electric discharges through other common elements, like carbon and oxygen, can form iron deposits. "On the surface, and often at a certain depth, superficial alterations have TRANSFORMED THE CARBONATE INTO A PURE HEMATITE, a formation difficult to explain since a mere ordinary and superficial alteration should give limonite [hydrated iron oxides] and not hematite," says F. Blondel. [Chronique des Mines Coloniales, Sept. 1955.] He goes on to say: The hematite production on the surface is not well-clarified. I suggest that water played no part in the Martian hematite deposition. The splash of iron oxides on this part of Mars is best explained as a recent exogenous deposit. It is recent in the sense that the deposit seems to have buried the fields of boulders strewn across the planet by the earlier electrical event that scoured Valles Marineris. The outlines of the distribution pattern shown above conform to that of other electrically etched surfaces, notably the 'calderas' on Io. The pattern need not be related to topography as we should expect if a lake were involved. The dark grey surface inside the small crater is probably an electrically modified version of the deep maroon soil underneath, itself a fine-grained hematite deposit. The most likely modification would be physical, in some form of melting and glassification of the hematite. That effect was seen by Apollo astronauts in the soil and centers of small craters on the Moon. Next would be a heat induced chemical change, possibly to metallic iron. It is also possible for surface ion implantation to occur, with hydrogen being the most likely atomic addition. Or it may show evidence of nuclear transmutations ? after the manner of Kervran. The combination of possibilities allowed in the electrical scenario is so diverse that it is difficult to predict precisely what will be found. However, it is probable that the surface has undergone a change from the soil beneath requiring a source of energy not to be found today on Mars. On descent, a crater was imaged near Opportunity's landing site. It shows clearly the dark crater floor and lighter surrounding surface. Squyres said the science team "looks to 'head for the big one' - a 150 meter wide crater, probably 10-15 meters deep at least and about half-a-mile away. The bright rim of that crater may well be another remnant of bedrock or something different altogether." The larger crater should show more evident signs of electrical activity than the modest crater Opportunity finds itself in. The heretics welcome Opportunity and wish it success! Thus the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has thought, about that which everybody sees. ~Erwin Schrdinger (1887-1961) Wal Thornhill www.holoscience.com

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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter AGE LIMITS OF THE EARTH'S BIOSPHERE ..................................................................... 52

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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE ................................................................................ 599

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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter MEMO TO EARL STAELIN................................................................................................. 880

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THOTH -- A Catastrophics Newsletter, VOL I, No. 1 (January 25, 1997)

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WORLD CONFERENCE REPORT

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SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW

THE POLAR CONFIGURATION

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