mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== IV:1 THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL IV, No. 1 Jan 15, 2000 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS SLIP STICKS AND WRONG THEORIES. . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: Part III . . . . . . . .excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper TEKTITE QUESTION . . . . . . . By Michel Tavir and Wal Thornhill OTHER STARS, OTHER WORLDS, OTHER LIFE . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- SLIP STICKS AND WRONG THEORIES By Mel Acheson A slide rule hangs on the wall of my office, a dual-base vector hyperbolic log-log slide rule. A mere 40 years ago it was a state-of-the-art calculating machine. It reminds me that technology progresses not only by incremental improvements but by extinction and speciation: My aluminum slip-stick was an improvement over the wood one I had before, but the scientific calculator I now use is an entirely different animal. As with technologies, so with theories. The understanding of nature that a theory provides is improved incrementally as the theory is articulated, tested, and revised. The theory's domain of validity-the set of data it can explain-is explored and the details filled in. But the very activity of exploration discovers data outside the theory's domain. These unexpected facts (for every theory starts out expecting to explain everything) become anomalies that eventually undermine the theory. A theory is an intellectual tool with the amazing property that as it's perfected it destroys itself. In analogy with natural selection, the cognitive niche that selects a theory for fitness is itself altered by the theory such that, after a time, a new and different theory is selected. Thus, a theory's domain of validity has temporal as well as factual limits. The power of an idea whose time has come is counterpoised by the debility of the idea whose time has gone. I never use my slide rule, but now and then I take it out of its case simply to admire the beauty of how it works. In much the same fashion, I admire the beauty of Ptolemy's epicycles and of Copernicus' helio-concentric circles and of Einstein's rubberized space-time. I appreciate how each theory worked for its time and its data. I esteem the talent and effort of the people who developed each theory. My friends chide me for the ensuing reluctance to call old theories "wrong". I plead that the term is relatively meaningless: On its own terms-within its domain of validity-no theory is "wrong". And from a historical perspective, every theory sooner or later will be replaced; hence, every theory is "wrong". But I must accede to my friends' pragmatism: We don't live in the past or in the future. We live in this present time, and this time is the domain of right and wrong. It would be wrong to insist on using a slide rule to direct Galileo around Jupiter's moons. Just so, it's wrong for Established Science to refuse to look at Arp's findings of quantized intrinsic redshifts. Just so, it's wrong to overlook Juergen's insights into the electrical nature of the sun. It's wrong to ignore Alfven's admonition that plasmas don't behave the way theoreticians believe and that there are large-scale currents in space. It's wrong to dismiss the Saturn Theory as "merely myth" in blind defiance of the intelligibility in the data. Turning a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a closed mind to this astronomical mass of evidence is intellectually irresponsible. The domain of data has expanded immensely since Established Theories first became established. The early flakes of mysterious data have become an avalanche of anomalies. There are many facts that don't fit Established Theory; there are many facts that contradict Established Theory. Established Theory is increasingly fragmented. It's losing coherence and generality in a proliferation of ad hoc adjustments for every new situation. It's straying into fantasy lands of big bangs and little black holes. It denies the existence of 90% of the universe then fills the void with invisible matter and ion winds. It slaps a smug hand to its back and overlooks its own history. It disdains its own mortality. The intellectual niche that Established Theory so comfortably fit has already changed, leaving only a residual feeling of comfort. But the feeling is false, and both the "fit" AND the theory are wrong. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: Part III Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson [ed. note: the text of the introduction to this paper is available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.] AMY ACHESON: Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho- historical records from all over the world. Among these were Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as the sun of night. Part II concerned the postulate that the mytho-historical record places Saturn at the Earth's north pole. Cardona stresses that this information is not taken from a single story, but is expressed in hundreds of different ways in hundreds of different stories told over the world. In part III, Cardona explores the nature of this northern configuration from both a mythical and physical perspective: DWARDU CARDONA: But what of the demands which this postulate raises? Can they, too, be met? The postulate concerning the former polar station of the planet Saturn raises more than one demand, but I will only touch upon one-and it will serve to show that physical requirements, as well as those which the mytho-historical record itself answers, can be met. THE LITHIC BULGE We all know how terrestrial tides are raised; they are caused by the attraction of the Sun and Moon on Earth's oceanic waters. . . . Now consider: With the massive Saturn in proximity to Earth, the tides that would have been raised should have exceeded those at present. And since Earth's tides are aggravated when the attractive force of the Moon is added to that of the Sun, it stands to reason that the additional pull of Venus and Mars, which the theory dictates to have been in direct line with Saturn and Earth, should have raised the northern tide even more. More than that, with Saturn having been positioned in Earth's north celestial sphere, terrestrial tides should have accumulated at Earth's north polar region. The hydrosphere, moreover, would not have been the only terrestrial element to respond to Saturn's attractive force. The atmosphere should also have piled up at Earth's northern areas. And so, also, should have Earth's crust. This, then is what the Saturnian thesis demands. Do we find it so? Well, let's be fair now. What was, no longer is, so that we cannot now take a trip up north to see if the water of the world is actually piled up in a tide around the north pole. Earth's crust, however, is a different mater. Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere would have easily-although not necessarily suddenly- have rebounded to settle in a more uniform shell around the world Earth's crust, on the other hand, would have taken a much longer period to re-adjust to the new conditions. And since the scenario we have been positing is theorized to have played its drama just prior to the rise of civilization, we should expect this northern lithic bulge not to have yet subsided. AMY: Cardona discusses how this lithic bulge fits into several theories of planetary catastrophism, including phase-lock theories and theories involving planets other than Saturn. CARDONA: Is there any evidence of a remnant of such a tidal bulge in Earth's north polar region? Of course there is ... The real shape of Earth ... is better described as a triaxial spheroid rather than an oblate one, with the bulge of its pearshape measured in meters rather than kilometers. But as a residue, or remnant, of a former greater uplift of land even meters are of significance. As Frederick Hall asked: "What pulled Earth out of shape from above its north pole? The small dimensions of this shift indicate the pull was short term (as in centuries to millennia) rather than eons. Furthermore the effect is relaxing, and in geological terms the distorting influence must have been remarkably recent." . . . Now it is true that Earth's present pear-shape could be explained through different causes than that proposed by the Saturnian configuration theory. But that is not the issue now, is it? What rightly concerns us here is that the theory demands such a state of affairs, and the demand is met. HE AXIS MUNDI One of the most mysterious of elements that can he retrieved from the mytho-historical record concerning the Saturnian configuration is what seems to have appeared, at least at first, as a tapered swath of light which stretched all the way down from the configuration to touch Earth at its northern horizon. Having received the generic name of axis mundi, this appendage is also recognized as the polar column and cosmic tree. It was even known as the world mountain which ... is not to he confused with the lithic bulge we have just discussed. This tapering appendage has been explained in various ways. Rose compared it to the so-called flux tube which stretches between Jupiter and its satellite, Io. In his own Martian, as opposed to a Saturnian, model, Jueneman sees the axis as a colossal Rankine vortex. David Talbott, on the other hand, had originally explained the polar column as a stream of debris stretching between Saturn and Earth, but later amended this to a stream of debris attracted from Mars toward Earth Additionally, Wallace Thornhill believes he has recognized this ethereal pillar as a sustained plasma discharge in the form of Birkeland current. AMY: Here Cardona disagrees with Talbott's interpretation on the basis that such an occurrence would have depleted Mars of its rubble and that Martian meteorites have not yet been found in the northern regions of the Earth. CARDONA: What Thornhill's explanation has going for it...is the fact that galaxies exhibit what Thornhill terms plasma focus characteristics at their centre during their active, or quasar, phase by emitting beams of particles in the form of twisted vortices.' These vortices bear a remarkable similarity to the posited axis mundi deduced from the mytho-historical record Moreover, such a beam in the form of a filament of light has now not only been detected ... but even photographed. And, together with the beam, we now have the first actual photograph of an extra-solar planet, a member of a double-star system known as TMR-1. What the photograph shows is what appears to be a runaway planet, jettisoned by the double stars together with what has been described as 'a thin filament of gas' extending all the way from the planet to its primaries. Anyone living on that planet . . . would see a swath of light stretching all the way from the horizon to the double sun very much like our ancestors would have seen a similar swath of light stretching .. from Earth's northern horizon to the Saturnian configuration. Those who used to tell us that such a phenomenon is not physically possible can now be silenced. One other aspect of Thornhill's postulate that fits well with the mytho-historical record is that magnetic fields tend to twist Birkeland currents into 'ropes,' making the structure appear like entwined snakes. As I will indicate below, this structure is important because, during its fina1 phase, the Saturnian axis developed exactly that form. AMY: Cardona then expresses his opinion that, although Thornhill's Birkeland currents fit most of the criteria of the polar column, they would not be able to suck material up from the earth, which he believes the myths describe. Cardona prefers Fred Jueneman's proposed Rankine vortex, an interplanetary tornado, as an explanation for the axis mundi. CARDONA: THE WHIRLING COLUMN Once again, I cannot here present the entire string of evidential sources which attest to the whirling motion of the cosmic pillar. Instead I will merely present the opinion of four authorities on the subject . . . DC Santillana and von Dechend are two of many who came to the conclusion that the axis did twist and turn--although they seemed somewhat unsure of whether it did so slowly or rapidly-even if to them the axis was anything but an actual physical entity. So, incidentally, did Elmer Suhr when he speaks of the 'whirling cosmic column' and 'the whirling column of the cosmos.' In fact, Suhr goes on to stress: 'It is especially important to think of the cosmic column not as a static post but as a constantly whirling crucible...' Talbott, of course, also recognized this fact when he wrote that 'the cosmic mountain in many creation epics is presented as a churning, serpentine column rising along the world axis...' . . . it is more than obvious from descriptions of the Saturnian axis, as well as prehistoric Petroglyphs, that the polar column was a visible entity rather than a deduced abstraction. This was so much so that, in some cases, the axis was even pictured as a ladder reaching to the Saturnian sun. Amy: Cardona mentioned that he finds it difficult to reconcile a the whirling motion of the axis with Suhr's interpretation of the cosmic pillar as the cone-shaped shadow which the moon sends to the Earth during a solar eclipse. CARDONA: THE ENTWINED SERPENTS . . . the cosmic pillar was often described as having had the form of a serpent or celestial dragon.... And, as [Talbott] continues to inform us, "in several lands the word for 'mountain' is the same as the word for 'serpent' or 'dragon,' though our natural world offers no basis for the equivalence.' For examples, Talbott offers the following: 'In Mexico, Nahuatl _can_ means 'serpent' but also 'mountain'... and [the] Egyptian Set is the primordial serpent or dragon, but _set_ also means 'mountain," and '[the] ancient Sumerian dragon ... was the Kur...but _kur_ also possessed the meaning 'mountain"...[The Greek] Boreas is the primeval serpent... but etymologists connect the serpent- dragon's name with a primitive _bora_, 'mountain'." As Suhr tells us: "Among primitive peoples there are signs of the column in the form of a python or dragon rising from the level of the earth to the clouds.' In fact, Suhr adds that, among the Murngin people of northern Australia, the great python 'is the most impressive representative of the column.' In China '[a] dragon ascending from the earth to the clouds can serve as the whirling column--which no doubt accounts for so many dragons on pillars." A serpent, or dragon, on the other hand, is not exactly the same thing as a pair of entwined serpents. So, if we are going to keep to the motif of Thornhill's Birkeland current, where do we look to find the cosmic pillar described as a pair of entwined serpents or, at least, a serpent entwined around a vertical prominence? In this respect, we only have to turn our attention to that object which the Greeks referred to as the caduceus--two serpents entwined around a central shaft--which Suhr also recognized as representative of the cosmic axis. Nor must we think of the caduceus as a uniquely Greek invention since the symbol was also popular in the east, including Mesopotamia. A fourth century BC relief from Greece depicts a cylindrical altar with a snake coiled around it ... the word 'altar,' although derived from Latin, has its phonetic equivalent in the Arabic Al-Tur which means 'The Mountain' This connection did not escape Talbott who has provided some intriguing insights concerning the associations shared between the altar, the world mountain, the cosmic pillar, and other Saturnian elements. Other examples of this motif are encountered in depictions of Mithras, shown with a serpent coiled around him in spiral fashion, and in that of the Mithraic Kronos, or Aion, who is likewise shown within the coils of a spiraling snake. A variant of the same motif is to be found in the serpent-footed Yahweh on coins of the Hellenistic period ... Yahweh originated as a personification of Saturn ... As Heidel tells us: 'That Yahweh and Saturn were identical was a belief widely accepted in antiquity...' This can be verified through Tacitus who had it recorded that the Jews worshipped the planet Saturn as their god. I mention all this, here, because the image of Yahweh reproduced on the coins mentioned above do not merely show him as serpent- footed, but with both serpentine legs entwined together, thus conforming to the demands of our model. ... Since we have opted for Jueneman's Rankine vortex in lieu of Thornhill's Birkeland current--sat least temporarily--how do we account for the image of the serpentine nature under this scheme? The answer is easy enough. As Jueneman himself explained: "Terrestrial tornadoes occasionally exhibit smaller counter- rotating vortices in close ... proximity to the primary whirlwind. 0n a much vaster scale, similar counter-rotating catenulate bolus flows would have snaked around the polar column in filamentary fashion, first in a counterclockwise, then in a clockwise direction in a slow oscillation." It is, therefore, this bolus flow that would have given the planetary tornado, or Rankine vortex, its serpentine quality. THE WATERY VORTEX AMY: Cardona proposes, if the polar column were actually a colossal tornado, that the Saturn theory demands that this, too, should be part of the mytho-historical record. That is, the tornado would have sucked large amounts of waters from the Earth and ancient man should have been aware of this, if not from observing the column itself, then at least from observing what happened when the column was severed. CARDONA: . . . among the Australian Aborigines, the great python is the most impressive representative of the polar column. It is therefore significant that this python is not only believed to tower up to the level of the clouds, but that he also 'brings about rain and flood.' The Efe pygmies of the Ituri forest tell of a deluge of water which gushed forth as a mighty river when their version of the Cosmic Tree, which was the polar column, was felled. Similarly, the Arawak Indians of the Guinas tell of a wondrous tree which Sigu cut down. From its stump, water gushed out in such quantity as to cause a deluge. This tale is also found among the traditions of the Cuna, who tell of their mischief-maker, the Tapir, chopping down the Saltwater Tree from which salt water gushed out to form the oceans of the world. Thus, Velikovsky was correct when he surmised that the water of the Deluge would have been salty, but not, as he believed, because the salt, or at least its chlorine content, originated from Saturn. The water was salty because it came from the same oceanic water the vortex had sucked up in the first place. THE FLOOD FROM THE NORTH AMY: Cardona moves on to the next demand of the Saturn Theory. If the Deluge was the result of the collapse of a colossal tornado situated in the north, then the mytho-historical record must also contain this information. And it does. Among others, three American Indian tribes, the Wintus, the Wichita, and the Pawnee, tell different legends of the flood, but in each case the deluge arrives from the north. CARDONA: But what of the hard sciences? Is the evidence there? Once again, I can only mention a few items here, but that an enormous flood had once swept down from the north to scour the land surface of North America has been suggested by J. Harlan Bretz. So, similarly, with C. Warren Hunt who speaks of evidence pointing to a flood from the north, excavating the land as it went before it emptied into Lake Bonneville. That Lake Bonneville itself also burst its bounds to cause a secondary flood has been documented by Robert Jarred and Harold Malde. What is of additional interest here is that the area once covered by this lake constitutes a vast salt deposit 100 square miles in extent. Similar signs of a vast scouring flood from the north have also been discovered in Siberia. It is, of course, theorized that this flood was due to the catastrophic melting of the northern ice cap at the end of the Ice Age. I, on the other hand, claim that, at this time, the northern ice cap had not yet been formed THE CHURNING OF THE OCEAN One of the most dramatic images of the concept under discussion, and one which brings various of our motifs together in one place, is invoked by the Indic myth, from the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana, concerning the production of amrita (or ambrosia). In brief the myth is this: In an effort to produce this divine nectar, both gods and demons used Mount Mandara as a churning stick. Winding the serpent Vasuki, also known as Ananta, around Mount Mandara, the gods (at one end) and the demons (at the other) grasped hold of Vasuki by the head and tail and, pulling him back and forth, were able to rotate Mount Mandara fast enough to whisk the sea into an ocean of milk from which amrita was produced. Now, to be sure, in most visual representations of the myth in question, Mount Mara is depicted not in the form of a mountain, but in that of a pillar, thus validating our conviction that the mythic World Mountain and the Axis Mundi were one and the same. In fact, it has long been known to Indologists that Mount Mandara stood for the axis of the world. The second thing we notice is hardly worth mentioning, and that is that this cosmic pillar did twist and churn. In Vasuki we recognize the bolus flow wrapped around the central vortex -- and here it is interesting to note that this entity was 'associated with the north,' thus locating the entire action in that locality. Finally, in the divinities' churning by pulling at the coiled Vasuki this way and that way, an echo is retained of the clockwise/counterclockwise rotation of the bolus flow as described by Jueneman. The elements contained in the myth of the churning of the ocean must not be thought of as uniquely Hindu in origin. In the Hindu myth, for instance, we see that Mandara was placed on the back of a tortoise. In Chinese mythology, it is Shang-ti who is depicted as standing on the celestial tortoise, while the serpent was said to have encircled the tortoise. Shang-ti's title was The Holy and Propitious Prince of the North Pole, who is usually represented as surrounded by a halo, both of which have special meaning to this study. It is also noteworthy that the symbolism of the tortoise and serpent goes at least as far back as the Han dynasty and was used as an emblem for the northern region of the world. More than that, as Lord of the Centre, Shang-ti was also revered as Huang-ti, who is perhaps better known as the Yellow Lord or Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor has long been acknowledged to be an avatar of Saturn. And in the Japanese Kojiki we learn of the Heavenly Jeweled Spear which joined heaven to Earth and which acted as the churning stick responsible for the surfacing of the mythical -- one might as well say celestial -- island of Onogoro. To be continued . . . ---------------------------------------------- TEKTITE QUESTION By Michel Tavir and Wal Thornhill Michel Tavir asks: In WiC Velikovsky mentions the lake of Bolsena in Tuscany as a crater which could look volcanic, but is the actual result of an electric discharge between a celestial object, most likely Mars, and the Earth. However, nothing in the literature or in the mineralogical business indicates that there are tektites to be found in that area (nor in the whole of Italy, for that matter). If tektites are the consequence of electric discharges, why do some of the latter not produce tektites? All the tektite localities I have on record have one thing in common: they are conspicuously outside of areas of high tectonic (no pun...)or volcanic activity. Any correlation? Italy hosts numerous volcanoes and is reputedly prone to earthquakes... Wal Thornhill replies: Tektites are identifiable by their aerodynamic shaping during entry (or re-entry) into the Earth's atmosphere. So they will not necessarily be found anywhere near their point of origin. Concerning origins, geologists are satisfied that their composition is earthly. However, if the surface stratification we see on Earth, the Moon and Mars is due to deposition from space - which I think is a far better model - then such satisfaction may be unwarranted. It seems to me that material that is glassified in a cosmic electric discharge will be near the center of the discharge channel and will suffer the most violent acceleration spacewards. So it would not be surprising if tektites are rare at the site of the planetary electrical scar. (See the section on meteorites on my CD). Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ---------------------------------------------- OTHER STARS, OTHER WORLDS, OTHER LIFE By Wal Thornhill Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Dr. S. Ross Taylor has concluded after a lifetime's work on the formation of the solar system: "When the remote chances of developing a habitable planet are added to the chances of developing both high intelligence and a technically advanced civilization, the odds of finding 'little green men' elsewhere in the universe decline to zero." The bleak suggestion that we are freaks of chance and probably all the intelligence there is in this immense universe is intuitively unsatisfactory. The problem with all predictions about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that it assumes we have defied history and reached a pinnacle of understanding at the close of the 20th century. History teaches that the peak we have climbed may be atop a house of cards. We might accept Dr. Taylor's conclusion based on the current model but it could be like pronouncing intelligent life to be highly unlikely in the ruins following the crash of a jumbo-jet. The solar system could be the result of a cosmic traffic accident. Possibly it is not the most hospitable environment for life. So using it as a benchmark must lead to pessimistic forecasts. Let's examine a key assumption underlying such speculation - that we understand what constitutes a star. The first presumption appears in the following statement from the Encyclopedia Britannica: "The most basic property of stars is that their radiant energy must derive from internal sources. Given the great length of time that stars endure (some 10,000,000,000 years in the case of the Sun), it can be shown that neither chemical nor gravitational effects could possibly yield the required energies. Instead, the cause must be nuclear events wherein lighter nuclei are fused to create heavier nuclei..." Astrophysicists have never considered the simpler alternative - that stars are powered externally. All their genius has been directed at modelling how a giant ball of hydrogen could be coaxed into slowly releasing pent up atomic energy in the most difficult way imaginable -- heating it to tens of millions of degrees. With one notable exception, no one has bothered to look for an alternative despite the fact that none of the observed features of the Sun have any business being there in the thermonuclear model. The exception is the work of a remarkable engineer from Flagstaff Arizona, the late Ralph Juergens. In his model, stars simply form a positive electrode (anode) in a galactic glow discharge. The Sun and all stars are lit up by the electrical energy that shapes and flows along the arms of the galaxy. The Sun is a giant ball of lightning! This surprisingly simple model fits all of the observations about our Sun and forms one of the key ideas in the Electric Universe. A star's size, brightness and color are then largely determined by its electrical environment. That explains the puzzling lack of neutrinos expected from nuclear reactions in the Sun's core, and how some stars are able to vary their output far more quickly than the thermonuclear model allows. Stellar lightning bolts are effective particle accelerators that can synthesize heavy elements in nuclear reactions at the surface of a star. The heavy elements seen in the Sun's spectrum are created at the surface of the Sun, along with the few neutrinos we observe. That neutrino numbers seem to follow surface and external effects like sunspots and the solar wind is to be expected in an electric star. It is inexplicable in the thermonuclear model. In the last few years a new class of faint stars has been discovered. They are called L-Type Brown Dwarfs because the element lithium appears in their spectra. They are the most numerous stellar objects in the galaxy and bridge the gap between stars and Jupiter-sized planets. They are too small to be shining from internal thermonuclear power. A further puzzle is that they radiate blue and ultraviolet light even though they are cool at a temperature around 950K. Water molecules dominate their spectra. All of these puzzles are simply explained by an electric star. There is no lower limit to the size of a body that can accept electric power from the galaxy so the temperatures of smaller dwarfs will range down to levels conducive to life. The light of a red star is due to the distended anode glow of an electrically low-stressed star. The blue and ultraviolet light come from a low-energy corona. (Our Sun's more compact red anode glow is seen briefly as the chromosphere during total solar eclipses. And the Sun is electrically stressed to the extent that bright anode "tufting" covers its surface with granulations and the corona emits higher energy ultraviolet light and x-rays as relativistic electrons strike it). At the other extremity of size, Red Giants are a more visible and scaled-up example of what an L-type Brown Dwarf star might look like close-up. The Red Giant Betelgeuse is so huge that if it were to replace our Sun then Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter would be engulfed by it. Astronomers recognize that such stars could swallow planets yet their plasma envelope is so tenuous that it would not impede the planetary orbits within the star's atmosphere. However, astronomers believe that any planet it swallowed would be gradually vaporized by intense heat from the star's core. But the standard stellar model has to be seriously fudged to explain Red Giants, their central temperature turns out to be so low that no known nuclear process can possibly supply the observed energy output. The electric model, on the other hand, works seamlessly from Supergiant star to a planet- sized Brown Dwarf. Since an electric star is heated externally a planet need not be destroyed by orbiting beneath its anode glow. In fact life is not only possible inside the glow of a small brown dwarf, it seems far more likely than on a planet orbiting outside a star! This is because the radiant energy arriving on a planet orbiting inside a glowing sphere is evenly distributed over the entire surface of the planet. There are no seasons, no tropics and no ice-caps. A planet does not have to rotate, its axis can point in any direction and its orbit can be eccentric. The radiant energy received by the planet will be strongest at the blue and red ends of the spectrum. Photosynthesis relies on red light. Sky light would be a pale purple (the classical "purple dawn of creation"). L-type Brown Dwarfs have water as a dominant molecule in their spectra, along with many other biologically important molecules and elements. Its "children" would accumulate atmospheres and water would mist down. It is therefore of particular interest that most of the extra-solar planets discovered are gas giants, several times the size of Jupiter, orbiting their star extremely closely. It is our system of distantly orbiting planets that seems the odd one out. In fact it argues in favor of a galactic traffic accident between the Sun and a sub-Brown Dwarf like Jupiter or Saturn. So let's examine a second major plank of standard theory - that we understand where planets come from. The nebula theory of the origin of planets is so problematic that it only survives because no one has been able to come up with a better idea. A many-body system controlled by a single force, gravity, is inherently unstable and should fly to pieces. In an Electric Universe the model is simple. Planets are "born" from stars in a descending hierarchy of size by the highly efficient expedient of electrical splitting of an unstable positively charged core. That is why the majority of stars have partners. It explains why many of the extra-solar planets orbit their star extremely closely - that is where they were created. It is why Jupiter and Saturn have a large number of close-orbiting moons. Close orbits are normal. Distant or highly eccentric orbits are more likely to be a result of capture. An exchange between orbital and electrical energy quickly stabilizes orbits. It can be seen that the Electric Universe model provides a superior environment for the establishment of life than a planet relying on a distant star and having to be self-sufficient for its atmosphere and surface deposits. Such a planet needs to rotate fairly quickly to even out the energy received and must have a small axial tilt for the same reason. It has only a limited range of orbits and eccentricity for life to survive. It also requires that the star maintains a steady radiance over millions of years. This is the Earth's present situation and I believe Prof. Taylor is right in considering the chances for life to have begun and to have survived here are close to zero. If the following sounds like science fiction, so be it. Science fiction writers are far better than experts at predicting future knowledge. What then might be the Earth's history? The distant orbits from the Sun suggest that we were captured along with our Brown Dwarf parent. In the process, the electric power that drove our parent star was usurped by the Sun. As well as turning out the primordial light, the Sun stripped the Earth from its mother's womb along with the Moon. Night fell for the first time and stars appeared. Ice ages began suddenly. The polar caps formed. High latitudes became uninhabitable. It is worth adding that many of the moons, or remaining offspring, of the gas giants have surprisingly icy surfaces and some have atmospheres. Life may have existed once on Mars and some of those moons. The Electric Universe model has almost biological overtones that favor life. In the process of growing in a galactic electromagnetic pinch, stars are prevented from becoming too massive by "budding off" other stars and gas giant planets. Some progeny remain to form binary or multiple star families. Others escape from their parent. All receive their share of energy from the galaxy. The most common stars in the galaxy are also the dimmest, the L-Type Brown Dwarfs. These stars have the "food" required for life present in their atmospheres. Such a dwarf star/gas giant may undergo a nova outburst to eject part of its core to form dense Earth-like planets and moons. If they remain close to the parent they may be enveloped within the "womb" of the stellar anode glow where it seems the principal conditions for life are present. Our search for intelligent life should therefore focus on the faintest close stars in the sky. But there is a problem in relying on radio signals because they cannot pass through the hot plasma of an anode glow. (That could account for the lack of success of SETI so far). It would limit the ability of intelligent creatures living in that environment to know anything about the wider universe since they would not see stars. There would be no incentive for space travel which, in any case, might be a problem through the anode glow region. Maybe we on Earth are almost a "one off", as Dr. Taylor says, to have survived an escape from our stellar cocoon to see the wider universe. If so, I hope we learn to use our privileged position wisely. The most disturbing idea I have left to last: the words used by ancient civilizations that are interpreted today as "the Sun" - like the Egyptian "Ra", the Greek "Helios", and the Roman "Sol" - all originally referred to the gas giant Saturn! Was that planet our primordial parent? Was Saturn until recently a much larger brown dwarf? (The apparent size and color of an electric star is an electrical phenomenon. If Jupiter's magnetosphere were lit up it would appear the size of the full Moon). Was ancient man around to see it as a sun? If not, why would anyone call a faint yellowish speck in the night sky - the Sun? Just how recently did Saturn get its icy ring? Does the discovery that the human race seems to have spread from a handful of survivors in the not so distant past have anything to do with this story? Oddly enough, an interdisciplinary approach can answer many of these questions in surprising detail. But it requires letting go of a lot of "things we know ain't so". The present model of isolated self-powered stars with a family of relatively distant planets gives infinitesimally small windows of opportunity for life to gain a foothold, let alone sustain it for millions of years. An Electric Universe where energy is available to objects throughout the entire volume of a galaxy is an infinitely better environment for life. Faint, dwarf electric stars may be crucial to a radical reassessment of the likelihood of other intelligent life in the universe. Who knows, the Cassini mission to Saturn may be a kind of homecoming? It will return some surprises. Full story with photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_other.htm Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/html/sales.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 PensČe Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. thoth at Whidbey.com New readers are referred to earlier issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the free newsletter page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues. editor of THOTH thoth at whidbey.com