- (The following report is inspired by material soon to
be published in the forthcoming book, Thunderbolts of the Gods, by David
Talbott and Wallace Thornhill)
-
- "Greek poets, historians, and philosophers often
spoke of the great dragon TyphonThe monster sprouted a hundred snake-heads,
spitting fire and venom, their whistles, roars and bellowing, and every
sort of horrible sound, shaking heavens to its foundations."
-
- -From Thunderbolts of The Gods, by David Talbott and
Wallace Thornhill, Chapter 2.
-
-
-
- Above: The famous Chinese dragon was characterized
by flaming, lightning-like emanations
-
-
- In a world where gods and goddesses reigned supreme in
the heavens, demanding constant appeasement lest they unleash their wrath
on the humans below, ancient man feared nothing more than the raging fury
of the cosmic dragon. This serpentine beast, a LUSUS NATURAE, was a monstrous
freak of nature whose weapons of destruction were its fiery breath, its
thunderbolts and thunderstones, and its terrifying companions, the fiends
of darkness.
-
- Every culture around the world recorded its dreadful
"encounters" with the cosmic dragon. Examples of the creature
range from the Egyptian Apep to the Babylonian Tiamat, from the Norse Midgard
serpent to the Aztec "Fire Serpent" Xiuhcoatl.
-
- It is inconceivable that we can understand the ancient
Doomsday terror without understanding the nature of the dragon, the centerpiece
of so many Doomsday accounts. The dragon brought darkness and storm clouds
to a formerly idyllic world, and it was his attack that invited into the
story another archetypal figure of myth the warrior hero. Such "superhero"
figures as the Egyptian Horus, the Babylonian Ninurta, The Norse Thor,
and the most famous of all heroes, Hercules, achieved their stature by
vanquishing the great monsters of chaos. But what could all of this mean?
-
- Most historians commenting on dragon stories treat them
as local "superstitions," giving little or no attention to a
striking enigma: the similarity of dragon accounts from one culture to
another.
-
- Earlier researchers, including Ignatius Donnelly in the
19th century, and Immanuel Velikovsky in the 20th century, insisted that
the cosmic dragon of mythology was a COMET. More recently, a host of mainstream
scientists, including Oxford University astrophysicist Victor Clube, British
astronomer William Napier, Australian astronomer Duncan Steel, and radio
astronomer Garrit Vershuur have followed suit, contending that a cometary
catastrophe lay at the heart of serpent and dragon mythology. In this regard,
one can hardly ignore the reality that in the ancient languages and astronomical
traditions, the symbols of the serpent or dragon continually overlap with
the symbols of the comet. For example, Aztec manuscripts depict a comet
as a fiery serpent or dragon-like creature descending from the stars. The
priest astronomers of ancient Mexico knew the comet as the "star serpent,"
a tradition with parallels from ancient Africa to Polynesia. Most compelling
is the incessant juxtaposition of COMET hieroglyphs - flowing hair or mane,
streaming feathers, streaming beard, or streaming fire with the serpent
or dragon. By this juxtaposition, the monster becomes a feathered serpent,
long-haired serpent, bearded serpent, and fiery serpent. In each instance,
the imagery seems utterly preposterous, until one realizes two facts:
1) the same images occur around the world, and, 2) from one culture to
another these images belong to the ancient astronomical language of the
comet.
-
- So the question must be asked: can discoveries in comet
science today help us to understand the mythic dragon? I am not a scientist,
but as an open-minded inquirer, I have found that the linkage between cometary
science and ancient dragon imagery is staggering. And there is a surprise
here: the exploration of comets is leading us inexorably toward an intellectual
revolution, one that will affect ALL of the sciences, while re-defining
the human past.
-
-
-
-
- Enhanced image of comet Hale-Bopp, 1997
-
-
- Science today always presents the comet in a "uniformitarian"
context. It assumes that "the present is the key to the past."
It assuems that our early ancestors experienced a cosmic environment virtually
identical to the environment we ourselves experience today. For this assumption
there is virtually no evidence, and all ancient cultures present a radically
different picture.
-
- If the dragon story means anything, it declares that
something is wrong with our ideas about comets. For example, the dragon
is virtually always connected to ELECTRICAL events in the sky. In its attack,
lightning and thunder shake the earth. Great stones fall from the sky.
The courses of heavenly bodies are altered. Without going into all the
nuances of the dragon myth, I find it of interest that innovative researchers
today are now putting forth alternative ideas about comets AND about the
origins of serpent and dragon mythology. For proponents of these ideas,
it is the electrical nature of comets that holds the key, enabling us to
connect the earlier human memories with the latest scientific discoveries.
-
- In popular astronomy today, a comet must have volatiles
something that can evaporate (such as ice) in the vacuum of space
as it moves closer to the Sun. Astronomers settled on the idea that a remote
"Oort cloud" periodically supplies chunks of dust and ice - or
"dirty snowballs" - that fall into the inner region of the solar
system. We are told that as these "snowballs" approach the Sun,
the evaporating ice and associated dust are released into space. Under
the influence of the solar wind, a gaseous comet tail is directed away
from the sun.
-
- But a cascade of discoveries has refuted every component
of the "snowball" model. The critical turn began in 1985, when
a probe of Halley's revealed violent, well-focused jets exploding from
the comet's nucleus. Then in 2001, similar intensely energetic jets were
seen on the nucleus of the comet Borrelly, far more energetic than could
be explained by sublimation of ice. More recently, the high-resolution
photographs of comet Wild 2 left astronomers aghast. Energy levels were
far more intense, and the surface more sharply defined than is conceivable
for a "melting snowball."
-
- As reported by thunderbolts.info, "project scientists
expected 'a dirty, black, fluffy snowball' with a couple of jets that would
be 'dispersed into a halo'. Instead they found more than two dozen jets
that 'remained intact' - they did not disperse in the fashion of a gas
in a vacuum. Some of the jets emanated from the dark unheated side of the
comet - an anomaly no one had expected. Chunks of the comet, some as big
as bullets, blasted the spacecraft as it crossed three jets. Wild 2's surface
was covered with 'spires, pits and craters' that could only be supported
by rock, not by sublimating ice or snow. The discovery was more than surprising,
'it was mind-boggling'."
-
- In all of the instances noted above, the comets' jets
bore striking resemblance to concentrated "cathode arcs" - the
arcing on a negatively charged object in an intense electrical exchange
or discharge. Such arcs will typically etch circular craters while burning
the surface black, EXACTLY as seen on comet nuclei.
-
- One enigma after another has confronted astronomers.
In the rendezvous with Borrelly, the comet's nucleus wasn't at the center
of the coma. According to electric universe theorist Wallace Thornhill,
"Under the electrically neutral gas dynamics used by astronomers,
that's a bit like finding the shock-wave from a supersonic jet a mile to
the side of the aircraft!"
-
- Also surprising was the discovery in 1996 that comet
Hyakutake emitted X-rays, one of the most common signatures of electrical
discharge, and something that was NEVER expected of a "snowball."
The electric connection was in fact confirmed when, on July 14th 2000,
the Chandra X-ray observatory found comet Linear generating X-rays at the
interface between the negatively charged cometary plasma, and the positively
charged particles of the solar wind.
-
- Following this energetic activity of Linear, the comet
"inexplicably" broke into MOUNTAIN-SIZED pieces. A "dirty
snowball" may melt faster under increased heat from the sun, but that
energy of heating would not penetrate into a MILE WIDE chunk of ice.
An explosion is exactly what can happen to an object subjected to electrical
stress. As reported by Thornhill and Talbott, "A comet nucleus can
be compared to the insulating material in a capacitor. As charge is exchanged
from the comet's surface to the solar wind, electrical energy is stored
in the nucleus in the form of charge polarization. This can easily build
up enormous mechanical stress in the comet nucleus, which may be released
catastrophically, as in a capacitor when its insulation suffers rapid breakdown.
The comet will explode!"
-
- Comet Borrelly was not only "hot," but its
coma was a reported 2 million degrees Kelvin - as hot as the sun's corona.
Though this temperature can, in part, be ascribed to an intrinsic quality
of plasma, the energetic levels can hardly be due to an effect of heating
from the sun.
-
- But let's get to the punchline. The foundational principal
of the popular comet theory is the presence of ICE. Without ice, the theory
will not allow for a cometary tail. In the electric model, this is not
an issue at all. A large rock, an asteroid for example, falling rapidly
towards the sun would experience increasing electrical stresses, and begin
discharging. Ice is not excluded, but neither is it required. Discovery
of a dry rock acting as the nucleus of a comet would singularly refute
the conventional theory. Keep that in mind as you ponder the significance
of the 2001 rendezvous with Borrelly. The probe found its surface to be
hot and dry with nothing like the quantity of water that would be expected
of a "dirty snowball."
-
- The key to all of this is the undeniable superiority
of the electric force over the gravitational force. To see comets as electrically
charged bodies moving deeply into the electric field of the sun is to envision
possibilities inconceivable based on gravity and gas laws. It is now known
that comet nuclei gather incredible volumes of charged particles from the
solar wind, producing envelopes up to a million miles or more across. This
volume may indeed represent a total mass greater than the nucleus itself.
A comet-sized neutral rock does not have the power to hold ANY "atmosphere."
But as stated by Thornhill and Talbott, "A gravitationally insignificant
rock on a highly elliptical orbit can be an electrically powerful object."
-
- What, then, of the cometary dragon of antiquity? The
electrical theorists emphasize the ability of electrified plasma
a medium defined by the presence of charged particles - to generate filamentary,
spiraling, and LIFE-LIKE STRUCTURE. It is this tendency that prompted pioneering
plasma researcher Irving Langmuir to give plasma its name - its lifelike
qualities reminded him of blood plasma.
-
-
-
- An electric spark in a laboratory
-
-
-
- Enigmatic petroglyph on cave wall in Chaco canyon
in Mexico.
-
-
- Anyone familiar with plasma phenomena will readily agree
that the dragon terminology discussed above (streaming hair, feathers,
etc.) answers extremely well to the luminous, filamentary, feathery, and
spiraling aspects of plasma discharge. But of course, if the cometary dragon
was in fact an electrical discharge formation in the heavens, it was vastly
more terrifying than any comet observed in our own time. If we follow
the logic of recent discoveries, it seems they have already opened Pandora's
Box, and we can no longer view the cosmos or the history of Earth through
the lens of twentieth century science.
- (The Introduction and Chapter One of Thunderbolts of
the Gods, by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, is available at www.thunderbolts.info)
-
- POSTSCRIPT:
-
- Though the electric comet hypothesis was not uncommon
in the 19th century, the 20th century pioneer whose work is most essential
to the hypothesis was Ralph Juergens. It was Juergens who argued (in the
Pensée magazine series, "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered"
(1972-4) that the Sun is a "glow discharge" at the center of
an electric field. Comets, he said, discharge electrically as they move
through this field. In the early 70's, Wallace Thornhill, co-author of
Thunderbolts of the Gods, was inspired by Juergens' work to undertake a
life-long study of electricity in space. In the mid and
- late 70's, Lethbridge University physicist Earl Milton
(co-author, SOLARIA BINARIA) and Cornell University astrophysicist James
McCanney took up the hypothesis. McCanney's articles on the subject were
published in the journal Kronos, successor to Pensée magazine.
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