Category: Electric Earth

Leviathan – Part Two

The stories in the Bible present a fascinating picture of mankind’s worldview in ancient times. We tend to apply our worldview when interpreting the stories, which makes the stories seem unreal. Catastrophic floods that covered mountains, storms raining brimstone from the sky. And Leviathan, rising from the sea, shooting fire and lightning – it seems ridiculous. The events are portrayed affecting the entire known world and nearly wiping out its inhabitants.

Regional disasters occur all the time. Typhoons and earthquakes kill thousands every year, but it’s thankfully, almost always, someplace else.  We can say, chances are it won’t happen here. We rally to support the victims, clean up the mess, then try to forget. Only the victims retain a fear and memory of the true horror.

The local impact on early agrarian civilizations might have seemed as though the world had come to an end. Science generally attributes the ancient stories to regional disasters like we experience today. James Hutton, a Scottish geologist in the eighteenth century, many refer to as the “Father of Modern Geology”, originated the prevailing paradigm that Earth’s crust was formed by slow natural processes identical to those we see today over geologic time. Myths of catastrophe don’t fit the paradigm, so are regarded as the unreliable product of superstitious imaginations.

The paradigm is called Uniformitarianism. Through observation and reasoned inference, Hutton theorized Earth’s geologic history could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His concept, that “the present is the key to the past” as a consequence of subtle influences acting over billions of years, has been challenged ever since by catastrophists.

Catastrophists look at diffuse geological evidence that can’t be explained by subtle forces acting over billions of years – events that would have impacted mankind greatly – and treats mythology as a body of corroborating evidence.  The accounts recorded in the Bible are just one set of stories repeated through time by cultures around the world. Their paradigm is “the past is the key to the present… and the future”.

image017Catastrophists commonly attribute cometary impacts, or supervolcano eruptions as the destructive forces behind the stories. These are phenomena consistent with the mainstream scientific view since they are phenomena science acknowledges has occurred in Earth’s past. Their ideas primarily depart from the mainstream over the notion any such events occurred in Mankind’s experience.

Electric Universe theory establishes a different paradigm altogether because it recognizes and accounts for electromagnetic effects in it’s cosmology. It also recognizes the stories as witness accounts of real events that can be understood with scientific inquiry using classical, empirically verifiable physics. It presents new possibilities to explain the stories of mythology and understand the environmental context of the ancient’s worldview.

Mythology presents a consistent story…

In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is the story of apocalypse, and it echoes many aspects of Revelations. Rangnorok is also presaged by signs. First, three years of uninterrupted winter, called “Fimbulvetr” when the world is plagued by immorality, famine, and wars that set brother against brother. The wolf Skoll devours the sun, his brother Hati eats the moon and the stars disappear. A red cock appears to herald “the end” while a second rooster crows to the gods and a third rooster raises the dead. Heimdall blows his horn and signals that Rangnorok has begun.

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The Norse dragon from the sea, Jormungand

The Norse armageddon takes place on the plains called Vigrid, where man and gods battle until Jormungand, the furious serpent, emerges from turbulent seas spitting fire and lightning onto the Vigrid plains, dragging huge waves as it writhes its tail and sprays poison. Earthquakes break the bonds of the wolf Fenrir, freeing it to wreak death and destruction across the land.

It’s almost exactly like Revelations in many of its descriptions of natural calamities, including lightning-spitting dragons from the sea dragging tidal waves behind. The Bible even repeats stories first told by the Sumerians. Sumerians first recorded the story of Gilgamesh and the great flood, Sodom’s destruction and others almost identical to those in the Bible.

Plato tells of “destruction of the things on the earth by fierce fire” in the Timaeus. He attributes a world-altering event to “a shifting of the bodies in the heavens, which move ’round the earth.”   The Iranian Bundahish says, “planets ran against the sky and created confusion.” The Chinese attribute catastrophe to planets moving “out of their courses.” Ancient obsession with changes in the sky; fear and awe of the planets, and attribution of godly power to them; and the belief those gods wreaked destruction on Earth – are sentiments universal to ancient cultures.

Yet, look outside at the night sky. Can you even tell which of the pinpoint lights up there are planets? Do they even stand out among the stars? Except for the brightness of Venus and that planets move in different patterns and don’t twinkle, there isn’t much remarkable going on. In a Uniformitarian cosmos the crazy actions attributed to the gods of myth seem like a big stretch of the imagination. But things were happening then that we don’t understand.

In Part One, the visions of prophets as real visual occurrences caused by highly energetic auroral events in the earth’s magnetosphere were examined. Plasma instabilities produced, or simulated in the laboratory by Anthony Peratt are the “Rossetta Stone” to understanding the visions, stories and iconography of the past that recorded those electromagnetic storms.

magFmWhat caused them may have happened in a number of ways and it may have happened a number of times. A Langmuir sheath like that surrounding the Earth – the magnetosphere – forms a double layer of magnetic fields with plasma current sheets sandwiched between. The sheath protects Earth from direct electrical interactions, shielding us from cosmic radiation and solar flares.  However, if a foreign body such as a planet, or comet with a different electrical charge penetrates the double layer, electrical discharge will occur.

The interactions can occur at huge distances. The magnetosphere is stretched into a teardrop by the flow of Solar winds. The Earth’s plasma sheath forms a tail which stretches all the way to the moon. Comets likewise have tails of plasma streaming away in the solar wind, as do the other planets and moons in the solar system. Electromagnetic interactions begin when the plasma sheaths interact, meaning the foreign body can be millions of miles distant when its plasma sheath interacts with the Earth’s.

Solar effects may aggravate the event further, adding unwanted energy to the magnetosphere, because the Sun, too is reacting to the foreign body. Dramatic evidence of the electromagnetic effect of two bodies of dissimilar charge coming together is obvious in this short NASA video of a comet striking the Sun:

The Sun issued a massive electromagnetic discharge (coronal mass ejection) in response to the comet which was just a tiny spec in relation to the Sun’s size and mass. This is due to the extreme energy released by the electrical potential of the bodies as they connected. There is no other way to explain the energies involved. This isn’t the only time this has been witnessed.

In fact it happens a lot. Here’s one more from BPEarthwatch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4RywjcjiQ4

Any close pass of a large body within the planetary region can generate severe electromagnetic storms on Earth without impacting Earth, or even scraping the atmosphere.

The electromagnetic geometry inside the Earth is less well known…

tavurvur-1089994-xlCurrent enters at the polar cusps (the magnetic poles) and is also induced by currents in the magnetosphere. Increased current in the magnetosphere will increase current within the Earth as well – it’s all connected circuitry.

An electric field, along which current flows, is like water in that it takes the path of least resistance. But unlike water, electricity does not obey gravity. It’s force is 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, so gravity is inconsequential. For electricity, the path of least resistance is the path of highest conductivity.

volcano-lightningIn solids, conductivity is greatest in solid metals like silver and copper, because they feature an atomic lattice structure with an abundance of free electrons. In ionic material, like water containing salts, ionized gases, or compounds of molten fluid metals, a net motion of charged ions can occur. This is electric current by ionic conduction – also known as plasma.

Inside the earth, magma is a conductive plasma…

Volcanic lightning is evidence of the electrical nature of volcanoes. The cause of volcanic lightning is thought to be static charge buildup in the ash cloud, similar to how thunderstorms are believed to result from static charge buildup from colliding ice particles. But according to Martin Uman, co-director of the University of Florida Lightning Research program, based on his observations, static buildup can’t explain the energies involved:

“As the plume started going downwind, it seemed to have a life of its own and produced some 300, more or less, normal [lightning bolts] … The implication is that it has produced more charge than it started with. Otherwise [the plume] couldn’t continue to make lightning.”

The energy for the lightning is coming from ionized magma. This is apparent in the following video  of Sakurajima Volcano in Japan, which shows sustained lightning as the plume forms only moments after eruption.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CLgB0jp6Vc

Because magma is a plasma, the paths of least resistance for current  through the crust are the magma chambers that produce volcanoes. In fact, a volcano should be considered the blister of an anode carrying current.

During a severe geomagnetic storm, whether caused by the passing of a large comet, a planet, or a solar super-flare, currents ramp-up throughout the system. Magnetic fields intensify and voltage differentials increase. The normal paths of electrical discharge between earth’s crust and its conductive plasma sheath respond. Conductive paths in crustal faults stimulate earthquakes. Magma becomes energized, heating and expanding, causing volcanoes to erupt. Thunderstorms and destructive winds are amplified. These are the catastrophic disasters that follow signs in the heavens.

But what of Leviathan – the lightning spewing dragon from the sea…

topographicalearthTo begin, note that earthquakes and volcanoes congregate along the seams of Earth’s tectonic plates.
volcano-earthquake

The rift zones along tectonic plates look like the seams on a baseball, sinuously winding, more or less, north to south between the polar regions. According to theories of earth currents, including those of Nicolai Tesla, the Earth’s circuitry naturally forms three phase currents. Three phase implies a Wye connection develops for inductive current between the earth and space. The typical morphology of subduction trench and rift zones supports this.

Trenches form where subduction occurs at the edges of continental plates, as the seafloor dives beneath the continent. The common features according to the current accepted tectonic theory is shown below. The trench is straddled by volcanic regions where offshore, volcanic magma chambers are excited by convection currents in the molten core. Magma feeding continental volcanoes is excited by the friction-heat caused by subduction.  What causes tectonic plate movement, or for that matter, volcanoes, is not well understood. Mantle plumes are believed to be the primary cause, but recent studies don’t provide much evidence to support the theory and it’s become a controversial issue.

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Accounting for electricity leads to an entirely different understanding of Earth’s geology as part of a solar system circuit. Theory of how Earth’s internal circuits work is summarized in this brief Thunderbolts.info video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiM_gLRIuGc

The key take away is current flows through the Earth’s core from the poles, and forms inductive Wye connections at hot spots, reaching up like sea urchin spines from the core. Different hot spots are energized based on dynamics of the whole system. Assuming the Wye connections emerge as volcanoes in Earth’s plasma circuit and some very interesting ideas emerge.

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Rising magma can be understood as the current path of the Wye connection to surface, creating volcanic blisters that straddle the plate boundary.

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Enormous energy is naturally and continuously discharged by thunderstorms, demonstrating electrical coupling between Earth and the Solar System.

Normally, discharge through the atmosphere to the plasma environment in space is seen as lightning, sprites and gamma ray bursts – they are displays of the electrical coupling of Earth and space.

In the violence of an extreme geomagnetic storm, current in the plasma sheath and plasma currents in Earth’s crust become energized, raising potential differences between the regions to billions of volts. As charge builds it manifests additional, more extreme discharge phenomena.

The Wye connections on a modern induction transformer are carefully engineered for perfect electrical balance, to withstand surge currents and to prevent harmonic resonance. Earth’s currents are imbalanced. In the “normal” times that we live, the energy is dissipated by the largely non-threatening continuum of thunderstorms, earthquakes and volcanoes around the world.

In a major power surge, the imbalance becomes amplified, overloading the circuits and causing a new phenomena to occur: Leviathan.

To understand Leviathan, two more simple electrical concepts are important to understand: surface conductivity and arc burn. Also, remember that electric fields follow the paths of least resistance – paths of greatest electrical conductivity.

300px-Surface_Conductivity.svgSurface conductivity is a highly conductive path in the vicinity of solid surfaces where a layer of counter ions of opposite polarity collect in a charged environment. Ions build-up near current flows and highly conductive materials, such as minerals and water due to a phenomena called the Corona Effect. A layer of ionic concentration results, surrounding the solid surface. The self-organizing, electromagnetic properties of plasma forms a double layer over the surface of the solid, providing a pathway for arcing currents. Surface conductivity is why electric arcs preferentially craze across the surface of an object. Lightning discharges skirt the outside skin of an airplane for the same reason.

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Surface arcs shorting insulators

Arc burn occurs when an arcing fault, or short circuit current passes through air and ionic gases, as it does in a surface conductive path. Arcing generates temperatures over 35,000°F. Extreme pressure is generated by the near instant thermal expansion of air in the arc stream as it’s heated to four times the surface temperature of the Sun.  The vaporization can cause an explosive blast and pressure wave in excess of 1000 psi. No contact is required with an arc burn as the electricity ionizes air particles to complete the circuit. Damage occurs from the searing hot blast.

To get a visual idea of a surface conductive discharge on a stellar scale, watch this video of a solar flare and note the following details:

  • The bright, giant looping feature and sprays are electric currents. Astronomers unschooled in plasma and electricity often refer to these as magnetic field lines, but the magnetic fields surround these currents and are not visible. These are electrical currents discharging in arc mode – in other words, solar lightning bolts.
  • Note the arcing discharges that seem to come from nowhere above the surface charge on the right of the loops. They alternate direction to and from the source and fire large plasma bolides at the surface.
  • Note the rain of flaming plasma falling from the loop current. These are not falling due to gravity, the loop diameter is much bigger than Earth. The raining drops are dense plasma flows in the current sheet “dropping” to the surface much faster than gravity could accelerate them.
  • The huge spray of plasma shooting horizontally to the right, skimming just above the photosphere is a lightning bolt in a surface conductive layer. This is a Solar Leviathan. Put it on full screen, it’s the coolest video ever.

Leviathan on Earth is barely a spark in comparison, but an Earth scale arcing plasma would have devastating results, leaving indelible marks as evidence. In a fault current between volcanic anodes, lightning would streak horizontally along a surface conductive path.

In the sea, the path follows the hard mineralized bedrock of the seafloor, beneath layers of non-conductive silt. The explosive energy of rock and seawater vaporizing around it would blast the silt layers away, exposing the bedrock.

At land’s edge, it breaches the water, streaking across land in a searing sheets of lightning to the volcanic field on the continent. As it leaves the sea, it drags with it a tsunami of water, sand and rocks.

Arcing across land it throws off charged whirl-winds of ionic dust and bollides of molten rock. The preferred path is where water flows. Mineralized water contains ionic material, is highly conductive, vaporizes easily to form a plasma and provides an interface with bedrock where a surface conductive path can form.

The discharge follows rivers and streams, arcing through valleys and canyons. It dives below ground to follow subsurface channels, explosively ripping away the land leaving giant divots surrounded by hills of ejecta. It arcs through ionized air over arid, waterless deserts, searing the ground and launching meteor-like bollides of dense, intensely hot plasma.

This is precisely the description of Leviathan. Physical evidence for surface conductive fault currents can be found on Google Earth.

Sub-sea canyons are one trace of Leviathan’s passage…

Subsea canyons exist all along the continental margins. Originally assumed to be carved by river outflows, geologists eventually realized most canyons don’t actually connect with rivers. They generally occur miles from shore behind regions of undisturbed sediments. Current theory says they are formed by sand falls and land slides on the sloping sea floor. As the sand falls, water entrains with the falling sand to form a dense plug of fast moving turbidity that erodes the seafloor down to the hard basement rock.

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Sand falls do occur and turbid waters have been witnessed flowing through sub-sea canyons. There are even sand deltas at bends in some of these canyons as proof. But deltas are not always found, in fact they usually aren’t, and the deltas that are known don’t relate in size to the volume of sediment carved from the canyon. So what came first, the canyon, or the sand fall?

Turbidity can’t explain common features of  canyons either, such as their length. Many canyons extend for hundreds of miles. They commonly follow extremely sinuous paths, display odd networks of tributary channels and often extend well beyond the steep slope of trenches to meander miles across the shallow slope of the abyssal plain. Turbid water scraping the seafloor will create friction, warming as it dives into deeper, much colder water along the seafloor. The temperature difference should cause the warmer water to diffuse into the surrounding cold, reducing its density and causing sands to fall out. It begs the imagination that turbid water currents could maintain coherence for several hundred miles into the icy depths of the abyss.

Most significant of all, however, is the way they are attracted to volcanoes. Almost invariably they extend into a zone of sub-sea volcanoes and seamounts (ancient volcanoes). Turbidity can’t explain that, since the turbid water theory has the canyons leading to the volcanoes, not away from them.

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The canyons are actually emanating from the sub-sea volcanoes, reaching for shore and the continental volcanoes at the other terminal of the Wye. The evidence of their passage continues on land.

Astroblemes are the scars of the Dragon’s bite…

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Astrobleme is a term for an ancient crater. Typically, craters are recognized as round depressions with raised rims and central peaks, thought to be caused by meteorite impacts. Another type of astrobleme can be created by an air-burst meteor, when no rocky meteorite material actually impacts the ground. Instead, the meteor explodes in the upper atmosphere and its solid matter atomizes to form a bolide of plasma. The plasma fireball carries the same speed, trajectory and energy as the original meteor, and essentially blow-torches the earth, creating an astrobleme. The “crater” in this case  is typically a long oval blast zone around a hogback hill. The hill is built by supersonic winds being sucked upward more violently than the central updraft of a thermo-nuclear mushroom cloud.

Meteor researcher, Dr. Mark Boslough and his team at Sandia National Laboratory have simulated the effects of an air-burst meteor. At 21 seconds into this video, the simulation records the plasma fireball’s downward blast, which melts the ground with forty-thousand degree plasma, pushing a shock wave that impacts with thousands of psi.

The center of the fireball rebounds violently upward, shearing a column of updraft in the opposite direction to the blast. This supersonic updraft, Dr. Boslough theorizes, vacuums molten ejecta into the strike zone,  leaving the characteristic air-burst astrobleme – a linear hill with a sharply peaked ridge and distinctive triangular buttresses on the flanks, surrounded by an outwardly blasted zone of ejecta. The phenomena is discussed in great detail by “Craterhunter,” a non-uniformitarian geophysicist who wrote this well written article, A Catastrophe of Comets.

His simulations and research show how a bolide, screaming into the atmosphere at a low angle, can blister a mountain in a searing instant. These mountains are seen all over the world. It is a bold and unconventional theory that realistically describes these types of hills much better than conventional geology.

HorstGraben
Conventional theory

The conventional geologic explanation for hills such as these is the Horst-Grabben theory. Horst-Grabben is the Uniformitarian explanation for basin and range lands found around the world. Regions of parallel curva-linear hills and valleys, according to mainstream theory, are created by tectonic expansion – in other words, the region is pulling apart – and then subsiding into deep valleys. The hills are remnants of the former land elevation, left due to oddly banked fault lines and shaped by millenium of assumed sedimentation, craton expansion, grabben subsidence, uplift, folding, slumping and erosion to arrive at these odd basin and range landscapes.

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Triangular buttresses – Mexico

Dr. Boslough has tossed this theory on its ear by correctly identified the distinguishing feature of a bolide astrobleme – triangular faces of repeating dimensions that are not adequately explained by any slow, Uniformitarian process.

The repeating pattern of triangular faces display fractal-like repetition in shape, size and frequency. They flank linear hillsides all over the world, across slopes from near horizontal to vertical, and across rock types from sandstone sediments to igneous and metamorphic, yet they keep the same basic patterns. The repeating patterns are in no way random. They show harmonic geometric progressions in size and shape. The following slides of arid mountains in Iran should dispel any notion these features are the result of eons of random wind and rain:

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Dr. Boslough’s work demonstrates how a plasma bolide can sear the Earth, leaving an astrobleme with these features. It falls short however, in providing a complete explanation. Electromagnetism is needed to complete the analysis of the marks of a Dragon’s teeth, as the Daily Plasma prefers to call these triangular buttresses.

reflected shock

Dragon’s teeth are a consequence of reflected shock waves – interference patterns of super-positioning pressure ridges formed by the shock waves of the passing bolide. The chevron pattern of the reflected waves can be discerned in the atmosphere trailing the F-18 in the photo above. Shock waves travel in any medium; gas, liquids, solids as well as electromagnetic fields and plasma.

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Shadowgrams of two small explosive charges encased in solid containers. Shock propagation (left) and reflected shock patterns (right). Photographs courtesy of Gary S. Settles.

tumblr_ncmwgnxuIC1qjqxmoo1_r1_500Reflected shock waves create the chevrons, plain and simple. Supersonic flow produces harmonic reflected shock patterns as the waves reverberate the medium in interference patterns of temperature, pressure and density. No random process of geologic faulting, rain and wind, over millions of years, could possibly produce these nearly identical harmonic chevron patterns in the diverse variety of climates and rock strata they are found on around the world. Dragon’s teeth can only be the result of a violent supersonic blast event. The idea they are created by meteors from space doesn’t hold-up, either.

A rain of bolides from comet fragments, or an asteroid will travel in a specific trajectory – that’s physics – they can’t land at odd angles to each other, or follow sinuous paths across hundreds of miles of terrain. Yet that is what is seen.

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These are the scars of Leviathan, not comets or asteroids. Surface conductive fault currents made these blisters. They occur where the fault current, after following the sea-floor and blasting sub-sea canyons, emerged on shore with a tidal wave and locked its path to the plasma rich environment of rivers and wetlands, seeking volcanic fields inland. To cross arid lands, the path of least resistance is the surface conductive double layer that forms in the atmosphere. The arid desert is where Leviathan spits plasma jets across the land, searing blisters and blasting divots.

Electromagnetic forces produce additional effects…

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Ground level inflow carries material to form linear hills. Reflected shock waves mold harmonic patterns of Dragon’s teeth

Unlike a meteor bolide, electrical current doesn’t fly straight, yet it has the extreme energy to create the same temperatures and pressures as a large meteor from space.

As it arcs across the land it will be drawn to conductive soils; minerals and moist regions, to skip, branch and gouge divots. Ionized material it carries will fire-off as bolides that strike land and leave teardrop astroblemes.

Magnetic fields around the plasma current will induce rotation along the horizontal axis of its flight, modifying the speed of the winds. This effect will cause some hills to be pushed over, shallower on one side and steeper, with more distinct dragon’s teeth on the other. It blows the ejecta blanket asymmetrically, and it may carve a valley longitudinally down the center of the hill. These are features typically seen.

So, let’s return to the Levant in Biblical times, to see the evidence for Leviathan…

The primary Earth currents involved come from the Indian Oceanic Central Ridge, where the Indian and Somalia tectonic plates meet. The current forks its path, up the Persian Gulf where it arcs onshore, forking again to follow the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. On the opposite side of the Arabian plate, the other fork follows the rift of the Red Sea, where it hits land and forks at the gulfs of Suez and Aqaba.

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The current rose from the sea, seeking to discharge to volcanic fields ashore. The huge Harrat Ash volcanic field in Syria was active around 2500 B.C.

The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the LORD’S vengeance, and the year of recompence for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. Isaiah 34: 6 – 10.

idumea3Idumea lies between the Gaza strip and the Dead Sea, stretching south to the Negev desert.

It isn’t the only mention of burning pitch and brimstone in the area. Most scholars agree Sodom and Gomorrah, and allied cities Admah, Zeboim and Bela, were on the plains north, or south of the Dead Sea, or along its southeastern shores. Several archaeological digs contend to be the fabled cities. Evidence of catastrophe has been found, including tektites and balls of pure sulfur burnt into mud walls – conclusive evidence for a rain of brimstone.

A chain of astroblemes across the northern Sinai and Negev deserts explains the holocaust. As charge built in the two forks of the Red Sea current, they tried to bridge, shorting across the land in bolides of thermonuclear hot plasma. Take the tour:

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The Bowls of Wrath…

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshiped his image. And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. Revelations 16: 1- 12.

Current surged up the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to volcanic fields in Turkey. These are still active volcanoes, with evidence of latest activity around 1,500 B.C. As the discharge dissipated near the ends of the forks, bolides of ionic matter splattered across ancient Babylon:

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…And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done’. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great. Revelations 16: 13-21.

Armageddon – the plains of Megiddo – the final battle. The Suez current arced across the floor of the Mediterranean. Two paths are apparent, the Beirut Canyon, leading to beach at Tripoli, and the Akhziv Canyon, landing on the plains of Megiddo. The current sheet flashed across the plains, dragging a tidal wave of sea and sediment, carving canyons across the plains with the back-flow. The current sheet connected with current flowing up the Jordan valley, near the Sea of Galilee, and seared across the desert of Syria, leaving long, snaking astroblemes.

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In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Isaiah 27: 1

The surface faults wreaking havoc in the Levant had to finally make connection to space. That lordly lightning bolt dissipated the charge and halted further calamity.

arc3The psychology of near extinction; the profound sorrow, fear and guilt of the survivors that resonates through history and shapes our minds today, derives from these events. The history of the Bible and other ancient mythology should be taken seriously. It tells the historical context of real events to those capable of removing the blinders of convention. Because there is profound truth within reach, quite obvious proof, when one sees the universe is electric.

Nature manifests energies we can only imagine. We have never experienced its full wrath. But understanding the cause, and that it’s not God’s wrath, might help us get over the guilt we did something wrong. Electromagnetism has its own laws and they are based solidly in science.

 

 

Leviathan

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns, ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

Leviathan, portrayed in the Bible as a destructive force from the sea. It’s a central theme of the Old Testament, from the dragon’s description in Job:

By his neesings (sneezings) a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. Job 41: 18 – 21

To the strange visions of apocalypse described in the New Testament book of Revelations:

… and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. Revelations 9: 17 – 19.

The devastation described is widespread and horrific:

Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away… … Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left. Isaiah 24: 1-6.

Is this just a description of earthquakes and volcanoes draped in superstitious embellishment, or is it an attempt to describe something profoundly catastrophic in the only terms conceivable – an utter rebuke from God that destroyed all but the faithful who obeyed the warning:

And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah 2: 19 – 21.

The warnings come in visions preceding the apocalypse – shining bright figures in the heavens signaling an impending disaster:

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two- edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. Revelations 1: 12-16.

Later followed the survivors repentance and shock at the destruction:

Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore? Isaiah 64: 9-12.

Modern science considers such stories dramatically embellished, superstition laden descriptions of the same world we see today, told by ancient witnesses at a loss to explain nature otherwise. But what if they are a description of incredible events, so catastrophic they were recorded as a warning for future generations. Is there a modern and scientific ways to look at the bizarre and disconcerting biblical stories of profound catastrophe, including dragons from the sea that shook the Earth and spread destruction?

“Mankind is a species with amnesia.”

Catastrophists say we have forgotten our past in a kind of collective PSD, in denial of traumatic events that nearly wiped us from existence. The stories are beautifully memorialized in mythology, particularly in the Bible, and in ancient cultures throughout the world. Vivid descriptions: hails of coal and fire, blast furnace winds, earthquakes, lightning, channels of water opened to bare the foundations of the world and seas that covered the mountains – they don’t seem to depict normal earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and bad weather. The events roll together in a chain of widespread catastrophe unlike anything we experience today.

Perhaps one reason it’s given little notice, except by a few, is the truth buried in the mythology is too painful to contemplate. The survivors recorded the calamities, attributed the cause to mankind’s transgressions and their survival to their own righteousness. As the distance of time progressed, mankind dissolved these stories into fictions, to hide from terror portrayed and to return to the behaviors warned against. The danger is this amnesia leads us to disregard past events that may recur in the future. With an open mind to the notion of Electric Universe theory, and dispensing with preconceptions of religion, guilt and past scientific misinterpretation, it is possible to give a realistic natural explanation for these incredible biblical events.

In Part One, this essay breaks down the “visions” that predicted catastrophe. Part Two will examine the apocalyptic forces of nature that followed. Sorry if this disappoints anyone, but answering the question, “was God involved,” or validating the concept of God’s existence is not in the framework.

Visions of Apocalypse

From the Book of Genesis, Jacob dreamed of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending, and so began the story of the tribes of Israel. Ezekiel reported:

Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. Ezekiel 1: 1.

The exceedingly strange visions he witnessed warned of a catastrophe to befall mankind as a rebuke for its rebellion against God’s word, its false idols and lurid whoredom. John of Patmos records visions of apocalypse in Revelations, where he witnessed figures in the sky – angels, scrolls and candlesticks, and he heard trumpets blowing which he attributed to God’s word.

Visions from heaven are a key piece of the Bible story, presaging calamity and affirming righteousness. The visions were not hallucinations, nor the fanciful imaginings of spiritually entranced minds, nor the psychedelic effects of drugs. They were real light shows in the sky caused by severe geomagnetic storms. To understand the light show, let’s first review some Electric Universe theory.

We begin with an understanding that Earth’s toroidal geomagnetic field is the consequence of external electric currents from the Sun. Solar current is captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere, and funneled down through the magnetic poles, to deep within the Earth itself.

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Image courtesy of NASA – Magnetic field lines defining Earth’s magnetosphere

Mainstream science denies the obvious and attributes the magnetosphere to a “dynamo” effect of the earth’s molten core. The dynamo theory, however, has many problems that dispute its validity. Foremost  is the chicken and egg dilemma the theory poses. According to the theory, current is the result of Earth’s magnetism, which is likened to a bar magnet in the earth’s core. This bar magnet in a rotating, orbiting, tidally stressed planet generates current that strengthens magnetic fields which increases current in a feedback loop. But what gave the earth a magnetic field in the first place? There had to be a current first, and this isn’t explained by a dynamo.

There are other problems with the dynamo theory. Why didn’t the dynamo wind-down millions of years ago as earth’s core cooled – physics says it should have. How does a molten iron core carry magnetism when magnetism is a consequence of the crystalline structure of the metal – molten iron has no crystalline structure – it cannot be magnetized above its Curie temperature.

Dynamo theory holds that the geomagnetic field is internally generated. So, why does it fluctuate in strength and flip polarity in a cyclical pattern tied to solar cycles? Scratch the surface of the dynamo theory and it’s obvious all the pieces aren’t there. There is no successful, comprehensive dynamo model.

EU Theory understands it differently and far more successfully. No dynamo is generating the geomagnetic field. Electric current is generated by the Sun, and this external solar current is flowing around and through the Earth, forming a plasma sheath appropriately called a Langmuir sheath, but which is generally called the magnetosphere. Since the advent of space based satellite observatories, evidence of this Sun-Earth connection is indisputable. Investigation into its dynamics is building understanding with each new observation.

The following images are a small sampling of real time data collection from the iNtegrated Space Weather Analyisis (iSWA) system coordinated by NASA. They portray 1) Earth’s magnetosphere in reaction to solar wind, 2) Solar current sheet within the planetary region of the heliosphere, 3) Electron current density in Earth’s ionosphere, and 4) Earth facing coronal mass ejection (CME) propagating through the solar system.

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The images represent pieces of a larger picture affecting our planet that includes solar alignment within the galactic plane, galactic space weather, planetary alignments, coronal holes, solar flaring, sunspots and other cyclical electromagnetic solar events.

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That a Parker Spiral mimics a spiral galaxy is no coincidence. Repeating fractal forms at all levels of nature is a signature of electromagnetic effects.

The Solar wind is a sinuous rotating current sheet called a Parker Spiral that mimics the rotation of spiral galaxies. This current sheet is a feature of the Sun’s heliosphere, which itself is an electromagnetic sheath around the Sun – repeating in fractal fashion the way the magnetosphere sheaths the Earth.

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Image courtesy of NASA – Berkeland currents are electric currents in plasma shielded in a self organizing conduit of wrapped magnetic fields. Berkeland currents generally form in twisted pairs. The self organizing nature of plasma is why it is named after blood plasma, because it encapsulates and protects itself like a blood cell. Astronomers find them delivering massive current flows throughout the solar system, galaxy arms and inter-galactic space.

Plasma physicists recognize that polar aurorae are electromagnetic plasma currents, called Berkeland Currents, delivering energy from the constant flow of current in the heliosphere. That energy doesn’t stop when it hits the ionosphere. There is a big planet inside with a conductive molten interior and a faulted, inhomogeneous crust that produces complex paths for ground currents.

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Image courtesy NASA

Lithosphere, ionosphere and heliosphere are electrically coupled. Between Earth and the ionosphere is a dielectric atmosphere that causes the system to act as a charged capacitor. The result is weather, earthquakes and volcanoes.

The current density varies. In fact, the Sun is in transition to low activity now, called a grand minimum, when sunspots are reduced and the associated CME activity is less. Coronal holes and their effects are more prevalent. At the same time on Earth, the magnetic field is weakening and moving towards a polar shift. The geomagnetic field has weakened by approximately 9% in the past 170 years. Paleomagnetic studies indicate it was much higher in earlier times. The Levant is one region where paleomagnetic evidence exists indicating the region’s magnetic intensity may have been as high as three times stronger 3000 years ago than it is today.

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Parker Spiral – Image courtesy NASA

This suggests electromagnetic forces had a far stronger influence in the past and produced earthquakes, volcanoes and weather unlike anything we’ve experienced in recent history. The tales of Leviathan suggest a force of nature far more sinister and destructive as a result of severe geomagnetic storms:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail. Revelations 11: 19.

Revelations gives a concise catalog of visions that presaged and accompanied Leviathan. In it John, a prophet is imprisoned on the island of Patmos where he sees a vision of apocalypse. He hears a voice saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, what thou seeest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches…” The vision begins when he sees seven golden candlesticks, one of which appeared like the “Son of Man” with hair white as snow and eyes like flames, holding seven stars in his hand. Out of his mouth came a two-edged sword. John is told the candlesticks represent the seven churches and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.

The candlesticks are a description of plasma discharge events seen in the sky similar to the “Sprite” shown above (left) that NASA photographed above a severe lightning storm. Apparitions like this have been recorded by people around the world in petroglyphs, geoglyphs and pictographs. Some have been dated from 10 to 12,000 BC, based on carbon and luminescent dating of incidental organic artifacts. Most are indeterminate because of the difficulty in obtaining an age from rocks. Some researchers believe multiple events occurred from four to twelve thousand years ago, which is consistent with many civilizations that recorded them in one fashion or another, including the Maya, Easter Islanders, Nazca, Australian Aborigine’s, North American Natives and many more.

The giant hillside intaglio in Pisco, Peru shown above (right) is probably the finest example reproducing the image of a candlestick-shaped plasma instability. Pottery artifacts found at the site date to the Paracas people in 200 BC, although the geoglyph could be much older. It is generally believed to represent the lightning trident of Viracocha, the pre-Incan god who came from the sea and was worshiped as the god of the sun, thunderbolts and storms, much like Neptune, Poseidon and Leviathan.

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Image credit NASA. Sprites are colossal towers of red and blue light, 10 km across, glowing above thunderstorms 50 to 80 km above the Earth. They are lightning bolts, diffused in the near vacuum of space. They may be single vertical columns, or  vast collections of columns, sometimes branching upwards and shooting tendrils towards Earth in displays nicknamed carrots, angels, jellyfish and A-bombs.

Dr. Anthony Peratt, Director of plasma physics at Los Alamos Laboratories, recognized many petroglyph figures resemble plasma instabilities he studied in the lab. Using a network of volunteers worldwide to catalog petroglyphs, and performing supercomputer simulations of high energy plasma instabilities, he found plasma images that correspond to the majority of enigmatic, ancient petroglyph images found around the word.

A plasma instability forms as current from the Parker Spiral charges the magnetosphere surrounding the planet. We see this current flowing at the poles in the aurora, as electrons impact oxygen and nitrogen in the ionosphere causing a soft billowing glow in the night sky. As current density increases, however, as in a severe geomagnetic storm, the plasma’s magnetic sheath tightens around the current, pinching and increasing the current density and accelerating the electron flow. A bright column forms, much larger, brighter and longer lasting than any aurora, or thunderstorm generated phenomena that we witness today.

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A plasma instability, or Peratt column, is essentially a cosmic lightning bolt. The shapes, colors, brightness and motions change over time as current densities and magnetic field strengths vary.

A plasma current emits light in three modes – dark current, glow mode and arc discharge. Dark current has low current density yielding few ion collisions, so emits no visible light. Glow mode is what we see in the aurora, a soft colored glow in a rarefied atmosphere. Discharge arcs are lightning bolts, resulting from the magnetic fields surrounding the current squeezing it to extreme density and relativistic speeds, called a z-pinch. In arc mode the plasma emits ultra bright light and x-rays.

As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. Ezekiel 1: 13 – 14.

In the diffuse plasma of space, the jagged spark we see in the atmosphere takes a more fluid, columnar shape. The  columnar plasma discharge is surrounded by stacked plasma toroids that evolve into cup and bell shapes as the edges of the toroids warp up and down. The number of toroids can vary between three and nine and can resemble anything from chalices to ladders. Various other forms exist as well, depending on the nature of the plasma and the currents in it. Spirals, lines and figures are anthropomorphized as human figures and various animals with odd horns and antlers in petroglyphs around the world which match the plasma forms.

“Squatter Man” is depicted almost identically in thousands of petroglyphs around the world, as shown in the slides above and in the collage of pictures below. Often seen accompanied by spirals and wheels, as the plasma discharge evolves, it’s legs and arms appear to splay upwards and downwards as the toroids warp – just as Ezekiel describes it:

And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. Ezekiel 1: 26-27.

Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the color of amber. Ezekiel 8: 2.

Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. Ezekiel 1: 15-16.

This is why Revelations, like Ezekiel, portrays a series of apparitions including the four horsemen, the lamb, the scrolls and the cups. The “seven cups of wrath” from Revelations are seen in the slide show image of a petroglyph above (1st slide, left side) labeled “Kayenta, Arizona.” It represents another empirically reproducible image in the evolution of a plasma instability.

Dr. Peratt extensively documented the instabilities and how they are accurately represented in ancient petroglyphs in “Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity”  (IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2003.)

The images recorded in the bible and numerous ancient petroglyphs are recorded throughout  history:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Revelations 12: 1.

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Our Lady of Guadalupe, by Ted DeGrazia

That precise image was also seen in 1510 by a poor Mexican farmer. He reported it to his priest and it is today known as “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” It is another anthropomorphized description of a high energy aurora that shows up in petroglyphs of strange entities with elongated bodies, surrounded by stars and shining halos.

On December 16, 1737, a remarkable event was seen and documented across Europe, but today it is nearly forgotten. This was the time of “light nights”.

In Naples, Padua and Bologna, Italy, a bright, red, flashing light was observed in the north after sunset, as if the air was on fire. The red cloud emitted rays of red and white with dark streaks. A bright red column appeared, which curved to arc across the entire sky,  becoming more vivid as it rose higher.

Stars shone bright in the midst of the light. After 8 p.m. the red light was interrupted by several vertical columns of a bright yellow color. In the south, where the sky was clear, there were fireballs. Several persons reported a stench in the air. The phenomena continued well into morning.

In Edinburgh, England, at 6 p.m. the sky was in flame. An arc of red light reached from the west, over the zenith, to the east. The northern border of this light was tinged with a blue color. It gradually stole along the face of the sky, until it covered the whole hemisphere.

Shooting-StarIn Sussex, it began as a pillar of light at about 6.15 p.m. After ten minutes, part of it divided from the rest, and never joined again. In the next 10 minutes it described an arc. At 8 p.m. it re-emerged in the north and made an arc from east to west, and went away to the south.

In Kilkenny, Ireland a great ball of fire appeared in the sky for an hour, then burst into pieces with an explosion that shook the island, set the whole hemisphere of sky on fire and “burned most furiously, till all the sulfurous matter was spent.”

Similar phenomena were witnessed in Russia and North and South America in subsequent days. These descriptions are of a strong geomagnetic event, but they do not come close to the kind of visions reported in the Bible.

Peratt notes that normal aurora are produced by currents in the megaampere range. The Peratt columnar images captured in petroglyphs would have required gigaamperes of current, significantly higher than anything experienced in modern history. His research engaged a global team of volunteers who used GPS positioning to catalog virtually every petroglyph in question world-wide. Eighty-four types of recurring petroglyph images were identified as aurora depictions found on every continent except Antarctica. He also discovered, by common orientation the petroglyphs recorded the aurora(e) occurred in the southern hemisphere and would have extended hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Their energies could have kept them visible for months, years, or even decades, allowing would-be prophets ample time to ponder their meaning, build idols and instigate a few sacrifices.

So this explains the visions, but what about the Leviathan itself?

To begin with, Peratt describes the evolution of the instability reaching arc discharge mode and emitting a wash of x-rays. Anyone exposed could suffer blindness, burns and radiation sickness, or even death. But the real damage came from the bowels of Earth itself.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound! Revelations 8: 7-13.

It was a bad day. Leviathan – Part Two will examine it closer.

Dragon’s Breath

Meteors are a cosmic experience everyone shares…

Who hasn’t looked up on a clear evening and watched falling stars at least once in their life. Most meteors people see are sand grain-sized. A big, flaming streak across the sky from a brick-sized object is an event remembered.

If the dragon is the archetype of ancient symbols for the comet – the classic harbinger of doom-and-destruction – then scattered fragments zipping into Earth’s atmosphere are its breath on the back of the neck. Meteors are the spine-tingling frisson of something bigger out there.

An estimated 100 tons of meteoric material enters Earth’s atmosphere daily. With the ubiquity of digital cameras on dash cams, surveillance cameras and cell phones, large bolide events are captured regularly now. It is somewhat disconcerting to see how scary a large event can be.

As a reminder, review the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013. Footage comes closer and closer to the epicenter as the video progresses:

This event is the largest in recent times, but it pales in comparison with past events like Tunguska, and certainly to the ancient events that left  craters around the world.

Famous Craters…

The largest is Vredefort dome in South Africa. Measuring 185 miles across, scientists believe an asteroid  blasted out the giant crater 2.02 billion years ago.

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Vredefort Crater, South Africa

oldest-earth-meteorite-crater-maniitsoq-GEUSThe oldest known crater is found in Greenland. Believed to be 3 billion years old, it left a 62 mile wide impact zone from a meteor estimated at 19 miles in diameter.

ChicxulubMost infamous of all prehistoric events is the Chicxulub crater, since it is widely thought to have caused mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, ending the age of the dinosaurs. Its current size is 93 miles across, but some estimates put its original diameter at 150 miles.

As simple as they may seem, meteors are not at all straightforward to understand. It has only recently been recognized that air-bursts are typical for larger meteors. Controversies over cometary, or asteroid origins of a particular events go on for decades. Whether some craters are from impact, or volcanic origin is also disputed. And Craters – Impact or Electric – Hard to Tell and The Antipodal Moon, are articles that discuss craters on the moons and planets of the Solar system that are odd, unless electrical discharge is considered.

Mysterious Bolides…

Conventional wisdom in the past, as well as physics, suggested the larger the rock entering the atmosphere, the more likely some of it’s mass will hit earth intact. Even though the stresses of heat and pressure that build while plunging into the atmosphere can break-up a large body, smaller pieces should slow and cool, to fall and leave a field of meteorite debris.

Chelyabinsk and other historic events exhibit behavior that have caused many scientists to rethink meteor impacts – the apparent energy of the events and other strange phenomena. The anomalies indicate an electric influence not fully understood by mainstream science (because they think with gravity, which is a slow and ponderous way to think).

The Daily Plasma will look at three events of recent times, and the mysteries of their occurrence through the perspective of Electric Universe theory: Chelyabinsk, Comet Shoemaker-Levy and in greater detail, Tunguska.

Chelyabinsk – February 15, 2013

We discussed in Electric Siberia, that the original estimate of the Chelyabinsk meteor’s size, based on observation, had to be upped by a factor of 1,000 when data streamed in showing it was 30 times more powerful than Hiroshima, on the order of a 500 kiloton blast. The power exhibited when Shoemaker-Levy struck Jupiter surprised astronomers, too. And the destructive energy of Tunguska, an order of magnitude bigger than Chelyabinsk – without leaving a crater, or meteorite debris – is still a puzzle after a century of scientific study.

The screaming Chelyabinsk fireball glowed 30 times brighter than the sun at one point, burning the skin and retinas of those below.  Only 0.05% of the original rock has been accounted for as debris. The largest piece was found in nearby Lake Chebarkul, weighing 650kg. It’s assumed intense heat and shock vaporized the rest.

Most strange, however, is this meteor anomaly, in which the video clearly shows a bullet of plasma accelerating from the meteor tail, to out and beyond the meteor’s head. There is no “gravity” explanation, or exploding rock theory that can slingshot a chunk from behind, to ahead of the meteor. This can only be a plasma event.

A meteor’s tail is plasma – ionized gas, both from the surrounding atmosphere and the ablating meteor material, not to mention the ionosphere it passes through – there is no controversy in this. The implication of a forward jetting plasma, however, is that an electrical field exists ahead of the meteor. The plasma bolt, or plasmoid seen shooting forward, is following an electric field, accelerated by magnetic fields, indicating the meteor is already in contact with a positive earth charge like a lightning bolt.

Witnesses reported crackling sounds as the meteor passed overhead, which implies the sound traveled at the speed of light. Acoustic waves don’t go that fast. This phenomena is evidence of the meteor’s electric field instantaneously inducing sound by creating a static electrical response from objects on the ground as it passed overhead. The sound people heard is the static discharge from the objects nearby.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy – July, 1984

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Comet Schoemaker-Levy provided the scientists with surprises, too. One of which was the small amount of planetary water revealed during impact. Models of Jupiter’s atmosphere predicted fragments  penetrating a layer of water that they would detect in the impact zone.

thAstronomers did not observe anything close to the predicted amount of water following the collisions, and studies found that fragmentation and complete destruction of the fragments probably occurred in a much higher altitude air-burst than expected, well above the depth of the water layer.

Another anomalous finding came from radio observations that revealed synchrotron radiation from the region of the impacts. Synchrotron radiation is most often associated with high energy electromagnetic plasma instabilities and particle accelerators, where relativistic electrons interact at velocities near the speed of light.

Following the impacts, aurora-like plasma emissions were detected near the impact region, and also antipodal to the impact site with respect to Jupiter’s magnetic field. Aurora’s are another electromagnetic plasma effect – and they were seen on the side of Jupiter’s magnetosphere opposite to the impact.

Astronomer’s theory for the aurora is based on a somewhat convoluted process of reverberating shock waves between atmospheric layers of the Jovian atmosphere. But the antipodal event indicates an interaction between the comet’s electric potential and Jupiter’s magnetosphere, an expected phenomena for bodies of differential charge coming in contact.

Tunguska – June 30, 1908

see captionTunguska is remarkable for its electrically induced phenomena. Its cause is widely believed to be an asteroid about 120 feet in diameter, traveling about 33,500 miles per hour. During its quick plunge, the 220-million-pound space rock heated the air surrounding it to 44,500 degrees Fahrenheit. At a height of about 28,000 feet, the combination of pressure and heat caused it to fragment and annihilate itself in an air-burst, producing a fireball with energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima bombs.

 The resulting shock waves registered on sensitive barometers as far away as England. Dense clouds formed over the region at high altitudes which reflected sunlight from beyond the horizon. Night skies glowed, and reports came in that people who lived as far away as London and parts of Asia could read the newspaper outdoors as late as midnight.

Locally, hundreds of reindeer were killed, but there were no human deaths reported as an immediate consequence of the blast, although one individual did die later from injuries. The explosion created the effects of a magnitude 5.0 earthquake, causing buildings to shake, windows to break, and people to be knocked off their feet 40 miles away.

kulikexpThe blast, centered in a desolate and forested area of mixed permafrost and semi-permafrost near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia, was so remote, that twenty years passed before the mineralogist and meteorite expert Leonid Kulik, from the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Museum finally reached the blast zone. On three separate occasions his expeditions investigated the area and obtained eyewitness accounts.

The explosion leveled an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square-mile area in a radial pattern from the blast zone.

Because the object exploded high in the atmosphere, it left no crater. At ground zero, tree branches were stripped, leaving trunks standing up. But at distances from roughly 3 to 10 miles, the trees were blown over, lying with tops pointed away from the blast.

The closest humans were herders camped in tents roughly 30 km from ground zero. Local Evenk natives who live an ancient, traditional life hunting, fishing and herding reindeer in the area were at first reluctant to discuss the event with the St. Petersburg scientists. Many Evenki’s seemed to believe the event to be a spiritually induced punishment – a curse on the region, and perhaps, carried a sense of shame.

One man, forty miles away at the Vanara trading post witnessed the blast as he was launched from his chair:

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“I was sitting on the porch of the house at the trading station, looking north. Suddenly in the north…the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire. I felt a great heat, as if my shirt had caught fire… At that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash… I was thrown twenty feet from the porch and lost consciousness for a moment…. The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or guns firing. The earth trembled…. At the moment when the sky opened, a hot wind, as if from a cannon, blew past the huts from the north. It damaged the onion plants. Later, we found that many panes in the windows had been blown out and the iron hasp in the barn door had been broken.”

Another witness said:

“I saw the sky in the north open to the ground and fire poured out. The fire was brighter than the sun. We were terrified, but the sky closed again and immediately afterward, bangs like gunshots were heard. We thought stones were falling… I ran with my head down and covered, because I was afraid stones may fall on it.”

Herders camped approximately 30 km away, and likely the closest humans to the blast zone, related that:

“Early in the morning when everyone was asleep in the tent, it was blown up in the air along with its occupants. Some lost consciousness. When they regained consciousness, they heard a great deal of noise and saw the forest burning around them, much of it devastated.”

“The ground shook and incredibly prolonged roaring was heard. Everything round about was shrouded in smoke and fog from burning, falling trees. Eventually the noise died away and the wind dropped, but the forest went on burning. Many reindeer rushed away and were lost.”

One older man was reportedly blown about forty feet into a tree, causing a compound fracture of his arm, and he soon died. Hundreds of reindeer were killed and campsites and herder’s huts in the area were destroyed.

Reports show agreement on several facts…

  • Three initial blasts occurred, followed by one smaller one, and then a series of explosions and tremors which persisted for several minutes like an artillery barrage.
  • An 830 square mile area of forest was completely flattened, with trees blown down radially away from a butterfly pattern impact zone. Areas within the zone are indicative of individual blasts from a cluster of at least four major explosions.
  • Witnesses stated they watched “the sky split in two” and  before impact saw a “blueish-white celestial body” in the sky.

The only debris found so far that can be meteorite fragments are tiny glass nodules embedded in the fallen trees, which are consistent in makeup with stony asteroid fragments that have been super-heated. Glass nodules are also created by lightning and electrical discharge. (Recent searches in the area have turned up three small rocky meteor fragments from nearby streams, but experts point out that these could be common meteors from any time before, or since the Tunguska event and cannot be correlated to it).

airburst3So where are all the fragments of the asteroid that was estimated to weigh some 100,000 tons?

Vaporized, they say – or atomized into dust and tiny gravel.

At first, scientists believed, because the meteorite did not strike the ground or make a crater, the object might be a weak, icy fragment of a comet, which vaporized explosively in the air, and left no residue on the ground.

More modern analysis indicates a dense rocky body of a certain size range can also atomize in an air-burst, leaving few large pieces. In 1993 researchers Chris Chyba, Paul Thomas, and Kevin Zahnle studied the Siberian explosion and concluded it was a stone meteorite that exploded as it belly-flopped into the atmosphere. They claim the meteor experienced a strong mechanical shock that exploded in a fireball leaving only a cloud of fine dust and tiny fragments. The ground blast was the effect of the meteor’s shock wave propagating from the air burst.

Blast Energy Controversy…

Some researchers of the Tunguska event dispute this. They claim the type of kinetic energy event described could not produce the kind of blast zone found at Tunguska.

air_burst_lg

Any moving object has energy because of its motion. That energy is technically called “kinetic energy.” Kinetic energy is mathematically expressed by the equation, mv2/2, where m is the object’s mass and v its velocity.

Because the velocity is  squared, high velocity imparts huge energy to even a small mass. Think of bullets. Throw one and it bounces off the target, fire one from a rifle, and… well, you get it.

Meteors travel 60,000 mph, or more, so that is very fast. According to the theory of an atomizing explosion, it is this kinetic energy that explodes the meteor.

Victor Korobeinikov, a member of the Russian Academy of Science Institute for Computer Aided Design and a team of associates has shown a meteor’s kinetic energy alone could not have produced the Tunguska blast zone. They concluded the internal energy of the Tunguska meteor had to be involved siultaneous with its kinetic energy to produce the radially patterned forest fall. Kinetic energy alone could not “explode” quickly enough to create the observed effect on the trees. The hypothetical Tunguska air-burst meteor had to act like an enormous block of explosive.

treesKorobeinikov concluded that the blast pattern required a predominately spherical air-shock wave to create it. The momentum of a kinetic energy induced shock wave from a disintegrating meteor must carry the momentum of the meteor, due to conservation of momentum. The simulations showed this type of shock wave produced a conical blast pattern. To achieve the spherical pattern of Tunguska required practically all of the air-shock to be produced from a complete and instantaneous explosive release of its internal energy.

The models also showed the epicenter should have experienced extremely high temperature from a kinetic air-burst and incinerate any organic materials at the epicenter. Yet many groups of trees survived in the blast zone and many trees showed no evidence of any burn, while ignition of wood bedding was reported up to 34 km away.

Besides the missing meteor fragments and Korobeinikov’s research, other, stranger things were reported:

  • no eyewitness reports of a meteor “tail”
  • disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field
  • a geomagnetic storm and aurora displays before and after the event
  • a reversal of soil magnetization
  • an electromagnetic pulse, similar to what would be created by a nuclear explosion
  • accelerated growth of plants after the event
  • up to 60% of survived trees in some areas near the epicenter with lightning damage
  • spots of melted sand and soil
  • radiation-like burns on exposed victims
  • 15 micrometer anhedral carbon particles that are likely micro-diamonds, that show a chemical make-up representing terrestrial values, and not an extraterrestrial signature. Micro-diamond are an expected result of an explosive plasma discharge event.

Also, in 1908, German Professor, Herr Doctor Weber of the University in Kiel, was monitoring the magnetosphere for auroras. As he recorded in the Astronomische Nachrichten (Astronomical News), he didn’t detect aurora, but he measured a constant, steady vibration in magnetic declination for several hours over the same daily time periods three evenings prior to the Tunguska event. The signal ceased after the event. He ruled out local interference.

Terrestrial Theory…

Andrei Yu. Ol’khovatov, a Russian scientist, has proposed the interesting and plausible theory that Tunguska was a geophysical event caused by tectonic processes. He analyzed the nature of earthquake tremors, as reported following Tunguska, and concluded they were not caused by the meteor blast, but were the cause of the event itself.

elights2
Earthquake lights

He points to the many eyewitness reports of odd luminous phenomena, such as light columns, stripes, lightning, flames and the sky glowing red, rather than the witnesses claiming a streaking meteor with a tail. According to his research, no one reported a trail of any kind behind the “fireball” in the sky, as would be evident from a large meteor.

An unusual glow in the sky was first observed days before the event. Beginning on June 23, 1908, atmospheric phenomena were observed in many places of Western Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia indicating geomagnetic activity. They gradually increased in intensity until June 29 and then reached a peak in the early morning of July 1st. These anomalies included frequent formation of noctilucent clouds and bright auroral twilight. After July 1, these effects decreased exponentially.

A surge in tectonic activity can produce various optical effects in the atmosphere: luminous columns, stripes, lightnings, flame, glowing sky, etc. Exploding “meteors” are among them.

Earthquake Lights…

Heima

Tunguska witnesses reported three different trajectories depending on where they stood, which is evidence of an earthquake event. Each of the witnessed trajectories is above a main tectonic fault, according to Ol’khovatov. The eastern trajectory superimposes on the Beryozovsko-Vanavarskii fault, the south-eastern trajectory projects on the Norilsk-Markovskii fault, and the southern trajectory is over the Angaro-Khetskii and Angaro-Viluiskii faults. They intersect inside the Vanavara circle geologic structure.

Ol’khovatov also points to reports of simultaneous auroral glows along these faults far from the immediate blast zone and near other major geologic features. He believes earthquake lights – plasma phenomena in the atmosphere caused by tectonics – are what witnesses saw emanating from the faulted regions, not an extraterrestrial bolide. This explains the various trajectories reported and other un-meteor-like observations.

A study in the journal Seismological Research Letters studied the type of quakes that generate plasma events and found they are tied to a specific type of temblor in areas where certain geological formations occur. Though the lights are rare, researchers have documented 65 examples.

elight3A witness described one event that occurred while he was sitting in front of his house during a cool night. Suddenly the air got so hot that he couldn’t breathe. The extreme heat lasted for 20 minutes when a bright light lit the whole ground like sunshine, as if a “chamber had opened in the sky.” Next he heard a great noise like thunder, and the air moved left and right. Four shocks lifted him and others out of their seats, and the buildings around them collapsed, less than 30 seconds after the bright light appeared. Earthquake aftershocks lasted for 40 days.

thelightnzAt the Russian town of Kola, February 21, 1873, witnesses  say the sky darkened and an enormous crimson fireball  came from the eastern sky and vanished in the west, immediately followed by an underground jolt that kept shaking the earth for 5 minutes.

Another “meteor” flew at low altitude in a blast of wind over the Russian town of Chembar on January 4, 1886, exploding on the road outside of the town with a loud thunderclap and killing an innocent horse. The frightened coachman said a fiery serpent killed the horse. About 15 minutes after the explosion an earthquake struck the town.

More recent events include:

  • 1931, Tama Hills, Japan during an earthquake “a fireball rose in the sky and disappeared. A sound like ‘Bah’ was heard.” The lower sky was colored pink-red for some time afterwards.
  • 1931, South Hyuga, Japan, during an earthquake a fishing boat 50 km off-shore began to pitch violently before a large pillar of fire shot up from the surface of the sea.
  • In the mid-1960s at Matsushiro, Japan, earthquake lights were photographed for the first time.
  • 1974, Kiangsu Province, China, immediately before an earthquake hit  people saw a bright streak in the sky, with sparks of lightning dancing across it. The spectacle went on for 3-4 seconds.
  • 1975, Liaoning Province, China, fiery columns, balls, and a “flame” shot into the sky at the time of the earthquake.
  • 1976, Hopeh Province, China, the Tangshang earthquake was preceded by a bright flickering light in the distance, said witnesses. Instantly it transformed from red to silvery blue, and then lengthened into a blinding white strip that darted across the sky and went out immediately. At the time of the earthquake an engine driver saw lightning in the form of 3 blinding light beams, followed by 3 mushroom-shaped smoke columns.
  • 1976, Lunling, China, two Chinese seismologists observed a fireball about 50 meters in diameter, 200 meters away for almost half an hour.
  • 1988-1989, Quebec, Canada, in connection with the swarm of earthquakes  many luminous phenomena including sparks,  diffuse dawn-like glow and auroral bands were witnessed. Fireballs a few meters in diameter reportedly popped out of the ground in a repetitive manner. Others were seen several hundred meters in the sky. Some observers described luminous droplets, rapidly disappearing a few meters under stationary floating fireballs.
  • 2007, Pisco, Peru, a naval officer saw pale-blue columns of light bursting four times in succession out of the water as a magnitude-8.0 earthquake struck. Security cameras in the city captured images of the lights as well.
  • 2009, L’Aquila, Italy, seconds before an earthquake pedestrians saw flames of light 4 inches high flickering above the stone-paved Francesco Crispi Avenue in the town’s historical city center.

elights.smithsonianSome events have been witnessed by scientists. Chinese seismologists observed a small fireball originate from the ground  100 meters from where they stood. At first about one meter in diameter, it shot up to a height of 10 or 15 meters and shrunk to ping-pong-ball size, then curved over in an arc, resembling a meteor. The light dimmed and brightened, small wisps of white smoke swirled, and a slight crackling sound was heard. A small funnel-shaped hole in the ground was found at the place where the fireball appeared.

Chinese seismologists observing the phenomena discovered that more fireballs occurred along intersections of river beds and faults. Investigators of “streaks of bluish white color” seen before the 1995 Kobe earthquake found the trace of a 1,000 amp electric current across an area of about 1000 sq. cm.*

lightnings12In 2002, a meteor exploded over the Vitim River basin estimated to produce a 5 kiloton blast. Researchers found a 40 square mile area flattened much like Tunguska, where the meteor was found to have exploded overhead. Most unusual, the area was suffering a power blackout during the strike, but when the meteor flashed overhead, the grid was activated by the electrical field of the meteor. Residents’ lights flickered on a few seconds, while crackling was heard and electrical discharges sparked along the tops of metal fences. Many people reported effects of radiation.

In general earthquake lights can manifest as comet-like fireballs, pillars of light, a shooting flame, spheres, patches and bands in the sky, all-sky luminous flashes, auroras, odd clouds exhibiting colors and sparks, black objects and many others. They are often reported as UFO’s.

In an Electric Universe…

That comet Shoemaker-Levy was, in fact, a comet, or that Chelyabinsk was a fragment of one, or a chunk of asteroid, is not really at question. The understanding of what comets are and what kind of “impacts” they, or asteroids can cause when screaming into Earth’s atmosphere is interpreted differently, though.

coronaThe EU solar model is that the Sun is not a fusion balloon as suggested by accepted theory, but an anode, or positively charged body in a negatively charged “atmosphere” – the heliosphere – energized into a stable arc discharge from vast electromagnetic currents in the Milky Way.

The Earth is also a charged body, with it’s own electromagnetic field that receives energy from the Sun’s radiating currents. We see these currents at the magnetic poles, where they occasionally are energized to a glow mode, or aurora when solar “winds” are strong.

The mechanism that carries current across vast distances in the vacuum of space are plasma streams called Birkeland Currents. That the polar aurora are Birkeland Currents was discovered and published by Kristian Birkeland in, coincidentally, 1908, the year of Tunguska.

In this model, there is little difference between an asteroid and a comet. The idea that comets are fluffy ice balls is an unnecessary convention of mainstream science to explain things they don’t comprehend. Both asteroids and comets are rocky bodies, and direct observations by exploratory spacecraft confirm this with every new piece of data.

Comet-67PThe difference is in the degree of negative charge they carry. Comets orbit the kuiper Belt in the far reaches of the heliosphere and are, therefore, far more negatively charged than an asteroid that orbits in the inner Asteroid Belt. When a comet enters the increasingly positive influence of the Sun, it begins to electrically erode, producing the iconic tail that streams away in the solar wind.

The consequence is that the meteor’s energy includes this charge differential, so when it approaches Earths influence there is a discharge between the meteor and earth. The energy is far greater than the kinetic energy of the meteor alone. It is also vectored along the electric field created between earth and the meteor, as well as throughout the geomagnetic field to deliver that energy to earth. This explains why Chelyabinsk and Shoemaker-Levy surprised researchers with their power.

The energy released not only includes the kinetic and internal energy of the meteor matter, but the responding energy of the Earth. The plasma events, such as synchrotron radiation and auroras are a natural consequence of such an event. So too are tectonic responses from the Earth’s internal geomagnetic field.

This can explain the spherical blast pattern of Tunguska and the anomalous seismic, aurora and lightning phenomena witnessed. It can explain the selective burns in and near the blast zone, which is very hard to explain otherwise. The mainstream theory of an air-burst shock wave would scorch the blast zone completely, which did not happen.

Tunguska 1908 4It is likely Ol’khovatov is partly correct in the tectonic origins of the Tunguska event. More likely, a bolide was involved, but in an event that occurred while geomagnetic influences were already at work, perhaps because of the meteor’s approach.

Wallace Thornhill discusses meteors and the possible cause of Tunguska in the context of EU theory:

“Do meteors burn up from air friction or from electrical discharges sparked by short-circuiting a double layer? Are the streaks of light hot air or lightning? Are the noises shock waves or electrically transduced sounds? Are meteorites etched by friction or by electrical discharge machining? Are they slowed to a soft landing by air resistance or by electrical forces? Why do we find meteorites where there are no craters and craters where there are no meteorites? Is “impact” an obsolete idea to be replaced with “arc scar?”

“In my view, earthquakes are an electrical phenomenon. The Earth is electrified beneath the surface as well as at the surface and can suffer “underground lightning.” That causes most earthquakes, I believe.  To have a good argument for the fireball as the cause of the other effects I would like to see the precise timing of each event. I would also be interested to see if any anomalous signals were picked up by stations or any other electromagnetic monitoring of the atmosphere. I say that because to be the cause of the earthquake the fireball must discharge to the Earth in some fashion. That would result in a radio signal similar to that of lightning or sprites.  William Corliss in his Sourcebook Project collected reports of “Earthquakes and Electricity” which would be useful to examine. For example in an early report from the Journal of Science, 20:7, 1884, by Arthur Parnell we find that from 490 earthquake cases, 156 were associated with thunder, detonations and rumblings, 73 with meteors, and 15 with lightning flashes that had nothing to do with thunderstorms.”

If you enjoyed this article, please “like” or leave a comment.

Additional links of interest:

International Meteor Organization

MeteorSeti.org

JPL/NASA – list of meteor streams

*For details see “Geophysical Research Letters” v.25, p.2721 (1998).

Today in THE DAILY PLASMA

Why do people believe weird things? Because they believe this guy…

“Skeptic” Michael Shermer shows his true colors – too lazy to listen, denigrates EU Community ad hominem – lost in the circular reasoning of establishment science.

Shamelessly misleads….claims EU about Chemtrails and 9/11 conspiracy.

Dr. Donald Scott rebuttal…Scientific American won’t fact check.


lightnings12What’s Hot…Lightning.

  • Mountain buster lightning…Nat Geo
  • Rock melting lightning…Live Science
  • Paleo-lightning and petroglyphs…JSTOR
  • From petroglyphs to Mars…USRA

The Daily Plasma is the new landing page for up to date news and fascinating articles. Plus a listing of sites with news of science, Electric Universe and even Bigfoot. See these articles and more…and if you know an article, a website, or you-tube channel worth following, let me know and I’ll include it.

Identifying UFO’s

Most sightings have an explanation, but do you know what it is?

UFO sightings are intriguing. People see something. It may be a blimp, or a balloon – perfectly normal in our world, but uncommon – and at great distance, easily misidentified. But many witnesses know they see something out of the ordinary, some thing that is not of this world.

In more than sixty thousand reported sightings, half the witnesses reported an oval, spherical, or variation of a round edged shape, according to data compiled by David Marler in, “Triangle UFO’s – An Estimate of the Situation.” Another seventeen percent reported polygonal shapes, predominately triangles. Twenty-four percent described what they witnessed as some form of lights in the sky, and the remainder are unspecified “other.”

Are there explanations for any of these? Yes. And you know what some of these are. So let’s start with the obvious, and count down to the bizarre.

Military Craft

X-43A Hypersonic X-plane
NASA Image

The triangle has been a common silhouette for stealth aircraft for decades now – the F-117 Fighter, the B-2 Stealth Bomber and various X-Planes, including the Aurora Hypersonic X-43B and the Boeing X-48B UAV. Rumors of other secret triangular craft such as the TR3-B abound.

Mystery surrounds some of these aircraft, but they are not extraterrestrial. They are airplanes with a lifting body, or blended wing design favored for low visibility and economy. They may look exotic and alien, but they’re the result of human engineering. There is no reason to assign extraterrestrial origins to something we already fly in the sky. Watch this Lockheed Martin video on state-of-the-art aircraft design. What is possible today may surprise you.

URL: https://youtu.be/JmnBGrw2XsY

Balloons, blimps and toy drones; lenticular clouds, Venus and Sun dogs.

Your heart skips a beat. You know it’s not a plane – lights in the sky slowly moving in the distance. But then perspective changes, and you see a blimp’s full banner of lights advertising car insurance. The wave of adrenaline leaves you sweaty, and a little disappointed.

Catch sight of a transparent, high altitude weather balloon at dusk when the Sun still illuminates it, and it glows and shimmers with rainbow colors. Toy drones are capable of flying to thousands of feet, performing acrobatics with flashing LED lights.

Venus can be brighter in certain phases, or in conjunction with another planet, appear as an oval shape. The sun reflects, refracts, and is shadowed by clouds, creating unusual sights. And lenticular clouds can take a smooth, saucer shape in speeding winds.

These are some explanations you have probably seen at some time. It catches your breath for a moment, until you recognize what it is.

Plasma – a misunderstood matter.

When someone claims to see a UFO, they are generally dismissed for having seen a balloon, blimp, airplane, or cloud. They are often ridiculed for wishful thinking – the desire to see a UFO blinds the witness from the obvious.

But many people know when they see something truly odd – and are often reluctant to talk about it. They aren’t pushing alien theories.

What many people see are atmospheric plasma phenomena. Science still has trouble recognizing and explaining it, but plasma is all around us. More than 99% of matter in the universe is plasma.

Auroras, Sprites and Elves – oh my – true alien invaders.

NASA_yellow_sprites_lg
Photo Credit NASA/JPL

Dramatic high-energy plasma displays above the atmosphere are created by an alien invader – electricity from space.

Electrical discharges from the sun create the solar wind, which sweeps the solar system with charged particles. Earth magnetic field deflects the flow of charge and funnels it to the poles. There, the energy encounters the ionosphere and lights it like a neon sign, creating the beautiful Auroras.

Plasma also discharges above the clouds, creating fantastic shapes of bright neon color.

Close to ground, an electrical discharge must ‘squeeze’ a tortuous path through the atmosphere, creating the thin, jagged currents we see as lightning. Electric current between clouds and space travels the ionosphere, forming a diffuse neon flash that more closely resembles the Northern Lights. They come in a variety of forms scientists have dubbed blue jets, sprites and elves. This brief NASA video explains more.

URL: https://youtu.be/vNmUfcc_zBk

Mysterious spheres and orbs – another plasma phenomenon.

55b68283170000260056592aThey are called “Plasma Magnetic Entity”, or “Plasmoids.” In simple terms, a plasmoid is electric current balled into a doughnut – a toroid of ionized particles whose electric field is bound inside it’s own magnetic field. The most common form known is ball lightning.

Plasmoids can be produced in the laboratory. Physicist Antonio Pavão and doctoral student Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil created orbs the size of golf balls by vaporizing silica wafers with electricity. They mimic natural ball lightning.

Plasmoids in nature are not easy to investigate. They are rare and ephemeral. Man-made plasmoids are produced in particle accelerators, arc-welding operations and even microwave ovens. Formed in the lab, they last only seconds, whereas in nature they can last much longer. They are the result of very high-energy events in nature that science is still investigating.

To learn more, see this National Geographic article:

URL: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070122-ball-lightning.html

If you want to make a plasmoid in you microwave, check out this nifty experiment:

URL: http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/oa_plsm4.htm

Terrestrial Plasmoids

Terrestrial plasmoids are seen near volcanoes and earthquake faults. Seismic stresses generate water vapor and ionized gases. Electricity charges the earth from the piezoelectric effect of crystalline minerals deforming under stress. A cloud of ionized gas forms a plasmoid.

They often appear as white or silvery spheres that float through the air, as if intelligently controlled. They can be mistaken for an escaped helium balloon, but their motion will give them away, often flying away or changing direction at speeds faster than a balloon in the wind could possibly do.

At distance the orbs appear solid, but closer observation reveals internal structure as the electric currents inside are seen to spark and glow.

This article explores the phenomena in great detail: http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Plasmoid

Light emission, Synchrotrons and x-rays.

EarthAtmosphere-2_lg
Image Credit NASA/JPL

Plasmoids are thought to be created when high energy current meets sudden resistance, as when solar winds hit the atmosphere. Like a rock hitting water, a bubble forms as it dives beneath the surface. A plasmoid is a bubble of plasma held together by magnetic fields instead of surface tension.

Unlike the terrestrial plasmoids created by seismic events, atmospheric plasmoids are higher energy events. They are commonly seen during thunderstorms, or due to incoming solar winds. They more commonly appear near the poles, in the arctic latitudes of Alaska, Canada, Norway and Siberia in the north; Argentina, Chile and Brazil in the south. But they can be seen anywhere.

A distinguishing feature is the powerfully bright light they emit, often pulsing and changing color. The light is an effect called synchrotron radiation.

Synchrotron emissions are generated by charged particles and electrons circulating within magnetic fields at close to the speed of light. As angular momentum changes they emit photons. The radiation is focused in the direction of the motion of the particle, creating polarized beams of light.

This may explain why many UFO witnesses claim they were caught in a “beam of light” from the “craft.” The light emitted may be bright visible light, but they also produce damaging ultraviolet and x-rays.

EarthPlasmatubes
NASA image of Plasma Tubes around Earth’s equator.

Watch this plasma display filmed in Mexico:

URL: http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2015/04/ufo-sighting-mexico.html

To read more about synchrotron emissions, see:

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Synchrotron+Emission

They fly in Formation

Electromagnetic effects can push, pull and move things around. Its force is 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity.

Two, or more plasmoids will interact with each other. They will form formations of geometric patterns, squares, triangles, or line-up in a row. They may follow each other, spacing themselves equidistantly, flying in formation. They may look solid or ephemeral, vanish and reappear, or zoom away at unbelievable speeds.

Watch these incredible videos of plasmoid events. They are being seen by thousands of people around the world.

http://www.wpxi.com/videos/news/strange-lights-hovering-over-tucson-az-usa/vCm4JR/

They may be dragons or other shapes.

Plasma discharges into Earth’s atmosphere don’t necessarily form a neat bubble. Heavy discharges will generate bright meteor like objects that eject streams of dripping plasma. They are obviously not meteors, because they don’t fly straight. They meander across the sky, or form glowing geometric shapes. Look at these astonishing examples, some of which were seen by multiple witnesses who filmed the event from a variety of perspectives.

Lightning from Space

We do not know the limit to the power of cosmic lightning. Watch this video – its no ordinary lightning. They may be bolts direct from space, with no cloud to intercept and modify the discharge – cosmic thunderbolts.

Perhaps this is the consequence of those flashes – Siberian Craters.

I call them “WTF Holes.” They never found the big plug of dirt – or whatever was in there. Some are over 100 meters deep.

In this photo taken Wednesday, July 16, 2014, a crater recently discovered in the Yamal Peninsula, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Russian scientists said Thursday that they believe a 60-meter wide crater, discovered recently in far northern Siberia, could be the result of changing temperatures in the region. Andrei Plekhanov, a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, traveled on Wednesday to the crater. Plekhanov said 80 percent of the crater appeared to be made up of ice and that there were no traces of an explosion, eliminating the possibility that a meteorite had struck the region. (AP Photo/Press Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Governor)
AP Photo/Press Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Governor

This one is 60 meters across. Like the others recently discovered on or near the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia, it rapidly filled with water so no one has seen the bottom, but they say it’s at least 200 feet deep.

Residents in the area claimed to see a cloud of smoke and a streak of bright light in the sky before this hole appeared.

Scientists are blaming Global Warming – of course. They say permafrost melted, releasing frozen methane bubbles that burst, possibly igniting at some point in the process. That could only happen once the gas reached air and a source of ignition.

There is gas in the region. There are more drilling rigs than reindeer in Siberia. And there are plenty of circular holes in the ground. It’s natural in permafrost for ice lenses to form below ground in a formation called a pingo, and then collapse, leaving thousands of round pools. But they aren’t 200 feet deep with vertical sides and crater rims.

It looks more like a giant fulgurite caused by a cosmic thunderbolt. Lightning creates temperatures that exceed the surface of the sun. Lightning would find easy conductance in frozen permafrost and vaporize surrounding ice explosively. They’ve found six more. Some of them are shown in this video.

Beware the alien invaders!

By A.D. Hall

https://andrewdhall.wordpress.com

Author of “Lapse of Reason”

The World Is Going To Change.

It’s already started. It will be an intellectual awakening. It may also be a catastrophic killer.

At the forefront of change is the long overdue awakening to our ancient past. A realization the ancients left us a message is finally dawning on mankind.

I recently watched a popular science show. The astronomers were boasting how they “discovered” the ancients used astronomical alignment in the layout and construction of the Giza Plateau. They did not mention Robert Bauval. They really should have, since he documented the findings they “discovered” – decades ago.

That is how it is going to be. People outside the closed-minded scientific community who make the discoveries will be written-off as “kooks” until the mainstream itself makes the “discovery.” The kooks will never be given due credit.

The 9,500 BC age of Gobleki Tepi blows the socks off mainstream archaeology because it refutes their timeline for civilization. But it has not stirred their imaginations to try and understand its real meaning. That is still left to the kooks. The kooks however, are becoming powerful, because they keep turning up right.

The quest to understand our past – to understand the enigmatic cultures and what they were about, took a huge stride forward with the work of Anthony Peratt. At its core is the discovery of what should be regarded as the Rosetta Stone to our past.

sp02_hohokam_petroglyphs_sears_pointThat discovery  identifies ancient petroglyphs and other iconography as accurate portrayals of plasma discharge in the upper atmosphere. Strange stick-figure characters seen carved on rock from Arizona to China, found in 140 countries so far, exactly match aurora just as they would be seen in the sky during such a significant electrical event. This isn’t willful pattern recognition, or confirmation bias. It is evidence. Dr. Peratt’s peer reviewed papers published in IEEE are available at Plasmauniverse.info

The electrical event was in space. We don’t know what caused the event the ancients recorded on rocks and cliffs across the globe. We do know what happened probably scared the crap out of them. Plasma physicist Anthony Peratt and his team at Los Alamos National Laboratories have studied the type of plasma display, and the energy required to produce it, and concluded the event would have swept our earth with deadly x-rays.

One theory is astounding. The Electric Universe theorizes the solar system was at one time arranged differently, with planets in closer proximity. The ensuing electrical battle between dissimilar charged bodies in close orbit caused powerful discharges of lightning. The evidence is left on the cratered and scarred surface of the planets and moons around us, and in the mythologies of our ancestors.

Alternative theories bear investigation. Professor Robert Schoch proposes a massive solar event was the cause. A monster Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that blasted the earth with a charged solar wind stronger than anything seen in recorded history.

Others speculate the energy came from the Milky Way. Galactic flaring, or a supernova may have surged the heliosphere with excess energy – and the sun responded.

Whatever the cause, the event would have changed the climate. Powerful Solar winds could overcome our magnetosphere and strip away atmosphere into a comet-like tail. Cosmic rays could destroy the ozone layer. Volatile weather, floods, earthquakes and volcanoes could result from the Earth absorbing huge amounts of Solar energy.

Whatever the cause, it is likely the event that ended the Younger Dryas, circa 9,700 BC, melting the remnants of the ice age. It is almost certainly the event described in the mythology of ancients around the world. The event science ignores.

The_magnetic_field_along_the_Galactic_plane_node_full_image_2
Image Credit: NASA

This is an image of electromagnetism in the Milky Way. This is real science. The Electric Universe uses conventional physics – the physics of electromagnetic forces and the plasma that carries it in space. Mainstream science has ignored it in their quest for ever-more exotic thought experiments and mathematical models.

General Relativity only contemplates gravity. Yet electromagnetic forces are obviously at work. How can a theory ignore a force that is so obviously evident.

Einstein never assumed his theory explained everything, but his followers have. They assume, a priori, that the only force acting on the cosmic scale is gravity. They invent “dark matter,” “dark energy,” “black holes,” and “wormholes,” to make their mathematics work. But they never actually find any of these “dark” things or “holes.” After nearly a century, they remain conveniently invisible.

Believing in General Relativity is like believing in magic.

The electromagnetic force is 39 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. It is evident in the energetic plasma we see everywhere we look in space.

  • The Sun,
  • The heliosphere,
  • Earth’s magnetosphere,
  • Stars,
  • Galaxies,
  • Nebula,
  • Galaxies are connected in a web of it;
  • Planets, moons and comets bear the scars from it.

Electricity, in space, is organized and interconnected in Plasma currents. Plasma is the key.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped the best ever image of the Antennae Galaxies. Hubble has released images of these stunning galaxies twice before, once using observations from its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in 1997, and again in 2006 from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Each of Hubble’s images of the Antennae Galaxies has been better than the last, due to upgrades made during the famous servicing missions, the last of which took place in 2009. The galaxies — also known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 — are locked in a deadly embrace. Once normal, sedate spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, the pair have spent the past few hundred million years sparring with one another. This clash is so violent that stars have been ripped from their host galaxies to form a streaming arc between the two. In wide-field images of the pair the reason for their name becomes clear — far-flung stars and streamers of gas stretch out into space, creating long tidal tails reminiscent of antennae. This new image of the Antennae Galaxies shows obvious signs of chaos. Clouds of gas are seen in bright pink and red, surrounding the bright flashes of blue star-forming regions — some of which are partially obscured by dark patches of dust. The rate of star formation is so high that the Antennae Galaxies are said to be in a state of starburst, a period in which all of the gas within the galaxies is being used to form stars. This cannot last forever and neither can the separate galaxies; eventually the nuclei will coalesce, and the galaxies will begin their retirement together as one large elliptical galaxy. This image uses visible and near-infrared observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), along with some of the previously-released observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Mainstream science has ignored the findings and the consequences of plasma physics. Plasma we know can organize itself. It is named ‘plasma’ because of similarities to blood plasma.

A plasma stream will contain electric current within self-organized  magnetic fields like a conduit, called Berkland currents, that form in twisted pairs.

This self-organizing system carries currents throughout space. Stars and galaxies are not energized by mass alone. They are fed by these currents with energy from outside.

That is why the universe is so dynamic, and why mainstream physicists must resort to the imagination to conceive of black holes, dark energy and dark matter to explain its behavior. None of these things describe what we see in the Universe. They remain a figment of imagination.

Electricity is, on the other hand, quite real, observable and testable. Today’s mainstream cosmologists will be recognized as “flat-earthers,” after they die-out in a decade, or so. The truth will win-out.

In the meantime, there is much work to be done. Pieces of the puzzle are coming together, but many gaps remain.

As an example; Dr. Robert Schoch has identified the Rongu Rongu text of Easter Island to be a catalog of plasma displays. So we can now speculate with great confidence what those giant statues were built to watch. And there are parallels in iconography and imagery threaded throughout past civilizations. All the way to the oldest site we know, Gobleki Tepi. And possibly, to the time of the event itself.

The work of Graham Hancock and others to uncover the megalithic remains of pre-deluvian cultures below the current sea level is a key piece of this puzzle. Whoever lived to see the event, and the few who survived, came from those civilizations. We must learn more.

The Geo-position of archaic sites, the astronomical alignments, the megalithic stones, mythology and art are telling us a catastrophic tale we are still ignorant of. We must understand what happened, and understand if it will happen again.

PIA19821
Image credit: NASA

We know we will be affected by CME’s. But who knows the magnitude they can be? What happens when the magnetic field shifts – it’s already weakened. Our civilization is built on a house of cards that will collapse without warning if we do not heed the dangers.

While our mainstream scientists wring their hands about what man has done to Earth, the cosmos doesn’t care. Neither does the Earth. It will be here long after we’re gone. Only the big rocks will remain.

By A. D. Hall https://andrewdhall.wordpress.com/

For more information on Electric Universe Theory, including articles by this author, please visit:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/

A.D. Hall is a science writer, humorist and author of the novel, “Lapse of Reason”.

Electric Universe And The Political Debate

Electric Universe Theory could become a topic in politics. Republican Candidate Ben Carson has expressed his doubts about the “Big Bang” theory in interviews this past week. “Science” bloggers have tried to make him into a “flat earth” crazy for having his doubts. We need to set the record straight.

ben-carson-tight-crop-restricted-large-169Far from being an ignorant flat-earther, Ben Carson is on the cutting edge of science. He is best known for leading one of the most complex neurosurgeries ever performed. In 1987, he directed a team of seventy doctors to successfully separate twins born co-joined at the head.

He was named one of the nation’s 20 foremost physicians and scientists by Time Magazine and CNN, a “Living Legend” by The Library of Congress, and was awarded the Presidential Medal and the Ford’s Theater Lincoln Medal by President George W. Bush.

There is even a made for TV documentary about him, “Gifted Hands,” starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. His scientific credentials far exceed those who criticize him.

He isn’t questioning Big Bang theory out of ignorance. He questions it because he’s a scientist. Few people outside the scientific community know this, because you won’t hear it from media, or scientists, but Big Bang cosmology is in serious trouble. It simply does not describe the Universe we see and cannot be validated.

The theory predicts a multitude of strange matter and energy that is not evident anywhere in the cosmos. New observations usually result in setbacks for the Big Bang, finding things it does not predict and not finding the things it does.

15-066The theory predicts that the Universe we see, with telescopes scanning space in every wavelength of the spectrum, is less than 4% of what’s out there. The other 96%-plus is assumed to be composed of “dark energy” and “dark matter.” They are “dark,” because they can’t be found. Dark energy and dark matter aren’t only invisible, scientists don’t know what they are.

Dark matter is thought to exist in a cloud around galaxies. They believe this because their model cannot explain spiral formation in galaxies without inventing something to hold them together. Yet they cannot find, or even describe what this dark matter is – they are just guessing.

Dark energy is believed to exert a force expanding the universe. Yet they can’t find it, or describe it’s properties. They can only say what it isn’t. Again, they are just guessing.

They have been guessing for almost a century now. Are we to believe in a theory that cannot describe 96% of the Universe? What kind of science is that? It’s nothing more than a plea of faith that the scientists know anything at all. Don’t we already have religions for that?

Big Bang theory predicts many things we can’t see and have found no direct evidence for: black holes, gravitational waves, wormholes, space-time, time travel – all great science fiction stuff – and all pure guesswork.

It cannot explain what gravity is, or why the Sun and the Earth interact instantaneously through gravity in order to maintain a stable orbit. There is no time lag for interaction at the speed of light and they can’t explain why.

0105-4x5color.aiIt cannot explain large scale filaments of electric current that connect galaxies across the Universe. It cannot explain the behavior of many “pulsars” and “gamma ray bursts” witnessed in deep space. It cannot explain the presence of “quasars” in galaxies that, according to their theory, are supposed to be billions of light years apart. It cannot successfully explain the behavior of the Sun, the most observed star in the Universe, or many of the properties found on planets and moons in our solar system.

General Relativity cannot be reconciled with other physics. The quantum behavior of nuclear physics can’t be explained in terms of General Relativity and attempts to reconcile it with quantum mechanics have never come close to succeeding. Everyone knows something is missing.

Even the few things General Relativity has “predicted” can be explained by simpler means. Phenomena that is purported to prove General Relativity, such as gravitational lensing, cosmic background radiation, planetary motion, time dilation of clocks sent into space – can be explained by alternative theories that nullify any unique proof of General Relativity.

General Relativity is conceived on the notion of space-time – Einstein’s cosmic fabric of four dimensions. Dimensions are just measurements. Measurements can be manipulated with mathematics to create a landscape, like a topographical map. But a map only describes the landscape – it doesn’t tell you what’s in it, what it’s doing, or what it is. Some of our scientists have confused the map with reality.

Look at reports from any NASA team after they obtain new observations. They begin with, “We didn’t expect this..,” or “Team is surprised…” Of course they are surprised. The “Where’s Elmo?” theory fails to predict anything real – only unknown, unseen “holes” and “dark” stuff.

Ben Carson is right. It’s time to rethink.

There is alternative science that explains our Universe with elegance and predictive accuracy, and without inventing imaginary matter and energy. The amazing thing is, it’s all classic physics. The Universe is full of electromagnetic energy – we see it on the Sun, we see it in comets, we see it on Pluto and every other planet and moon in the solar system. It is the organizing power we see all around us. Plasma is the reason.

IDL TIFF filePlasma is a fundamental state of matter, like solid, liquid or gas. It is the fourth and most abundant state of matter. Plasma is what we see in a flame, a lightning bolt, the aurorae at Earth’s magnetic poles and neon lights on beer signs. It’s a mixture of electrons and ions. An ion is a particle with one or more electrons stripped away, making it positively charged. Because plasma always has electrical charge in its electrons and ions, it produces magnetic fields.

As anyone who has used a magnet knows, they have the ability to pull things together and force them apart. Two like  charges push each other apart with great force. Two unlike charges, one positive, one negative, attract each other. That’s why a magnet sticks to the refrigerator door on one side, but falls off if it’s turned upside down. The force of even a small refrigerator magnet is able to overcome gravity with a force trillions of times stronger.

According to new theories coming from a rogue group of scientists from the world of applied science, rather than the institutionalized echo-chamber of theoretical cosmology, electricity and magnetic fields energize the Universe we see. It’s obvious what they propose makes good sense. All of the stars, and all of the galaxies, and all of the bright nebula, and all of the filaments of energy we see in the Universe is plasma. And all of it contains electromagnetic energy.

Big Bang cosmology disputes this, believing the weak force of gravity alone makes the universe work to create stars and galaxies. They assume all the ions and electrons cancel each other out, so they don’t have an effect on anything. This notion is absurd if you think about it. And adhering to it in the face of evidence makes it obvious theoretical physicists are just protecting their interests.

Snow Angel courtesy of NASALook at photos from the Hubble telescope and you will see bright, multicolored objects – planetary nebula, stellar novas, galactic nebula and spiral galaxies. They are all neon bright clouds of plasma, often forming organized patterns – spirals, hourglass figures and thousands of light year’s long beams of plasma. Gravity can’t do that.

What ‘Where’s Elmo?’ science does not recognize is the fact plasma does not allow the electrons and ions to cancel each other out. The positive and negative charges have magnetic fields that push and pull them around. The particles can’t fly in straight lines, running into each other like billiard balls, cancelling each other out. They are pushed and pulled in directions that separate the charge. The more they move the stronger the magnetic fields become, and particles organize into regions of magnetic fields and current flow, rather than dispersing like an inert cloud of dust.

Plasma is unique in it’s ability to self organize, creating sheaths of magnetic fields around current. Of course it’s a bit more involved than that, but I’ll let plasma physicists explain the details. This is a phenomena that electrical engineers and plasma physicists in applied science work with every day. It is known science developed by Nobel laureate scientists, backed by a century of repeatable experiment and observation. Big Bang theorists just refuse to consider it, preferring instead to support a theory they have invested their careers and our tax dollars into proving – without success.

Ben Carson is 100% right to question them.

For more information about Electric Universe theory, visit Thunderbolts.info

The Galapagos of the Southwest

North America’s Western Cordillera, from Alaska to Southern Mexico, is a wall of mountain. Except for a low point called the Deming gap, between the Rocky Mountain’s end at the Mogollon Rim, and the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico.

Chihuahua Desert grasslands spill west through the gap to mingle with cactus in the Sonora Desert. Both deserts span the area between Rockies and Sierra Madres, including southeast Arizona and northern Mexico.

nitro.biosci.arizona.eduPuncturing the desert are mountains ten thousand feet high, where rainfall doubles, snow falls in winter, and alpine forests thrive. This confluence of temperate and tropic, grassland and cactus, dry desert and pine-capped mountain creates one of the most amazing places on the planet.

It is the Madrean Archipelago. ‘Madrean’ is the floristic region’s name, derived from Sierra Madre. ‘Archipelago’ because forty distinct mountains poke through a sea of desert, each an environment of unique complexity. These are the Sky Islands of the Madrean Archipelago. Here’s ten amazing facts.

Northern Canada’s Southern Border

Their names, Penaleño, Galieuro, Huachuca, Chiricahua, Santa Catalina, Rincon and Santa Rita evoke the Spanish influence on the region. They rise abruptly from the valley floor. Piles of granite extrusion, caverned limestone and volcanic flow – wrinkled, faulted, folded earth. Each is an ecology of it’s own, or more precisely, several.

saguarosDrive Mount Lemmon Highway to the 9,157-foot summit of the Santa Catalina’s for a bio-tour from Mexico to Northern Canada – in just twenty-five miles.

Leaving Tucson, you begin in creosote chaparral, typical of Sonora. It’s so dense with plants you wouldn’t think desert if there weren’t needles to remind you. Barrel cactus, prickly pear and cholla grow thick, and thermometers read triple digits the entire summer.

A forest of Saguaro and occotillo blanket the slopes as you begin to climb. Within minutes, these yield to grasses, juniper, yucca and cooler breeze. It’s like Chihuahua.

A few miles farther are pine-oak woodlands. Pine-oak woodlands cover every Sky Island in the Madrean Archipelago; they come from Mexico’s Sierra Madre.

Above seven thousand feet are forests of ponderosa pine, denizens of the Colorado Plateau that marched down the Continental Divide.

Chiricahua

On the tallest sky islands are glades of fern, forests of aspen, spruce and fir, and temperatures thirty degrees cooler than the desert below – just like Canada.

Steeply gorged canyons collect snowmelt and rain into riparian ecosystems. Sycamore, willow and cottonwood fill the lower reaches, and streams tumble down cataracts to pool in box canyons, creating enchanting microclimates.

One can experience eight of the worlds twelve bioregions in a single day’s hike, and walk past a thousand different plants. This vertical variety of ecosystems is compared to the Galapagos Islands for its diversity.

The Most Critters In The U.S.

Twice as many mammal species than Yellowstone Park inhabit the region – 104 at last count. From common black bear to boar-like javalina, black-tailed prairie dog to tropical coati mundi, the region is one of the most diverse in the world.

There are 29 species of bat, alone. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognizes the Sierra Madre and Madrean Archipelago as one of three biological “mega diversity” centers on the planet.

jaguarMany species are threatened. One hundred and fifty-three are listed as vulnerable. Man eradicated grizzly bear, but Mexican grey wolf, reintroduced decades ago has returned to some Sky Islands. Bighorn sheep have also been reintroduced to replace lost herds.

In 2013, a jaguar, largest cat of the America’s, and third largest of the worlds big cats, was photographed in Arizona’s Santa Rita’s. Ocelots have been photographed in Arizona, too. Both cats retreated far into Mexico, it was thought. These have come back, or perhaps they never left.

ocelotWhich raises a significant issue with a border fence. Many Sky Islands are in Mexico. The greatest diversity of creatures on the continent migrate hopscotch between them, and the border cuts their path. It is a significant issue in debate about the border to ensure protection of their migratory routes. The critters can’t apply for visas.

But Even More Birds

There are places on every birder’s bucket list. The Chiricahua Mountains are at the top, because half of all avian species in North America are found there.

The San Pedro River flows north from Mexico, to join the Gila. It is the most significant free flowing stream in the southwest. Flanked by the Dragoon’s and Chiricahua’s on the east, and the Huachuca’s on the west, it forms a corridor birds fly in migration, which makes the Dragoons, Huachuca’s, Chiricahuas, and the valleys between, their home every year.

Arizona-Sonoran-Desert-Museum-BirdSome birding hot spots:

  • Miller, Carr and Ramsey Canyons in the Huachuca’s. Thirteen species of Hummingbird are documented every year inRamsey Canyon. Birders can witness the Elegant Tanager, Eared Quetzal, Rufus-capped Warbler, Aztec Thrush, Brown-backed Solitaire, and others rarely, if ever seen elsewhere in the U.S.
  • Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahuas is famous the world over. Of special interest are wintering raptors. It is not uncommon to check 100 birds of prey off your list in a day, including the rare Ferruginous Hawk, Northern Harrier, Harris’s Hawk, Prairie Falcon, Bald Eagle, Golden Eagle, and Red-tailed Hawk.
  • The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, is a 56,000-acre preserve along the upper San Pedro River. An estimated 4 million migrating birds travel there each year. It is home to over 100 indigenous species, including forty percent of all Gray Hawks in the U.S.

Needless To Say…

gila_thumb_0The area has the most reptiles, bees and ant species in the U.S. There are 135 types of snake, lizard, toad, and turtle living there.

The finest place to see and learn about the diversity and splendor of plants, reptiles, birds, mammals and insects that inhabit the region, is the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It’s located in the natural desert environment, next to Saguaro National Park, west of Tucson.

It’s ranked one of the Top 10 Museums in the country by TripAdvisor.com and contains 98 acres of zoo, aquarium, aviary, botanical garden, art gallery, mineral exhibit, and natural history museum.

Famous For Rocks

It’s not just plants and animals that define Madrean diversity; it’s the rocks too. The Sky Islands exhibit more mixed geological composition than any other place on the planet. Formed 13 million years ago from continental rifting, the mountains did not rise so much as the valleys sank away, leaving the hard rock standing.

roock The Chiricahua Range is a single massive volcano, whereas the Santa Catalina’s, Rincon’s, Penaleño’s and Dragoon’s have metamorphic cores of gneiss and granite. The other Sky islands are predominately limestone. This mixed composition presents a variety of soils types, which contributes to the wide diversity in plants.

No wonder Tucson is home to the largest Gem and Mineral convention in the world, with over forty show arenas throughout town, anchored by the prestigious Tucson Gem and Mineral Show held each year in February.

Its Where The Anasazi Disappeared.

The region is a crossroads for people as well as flora and fauna. It is the scene of one of the greatest mysteries of antiquity – the Anasazi, who left castles and cliff dwellings, roads, farms and kivas in the Four Corners area in apparent hurry in 1,300 A.D.

We may not know why they left, but we know where they went. They came here.

The Anasazi were only one group of Pueblo Indian. Puebloan culture extended from southern Utah and Colorado, throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. Cultural cousins to the Anasazi were the Mogollon, Salado, Paquime, Hohokam and other Puebloan people.

When the Anasazi departed Mesa Verde, Kayenta, Canyon de Chelly and other Four Corners pueblos, they fled south and joined these groups. Some followed the Rio Grande, or joined clans on the Mogollon Rim. Others passed through and found a home in Paquime, in Mexico. But many came to reside with the Hohokam, who lived along the rich riparian canyons of Sky Islands, and built sophisticated catchments and irrigation canals to water their crops.

Coronado’s Conquistadors Arrived

Portal_Peak_in_the_Chiricahua_MountainsThe San Pedro River Valley was a causeway for trade and travel to the Pueblo Indians, who traded with the Aztec. Artifacts spanning centuries from Chaco Canyon to Kayenta include Macaw feathers, obsidian mirrors and hammered copper that came from Aztec culture deep in Mexico.

When the Spanish arrived, they took the same trail. In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his conquistadors entered what is now the United States in the San Pedro Valley, near the Huachuca Mountains. They traveled north in search of “seven cities of gold” and found one hundred Indian pueblos, the Grand Canyon and Kansas before giving up on gold.

Today, several Sky Islands compose the Coronado National Forest.

Home For Eskimos

Before Spaniards arrived, Eskimo’s came to the Sky Islands. Navajo and Apache are of Athabascan origin. They migrated from Canada, like the spruce and fir that populate the mountains, and are genetically linked to today’s Eskimo.

GeronimoBands collectively known as the Chiricahua Apache made the Sky Islands home, and fought 150 years of war to stay there. The most seminal event of the Apache Wars occurred when Mexicans killed the wife and children of a man named Goyathlay. Today we call him Geronimo.

The crime fostered his vicious guerilla approach to warfare that had Mexican and American soldiers scouring the entire region. The complexity of the geography aided Geronimo, making his renegade band impossible to find.

General Nelson Miles, who captured Geronimo in 1886, built a heliograph station in the Penaleño Mountains to signal troops in search of the Apache. The place is still called Heliograph Peak. At one time, 5,000 troops hunted Geronimo and his band of a few dozen warriors.

Geronimo lobbied to the end of his life to allow his people to return to the Chiricahuas. President Theodore Roosevelt denied him, saying it would raise fear in the “local” people.

Astronomy Capital Of The World

NOAO_AURA_NSF
Kitt Peak. Credit NOAO/AURA/NSF.

Today, Sky Islands are home to more peaceful pursuits. There are twenty-five active observatories located on their peaks. Clear, dry desert air, low light pollution and peaks that reach seven to eleven thousand feet above sea level make this place tops for astronomers. That’s why the University of Arizona in Tucson is a renowned institution for optics and astronomy.

The Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson are home for the Mount Lemmon Observatory, and the Mount Lemmon Sky Center, affiliated with the University. South of Tucson, in the Santa Rita Mountains is 8,550-foot Mt. Hopkins and the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Above the town of Safford brood the Penaleño range, tallest of the Sky Islands, where several observatories reside atop 10,720-foot Mt. Graham, including the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope and the Mount Graham International Observatory.

Most famous of all, and the largest collection of optical telescopes in the world, is Kitt Peak National Observatory, at 6,875 feet in the Quinlan Mountains southwest of Tucson.

These connect the Sky Islands with researchers around the world, bringing the entire universe into focus, making it the greatest crossroads on the planet.

Here are some handy links:

 http://www.terrain.org/articles/21/skroch.htm

[Ref 2] http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_rm/rm_gtr264/rm_gtr264_006_018.pdf

[Ref 3] http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_rm/rm_gtr264/rm_gtr264_036_059.pdf

[Ref 4] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rare-jaguar-seen-roaming-southern-arizona-mountains/

[Ref 5] http://wildsonora.com/content/ocelots-arizona

[Ref 6] http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_rm/rm_gtr264/rm_gtr264_036_059.pdf

[Ref 7] http://sabo.org/

[Ref 8] http://www.checklist.org.br/getpdf?SL122-08

[Ref 9] https://www.desertmuseum.org/about/

[Ref 10] http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_rm/rm_gtr264/rm_gtr264_006_018.pdf

[Ref 11] http://www.tgms.org/show-2015/

[Ref 12] http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind11.html

[Ref 13] http://arizonaexperience.org/remember/coronado-expedition

[Ref 14] http://www.indians.org/welker/geronimo.htm

[Ref 15] http://www.go-astronomy.com/observatories

We’ve been warned. People need to listen.

First came the warning from scientists – twelve percent chance a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) will hit Earth in the next ten years. That’s one-in-eight…one-in-six is Russian roulette. Nice odds.

Now a major hedge fund warns “unimaginable consequences” for the global economy. The global economy is the host from which they feed – vampires can’t survive if humans go extinct.

Said Paul Singer’s Elliott Management in a letter to investors about CME’s, dated July 28, “While these pages are typically chock full of scary or depressing scenarios, there is one risk that is head-and-shoulders above all the rest in terms of the scope of potential damage adjusted for the likelihood of occurrence.”

Lloyd’s of London warned in 2013 a massive solar storm could disrupt financial markets, food supplies, transportation systems, and hospital services at an economic cost as high as $2.6 trillion—20 times larger than the cost of damages caused by hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

I’m not concerned about the money. I’m concerned about the lives. People may die by thousands, or even millions.

solarflare_02
NASA Photo of Coronal Mass Ejection

Two years ago, Earth narrowly missed the most powerful CME in 150 years.  NASA published in the December 2013 issue of Space Weather, “A major solar eruptive event in July, 2012.” The study describes a CME that tore through Earth orbit narrowly missing us. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” said team member Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. 

Californians know the “big one” is on it’s way, and live in a  – “it will kill somebody else, not me” – state of denial, but sooner or later it will occur. The odds are about the same for a CME that could affect the entire Continent, and the complacency is worse. At least California enforces building codes with severe earthquake in mind. At least most Californian’s will not be where the earthquake happens.

A CME could hit us all. Grid down, communications down, water, gas and electricity off for days, weeks, months…coming on-line slowly while millions of people look for help. If help doesn’t arrive and we run out of water and food, what then? Got your bug-out shelter? I hope its not all P-V powered. Those cheap Chinese panels will fry.

The answer isn’t a plan to run for the hills, although I recommend it for back-up. The answer is – Stop electing leaders who have their heads up their ass, working the gravy-train instead of serving the people.

I won’t diatribe on the dishonesty of progressive ideology, or the closed-minded idiocy of conservatives. I wish to point out that there is only one candidate who is concerned, which makes him the smartest, most qualified man to be president. He actually recognizes the risk and puts it front-and-center as a key issue for the security of our nation.

That man is Ben Carson.

ben-carson-tight-crop-restricted-large-169
CNN Photo – Ben Carson

As of right now, he’s got my vote. If I hear a cogent concern about the real risk of CME’s from another, I’ll weigh him, or her into consideration.

Anyone running for president who does not either raise the issue as critical, or who instead claims man-made global warming is the biggest threat we face, I immediately remove from consideration for being either ignorant, or an intellectually dishonest toady for hard-left environmental groups and scientists protecting their gravy-train.

Ben Carson is smart. He knows the important issues and calls bullshit on the rest, so it’s not just his awareness of CME’s.

He has a consistent moral rudder that keeps a straighter course than mine, which has to be a good thing. He understands applied science and how we must look to it for answers. He wants a flat tax. He does not support theories unsupported by evidence to advance a political agenda. In other words, he has common sense. When was the last time you saw that in politics?

Data mounts that our scientists have their heads up their ass.

ND_NASA-39B-Lightning_photo3
NASA Photo – Massive Lightning Discharge

Why do I say such a thing? Because they underestimate the danger. Look at the photo on the right. See the relative size of the lightning to the foreground buildings – that ground strike is massive, covering acres of land. Science does not understand how big these things can get.

They know it’s going to happen – that is not in dispute. The Carrington CME event of 1859 is well known. What an event like it would do to the house-of-cards, technology dependent society we live in is also known. That it will happen again in the near future is certain.

We may get lucky and it won’t happen for decades, allowing time to harden the grid, build adequate redundancy and improve early warning systems. If so, breakers can be opened to protect grid components and communications.

Utilities take these things into account, but realizing the threat has been slow in coming. Politically driven focus has been on renewable energy. Enormous time and resource has been wasted on thermal solar plants, P-V farms, environmentally damaging bio-fuels and annoying windmills over a small, or non-existent problem with CO2. Safe guarding the grid needs our attention and resources.

The government answer is to improve early warning. All well and good, but some Solar “winds” travel at near the speed of light. It can travel from Sun to Earth in minutes. We do not have a margin for error. The grid itself needs more protection.

We can protect ourselves from Carrington sized events, but what if it’s way bigger than that?

NASA_burning_tree_lg
NASA Photo – Sprite, a plasma discharge to space.

Mainstream science is loath to recognize the role of electrical current in space. They see magnetic fields and believe they are local phenomena created by dynamos within stars and planets. They believe bulk electrical charge in space is neutral – positive and negative particles cancelling each other out.

This is absurd.  Positive and negative charges don’t come together one-on-one to cancel each other out. Regions of differing potential manifest. A difference in charge potential creates an electric field, along which the charge flows and generates a magnetic field. Electrically charged plasma naturally self organizes these interdependent fields and forms a sheath to project current through space.

That is why it is called plasma. It self organizes cell-like structure similar to living blood plasma. This is known from classic physics.

We see organizing magnetic fields throughout the solar system, nebula, galactic arms, collimated plasma jets shooting thousands of light years from active galaxies, and cosmic scale, charge carrying filaments where galaxies form in clusters like flies on a spider web.

Magnetic fields don’t exist without electric current. The evidence is overwhelming that electric current is coursing through space. Satellites watch the Earth and Sun from almost every angle in every spectrum. New data comes in every day that confirms we are electrically connected to the Sun. It makes our climate, effects tectonics and generates weather.

Anthony Peratt, plasma physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory proved that ancient petroglyphs are images of powerful aurora. We don’t know exactly when, or how many times such events occurred, because of uncertainty trying to date images pecked in rock, but it happened somewhere from 4,000 to 12,000 BC.

My concern is that the laboratory plasma energy Peratt used to produce such instabilities scales-up to a gigaampere event. By comparison, a normal aurora is a megaampere event. Peratt’s findings indicate electrical current hit Earth with a thousand times more energy than anything we’ve experienced in recorded history, making Carrington a mere hiccup.

Unless something else entered our solar system, the Sun had to be the culprit. Assume it is. Then what’s to prevent it from happening again?

Mainstream science thinks the Sun is a fusion balloon, even though we see nothing but electromagnetic activity in the Sun’s photosphere, corona and heliosphere. Actually, wherever we look in space electromagnetic plasma phenomena is obvious.

Mainstream science, believing the Sun is internally fueled by it’s mass, views it as barely variable, expecting the occasional Carrington hiccup, but not anticipating the type of event discovered by Peratt. Peratt’s study and a growing list of other evidence disputes this, suggesting the Sun responds to electrical current from the galactic arms. If so, we don’t know how big the Sun can amp up.

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NASA Photo – Electricity is everywhere. It’s not the consequence, it’s the cause.

Recently, researchers found geomagnetic induction current is enhanced at the equator during severe geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic induction current (GIC) is what knocks out power lines, blows transformers, zaps pipelines and satellites.

They believe the equatorial electro-jet is the cause. The electro-jet is a torus of current that flows around the equator, only discovered recently. The article in Geophysical Research Letters, shows countries near the magnetic equator are more vulnerable to space weather because of it.

They found GIC is amplified by the electro-jet at low latitudes, not at the poles where it was thought to be most severe.

Scientists also discovered solar flares produce dark current more focused and perhaps more dangerous than CME’s. They shoot like torpedoes, collimated beams of current with an affinity for targeting planetary bodies, because that’s where an electric field will lead – the closest body of different potential – just like lightning seeks the tallest point on the ground on which to discharge.

They also occur during the Sun’s quiescent periods, like the one it’s heading into now. A quiet Sun may mean more dangerous space weather.

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NASA Photo – A tornado has counter-rotating winds and up and down draft currents that resemble plasma currents. Perhaps it is more than a resemblance.

Space weather drives the weather here on Earth. The linkage has been known and studied for centuries, correlating sunspots and solar cycles with climate. That is how a man like Ben Franklin was able to write an Almanac that predicted weather cycles much better than Al Gore.

It seems an unfortunate fact that our ancestors, who had nothing but fire and chipped stone for technology, understood more about some aspects of the world around us than our scientists today. That is because they trusted their eyes and not an equation.

Lightning bolts from space are not my biggest concern. The worry is how an amped-up earth will react with tectonic activity and fierce weather. Space weather could present a truly “perfect storm.”

We have ample witness accounts in legends and mythology from the past. Thunderbolts of the Gods, rains of fire and brimstone, torrential floods. Does it make sense that every major ancient culture around the globe made that stuff up?

Take a look at Google Earth – examine the dozens of craters in North Africa. They are everywhere on the planet, but easier to spot in the desert. One is twenty-five miles wide. They are not impact craters, or volcanoes. They are craters formed by electrical discharge, just like all the planets in the solar system.

I will endeavor to show you this in future articles. In the meantime, give a listen to this candidate who is talking sense. Realize he is not another airbrushed politician who seeks to win your vote by saying what failed political parties and ideologies expect him to say to prop themselves up. He is willing to say what people need to hear, the truth, whether it’s politically correct, or not.

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