- Above: The "Great Comet" of
1996, Hyakutake. The stunning discovery of X-ray emissions from the visitor
was a milestone in comet science, as was the discovery that the comet's
coherent and filamentary ion tail spanned more than 350 million miles.
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- Though NASA officials have said nothing
on the subject, astronomy today is on the edge of a critical shift in perception--a
revolution that could redefine our view of the heavens.
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- Proponents of the "Electric Universe"
say that a revolution in the sciences is inescapable, and they believe
the failure of modern comet theory could be the tipping point. The high-energy
events exhibited by comets require a new understanding of what makes a
comet work, and the answer to the mystery of comets will invariably affect
all of the space sciences. For starters, a list of the enigmas would have
to include these surprises: comet x-rays, a coma several times the size
of the Sun glowing in ultraviolet light, strong electrical and turbulent
magnetic fields, million degree coma "temperatures", supersonic
jets, collimation of these jets over great distances, coherent and filamentary
comet tails spanning up to a hundred million miles and more, explosive
outbursts of dust hundreds of millions of miles from the Sun, the "inexplicable"
break up and complete disintegration of comet nuclei far from the Sun,
sharply etched surface relief, bright surface patches (camera saturation,
most obvious in the case of Tempel 1), and "impossibly" fine
comet dust. Intense energetic activity has, one discovery at a time, shocked
astronomers. But in fact every surprise points in the same direction.
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- For several years the electrical theorists
have predicted that the fatal blow to modern comet mythology will come
from the absence of sufficient water ice or other ices on a comet nucleus
to produce the jets and coma. This prediction has already been fulfilled,
but the message has yet to register. After repeated failures to find any
water on comet surfaces, NASA spokesmen celebrated the "success"
of the Deep Impact mission when they thought they had found, on the surface
of Comet Tempel 1, a minuscule .005 of the water required by theory to
explain the signals associated with water in the coma.
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- (For a unified answer to the question
of water-ice on comets, see Deep Impact (3): http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060217deepimpact3.htm)
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- When findings repeatedly discredit an
accepted model in the sciences, it's time to consider the findings from
a different vantage point to look for a pattern that has been missed. For
the electrical theorists, the pattern is too obvious to be missed. The
unexplained features are predictable effects of an electric discharge,
and nothing that an electrical expert would look for is missing from NASA's
discoveries.
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- It is also inconceivable that the collapse
of comet theory could stand as an isolated event in astronomy. The physical
universe is not a bundle of contradictions, even if modern "explanations"
are. A comet discharging electrically as it approaches the Sun means simply
that the Sun is the focus of electrical activity strong enough to produce
the observed cometary phenomena. That includes the visible flare-up of
comets while in "deep freeze" beyond the orbit of Saturn. The
implication, according to Electric Universe advocates, is that sufficient
electrical energy is available from the galaxy to power the Sun. A tiny
charged comet occasionally taps into that solar circuit to produce a visible
display.
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- But in the past 75 years, most astronomers
never entertained electricity as a source of energy in the cosmos--despite
its usefulness to mankind. A Sun energized electrically will be much more
of a "shock to the system" than an electric comet. For decades
we've been assured that the science of the Sun is well established--a few
i's to dot, a few t's to cross, and little to fret about. But those expressing
this confidence had no training in electrical discharges in thin plasma.
Instead they treated the solar wind merely as a wind, with a weak magnetic
field thrown in. They did not see that the magnetic field and the reaction
of a comet to the solar wind, when interpreted as electrical phenomena,
answer the greatest mysteries of the Sun.
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- Why, for example, do the charged particles
of the solar wind defy gravity and continue to accelerate as they move
away from the Sun, out past the planets? And how is it that the temperature
of the Sun leaps from a few thousand degrees at the surface to a million
degrees above the surface, at the corona?
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- These questions are easy to explain if
the energy is coming from outside the Sun. In the electrical model, the
Sun (like all stars) is an anode, or positively charged focus within a
galactic discharge. The Sun's electrical influence extends out to a plasma
sheath, incorrectly called the heliopause, far beyond the orbit of Pluto.
The electrical acceleration of the solar wind and the ion tail of a comet,
therefore, is exactly what should happen, and there is no other credible
explanation of this phenomenon.
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- Those who are not trained in plasma discharge
behavior are unaware that throughout almost the entire volume of space
within the Sun's plasma sheath, the electric field remains weak but constant
in strength, representing an immense electric potential across the vast
distance to the boundary of the Sun's electrical domain. It is not until
charged particles are very close to the Sun that they experience strong
electric fields in 'double layers' that heat the solar corona and form
the global electrical storm we call a star.
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- The electrical theorists Wallace Thornhill
and Don Scott have enumerated at least two dozen enigmas of solar behavior
that immediately disappear when you grant the same electric field that
is implied by the electric comet.
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- And what of planetary science? From an
electrical vantage point, the electric arcs that have carved the surfaces
of comets can be compared to those that, in an earlier phase of solar system
history, etched the surfaces of planets and moons. The astronomer's bafflement
at recent close-up images of comets is just like their response to enigmatic
surface features of larger rocky bodies in the solar system--from the tortured
surfaces of Venus and Mars to the alien worlds of Jupiter and Saturn. The
sharply sculpted nuclei of comets reveal the same features we see on rocky
planets and moons--craters, rilles, spires, mountains, ridges, mesas rising
from flat valley floors and etched relief--just the opposite of what astronomers
had expected. Of course, the prevailing model of comets, envisioning a
sublimating chunk of dirty ice, does not allow that similar features could
have similar causes, though that is precisely the message of the electric
theorists.
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- To see planetary history in the terms
implied by the electrical interpretation, it will be essential that science
free itself from the modern fable of the "uneventful solar system"--planets
moving on unchanging orbits for billions of years. The fable originated
as a theoretical conjecture long before the space age began. Geological
models of the 1950's did not envision the pictures of planetary violence
returned from space, because they imagined isolated bodies moving like
undisturbed clockwork for aeons. More than any other discovery of the space
age, the electric comet will force a reconsideration of solar system evolution,
with a new appreciation for the role of planetary instability and global
catastrophe. What happens to comets happened in the past on a planetary
scale. The present stable order of the solar system is new.
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- The picture of the macrocosm will change
as well. If the electric force was active in solar system evolution, our
little enclave in the Milky Way could hardly be an exception to a rule.
Electric events evident in our neighborhood must have countless analogs
in deep space. How, then, could popular cosmological theories based on
a gravity-driven universe retain their hold on scientific imagination?
By following the evidence, one will confront the single most costly theoretical
mistake of the twentieth century: the belief that we live in an electrically
sterile universe. When that mistake is corrected, the universe will no
longer resemble the "big picture" that dominates popular science.
And the disappearance of the big bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy,
and neutron stars from the lexicon of astronomy will be a mere beginning.
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- Photo Credit: NASA
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