Category: Electric Earth

Electric Earth May 12, 2017October 3, 2017

Trailer Park Cosmology – 4

Chapter Six – King Roach

A tornado is nature’s demon. Rotating winds, tight as a knot, with a body and energy that give it life, coherency, and a dislike for trailer parks. It’s lucky for me they are rare in Tucson. This town has so many trailer parks, and so few tornadoes, I hardly worry about them.

We do get hellacious thunderstorms, though. They make a lot of lightning and rain – never enough, of course – this is a desert, but it all comes down in the “monsoon” season, so for the moment it can seem like a lot. Monsoon season is July through September. It’s often spotty. Storm days can be separated by weeks of blazing, cloudless, dog days.

Tornadoes and lightning are intimately related. You might not get that impression from consensus science – they don’t treat them as related in any physical way other than the fact thunderstorms produce them both. Gee, that doesn’t imply any connection does it?

No, say the consensus. Lightning is just a static discharge from hailstones rubbing together, and tornadoes form by some chance circumstance of cross winds into spontaneous, coherent spirals of death. The only connection is the winds that rub the hailstones and spin the tornado come from the same storm – that’s all. Nothing else to see.

I beg to differ.

Tornadoes and lightning are two forms of electrical discharge from corona. Since the storm itself is a coronal construct of looping electrical current from the updraft core, it has to dump all that energy. Making rain, in some cases, isn’t enough.

Three facts help help illustrate the connection. One is that the faster the updraft wind flows, the more lightning the storm makes. Another is that when a tornado forms, the lightning abates. And finally, tornadic storms are prone to produce more positive lightning.

It’s a motor running. Plug it in and it sparks and spins.

My own experience with lightning began watching summer thunderstorms from the back porch. The roof of the porch extended the length of the house, facing north with a view of the mountains. Thunderstorms formed over the mountains, and spread across the valley to engulf us. Lightning was often intense before and during the downpour.

Watching thunderstorms form was more than casual entertainment. Thunderheads building over the mountains gave hope – hope that there would be rain to break the heat. In the sweaty days of August, the evaporative coolers – the only means of cooling the house – didn’t work. The air is already saturated with moisture, so the damn things just blow hot air.

Thunderheads start with bright white cumulus piling over the nine-thousand foot peaks of the Rincon and Catalina mountains. The updraft can be seen doing its work, pushing the cloud into a tower, broadening its base until it turns black. Under the blackness is rain, winds and licks of lightning we see striking the peaks.

We will that horror to come our way, because it is preferable to the horror of melting alive in 110 degree heat. If the clouds lower and swallow the mountains, that is a good sign it’s spreading out to get us, too.

As a child, I remember my Dad paid a lot of attention. He’d say, “Nope, that one will miss us. They have to form over there to reach here,” and he’d point to the north-east. He also kept tabs on weather in the gulf of California and Mexico. “If they have a cyclone, it’ll come our way,” he’d say, anticipating days in advance the effects.

My Father was a ham radio operator. He also had several CB radios, and had erected a large truss tower for all of his radio antenna. I think he violated code when he installed it, and had to remove the top section to bring it into compliance. It’s still there, though, the bottom section at least, used as a permanent ladder to the roof of the house.

When the lightning struck, I was in the living room with my niece.

“Holy crap,” we said, or words to that effect. After that, it was, “Do you smell smoke?”

This quote I’m sure of. Dad’s radio room was full of it. One of the CB’s was still flaming when we got there. We found the CB antenna fifty yards away. It had speared off the tower like the crucifix on the church in the “Omen”. Fortunately, there was no priest below to catch it (I doubt my Dad would have allowed a priest on the property).

I had another experience like this in Sumatra. For a few months, I lived in an oilfield work camp in the jungles of central Sumatra, a place called Duri. I and a colleague from another oil company were doing a feasibility study for a joint-effort project to be located there.

011 — About to eat at a Padang cafe in Sumatra

We lived and worked in a three-bedroom bungalow with the address, Jati 103. Every day our team of a dozen local engineers and analysts would assemble in the bungalow and work with us on computer models and power-point presentations – that is how building a power plant begins.

It was like working from home – I never had to put my shoes on. After work when everyone left, Gary and I would pop bottles of Bintang, and relax with cockroach target practice.

Sumatran cockroaches are very large and wily. Jati 103 had a resident roach that was as big as a baby’s shoe. He was the only one I saw there – apparently it was his territory.

The whole camp were these family bungalows for expats and local management. It was like a little suburban neighborhood sitting in the middle of the jungle. There was a golf course, if you didn’t mind the cobras. Also a gym, a community store and a club with a nice restaurant and pub. And that was it.

I spent spare time at the gym, or taking a run through the camp. No one else ran there. I figured it must be the heat, but then found it was because of the monkeys. They ran in packs like coyotes. They’d tear into garbage and run across the roof of the bungalows at night. They were as big as chimpanzees and dangerous. They were not cute monkeys.

I found myself far at the outskirts of the camp on one run. I went all the way to the fence, behind which was a wall of green rain forest. My attention was drawn to a single huge tree. I didn’t know why, but something seemed off about it.

After I stared at it for a minute, I saw a branch move, and one of these monkeys stared back. Then another branch moved, and another face appeared. This kept happening faster and faster, until I was being stared-down by a tree with a hundred monkeys. I ran for my life.

Gary had brought a set of juggling balls with him for a time-passer. The cockroach had a timetable and was always punctual – at six P.M. he’d appear. The only uncertainty was where he’d appear, but he always came out like clockwork. So most evenings we’d drink beer and lay in wait with the juggling balls.

I don’t know how, but King Roach always moved out of the way. We were both good shots, but never hit the thing even though it was as big as the side of a barn. We did hit some computers and lamps, I recall, but never the damn roach. Anyway, we were so occupied when Jati 103 got hit.

Wham! It was like a sledgehammer hit the ground. The house shook and we smelled ozone. Then the telephone wire began to buzz. A sparkling ball of discharging electricity passed down the wire in slow motion, maybe a foot from my elbow. It took at least three seconds for it to pass down the wire from the ceiling to the phone jack, where it exploded in blue flame.

It was way better than King Roach for excitement, however briefly it lasted.

Those storms in Sumatra were like storms in the mountains. The cloud comes right down to the trees and the lightning just pounds out of it. There is no flickering, no peeling crack, no counting seconds… just wham. Flash, crack and destruction in a single moment of awe.

I’ve seen a tree blown apart in the Sierra’s. At ten thousand feet in the mountains you’re part of the storm. Lightning damaged trees litter the high passes and ridges, and huge rocks are blown apart. Lightning has much more to do with erosion than it’s given credit for.

Let’s take a look at lightning, and tornadoes and see if we can’t make sense of it all.

Electric Earth May 1, 2017October 3, 2017

Trailer Park Cosmology – 3

Chapter Five – The Summer Thermopile

Even consensus science acknowledges a super-cell thunderstorm is electric. They often liken it to a battery, where immense static charge builds as it sweeps over the land, and winds internally stir water and ice.

Convection cells of warm moist air rise into frigid layers of the stratosphere, causing condensation towers with anvil tops. Winds rise and fall carrying rain and hail, and occasionally twist into vortexes that drop to the ground and scour the scrim of humanity from their path.

These are effects of temperature and pressure in the act of convection we are told.

Baloney.

classicsupercell The proper electrical analogy for a super-cell storm is a thermopile. Actually, it’s not an analogy, it’s what it is.

A thermopile is a thermo-electric circuit that you’ve probably seen in use. Plug-in-the-cigarette-lighter ice coolers made for cars use the thermo-electric effect. Look it up if your curious, we’ll only need to talk about the basics.

Thermocouple_circuit_Ktype_including_voltmeter_temperature.svg Thermo-couples are an instrument to measure temperature that use the thermo-electric effect. It’s a circuit that couldn’t be simpler. All it takes is two, or more wires of different conductivity connected in series. When current is passed through, a temperature difference arises at the junction of the wires. Or reverse that – heat the wires, and generate a current. The effect can also be made with solid state materials in a manner very similar to photo-voltaic solar cells.

Current generation from thermo-electric effect.

The different electrical properties of the dissimilar materials create a temperature difference – one conductor chills and the other heats up in the presence of current; or vice versa, current is produced by a temperature difference.

Full stop and allow me to repeat that. Current is produced by a temperature difference. Temperature is a consequence of electrodynamics. There are all kinds of things one can delve into about temperature and radiation and how it’s transported by conduction and convection, but the bottom line is electricity – excited electrons. Most people don’t think of it that way, and they should.

There are three related mathematical relationships that describe the conversion of current to heat and heat to current in terms of a circuit, called the Seebeck, Peltier and Thomson effects. The differences are not important – they describe different conditions and aspects of the same thing. Current produces heat, and heat produces current, provided the right dissimilar materials are properly arranged in the circuit.

The current-temperature relationship is precisely understood. Properly calibrated thermo-couples are used to detect the slightest temperature differences in every kind of scientific and industrial application, as well as to measure the most extreme temperatures.

The relevance to a thunderhead is in the central updraft core of the storm, which becomes a thermo-couple circuit. It’s a flow of wind bearing ionic matter – water vapor is one, and surface dust is another – which produces a current.

The updraft rapidly chills as it rises, becoming more saturated with condensate and more ionization. It also shrinks. The central updraft column gets denser as it rises, so the column has to shrink in volume, and this causes it to speed-up.

250px-Shelfcloud All of these changes to the state of the air in the updraft drastically change the conductivity of the air in the column. The updraft column is electrically no different than a wire of changing conductivity, which in the presence of current, will exhibit a thermo-electric effect.

It won’t maybe do it, it’s gonna do it. It has to do it. In the presence of a huge electric field, a wet, surface-wind rising into the cold dry stratosphere is going to cause a whopper electric current. If anyone doubts this, go look at a thunderstorm.

When there is a sequence of several conductors of different conductivity in series, the thermo-electric effect can be amplified by adding more junctions. This is called a thermopile. It’s several thermo-couples connected together.

A super-cell thunderstorm is a thermopile. It has more than one ionization event and each one changes the column’s conductivity in a feedback that increases current and amplifies ionization.

The rising central updraft ionizes where the moisture is saturating and condensing, or freezing, at specific temperature layers. All around the column is a shear zone between it and the surrounding air, and this is where the ions go to collect. The shear zone is an interface – a dielectric barrier that attracts charged species to it.

Have you ever seen llamas in a field? They always stand at the fence, because they are like guard dogs protecting their perimeter. Charge does the same thing. It flows to the interface, like a llama runs to the fence. And if there is a hole in the fence it leaks out.

There is a perception of a charged species being an independent particle that will immediately be attracted to the first oppositely charged particle it finds and neutralize. Plasma won’t do that. It acts as a coherent fluid, organized by electric field. It seeks balance in an equi-potential layer transverse to the electric field, so it spills out from the walls of the column and forms ‘sheets’, which is what is detected in thunderstorms: ‘sheets’ of charged species.

noaaelectrical-charge-in-storm-clouds They actually have more complex geometry than a ‘sheet’. They organize into plasma coronas that actively spit out electrons and ions in channeled currents. Coronas have a geometry and produce effects that depend on the polarity of the charged species mix.

The channels of discharge they create explain every aspect of a super-cell thunderstorms. Coronas explain rain, downdrafts, tornadoes and lightning. They explain cloud-to-ground lightning and positive lightning; intra-cloud lightning and inter-cloud lightning. They explain sprites, elves and gnomes – electrical discharges to space that are the Earth’s equivalent to a solar flare, caused by the same thing – coronas.

They explain the shape of wall clouds, beaver-tails, meso-cyclones and anvils. They explain things I haven’t even heard of yet, but before this week is out I will read an article about some aspect of a thunderstorms I didn’t know, and it will explain that too.

Because this is the electric model of a thunderstorm it’s closer to the truth. It’s not that convection doesn’t occur, it does. But convection is heat transfer and that is fundamentally electric, like everything else.

Heat is atoms getting excited, which is a purely electrical thing. Add heat to a volume of atoms and they will spread out and try to cool down. They prefer a state of rest. But if you contain that volume, bottle it up so it can’t use more space, the pressure and temperature rise. Pressure is the result of the excited atoms trying to push outward, but being confined from doing so. Pressure and temperature are intimately related as physical expressions of electrodynamics.

Convection cells form like hot air balloons. Imagine big balloons of warm air with invisible envelopes all jostling together and rising. When they begin to form, electro-dynamic forces have already been at work. Solar radiation and heat from the land warmed the air in the first place. The air carries an ambient ionic charge. As they rise they ionize more as moisture in the air condenses.

It’s been known since the beginning of the twentieth century, that a fast-moving charged particle will cause sudden condensation of water along its path. In 1911, Charles Wilson used this principle to devise the cloud chamber so he could photograph the tracks of fast-moving electrons.

In 2007, Henrik Svensmark published a theory on galactic cosmic ray influence on cloud formation, and later demonstrated his theory in a cloud chamber at Cern, demonstrating certain cloud formations are catalyzed by cosmic rays ionizing the atmosphere.

These are examples of ionization causing condensation. Let’s postulate condensation causes ionization too.

Water vapor condensing into droplets self-ionize into cations and anions. In the hugely building electric field of a thunderstorm, they ions are torn apart as they form, filling the rising air with charged species. This condensation event forms the first corona, a negative corona around the central updraft with charge density concentrated in the lower clouds where condensation first occurs.

290px-Chaparral_Supercell_2 Another corona forms higher. This is the anvil top, caused by another ionization event, when the water freezes to ice. The ionic mix here is different and a positive corona is the result. It has a different shape, being a broad diameter and less dense in terms of charge density.

The coronas are the thermopile’s different current junctions, where charge bleeds out into a corona, just as it would from a power line if the insulation is damaged. Atmosphere is a leaky insulator. It’s the strength of the electric field that gives the storm it’s shape.

And once this motor gets started – the conveyor belt of wet wind in the updraft keeps rev’ing as charge density builds. The rain curtain and downdraft are the same current looping and dumping hydrolyzed charge in the form of rain at the exhaust of the updraft.

It’s a looping current from ground to atmosphere, and back to ground, in a continuously changing conductive path through several temperature regimes – a thermopile.

And so builds the strength of the corona, until it spits electrons that avalanche into lightning bolts. If conditions are right, a charged corona will lower towards the ground, abating it’s lightning to send downwards a twisting tendril of plasma, while stirring ground winds below into a vortex. A tornado is born of a corona.

Coronas develop unipolar winds. Where charge density is low, the corona can’t make lightning, but it still spits electrons that drift towards ground. The drift region of a corona creates winds as drifting electrons drag ions and neutral matter along. Downdraft, inflow and updraft winds result.

In the above diagram, a point electrode generates a corona opposed to a plate electrode connected to ground, with a gap in between. This is a similar circuit to a storm except the corona in the clouds would not have the geometry of a point electrode, but likely a flattened toroidal shape.

The region in the gap labelled drift region, channels of current are created based on the charge density of the region of corona from which it radiates. The outer edges where charge density and electric field tension are lowest, channels form electric, or unipolar winds.

Sudden and intense down-bursts are highly mysterious to atmospheric scientists and they attribute them to density bombs – pockets of dense heavy air that rapidly sink from the clouds. These violent downdrafts will slap airliners from the sky. They aren’t density bombs – they are unipolar winds.

The entire morphology of a thunderstorm is explained by a thermopile circuit with leaky insulation. But that isn’t all it is. In Electric Earth Theory, there is a more significant meaning.

The looping circuit of a super-cell is a weak form of electrical expression known as a coronal loop. Coronal loops are the result of the corona’s themselves moving relative to the plate electrode. The differential movement creates an offset between the center of charge density in the sky versus the center of charge density on the ground, distorting the electric field. It’s a dog chasing a cat that can never catch-up – negative chasing positive polarity in a wave.

The result is it bends the current into a loop. It goes up in a flowing discharge of current and comes down, energy expended and recombined into rain. If charge builds enough, though, the loop breaks out into a fully realized discharge. The current has broken through the dielectric barrier of the atmosphere to splash charge into space. On the Sun we call them Solar Flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections. On Earth we call them Sprites, Elves and Gnomes.

So, here we are in the world of plasma. Double layers, Alfven waves, z-pinches and corona – it happens in our everyday lives as much as it does on the surface of the Sun – because it’s all the same thing.

Prominence_(PSF) So too, we have symmetry. Not the artificial symmetry of mathematical equations and categories consensus science keeps force fitting to Nature, but Nature’s true symmetry of nested fractal repetition.

This why we can be confident it’s true. Such organization and harmonic resonance between phenomena across all orders of scale is not the result of random anything. It’s the result of electricity.

The same phenomena is found on any planetary body that carries an internal current that forms an electromagnetic field. The coronal loops are ultimately caused by the voltage between the magnetosphere and Telluric currents below Earth’s crust, just as they occur above and below the photosphere of the Sun and in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.

As above, so below… the ancients knew what was going on and they weren’t just talking about the sky. They were talking about below the ground, too.

The electrical stress across the layers of atmosphere and crust is charge building on layers of dielectric, which is what a capacitor is. A storm is an expression of capacitor discharge. If clever technicians made a high voltage capacitor with a fluid dielectric over a grounded flat plate dielectric they would see coronal loops form, I’ll bet.

Tornadoes are a harmonic fractal repetition of the super-cell storm as a whole. They are nested coronal loops inside the bigger loop of the storm. Because they are smaller and generate from an intense charge density region of the corona, the energy is more concentrated.

Look again at the image of a solar coronal loop and see there is a smaller loop of higher intensity. This is the effect of an embedded harmonic repetition; and that is what a tornado is to the storm it’s born from. But, as always it’s more complicated than that. We’ll delve deeper into tornadoes next to complete the picture.

Electric Earth April 25, 2017October 3, 2017

Trailer Park Cosmology – 2

Chapter Three – Uncle Smith

If rolling stones gather no moss, my Uncle Smith was a rock-slide. Not kinetically – he always seemed very calm – but emotionally, living the moment in a state of pure joy.

When I was a child in the sixties, Smith lived and traveled the National Parks in a Streamline travel-trailer towed behind a Dodge pick-up. He took his wife, Mildred, and a small dog.

He was a seventy-plus year-old, free-spirit, when the Beatles wore matching page-boy haircuts and suits – in other words, even when ‘rebels’ helplessly conformed more obviously than normal, Smith was authentically weird.

He was old and retired, living on a pension from the time I could remember. I physically outgrew him before I reached puberty. Built like a wiry elf, he weighed about ninety pounds, with more hair in his ears than anywhere else.

He was blind in one eye. His wire-rimmed glasses had the bad eye fogged, but were so dirty and scratched you couldn’t tell. The eye was poked-out by a tree branch, he claimed, while chasing a bear from camp one night in the woods. He had only aspirin and cotton-balls to catch the draining fluid, while he slept in a tent until daylight. He said he slept – I don’t know how – the bear alone would have kept me up.

Smith was actually my great uncle, my Grandmother’s brother on Dad’s side. Dad was born in 1910, and I in ‘57, so there’s some generation gap at play. Lord knows when Smith was born, but he grew up at a time when pipe-organs outnumbered cars, sometime after the ‘War between the States’.

On the subject of pipe organs, that was his occupation back in the day – organ tuner. Not a cleanse-your-colon, fitness guru you’ll find if you ‘Google’ that term today, but a pipe-organ tuner.

There were not many of them even fifty years ago – Smith may have been the last. In any case, he never voluntarily retired. Pipe-organs did.

Pipe organs are the only musical instrument that can’t be taken to the shop for tuning. They need a building to hold them up, so, Smith got used to travel. Eventually, the number of vaudeville, bawdy houses and churches with pipe organs dwindled as the century ticked away. Smith got a travel-trailer and kept driving with Mildred and the dog.

He’d take the job of Camp Host in National Parks where they’d stay the season, then visit kin in the weeks between odd-jobs at the handful of Mormon temples still using pipe organs. He was always on a continuous roam, Mildred and the dog with him, or not. At some point in my youth, the dog quit showing up.

He followed the seasons through a circle of his favorite haunts that ranged the entire west. Oak Creek, Sedona and Apache Junction were favorite camps on the Arizona leg of his loop. There is a cluster of family in Tucson, a good VA hospital, and our trailer park for a place to stay, so we were on his route.

Most of his waking hours he spent at a workshop in the back of the Dodge beneath a camper shell. It was a complex and messy workshop from his days roaming the country tuning organs. Besides the carpentry and machining tools required for pipe organ maintenance, there were automotive tools, and everything for the Streamline RV. Except for food, Smith carried everything he needed with him.

Because it was what he liked to do, he spent most of his time tinkering in the workshop. One thing he made was a bellows from wood, leatherette and brass tacks, with a rolled sheet-metal nozzle and marble for a check valve. He originally made them for tuning pipe organs, because he needed a way to blow air through the pipes to get sound.

The bellows also worked marvelous with a fireplace, and he continued to make them long after the last pipe organ wheezed. We got several for those chilly, sub-100 degree days we lit the fire-place in Tucson.

While Smith worked at the narrow workbench on the tailgate of his truck, work piece in a vise bolted to the bumper, I helped him. At that time in my life, adults were generally telling me to shut-up, or go away. Smith asked for my thoughts, encouraging me to join him in whatever he was doing and talk. He was always interested to listen, and interesting to listen to.

Smith’s pipe organ days must have been something. He took my Father to Chicago with him in the later days of Prohibition. Drinking establishments bloomed in Chicago like nowhere else on Earth back then, because they were illegal. Nothing makes business boom better than making it illegal, and Chicago was ground zero for illegal booze. Dad was about twenty, and while Smith tuned bawdy house organs, Dad got a job helping manage an A&P store.

I asked my Father about those days once – I mean Speakeasy’s and Al Capone – he was right there – I wanted his ‘Forest Gump’ account.

I learned more than I wanted about A&P’s. Capone and the gangsters he only remembered reading about in the papers. All he said about Speakeasy’s was, “We called them clubs”.

That’s as much as I got. But Dad had a butterfly tattooed to the inside of his right arm he never spoke about. Something so out-of-place with the straight-up Father I knew, it had to be from those days of his youth in the Chicago “clubs”.

And I think it strange it was a butterfly, given my own obsession with them now.

Smith told stories about the war. And I mean – The War: World War I. The best I heard involved him and a driver, he said, inadvertently crossing enemy lines. They were in France carrying some communication, or moving from one place to another for a reason I don’t recall, and suddenly they realized the uniforms around them were different.

He said they turned around and hauled out of there before anyone noticed their uniforms were different too.

I try to picture such a scene. It has a ‘Three Stooges’ element to it that, along with Smith’s mischief, makes the story less credible. But then, stranger things have happened.

I can’t picture Smith holding a gun in anger. Perhaps he never did, but he surely witnessed the darkest side of man. Though he never told me anything gruesome about the war, I imagine he saw things that would curdle blood. He only spoke about funny things, like the French he learned to parlez local girls. He probably didn’t want to remember the other parts. That’s sometimes how people are who have seen the darkest – they only want light shining through.

I remember most talking about the outdoors with Smith. He was the first adult who shared that passion with me; alp-en-glow in a mountain valley, bears at night, panning for gold… the adventure of wild places been, or to go.

One adventure of Smith’s nearly killed him. I was about thirteen and Smith was edging towards eighty. An older brother suggested we take a family hike. There was a miscalculation, or misread map involved somehow – I don’t remember, but the trail was well over twenty miles of rugged, steep terrain. In the mountains around here, that’s a hike better suited for two days, not one. Smith, of course, insisted on going.

The hike began beautifully. Crisp, chilly air at nine thousand feet on a bright spring morning. The creek was still sheathed in ice. As we crossed the stream on icy rocks, Smith slipped and broke through. He twisted his ankle and soaked his pants. He wouldn’t turn back though, said he was fine, just had a little limp to make him take it slow.

Of course, the pain and inflammation took awhile to build, and in the meantime we kept going. As he slowed down more and more, the older ones stayed back with him and the younger of us went ahead. Smith seemed to be managing, so there was no reason to hold the young gun’s back. My brother and I separated from the group descending fast down switchbacks. I still remember how it burned my legs.

The sun went down miles before we reached the end of the trail. There was a fortunate full moon, because we had no flashlight. The moonlight gave an ethereal beauty to the canyon grasses shifting in the breeze. The trail from this point was easy ground, but it wound in hairpin turns through side canyons such that it took a mile of walking to advance a hundred yards.

Walking a mile to arrive at a point where you can throw a rock to the place you started is demoralizing. Mile after mile, every canyon looked the same, until we joked that we’d entered a nightmare.

“Imagine, if you will, a trail that never ends. Under a silver moon of surreal beauty, these unfortunate souls find it leads forever nowhere, because they have entered … The Twilight Zone.” That was the nature of our talk.

The final section of trail required a push over a ridge, then a long corkscrew of winding switchbacks to the end of the park road. It was such a relief to get down. Our feet were hot-irons, but my brother Rich also suffered toe-jam. It happens going downhill if your nails aren’t trimmed short. The pain is like bamboo shoots and will cause the affected toenail to turn green and eventually fall out.

Our glee at trail’s end was suddenly clouded by the realization there was no phone at the end of the road, and the Park gate was locked until morning. I think it was another four pain-filled miles to the gate and a telephone.

Sometime three, or four hours later my older brothers and sister-in-law came down, and Dad went to pick them up while I soaked in a hot shower. Smith wasn’t with them.

Still high on the mountain, he decided he needed to rest his leg, so he sat down and lit a fire. Then he decided the fire was warm and his leg was not working, and insisted on staying the night. My brothers were unsure about leaving him, but it was at a point of leave him, or spend the night with him. They gave him extra sweaters and came down.

In the morning we were at the gate when it opened and immediately set up the trail. Smith met us at the top of the switchbacks – almost down already. He was a little stiff, black-faced and dirty from crawling into the campfire coals to keep warm, but remarkably cheery.

It was below freezing that night. Not many octogenarians would have made it, or even attempted the hike. In spite of his fall, Smith knew his own capabilities and how to deal with the situation. The experience to him was of so little drama, he was embarrassed he put anyone to worry.

Had anyone suggested the following week to do the same hike again, Smith would have been the first to go. Probably by himself, because no one was making that suggestion.

Smith was unconventional. It’s the most endearing and memorable aspect of him. He lived on the fringe; happy, law-abiding and respectable, no man’s but his own. His example resonates through the family.

My take on life included a “Smithsonian” perspective forever-more. Uncle Smith’s alternative lifestyle seemed more agreeable than convention offered. Doing things mattered more than having things, to Smith. If given a mansion, I don’t think he would have known what to do with it. Anything more than what fit in his pick-up was too much.

Lifestyle isn’t the issue, though. A curious mind, empathy for the ways of others, minding ones own business and getting on with life in the fashion best suited for you is the point. Smith was a great example of those qualities.

We all have unique perspectives. From a trailer park, the perspective is closer to the edge of the lens, so to speak, and there is less distortion to reality. Layers and layers of social obligation and expectation are stripped away in a trailer park. So long as you keep the weeds down around the place, you’re socially acceptable.

Once that hurdle is met, one can do as they please. It’s classic Smithsonian. The night sky is brighter, more vivid and detailed from the top of a mountain than it is from a city. Such is the view of reality from the trailer park.

I’m actually a neoclassic Smithsonian. I lack the rigor for his austere simplicity, but ideologically I’m on the same page. It allows me a fresh take on Nature. Let’s now examine some notions about Nature from the trailer park perspective.

Chapter Four – The Chicken Hath No Egg

Everything being electric, phenomena scale infinitely, repeating fractal patterns within fractal patterns. The universe is a Mandelbrot Set of embedded repetitions. It has little to do with fancy mathematics. It’s cellular automata progression of self-same order over infinite magnitudes, producing similar effects at different scales.

The fractal forms are never exact reflections because they are modified by charge density and phase changes. Whether a hot plasma is at work, or a cold plasma we can’t see, the degree of ionization, relative polarity, charge density, electric field strength and field geometry are the things that influence most. Phase of material, whether liquid, gas, solid, or airborne water and dust; the mediums response to electromagnetic forces has relevance to the effect.

Proof of the concept is in the fractal forms that repeat over orders of magnitude in scale. To recognize the patterns becomes easy if the consensus brainwashing is ignored and a correct perspective is used.

Trailer Park Cosmology requires a change in how Earth is viewed in the first place. Our sight is limited, and therefore our perception. The “blue marble” of astonishing beauty we see in spacecraft photos only shows the reflection of visible light. Earth is much bigger, reaching all the way to the Moon with its electromagnetic sheath.

The Geomagnetic field should rightly be viewed as the boundary of the Earth. Looking at only the blue marble is like seeing the nucleus of an atom without electrons. The picture, and therefore perception of it, is incomplete.

The Earth is a torus of electromagnetic energy orbiting in waves of solar wind. The blue marble spins inside, shielded from life threatening radiation by shells of magnetic field. Those shells induce current from the solar wind that emit coronal light at the poles – the aurora is a physical tell about the electricity in the Solar System that science has completely missed the significance of until recently.

The Earth is like the electromagnet inside a generator. It must be excited by current to manifest a magnetic field.

Magnetism is a consequence of electric current, it cannot come into existence on its own. It is the product of electricity flowing through dielectric matter. Mathematically, flowing a given quantity of current through a given dielectric barrier yields a given magnetic field. It’s like flowing water through a chiller to freeze it to ice. It’s phase change of energy – electricity to magnetism, like phase change of matter – water to ice, with the dielectric being the chiller that takes away heat.

That’s a simple analogy, but helps to define the relation of electricity to magnetism – that they are two sides of the same coin.

Magnetized rock and man-made magnets are the result of current that aligned the atomic dipoles of the matter into coherency, lining them up in the same direction so they are magnetically focused. The magnet keeps this focus as static, or Remanent magnetism until another electrical force changes the dipole orientation.

Man-made magnets are created by exposing ceramics to high voltage current. Natural magnetism, found in magnetite and load stones, are the result of past lightning strikes, or some similar exposure to current. Magnetic remnants of meteors were exposed to current at some point as well, perhaps as they entered Earth’s influence.

The problem with consensus scientific theory on the Earth’s magnetic field is that it’s predicated on the Earth’s core being a magnet whose spin creates the Geomagnetic field. The idea is like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. To mix metaphors, it’s not a chicken-and-egg problem, but a chicken without an egg.

For the last hundred years they’ve said the Earth’s core is like a bar magnet, yet they can’t explain how the core of the Earth became a magnet. Their models also can’t explain why, if Earth’s core is an electrically static magnet, it’s magnetic field varies so much. It acts like an electromagnet, and that requires current. Without an internal current, Earth would be a dead hulk like Mars.

This fact is only recently being contemplated and beginning to be verified by surveys. Fast streams of magma below Earth’s crust have been detected that betray the electric current. It should be intuitively obvious, but that isn’t the way of science. Reduction before deduction is the name of their game, which means trees before forests, dumb before wisdom, etc. It’s an echo chamber of bad ideas.

Current has to be flowing through the interior of the Earth from the poles. There is no verifiable physical explanation for the Geomagnetic field without accepting, as fact, there is an excitation current internal to the blue marble that causes it to act as an electromagnet.

With current internal to the blue marble, and current in the ionosphere that surrounds the atmosphere, the layers in between are like plates in a capacitor with charge on either side. These plates, the atmosphere, and crust of the blue marble, are in charge equilibrium with the internal and external flows of energy.

Because the plates are charge neutral – the atmosphere and crust of the Earth always carry charge, but the vast predominance of matter in these regions is neutral – we live in an equi-potential layer that causes us to perceive equi-potential as the norm.

It’s not. The universe is filled with charged plasma and electric current. The ‘Goldilocks zone’ we occupy is a very special place. It’s special because it’s charge neutral, and balanced, or otherwise things would fly apart. Even so, it’s not without electrical drama. We live inside an electrical circuit.

Thunderstorms and hurricanes race through the atmosphere in the tropics, discharging accumulated atmospheric charge. Volcanoes and seismic zones stripe between the poles like the spiraling seams of a baseball, betraying the flow of current beneath the crust, and discharging to surface on occasion.

Given some change in the Solar System’s electrical environment, these layers become the most energetic. A change in electric field between internal and external currents stresses the equilibrium of the dielectric plates in between. We see it in the atmosphere every day.

In the course of understanding Earth’s crust, it becomes apparent the surface of the Earth was formed by winds and arcs of electricity more closely associated with the planet Jupiter than the Earth we know today. There is evidence for atmospheric coronal discharges causing gargantuan lightning bolts, surface conductive arcs, dielectric barrier discharges, sputtering discharges and global, uni-polar winds of supersonic velocity that fed vortex storms of immense size and energy. In proportion to Earth’s size, the storms were similar to the giant storm on Jupiter known as The Great Red Spot.

It also becomes evident those same forces are at work today in Earth’s atmosphere and lithosphere, creating the same effects only far milder. Whatever events caused the continents to form was an external influence to the Earth. The Earth’s response was no different then, from how it responds to external influence now, only the magnitude has changed.

This is how Earth looks from the trailer park. It’s because I watch a lot of thunderstorms – can’t help but notice since the roof leaks. Thunderstorms are the result of Earth’s electrical currents. They are themselves coronal loops.

Thunderstorms are a consequence of the dielectric breakdown of the atmosphere as it is subjected to an intensified electric field. Since we know more about them than we know about the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, or coronal storms on the Sun, they are the best place to begin understanding coronal dynamics on Earth.

Electric Earth April 9, 2017October 3, 2017

Trailer Park Cosmology – 1

Introduction

It’s time to begin this book, because I finally know the ending. I can’t tell you how important that is. Writing without an outline is a great way to exercise creativity, but it’s no way to write a serious book. This is a serious book.

I’m breaking the rule and writing without an outline, though. I know the ending, so its okay, but I need to amble and divert this message with humor and introspection. I can’t write without relying on humor, and that is something to do with the power of the message. It wants softening to pretty it up; some window dressing to blur the vision of hell it presents, for surely, some will see it as that.

Others are going to see beauty and know there is nothing to fear. You’re the people I’m talking to – you have a sense of humor. That’s what those awakening to reality need more than anything else.

The core of the book’s message is the answer to one of mankind’s Big Questions – how the surface of the Earth got it’s shape. It’s the one key piece in the jigsaw of the Cosmos that is tangible and readily available to us.

Science was born of the pursuit to understand Nature, yet no one can deny Nature poses as many enigmas today as it did when we began. Every scientific ‘answer’ turns out to be a guess that begs more questions. Why is that?

We are going to turn that around in this book, and start looking at answers to questions no one’s been asking. When answers to unasked questions start popping up everywhere, and you can see things with your own eyes, you will say, “Hot damn… this is real!”

Religion, myth, and iconography from the past echo a belief in catastrophic events that flooded the land, glowed in the sky and rained fire. Some of them are related as eyewitness accounts. Is it possible the ancient portrayal of celestial battles and thunderbolts of the Gods is true?

Schools, government and private institutions brim with scholars who say those myths are fantasy, because they believe tectonics tumbled Earth’s hard crust like a clothes dryer – very, very slowly. Could they be replacing one fantasy with another?

Today, a slew of self-righteous environmentalists, catastrophists and intelligent design theorists attempt new interpretations that involve meteors, solar storms and CO2. Are they thinking out of the box, or forcing results to fit their theories?

These questions can be answered. And now that I can settle the issue, I feel it’s urgent to get this out, so everyone can relax and focus on other important things.

I know, that sounds preposterous. You’re thinking, get the tin foil and make this guy a hat – another internet genius-in-his-own-mind. Well that may be, but what I’m going to show you is all based on real electromagnetic effects – things we can see and experience. I present visual evidence with my best explanation of its cause. This is a study in natural philosophy, one that brings cause and effect in the world around us into coherent focus. It’s your decision whether to believe what you see with your own eyes.

The patterns in nature aren’t some miraculous, unknowable coincidence of randomness. There is cause and effect in every pattern, from rocks and bird feathers, to clouds and lightning. The patterns reflect, fracture and nest in fractal repetition across scales from the atom to the entire cobweb of galactic clusters that make-up the universe. The face of Earth and all of the planets and moons were shaped by the same unified force of Nature – electricity. So too, all of the stars, galaxies, and odd, flickering, spooky things out there.

I’ll confess right now, I don’t have all of that figured out. Other people are covering those aspects of cosmology we call, Electric Universe Theory. My part only pertains to the face of the planet – how the continents were made, specifically; and how the same forces at work long ago are still at work in the environment today. But that’s a pretty Big Question in the panoply of Big Questions, certainly closest to us in terms of proximity and impact to our lives.

The land and its form, weather, and climate is the environment we live in, so it’s the best starting point to discuss all the Big Questions and put our lives in proper context with the cosmos. I call the collective work, Electric Earth Theory.

I’m going to tell you the ending for this book right up front so you know I’m being square and not just withholding for suspense. The very next chapter will describe how the continents were formed and the physics behind it, in a concise overview. But I’m writing a long book, so there has to be something to keep your interest through the next – however many – chapters.

So, big picture first, then we’ll work our way into the details. That’s ass-backward from how I figured it out, and writing this gives me a way to look from a new perspective, which will help to refine the theory. You’ll have to keep reading to get the details, but it’s astonishingly simple.

Also, it occurs to me I’ve acquired some insight few people in today’s world can lay claim to, so who I am might be of future interest. After-all, what I’m going to tell you will expand your imagination. It has to for you to comprehend the reality it presents. Forces of nature few have ever contemplated will be exposed.

Your getting it straight from the trailer park were I live, which is a pretty humble perspective. An unvarnished, earthy reflection on what is really important, which is a perspective I have because I don’t spend my time like most. I’ve taken to a semi-hermetic lifestyle that allows me to contemplate the Big Questions in the sublime quietude of a retiree’s mobile home park.

I’m not unique. There are others unlocking a Pandora’s box of neglected science. The mystery of the Holy Trinity – dielectricity, electricity and magnetism, is under scrutiny by modern-day Faraday’s using home-made ferro-fluids and powerful magnets. They are able to comprehend where formal science fails because they see with the wisdom and curiosity of fresh eyes and open minds, instead of dead-eyed conformance with the establishment.

Others are revealing how gravity is electric, how currents flow in space, how galaxies are fed and how stars are made. The revelations extend down to the atom and the nature of matter, the ether and how electricity is the grand unifying energy in Nature. We will explore some of these folks and their work.

So, I’ll dribble out the geo-morphological details along with a bunch of other stuff. This book will present (at least it will when edited) both a coherent look at nature and describe the elegant simplicity of its form, while I rant about some of the establishment’s monumentally stupid theories, and tell you some stories from my life – this last being for humor. In context, my theory and ravings might leave a trail of crumbs for future psychiatrists to ponder what kind of brain damage I’m struck with.

I will also reach out into realms I don’t understand, but strive to. These will be another source of entertainment and allow me a way to build suspense. There are mysteries down the road to keep you reading.

Along those lines, we’ll look deep into the past when ancient people on this Earth knew what I’m going to tell you. They left scratches in rock and stories about dragons, because they were trying to pass-on important information. We’re digging to the heart of the story of mankind, really, to take a holistic view at what we are, within the bounds of known physics.

We’ll look at arcane things like the Eye of the Sahara and discover how it was made, and why there are sea horses in Lake Titicaca. We’ll look at other planets in the Solar System and discover possible answers for anomalies that have never been adequately explained. We will certainly touch on Dinosaurs, and perhaps UFO’s, crop circles and Bigfoot.

One could easily call the theory and speculations I present the consequence of too much time on my hands, with perhaps a little too much vodka. But if you actually look at what I’m going to show, you will come to understand, because it is all anchored in observable nature and real, verifiable physics.

My observations are undeniably present and verifiable. It’s the interpretation that matters, and my approach works because nature is a simple thing. That what I present will be recognized by a few during my lifetime is all I expect, but it will outlast me and come to be understood with greater fidelity some time in the future. I hope my grandchildren will be proud.

Chapter 1 – Coronal Storms and the Violent Artist In Them

Earth’s continents lay like sheets of clay smeared over a baseball. The ball is a layer of basalt, covered by oceans two-thirds around. Over the rest, basalt is covered by cratons, or sheets of granite, that are in turn covered by layers of sediment and volcanic extrusion. These are the continents.

Conventional science holds to the notion these continents obey plate tectonics, which was arrived at by an interpretation of their shapes. The west coast of Africa seemed to nestle with the east coast of South America so well, they must have once been together. This reasoning led to other theories about how this came to be, and now plate tectonics is a virtual given in geo-science.

A piece of advice: don’t ever pick a trained geo-scientist to be on a competitive jigsaw puzzle team.

If one actually tries to fit the continental shapes together, like a jigsaw puzzle, they really don’t fit anywhere, except for the Africa/South America coast line. But, there are patterns that repeat all over the globe that resemble each other in uncanny ways, and much more precisely than the one piece that fits the Uniformitarian Bible.

I don’t think it’s because they haven’t noticed. Good Lord, Google Earth is free. Geologists aren’t like the proverbial weatherman who never looks out the window, are they? They must have noticed. I think it’s that their theories can’t provide an explanation, so they pretend the patterns don’t exist. But secretly, I have to believe they feel totally confused.

The patterns are there because they were formed by Coronal Storms that electroplated the face of the planet. The continents are the result of volcanoes bubbling stuff to the surface and coronal storms welding stuff on top. The repeating forms occur because electricity is a fractal phenomena. It repeats self-same heteromac forms in the same way harmonics emerge in sound.

That in a nutshell, is how the continents formed. Okay, I guess a little more detail is warranted, but some of you already know what I mean… right?

It’s the same thing that makes solar flares, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, and other things people may, or at least should already recognize as coronal storms – or sun spots, or their prominence, called coronal loops. So let’s talk first about Corona. It’s one of my favorite beers.

I happened to be drinking one when I saw a coronal loop over my head. It was a strange cloud formation – huge in fact, spread across the entire southern sky. One of those high, thin layers of feathery cirrus formations making a coherent disc of concentric waves stretching maybe ten miles across.

It looked like a ray gun in space hit the outer atmosphere and rolls of concentric clouds spread out like waves in a pond, with interference patterns and delicate criss-cross standing waves embedded. Next to it, the same diameter, was a six-point star of horsetail filaments with a rising center. It looked like a compass rose. The two were obviously a pair, one the conjugate of the other. I suspect it was formed by a looping electric current that connected them to Earth.

Although I wouldn’t call it a storm, it was like the ghost of one advancing in a weather front moving over the area. The condensation was an ionization event, of the kind confirmed by Heinrich Svensmark in cloud chamber studies at CERN. Since it is a recent revelation that coronal loops have such significance to the environment, I took comfort in it’s confirming presence and savored my Corona while the rose flush of sunset lit the stunning clouds.

A corona is an electromagnetic plasma construct. That is, a self organized cloud of ionized gas in a high-potential electric field, where electrons are being stripped from atoms, leaving ions. Ions are charged gas molecules, or little clusters of atoms that define the species – oxygen, nitrogen, or hydrogen, say – that either have extra, or missing electrons, because the fast, free electrons flying about either attached themselves, or knocked another off, giving the species of whatever kind of gas it is, positive, or negative charge.

The free electrons continue to zip along the potential gradient of the field, knocking off more electrons and making more ions as long as the voltage stays high enough. It’s a domino effect. When the percentage of ionized species reaches about one percent of the ambient atmosphere, the result is a plasma. Plasma differs from neutral gas because it’s charged and behaves in response to electromagnetic influences.

Corona forms at interfaces. St Elmo’s fire is a form of corona that glows atop masts and steeples during thunderstorms. It’s because the supercharged electric field during a storm pools positive ions on the surface of the Earth, attracted to the highest and most narrow grounded points. There it glows, fizzes and spits as the activated plasma starts discharging.

Charge collects at an interface to create a corona because it’s like a seam between different fabrics. On either side is material of different dielectric property that the electric field spans across. The dielectric wants to keep a balanced electric field across it, so it pushes positive and negative charge in opposite directions until it accumulates at the seams.

But the seam has its own dielectric property because of surface tension and material differences that make it like a hill the charge can’t cross easily. Positive and negative charge lines up on either side of the hill forming what is called a double layer, where they face off like enemy soldiers in battle waiting for orders to attack, or in this case a big pulse in voltage to push them over. Positive accumulates on one side and negative on the other, in effect becoming plate electrodes, or in the case of narrow protrusions, point electrodes facing each other.

The corona is the massing of charge that forms a plasma sheath on the face of the electrode. It is the source of arcs and other forms of current discharge. The electrode itself doesn’t carry charge, it’s just the surface, or interface where charge collects. There is no need for a copper wire. This, by the way, is what baffles atmospheric scientists to this day – what generates arcs of lightning in thunderstorms. It’s a corona, but we’ll get into that later.

A coronal storm occurs when the Earth is put under electrical stress. That could be caused by Solar Wind, high energy cosmic rays, or a significantly large comet intruding to the inner Solar System. The events that cause coronal storms is something we’ll discuss more later, as well.

It’s effect on Earth is to compress the Earth’s electromagnetic field, charging its layers like a capacitor in a circuit. Ultimately, it energizes the atmosphere and lithosphere into layers of charge to the point they ionize into a partial plasma. Partial means some of the atmosphere and ground is still neutral, but an amount greater than one-percent is ionized.

To get a flavor for plasma, consider two types we all experience, lightning and flame. Flame is a partial plasma, or cold plasma, because not all the gas is ionized. Hot plasma in a lightning channel is a fully ionized gas.

In a flame, the oxidizing fuel emits ions but there is also a lot of neutral charge species caught-up with it, and it’s not in an intense electric field. Things aren’t moving very fast, so it waves around and gets blown in the wind, and the ions recombine very quickly into new gases like CO2 which extinguishes the flame in a short distance. Keep the wind away and it will conform to a more-or-less stable shape, however.

The lightning bolt, on the other hand, is a highly ionized channel in a high electric field and looks and acts differently. It ionizes air, heating it thousands of degrees across miles of sky in the blink of an eye. They are both plasma obeying the electric field, though to a different degree. At the cold end of the spectrum in a weak electric field, plasma behavior is flame-like, and at the hot end with a strong field, it’s a ray gun.

Under tremendous electrical stress, the atmosphere partially ionizes into coronal clouds that stratify in layers differentiated by velocity, pressure, temperature and electric charge. Energized by an electric field measured in billions of volts, facing each other like plate electrodes connected to a powerful battery, current flows across the gap.

Corona discharges current in different ways. There is lightning, or sparks of discharge in fully ionized channels. Then there are the glowing flames of discharge, like St. Elmo’s fire. And then there is dark discharge, which the eye can’t see.

All this current flowing from the corona interacts with the neutral species in the atmosphere to do some creative things, like whirlwinds and electro-kinesis, which is ionic wind caused by moving ions dragging neutral species with them. We use the effect in air ionizors and blade-less fans.

It can also machine surfaces by creating little puffs of discharge, called sputtering, that carve material away. We call it electro-dynamic machining (EDM), or etching when it’s used in manufacturing.

It also sticks things together, which we call electroplating and welding when we do it on purpose.

You see, almost every physical occurrence we will talk about here is something known about and used in applied science. We’ll not go into the details and complexities, and certainly not equations any further than needed to illustrate and give those interested a lead to follow. We won’t because I don’t know enough to go there. Getting the big picture doesn’t require it, though.

Electricity is confounding, so it’s no wonder it scares scientist bat-shit crazy. It does. They would rather wade through reams of equations than confront nature in its raw form. What is important to understand about electricity is that it scales, for all we know, infinitely. The spark from your finger and the five-mile long lightning bolt have the same morphology. So do humongous lightning bolts observed on Venus and Saturn. In every way they look and act the same, just at different scales and in different mediums.

If a tiny corona from a wire electrode under a few kilo-volt potential can circulate the air in a room, think of what one scaled up to global proportions in a field of over a billion volts would do. We are going to think about that next.

ALMA_observes_a_giant_sunspot_(1.25_millimetres) — Sunspot – top view

Armageddon

What it would do, and did, is build continents with screaming supersonic winds, electric arcs spanning thousands of miles, boiling, fuming magma that erupted in chains of strato-volcanoes, and lightning bolts that welded mountains and split the ground. We are talking coronal storms here, folks.

Sunspots are coronal storms, the Great Red Spot is a coronal storm, so we have examples to look at. Let’s look at what they are and how they act.

This is a sunspot in the first image. Sunspots are coronal storms in the Sun’s hot plasma environment. They can last from days to weeks, showing in pairs of opposite polarity and often in clusters. Pair polarities swap between north-south to south-north orientation with the Sun’s eleven year magnetic cycle. It’s been confirmed they have powerful downdrafts beneath them.

Now look at what comes out of them in the second image. Holy crap! You could throw Earth through that hoop. It’s called a coronal loop.

Now take a close look at the small, bright loop inside the giant arcs. I’m going to show you the same thing happened here on Earth.

First, we look at another coronal storm in the solar system to get a different perspective. The next image is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in a NASA color enhanced image. Looping clouds appear in the red, just below the white clouds.

These are coronal loops – they look like the Roman arches of an aqueduct. There are several, but the lower, right arch is very distinct where it dives into a doughnut shaped cloud that looks like a drain. On the other side it rises higher, pulling a pillar of orange cloud with it. There appear to be two layers of arches, or loops, one above the other.

This is consistent with what a loop on Earth should look like judging from the footprints left on the Colorado Plateau. Jupiter’s atmosphere is cold plasma and less ray gun-like than the Sun. It’s fluid and chemically diverse, like Earth’s atmosphere. Though Jupiter is a gas giant, and has no solid crust beneath the storm, the action of the storm system is sandwiched in a layer hydro-dynamically similar to the way Earth’s atmosphere is sandwiched between the ground and ionosphere.

Electrical compression and expansion of the boundary layers surrounding the storm, being sandwiched between strata above and below, and how that effects ionization in the region between appears to have a significant influence on the storm morphology. It’s worth noting that the Great Red Spot has been raging for centuries – as long a we’ve known about it. This image has a number of other features to discuss later, so we’ll see it again.

What makes it occur, at least in part, is a wave of polarity in the plasma. The wave of polarity stems from an offset between centers of charge distribution between the coronal cloud and ground. Since the ground is fixed, and the cloud isn’t, the offset is inevitable. The waveform, and it’s effects are governed by how the offset propagates as an Alfven Wave. The EM field, conforming to it, generates loops of current. In the hot plasma of the Sun, the rings build as current pushes outward, ultimately to break through the solar coronal atmosphere in a discharge, called a Solar Flare.

In the cold plasma atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, or Earth, the currents are not so high, are less collimated by magnetic flux and move much slower. The effects are seen in violent atmospheric winds and vortex storms.

On the ground, beneath one of these storms, what happens is depicted next. Beneath the updraft storm, the loop accelerates dusty wind to supersonic speed vertically through its eye, sweeping a pile of sediment beneath that forms a dome. On the downdraft side, the loop blows violent winds downward forming a crater-like depression. The winds are driven by electric current in a loop through the ground and the atmosphere. These dome and crater pairs are all over the world, but we’re going to look at North America first.

San Rafael Swell

This is San Rafael Swell in Utah, formed by an updraft, and the downdraft crater is next to it. Together they look like butterfly wings.

CL1 — Google Earth – San Rafael Swell is northern lobe

The Swell, or updraft dome is ringed by rows of flat-iron mountains that look like rows of sharks teeth. The downdraft crater is also ringed by sharks teeth, only they point outward. I call these dragons teeth, or triangular buttresses, created by standing shock waves from ionized supersonic wind. You will be shown proof that shock waves made them.

Also note, the crater’s rim to the east conforms with the Colorado River and its tributary. This is no coincidence, because the river’s path was formed due to the electromagnetic event. So to, the mountains interior to the crater – they are the footprint left from a strong electric current.

And opposing the fulgamite mountains in the center of the crater, are canyon-lands eating deeply into the dome.

San Rafael2 — Forested mountains are fulgamites in downdraft lobe – foreground; canyons are etched from the updraft dome – San Rafael Swell – background

banner5 — San Rafael Reef outlines the updraft dome like rows of shark’s teeth

astroutah2 — The reef is a windblown pressure ridge that displays harmonic reflections of shock waves

Now look how this pattern repeats, because we know these things like to cluster. Farthest left is the San Rafael Swell butterfly in Utah, then a pair for Monument Valley and Black Mesa, then the Chuska Mountains, Arizona and Zuni Mesa in New Mexico. Circulating the other way out-of-frame is a downdraft crater forming San Luis Valley, Colorado.

I could go on, but this is one cluster of similarly sized and shaped domes and depressions that formed the Colorado Plateau and central Rockies. The domes and depressions overlap older formations like new footprints over old, but the ones circled appear as the freshest, and apparently the last formations of the storm.

So what? Ovals on a map… who knows what’s really under those circles.

Those details have to wait, because it will take several chapters. The evidence is substantial, and has to do with mapping visual evidence of shock waves and supersonic winds, plus lightning, arcing, volcanic, EDM and flood features. Instead, for now, I’m going to show you something amazing. Back-up to a higher view, and you’ll see the pattern of the Great Red Spot in the following wind map derived from the orientation of wind formed mountains.

North America, shown sideways in the first image is annotated with tracing of supersonic wind and shock wave patterns clearly embossed on mountain features. The wind map displays wind patterns almost identical to the Great Red Spot, shown in the second image. The last image above is color enhanced and the shear zone between three circulating systems is marked in black. The same shear zone pattern appears in the first image, shown by heavy red lines.

The Spot is divided into multiple vortex counter-clockwise rotations, as is the Earth wind map, forming two major lobes, with three major inflows of vortex winds. One from the right, one from the left, and a slipstream flow from the right that curls over and down at the top, as if from the three points of a triangle.

Note the triangular positioned inflow winds in both images – Earth and Jupiter. This is a fractal element in a vortex formed by opposing winds. The location of the clustered coronal storms march along one side of the red division, the winds braiding their way up-and-down and around the storm system like crocheted yarn, making the ‘aqueduct’ structure in The Great Red Spot.

This is fractal repetition, in similar electromagnetic phenomena. The smaller coronal storms are embedded, or nested inside the larger one. Not convinced yet? Then let’s go small, and see what we find.

The next images are from the San Rafael Swell again, along the outer edge of the updraft dome. The Swell is about seventy miles across the long axis. Circled are butterfly wings along the rim of the Swell. They appear to be made by nested coronal loops that span the Swell instead of falling next to each other. The first two images are the updraft dome, which is 12 miles across. The next shows both updraft and downdraft. The final image is the downdraft crater, now farmland, approximately 20 miles across – an expression of fractal repetition.

Then there is this pretty little set of wings right between the wings of the San Rafael butterfly. These are only seven miles across, a self-same harmonic reflection one full order of magnitude smaller – another fractal repetition.

I count at least five layers of fractal repetition caused by coronal loops, covering three orders of magnitude in scale.

Coronal storms and coronal loops are verifiable stellar and planetary phenomena, and there is an abundance of morphological, geological and electrical evidence to support that it happened here on Earth. That is the path of discovery we are on and I guarantee it will yield answers to some Big Questions.

I’m also confident that forensic geologic study of the rocks beneath our feet will prove this to be true, eventually, once geologists start including some electrical engineering in their curriculum. As we go, I’ll try making predictions they can verify.

The continent of North America was made in this way by coronal storms, but wasn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a squall line that spread from pole to pole. Anodes, or positive electrodes in the circuit, are the continents of North and South America, with South America’s centered near Nazca, Peru.

Cathodes, or negative electrodes are the deep-sea trenches in the Caribbean and South Atlantic, and though it appears covered over, one is assumed in the Arctic, where the loops burned out of the Earth’s interior through the crust.

clean30 — Coronal storm system centered over the Colorado Plateau/Great Basin of North America

clean31 — Coronal loops arced through the crust in the Caribbean

clean32 — Coronal storm centered over Nazca, Peru

clean33 — Coronal Loops erupted through the crust in the Southern Sea

The face of Earth was shaped by winds and lightning and tsunamis the storm system created, dragging with it material from the sea floor, mantle and crust, and plating it at anode spots that grew into continents. It spread into roughly triangular shapes and thickened to the west as the Earth rotated beneath the storms, being generated by some extraterrestrial source, leaving their most lasting and indelible imprint in the mountain arcs, deserts and plateaus of west-central North and South America.

The other continents will be shown to be made the same way, only it gets a bit more complex. But now that you have the concept, it will be easier to discuss.

A Note to the Reader

This is a raw draft, although I’ve edited each paragraph several times. It will be edited again, and again for clarity, grammar and relevance before it publishes. New information, better graphic depictions and input from others will improve it over time. You can help. You’re comments and likes are welcome. There’s nothing bleaker than a dark room and keyboard on a sunny day, when no one seems to be out there.

Don’t worry about the typo’s unless it’s something very sinister, or foolish that needs immediate attention. Constructive input and any support will be appreciated.

Articles with richer technical detail and less fun are available at Thunderbolts.info and at this website for further reference. Bruce Leybourne and I are working on a true, no nonsense technical paper on the theory and our field investigations in Utah.

If all you have to say is I’m wrong and your right, please try to hold your keyboard because I’m already aware my theory will conflict with most people’s belief system. You don’t have to tell everyone unless you have something pertinent to add to this discussion and can back it up, respectfully, not in the comments, but linked.

As chapters are added, they will be moved to a Page, where the book takes form as a whole. That is the place to see the entire work in progress and make comment. Thank you for reading.

Electric Earth February 2, 2017October 3, 2017

Tornadoes – Cold, Dusty Plasma

People who witness a tornado never forget. They may recall awe and beauty, or awe and terror, depending on their vantage point. Either way, they will be awed and it will haunt them forever.

For many, it becomes an obsession. An obsession to watch, film, chase, drive beneath – a need to understand. Or else, an obsession to hide every time the wind howls.

A tornado is nature’s demon. Winds in rotation, tight as a knot, with a body and energy that give it life, coherency, and a dislike for trailer parks. Most terrifying of all, it will chase you down, suck you off the ground and spit you back naked, muddy and dead.

That’s demonic.

It’s size and power seems to materialize from thin air. And it does. It’s nothing but air, at least until it picks you up, along with tons of dirt, cars, buildings and cows. All are then part of the coherent, rotating structure.

But is it really just air, spinning like a top – or is there something too organized about the mayhem – something we still don’t know?

The Mystery…

No one fully understands tornadoes. Scientists and weather nerds chase them all over the Midwest every spring; they can’t hide. So what’s the mystery?

There are a few, but the primary one is how this coherent mass of rotating air gets vertical and ‘descends’ itself to the ground.

Tornadoes are believed by consensus science to be a purely thermodynamic event, caused by convection of moist, warm air into cold jet streams above, and the shear winds and condensation that results.

It’s no reach to understand how shear winds generate rotation, but the shearing in thunderstorms tends to be drafts traveling up and down, and cross winds at different elevations. Either shear can produce rotation, but only in the horizontal plane.

The theory approved by consensus science for grade school education, is that the column is created by shearing horizontal winds, one over the other, that create a horizontal rotating mass that gets lifted and stretched by updraft winds into a vertical vortex. What they don’t tell the grade-schooler’s is that the physics doesn’t work.

The Consensus Notion

To illustrate the issue, think of a similar vortex, like a whirlpool in a bucket of water. If you stir the water with a spoon near the surface of the water, at first no whirlpool appears.

Keep stirring…

After awhile, when you have water rotating at the top of the bucket, the vortex forms. But it won’t extend any deeper than where the water is rotating. It won’t reach bottom until the rotation translates downward and the whole bucket of water is spinning.

If you want to make a whirlpool fast, put the spoon all the way down and stir at the bottom of the bucket. Then it forms quickly, like opening a drain. To ‘descend’, the vortex needs to be pulled down by the low pressure created by centrifugal effects of the rotating water around it. If the bulk body of water around the vortex isn’t rotating, the funnel loses coherency and dissipates.

What is really happening is the vortex is created at the bottom of the bucket when you stir, and the funnel descends to meet it. The vortex has to be there first, and made to spin faster to draw the void of air down, which is the funnel we see.

So, one might ask, isn’t the funnel sucking like a straw and pulling itself down a column of air like a climber on a rope? Does your vacuum cleaner hose pull you down when you hold it a foot, or so above the ground?

No, there is nothing for it to pull on. The air beneath the hose keeps getting replaced as fast as it’s sucked in, so there is no tension created. A sufficient low pressure region can’t develop beneath the hose to provide any force unless you hold it less than an inch away from the ground, where friction can slow the inflow and generate a region of low pressure between the hose and the ground.

Just like the whirlpool, there needs to be a low pressure region to pull the funnel down and vortex winds at ground level. Before a tornado touches down, these winds need to be there. But there is often relative calm before a touchdown. All hell doesn’t break loose until after.

Consensus Theory #1…

*Yes, it’s usually counter-clockwise, but I’m not going to redraft it.*

Some researchers do predict rotating ground winds initiate tornadoes. The appearance of descent is really not the swirling winds of the tornado, but the visible condensation forming in the low pressure inside the vortex, and this condensation descends as the vortex ‘spins-up’, rotating faster.

In this concept, the tornado’s wind is already there in a compete column surrounding the descending condensation. It’s thought the tornado is initiated by a ground level vortex wind and this ground vortex controls the spin of the tornado.

Inflowing ground winds are certainly in the equation during the tornado’s life. But before touchdown, the existence of a ground vortex hasn’t been verified. It’s thought to be at low wind speeds, below speeds that would cause damage. It’s not until this ground vortex spins itself-up enough to start lifting dust that the tornado technically ‘touches down’ and we notice it.

The issue with this theory is that rotating funnel clouds are commonly seen that never seem to touch down at all, or be associated with ground winds, which implies they are rotating up there by themselves caused by something other than a ground vortex. This puts tornadogenesis back in the clouds.

Even in the event a subtle ground vortex is involved in creating a rotating column, how does this ground vortex form? Data is lacking because no one can predict where a tornado is going to land in order to set up the instrumentation.

Consensus Theory #2…can it still be a consensus?

Another theory proposes that the vortex is drawn to the ground when a descending column of air and rain wraps around a funnel cloud.

It’s called an occlusion downdraft, and it’s commonly seen, but not always. The theory requires the rainy downdraft wrap around the funnel to form a concentric vortex that merges with the funnel cloud and creates a smoke ring effect, a torus of rotating winds, with a longitudinal momentum that drags the funnel down. No photographs of this torus exist, as far as we know.

It sounds like a complex process. Too complex to explain several types of tornado that form when the mechanisms required aren’t there. Non-supercell tornadoes, albeit typically weaker, form when the conditions required for rain-wrap aren’t present.

Strange behavior…

Non-supercell tornadoes are circulations that do not form from organized storm-scale rotation. These tornadoes form from a vertically spinning parcel of air already occurring near the ground.

One non-supercell tornado is a landspout. A landspout is a tornado with a narrow, condensation funnel that forms while the storm clouds are still growing and there is no rotating updraft – the spinning motion originates near the ground.

Waterspouts are generally classified as non-supercell tornadoes. Waterspouts have a five-part life cycle: a dark spot on the water surface, spiral pattern on the water surface, a spray ring around the pattern, a visible condensation funnel, and ultimate decay.

Again, the life cycle begins at the surface, when a “dark spot” forms. They normally develop as their ‘parent’ clouds are still in the process of development.

Waterspouts are known for raining fish. From as deep as three feet below the surface (how do they know this?) fish can be lifted into the air and deposited as far as 100 miles inland.

Tornadoes display other perplexing behavior. Witnesses claim seeing tornadoes die suddenly and another rapidly form in apparently the same track as the previous.

Did they see one tornado fluctuating in strength, or two vortexes in sequence? The disappearance and reappearance is so rapid it is hard to imagine the atmospheric dynamic that would cause it.

Mounting evidence, including Doppler mobile radar images and eyewitness accounts, show most tornadoes have a clear, calm center with extremely low pressure, like the eye of a hurricane. The mystery of this is why it surprises anyone, but it’s still fascinating.

What follows is an excerpt from a 1930 report by Mr. Will Keller of Greensburg, Kansas, eye witness to the inside of a tornado:

“Steadily the tornado came on, the end gradually rising above the ground. I could have stood there only a few seconds but so impressed was I with what was going on that it seemed a long time. At last the great shaggy end of the funnel hung directly overhead. Everything was as still as death. There was a strong gassy odor and it seemed that I could not breathe. There was a screaming, hissing sound coming directly from the end of the funnel. I looked up and to my astonishment I saw right up into the heart of the tornado.

There was a circular opening in the center of the funnel, about 50 or 100 feet in diameter, and extending straight upward for a distance of at least one half mile, as best I could judge under the circumstances. The walls of this opening were of rotating clouds and the whole was made brilliantly visible by constant flashes of lightning which zig-zagged from side to side. Had it not been for the lightning I could not have seen the opening, not any distance up into it anyway. Around the lower rim of the great vortex small tornadoes were constantly forming and breaking away. These looked like tails as they writhed their way around the end of the funnel. It was these that made the hissing noise.

I noticed that the direction of rotation of the great whirl was anticlockwise, but the small twisters rotated both ways – some one way and some another. The opening was entirely hollow except for something which I could not exactly make out, but suppose that it was a detached wind cloud. This thing was in the center and was moving up and down.”

There are other types of tornado-like phenomena. Gustnado’s that form at storm fronts display the characteristics of a tornado touchdown, kicking up dust and debris in a vortex on the ground, but without any apparent rotation, or funnel above.

Sometimes without even clouds above. Dust devils also form this way. Isn’t there a common dominant influence underlying all these atmospheric whirlpools?

Now let’s remember that we live on an Electric Earth…

Take the blinders off, and see if there is another way to look at tornadoes.

By taking blinders off, it means adding electromagnetism back into the picture. It has been excluded almost completely by consensus science, even though it is the most pervasive feature of thunderstorms – the very things that makes tornadoes.

The word tornado is an altered form of the Spanish word tronada, which means “thunderstorm”. This in turn was taken from the Latin tonare, meaning “to thunder”. So even the etymology recognizes the obvious, fundamental connection that many, in influential positions, miss. With that in mind, let’s digress a moment to discuss lightning.

Atmospheric Circuitry…

We don’t notice what’s happening electrically in our atmosphere, because we live on the earth’s surface in an equipotential layer. We don’t notice, that is, until a thunderstorm arrives.

Our atmosphere carries an electric field. The atmospheric field varies widely – from night-to-day and summer-to-winter – between 100 volts per meter vertically in clear weather, to orders of magnitude stronger during thunderstorms.

For example, dust devils have been researched by very dirty scientists who measured a vertical electric field gradient of 10,000 volts per meter, even in small whirlwinds. They also found them to produce radio noise and a fluctuating magnetic field at frequencies of 3 to 30 Hz.

Since no intrepid storm-chaser has yet stood under a tornado with an antenna and voltmeter (not for lack of trying) we don’t know the potential in a tornado. Assuming an average tornado column to be three km long and carrying the same potential gradient over the column, that would be a 30 million volt potential. That’s two and half million car batteries connected in series.

A strong electric field will lift materials off the ground and into the atmosphere. Field experiments indicate that a large dust devil measuring 300 ft across can lift about 15 tons of dust into the air in 30 minutes.

Electricity is also known to aid formation of sand storms on Earth, and NASA believes it to be instrumental in raising dust on the Moon, dust devils on Mars, and tornadoes in the atmosphere of the Sun.

Normally the atmosphere carries a minor fair weather current of one pico-amp per square meter. This tiny current is thought to be a return current caused by lightning around the world, diffused throughout the atmosphere. This tiny, diffuse current is only part of the return circuit in a lightning bolt, however.

Keep stirring…

noaaelectrical-charge-in-storm-clouds — NOAA Image

Lightning from a thunderstorm has no ‘electrode’ in the sky. It comes from accumulations of charge in the clouds – pools of electrons, or ions, like the accumulated charge on a capacitor plate.

Temperature and pressure moved by shearing winds take the place of the plates in segregating regions of charge.

A study using interferometer and Doppler radar to correlate lightning with updraft and downdraft winds, showed that lightning avoids the updraft core (red arrow in the image) and forms in regions of weaker, lower pressure winds around the updraft. As a storm intensifies and the updraft speeds up, lightning frequency dramatically intensifies.

Fast updraft winds and their role in supercell structure is a discussion for another day, however it will be shown they are likely motivated by electric current in the storm in the first place, so it is not surprising in an electric atmosphere that positive ions in a powerful updraft would collect negative charge around the updraft column, which is where the study found lightning to initiate.

Updraft winds don’t produce much lightning until they reach 10 to 20 mph. Then strike frequency escalates with updraft speed. From 20 to 50 mph wind speeds, lightning frequency might be 5 to 20 strikes per minute, whereas above 90 mph, the flash rate can exceed one strike per second.

It’s like a motor running.

Coincidentally, cloud-to-ground lightning frequency is seen to decrease as a tornado touches down, and return to the baseline level when the tornado dissipates. This is an important point, but we’ll return to it later.

The charged layers in the cloud, and the thin, flashing filament we see in common cloud-to-ground lightning, is only part of the event. There is also buildup of positive charge on the ground. The ground charge forms as a pool of positive ions over the surface of the land and its features, accumulating in concentration at high points. The positive ions form when electrons are stripped away from air and surface features by the powerful electric field.

The lightning bolt initiates when the negative charge invades the air below with filaments of charge called leaders. Remember, there is an amplified electric field of millions of volts between the storm clouds and Earth. The leaders zig-zag downward in stepped segments while the ground charge reaches up in a filament of positive ions called a streamer. When leader and streamer meet, the channel is complete and dumps the negative cloud charge to ground. This is called an arc discharge.

Electrons flood through the channel at relativistic speed, creating a magnetic field that constricts the channel and the current, called a z-pinch. It is the dielectric breakdown of atmosphere to allow a discharge – a short circuit between the clouds and ground.

The ionic ground charge follows, ions being heavy and therefore slower than electrons, rushing up the channel at 60,000 miles per second in what is called a return stroke. It’s the return stroke we see emitting light from particle collisions in the constricted channel. Return strokes often repeat as new charge pools and discharges, producing multiple flashes until charges equalize.

It all happens within tenths of a second, involving volumes measured in cubic kilometers. So these charged layers in the clouds and on the ground must be highly coherent.

Dark – Not Arc…

Arc discharge is the extreme end of the spectrum for electrical discharge, however. There are other types of discharge that occur under different regimes of electric field intensity, charge density, and the polarity and physical properties of the electrodes and medium the discharge takes place in.

The channel lightning travels in is a fully ionized plasma generated by the strong electric field between the cloud and ground. The leaders and streamers are the plasma channel being created. Other modes of current flow can occur without dielectric breakdown, or full ionization of the plasma. These currents don’t create an arc of lightning.

300px-glow2arc — Glow discharge in a Plasma

The chart above demonstrates that extremely high current is required to make an arc, (red part of curve). Medium currents produce only a glow, like the polar aurora and neon lights (blue curve). Low currents will produce no light emission at all (black curve).

From ‘A’ to ‘B’ is a regime of discharge initiation, where reactions are taking place to saturate the channel with ionization. Then from ‘B’ to ‘D’, current rises exponentially with very high voltage. Current density is low enough though, there are few particle collisions and it emits no visible light. This is the regime of dark discharge, or dark current mode, and it’s invisible.

280px-airshower-svg — Cosmic ray creating an avalanche.

In this region, the high electric field gives electrons enough energy to ionize a neutral atom, releasing another electron which initiates a chain reaction. The new free electron ionizes another neutral in a secondary reaction and this continues, leading to an avalanche of new ion and electron production. The avalanche results in the exponential current rise as charge density amplifies. It’s called a Townsend discharge.

When current is high enough, visible glow can occur near the electrode and edges, sharp points, or other narrow objects where charge collects. This is called corona discharge. One form of corona discharge is St. Elmo’s fire.

Another glow discharge related to corona discharge is dielectric barrier discharge between two parallel plate electrodes. Both occur at high voltage, low current in atmospheric air below the dielectric breakdown threshold, and without the explosive blast and temperatures of an arc.

A dielectric barrier discharge, shown above, demonstrates how current collects itself into plasma streamers. The discharge is occurring in air between two parallel electrode plates layered with mica at about 30 kHz, with a discharge gap of about 4 mm. The wide foot of the discharge is ionic charge pooling on the barrier surface.

Cold, Dusty Plasma…

For air to become plasma and carry current, the air has to be partially ionized. A plasma state can be defined by “plasma density” – the number of free electrons per unit volume, and the “degree of ionization” – the proportion of atoms that have lost, or gained electrons.

Even a partially ionized gas in which as little as 1% of the particles are ionized is considered a plasma, responding to magnetic fields and displaying high electrical conductivity. A partially ionized plasma is often referred to as a “cold plasma”, and highly ionized plasma is referred to as “hot”.

A negative corona begins with an ionization event, such as a pooling of ions in a strong electric field generating primary electrons, followed by an electron avalanche. Secondary electrons are created by photoelectric effect at the electrode.

Corona discharge will produce dark current by generating the electrons and ions in a current flow that has a particular geometry. The glowing region that halos around the point electrode is where primary ionization occurs. The charged species then enter a ‘drift’ region where they follow the electric field, but are dispersed by charge repulsion in a spray, like a wonky shower-head.

It’s in this region secondary ionization occurs. If electrons/ions have enough oomph from the electric field, the secondary reactions will continue to occur, maintaining a current to the plate electrode. If not, they recombine with positive ions and neutralize, extinguishing the current.

The center of the coronal discharge is more energetic and isolated from interaction with surrounding particles of opposite charge, so more often cascade into avalanches. Closer to the edge of the discharge, weaker reactions manifest in transfer of momentum and heat between the ions and neutrals. This causes a current density distribution, as shown by the curve at the bottom of the above diagram. The current segregates into channels oriented to the distribution.

The geometry in a negative corona is three concentric regions of emission. The inner region, corresponding to the peak distribution of charge density, is ionizing plasma where high energy primary electron-neutral collisions avalanche. The intermediate ring is a non-ionizing plasma where electrons collide with neutral oxygen and water vapor with insufficient energy to avalanche, but produce a plasma of primarily negative ions that drift to the flat plate electrode and complete the circuit. The outer region is a flow of negative ions and sparse electrons known as the unipolar region.

These regions correspond well with the anatomy of a super-cell, assuming charge accumulates around, or near the central updraft that breathes life into the storm.

The Ionizing Plasma Region…

Directly beneath the core of the corona, avalanches can be energetic enough to establish sputtering arcs. We see it as negative cloud-to-ground lightning, which observations concur, happen around the updraft and with a frequency regulated by the updraft speed.

The Unipolar Region…

The uniplolar region is the outer ring of the corona. It’s not a plasma, but is composed of a low density of negatively charged ions drifting towards the plate electrode, transferring energy primarily as heat and momentum rather than electrical current. Momentum transfer manifests as downdraft winds by the process of electrokinesis.

Electrokinesis is the transfer of momentum from the charged particles to the surrounding neutrals, creating an ‘electric wind’ that moves the bulk fluid along the electric field. Air ionizers and blade-less fans work by electrokinesis, by partially ionizing air in the same fashion, with a coronal discharge.

In humid air, ions will also be hydrated causing selective water transport. Therefore, unipolar drift manifests in a thunderstorm as the forward (FFD) and rear flanking (RFD) downdraft winds, rain and hail.

The Non-ionizing Plasma Region…

The intermediate channel of non-ionizing plasma generates ions at low energy that precludes avalanche, but carry current as these ions drift to the plate. If the ionization rate exceeds the rate of recombination, the plasma will build a tendril (actually called a streamer, but we’ll use the term tendril to distinguish it from a lightning streamer) from the point electrode to the plane electrode (earth) pushing the plasma generating ionization region ahead of it, and drawing behind it a cloud of cold plasma. When this plasma hits the plane electrode a cathode spot is produced, and the electric field redistributes along the plasma channel that is created.

The Tornado…

The cathode spot on the ground (plate electrode) draws positive charge to it, dragging neutrals by electrokinesis, and creating the in-flowing winds that generate a vortex. This is the moment of touchdown, as charged air and dust flow in and spiral upwards around the invisible plasma tendril.

The action is analogous to the lightning bolt leader and positive ground streamer that meet to create a channel for arc discharge, only in this case the plasma channel is partially ionized, diffused with predominately neutral species. Its energy and charge densities are too low to make an arc, so it forms a complex plasma channel called a Marklund Convection.

400px-marklund-convection — Marklund convection, showing diffusion of neutral air away from current tendril (blue arrows) creating low pressure. Plasma drift (green arrows) draw positive ions at ground level, creating inflowing winds to the point of contact with the plate electrode.

Rotation is a natural consequence for two reasons. Neutral air is diffused away from the Marklund current creating low pressure. But positive ions near the ground drag air, dust and debris to the ground contact and create in-flowing winds and a sudden change in direction up, and around the tendril. The meeting of these opposing winds is, by definition, a vortex.

But current in plasma will itself rotate, taking a helical path as it interacts with the magnetic field around it. The appearance of a tornado is precisely what one would expect from such a current. Increasing current flow “spins up” the tornado.

It forms an inner spiraling negative current to ground and an outer spiral of positive ionic wind flowing up to the source of coronal discharge.

Because the tornado is a cold, partial plasma carrying a significant mass of neutral air and dust, it can be pushed by winds to create a slanted, or even kinked path, and travel away from it’s point of origin.

Now let’s return to the storm that most often creates tornadoes. Super-cell morphology provides all the effects of corona discharge. The super-cell has distinct regions of updraft and downdraft winds (electrokinesis), rain and hail (water transport) and sputtering arcing discharge (lightning) which we discussed earlier, forms around the central updraft.

Evidence…

If tornadoes are caused by coronal discharge generating a Marklund convection current from cloud-to-ground, what are some tell-tale signs?

Wall clouds…

One piece of evidence may be the wall cloud. Wall clouds form before a tornado in typical supercell evolution. It will develop rotation and sometimes its clouds can be seen to rise and fall in an agitated manner. Puffs of low level clouds are drawn to it below the main cloud base.

It creates a vertical wall of cloud that is incongruous to the general slant of the storm cloud and winds in-flowing to it.

This may be evidence of the vertical orientation of the electric field created by the coronal discharge and ions transported down with moisture. The electric field doesn’t pay attention to the wind.

The funnel cloud doesn’t always emerge from the center of the wall cloud, as shown in most consensus science diagrams. The tornado funnel often appears along the edges of the wall cloud, or from the surrounding clouds.

This is because the tendrils of current are mobile on the negative electrode and can wander. They can also multiply, creating several tornadoes.

Characteristic of parallel currents, multiple tornadoes stand off from each other as if repulsed like two parallel wires flowing current in the same direction. Rare occasions when tornadoes seem to merge, it may be that one simply dies as the other steals it’s current.

The sudden disappearance and reappearance of tornadoes, and the reported skipping, or lifting they seem to portray, are likely caused by pulsating current from an unstable coronal discharge that weakens until recombination steals the current, and then revives when the rate of ionization again overcomes the rate of recombination and a complete circuit to ground is reestablished.

Tornadoes and lightning…

As mentioned earlier, lightning frequency is highest around the central updraft and increases in frequency with the strength of the updraft winds. The central updraft of warm moist air carries positively charged ions and dust particles into the center of the storm. A negative corona might be expected to form around this updraft, attracted to the positive current generated, excited by the electric field and collisions with neutral atoms.

The physics of coronal discharge studied in the lab is generally done with point, or wire electrodes that have a constant position and shape. An electrode formed in the clouds probably forms an amorphous ring structure around the in-flowing central updraft, where charge densities can migrate.

When a tornado forms, it’s been noted that cloud-to-ground lightning frequency diminishes until the tornado dies, and then it picks-up again to the baseline level. This is evidence the electric field has re-aligned along the Marklund convection in the non-ionizing plasma region, sapping energy from the ionizing plasma that manifests lightning and migrating it to the outer portion of the ring.

Sights, smells and sounds…

Tornadoes are formed by a cold plasma, dark current, so light emissions aren’t evident, at least below the clouds. Storms that produce tornadoes are often characterized by a greenish tint in the clouds, however. The green tint is excused by many scientists as a reflection of city lights, and their search for green-tinted city lights continues. The green glow of a coronal discharge internal to the cloud formation explains the green tint.

Luminosity in the clouds and the funnel are also reported. Consensus science blames this on misidentified sources of light from lightning, city lights, or flashes from downed power lines. Some of it no doubt is, but some of it is likely the effect of coronal discharge. Lightning flashes don’t make a continuous glow.

Ionized oxygen can recombine to produce ozone, which has a distinctive chlorine-like “gassy smell”. As Mr. Keller’s close call with the mouth of a tornado attests, a “gassy smell” was present.

Mr. Keller also reported he heard hissing sounds from the multiple vortex tendrils at the base of the funnel. Funnel clouds and small tornadoes are known to produce harmonic sounds of whistling, whining, humming, or buzzing bees, like electricity. As ozone is liberated it produces such a hissing sound.

Energized transmission lines subject to over-voltage conditions produce all of these same effects: faint luminescent glow, ozone production and it’s accompanying hiss and smell. It’s cause is coronal discharge.

Tornadoes also produce identifiable infra-sound. It’s inaudible to the human ear, but it can be felt. It can produce nausea, agitation and body heat… not that a tornado really needs infra-sound to do that.

Lightning is seen internal to the funnel, again as reported by Mr. Keller. These are likely a form of cloud-to-cloud discharges, between the counter-flowing positive and negative currents in the Marklund convection.

Tornadoes are seen to have an inner and outer column, although this is disputed by consensus scientists as another illusion. The inner column, however, is seen if the outer dusty sheath dissipates, or is blown away. This is consistent with the double wall formed in a Marklund convection.

cordell — *Double wall – an inner tube with an outer sheath of dust can be seen.*

There goes Aunt Em…

A good friend who had the misfortune of being in a tornado, said he was momentarily lifted from the bathtub he was hiding in because he was weightless. He swears no wind was lifting him – he was simply weightless.

Stories from other survivors also report the sensation of momentary weightlessness, floating as if no wind was pushing. This is likely because of electrokinesis.

At ground level, the accumulation of positive charge beneath the influence of the electric field from the storm may be charging items, including people and lending them an attraction to the negative electrode overhead.

Perhaps this explains other odd events reported. For instance a house demolished, yet a table sits with a glass of water in the middle of the carnage untouched. Maybe if you don’t want to get picked up and carried away, give yourself a negative charge. Of course, too much of that can kill you, too.

Tornadoes emit on the electromagnetic spectrum as measured at a distance by researchers. Electric fields are detected and tornadoes emit sferics, the same type of broadband radio noise lightning discharges produce.

Non-super-cell tornadoes…

So what if there is no super-cell? How do all the other vortex phenomena form – landspouts, waterspouts, gustnadoes and dust devils, and how are they related.

By the same mechanism proposed here for the super-cell tornado, only in lower energy form.

Funnel clouds, which never result in a touchdown are a tendril of Marklund convection current that begins to recombine faster than it generates ions, and it dies. Landspouts, gustnadoes and waterspouts all begin with a surface disturbance – a vortex without a cloud, or at least not one showing a wall cloud, or rotation.

These may be evidence of ground contacts of the first pulse of the tendril, stimulating the ground vortex to initiate the tornado. The lack of wall cloud, rotation, or in the case of a dust devil, no clouds at all, are because the electrode is simply invisible. A dark discharge from an amorphous collection of charge in an electric field wouldn’t necessarily glow, or generate a condensation funnel.

A powerful thunderstorm creates a charged environment and elevates the electric field, regardless of whether it reaches super-cell proportions. With no organizing rotation in the clouds, the corona may very well be more like a plate electrode than a point, spread out across the sky. In this case, barrier discharge which we discussed earlier, may be closer to the mechanism that shoots tendrils without a rotating cloud overhead. Even in clear weather, thermal convection would create an updraft that could generate a diffuse corona.

This comports with the observations of twisters of all kinds, including dust devils and spouts which are seen to begin on the ground. Or water – in the case of a waterspout – where documented evolution begins with the mysterious “dark spot” on the water.

In theoretical research, not many people are even looking for electromagnetic influences except with respect to lightning. Several surveys have attempted to gain electrical data. Balloons, drones, airplanes and rockets, people in armed vehicles and stationary sounding platforms of various kinds have been deployed to take readings on tornadoes.

The extreme winds, physical danger and uncertainty in pre-positioning instrument arrays has defeated many attempts. As a result, science is relying on chasers, doppler radar and interferometers to get detailed information on wind speeds, pressures, temperatures and other physical parameters, but not so much about the ions and electric field.

Cold plasma with only a percent, or so of ionization may remain below the sensitivity of their instruments. Especially on the ground during tornadogenesis – they either arrive to late, or don’t live to tell about it. Airplanes have flown through storms and mapped clouds of electrons and ions, so we know vast sheets of charge accumulate up there.

Waterspouts were examined for electric fields. The researchers didn’t detect an unusually strong field and concluded electricity had no significant influence. There is always an electric field. Perhaps a waterspout doesn’t require as high a voltage. After all, salt water in particular, is composed of easily ionized constituents. More likely, the scientists didn’t get there on time to record the initiating pulse of the tendril, when the highest current and realignment of the electric field occurs.

We live on an Electric Earth. Weather, climate and even the land forms display it, we just need to learn how to recognize it. So, we’ll look deeper into the super-cell next time, because no one else seems to recognize it’s a thermopile!

Electric Earth October 1, 2016October 5, 2017

Electric Earth Field Expedition 2016

A report on the 2016 expedition to Utah

Sacramento Leo, Southern Comfort Leo, Smooth-in-the-Groove Leo and Geology Leo – dragon hunters armed with compasses, four-wheel drives and field books to confirm that myth is actually fact. I’m Desert Rat Leo, with my dog – Rat Dog Leo.

The purpose of the expedition was to find evidence about mountains and the physics of their creation coherent with the theory of Electric Universe. Not an easy task, but the theories are our own, which allows some flexibility – not in the science, of course, but in the methods of discovery.

We were using an entirely unconventional method called ‘Looking’. It’s a practice out of favor in academia. Most scientists now use computers to mimic reality – modelling reality to understand it. Like studying clay sculpture of people to understand life – it looks right, but doesn’t say much about the human heart. We took the approach of actually looking.

The trip began for Rat and I two days early. One day, so I could stay the night in Flagstaff and break-up the drive. Another day because I didn’t look at the calendar. I’m more attuned to phase of the moon than day of the week. It was coming up full, so I had to go.

Actually, leaving early allowed independent investigation of a fascinating land form near Kayenta, Arizona, called Comb Ridge.

dsci0080 — Comb Ridge stretches east behind the beer can.

Comb Ridge is a smaller version of Capitol Reef, the primary objective for the Utah expedition. A stop at Comb Ridge was like the trailer to a movie – a preview of things to come.

The Comb is known as a single-sided monocline. You can look-up the mainstream theory here, but it’s pretty boring. By my theory it’s a pressure ridge, made by searing supersonic winds and shock waves. The theory is called Arc Blast. It’s really hypothesis, not theory, but that word has too many syllables. Most people know what I mean – it’s a concept that still requires proof.

Arc Blast is the literal breath of the mythical dragon – one of the archetypes from mythology that describes hydra-headed serpents launching from the depths of the sea, exposing the basement of Earth, arcing across the land, and dragging a tsunami of ocean behind that flooded to the height of mountain tops.

Arc Blast is caused by electrical discharge – arcs of current – lightning bolts in other words. Only this is lightning from inside Earth. When Earth amps-up from an external cause, like a big comet, or Solar flare, current internal to Earth blast out. The havoc that follows makes weather like Jupiter’s, with winds and lightning of enormous proportion.

Comb Ridge is a perfect example of an arc blast feature, because it exhibits triangular buttresses. These I contend can only be explained by supersonic winds and sonic shock waves. Mainstream theorizes these triangular forms are made by water erosion, which is entirely inadequate, and I can show that.

The reason is coherency in the forms. Their explanations lack it. Mine don’t. Examining Comb Ridge gave confidence to my claim.

It’s also easily accessible. A graded road runs behind the ridge and cuts through a canyon between buttresses. Rat Dog and I parked the Rover in the sandy wash, and simply climbed up. They lay at a shallow angle of about 20 degrees.

Structurally, everything we examined fit our theory. The buttresses are layered sandstone, no evidence water erosion created the shape of the triangles, and every indication they were deposited by winds.

But we also found things I hadn’t expected.

U.S. Route 163 passes through Comb Ridge, north into Monument Valley. As the road falls away from the Ridge, there is a stark, ugly blister on the land. It’s called Agathla Peak, and pokes 1,500 feet out of the desert floor. It’s dark brown, to black, like it’s made of burnt mud.

It’s where a huge lightning bolt struck, and left this raised blister. Using the preferred scientific instrument, our eyes, Rat and I detected lots of them in the area.

These pinnacles are considered by convention to be diatreme of ancient volcanoes. A plug of magma that stuck in the volcano’s throat, now exposed by time and erosion. The mainstream theory requires all of the surrounding land to have eroded away, leaving these ‘volcanic plugs’ behind.

But how severe erosive forces, capable of scouring away thousands of feet of land, could leave behind these crumbling chunks of sandstone is a bit perplexing to me.

Another feature of these pinnacles are dikes – walls of crumbling, darkened material called minette, also believed to be formed by volcanic process. But minette is like sandstone that has been altered electrically. It’s not like what spews from volcanoes at all.

Rat Dog and I found the same kind of dikes embedded in the buttresses, and radiating across the desert plains. They are too unconsolidated and crumbly to withstand forces that washed everything around them away. It seems more likely they are the remains of electrically charged shock waves from the same lightning that created the pinnacles.

dsci0085 — Dikes angle across the plains in front (south) of Comb Ridge.

kayenta-dikes-1 — Dikes (some are highlighted) radiate from Comb Ridge. Dikes align with the edges and orientation of triangular buttresses, radiating towards the river. Do you see coherency? Geologists think water erosion made the triangular buttresses. But how did water make these dikes – they are supposed to be caused by volcanic process. The black pinnacle due north of Kayenta is Agathla Peak. It’s a cluster of lightning strikes.

Having collected this key intelligence, Rat was hot and needed a nap. Of course, she took my lap, which meant I wore a hot dog in my lap. The temperature on the Comb was around 100ºF.

We drove on through Monument Valley. The place is is astonishing. Many trips back are in order, but on this day we rushed through on our way to Moab. We needed to set camp before dark.

Moab is a pretty patch of green in Canyon Country, where tributary creeks feed the Colorado. We gassed the Rover, ate and restocked the coolers with ice. Then ventured along the river to the campsite where the other Leo’s intended to meet us. That campsite was full. So was the next. And the next. And the next.

Down river we drove, surveying each campsite along the way. Here, the river cuts through a deep walled chasm favored by rock climbers. So the camps were full of these spider people; a strange, underfed and insular cult, festooned with colorful webbing.

Rat Dog felt it was best to keep our distance from the strange beings. Finally, we came to the last campsite available. It was empty.

We took the finest, shady spot at the bank of the river. While I unloaded gear, pitched the tent and collected firewood, Rat Dog sniffed flowers.

She didn’t sniff flowers for long – she wandered away instead. I hated to leash her since there was no-one else around, but couldn’t keep my eyes on her either. She seemed reluctant to stay in camp. The reason became apparent when I pulled branches from a pile of driftwood by the river-bank. Clouds of mosquitoes billowed out.

And so began a relentless night of misery. The Rat found mosquitoes in the flowers. Her hair sprouted clumps where bites raised her skin. She looked pitiful in a funny way, but I was alarmed at how many bites she had. She’s not a big dog and can’t take much poison. So, I zipped her inside the tent.

Meanwhile, the mosquitoes began to consume me. Constant movement was the only relief. I found if I moved fast enough to generate wind, I could outrun them. So I ran around, grabbing sticks and branches for the fire. Every piece of wood I picked-up swarmed more mosquitoes.

I frantically lit the fire to get smoke in the air. It was the only form of repellent available. I’m not used to dealing with mosquitoes because I live in a dry region. I don’t use bug repellent on my skin either. I had to resort to the only other form of relief at my disposal. A bottle of vodka.

I watched the sun angle below canyon walls, wondering how long until it cooled inside the tent to be bearable. I paced back and forth in smoke to foil the mosquitoes, my skin cooking from fire, my insides cooking in vodka, and fever in my brain from both.

When I bent over to tend the fire, mosquitoes attacked my backside. They bit through the seat of my pants. I ate naked crackers for dinner with vodka. It was too hot for cheese. As soon as the temperature dipped I joined Rat in the tent.

When morning sun steamed me awake, a dozen of the insolent bugs lounged on the tent walls. Fat with our blood, they were too sluggish to escape my wrath. I turned them into bloody blotches, and then regretted the stains.

I left Rat sleeping while packing everything, none of which I used. Then collected her and the tent, let her pee, and left for Moab to find coffee.

Once mental cognizance was reestablished with a large, dark roast, the Rat and I took stock. There was no way we were camping along the river again. I had to break down and buy a map.

This was a smart move. We’d been going solely on instinct, as dragon hunters are wont to do, eschewing navigational aides. I noted several campsites high on Dead Horse Mesa, between the Green and Colorado Rivers.

The Mesa had no mosquitoes, and was also out of the oppressive, brooding canyon. Here, there was big sky, clouds and a breeze. It’s called Dead Horse, because some dumb-ass rustlers thought the narrow tip of the Mesa would make a good corral to capture a stolen herd. I’ll let you figure out the rest.

W chose a campsite with trees and pitched the tent and a surplus parachute for extra shade. I strung it between Junipers, and when the wind blew right, it billowed and made an awesome clam shell awning.

The Leo’s arrived early afternoon. Finally, someone to talk with besides Rat. Tents went up, beers came out, along with chairs, ice chests and gadgets. There was also one luxurious, padded cot. I noticed the Rat eyeing it jealously. So did I. “Don’t you dare!” I said, and I gave her a look that meant business.

It belonged to Geology Leo. He laid on it immediately and began snoring, and that’s where he stayed for the rest of the trip.

The rest of us sat at the fire, talking and drinking beer. It was fun and we soon succumbed to disorientation, unbalance and expansive creativity. It wasn’t long before, one by one, they all drifted away to nap. Envy towards Geology Leo, snoring away on that damn cot began to burn inside, so I sat and grumbled to myself.

A couple things of note occurred then. We had our first wildlife encounter as a group. Rat and I met the mosquitoes, of course – my butt still itched from that. But this ‘National Geographic’ moment was more engaging. A fox approached Smooth-in-the-Groove while he napped on the ground, and sniffed his face. It was cute, in spite of the risk of fleas and rabies.

Then the camp host paid a visit and berated us for pitching tents, leaving dogs off-leash, and parking vehicles in the wrong places. Once we made adjustment according to orders, however, he relaxed and talked about the fox. Apparently it was a little rascal who stole campers clothes and food on a regular basis.

The other thing of note were two Italian girls camped across the road. The Rat made first contact. She trotted away to meet them first chance she got. She’s not overly fond of people in general, but she trusts other women.

2016-08-16-09-49-22 — The Italians came to say Ciao to the chow. The Rat screams in protest.

The young ladies were from Italy, on a cross country trip through National Parks. I had no intention of bothering them, but Rat didn’t give me a choice. The girls immediately began cooing and fawning over her, so she jumped in their car and sat on the comfy seat. I had to get her back.

Smoothy immediately joined us. He wanted to flirt with the girls. So, while I mentally stumbled trying to communicate, he went-off speaking fluent Italian. This left me standing with my thumb up my butt while they conversed.

I extracted Rat from their car and threw her in the tent. She looked at me with daggers the rest of the night. I know she’d have abandoned me for those girls if I let her.

The next day the wind changed, causing the parachute awning to flap mercilessly, knocking off hats and slapping the unwary. The breeze also brought scent of the toilet to us.

1471452389657 — This dragon tried to eat the campsite in Goblin State Park.

I hadn’t noticed any odor when I picked the campsite. But something was different today. Not just wind direction, either. The chemical balance was off in the toilets. It smelled like shit.

We moved in slow modality all morning, shuffling about sipping instant coffee in the smelly miasma. The Italian ladies came and shared granola bars. They brought one for each of us (two for Rat) and shared their travel stories while we munched. They were very charming with their accents and animated story-telling. They spoke better English than we could at that moment, so we just listened.

Around Noon, we finally got into the Rover and Southern Comfort’s jeep for some geology field work. What follows is actual field work in action:

Desert Rat Leo, September, 2016.

Electric Earth July 3, 2016October 3, 2017

After Dark at EU2016

This was to be my first EU conference. As I left Tucson on I-10, the temperature was hot. Arizona in June is like Venus. Temperatures always hover above 100ºF, but when it exceeds 110ºF, it’s life threatening.

First, you seem to stop sweating. You still release sweat, but it evaporates immediately and you remain dry as a bone. There is no moisture in the air. No matter how much water is consumed, lips chap, pee turns orange and scratchy salt crusts form in armpits.

It got hotter and dustier as I traveled north into the Phoenix basin. When I arrived in Mesa at noon, it was 120ºF in the shade.

Since I was a speaker and a last minute addition to the roster, I went straight to the auditorium to get checked out on the A/V system. I needed to know how it worked right away, because I didn’t have my presentation committed to memory. I needed to know if I could read my notes on the screen at the podium, or if I’d need to carry a sheaf of papers, or simply stand up there and look foolish. The last time I gave a presentation, flip charts were the state of the art.

Before I could do that, I found Susan Schirott. She took me under wing, stray cat that I was, and gave me the low-down on the conference.

Susan introduced me to the EU. I found Thunderbolts while surfing the web, became convinced for reasons too numerous to get into now and contacted Susan to pitch a guest blog. Susan gave me that opportunity and made everything else happen. I simply had to write what I learned and she handled the rest. Susan is the engine of Thunderbolts, but made time to make sure I was taken care of.

We’d had a bit of drama over adding my presentation at the last minute, including my own moments of high anxiety. Susan let me know the current status and that things were okay. She got me settled in and at ease.

The A/V system turned out to be a piece of cake and gave me all the capability to present that I could hope for, if I could just remember which buttons to push. So, unable to stand there forever pushing buttons to get used to the mechanism, I retired to the bar to relax and trust to fate.

Conference bars are where the action is, in my humble opinion. You have to see the presentations, of course. At least most of them. And you have to socialize in the halls and workshops, but the bar is where people let down their shields. I was to be here for three days, followed by the geology tour for another two days. I hardly knew anyone in the EU community. This seemed the best place to be.

My first encounter was with a young couple from the Phoenix area. Since I wore a speaker ribbon on my name tag, but few people had heard of me, I had a brief advantage. It rose people’s interest, which I need since I’m an introvert. But they didn’t know what to ask since they didn’t know what I was there to talk about. It allowed me attention and still a comfortable anonymity.

I was vague about my presentation, simply saying it had to do with geology and some electrical features. This raised the mystery. They assured me they would watch me speak. So far things were working well – two attentive listeners would be at my talk and I hardly had to do anything. They even bought my beer.

Then a bloke bounded up to our table and began hugging everyone around. I’ll call him Leo. In fact, I’m going to call everyone in this story Leo. I have to protect the innocent. More importantly, I have to protect myself.

Every Leo was different. Every Leo was interesting. Every Leo is my brother and sister, now, but that is getting ahead of the story. Leo came from British Columbia, Montreal, New Brunswick, Colorado, California, UK, Australia, Belarus, Germany, Tibet and at least one from another planet. Leo wore tattoos and buzz cuts; tie-dyeds and chinos; safari hats and bandanas; piercings and goatees; or in one case, a beaded, braided fu-manchu. All points on the globe, all types of people, representing a common interest in our Electric Universe.

This Leo was from the UK. UK Leo sat down and immediately ordered a beer, and I ordered a second. Little did I know at the time, UK Leo would be at the bar every time I went there. UK Leo, I recognized eventually, was a professional beer drinker.

As we got acquainted, a certain cadence set into our discussion. His thick accent was impossible to understand. So I would say, “uh huh”, when I thought he’d made a point. He would reply, “eehah, mate?” because he couldn’t understand me either. In other words, we were perfect drinking partners – the burden of making sense wasn’t on us.

The young couple left. I don’t think they understood UK Leo either. He and I talked nonsense through our beers and then I left to circulate. At the bar I spotted Southern Comfort Leo. Southern Comfort Leo was someone I wanted to get to know, because I’d seen him present in a video of the previous year’s EU conference. His topic had direct bearing on mine. He held court at the corner of the bar, a place only a talkative person would take.

I sidled up beside him to see if I could start a conversation (it’s not something I’m very good at). I call him Southern Comfort Leo, because when I asked where he was from, he listed every southern State he’d ever lived – which was all of them. He said he’d “been around.” Much to my surprise, starting this conversation was easy, and he bought my beer.

I still had the advantage of anonymity, so the talk centered around him and his work. I simply listened to the fascinating work he did and the kind of information he got from it. Others joined us. We held court like Norm Petersen and Cliff Claven at the corner of the bar. But as the evening wore on, the crowd dwindled until there were just four of us left. Room Mate Leo, Boorish Leo, Southern Comfort Leo and me.

As I found with all EU conference participants, they are fiercely independent thinkers who fear no topic. In this case, our conversation turned to God and the relative merits of belief in HIS existence. Dangerous ground for a late night at the bar.

Leo held a belief in God’s existence, while the other Leo disagreed. As it became heated, Southern Comfort Leo wisely took his leave, begging the need to rest for his morning presentation. I was to speak in the afternoon, so I stayed.

Having been raised by a devout Christian mother, I have a respect for most beliefs provided it doesn’t involve hacking heads off. So I attempted to mediate the rougher edges in the conversation, but to no avail. Boorish Leo launched into a devastating destruction of Room Mate Leo’s character flaws, which the younger Leo had guilelessly laid bare for our examination.

We finally agreed to disagree around four AM. Leo and I, being room mates dragged ourselves, shirttails hanging, to the room. The emotions scraped bare at the bar were still bleeding however. Leo and I continued to talk in the room, he giving me intimate glimpses into his troubled yet valuable life. Valuable because he’s brilliant, curious and courageous – the earmarks of an EU scholar. Troubled because he carries baggage – we all do.

I noticed the sun was shining through a gap in the curtain. I sealed the gap before we finally gave up talking and went to sleep. I woke in time to catch Southern Leo’s talk mid-morning.

The conference room was a comfortable place. Dark, with a casual and attentive audience and the most interesting subjects to hear about, delivered by some of the most knowledgeable people in the world. What could be better. I lost myself in the ambience, surprisingly relaxed, without any building apprehension for my own talk that afternoon.

In fact, my talk went well. I think. Except the lights were blinding my sensitive eyes, which were only closed for an hour and a half that morning. Remember that when you watch the replays on Thunderbolts.

I did almost electrocute myself trying to drink some water with the microphone at my lips. It could have been a great display of Arc Blast – the subject of my talk, had I thought of it. I didn’t trip at the podium, or say anything stupid as far as I can remember.

Following the talks, I and my brother Richard, who was attending the conference to graciously provide moral support, and even more gratifying to me – learn more about our Electric Universe, met-up with Susan. Our timing was perfect, because she and David were heading to dinner with another speaker and an attendee who seemed to have a long association with the EU.

It was a delightful dinner. My brother, a former PR and public affairs professional, enjoyed trading anecdotes about conference organization with Dave and Susan while I stuffed my face with baked grouper. Dave Talbott is a sincere and gentle-hearted man who kept the conversation light and engaging. He suffered a dozen questions about Velikovsky and EU that he must have answered a zillion times before, but he spoke with absolute enthusiasm about the things he champions.

After dinner, of course, Rich and I retired to the bar, while the sensible people went about other business, like sleep. After one drink, my brother left to meet his son in Scottsdale, leaving me with the Leo’s again. It was pretty much the same crew, UK Leo, Southern Comfort Leo, Roommate Leo and me. Many other Leos were there, too.

This night was less talk and more drinking. Those of us who were speakers had finished our talks and were ready to unwind. Everyone else was just ready. Michael Claridge-Leo strode in with an electric bicycle to show off. The evening was a hoot, everyone in cheery little clusters around the bar and outside at the pool..

The day had been hot and it began to take its toll. People drifted away to bed, leaving only dead-enders. You know us by now. Leo and I had both shifted from beer to vodka at this point, so my recollection may be out of sequence. What I recall is that Leo began speaking gibberish.

We were having a perfectly rational conversation when he suddenly became agitated, and in perfectly articulated English said something that made absolutely no sense. It was as if Neil DeGrasse Tyson had entered his body. I hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was talking about, but it seemed urgent. Then he simply walked away.

The remainder of us carried the night to a quiet conclusion after the waiters stacking chairs refused us any more post closing drinks. We retired to our rooms, confident that, except for the hotel staff, we were the last people standing and our duty had been satisfied – to be the last people standing – somewhat stooped, but standing.

When I arrived in the room, I found Leo. Leo was passed out in the bathroom, undressed, pants around his ankles. This was not the behavior I expected from Leo. I immediately became suspicious. There was a pool of fluid on the floor. I shook him by the shoulder and called his name. He slid to the floor like a greasy snake, taking the toilet seat with him.

I won’t go into any more detail. It took a good two hours to get him to bed. There was a period of time he simply stood, incapable of moving. Dehydration, heat stroke and vodka don’t mix. I gave him water.

Leo was only the first of the heat casualties. The sun was peaking through the blinds again when I finally laid down. The damn thing wouldn’t stay down. It was already up and blazing people into an ultraviolet-brain cooked stupor and I hadn’t had a wink of sleep yet.

Eight AM came , literally, in the blink of an eye. I met my brother and we enjoyed the talks, seeing almost every one. Incredibly, I never felt tired even though that auditorium could lure a meth addict to sleep. All of the talks were good.

After the banquet there was a gathering at the bar. I happened to join in. Imagine that… Leo was there, too. All of the Leos, in fact. This was the big finale. It wound down as the sun rose and it was too late, or perhaps too early…whatever, to buy beer at the Circle K. I spent my time engrossed in conversation with a charming Leo from UK, this one a female, about documentary film making.

There wasn’t much point in sleep now, since the Geology tour was leaving in less than two hours. UK Leo said he’d just wait-up. I slept until the vans were running downstairs. I had time to simply bundle my kit in a wad and run downstairs and throw it in the StRange Rover. The vans were just loading, so I ran back inside to Starbucks. I wanted to kill the person in front of me ordering a triple mocha hoopla-drip machiacappucinoamericano hand-blended smoothy with sprinkles. After what seemed like a month, I ordered my BIG coffee (I refuse to say Grande) and shuffled out to the StRange Rover and fired her up. I pulled into last place in the caravan and waited.

There is a mathematical rule that relates the number of people in a party to the time it takes that party to actually do anything. It is called the ‘milling factor’. The more people there are, the larger the milling factor becomes by logarithmic scale. If there are enough people, the milling factor will prevent anything from happening and the situation devolves to chaos. With well over twenty people the milling factor was enormous.

As I watched light refract through heat blistering off the hood, the StRange Rover’s vinyl dashboard disintegrated before my very eyes in the UV, X-ray and gamma radiation from the Sun. The organizer and leader of our caravan, Herr Leo, was circling the vans attempting to get people inside and strapped in.

Some folks refer to this as ‘herding cats’. I disagree. Cats tend to scatter and move. High milling factor creates a kind of paralysis where people just stand and stare at each other, waiting for someone else to make a move. Milling has a more bovine nature to it. My BIG coffee was almost finished when the vans actually started rolling. Now I had to pee. I held on because I wasn’t about to run inside when everyone else was finally ready, so we took off on the Geology tour.

Southern Comfort Leo joined me in the StRange Rover at the first stop. It was my first chance to pee and survey the group I was with – in that order. I noticed all of the essential Leo’s, meaning the drinking ones, were on the geology tour. We must run in crowds, I thought, mutually attracted by intense heat, miles of driving, lack of sleep and an excuse to party every night.

As I focused my bleary eyes (I don’t think Leo would have climbed in with me if he knew how much sleep I’d had in the past three days) I saw geologic features I’d written about. I was going to point them out to Southern Comfort Leo, when Leo pointed out to me what he’d been noticing. Leo in the car ahead was swerving off the road occasionally.

Why would Leo do that, I wondered. We found out a few miles later, when on a steeply diving switchback road with no shoulder, Leo in-the-car-ahead, swerved off road and punctured his tire. As it happened, he was passing-out from dehydration and heat. Apparently he came from a place where air conditioning is not a life support system.

He was bundled in the back of a van to re-hydrate and sleep, while someone else took over command of his car, now driving on a spare. We spent a couple of hours getting a new tire for Leo in-the-car-ahead and ended up split into two groups somewhere in Verde Valley because of lunch preferences. We regrouped in Oak Creek Canyon, just past Sedona. Here, everyone cooled their feet in the water under the shade of cottonwoods at Oak Creek’s shore.

The heat, the fact we hadn’t made it to Meteor Crater that day, Leo in-the-car-ahead’s travails, all melted away as the group laughed and splashed in the creek. It was a fine moment. All of the Leo’s felt better. We were all Leo now. Regrouped and refreshed, the caravan drove on to Flagstaff.

As the group checked-in to the motel and got settled, Southern Comfort Leo and I walked to the bar/restaurant across the parking lot to have a cold one. UK Leo joined us next, then others drifted in. I hadn’t paid much attention, but did notice an older gentleman sitting alone drinking beer at a table in the back.

The Leos and I stood at the bar, while all the other Leo’s congregated at a table behind us. I heard a commotion and turned around to see the distinguished looking gentleman sprawled on his back. Several of our Leo’s were attending to him.

I said, “who’s that guy?” to our little group at the bar, but they paid me no attention, struggling as they were to understand each other – Southern drawl vs. UK soccer slang. I sipped my beer and surveyed the situation. The man was still prostate, being given wet towels and water. Someone was calling 911. What else could I do. I sipped my beer. “Do you guys see what’s happening behind us?” I asked. This time I broke through and they turned to look. “Why that’s Seattle Leo,” said Southern Comfort Leo.

I vaguely knew we were to meet Seattle Leo in Flagstaff. I didn’t know details though, so hadn’t connected the distinguished man at the back table with being a Leo. As the paramedics wheeled him away, I said something lame like “take care” and laid my hands over his. They were cold as ice. Our third victim of heat stroke.

One part of our group driven by Colorado Leo, or as I thought of him: the spitting image of Jeff Bridges, were eclectic Leo’s from around the world. They decided to camp-out in the National Forest instead of staying at the motel. They were a lively and entertaining bunch, so some of the motel Leo’s and I decided we’d visit their camp for a few beers.

They were camped somewhere in Coconino National Forest. Since Coconino National Forest covers approximately 1.8 million acres, I thought our prospects of finding them dubious. Nevertheless, we took two cars, bought some beer and departed Flag for the ‘campground’ they were supposedly at. They weren’t. The location was the Forest Service headquarters. No campground in sight.

This called for an unmanly admission that we didn’t know where we were going and needed directions. A cell phone was produced. I’m not sure if it was a bad connection, or if UK Leo was doing the talking. In any case the directions seemed uncertain.

We tried, but eventually gave up and parked in a dense, dark forest of Ponderosa and Spruce. I kept my eye out for bears and Sasquatch. At least we had beer and other essentials among us, and we stood in the dark and talked about magnetism, mountains and made a toast to Michael Steinbacher. A freight train roared past within a hundred yards of where we stood. It must have been a mile long and it left us feeling pumped from the noise and vibration.

I was driving, so only sipped on my beer. Still, lack of sleep had me seeing pinpoints of light in the corners of my eyes as we drove back to the motel. I followed Room mate Leo as he missed the exit and drove around the longest way conceivable to get back on track. I was almost beside myself thinking we’d entered a never ending road somewhere in the twilight zone. The Leo’s in my car had turned into bobble-heads and didn’t seem to notice we were being sucked back to Sedona, no doubt by the vortex.

I got a solid night’s sleep, rooming with Sacramento Leo. It’s usually a little strange to sleep in a room with a stranger, but in this case my head hit the pillow and didn’t lift until Leo belatedly advised me the vans were ready to roll in five minutes.

No time to shower – day three. I was beginning to stink. Well, not really. I stunk. You either stink or you don’t, there’s really no ‘beginning to’. I felt some pity for my StRange Rover-mate, Southern Comfort Leo.

After that first devastating day of heat, others began to notice – in addition to how bad I smelled – how I always parked in shade if I could find it, or aim the car away from the sun so the seats didn’t blister my ass when I got back in. At 120ºF, a car’s interior surfaces exposed to sun can reach 195ºF. By comparison, pork is considered safe to eat at 145ºF. I don’t comb my hair either, otherwise I’ll get a sunburned part. Tricks of the desert rat.

Our intrepid leader, Herr Leo, stepped up to a major feat of organization at meteor crater, advising us of the time to regroup. Things went smoothly until I had the sudden urge to (once again) use the bathroom at the last minute, hence I was the one who held up the group. It’s no fun walking out of a restroom, zipping up your fly, while thirty people sit in a parking lot staring at you.

I learned a lot about Michael Steinbacher on the trip. What a vagabond life he led, and how many loyal friends he had who gave him a couch, or bed, and traveled with him to rocky, windswept corners of the southwest, looking at evidence of the vast catastrophic forces that shaped our planet.

It gave me a tremendous morale boost. I recognized in the stories about Michael something I’ve found to be true for me. To truly clear the eyes of mud… to see things clearly for what they are, demands a rejection of convention.

I gave up income, home and stability to find the Electric Universe. Hanging on to what people expect of you will keep you locked into their paradigm forever. All notion that theoretical science explains anything at all had to be discarded and understood as a gross misinterpretation of the physics that govern our universe. I had to disconnect to see that.

Michael understood and looked at landscape in a way no one else had really captured. His inspirations inspired many more. We came to spread his ashes at the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon. Herr Leo had selected Geology Point as an appropriate place. It was.

Being a generally agnostic group to begin with, and knowing Michael was too, there was not much in the way of spiritual context. Herr Leo and a couple of the female Leo’s took a moment to reflect on Michael’s influence in their lives and his appreciation for truth.

Truth does exist. We could see it with our own eyes in the canyon. The obvious carving of scalloped edges in the ninety degree, boxed side canyon we stood above spoke more to the validity of Michael’s interpretation of geology than anything anyone could have said.

I spoke with Michael’s friends about the formation of the Grand Canyon. I agree with Michael’s assessment, in general. The canyon was carved by an explosive current locked to the river’s channel. I’d looked into, and written about breccia pipes; karst-like formations of broken rock that fill vertical tunnels emanating from a limestone formation above the inner gorge. These breccia pipes emerge from the ground all over the south rim, concentrated along the rim and even split open in places along the canyon wall.

My belief is these were the result of current flows from the inner gorge that blasted out the stubby, 90 degree angled side canyons by coursing through the limestone aquifer and up through the crust, forming the breccia pipes. Everything I saw standing over Geology Point confirmed my intuition, and Michael’s hypothesis, which I think conforms with mine. It made me feel good we laid his ashes there.

The canyon left me uplifted, but feeling small, knowing how few are the people who even fathom what we could see.

Herr Leo took the caravan speeding down an empty two lane road to Utah, past miles of open country I wanted to walk through. Shallow canyon fingers dipped right away from the roadside, to disappear into dark cavernous gorges that led a mile deep to the Colorado. How were they formed – not by water erosion. There is no evidence of water erosion on the walls of the Grand Canyon – anywhere, except the very lowest reaches of the inner gorge – the only place the river has ever flowed.

The only evidence given for water erosion creating the canyon is that there is a canyon there. Ergo, typical mainstream circular logic says it must have been carved by water. It ain’t evident in the rocks though. A fact neatly and blithely ignored by geologists.

We crossed the Little Colorado and skirted the Navajo Nation, heading north. At Cameron, Arizona we stopped for lunch. It made sense, since one of our Leo’s was named Cameran-Leo; wrong spelling, but close enough to earn a sandwich. This was also where I departed, leaving to drive home to Tucson through the best part of Arizona, Highway 191. I’ll tell about that in a moment.

I hate goodbyes. This one didn’t hurt though. I knew I would be seeing these Leo’s again.

Every Leo hugged me. There wasn’t a single hand shake, or fist bump. Just hugs. It was a striking moment for me, when Sacramento Leo gave me a memento from Michael. Something Michael raised on his own, infused with his love of life and our world. I fired it up as I drove alone to Kayenta.

As the StRange Rover hummed along, the sun began to set on a landscape I could only imagine had been etched. Magnificent undulating, layered and cap-rocked dunes scalloped and gouged around the edges. A different electrical scarring than I’d been studying. Something to look into in the future.

Near Kayenta is where Dave Talbott’s photo of a petroglyph was taken. The one Tony Perratt identified as a plasma instability – rock hard evidence of an aurora in the ancient sky that our ancestors witnessed. I marveled to myself that his paper had been published over a decade ago and so few people had even noticed. Yet it gave up so much truth. It was the very thing that had brought me to look into EU.

As I drove through Tsegi, I looked into the canyon. Tsegi Canyon holds deep mystery for me. This is where the Kayenta Anasazi – the Pueblo people of Northern Arizona spent their final days in cliff dwellings, before, in sudden diaspora they fled to Mexico. Something like the Exodus.

What happened? Why did they live in the cliffs? Mainstream theories of drought and infertile crops is simply a weak and unintelligent answer to the true plight of the Pueblo people of the Four Corners area. Scientists blame everything on climate change now – that’s the paradigm. Something else happened to the Pueblo in 1100 to 1300 AD, when after living in the open for centuries, they turned to living under rocks before simply leaving the area, en masse.

They were either hiding from something from above, or below – lightning perhaps, or a swarm of hungry bigfoot (cannibal demons in the native Hopi) come down from the San Juan’s. I don’t know which yet, but I’m going to Tsegi some day to figure it out and write a novel about it.

As I looked into the deep reaches of the canyon, the setting sun shone through, framed by the vertical, black canyon walls and sheets of illuminated virga hanging from the clouds above.

It was damned ominous looking, but spectacular. A few miles beyond Kayenta, there is a mountain feature visible from the road I had used an image of in my presentation. I knew it was there and hoped to see it under the full moon. I couldn’t see it though, because storm clouds blocked the light. Too bad.

I continued non-stop through Navajo lands because I had to. There are no Motel 6’s on the Res. Nor is there any alcohol. Two reasons to keep driving. As I drove South from Four Corners past Canyon De Chelly, the StRange Rover rolled over giant fingers of the Chuska mountains that stretched across the desert. In the sky, the clouds made giant feathered strokes of lichtenberg figures. I knew the land under my feet looked the same, and it was no coincidence.

After a night in a cheap motel along I-40, where I closed thick drapes and slept late, I departed on my final day. This I knew would be an epic drive. Highway 191 (renamed because Highway 666 seemed to disturb some people) runs down the eastern edge of the State. It is an age-old corridor for migration and trade. The Anasazi traded with the Aztecs along this route. It led to the region’s giant center of trade, Chaco Canyon. The Puebloans retreated on this route during the diaspora.

It was used by Coronado and the conquistadors, when they came as the first tourists to the Grand Canyon. Renegades and outlaws used this trail in the days of Apache wars and stage coach robberies.

It climbs into the White Mountains through lava fields and hills that appear like huge, low windblown dunes. Near St. John there is a lake right off of the highway, named Lyman Lake. I turned in to look at the State Park campsites and take a break. As I drove in a sign pointed to a road that said “Petroglyph Trail.” I made the turn and parked at the trail head.

It led into some small hills on a peninsula in the lake. The hills have a cap rock that is black with patina on the top surface. Broken blocks of it are scattered down the hillsides. On these I found a perfect ‘squatter man’ pecked into a flat, patina covered block.

I also noticed the patina appeared to be burnt onto the rock’s surface. There were marks of hot ablation, as if a sheet of flame had seared the cap rock from above. I wondered if it was a thing people had witnessed. Perhaps that is why they chose this place to commemorate the auroras that surely would have preceded such a flash.

A few miles further up the road, I passed volcanic cinder cones and rode over vast lava flows. On the lava flows, lightning began to strike. It flashed with an almost constant frequency, close enough to hear the peel of thunder, but far enough to enjoy the show. I pulled to the side on a hill and lowered my tailgate to watch – the reason I drive the StRange Rover is it has a classic drop-down tailgate – essential for such moments. I also celebrated Michael’s green thumb again as I watched the lightning strike and listened to the thunder. It was a fitting spectacle to end the journey and my formal introduction to the Electric Universe.

Thanks to Leo’s gift of Michael’s homegrown, I missed my turn in Springerville, and drove fifteen miles into New Mexico on Highway 60 before I realized I was going downhill when I should be going up. Things were going too well, I suppose. Where I turned around was a dirt road to Luna, New Mexico. I was in a curious feature of land I had spotted on Google Earth before. The dramatic sweep of land before me was a shallow valley, closed in by windswept dunes of sandstone. The name Luna was appropriate. This trip just kept giving surprises. I didn’t take the road, but committed to coming back, to Luna, to the Leo’s and to uncovering the simple majesty of our Electric Universe.

StRange Rover Leo.

Update: Leo is now engaged to Leo. I have confirmation, so feel free to announce it. And I thought I was having fun…apparently not as much as those two.

Electric Earth June 5, 2016October 3, 2017

Arc Blast

One of the most compelling aspects of Electric Universe cosmology is that it is visually apparent. A person can see a Peratt column in a petroglyph and reasonably conclude that our ancestors viewed a different sky than we do.

Or look at a telescope image of planetary nebula and recognize the hourglass shape of plasma current contracting to form a star.

Or view the red-shifted quasars inside Halton Arp’s “unusual galaxies” and determine for yourself if they are really the distant objects we’re told by conventional astronomy.

In fact, through Electric Universe eyes, you can see that patterns in nature, from galactic to nuclear, are coherent, fractal, and electric.

The planets and moons of our own solar system provide some of the most accessible and compelling visual evidence of all. Hexagonal craters, rilles and the odd distribution of these features, often concentrated near the poles, or in one hemisphere, attest to an electrical formation. One can imagine the vortex of discharging plasma that carved them.

5080_mount_fitzroy_c — The central pillar of Mt. Fitzroy

Earth should also show electrical scarring – in an Electric Universe it has to be the case. But it’s not intuitively apparent.

Unlike the Moon, or Mercury, Earth doesn’t display a carpet of hexagonal craters. There are some craters we know that are ancient and eroded, but their formation remains controversial.

There does exist proof of electrical scarring on Earth, however, and it’s in abundance. You can say it’s staring us in the face. This article will discuss how to recognize it.

First however, recognize that what distinguishes Earth from a planet like Mercury, or the Moon, is its atmosphere and geomagnetic field. This changes the electrical character of the Earth entirely. It doesn’t respond like a bald, rocky planet in an electric current, drawing lightning bolts from a region of space that carries a different electrical potential.

Earth acts like a gas giant, integral to the circuitry, with current flowing through, as well as around it. But Earth’s current flows in a liquid plasma – the molten magma below the crust. In the event the system is energized, current discharges from within.

The evidence is in the extensive volcanism on Earth. Volcanoes straddle subduction zones at the edges of continental plates, rift zones and mid-ocean ridges. They betray the flow of current beneath the crust.

Surface evidence is in the mountains. Basin and range, mountain arcs, and mountain cordilleras are all proof of electrical discharge. To understand the visual evidence, however, requires looking beyond the simple concept of a lightning bolt from space. The reason is the Earth’s atmosphere.

When electrical discharge occurs in an atmosphere, it creates sonic-hydrodynamic effects. We experience the effect when we hear thunder – the sonic boom of a lighting bolt. It’s the sonic and hydrodynamic effects, in a dense, viscous atmosphere, that leave their mark on the landscape at the grandest scale.

In a previous article, “Surface Conductive Faults”, we discussed the concept of a surface conductive double layer providing a path for arc flash. The surface conductive path is the cloud layer, where we can see that ions collect to produce thunderstorms.

Imagine a lightning bolt of immense proportions, sheets of lightning, in fact, arcing horizontally in this region that is roughly five, to fifty thousand feet above the land. The focus of this article is the hydrodynamic effects of the resulting arc blast. Arc blast is the consequence of arc flash in a surface conductive current discharge.

Four Steps to Build a Mountain…

The following image (annotated by the author) from Los Alamos Laboratories shows a shock wave being created by a supersonic projectile passing over water. The colors display density; highest in the red, lowest in the blue. Purple is the baseline of the atmosphere. It provides a very good analogy for the way a mountain is built.

The result of the arcs passing is embossed on the land by shock waves that act almost precisely as those made by the projectile.

The difference being the shock wave is plowing land, not water, and it has the hyper-sonic velocity, heat and power of an arcing current – much more energy than a simple projectile.

The bow shock is an anvil of many thousands of psi, at a temperature many times that of the sun, carrying charged electric fields. In a dense, viscous environment, fluid mechanics, shock effects and electromagnetism align in phase and frequency with the arc that creates them.

In Region 1, the bow shock vaporizes, and melts the ground, plowing an oblong crater.

Region 2 is a reflected shock wave blasting into the atmosphere, pushing an exploding cloud of vaporized debris into a Richtmeyer-Meshkov instability, more commonly known as a mushroom cloud.

The cloud is not shown in the projectile over water because that simulation did not involve the explosive effects of expanding gases heated instantaneously by an arc flash.

The mushroom cloud rises behind the shock wave with a supersonic vacuum at its core. The updraft of expanding gases generates in-flowing ground winds that scream like banshees across the ablated surface of the blast zone, attaining supersonic speeds as they funnel to the core of the updraft, dragging clouds of molten rock and dust. A simulation of such an event created by an air-burst meteor is portrayed in this video by Dr. Mark Boslough of Sandia Labs.

The ground winds are directed perpendicular to the primary shock wave. Keep this in mind, because it is very important evidence in the sacred geometry of mountains.

In Region 3, a low pressure updraft forms, like the rooster tail behind a speedboat. The rooster tail pulls ablated melt from the crater. It forms the core of the mountain.

In Region 4, multiple shock reflections form triangular wave-forms. Note, the reflected wave bounces from the surface. The base of the triangle forms on the surface that reflects it.

The multiple shock reflections in Region 4 are standing waves. Standing waves don’t travel. The wave-form stays in place with the energy coursing though it. Reflected waves multiply, like in a hall of mirrors, repeating harmonic wave-forms to the nth degree, until the energy of the shock dissipates.

The reflected shock waves are rigid and stable when the energy is high, creating a shock ‘envelop’ over the ablated land. The energy does not dissipate quickly, because the vacuum of the mushroom cloud above is punching a hole through the atmosphere to space, drawing supersonic winds through the shock envelope like a cosmic vacuum. This is a source of free energy to the shock wave that keeps it alive.

Shock waves are highly energetic. They are razor thin sheets of pure energy, entire tsunamis in a sheet of glass. Like steel plates animated with resonate energy that derives from the original bow shock.

The incoming ground winds funnel through triangular plenums formed by reflected shock waves. The entire envelop of reflected waves acts as a coherent entity, with structural stiffness, resonating with the vibrations of the parent shock and the supersonic winds screaming through it.

It rides on the surface of the land, spread across the entire impact zone of the bow shock, like a multi-manifold vacuum cleaner, hosed to a hole in the sky above.

The winds plaster the mountain core with layered triangular buttresses.

Supersonic Wind Effects…

bulletreflectecshock — Reflected shock waves from a bullet impact

Shock reflections form at 90 degrees to the path of the shock wave that made them, so they emanate radially from the impact as seen in the Schlieren image of a bullet impact.

Hence, the orientation of triangular wave-forms holds information on the path of the initial shock.

It also vectors the supersonic wind flow, which layers the buttress in place. Therefore, wind direction is perpendicular to the stratified layers of the buttress and can be determined.

Examination of the coherent orientation of triangular buttresses dispels any notion they were made by random influences of wind and rain over the eons. The non-random, radial orientation of wave-forms is, in fact, impossible to explain except as the result of a single shock event that produced winds unlike anything we experience today.

When a shock wave dissipates, the inflow of winds doesn’t necessarily stop, but they slow down and are no longer constrained to the path formed by the shock fronts. The final layers of material deposited often lose coherence and exhibit sub-sonic flow patterns.

The layered material on buttresses is deposited in a hot, molten state. Patterns of deposition display evidence of molten fluidity at the time they were made.

Reflected Shock Waves…

Supersonic shock waves display particular behaviors that have been studied by aerospace engineers since the beginning of the jet age. These characteristics must be understood to design airplanes, missiles and rockets. We know a great deal about their behavior.

The angle that the initial shock wave makes is directly related to the Mach speed of the wave, so it is called the Mach angle. Hence, the Mach angle holds information on the speed of the shock wave that made it.

The triangular reflected wave form is an inevitability of supersonic flow. It forms when the initial shock wave hits a surface and reflects.

The reflected wave will have an equal, but opposite angle incident to the surface from the shock wave that made it, assuming the plane of the surface and trajectory of the wave front are parallel.

When the incident angle between the shock trajectory and the reflecting surface change, more reflected waves are created in predictable ways. Hence, the reflected angle holds information on the trajectory of the shock wave that made it.

The amplitude and wavelength of the reflected waves diminish over time as the energy dissipates. Hence, reflected waves hold information on the energy of the event that made them.

The shock wave travels on a transverse carrier wave called the “propagating wave”. This vibrates the land, seismically, from the hammer blow of the shock wave. The land will reflect some of the shock and absorb some of the shock, as a function of its modulus of elasticity. Hard rock will reflect better than sandstone, because the sandstone will absorb much more of the shock. Uneven surfaces will also modify the wave-form. This contributes to the variety of wave-forms we see.

Supersonic shock waves are longitudinal waves. Instead of vibrating up and down in a sinusoidal vibration, longitudinal waves compress and expand back and forth, like an accordian. Transverse waves, like the propagating wave, travel up and down.

The result is longitudinal and transverse waves super-positioning. Except inverted to the super-positioned wave shown below, with the fixed boundary above, fixed to the point in space the shock originated from, and wave motion amplified near the ground.

The static image in pink shows the standing waveform that results. Compression results in a higher frequency of small amplitude, short wavelengths, and expansion results in low frequency, high amplitude, long wavelengths. Triangular buttresses are the molded product of these shock waves, frozen in time as supersonic winds fused them in place on the mountain core.

Take a look:

These wave-forms had to be created from above. A wave needs a surface – an interface – with a medium of higher density to reflect. Pure seismic waves shaking and rolling the ground from below are unbounded above. The atmosphere can’t reflect a seismic shock and create a reflected wave-form on a mountain side. The shock waves came from above.

Our ancestors had a name for them… Dragons. We now examine more, compelling evidence.

Harmonics…

The images below are color enhanced Schlieren photographs of reflected shock waves in a wind tunnel.

Wind tunnels typically show supersonic flow between two surfaces. The initial shock reflects from both walls, creating two triangular wave-forms adjacent to each other. The diamond patterns that form between the triangles are often called ‘shock diamonds’.

In the case where a supersonic shock wave is created in the air, it is unbounded above, so the only surface reflecting it is the ground, and it creates a row of triangles instead of two opposing rows.

The initial wind speed in the first frame (top left) is Mach 2. It shows the shock wave producing one and a half diamonds.

The wind tunnel is charged with gas in a pressure vessel, so as the gas flow progresses, the pressure and mass flow decrease from the pressure vessel, lowering the Mach speed of the wind.

The subsequent frames shows instability in the shock waves as the winds slow. The wave-forms compress and the angles of the primary and reflected waves grow less acute.

Vertical shock waves form, called normal shocks, which travel through the triangles, distorting their shape where the normal wave crosses the reflected wave, causing more reflections. New smaller triangles form and replace the original standing wave. This is harmonic reflection of the primary shock wave.

In the final frame (bottom, right) the wind speed has slowed, the triangular wave-forms are smaller and higher frequency. There are seven shock diamonds where there were initially one and one half.

This sequence of harmonic reflection as the energy of the shock wave dissipates is evident on the triangular buttresses stacked on the sides of mountains. As seen in the images below, triangles are stacked upon triangles in harmonic multiples as the successive layers of material were deposited by supersonic winds, tunneled by the reflected shock waves.

The first image in this group is most instructive. In it, the lower-most layers of harmonic waveform can be seen to have begun to form at the outer edge of the preceding layer.

Instability, Interference and Cancellation…

Transients in wind speed, Mach angle and multiple reflections create instabilities in the wave-forms. Unstable waves segregate and fan away from each other under expansion, fragmenting the wave-forms.

Or they bunch together in compression, pressing waves against each other. Shock waves don’t cross, but fold against each other, like magnetic fields interfering.

As wave-fronts compress, the wave-form can be squeezed and cancelled-out. In this image of a mountain in Iran, three wave-forms compress, distorting into curves where the waves, pressed against each other, bend the center wave-form almost circular. In the following layers, the pinched wave has cancelled altogether and the surrounding wave-forms have joined, stretching wavelengths to close the gap.

A similar wave cancellation has occurred in the next image. Here the center wave-form is cancelled by neighboring wave-forms, and they have expanded to fill the wavelength. A diagonal shock line appears cutting the mountain where the cancellation occurs. It crosses in a step-wise fashion, a few layers at a time, causing it to zig-zag. Note the ruler straight shock lines that divide the adjacent triangular buttresses.

Complex Wave-forms…

Complexity is found within the shock fronts, inside the triangles themselves, as pressure and density variations.

Note the density variations form a circular feature near the top of this Schlieren image. The same feature is on the distorted triangular buttress found in Northern Arizona, shown below.

Also, note how the edges of the triangle draw in towards the circle, just as the waves near the top in the Schlieren image do. The three small buttresses below the hole show a striking similarity to the size and location as those on the wave-forms in the same position in the Schlieren image.

Here is another hole created in a triangular buttress. This one is in Iran.

The Lambda Foot…

This road cut is in Iran and is sometimes described as the slip fault that created the ‘horst-graben’ or basin and range region where this is found.

That isn’t the case. This slice in the ground was left by the primary, or incident shock (left side of the ‘V’) and its reflected shock (right side of the ‘V’).

This is the boundary region where the initial shock meets and reflects from the ground. The incident shock curves sharply downward, and the reflected shock is nearly straight. Where the reflected shock and incident shock meet, there is a feature called the lambda foot.

Note, the incident shock curvature and the particular dip of the sedimentary layers within the ‘V’. They are similar to the angled transmitted shocks shown in the ‘V’ of the diagram. Here is another image with a broader view. In this view, the lambda foot is easier to discern.

Also, a feature not originally shown on the diagram, the cut in the center top of the ‘V’ which results from a shock that curves downward, normal to the expanding corner of the reflected shock, annotated in red on the diagram.

This shock feature is along the side of a hill that can be seen stacking in layers to the left. It should define the outer boundary of the initial shock wave. If so, it should form a ring around the mountain. A similar ‘V’ shaped cut should be found on the opposite side of the hill. If true, the incidence angles, and distance between this ‘V’ and the predicted ‘V’ on the opposite side, hold information about the height of the apex of the passing wave.

Harmonic repetition is undeniably evident on triangular buttresses – proof they resulted from a sonic shock event. It’s proof they were created in a single, coherent event, and could not possibly be the result of time and erosion. Wave-form instabilities and boundary layer effects, like the lambda foot, imprinted on the landscape with such exact form, are beyond statistical happenstance.

Vectors…

Let’s be very clear on this, the wave-forms have no physical explanation in mainstream geology. The wave-form shapes, reflections, harmonics, expansions and contractions dictate a shock event that came from above.

A large comet, or asteroid that atomizes in an air burst could produce a plasma that sears the land, creating a crater, or astrobleme. But such an event would produce a linear, oval, or circular blast zone. Several fragmented bolides from a comet would produce a grouping of astroblemes, but they would necessarily be aligned to the comet’s trajectory.

Only an electrical arc has the ability to make turns in it’s path. The following images demonstrate what I am showing is not the result of any type of rock from space. Future articles will discuss more on the nature of an arc flash.

Iranbends — Aimed in different directions – Iran

Iraq bends — They seem to turn bends – Iran

Electromagnetic Effects…

snapshot2 — The Angry Photographer – magnetic fields

The stratified layers of triangular buttresses are often segregated by mineral composition. This is evidence of dielectric forces.

The arc flash that creates the mountain is essentially a lightning bolt, traveling in an ionized double layer in the atmosphere. An electric field will ionize particles. A magnetic field will sort them. An arc flash necessarily has an electromagnetic field surrounding it.

In fact, the arc is just the intense current flow of electrons at the core of the electromagnetic field. The field itself expands away from the core with the shock wave.

The sock waves are energized with current. The shock wave is a highly stressed region – a dramatic shear zone of pressure, density and temperature the ionized winds can’t penetrate. Ionized material flows with the winds in the low stress triangular region between the shock waves. The shock wave itself is a conduit for current. Current coursing through thin shock waves molds the electromagnetic fields in the coherent form of the reflected shock and sorts material according to its dielectric properties.

Blowouts…

Another dramatic signature of an electrical nature is a feature we’ll call a blowout. Blowout occurs when the arcing current makes direct contact with the ground.

The arc flash follows the most conductive path available. It travels in the ionized atmosphere, especially in arid regions where soils are dry and non-conductive compared to the ionized atmosphere above ground. When a conductive surface feature is available the arc will fork to ground.

The conductive feature may be a mineral deposit, or water in a stream, aquifer or wetland. The result is a crater that blasts away a portion of the mountain being formed. The images below show a blowouts in the center of a mountain. It is apparent the crater significantly modified the form of the mountain.

Expansion Fans…

The images to follow are from a complex formation of astroblemes in Iran. They are on the outside, or convex bend in a large mountain arc.

One unusual crater shows shock effects as the apparent arc trajectory changes. The feature annotated is an example of an expansion fan, which is a set of reflected waves that occur on the outside of a bend (convex) when the source of the shock makes a change in direction. The fanning shock waves have produced linear hills that radiate from the bend.

Ejecta and Ablation Zones…

Material ablated from the blast forms layered hills and pressure ridges on the surrounding area. Layering indicates material was blown away from the blast, instead of being drawn toward it by the suction of the mushroom cloud. Evidence of high speed winds is seen where they form fingers of conical flow, dunes and pressure ridges.

Summary…

What we have seen:

Triangular buttresses form on the sides of mountains in the shape of reflected supersonic shock waves,
They are layered onto the mountain, so they are not caused by seismic waves,
They are not layered sediments from an ancient beach, or waterway since the sharply angled triangles are a consistent feature around the world and do not conform to any motion of random water waves,
They are formed in all types of rock, including granite, so they are not formed by eons of normal winds,
The triangular wave-forms exhibit compression and expansion from superimposed longitudinal and transverse waves,
The triangular wave forms exhibit harmonic repetition consistent with reflected shock waves,
The triangular wave-forms exhibit super-positioning and cancellation under compression consistent with reflected shock waves,
The triangular wave-forms are parallel to the primary shock pattern, consistent with reflected shock waves and perpendicular to the wind direction, consistent with supersonic winds created by a shock wave,
The triangular wave-forms exhibit less energy and more transient effects on softer substrates, and higher energy and sharper, more defined angles on hard substrates,
Triangular wave-forms exhibit transient reflections, normal shocks and features of density variation consistent with supersonic reflected shock waves,
The blast zones show concentric rings of pressure ridges, layered in the direction of the winds,
The winds within the blast zone are directed normal to the central mountain, or crater (outward blown winds), as indicated by surface layering on pressure ridges and buttresses,
Boundary layer features of reflected waves can be found in the substrate of the blast zone, as seen in the road cut in Iran,
Land surrounding the blast zone is blanketed with ejecta that exhibits flow patterns from high speed winds.

Future articles will examine more evidence for the effects of arc flash on the landscape:

The ‘rooster tail’ and how big mountains are built,
Following winds and how Kelvin-Hemholtz instability can modify a mountain ridge,
Complex mountain forms and mountain arcs,
The interrelation between volcanoes and mountains,
The connection between shock waves, fractals and Lichtenburg landscapes,
How rocks form,
The cause and nature of an arc flash,
Sub-sea canyons, trenches and rifts,
Examples from the archeological and mythological records of mankind.

What is proposed here can be verified. In fact, mountains are the most tangible evidence for the Electric Universe model available. The evidence is under our feet. There are already reams of geologic data waiting to be re-interpreted.

Geophysics, applied to evaluate geology as the consequence of electromagnetic and hydro-dynamic forces, will some day bear this out. You may even have the ability to bring that day closer. Your comments are invited.

The proposed theory of arc flash and arc blast and the effects on the landscape are the sole ideas of the author, as a result of observation, knowledge of shock and hydrodynamic effects, and simple deductive reasoning. The Electric Universe cosmological model provides the proper scientific context. Credit to Dr. Mark Boslough’s simulation of an air burst meteor, which provided significant insight into the mechanism of a shock wave. His simulation can be viewed on YouTube: Mark Boslough.

Electric Earth April 16, 2016October 3, 2017

There Be Dragons…

A mountain’s form is like a brush stroke on the landscape. To understand it, all one has to do is look. But it helps to know a little mechanical engineering.

What…you thought the study of mountains was called geology? Not in the Electric Universe. In the Electric Universe, conventional geology belongs in the ash bin, along with Big Bang theory and climate science.

In the Electric Universe, the pedantic view that all things are particles pulled by gravity must be cast aside, and everything looked at with fresh eyes. Electromagnetic fields govern everything we see and experience.

Everything Is Electric…

From the atom, which is a “cloud” of electrons around a positive nucleus; to the chemistry of molecules that compose matter; to the workings of organic cells that animate life, it’s all manifest by electromagnetic forces.

Everything we see in space, beyond the dust and debris of rocky planets, is plasma.

Our own star, the Sun, is a ball of electromagnetic activity that pervades the solar system with a current that influences the Earth’s geomagnetic field. Even the largest things we see in space, the plasma filaments that string galaxies together, and the galaxies themselves, carry electric current in cosmic proportion.

So, to not consider the possibility that, what is beneath the resolution of our microscopes, and beyond the reach of our space probes, might also be electromagnetic in nature, would be, well… unscientific.

“Science” has kicked this notion aside, however, preferring to invent things they are more comfortable with, because electromagnetic fields are weird and hard to comprehend. It is much easier to imagine particles as billiard balls in a clockwork, deterministic cosmos.

And when that doesn’t explain things, because it is based on false assumptions, it is easier to invent things no one can ever see than it is to rethink the entire premise. If it can’t be seen, tested, or reproduced in a lab, no one can ever disprove it. How convenient.

That is why we have the invented dark forces – black holes, dark matter, dark energy and virtual particles – stuff we never see and never will – and none of it has a shred of real proof behind it. There is much use of Latin terminology as a form of intellectual hand-waving – a way to keep the unwashed masses from asking uncomfortable questions. And there is much circular argument – ‘dark matter exists because our equations don’t work without it, therefore we know it exists’ – type of thing. In fact, what they would have us believe is that 97% of the Universe is composed of invisible stuff.

That is what geology has been doing for a couple of hundred years, as well. Only it doesn’t even have the math behind it. It’s a guess, based on a worldview that doesn’t include electromagnetism.

The geologist considers electromagnetic properties of rock all the time, but not as a means of formation. Geology has imagined rocks are made deep inside the Earth, where enough heat, pressure and time can be conjured to weld silica with other compounds to make a rock. Yet rocks of every structure, from the clay that binds sandstone, to hard crystals like quartz, are bound by shared electrons at the atomic level.

The Earth carries a ground potential. Every electrician knows this. Those who forgot aren’t around anymore. So, one might consider in true scientific fashion, that if rocks are structured by electrical bonds, and the Earth has inherent current, there might be a cause and effect relationship. But no, geology does not consider electromagnetic forces at work in rock formations.

Instead they have created a narrative of ancient trolls and demons beneath the Earth.

The trolls roll the continents about, crashing them into each other and squishing their edges to form mountains. Shards of rock stick up like broken glass from the land. The trolls are called ‘Plate Tectonics‘ and ‘Subduction‘.

Demons help the trolls stretch and pull the land like taffy, until it resembles an accordian. The demons are called, ‘Slip Faults‘ and ‘Horst and Graben‘.

All of these trolls and demons are ancient, and died millions and billions of years ago, conveniently unavailable for questioning.

The land thus created sits many millions of years and erodes. This is where geology begins to get things right, because we can actually watch water and wind and landslides erode the landscape. Pack a lunch and sunscreen to witness – it takes awhile.

And then there are volcanoes. Real demons of the deep that rise to form mountains we can see in the making. Cinder cones rise, magma flows, pyroclastic ash and lahars spread over the land. Geology is right about volcanoes, except for what causes them, but that is a subject for another article.

Volcanoes provide a baseline for studying erosion on other mountains, however, because the theory you are about to read will be excused as an act of erosion, the ‘marvels of chaos’ and the author’s dementia by those who prefer not to believe their own eyes. So let’s tackle one issue first.

Mt. Fuji

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Vesuvius

Mt. St. Helens

These are volcanoes. They are exposed to the same influences of wind and rain, avalanche and landslide, glacier, snow melt and seismic shock that other mountains are exposed to. Yet, except for the conical shape of the cinder cones and craters, nowhere on their flanks, or between their stream beds, is there evidence of any pattern of repeated harmonic land-form of any kind. They are beautiful, but they look like melted candles.

This is important and provable, in case anyone wants to make a survey of every true volcano to verify it.

Mountains, on the other hand, display harmonies. This question has haunted my conscience since I was a child: Why do mountains display harmonies?

You will learn why in the next forty-five hundred words and many pictures. All you need to do is believe your lying eyes.

You will see that mountains are made by hydrodynamic forces – I have come to recognize this because I’m a mechanical engineer. But hydrodynamics is ultimately a result of electromagnetic fields. How could it be otherwise in an Electric Universe?

You will never look at a mountain the same way again, but don’t fear. They will only impress you more when you recognize the grandeur of their creation.

And the fact they were made by electric dragons.

The Dragon’s Flight – How A Mountain Is Made…

The following images from Los Alamos Laboratories shows the shock waves created by a supersonic projectile passing over water. The colors display density; highest in the red, lowest in the blue. Purple is the baseline of the atmosphere.

We will look at the final frame of the fully formed shock wave for detail. It provides a very good analogy for the way a mountain is built, even though this image depicts a projectile in air over water. To build a mountain requires the energy of a surface conductive arc flash. To learn more about these, you should first read Surface Conductive Faults.

This article is about the mountains they create, so the projectile is imagined as an arc flash, searing through a surface conductive layer over the land. The surface conductive path is the cloud layer. The same conductive region where ions collect and generate the electrical storms we see today. From roughly five, to fifty thousand feet where thunderstorms live, is where the arc flash occurs. Only it is a lightning bolt of immense proportions.

The result of its passing is embossed on the land by shock waves that act almost precisely as those made by the projectile.

The difference, instead of a projectile, is a hyper-sonic flash of arcing current creates the shock wave, and the shock wave is plowing land, not water. And it has far more energy than a simple projectile.

It is an anvil of many thousands of psi, at a temperature many times that of the sun, carrying charged electric fields. Plasma obeys the hydrodynamics of shock waves.

In Region 1, the bow shock vaporizes, and melts the ground, plowing an oblong crater.

Region 2 is the reflected shock wave blasting into the atmosphere, pushing an exploding cloud of vaporized debris into a Richtmeyer-Meshkov instability, more commonly known as a mushroom cloud.

The cloud is not shown in the projectile over water because that simulation did not involve the explosive effects of expanding gases heated instantaneously by an arc flash.

In our case, it does. The mushroom cloud rises along the length of the shock wave strike zone, trailing a reflected shock wave with a supersonic vacuum at its core.

A simulation of such an event created by an air-burst meteor is portrayed in this video by Dr. Mark Boslough of Sandia Labs.

The cloud is orders of magnitude larger than a hydrogen bomb. It is made of a massive quantity of vaporized rock, which has instantaneously increased its volume fifty thousand times. The word explosion is an understatement.

The updraft generates massive in-flowing ground winds that scream like banshees across the ablated surface of the blast zone, attaining supersonic speeds as they funnel to the core of the updraft, dragging clouds of molten rock and dust.

The ground winds are directed perpendicular to the primary shock wave. Keep this in mind, because it is very important evidence in the sacred geometry of mountains.

In Region 3, a low pressure updraft forms, like the rooster tail behind a speedboat. This rooster tail pulls ablated melt from the crater. It forms the core of a mountain.

Region 4 is the rarefaction zone where multiple shock reflections form triangular wave-forms. This image shows only the first reflections. Note, the reflected wave bounces from the surface. The base of the triangle forms on the surface that reflects it.

The reflected shock waves are rigid and stable when the energy is high, creating a shock ‘envelop’ over the ablated land. The energy does not dissipate quickly, because the vacuum of the mushroom cloud above is punching a hole through the atmosphere to space, drawing supersonic winds through the shock envelope like God’s own Hoover. This is a source of free energy to the shock wave, keeping it alive, so to speak.

Shock waves are highly energetic. They are a razor thin sheet of pure energy, an entire tsunami in a sheet of glass. Like steel plates, animated with resonate energy that derives from the original bow shock.

The incoming ground winds funnel through triangular plenums, walled in by the reflected shock waves. The entire envelop of reflected waves acts as a coherent entity, with structural stiffness, resonating with the vibrations of the parent shock and the supersonic winds screaming through it.

It rides on the surface of the land, spread across the entire impact zone of the bow shock, like a multi-manifold vacuum cleaner, hosed to a hole in the sky above.

The winds plaster the mountain core with layered triangular buttresses. We will see that these buttresses are as predictable as the stain in Daisy May’s panties.

The Dragon’s Breath – Supersonic Wind Effects…

Shock reflections form at 90 degrees to the path of the shock wave that made them, so they emanate radially from the impact as seen in the Schlieren image of a bullet impact.

Hence, the orientation of triangular wave-forms holds information on the path of the initial shock.

It also vectors the supersonic wind flow, which layers the buttress in place. Therefore, wind direction is perpendicular to the stratified layers of the buttress and can therefore be determined.

The layered material on buttresses is deposited in a hot, molten state. Patterns of deposition display evidence of molten fluidity at the time they were made.

Simple Mountains and Craters – Examples…

This mountain in Iran is 50 km north of Bandar Abbas, on the Straights of Hormuz. It is a simple astrobleme created by a shock wave and in-flowing (towards the center of the blast zone) supersonic winds. Let’s look at some of its features.

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This next simple astrobleme, in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental, has only a small central hill. It is a crater with raised rims. Here, the winds blast outward, and supersonic winds form triangular buttresses on the inside of the crater rim.

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The Dragon’s Teeth – Reflected Shock Waves…

shockingbanner — Standing triangular wave forms made by reflected shock waves in supersonic flow

The triangular reflected wave form is an inevitability of supersonic flow. It forms when the initial shock wave hits a surface and reflects.

The reflected wave will have an equal, but opposite angle incident to the surface as the shock wave that made it, assuming the plane of the surface and trajectory of the wave front are parallel.

The amplitude and wavelength of the reflected waves diminish over time as the energy dissipates. Hence, reflected waves hold information on the energy of the event that made them.

The shock wave itself travels on a transverse carrier wave called the “propagating wave”. This vibrates the land, seismically, from the hammer blow of the shock wave. The land will reflect some of the shock and absorb some of the shock, as a function of its modulus of elasticity. Hard rock will reflect better than sandstone, because the sandstone will absorb much more of the shock. Uneven surfaces will also modify the wave-form. This contributes to the variety of wave-forms we see.

Longitudinal waves

Transverse waves

Superpositioned wave

Shock wave

The Dragon’s Song – Harmonics…

The images below are color enhanced Schlieren photographs of reflected shock waves in a wind tunnel.

The initial wind speed in the first frame (top left) is Mach 2. It shows the shock wave producing one and a half diamonds.

The wind tunnel is charged with gas in a pressure vessel, so as the gas flow progresses, the pressure and mass flow decrease from the pressure vessel, lowering the Mach speed of the wind.

Frame 2, (top right) shows instability in the shock waves. The waveform is compressing and the angles of the primary and reflected waves less acute.

Vertical shock waves are forming, called normal shocks, which travel through the triangles, distorting their shape where the normal wave crosses the reflected wave and causing more reflected waves.

Inside the triangles, new minor triangles form. This is harmonic reflection of the primary shock wave.

In frame 3 (bottom left) the shock waves have a new standing wave configuration with triangles that are now smaller and higher frequency. The triangles are again well defined, but now there are five wave-forms, where at Mach 2 there were only one and half wave-forms visible.

In the final frame the wind speed has slowed more and the triangular wave-forms are correspondingly smaller in wavelength and amplitude. There are seven shock diamonds where there were initially one and one half.

The first image in this group is most instructive. In it, the lower-most layers of harmonic waveform can be seen to have begun to form at the outer edge of the preceding layer.

The Dragon’s Footprint – The Lambda Foot…

This road cut is in Iran and is sometimes used to confirm the myth of the ‘horst-grabben’. It is said these are the ‘slip faults’ that separate the ‘horst’ from the ‘grabben’.

But this is a fairy tale. How could this loosely consolidated, cobbled dirt part with such fine precision that this chunk would just slide down like a sweaty pole dancer?

This slice in the ground was left by the primary, or incident shock (left side of the ‘V’) and its reflected shock (right side of the ‘V’). In this boundary region where the initial shock meets and reflects from the ground, the incident shock curves sharply downward, and the reflected shock is nearly straight. Where the reflected shock and incident shock meet, there is a feature called the lambda foot.

Interference and Cancellation…

As wave-forms compress, they squeeze and interfere with each other. Shock waves do not cross, but fold against each other, like a magnetic field.

In this image of a mountain in Iran, three wave-forms compress, distorting into curves where the waves, pressed against each other, bend the center wave-form almost circular. In the following layers, the pinched wave has cancelled altogether and the surrounding wave-forms have joined, stretching wavelengths to close the gap.

Electromagnetic Effects…

snapshot — Image of electromagnetic vorticity, courtesy of the Angry Photographer

The stratified layers are often segregated by mineral composition. This is evidence of electromagnetic forces.

In fact, the arc is just the intense current flow of electrons at the core of an electromagnetic field. The field itself expands away from the core with the shock wave. The science behind this is called magneto-hydrodynamics which we won’t attempt to discuss (where is a plasma physicist when you need one) except for one aspect.

The sock waves are energized with current. The shock wave is a highly stressed region – a dramatic shear zone of pressure, density and temperature the ionized winds can’t penetrate. Positively charged ionized material must flow in the low stress region between the shock waves. The shock wave itself is a conduit for electrons. Current coursing through thin shock waves molds the electromagnetic fields in the coherent form of the reflected shock and sorts material according to its dielectric properties.

Gansu Province, Zhangye Danxia scenery — Gansu Province, China

Shock currents course through the very bones of the rock, leaving ruler straight slices and “inclusions” of quartz and often minerals and elements. Iron, gold and silver appear in “veins” with quartz, while the native rock around it may be devoid of mineral concentration. Rock rheology will be explored in future articles.

Complex Wave-forms…

Complexity is found within the shock fronts, inside the triangles themselves, as minor shock fronts vibrate and jostle each other. Note the density variations form a circular feature near the top of this Schlieren image. The same feature is on the distorted triangular buttress found in Northern Arizona, shown below. Note how the edges of the triangle draw in towards the circle, just as the waves near the top in the Schlieren image do. The three small buttresses below the hole show a striking similarity to the size and location as the wave-forms in the same position in the Schlieren image.

Do you believe your lying eyes yet? This isn’t the only funny hole in a triangular buttress. The existence of triangular buttresses on mountains, including features like this can be found as reliably as an unpaired sock in the laundry.

Summary…

Let’s recap what we have seen:

Triangular buttresses form on the sides of mountains in the shape of reflected supersonic shock waves.
They are layered onto the mountain, so they are not caused by seismic waves.
They are not layered sediments from an ancient beach, or waterway since the sharply angled triangles are a consistent feature around the world and do not conform to any motion of random water waves.
They are formed in all types of rock, including granite, so they are not formed by eons of normal winds.
The triangular wave-forms exhibit compression and expansion from superimposed longitudinal and transverse waves.
The triangular wave forms exhibit harmonic repetition consistent with reflected shock waves.
The triangular wave-forms exhibit super-positioning and cancellation under compression consistent with reflected shock waves.
The triangular wave-forms are parallel to the primary shock pattern, consistent with reflected shock waves and perpendicular to the wind direction, consistent with supersonic winds created by a shock wave.
The triangular wave-forms exhibit less energy and more transient effects on softer substrates, and higher energy and sharper, more defined angles on hard substrates.
Triangular wave-forms exhibit transient reflections, normal shocks and features of density variation consistent with supersonic reflected shock waves.
The blast zones show concentric rings of pressure ridges, layered in the direction of the winds.
The winds within the blast zone are directed normal to the central mountain, or crater (outward blown winds), as indicated by surface layering on pressure ridges and buttresses.
Boundary layer features of reflected waves can be found in the substrate of the blast zone, as seen in the road cut in Iran.
Land surrounding the blast zone is blanketed with ejecta that exhibits flow patterns from high speed winds.

There is one error I have conveyed. It was a trick for anyone who took up the challenge to survey volcanoes. Volcanoes do have triangular buttresses inside craters and regions where hot gases blow. Like those on mountains, they are created by high velocity winds and shock waves, but they come from the volcano itself. Volcanoes are known to spew shock waves on occasion.

Whether you choose to believe this concept, or not, you now know more about how the earth is shaped than a PhD in geology.

But there is much more to learn. And as I figure it out I will continue to write about it and fill you in, even before the book is written.

Future articles will examine more evidence:

The ‘rooster tail’ and how big mountains are built.
Following winds and how Kelvin-Hemholtz instability can modify a mountain ridge.
Complex mountain forms and mountain arcs.
The interrelation between volcanoes and mountains.
The connection between shock waves, fractals and lichtenburg landscapes.
How rocks form.
The cause and nature of an arc flash.
Sub-sea canyons, trenches and rifts.
Examples from the archeological and mythological records of mankind.

monster-solar-flare-feb24-2011 — A flare on the Sun – what a big arc flash looks like.

There have been times the earth was wrapped in flames. Cosmic energies electrified our planet. Sparks flew. And those sparks scarred the face of the Earth indelibly. We can read the landscape and understand, not just with our lying eyes, but with the tools of science.

Geophysics, applied to evaluate geology as the consequence of electro- and hydro-dynamic forces, will some day bear this out. You may even have the ability to bring that day closer. Your comments and input are invited.

Electric Earth April 10, 2016October 3, 2017

Source of the Geomagnetic field

I’m re-posting this nicely written, concise piece of reasoning to introduce Louis Hissink’s Crazy World, which happens to be an electrical one. Well all of ours is, but he’s actually aware of it and quite thoughtful about it. There are many interesting, insightful articles at his site. Cheers, Louise!

Chapter Six – King Roach

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Chapter Five – The Summer Thermopile

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Chapter Three – Uncle Smith

Chapter Four – The Chicken Hath No Egg

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Chapter 1 – Coronal Storms and the Violent Artist In Them

San Rafael Swell

A Note to the Reader

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The Mystery…

Keep stirring…

Consensus Theory #1…

Consensus Theory #2…can it still be a consensus?

Strange behavior…

Now let’s remember that we live on an Electric Earth…

Atmospheric Circuitry…

Keep stirring…

Dark – Not Arc…

Cold, Dusty Plasma…

The Ionizing Plasma Region…

The Unipolar Region…

The Non-ionizing Plasma Region…

The Tornado…

Evidence…

Wall clouds…

Tornadoes and lightning…

Sights, smells and sounds…

There goes Aunt Em…

Non-super-cell tornadoes…

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A report on the 2016 expedition to Utah

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Four Steps to Build a Mountain…

Supersonic Wind Effects…

Reflected Shock Waves…

Harmonics…

Instability, Interference and Cancellation…

Complex Wave-forms…

The Lambda Foot…

Vectors…

Electromagnetic Effects…

Blowouts…

Expansion Fans…

Ejecta and Ablation Zones…

Summary…

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Everything Is Electric…

The Dragon’s Flight – How A Mountain Is Made…

The Dragon’s Breath – Supersonic Wind Effects…

Simple Mountains and Craters – Examples…

The Dragon’s Teeth – Reflected Shock Waves…

The Dragon’s Song – Harmonics…

The Dragon’s Footprint – The Lambda Foot…

Interference and Cancellation…

Electromagnetic Effects…

Complex Wave-forms…

Summary…

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