Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 2: Methods and Cosmology.

[Table of Contents]

"A discovery must be, by definition,
at variance with existing knowledge."
-- Albert Szent-Györgyi

$Revision: 23.46 $
Contents of this chapter: [Introduction] [Methods] [Scientific Dogma] [Speculation] [History] [The Accepted Model] [Two Alternative Cosmologies] [Where Planets Come From] [Expulsion] [The New Planet] [Solar Flares] [Mono-polar Battery] [The Homopolar Motor] [Solar Wind] [Planetary Crusts] [Endnotes]

I intend to present two things in this chapter. First, I will present my research methods and some thoughts about scientific dogma, theories, and the testing of postulates. Second, I want to acquaint the reader with the traditional cosmology and two alternatives.

Two Volcanoes on a Rock

The image below was published in Newsweek Magazine in the mid 1980s. It became my starting point for inquiry. It is an image taken by the European satellite Giotto of the comet Halley. As originally presented, the image was colored orange -- as if to suggest that the "water vapor subliming into space" from the comet was lit by the Sun.

It was this image which convinced me to stop believing in official presentations. It was noted at the time that the two "volcanoes" of the nine mile long rock were producing X-rays and Ultra Violet radiation (measured at several thousand degrees Celsius) in the process of subliming water. However, no further mention was ever made of this. There was something awry with this presentation.

The traditional explanation is that comets consist of ice, which wafts into space as the ice is heated on approaching the Sun. It occurred to me that the subliming of ice, at the temperature of deep space and at some 100 million miles from the Sun, would not hurtle water molecules 12 million miles into space, much less produce X-rays or Ultra Violet. On Earth, subliming ice wafts into the air, producing a hovering fog. In a vacuum something similar would happen. But what we are seeing are 'jets' of matter attached in the wrong location to comets, and expelled in the wrong direction. I suspect that astronomers have a mind-image of comets not unlike tossed smoke bombs, "Poof, look at that trail of sublimed water vapor!"

Image: The comet Halley spewing forth matter in UV and X-rays from two "volcanoes" on the 9 mile long rock.

Comets are rocks, like asteroids and meteorites, they are not snowballs. As the comet Halley moved closer to the Sun from the far reaches of space, the major change in its environment was the ever increasing electrical field of the Sun. Halley, initially at a much lower electrical potential (higher negative), had to make adjustments. The coma and the tail are a cloud of excited electrons, a plasma in glow mode. The plasma forms an outer sheath of lower negative charge, seen as the coma and tail, which in effect isolates the comet -- carrying a much higher negative charge -- from conditions closer to the Sun. [note 1]

Within the coma a charge equalization takes place also, between the exterior coma sheath and the physical object (core) of the comet, resulting in an electrical current impinging on the rocky comet. At the surface of Halley the extreme electrical stresses produced two localized spots where the current flow of the plasma is concentrated to arc mode. These are not two volcanoes fed by a heated interior. Halley has been seen as a comet repeatedly since remote antiquity. The whole of the interior would certainly have been expelled by the "volcanoes" by now.

The radiation of Ultra Violet and X-rays is inexplicable when meteors are understood to be balls of snow or ice, but this is certainly expected when produced by electrical arcs. The "water vapors" detected in the tail are actually (and admitted to be) Oxygen radicals, not produced by sublimating water, but by the electrical decomposition of rocky silica compounds into ionized Oxygen, Silicon, and Helium. The electrical field of the comet propels the ions into space.

Methods

My method in developing these pages has been varied. First, much of the information has been accumulated over a lifetime and so, in a manner of speaking, I had the facts on hand. Secondly, although most of the time I just had to plod through texts -- checking dates, names, and other details -- quite a few times the story simply jumped to mind. Of course, backing up speculative insights frequently took weeks and many rewrites.

I started from four primary sources. The first of these was Immanuel Velikovsky's book, "Worlds in Collision" (1950), which related a close approach to Earth by Venus at the time of the Israeli Exodus, in 1500 BC, and a number of destructive passes by Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC. The information is almost entirely from literary sources rather than physical data, but it is quite convincing, even though some of the data is applied to the wrong events or the wrong era.

The second was David Talbott's book, "The Saturn Myth" (1980). Talbott's search among Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources established the image of a large globe, identified as Saturn, standing above the Earth at the north horizon in remote antiquity. Many other researchers have followed up on his initial ideas and augmented the information. A number of physical models have been suggested, of which only one made sense -- the proposal of planetary electrical fields and plasma interactions by Wallace Thornhill.

My third source, thus, was Thornhill's insistence on the electrical nature of planets (and the Sun) and the electrical interactions in the form of plasma streams -- presentation at a conference in Nevada in 2001. There is no definitive text on plasma at interplanetary levels. (Although Talbott and Thornhill have started a series of books on the topic; see below). But plasma has been part of physics and electrical studies for 150 years. I have played with plasma devices since high school. [note 2]

The fourth source has been Julian Jaynes' book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Jaynes makes the claim that subjective consciousness did not become part of human culture (in the Near East) until the first millennium BC. The overwhelming concerns of our ancestors with the Gods in earlier antiquity was suddenly explained. Additionally, the book is a gem of insight into our contemporay thinking. Jaynes' book is independent of any of the above.

Taken together these sources present a picture of antiquity which does not match the traditional histories entertained today. As I mentioned earlier, there is an amazing collection of information in agreement with the postulates of the cosmology presented here, which in turn strongly confers validity. This cosmology suggests sensible answers to questions which remain unanswered by the traditional 'handed-down wisdom' usually presented as the history of mankind, the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe.

The cosmology pursued here is almost too simple to be true. Once I started the inquiry, data just started to fall into place, matching the mechanics of the postulates with which I had started. Although I frequently had to be careful in my wording, I have tried to avoid being 'selective' in presenting information. I have added alternate viewpoints, including the traditional, where this was appropriate. Very little uncorrobated speculative information is included. Where I have done so, I have made note of this. There are some things we still do not know, much of which revolves around the attitudes and reactions of our ancestors.

Our contemporary attitude to the people of antiquity and remote antiquity is ambivalent. One the one hand, we make assumptions about their psyche which are obviously modern impositions, as if to say that people have always been the same. Yet, on the other hand, there is the theory that we have 'evolved' over time, suggesting that humans were much less clever in the past. This is a chauvinistic attitude which assumes that today we have full knowledge of all things. Of course every age thinks that this is so for its own era. If you look at the intricacies of flood control and irrigation in Mesopotamia during Akkadian and Sumerian times, which included massive 'public works' projects and constant maintenance, you will come to realize that these people were not less capable than us. This is just one instance. What we know of their abilities at mining and metallurgy will demonstrate the same thing. [note 3]

But there was something decidedly different in antiquity. Our ancestors lived in an environment which included the Gods as absolutely real and actual. They were not metaphors for natural phenomena. The Gods were believed to be real because the concepts held about the Universe surrounding the Earth limited what could be imagined. In antiquity the space surrounding the Earth was understood in a manner radically different from our point of view. In effect, humans thought of themselves as living at the bottom of a depression, surrounded by waters in the south and another land mass in the north. Both could be seen. This demands that we cannot simply assign metaphors to the descriptions which have come down to us. Their Universe was not at all like ours.

In fact, it would be a mistake to attribute any metaphorical thinking to the people of antiquity before 1500 or 1000 BC. By not doing so, it will be much easier for us to understand their images, their attitudes, and their concerns. In the minds of the ancients, and in the sparse records which have come down to us, descriptions of many phenomena were exactly equated with the phenomena, whereas we would understand these descriptions to 'represent' or to 'stand for' something else. Our attempts at understanding are derived from our facile use of imagination and metaphors based in subjective consciousness -- something which was entirely missing from the thought processes of humans before 1500 BC and only slowly developed after that time.

I have attempted to keep things as simple as possible. The electrical properties of planets, first proposed by Thornhill, became a given. I have kept to planets which are known and to stable orbits, kept the planets on the ecliptic, and did not add anything new unless it started to show up in a logical manner -- that is, as explainable by mechanics or physics.

Within the limitations of unchanging orbits, there is plenty of room to account for all the seemingly random interactions. In fact, nearly every interaction and every change can be traced across 3000 years of history. The precession of orbits could account for nearly all of the sporadic interactions. These interactions happened on a regular basis, although infrequently. The interval, for example, between interactions of Venus and Earth turns out to have been on the order of 800 years. The interval between two series of interactions of Mars and Earth appears to have been about 2200 years. [note 4]

There were, however, also changes in orbits of the planets, but these can be attributed to electrical repulsion between specific planets. Gravitational forces have had no noticeable or lasting effect in changing orbits. All of the changes can be attributed to electrical forces, and these can be readily detailed. There is one exception -- a change in inclination of the rotational axis of Earth and a change in the eccentricity of its orbit, in 685 BC, are not easily explained. I have assigned this change to an external electrical flow from a plasma expulsion of Venus, or, more likely, the Sun. Such external electrical flows are also experienced today, for electrical storms arriving from the Sun are known to change the daily rotation of the Earth, although minutely.

Scientific Dogma

What I continue to find immensely interesting in absorbing the information of the Saturnian and Plasma people (and earlier Velikovskians) is the fact that questions are being answered about our ancestors and all the strange ideas from the past which have been carried forward into the present. The Saturnian cosmology also does better at explaining the nature of the physical Earth than the traditional 'stories' spun by sciences, from astronomy to biology.

I am not denying the sciences, but it has to be realized that the sciences put forth a schema -- a systematic arrangement of the 'facts' of the Universe present and past -- which is based on a consensus of the practitioners and their philosophical concerns. Thus, a combination of physical facts and a priori assumptions is formed into a narrative which is considered comfortable and acceptable. Such a narrative is buttressed by the facts and mechanics of science, but much of it is located entirely in the imagination and may have little to do with the actual physics of the Universe.

Ian Tattersall, in "The Fossil Trail" (1995), writing about the use of complex hypotheses in his own discipline, paleoanthropology, states,

"When you're out there selling such complicated narratives, normal scientific testability just isn't an issue: how many of your colleagues or others buy your story depends principally on how convincing and forceful a storyteller you are -- and on how willing your audience is to believe the kind of thing you are saying."

Once a narrative is 'bought' in any discipline, it assumes the status of dogma. When there are problems with divergent facts, the lack of precision of the sciences is blamed, rather than entertaining an investigation of underlying philosophy. What I am proposing in these pages is that the alternate cosmology described here (also admittedly a 'narrative') overcomes many of the 'divergent facts' of the accepted schemata, while remaining entirely within the hard facts and mechanics of the sciences.

There is another side to this critique of handed-down science, it is the apposition to an alternative cosmology. And it too, has its adherents and points to make, for the whole of the Saturnian cosmology has to be suspended in the mind like a curious glass object held in the hand and rotated for inspection. There is no telling what will be seen.

A rather harsh observation by Sean Mewhinney, in "Minds in Ablation" (1998), addresses the creation of a narrative surrounding a model. He is speaking here in disagreement with some other text, and his blanket accusation is very broad, but recognizable..

"Most Velikovskian literature follows a standard formula: The writer identifies some phenomenon which he claims constitutes a difficulty for 'conventional' science, exaggerates the surprise and puzzlement of scientists, derides their efforts to explain it as ad hoc and hopelessly inadequate, then offers some vague 'explanation,' usually a crude analogy or bald assertion, which he claims is superior to those of the scientists, because, of course, they have the wrong paradigm. There is a ritual flavor to it."

Considering how much the Saturnian model is at variance with currently accepted postulates about the past, you may understand how a belief in the reality of a Saturnian model would lead to questioning the accepted dogma of many other aspects of natural history. There are philosophical assertions which have leaked into scientific theory and badly color current thinking -- philosophical notions which have taken on the status of 'scientific' dogma. I can readily accept the methods and data of science, but I have trouble when these are spun into explanatory narratives. As Alfred de Grazia once noted..

"Science, and all that goes by the name in discourse and actions, is almost entirely a process of administering deductions in the name of an ideology."

-- Alfred de Grazia "Cosmic Heretics" (1983)

One of the explanatory narratives, for example, is the postulate of a single moment and single point of creation for the cosmos, followed by a free running series of events at an atomic level, which brings us, 15 billion years later, to today -- the "Big Bang" theory.

The idea of a starting point is here combined with the observed red-shift of galaxies. Calculating backwards in time would compress all of the Universe to a single tiny point, which, at time zero, would have contained everything. But the idea represents nothing less than the impress of Christian philosophy, as the astronomer Fred Hoyle (who coined the phrase "Big Bang") suggested. It represents an unwillingness to imagine that perhaps the creation of matter happens all the time, or perhaps to say that we just do not know. For most people it is scary to think of the alternative -- that the Universe might extend indefinitely back in time. We are unwilling to admit that we have absolutely no idea where any of the material of the Universe came from, or when, or even if, any of 'creation' ever happened. Red-shifted light is a fact, but combined with the idea of a singular creation and single starting point, despite all the speculative mathematics which has gone into this, the Big Bang is only a comforting narrative. [note 5]

More astounding to me is the continued insistence that the Solar System was formed from the coagulation of a cloud of dust, even though this 18th century concept was solidly disproven a hundred years ago. However, standard theory has been unable to come up with an alternative. I will address both of these further below.

The subject of 'scientific dogma' requires a few more comments. Let me start with an observation by Alistair B. Fraser...

"Jonathan Swift is reputed to have observed, .. 'You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.' So, if science is taught as just a collection of (assumed-to-be) facts, it is nothing but dogma. Dogma stoutly resists subsequent displacement by reason."

"It seems that anything people have learned prior to puberty takes on the status of an immutable truth (this is something well understood by parents, governments, and religions). Rational explanations of why some previous belief might be incompatible with the behavior of nature, and a careful explanation of the actual behavior of nature, are of little avail."

He continues with a lament of the problem this presents to educators..

"So, if science is taught as dogma to the prepubescent, just imagine the problem created for subsequent teachers."

-- [http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html]

Those familiar with the work of Julian Jaynes will recognize the syndrome. Anything learned before the age at which subjective consciousness is reached, 7 or 8 years, or what Fraser calls "prepubescence," is held as an absolute by the right brain, for facts received early in life have never been consciously examined or explored systematically by the left brain. There are no conceivable alternatives to these 'facts' and there will be no reinvestigation. Fraser deals with handed-down 'facts' of natural science. Some small percentage of students, he admits, can be convinced of the errors in reasoning. However, for handed-down 'facts' of religion and faith, there is no hope of ever changing a person's mind for there is no reasoning to correct.

Edward T. Hall, in "Beyond Culture" (1976), expressed similar frustrations, about interactions specific to a culture, writing..

"But once learned, these behaviour patterns, these habitual responses, these ways of interacting [with others] gradually sink below the surface of the mind and, like the admiral of a submerged submarine fleet, control from the depths. The hidden controls are usually experienced as though they were innate simply because they are not only ubiquitous but habitual as well."

His frustrations are summed up in a footnote to the above paragraph, the longest footnote in the book, which I will only partially quote as follows..

"A lifetime of dealing with the subtleties of intercultural communication has convinced me that the strength and persistence of these habitual behaviours are almost beyond belief."

"These behaviours are closely identified with the self -- the good self, the socially responsible self, which wants to do right and fit in -- and are synonymous with social competence."

"When other people call attention to these hidden responses and perceptual differences, suggesting that the world is not as one preceives it, these observations can be unsettling. To do so is to suggest that a person is incompetent, not properly motivated, ignorant, or even infantile."

Hall here has reached the same conclusion as Tattersall, de Grazia, and Frasier, mentioned above, and Julian Jaynes, to be introduced later, and as attributed to Dean Swift..

.. you cannot reason a person out of a
position he did not reason himself into.

The reader stands warned, however, that this text will attempt exactly that.

It is not just facts and science learned before the 'age of reason,' which aren't susceptable to rational analysis, but the unqualified absorption of views, even when supported by mathematics, which extends to anything learned under a system which provides approval on acceptance. What I am talking about, of course, is advanced studies in the sciences.

"Science plays the same role in popular culture
that the clergy did back in the 13th century."
-- David Berlinski

For graduate students in hard science, the 'age of reason' does not dawn until later in life, if ever. At that point a hegemony of special interests keeps everyone in line. The silence of scientists on some topics speaks volumes. Engineering, and other fields based on proof in pragma, seem to escape this.

Theories and Postulates

Let me quote a comment by Tom Van Flandern (from a talk in 1994) on the standing of theories, which presents an idea that is neglected or unrecognized by most people. Van Flandern said (partially paraphrased)..

"It is important, if you have an hypothesis, to formulate predictions."

".. if the prediction is wrong, the hypothesis is wrong, and you shouldn't come back with an explanation why the prediction failed afterwards."

"Contrariwise, if the prediction is successful, it doesn't prove the hypothesis is right, but it does say that it has at least been useful."

I should add that the failure of a prediction also does not prove the 'opposite' of a theory. As Heraclitus proposed 2400 years ago, there is more to theories than the simple fact of being what they seem.

"Either things seem and are;
or they seem to be, yet are not;
or they seem not to be, yet are;
or they seem not, and are not."

It is interesting to consider, for example, the question of the age of the Earth. The accepted cosmological postulate holds, as inviolate doctrine, the notion that the whole of the Solar System condensed or solidified out of a cloud of dust 4.7 billion years ago. Moon rocks solidified 4.3 billion years ago. The Earth, is thus held to also be at least 4.3 billion years old, despite the fact that Earth rocks universally date to (that is, solidified) 3.9 billion years ago. Mars is the size of the Moon (actually twice the diameter), and should have cooled at nearly the same rate as the Moon. However, Mars rocks date to 3.1 billion years. Yet it is maintained that Mars is also 4.3 billion years old.

This seems to be a case of invoking Heraclitus' third proposition, where things "seem not to be," yet it is maintained "that they are." The facts are held to represent something which they do not represent because of a stubborn refusal to accept the data as it appears. Additional corollaries could be suggested to clarify this situation, but these often only lead to negating the initial postulates. [note 6]

Equatorial rings

Corollaries are, in fact, often suggested from available data rather than being derived from an initial postulate. There is generally no problem with this, for our 'reasoning' is frequently 'after the fact.'

However, in the ideal case we would start from an initial (a priory) postulate and following this up with a search for data and confirmation of corollaries. I can think of one example of this and recall what evidence was brought to bear on predictions (tests) and in what order. This instance is revealing of how a particular postulate was confirmed. The starting postulate was the theory that the Earth must at one time have had equatorial rings.

The theory for the existence of equatorial rings for Earth (which do not exist today), came from the general ideas that (1) all the planets with considerable magnetic fields have rings, (2) rings of particles are probably suspended by electrostatic forces, and (3) the rings of Jupiter and the outer planets seem to be fading, whereas Saturn, which is electrically very active, still has the most noticeable ring structure.

The Earth, thus, would be a good candidate for having had equatorial rings. Earth has a magnetic field. Earth was electrically active at an earlier time. Perhaps Earth had rings at one time which faded like the rings of other planets seem to be fading. This is already a qualified postulate, incorporating secondary evidence into the original notion.

But now consider the corollaries to the original postulate.

First, if the rings existed, they would have been seen by humans, and a record might exist. I had no trouble identifying the Sumerian Absu, the Egyptian Duat, and the Maya 'House of Nine Bushes' as a set of rings seen in the southern night sky. [note 7]

Second, if the rings existed, they would most likely have segregated into distinct bands, like ring systems of other planets, which could have been counted. The Sumerian Absu and the Egyptian Duat consisted of seven 'mansions' while the Maya or Olmec, located at 20 degrees latitude, ten degrees further south than Egypt and Sumer, counted nine rings ("bushes"). In the US, at Poverty point, Louisiana, at 33 degrees north latitude, only six rings were recalled.

Third, if the rings looked anything like Saturn's rings in the 1980s (when it was electrically more active than in the 2000s), then a 'sea' would be instantly suggested from the wave patterns seen in the rings, despite the fact that this sea was located in the sky. This is especially so because rings at different locations from the Earth's equator moved at rates different from the rotation of the Earth -- some even seeming to move backwards.

It is clear that both Sumer and Egypt described the southern skies (the Absu or the Duat) as a sea, although some Egyptian descriptions have more of the feel of a swamp. In Egypt the Gods and the dead pharaohs are described as moving by boat across this sea. In Sumer, the God of water was assigned to the sector of the sky below the equatorial. In Egypt, the mountain of Re (the lower plasma plumes of Jupiter) was said to rise out of the waters -- first seen every year in the east.

Last, the Earth would have cast a shadow across the rings at night, which would have moved from the east at nightfall to the west at dawn. It would have looked like an obscured arched doorway, or perhaps as a giant gap, depending on the angle of the Sun. I had no trouble locating references to a doorway of the Duat and references to an Egyptian name for the door which implied that 'reeds did not grow there.' And it is also clear that the land of the Gods and dead pharaohs was located in the sky in the west -- the direction in which the portal moved each night.

Once the initial 'theory' that Earth had equatorial rings was established as not unproven, it suggested other directions of inquiry. For example, the 'flood of Noah' suddenly became clear when measured up against the lack of physical evidence and the records from China. I'll detail these further on in this narrative.

At the other end of the spectrum, one starts with the data and searches for a seemingly axiomatic theory which might support the observations. Here it is the empirical observations which lead to the axioms from which further testable postulates are made in turn. The testing remains. This has consistently been my method. Of course, the empirical evidence is always provisional and open to interpretation. Others could read the data differently.

Thus I generally start with a descriptive or graphical image from antiquity, which has to be understood as a simile. Whatever was seen will have been described on the basis of objects and forms from an ancient cultural environment. Often this allows dating an apparition, for if, for example, some phenomenon is described as consisting of chariot wheels, it is not likely to have been seen before 1500 BC, when chariots first made their appearance.

If a likely sequence of events can be found to explain the imagery, or if a reasonable physical model can be constructed, then the next step has been taken. The validity of the sequence or model then depends on how it meshes with other images, other sequences, other data. This can be an endless (and slow) process where things 'fall into place' only piece by piece. I am grateful for all the loose tidbits and factoids which have been collected by others. A lot of these pieces of information remain stacked on the shelves of a sort of warehouse, awaiting an assignment as some prominent cog in the mechanism of a grand theory. At least that is my hope for them.

There will be some calculations and geometry found in the endnotes of many chapters. These are rough calculations and 'order of magnitude' estimates. Their purpose is to provide a comparitive and reasonable sense of scale. I will not trouble you with the amount of Beryllium in ice cores, estimates of electron density in outer space, or disturb you with partial differential equations.

Speculation

[April 24, 2008] I have been accused by the Saturnians (the Thunderbolt.info people at the Electric Universe Blog) of speculation. But everything in this field is speculative. And with "mere speculation" I have, in five years, managed to come up with a reliable and detailed chronology, the dynamics of planetary interactions, step-by-step descriptions of catastrophic events, an elucidation of symbols, the effects on culture, philosophy, and religion, and an extension into the Paleolithic and the Precambrian. All from information which was readily available. [note 8]

Speculation at least implies the guessing after facts. The facts are not in dispute. The objection then, is to my mediation of them and the conjectures I might have derived. True, even to me the narrative proposed here often looks like science fiction, complete with unbelievable portents in the skies and the psychological effects on humans. And it has taken relentless imaginings of dynamics and chronologies. But the results, as Rens vd Sluijs proposes as the requirements of an adequate 'theory' (meaning 'model'), are both "most convincing" and "complete." The narrative I have developed on these pages is certainly well-founded speculation. Everything fits, although the three thousand year history is as complex as an O'Henry novel. What I have not done is to start from a priori assumptions. [note 9]

The Saturnians, on the other hand, consider their thesis as consisting of "the highest confidence levels and the least amount of conjecture." They have organized conferences, written glossy books, and produced splendid videos. But all of it seems based on promises of something better to come, and hints at a complete picture at a later date. Yet, in thirty five years, nothing further has come forward. Complaining in frustration of what he called "the mediocrity, the shallowness, the amateur sophistry, and the nauseating bluff of the neovelikovskian dilettantes," Roger Ashton once likened it as, "a little bit of this, a little bit of that, all aimed at a picture of earnest and revolutionary scholarly enterprise, but leading absolutely nowhere.." [note 10]

I'll be more charitable and suggest instead that the Saturnians know something is going on, but they can't explain it, can't get at the core, can't understand the impact that the 'unknown something' has had, yet they continue to promote the ideas, hoping for clarification and resolution in their lifetime.

Some of the Saturn Theory of Talbott may be just dead wrong. I think the thinking went wrong with the out-of-hand dismissal of Velikovsky, because there were obvious problems with Velikovsky's suggestion of a "close encounter" with Venus -- the world would have been destroyed. But when I started to look at it, I could not get Earth and Venus closer than about 10,000,000 miles. That solved a lot of problems. But it also required the application of plasma theory. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, and had no problem with that. Of the core group of Saturnians, only Cardona is reputed to have an engineering background. In the past, Juergens had an engineering background also, and he could think and imagine what could happen within the realm of plasma physics. That capability is today augmented by Scott (Chairman of an EE program) and Thornhill, neither one of which is to be neglected in their writings. The rest, all good people, are clueless, they wave plasma around like so much New-Year party confetti.

Anyway, the difficulty with Velikovsky and Venus was such that everything Velikovsky came up with was summarily moved to the end of the "Age of the Gods." And so the Exodus (of 1492 BC) was held to be only a retelling of the earlier cataclysm of 3147 BC (my date). Except that it was a retelling of 2349 BC, an incident never covered by Velikovsky. And thus the attacking dragon, the three days of blood in the sky, and the new midnight Sun were also moved to 3200 BC, soon followed by the Bull of Heaven, the Sun on its moving mountain, the polar plumes, the ocean in the south, the celestial cow, the star in the crescent (from the 7th century BC no less!), and any number of other celestial phenomenon.

One of the most acute drawbacks of the heavily footnoted essays on the Saturn Theory (as by Ev Cochrane or Dwardu Cardona) is that one gets absolutely no sense of historical time. Thus a considerable portion of the iconography that Talbott, et alii, place before 3200 BC properly belongs elsewhere in time, displaced by thousands of years, and can be supported from other sources (as I will show in this text). But in the meantime the Saturnians are stuck with having to explain a singular event which includes far too much unrelated iconography. In the meantime they have also produced videos which suffers from the same surplus of imagery, and with little sense of narrative, as also in their writings. That makes the continued efforts all the more strange -- there is no hint anywhere in their writings of why this information is so important and why it will be so exciting.

Speculation or not, the difference -- the reason I have been able to put together a cohesive narrative -- is all in my determination to first create a likely chronology and postulate the likely celestial dynamics, to test these against available information, and to update these as things became clearer. As the chronology and mechanics of celestial events solidified over the last few years, additional facets of mythology and historical obscurities simply started to fall into place.

I have also spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the subject, a luxury which other researchers may not have had, which has allowed the evaluation of many alternatives, some of which only slowly took shape. Additionally, I can imagine orbits, I can imagine the view from Earth, and I can do geometry and make calculations. And I have consistently attempted to put myself in the frame of mind of the people who experienced the events of the past. Lastly, I have been allowed to constantly rewrite, augment, and alter this text, since it is presented as a mutable internet document. I therefore have never backed myself into a corner because of what I may have written and published earlier.

I have used speculation, more apropriately to be seen as intuition backed by common sense, as an approach to some of the problems of this cosmology.

"It is an elementary logical error (known as 'the fallacy of affirming the consequent') to argue backward from the truth of the conclusion to the truth of the premises." -- an editorial in Sc. Am. by Wesley Salmon, May 1973.

This method is otherwise known as 'abduction;' it is illegitimate from the standpoint of classical logic, since hypotheses are derived from results, rather than the other way around. But it is exactly the methods used in mythological research. Thornhill at one time wrote, "At the heart of geology and planetary studies is a reasoning process called abduction. It is a form of logic whose major premise is certain and minor premise is probable." Or the reverse of this. It is a haphazardous process at best, but the recognition that such 'logic' is at the core of geology and planetary studies is well taken.

You gather the data, then look for a theory. Abduction has legitimacy especially in probabilistic approaches to problem solving. We could have thousands of instances of reported observations, but, as Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan write in "Chances Are" (2006), "But observation, however diligent, is not the same as understanding the forces that generate phenomena."

They are talking about weather data, but this applies elsewhere, as for example, the number of instance of some recorded data from antiquity, found by the "hundreds, possibly thousands, all painstakingly accrued from a minute inspection of primary sources, spanning millennia in age and across a spectrum of different languages," as reported to me by one Saturnian. But what do you do with all this data? To suggest a possible cause -- a hypothesis -- is, in fact, the only resolution to providing parentage to all the orphaned data. If one data point can be assigned to a cause, and another, and more yet, then there is no need for a collection of hundreds or thousands.

As a Wikipedia page on the logical fallacy of "affirming the consequent" reads..

"Although affirming the consequent is an invalid inference, it is defended in some contexts as a type of abductive reasoning, sometimes under the name 'inference to the best explanation'. That is, in some cases, reasoners argue that the antecedent is the best explanation, given the truth of the consequent."

"The strength of such reasoning [abduction] as an inductive inference depends on the likelihood of alternative hypotheses, which shows that such reasoning is based on additional premises, not merely on affirming the consequent."

I have not departed from the original Saturn 'theory' as much as I have extended it. The original Saturn Theory of 1980 was monolithic, and still is today. The attitude is known as the "neovelikovskian" philosophy -- meant to replace all of Velikovsky's findings with a single earlier event. The notion of a single cause, a single event, the idea that only one thing happened, and that all of the resulting mythology and symbols sprung from this, is, in my estimate, totally inadequite, simplistic, and completely unrealistic. It is a fallback position, an admission that nothing is really known about the events behind the mythology.

As a result, the Saturnian people have been working from a 'story core' model which severely limits what can be imagined. Talbott recently (2008) wrote, "Ra, in his original character, is the primeval Sun and Horus is the warrior-king," reiterating a reading which has stood for 30 years. And there is the Princess, the Mother Goddess, the first King, etc. I really think, though, that this morality-play idiom ought to be dropped, since it is so deeply imbedded in Western culture, Christian philosophy, and the Indo-European language as to be useless in the analysis of how people of differing cultures, differing philosophies, and differing languages would have understood the celestial images. What imediately comes to mind is the 'mythology' of Mesoamerica, where there are no goddesses (the Moon excepted), no First Kings, and no Warrior Prince.

I would rather have a working model in terms the dynamics of a celestial mechanics first. And we need to know when things happened, in addition to how. How can allegorical roles (called 'archetypes' by Talbott) help this? It is all about images -- images come first. As Yeates said, "Images before Ideas."

History

The center post of the house of the Saturnian Polar Model was the existence of a plasma column extending from Saturn or Mars to the north polar region of Earth. This had been the supposition since 1980, and it is also the physical model on which I built my exposition. Anthony Peratt (an electrical engineer) joined forces with the Saturnians in the year 2000. The Saturnians were elated, as evidenced by their enthusiasm in the on-line newsletter "Thoth," for Peratt could explain much of the imagery which the Saturnians had collected.

Anthony Peratt published his first findings on petroglyphs in December 2003, in a paper titled "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity" (IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science). In his acknowledgements, Peratt thanked A. Acheson, M. Acheson, D. Cardona, E. Cochrane, A. de Grazia, B. G. Low, C. J. Ransom, D. Scott, D. Talbott, W. Thornhill, H. Tresman, I. Tresman, and M. A. van der Sluijs, all people associated with the Saturnian group. It is not that Peratt did not work closely with the Saturnians. [note 11]

For his second paper on petroglyphs, published in August 2007, the same people are listed. Meanwhile, Peratt had co-authored other papers with vd Sluijs and Scott. Peratt's second paper explains in print what must have been known even before the first paper was published, that the "gigantic auroral plasma column," now known as the 'Peratt Column,' was seen in the south, not in the north.

This must have been a bitter disappointment and major setback for those who had built their whole theory on a northern polar column. A giant of science had been engaged to help carry the logs, but now he had dug a hole which buried the column, center post to the house of Saturn, and flattened the boys when it blew up. Progressively, from about 2004 or 2006 on, the Saturnian websites started removing the previous reconstructed history of antiquity. Such are the pitfalls of speculation.

Peratt's second paper prescribed a date for the south polar column of about 10,000 BC to 2000 BC (one date of 5000 BC is listed). I was able to integrate the Peratt Column into the archeology of the remote past, quickly finding numerous Mesoamerican references, and was finally able to explain some curious Babylonian and European imagery. From Mesoamerican sources it was easy to find the initial date for the Peratt Column as 8347 BC. The number of times the Peratt Column showed up in the south sky, mentioned by Peratt, is verified by Mesoamerican and Indian sources, and is suggested from a physical model of the relationship of Earth to Saturn in the early Neolithic era.

The causeways at Carnac point up that the Peratt Column, which travelled past the Earth (on all sides), connected to another circular entity in the north. The "Popol Vuh" makes the same point: there were two sets of Gods, three in the south, five in the north. (See Chapter 5, "Saturn and Archaeology" and Chapter 20, "The Popol Vuh.") After a period of four thousand years (ca 8300 BC to 4200 BC) of being seen connected to some objects in the south, the Peratt Column disappeared along with the ball plasmoids, to be replaced by a stream from a globe in the north. [note 12]

The Accepted Model

Cosmologies are models of how things work on the grand scale of everything. Cosmologies thus propose to explain the workings (and origin) of the Universe, the Solar System, the planets. We should start with the accepted model.

I'll describe the current Solar System and its planets in the following chapter. In terms of where everything came from -- the 'accepted cosmology' -- it would benefit the reader to be familiar with Bill Bryson's book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (2003) which makes easy reading and will inform you properly. The book starts with the "Big Bang" and progresses, in following chapters, through atomic physics, geology, evolution, and the history of the hominids. (The development of humans in historical time is not covered.) Of particular interest are the vignettes which illustrate the personalities of the people and the processes involved in the ideas which have become current.

I could list a few objections -- for example, on the first page Bryson has creation starting from "a singularity" at the beginning of time, that is, at the start of the Big Bang. A singularity, however, is a mathematically undefined point, which here becomes a physically defined point. An undefined mathematical point, like in dividing by zero, starts yielding infinities but that does not mean that it contains the whole infinite Universe. However, it doesn't matter; this is an abbreviation by a popular writer and, overall, the book is captivatingly written. Occasionally you will run into a statement which clashes with all of common sense, like, "At this point, 4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon." However, as I progressed through the book (and came ever closer to the world of today) I had fewer and fewer objections.

Two Alternative Cosmologies

And now we can go on to describe alternative cosmologies. Below are two cosmologies which have sprung from the efforts of established scientists.

I am not listing here the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, which started most of the current speculation in the 1950s, and which is discussed elsewhere. A dozen people keep nagging at hair-splitting re-evaluations of Velikovsky's gaps in the history of the Middle East. I will not list this line of inquiry either. And there are still too many folks actively engaged in attributing all causes to meteor impacts. Meteor impacts belong with Speculative Cosmologies even if proposed by "established scientists." The flood of other weird theories has abated somewhat, mainly due to the mass of criticism that 'ancient maps' have generated. See the file [Other Cosmologies] for additional speculative cosmologies. [note 13]

Electric Universe

A very important alternative to the handed-down cosmology is the work by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, "Thunderbolts of the Gods" (2004), at [http://www.thunderbolts.info].

Early in 2004 Talbott and Thornhill offered Chapter 1. Chapter 2 and 3 followed early in 2005. They are working with the editorial team of Amy and Mel Acheson, Dwardu Cardona, Ev Cochrane, Walter Radtke, Don Scott, C.J. Ransom, Rens van der Sluijs, and Ian Tresman (all editors, publishers, and contributors to the Kronia site, Thoth newsleter, Aeon magazine, and SIS). Together these people represent an enormous block of knowledge.

Wallace Thornhill's contribution has been immense. With the application of plasma theory and electrical forces, everything falls into place. But it requires a change in thinking -- a new conceptualization. A grounding in electrical theory (or practice) helps. If you have an inkling of atomic theory, can imagine ions, and feel comfortable with electricity, take a look at the websites of [Don Scott] and [Wal Thornhill], who take up the topic of plasma and an Electrical Universe. Don Scott's website does a great job of explaining the plasma aspects. See also a website of [Anthony Peratt] of Experimental Programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

I also recommend Don Scott's recently published book, "The Electric Sky" (2006), which details the plasma concepts at planetary and galactic levels. It may be the first time this information has been brought to a general reader even though the concepts have been around for 150 years and have been part of electrical engineering curriculum for nearly as long.

The plasma theory is simple, based entirely in classical physics, and has much higher predictive value than the standard model of the Universe. However, there is an immense problem with general acceptance. The problem is attributable in part to academic orthodoxy. [note 14]

"...my impression has been that much of what Thomas Kuhn has called 'normal science' has degenerated into mindless support of orthodoxy and the so-called 'consensus of opinion', which is arrived at by a process of one scientist repeating what another has said in a kind of mirror-gallery regression for the fear of falling out with his (or her) colleagues. In the end nobody seems to know how this 'consensus' has originated, but anything that is out of step is ruthlessly suppressed."

-- astronomer V. Axel Firsoff (nd, ns).

Another barrier to acceptance of the plasma theories is the politics of research funding. For example, the stated goal of the USA Space Program (NASA) is to find the beginnings of the Universe and the origins of life. As long as these two goals remain unresolved, funding will be forthcoming. The plasma concepts are able to slam the door on these questions.

Planetary Breakups

A second alternative (but limited) cosmology of some interest is found in Tom Van Flandern's book "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets" (1999). Van Flandern is an astronomer, with interesting theories on planet formation, and other topics, approaching the catastrophic. A promo for his book follows: [http://www.metaresearch.org]

"Alternative for the origin and nature of the universe; deductive models for the origins of stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, meteoroids, rings, Sun and planet spots; the latest on the hypothetical 'tenth planet' beyond Pluto; an alternative to the Oort cloud of comets and the 'dirty snowball' comet model; and much more. Since the book deals primarily with observational puzzles and anomalies that don't fit conventional models, many viable alternative models are described."

Van Flandern's main contribution is a "planetary breakup hypothesis as the origin of asteroids and comets," and he offers several mechanisms which might result in a breakup (explosion) of a planet. I think his most interesting theory deals with the formation of planets (and satellites) as expulsions from stars (and planets). He uses a model based on mechanical interactions. The results are close to the 'electric universe' model and could probably be integrated with the latter. I will return to this further below.

Van Flandern believes comets are solid and thus predicted that when an 800 pound projectile was to be fired from the spacecraft Deep Impact on July 4, 2005, to impact Comet Temple 1, it would make a small dent only, and vaporize the copper anchor. The regular space folks predicted that the anchor would blow straight through the "snowball" core of the comet. My money was with Tom Van Flandern, and his predictions proved correct. Thornhill also accurately predicted the energy exchange, the flash, and other "surprising" results. See my notes on this at the [Deep Impact] file.

Additionally, Van Flandern's book (and his website) address more speculative matters, such as gravity, quantum physics, and the Big Bang. He follows Halton Arp on red-shift. [Halton Arp] is an observational astronomer who has compiled an extensive array of data which shows the failure of the accepted relationship between red-shifted light and speed of recession for galaxies. Arp has also demonstrated that galaxies give birth, in pairs, to other galaxies along their rotational axes. See his book "Seeing Red" (1998).

Image: The Corona of the Sun. The flares reach thousands of miles up from the surface. Earth would be lost in some of the flares.

Where Planets Come From

What I will describe in the rest of this chapter is a theory of planet formation which is based almost entirely on the electrical nature of the Universe as described by Thornhill, Scott, Peratt, and others. The goal will be to present an alternate model of how planets might be created and to suggest why planet and satellite surfaces are so radically different from each other. But note that the overt mechanics of the following is entirely speculative, although the details are not.

I should also note that the speculations developed below are not critical to the postulates of this Saturnian cosmology. It is presented here because we will run into questions of planetary genesis, although all I can do is to hint at answers. What is developed below thus remains somewhat speculative. Other researchers will argue the details. What is not speculative is the implicit suggestion that the 'handed down' idea of the genesis of the Solar System from a coagulating cloud of dust is in error.

Be aware, therefore, of the fact that none of the following theories are accepted scientific dogma. Of course the temperatures at the Sun, the flares of the Sun, the Solar Wind and its make-up, the speed of particles which move past Earth, and other details, are all correct and accepted. But these are data, not theories.

To propose the creation of planets by expulsion from stars is not as radical as it might seem, since the established astronomer Van Flandern is willing to entertain such a theory, and Halton Arp has proposed the same at a galactic level. But Van Flandern still holds that the Sun itself was formed from the coagulation of primodial dust. This, in fact, is the accepted consensus theory for the creation of all objects in the Solar System. We should start there.

The accepted scientific narrative is that the Solar System was created through the condensation (gravitational attraction) of pre-existing dust. Somehow the lightest elements fell to the center to create the Sun, the heavier elements clotted up into balls composing the planets. This was the suggestion of the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. [note 15]

The dust from which the Solar System formed would have been created in the supernova event of a previous star. The supernova would also have created all the heavy elements, while the star's core collapsed into a neutron star (another wonder of contemporary astrophysics, a gravitationally compacted star composed only of neutrons).

The problem with this 'narrative' is that we have now witnessed stars repeatedly going through supernova events, without disappearing into neutron stars. Additionally, it turns out that the Sun creates all the heavy elements on an ongoing basis and spits them out continuously as the Solar Wind. And, finally, there is absolutely no known mechanism in classical astrophysics which could condense stellar dust, and set it all spinning (and at different rates).

An alternative is to start by considering stars as electrical terminals which are discharging to their surroundings. Briefly, then, we can say: Planets are expelled from stars when the gradient of electrical charge between the star and its surroundings becomes too large for the surface area. The magnitude of the charge of a star is related to the mass, but the continuous leakage of charge to the surroundings will be limited by the surface area, which, as a star grows in size, increases slower than the mass.

A mass expulsion -- the birth of a planet -- helps the star balance its electric charge against its surroundings in two ways. First, with an expulsion, the mass of the star is reduced much more than the surface area. Second, the nearby expelled object in effect increases the total available radiation area -- at least temporarily -- since the expelled object often remains very close to the parent and connected by a stream of plasma. The connection has been seen repeatedly in binary stars. The core of the expelled material is composed mostly of heavier atoms like silicon and metals. Now for the details. [note 16]

Expulsion

Stars are composed mainly of protons (hydrogen ions) and it is these which are in plasma discharge at the surface -- an electrical arc discharge to the surrounding space. This outer shell is somewhat unstable, as seen from the fact that our Sun regularly quakes and distorts its shape. Above the surface is the corona (the large gas envelope) and the region from which flares leap up like flames of a fire -- jumping millions of miles up from the surface. The flares easily reach a temperature of two million (degrees) Kelvin, whereas the surface remains at about 5000 to 7000 Kelvin. On occasion, the flares throw off large quantities of ionized matter (plasma streams) in total contradiction to gravity.

At the core of the star there will be an accumulation of the heavier elements. Stars create these at their far outer surface, where temperatures in the flares run into millions of degrees and simple elements are combined to form heavier elements. Most of the heavier elements fall into the interior and accumulate at the center due to gravity. (We will have to accept 'gravity' as a given.)

Such a central core of heavier material is probably dynamically unstable in that, as the Sun spins (all stars rotate), it could develop considerable outward directed forces if that material were offset even slightly from the center. If the core, like the surface, is subject to wobbles, the wobble will most likely offset parts of the core in the direction normal (at right angles) to the axis of rotation of the Sun, that is, in the direction of the Sun's equator. This, in effect, is Van Flandern's mechanical expulsion mechanism.

If a secondary object (a planet) is expelled, it may be primarily because of internal electrical forces, rather than just dynamic instabilities. But, of course, the dynamic instability would add to the likelihood of a mass expulsion. All stars rotate because of the flow of plasma leaving them from the equatorial region. Planetary expulsions will be flung out sling-shot fashion at the equator, or thereabouts -- in the mechanical (and electrical) path of least resistance. Since the planet starts out with the rotational momentum of the star, it is already in rotation when it exits, and it will rotate in the same direction as the star, as is true of virtually all planetary satellites. [note 17]

The birth of a planet might be more easily visualized by observing a Lava Lamp, although the forces and action are different. Just like a Lava Lamp, a bubble forms, which is a part of the interior being forced out. (In the case of a Lava Lamp, it is the rise of a heated interior). As the proto-planet starts being expelled, it will be subject to repulsive electrical forces tending to complete the expulsion.

The proto-planet exits as a teardrop. The tail will start to pinch due to gravitational (and constrictive magnetic) forces. The forces on the tail portion will pinch off a number of smaller planetoids. Now it really does look like a Lava lamp. These smaller droplets will be the future satellites of the proto-planet, or remain as smaller satellites to the star. Planets orbitting the Sun are the Sun's satellites; a planet in orbit about another planet is a satellite. [note 18]

Since the smaller satellites break away from the more exterior portion of the expulsion, they will tend to be composed of silicates (rock) rather than the heavier iron of the core. They will initially all have a gas envelope, as does the expelled planet -- since that is part of the exterior of the star which will be pulled away at the time of the expulsion. The envelope will form part of the remaining temporary plasma connection between the star and the new planet.

The New Planet

Initially the star will use its proto-planet as an additional conducting path, that is, as an additional radiation surface. The planet will light up and remain connected to the star with a plasma stream. Many of these forms are seen among stars and are called binaries.

Since the planet is a globe, it will accumulate a negative electrical charge at its exterior surface (a coulomb charge), producing a repelling electric field set against the exterior negative electric field of the star. It will slowly start to back away from the star. And as the distance increases, the plasma stream connecting the two will go from arc mode to glow mode and then to dark mode (since the current flow depends on the electrical 'resistance' between the two objects), and eventually turn off.

This is followed with a gravitational collapse (and further condensation) of the heated material of the planet as it cools. Depending on how much it shrinks, the rotational speed will increase. That is basic physics. The 'gravitational collapse' concept is also used by the 'condensing cloud of dust' adherents of planet formation.

The dust-cloud condensation folks presume that planets are formed by the gravitational attraction of interstellar dust and gases, and that the gravitational pressure of this coagulating material will heat the material to incandesence (5000 -- 7000 degrees K), hot enough to melt rock and allow migration of heavier elements to the interior of a planet. That is not likely. First, despite the enormous amount of dust in the Solar System, we don't see aggregation happening. It hasn't even been 'modeled' with computer simulations either. And, secondly, it is also very doubtful that temperatures high enough to liquify silicates (and iron) would ever be reached. However, a planet which is forced out of a star will already be in a molten state.

Similarly the dust-cloud condensation folks think that a star can also be formed from condensed gases, collected through gravitational attraction, and heated in the interior to millions of degrees through the pressure of gravitational compression. They maintain that the million degree internal temperature would cause the start of a thermo-nuclear reaction, which subsequently produces all the heat and light of the Sun in addition to creating new elements.

There are more than a few problems with the thermo-nuclear reaction formulation. For one, the portion of the Sun seen within sunspots (which is where the actual surface can be seen) is at a temperature of only about 6000 Kelvin, whereas the flares of the corona -- far above the nominal surface of the Sun -- reach temperatures in the millions of degrees There is no indication, therefore, of an interior temperature in millions of degrees.

A star is composed mainly of protons (ionized hydrogen) with the positive ions of heavier atoms at its core. The interior electrical repulsion of hydrogen ions far exceeds the compressive pressures of gravity. The internal density thus stays relatively low as the ions remain distanced from each other, and thus it does not produce the compressive temperature associated with the "core nuclear reaction" model. But the interior temperature, 5000 to 7000 degrees Kelvin, is certainly high enough to disassociate any electrons found inside and force them outward. Additionally free electrons in the surrounding space are attracted to the star. At the outer shell the electrons get energized, and produce the light we see. [note 19]

Solar Flares

Boundary conditions, an inversion of the electrical field just outside the shell (induced by the electrical charge of the Sun), keep the mutually repulsive material of the Sun from explosively launching itself into space. But some of the material moves out from the Sun at a fairly constant rate and, in the case of large solar flares, massive amounts of positive ions are released into space -- 'catapulted' might be a better description.

This outflow of protons is known as the 'Solar Wind' (and includes electrons also) and proceeds at high speeds, starting with a speed on the order of one million miles per hour. A high velocity is required to overcome the boundary conditions above the surface of the Sun. Electrons which acquire sufficient energy also escape, but for our Sun this outflow of electrons has not been measured. (The 'flow' of electrons in space has not been properly measured.) [note 20]

Mono-polar Battery

The Sun may be understood as a 'mono-polar battery.' Its exterior surface is a single positive terminal. The other end of the circuit is presumed to be in the far reaches of space beyond the Solar System. The Solar Wind is the constant outflowing current from this 'battery.' The usual model of an electrical 'circuit' does not apply well here. The Sun and its outflow of electrical energy is instead equivalent to touching a single terminal of a battery to a metal plate. You will have a sudden outrush of electrons (and thus a limited flow of current), but no circuit. Mono-polar batteries, by the way, are used on space craft. The electricity is generated with a nuclear reactor, which, similarly to the Sun, produces excess protons. The nuclear reactors are not as efficient or cost effective as electrical generators. Otherwise every family would have one in their basement.

The electrical charge of a sphere (the coulomb charge) depends on the size of the sphere (a larger sphere can hold more charge on the outer surface), the internal temperature (higher temperatures will cause more charge separation), the atomic makeup (heavy elements with bound electrons will produce less free electrons), and the potential for polarization of the atoms (easily dipoled atoms will yield a higher positive internal electric field).

What we are at a loss to explain is the source of all the protons which constitute most of the mass of the Sun. Clearly the "power" of the Sun is the massive collection of protons. Where did they originally come from? The most internally consistent model is that the Sun is a terminal in a large galactic plasma current. The plasma currents -- billions of miles wide, and thousands of light-years long -- are certainly seen in nearby galaxies. Ralph Juergens first proposed the external source in a series of articles in the 1970s. [note 21]

A more casual model suggests that high energy inter-galactic protons from outer space are intercepted by the Sun in sufficient numbers to make up for the depletion of material expelled from the Sun. Since the continued expulsion of matter by the Solar Wind constitutes only the smallest fraction of (for example) the number of available protons, this may not be a problem. But the loss of electrons to the Solar Wind have to be replaced. The Ulysses space craft, in a polar orbit about the Sun, has since about 1993 detected a massive influx of electrons to the Sun at its poles.

Don Scott, in "The Electric Sky" (2006), summarized the perplexing problems and the status of counter-arguments with the following..

"Whether or not Juergens was completely correct in his assertion that the Sun is totally powered by external electrical excitation is really not the most important point of the ES [Electric Sun] hypothesis. What is important is that all of the phenomena we observe on and above the surface of the Sun are clearly well-known effects in electric plasma. This is true no matter how the Sun gets its power."

The expulsion of protons away from the Sun (and a possible inflow of free electrons), constitutes a current (inbound). The power of the Sun, based on the production of light and heat, is an absolutely astounding amount of energy -- 4 x 10 exp 26 watts (4 times 10 to the 26th power). If the Sun is roughly estimated to be at 100 billion volts with respect to the far surrounding space of the Solar System, then the current equivalent to this is estimated at 4000 billion amperes per second.

The Homo-polar Motor

The electrical (plasma) flow from a rotating star happens primarily (or generally) at equatorial levels (protons out, electrons in) and generates a magnetic field in the up-down direction, perpendicular to the equator of the star. As long as a planet carries a charge, it will be propelled in a counterclockwise direction as seen from above -- due to the magnetic field induced by the outflow of current from the star. That is an example of a simple electric motor (a 'homo-polar' motor). So simple. Watt-hour meters operate like that. [note 22]

And yet, not so simple. Of all the Plasma Universe formulations, the concept of a homo-polar motor is the least satisfying. And it gets more complicated. The outflow of protons and Solar Wind material near the Sun's equator effectively constitutes a circuit of sorts, probably spanning the whole of the Solar System and far beyond. This fact seems to imply a circuit involving very large external source. Perhaps the up and down magnetic field is due to a giant galactic Birkeland current (plasma current) in which the Solar System finds itself imbedded. [note 23]

Electricity (electrical field theory) does not define gravity. Newton's formulation of gravity is a hueristic model for the attraction between masses. As an empirical formula, it works like a charm, and can be applied with great predictability to the interactions of planets and space ships. However, it breaks down completely on a galactic scale, which is why the concept of invisible and undetected "dark matter" was invented by astrophysicists.

Newton admitted that he did not understand 'how' gravity worked. In 300 years no one else has managed to figure it out either. Einstein spent 40 fruitless years of trying to incorporate the concept of gravity into his Relativity theory. [note 24]

Solar Wind

As noted above, initially the new planet will rotate close to its primary, and a plasma connection will exist between the two. This has been repeatedly observed in the last 20 years for nearby stars. The plasma connection will allow protons out of the star, and probably take in electrons from the planet (or some such exchange). As the planet's charge balance changes (a very slow process), it moves further away from the star. That is happening to us also!

The materials which make up the Earth -- iron and nickel at the core and silicon/oxygen compounds in the mantle and crust -- were made by the Sun at the tips of solar flares. Here the temperatures were high enough to synthesize all the elements of the Periodic Table from the available protons (hydrogen ions). The newly created ionized elements have high randomly oriented speeds because of the extreme temperatures. They fly away from the solar flares at extreme speeds in all directions. Most will be propelled back to the Sun, and will accumulate at the center because of their greater atomic weight. Atoms which happens to be directed away from the Sun will move through the boundary layer because of their stupendous velocities.

About 15 percent (maybe less) of these particles might make it out, away from the Sun. These start out with a speed of about 1 million miles per hour, and are then accelerated by the exterior electric field of the Sun. They are traveling at 2 million miles per hour by the time they reach Earth, and continue to be accelerated (although apparently less so with distance).

The continuously expelled material is called the Solar Wind. It blows day and night, sending out almost every particle of the periodic chart -- but as ions, of course. The most frequent constituents are hydrogen, oxygen, silicon, iron, and the rare gases. Most bypass the Earth because our magnetosphere (plasmasphere) deflects them. A portion of the material gets caught in the Earth's magnetic field and is forced down at the magnetic poles. The electrical flow shows in the polar auroras where atmospheric gases are ionized by electrons which are part of the current flow. When the Sun is 'active' the Earth's poles glow. Rather than just accumulating on reaching the ground, most of the particles are propelled upward again (on the night side of the aurora) and away along the tail of the magnetosphere.

The Solar Wind closed down for two days in May of 1999, for the first time ever recorded. It was scary, but nothing happened and, of course, nothing was explained either. Other unexpected and inexplicable solar events have happen, but none ever interfere with what we most count on -- sunlight. [note 25]

In November 2003, the Sun produced a series of the largest mass ejections ever recorded. Wal Thornhill wrote:

"..last week has seen nine major solar flares -- a historically unprecedented outburst from the Sun. Moreover, this is a period of declining solar activity, when the sun should be experiencing fewer, less energetic outbursts. With each flare billions of tons of solar matter, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), were hurled into space at millions of kilometers per hour in defiance of the Sun's powerful gravity. The energy released in these unusual outbursts is phenomenal."

The CMEs traveled much faster than the usual Solar Wind, crossing 96 million miles in 30 minutes. That is approximately 200 million miles per hour. The Solar Wind normally travels at 2 million miles per hour on reaching Earth. Astrophysicists were shocked.

"Billions of tons" might seem like a lot, but the Solar Wind normally releases about 6.7 billion tons every hour in all directions. Over time the Sun loses a mass equal to that of the Earth every 150 million years. This represent only the smallest fraction of a percent of the Sun's mass.

Differences in Planetary Crusts

Stony meteorites have a microscopic (and chemical) composition totally unlike any rocks found on Earth. That is true for Moon rocks also, which are distinct from both meteorite and terrestrial material. [note 26]

"In all but a few rare classes, the chemical composition [of meteorites] is different from that of any terrestrial rock."

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition

What we are seeing, it would seem, are distinctly different aggregates of molecular structures and chemical compositions. This can probably be readily extended to all the satellites of the planets, and to the planets themselves. Certainly they all exhibit striking visual differences from each other. Over the last few decades, as space exploration has provided closer views of many planets and satellites, the most frequent unanswered question of astrophysicists has been, "Why are all the planets and satellites in the Solar System so different each other?" We have satellites with clouds and without, with frozen water and without, with metallic centers and without. We have coal black and brilliantly reflecting satellites, scarred and pockmarked planets and satellites, planets in every color.

It has been generally assumed that there are no radioactive materials to be found below the crust of the Earth, for even a limited amount of radioactive elements in the mantle would generate enough heat to melt the crust. The absence of radioactive elements below the crust, or the very early migration of these heavy elements to the surface, cannot be explained. Heavy elements would be expected to sink to the center of the young and molten Earth, not rise to the top. Postulating that these heavy elements in the crust of the Earth were a late addition would account for their absence in the interior.

I suggest that the original plasma connection between a young planet and its primary is responsible for the differences. On Earth, the solidification of the crust separated out and consolidated many elements so that today we find concentrations of minerals and metals, although the nearly four billion years of intense biological activity also built immense concentrations of minerals. But I suggest that many elements were added by the continued plasma connection with the Sun as a sprinkling to the exterior of the Earth for some thousands of years after the Earth was first extruded by its parent star -- and, of course, after the Earth had already cooled to form a crust.

This suggestion bears especially on the fact that the Earth's heavy radioactive elements are only found in the crust. These, as well as many other elements, should have sunk to the center of Earth if all were in existence on Earth when it was still at incandescent temperatures after, as popular science has it, cooling from its initial coagulation state.

Solar flares at the surface of the Sun today synthesize all the atomic elements beyond hydrogen and helium. All have been observed as ions along with many short-lived isotopes. These comprise a small portion of the Solar Wind, but are continuously expelled from the Sun towards the planets and outer space. A planet still in close proximity to a star and perhaps still connected with a tail of plasma, would receive a much greater proportion of such newly created elements. Within a few thousand years of its birth, the Earth would have achieved a solid crust so that any added elements would have failed to sink into the molten interior. [note 27]

This chain of events -- expulsion, plasma connection, solar flares -- will be different in degree from one satellite to another, depending on the electrical conditions of the primary, the number of other satellites which might be targets for plasma, the size of the satellite, and the rapidity of cooling. Thus any particular planet or satellite should be expected to have unique crustal compositions. And this, in fact, has been observed. Ejected rocks from the Moon, found in Antarctica, can clearly be identified as being from the Moon, as with rocks expelled from Mars.

The following chapter will look at the mechanics of an intersection (a sort of a "collision") of the Saturnian System and the Solar System.

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Endnotes

Note 1 --

Wallace Thornhill noted in 1993..

"Further evidence in support of the electrical discharge theory was the baffling flare-up of Halley's comet between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. The nucleus should be frozen and inert at that distance. However a plasma discharge can occur at any time when the electric stress exceeds breakdown potential. It is significant that the flare-up followed some of the largest solar flares recorded. In this case, the Sun was rapidly altering the comet's electrical environment at a far greater distance than normal."

-- Wallace Thornhill, in "Evidence for the Extreme Youth of Venus" (1993), SIS Proceedings of the 1993 Cambridge Conference.

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Note 2 --

Excepting "Physics of the Plasma Universe" by Anthony L. Peratt. (1992), a very technical book.
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Note 3 --

Leonard W. King, in "Legends of Babylon and Egypt" (1918), takes up irrigation and flood control as part of a series of lectures presented in 1917. At [http://www.worldwideschool.org/].

See Joseph Lambert, "Traces of the Past" (2001), which deals with the chemistry of pottery and glass, the development of glazes, the variable metallurgy of bronze, the manufacture of Damascus steel, Upper Paleolithic colorants, Mesopotamian beer brewing.

Also see also Richard Rudgley, "The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age" (1999), which presents Neolithic culture with respect to languages, writing, medical practices, religious symbolism.
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Note 4 --

Planetary orbits are ellipses. Ellipses have two centers, called nodes, defined so that the sum of the lines drawn from the two centers to a point along the orbit always has the same value. One of the centers of an orbit is located at the Sun. The other center is located away from the Sun. The ellipse of the orbit slowly rotates in space, which means that the node located away from the Sun moves in a circle around the Sun. This describes the precession of the orbit (the rotation of the second nodal point). Currently the precession of the Earth's orbit takes an estimated 40,000 years.

Obviously the orbits of two planets will come closer together in time, and then separate again, as the individual orbits precess. The orbits of Earth and Mars are currently (ca AD 2000) aligned to a close approach, although still separated by a minimum of 30 million miles. This close approach of Earth to Mars is not expected to happen again for 60,000 years.

As I will make clear later in this text, a 'close approach' is not a likely condition for a planetary interaction. It is the alignment with the Sun which results in a destructive interaction between planets.
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Note 5 --

See, for example, Halton Arp, "Seeing Red" (1998), who disputes the redshift/distance relationship. Arp has shown that daughter galaxies arise in pairs from mother galaxies, coaxial with their axes of rotation. On a whim, I took some of his basic postulates and estimates of time, and applied an expansion based on the Fibonacci series (which is how rabbits multiply if they are limited to two young at each litter). See the file [Age of the Universe] where a modest value of 496 billion years is reached on the basis of the visible Universe, certainly a lot more than the current accepted age of about 15 billion years.
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Note 6 --

There are some rock fragments on Earth which date to 4.3 billion years. Under the conditions of interplanetary electrical strikes, which can explosively launch rocks into space, these fragments could have come from any other planet. This process accounts for rocks found in Antarctic ice which are identified as native to the Moon or Mars on the basis of their chemical composition and crystalline structure.

What is given as an explanation for the 4.3 billion year old fragments, however, is that these represent the first crust of the Earth which had sunk into the mantle long ago, ground up, and has been pushed to the surface again. This, and similar narratives, are usually insisted on, despite the fact that the crust of the Earth is lighter than the mantle (the crust 'floats' on the mantle) and would not sink.
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Note 7 --

The Mesoamerican illusive site of the "city of reeds" -- Tula or Tollan -- is, without a doubt, a recollection of the rings seen in the south. In Mesoamerica the rings are described as bushes; in Egypt the rings are described as reeds. The cross-section design of the Mesoamerican ballcourt also represents the same rings, with the Earth's shadow on the rings at the time of the equinoxes.
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Note 8 --

From the Electric Universe Blog (http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/), a post by 'shrunkensimon' on Sun May 25, 2008 5:52 pm..

"i found this website today that has quite alot of detail on the Saturn idea and Plasma based explanations for some of history. ..."

He listed the URL. Previous posts of the link listed above had been removed within an hour. There were a few favorable reviews to this post, however. Two days later there was a response from 'Plasmatic'...

" The above saturninan site is full of rampant speculation and quite misleading in many ways."

After a number of additional favorable reviews on the same day, a comment by David Talbott ended all discussion (quoting only the last line)..

"Occasional worthy fragments are embedded in the work, if someone could just find a way to recognize them before wasting too much time. :)"

A month later (July 14, 2008) the SaturnianCosmology.org website was brought up again under the thread of "dating." On September 11, 2008, the "Origins of Myth" thread (which included "dating") was permanently removed. They may have thought they owned the territory, but then this website came along.

Official closure came in December of 2009, after acknowledgement of this site by some posters, for example, "Most here are familiar with the saturniancosmology.org website."

"Please note, the speculations offered by Jno Cook at saturniancosmology.org in no way represent the views of the main proponents of Electric Universe theory. Whilst he often quotes and references people from the main arena of EU discussion, Cook has his own very specific theory which is NOT supported by the proponents of EU."

"Cardona, Talbott, Thornhill et al DO NOT in any way support the precise dating of and events offered by Cook, or such published account of such support would be offered."

-- davesmith_au, Tue Dec 15, 2009

Likewise and conversely, I would not want the reader to infer that I support all of the speculations of Talbott, Cardona, Cochrane, and van der Sluijs. The core Saturnian 'theory' as originally presented by Talbot, and since expounded on by Cochrane and Cardona, is solid, however. The prior work by Santillana and von Dechend showed that. The earlier groundbreaking work by Velikovsky likewise is acceptable under the same terms.
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Note 9 --

Rens van der Sluijs is one of the most articulate and rational writers in the field and has, on the current main page of his website, expounded on the status of a theory to be applied to mythology and iconography. He discusses and dismisses the concepts current in the philosophy of science, promolgated by Karl Popper, especially the status of the need for a falsification in scientific theory -- the fact that a theory does not stand unless statements can be generated which would, if proven (tested) as true, disprove the theory. Van der Sluijs writes..

"The plasma-physical model of creation mythology and art-historical data, such as geometric petroglyphs, is simply a working hypothesis for a large set of ancient data that we consider the most convincing, the most complete and the most economic theory of the nature of traditional mythology in general."

I mostly agree with this, barring his use of "art-historical," by which he probably meant either "iconography" or "imagery." (Art historical theory, a theory of derivative forms of representation, is notoriously full of holes.) But what struck me as discordant was the use of "most economic." The application of the concept of 'economy' is used to evaluate alternatives, so that for example, a theory that satellites are generated as polar expulsions from parent planets is much less 'economical' than a theory that satellites are generated as equatorial expulsions from parent planets. It is less economical because, after a polar expulsion, the satellite would have to undergo an additional step of moving to an equatorial position.

But for the Saturnians "most economic" is not a starting position when there are no alternatives. I think it only follows from a desire to keep the model simple. But nothing has been brought forward to suggest a single cause, a 'single prototype,' a unitary event. A decision to select a single prototype (economic or not) is a rejection of the possibility of multiple causes, separate events, or a model of some complexity.

What is also missing from consideration is that a cosmology cannot be treated as a 'theory' -- it is not a 'theory' and not subject to hypotheses testing. Similarly, the frequently argument brough forward by Leroy Ellenberger, of what he calls "the obsolute veto power of negative evidence," simply is not applicable to an hypothesis, that is, a theory (and not at all for cosmological postulates). What is 'negative evidence?' The failure of a test never implies some opposite or alternate condition. This misreading of hypothesis testing is probably the most common error in understanding of probability theory and the most common mistake made in popular (and commercial) interpretations of testing.
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Note 10 --

Quoted by Leroy Ellenberger from a letter to him by Ashton of September 1, 2007, and sent on in one of Ellenberger's periodic mass mailings, September 11, 2007.
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Note 11 --

Leroy Ellenberger pointed out to me (January 2009) that I missed the following names: K. Anderson, M. Armstrong, E.J. Bond, K. Moss, and A. Scott, R.M. Smith, and A.B. Mainwaring. I should point out that there are also another 44 people listed who are not connected to the Saturnians.
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Note 12 --

I estimate a range of dates from 8300 BC to as late as 4200 BC. The starting date matches the "Chilam Balam" statement about the start of the "first creation" -- which would have been 13 Katuns before 3147 BC anyway. This date also clearly falls after the Younger Dryas (10,500 -- 9,000 BC), and the Earth would have been in sunlight for some 700 years already. The 'event' which initiated the first count of solar years for the Olmecs then was likely the appearance of the southern ball plasmoids of the Peratt Column. These would not have been seen unless Earth had already dropped into the outer cup shape of the lower plasma plumes of Saturn.

If, as I have estimated, Saturn lit up in 4200 BC and established a plasma connection with Earth, then the southern ball plasmoids would have disappeared at that time. For most nations of the Earth, this date constituted creation.

There will be an urge for the Saturnians to move their polar column and standing sphere to the south. But Peratt has ellucidated nothing with respect to Mars or Venus, and, in fact, these entities never show up among the 4,000,000 petroglyphs which were collected. Peratt had suggested a "massive aurora" as a shorthand simile for the phenomena, since he was not allowed to suggest a planet standing above the Earth's pole. There came thus also an urge to identify the polar column with an aurora, despite the fact that an aurora does not assume the shape of a column, and that an aurora moves its curtain south toward the equator with an increase in strength. This has nothing of the looks either of lines of electrons in arc mode traveling past the Earth, or of a column which reaches down from above the polar regions.
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Note 13 --

The "ancient maps" controversy involves an interpretation of the Piri Reis Map of 1513. Some authors claim that the map shows an ice-free Antarctica. This was used as source material in books by Graham Hancock as evidence for Antarctica once having been Atlantis.
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Note 14 --

David Berlinski, author of "A Tour of the Calculus" (1996), recently noted, "There is no culture of criticism in science, which is a great weakness in Western civilization." Scientists "dominate the agenda. They define the questions that can be answered." And, of course, only they provide the answers. (Quoted from an interview by Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2000)

Don Scott, in a rebuttal to Tim Thompson's critique of the "Electric Sun" theory writes as follows..

"We stand at a time in scientific history that will be embarrassing to look back on from the vantage point of the next century. An entire subgroup of science consisting of a majority of astrophysicists and cosmologists is now -- and has been -- smugly ignoring the fruits of 150 or so years of electrical science. This subgroup feels perfectly confident in postulating the existence of processes and entities that cannot be verified experimentally in earthbound labs. But that doesn't mean those processes can't happen in space, they say. When there are perfectly valid electrical explanations for certain phenomena, it is irresponsible to ignore those explanations and invent new science to avoid using them. People will ask, years from now, How could they have ignored electricity in space when it was staring them in the face?"

"Classic astronomy (and its offshoots: helioseismology, astrophysics, cosmology, etc.) have never made any real predictions that turned out to be true although they are past-masters at inventing dynamos and invisible entities to explain things retroactively. After-the-fact explanations are easy, especially if you can get away with saying, The hidden dynamo did it.... [C]lassical astronomers were wrong about how the auroras are powered, about the temperature of Venus, about the rocky nature of comets, about x-rays coming from comets and other objects, about the existence of natural radio emissions from the planets. And I claim they are wrong about many things they are now saying about the Sun."

"... The standard astrophysical models are far more speculative [than the Electric Sun model]. They are built up of speculation cantilevered onto speculation that is ever farther removed from any empirical basis. And a tremendous amount of doubt is piling up about them. They do not explain (without ad hoc and a posteriori adjustments) many of the observations that are being made as the Electric Sun model does. (The fusion model doesn't even explain why the solar corona exists in the first place, let alone its three million Kelvin temperature inversion.) Each time new data comes in from space probes, astronomers typically announce their surprise and rush back to the drawing board. They then busy themselves modifying (adding complexity to) their models -- reminiscent of Ptolemaic epicycles -- and emerge confidently claiming they knew this all along. In the one case where they deigned to make reference to anything electrical (the release of magnetic energy) they got it wrong and had to discover new properties of magnetic fields that do not exist."

-- Donald E. Scott, [http://www.electric-cosmos.org/Rejoinder.pdf]

Academic orthodoxy is not limited to astrophysics. The following is from Mikey Brass, an archaeologist..

"Our past is not reconstructed by archaeologists and historians, but rather constructed. Archaeological facts cannot speak for themselves. Rather, the material remains are marshalled, compared and manipulated by scholars who are active participants operating within their own social contexts to support mutually inclusive and exclusive hypotheses of past behavioural patterns. The archaeological record is malleable, although we can accept that a cattle bone is 25 mm, that a stone tool is made from a particular raw material and that rock art is concentrated in one area but not another. Thus empirical observations and measurements constrain and frame the viable hypotheses which may be adequately derived from the data sets, although questions must always be asked as to why certain criteria (observations and measurements) were applied in order to prevent a degree of bias as far as possible."

-- http://www.antiquityofman.com/index.html

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Note 15 --

Although generally attributed to Laplace, who published a speculation on the origin of the Solar System in 1796, the concept originated with the philosopher Kant. The 'dust cloud' hypothesis (and variations involving stellar collisions) was picked up again in the 20th century by astronomers.

Harold Urey, in "The Planets" (1952), writes,

"During the three hundred years since Copernicus again discovered the heliocentric solar system no progress seems to have been made in explaining its origin. Ad hoc assumptions have been made which have all been questioned or appear highly improbable. The subject seems always beset with miracles, especially when considered by others than serious scientists.... But even scientists have a marked tendency to call for miracles whenever some phase of the subject moves outside their own specialities."

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Note 16 --

The Sun is unlikely to blow up soon because the planets of the Solar System act as pathways for discharge. Should the Sun lose its planets, it might go nova -- a mass discharge. We only have circumstantial evidence that this might have happened in the past.

There is a class of comets of extremely long orbits which enter the close region of the Sun from every direction (rather than only near the ecliptic), and even in reverse rotation, that is, opposite from the normal direction of rotation of the planets and all the other (short period) comets. Jan Oort in the 1930s suggested that these came from a cloud of objects surrounding the Solar System and located at the extreme distance of some 50,000 AU from the Sun. This is an absolutely stupendous distance, but is still only the smallest fraction of the distance to the next star.

All other comets have periods placing them at aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter (mostly closer to Mars), in the space beyond Jupiter, or in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune (30 to 50 AU distant). These belts are all more or less configured around the Sun's equator.

The Oort cloud has not been seen. It is too far away and the (presumed) billions of objects are likely to have a very low reflective quality, as is true for the Kuiper belt.
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Note 17 --

Some of the details of the process of the expulsion of planets from stars, which I had cast mostly in mechanical and gravitational terms in April of 2004, were detailed in electrical terms by Thornhill in 2005..

"External electrical or gravitational stresses on a star may cause some of its internal positive charge to be offset from the center of the star. And since like charges repel, the offset charge will tend to accelerate toward the surface. It is a form of internal lightning. This process may lead to the expulsion of a substantial portion of the positively charged interior of the star. The visible result is a nova, or star-wide lightning flash, as electrons in the stellar atmosphere rush toward the emerging positively charged matter. The ejected material constitutes a powerful electric current, which generates its own magnetic field. That magnetic field constricts the charged matter to form a jet. The leading matter is neutralized and stops accelerating, causing the following charged matter to pile into it. So is born a companion star or gas giant planet. This explains why so many stars have been found to have extremely close-orbiting gas giant planets."

-- from [http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=1dqzp30f]

As notes earlier, another and similar process of planet formation by a fissioning (expulsion or breakup) process is proposed by astronomer Tom Van Flandern, described at [http://www.metaresearch.org]. Van Flandern proposes that planets are created simultaneously in pairs. Apparently the suggestion for pairing is gleaned almost entirely from observation. The pairs would be of unequal size, and move out to different locations from the primary, the more massive moving further away. The mechanism for fissioning is due to an "overspin" condition of the primary. Van Flandern proposes something similar for the fissioning of satellites.

"The strong similarity of pair members [in the Solar System] compared to the differences among pairs suggests a common origin of pair members. In the solar fission theory, when the Sun reaches overspin, two planets would form simultaneously on opposite sides of the Sun. The larger of the two masses would evolve outward by tidal friction faster than the other, as observed [from the position] for each pair except Jupiter/Saturn...."

"Each pair is notably dissimilar to its adjoining pair or pairs. Now there is no particular reason under the 'primeval solar nebula' hypothesis of planetary formation why this should be so. The nebula from which the planets allegedly condensed should have been rather homogeneous in most respects, and planet masses should have had a smooth radial gradient [in planet sizes] with solar distance."

"On the other hand, Chapter 19 [of his book] argued that origin of planets by fission from the Sun should be reconsidered because it elegantly solves several problems the standard model does not. For example, if planets fission from the Sun due to 'overspin' while the Sun is still accreting, this more easily explains how 98% of the solar system's angular momentum ended up in the planets. That fact has always been considered significant for understanding solar system formation since all the planets combined have less than 0.002 of the mass of the Sun."

"The fission hypothesis would also solve the mystery of the dominance of prograde [that is, normal counterclockwise] rotation for these original planets, since they would have shared in the Sun's prograde rotation at the outset. J.J. Lissauer summarizes the latest results on this puzzle for the standard model: 'Almost all the previous calculations were wrong ... If you accrete planets from a uniform disk of planetesimals, the observed prograde rotation just can't be explained.'"

-- from Tom Van Flandern "Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets" (1999)

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Note 18 --

This suggests that satellites are part of a planet from the beginning, and are not later expulsions. This would also better account for the fact that almost all satellites are in synchronous orbits. They no longer rotate because there has been enough time for charge equalization with the primary.
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Note 19 --

About 50 percent of the energy received from the Sun is heat; 40 percent is light in the visible spectrum. This remains constant despite changes in the Solar Wind, sunspot activity, and occasional mass ejections.

To suggest a "disassociation of electrons," as I do in the text, assumes that atoms are constituted as outlined by Niels Bohr in the 1920s -- a nucleus of neutrons and protons, surrounded by electrons in orbit about the nucleus. This, in fact, is the standard descriptive version of an atom learned from every physics textbook of the last 100 years. But this model has largely been abandoned by physics today. There are no electrons held at various valence shells within the atom, despite the fact that this concept is still of great utility in chemistry. Electrons exist, can be controlled (as in cathode ray tubes and electron microscopes), behave as specified by classical electrical theory (as in constituting an electrical current), but otherwise seem to appear out of nowhere and can be found just about everywhere. The aggregation of excited electrons at the surface of the Sun -- which we see as it's orange glow -- are thus not as much the product of the heated interior, as they are simply the response to the Sun's positive interior charge.
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Note 20 --

Actually a number of electrons equal to positive ions are noted in the Solar Wind, leading astrophysicists to claim that the Solar Wind is electrically neutral, for it is assumed that the electrons neutralize the protons statistically (even if not physically). But electrons in space (and their direction of travel) have not been well measured. Thus when I stated "and electrons in," this is not certain. A considerable inpouring of electrons has only recently been detected at one of the Sun's polar region. A flow of electrons toward the Sun would constitute an additional current in addition to the current (in the same inward direction) of the outbound positive ions of the Solar Wind. Together these two should balance the production of radiant energy produced by the Sun.
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Note 21 --

This is the thread pursued by the Electric Universe adherents, but evidence is hard to come by. Additionally, since this model assumes a circuit on a galactic scale, it is readily attacked by those who then assume the Sun would then be equivalent to a lamp on the string of an electrical power cord. This may be called the 'missing electrons' syndrome, and is endlessly pursued by both sides of the 'Electric Sun' model, despite the fact that both parties might be barking up the wrong tree.
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Note 22 --

This curious analogy to the watt-hour induction motor is from Thornhill. Don Scott wrote (at his website)..

"Recently physicist Wal Thornhill has pointed out that Alfven's circuits are really scaled up versions of the familiar homopolar motor that serves as the watt-hour meter on each of our homes. The simple application of the Lorentz force equation ('crossing' the direction, _v_, of the current into the direction, _B_, of the magnetic field) yields a rotational force."

The 'crossing' above is the multiplication of vectors. But it may be based more on the looks of a watt-hour meter than its actual operation. To carry forward the analogy, I think that the disk of the ecliptic would here represent the watt-hour meter's aluminum disk, the Solar Wind would constitute the flow of current, an up-directed magnetic field would have to be assumed, either at the ecliptic alone or permeating all of the space about the Sun, and the direction of movement of the planets would represent the completion the three vectors. This is known as the 'right-hand rule' in the physics of electricity.

The traditional description of the space outside of the Sun has magnetic lines radiating out from the Sun at the equator (presumeably to return to the Sun in the space above and below the equator) and an electric field directed upward at the equator. Both are of low values and assumed to result from the outflow of protons and electrons. A radial electric field of the Sun is not part of the traditional description of the Sun. The electric field across space cannot be measured.
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Note 23 --

An article by Ralph Juergens, "Reconciling Celestial Mechanics and Velikovskian Catastrophism," published in Pensee Magazine in (1972), best explains the problems involved and resolves some of the issues. I realize it is more than 35 years old, and certainly additional data has come forward from the space program and some theories are further developed currently, but even if some of the paper is partially speculative, the information is very readable and, interestingly, casts a spotlight on the reluctance and resistance of contemporaneous astrophysicists and astronomers when faced with new ideas -- extending a half century back from the 1970s. That has not changed at all in the intervening 35 years.

Of the 3500 files from the Internet which I have mirrored at this site, it is one of the only three to which I am providing a direct link. Find it at [juergens.htm].

For a more recent and well written discussion, see the 2005 essay by [James Hogan] from his book "Catastrophes, Chaos and Convolutions" (2005). Hogan has the most lucid descriptions of plasma, double layers, solar tufting, solar creation of heavy elements, and H-R stellar sequencing. He extends his discussion to the electric Sun.
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Note 24 --

Neither Newton, nor anyone else since, has been able to explain 'gravity.' But it works, locally. However, even on Earth gravity measurements show many anomalies. Another notable anomaly is the mass and density of Saturn. Saturn's mass had been calculated by inference from gravitational reactions with the Sun and nearby planets. Until Saturn was visited by space ships, it was always assumed that Saturn must be a large ball of gas, with an average density much less than water. But space exploration has determined that Saturn is composed of liquid rather than gas.

Thornhill has noted that a mathematical exploration of electrical theories in the late 19th century might have led to a theory of gravity based on electric field theory assumptions. It was abandoned because the math must have grown in complexity beyond any need to demonstrate that Newton's formulation was in essence correct.

Additionally, at that time, we lacked a sensible description and understanding of atoms in physics. When that was finally forthcoming in the early years of the 20th century, it was beyond any hope of simplicity. Although electrical field theory is used as an analytical tool in atomic physics, it is applied to individual atoms. There have been no attempts to combine electrical theory and atomic physics on an aggregate scale in the hope of gaining an understanding of gravity. The elegance and simplicity of Newton's gravitational model have completely won the hearts of astrophysicists.
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Note 25 --

The stoppage of the Solar Wind of May 10 to May 12 (1999) was gradual, extending to over a day. Helium ions dropped by 99.9 percent. Heavier ions disappeared altogether. The stoppage was preceded by an intense Gamma ray burst from south of (below) the Sun. It might be suspected that the events were connected. Robert Fritzius has speculated that the heavy ions from the Sun were neutralized, or as Fritzius writes, they were photodisassociated (neutron beta decay) -- in effect disassembled to constituent protons and electrons. See [http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/solwin.htm].

The fact the the cessation of the Solar wind caused no lasting problems with the rotation or orbit of Earth suggests that it is not the outflow of plasma which regulates the orbits of planets, but something which remains constant throughout the Solar System. The two constants which could be suggested are the radial electrical field of the Sun, and the electrical charge of the Earth. The arrival of a Coronal Mass Ejection does slow the rotation of the Earth minutely and temporarily.
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Note 26 --

Metallic iron/nickel meteorites show a grain structure which can only be accounted for if the originally molten material cooled at a rate of one to ten degrees per million years. That is astoundingly slow. This clearly suggests that iron/nickel meteorites are the cooled metallic core of a planet -- a planet that has had 2 to 4 billion years to cool down.
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Note 27 --

There is mostly no accounting also for much of iron, copper, and gold placer deposits except as deposited by exterior agents. It has been pointed out that birkland currents will concentrate elements by atomic weight and segregate them accordingly.
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Special thanks to H Pluut for the inspiration for the section on speculation.

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