- It has now been more than two years since the fiery destruction
of the shuttle Columbia on
- February 1, 2003. The disaster killed all seven astronauts
on board and dealt one of the most severe blows ever to America's space
program.
-
- But as astronauts now prepare to ride another shuttle
into space, few Americans are aware of the most critical issue raised by
the Columbia disaster. Did a super-bolt of lightning--called "megalightning"--strike
Columbia, causing the breakup of the craft?
-
- Shocking evidence that this is so includes the once-censored
photograph above, taken by amateur astronomer Peter Goldie. It shows a
purplish corkscrew trail of "something" merging with the ionized
plasma trail of Columbia early in its descent, while Columbia was still
63 kilometers above the earth. One might have expected this photograph
to catch the attention of media around the world. But NASA officials seized
both the camera and the photograph itself, prohibiting the San Francisco
Chronicle from publishing it after the newspaper had received the picture.
-
- Most shocking of all is the explanation given by experts
who examined the photograph. They said that the luminous corkscrew trail
was an "artefact" caused by a camera wobble. The explanation
left critics aghast, since the Columbia trail in the photo is crisp with
no evidence of camera movement. Nor is any wobble evident in other similar
photographs taken by Goldie. The explanation relegates to "coincidence"
the fact that the Columbia trail brightens precisely at its juncture with
the corkscrew trail. This brightening is an electrically predictable occurrence
when two plasma channels merge.
-
- Proponents of the "Electric Universe" have
maintained for many years that ideology within official science has limited
the ability of working scientists to look at pictures objectively, to see
what would otherwise be obvious. Popular doctrines say that Earth is a
neutral body in the neutral environment of the Sun. When lightning strikes,
its source must lie in the mysterious ability of clouds and temperature
gradients to "separate charge." A bolt of lightning in the rarified
atmosphere 63 kilometers above the earth is unthinkable within this framework.
Therefore, the alleged lightning strike on Columbia could not have happened.
-
- Alternative viewpoints do not suffer from these limitations.
In the Electric Universe, our Earth is an integral part of solar system
circuitry, fed by currents streaming along our arm of the Milky Way. An
electric field between Earth's surface and the ionosphere, separated by
an insulating layer of atmosphere, is responsible for thunderstorms. In
weather conditions favoring breakdown of this insulation, electric currents
leak through the atmospheric layer (in the fashion of a "leaky capacitor"),
creating the electrical displays we see in thunderstorms. And this is why,
far above thunderstorms, meteorologists have discovered powerful discharges
called "red sprites" and "blue jets" reaching many
kilometers into the ionosphere. In fact, electrical interactions associated
with powerful thunderstorms have now been traced outward to the Van Allen
Belt.
-
- Since the discharge of a sprite is diffused over a large
area, meteorologists have doubted that a sprite could damage aircraft.
But here is how Wallace Thornhill, a pioneer of the Electric Universe hypothesis,
views the issue:
-
- "The electromagnetic 'pinch' effect will ensure
that the energy of that sprite will be focused onto any large electrical
conductor that blunders into its domain - as we see in the time-lapse photograph.
The brightening of Columbia's trail where the lightning joined it is due
to the sudden release of energy in the more dense plasma of that trail.
It is that kind of energy that was released over a few square centimeters
of Columbia's wing. Temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees would
have resulted. The Shuttle's tiles are designed to withstand 2900 C."
-
- This is where Professor Edgar Bering, a physicist at
the University of Houston in Texas, comes in. He heads a team from NASA's
National Scientific Balloon Facility to study sprites by flying a high-altitude
balloon above major thunderstorms. His work, preceding the Columbia disaster,
led to some surprising conclusions about sprites. He found that the charge
released in sprites is not generated within the clouds, but lies in the
mesosphere above the thunderstorms. And the energy is far greater than
previously thought.
-
- But according to Thornhill, all of the data will fall
into place if the charge in the mesosphere "comes from space via the
ionosphere above," not from charge separation within the clouds below.
It will then make sense that Bering found the current released in a sprite
to be around 12,000 amperes, rather than the 3,000 amperes predicted by
conventional models of cloud-generated charge.
-
- It does not appear, however, that NASA scientists have
followed Bering's discovery to its logical conclusion: "None of the
existing models will survive when people finally pay attention to what
our data actually says," Bering writes.
-
- If the fate of Columbia was indeed the result of megalightning,
then scientific misperception has cost human lives. And it is now placing
other lives at risk as well.
-
- Photo credit: David Monaghan Productions/HTV West, from
the TV program: "Megalightning."
-
- Read more on the Columbia disaster at:
- http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y424y
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