mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL III, No. 11 Aug 15, 1999 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS JUMPING FOR JOY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson COSMIC SYMBOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Dave Talbott RITUAL BALL GAMES . . . Dave Davis, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott IO's AURORAL LIGHTS . . . . . . . NASA: Comments by Wal Thornhill CIRCULAR ORBITS . . . . . . . . by Donald Scott and Wal Thornhill DEFINING PLASMA . . . . . . . . .By Mel Acheson and Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- JUMPING FOR JOY When our son was 2 and 3 and 4, he liked to climb up on high objects-the table, the refrigerator, the roof-and jump into our arms. When we weren't available to "play catch", he would climb up on the chest of drawers and jump onto the bed. He had practiced the bureau-to-bed jump quite a lot when a couple of his friends visited. He persuaded them to climb up on the bureau with him. Firmly taking each one by the hand, he jumped. We took a photo of all three in midair: Our son looked exuberant; one friend looked startled; the other friend looked horrified. What brings this to mind is Halton Arp's mention of telling friends about his discovery of the connected universe: Some were "horrified"; one was "angry." Arp had jumped, and his friends suddenly found themselves falling. Paradigm shifts do that. But talking about paradigms shifting is a cop-out. What's really happening is learning: not the brain-washing that established pedagogy calls learning, but a primal, emotionally-charged, creative process. You experience something you've never felt before. You wrack your brain trying to make sense of it. As you develop each successive idea, you decide it doesn't work. You go back to wracking. It's all highly emotional: You feel sad and glad and mad. In Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies, Arp showed that some quasars were connected to certain active galaxies. In Seeing Red, he adds evidence, more evidence, and much more evidence until nearly every object in the sky is connected, forming two extensive spiral structures. What once were clusters of galaxies and quasars sprinkled into the distance have become the interacting parts of a couple of cosmic swirls in our backyard. The Expanding Universe is cancelled. The Hubble Constant is trashed. The redshift- distance relationship is divorced. The Big Bang is blown away. And clusters of galaxies are illusions spawned by a failure of imagination. ("What else but a Doppler effect," the blind astronomer said, "could redshift be?") It's understandable this could cause surprise or horror or anger. But it can also cause exhilaration, zest, joy. Learning- especially on the level of paradigms-can be fun. All you need do is stand at the edge of all you know and believe. Then jump. ~Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- COSMIC SYMBOLS By Dave Talbott [Exerpted comments from Kronia discussion group] RITES OF KINGSHIP Saturnians didn't invent the "rites of Kings." In their earliest expressions, kingship rites are overwhelmingly COMMEMORATIVE. Same goes for the ritual aspects of war and sacrifice in their earliest documented expressions. The question isn't whether certain motives found in kingship rites (power, cooperation, allegiance, fear, whatever) may have existed among earlier human tribes--that would only require them to have been human. The question is: in the distinctive, heavily documented rituals of kingship, what is being commemorated? You don't have to believe a word of the "Saturnian" explanation to see that there are a hundred recurring patterns focusing on clearly presented cosmic images, including these most obvious motifs-- 1) Celebration of the king as part of a blood-line tracing back to the rule of the central luminary himself, in a golden age; 2) The role of the king as the source of natural abundance (the duty to restore the golden age, or a semblance thereof); 3) The king's symbolic marriage to a mother goddess, identified as the eye-heart-soul of the central luminary; 4) The goddess in her terrible aspect as flaming serpent or dragon, raging in the sky; 5) The role of the king as the warrior-son, born in the eye- heart-soul of the central luminary; 6) The role of the warrior-son in defeating or pacifying the raging serpent-dragon; 7) Assimilation of kingship rites to memories of sweeping cosmic catastrophe, involving the death or ordeal of a primeval, celestial king, whose rejuvenation was synchronous with the regeneration of nature following the catastrophe; 8) Symbolic assimilation of neighboring tribes to the chaos hordes or retinue of the serpent-dragon. These cosmological images, constituting a vast complex of kingship rites, are not present in the prior phases of human history. And the images do not answer to anything in our sky today. Therefore, the verifiable coherence of the images, each inseparably connected to the others, is an issue that cannot be swept aside. THE SPIRAL: The spiral form depicted in the Egyptian eye-glyph is also a part of many other sacred symbols, including glyphs of the White Crown and Red Crown. Nothing in our sky today can begin to represent the power of the idea. The depicted spiral is the vehicle by which the creator-king fashions his dwelling in heaven, the polar enclosure. In the Egyptian system, the spiral means "to fashion or create", in specific reference to the fashioning of the cosmic dwelling. The subject is the spiraling Venus comet, also depicted by the Sumerian pictograph for the goddess Inanna (Venus). The spiraling "tail" (enclosing serpent-dragon) comes to form the enclosure or boundary of the land of the gods. HEAVENLY TWINS IN EGYPT: Shu and Tefnut are two of my favorite mythical figures, and are intimately tied to the differentiation of the unified Atum (something we've discussed at some length in earlier threads). "From one god, I became three," Atum declares. That declaration signifies the birth of Shu and Tefnut, as the unified Atum is transformed into Ra, Shu, and Tefnut. For newcomers unfamiliar with the general thesis, Ra = Saturn, the primeval sun god and creator-king; Tefnut = mother goddess Venus, the central eye- heart-soul of Atum; and Shu = Mars, warrior-hero and unborn child in the womb (i.e., pupil of the eye). In his birth, Shu descends to become the world pillar supporting Atum-Ra. The eye goddess, in turn, spirals out as the uraeus serpent, ultimately coming to form the polar enclosure. The different motifs are summarized in the notebook, "Symbols of an Alien Sky", which presents a series of "snapshots" of the polar configuration, supplemented by numerous ancient drawings and explanatory text. Ancient symbolism was multi-layered. The great mythical motifs were projected onto every available form in nature, be it a local mountain (symbol of the world mountain), or a prominent star group. Most of the diverse figures of the mother goddess and warrior hero are paired in various ways, to represent the cosmic twins in later art. The good and evil brothers, dark and light, male and female, above and below, two faces looking in opposite directions, right and left - all are included in the mix. As I've suggested previously, these motifs are explicable by the concrete play of light and shadow off the polar configuration as the Earth turned on its axis. Hence, I would say that Gemini has a global myth behind it, tying the constellation symbolically to the memory of creation. ---------------------------------------------- RITUAL BALL GAMES Dave Davis, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott DAVE DAVIS: Stecchini claimed that ball games were derived from the idea that the zodiacal band in the sky, 7o on either side of the ecliptic, in which the sun & planets moved, was a celestial ball game, the planets bouncing off the "walls" which bounded the band. He particularly cites the Mayan Chichan Itza arena as based on this idea... any thoughts on this? DWARDU CARDONA: Ball games, especially those once played in Mesoamerica, were definitely celestially inspired. However, I do not accept Stecchini's interpretation. Rather, I assume that these ball games derived from the once shifting planets within the Saturnian configuration. DAVE TALBOTT: Yes indeed, and not to forget that any interpretation of ritual ball games identifying the ricocheting "balls" with planets (Stecchini), is faced with the enigma that in our sky today, planets and stars to not look like spheres. The naked eye simply cannot make out their spherical shape. That planets were, in fact, anciently represented as spheres, is one of the more fundamental levels of evidence that the planets were formerly seen up close and personal. ---------------------------------------------- IO's AURORAL LIGHTS NASA: Comments by Wal Thornhill Auroral lights on Io reveal secrets of jovian moon's atmosphere August 5, 1999 An astronaut landing on the Jovian moon Io would have a harsh environment to deal with, but would be rewarded with the most dazzling auroral light show in the solar system. A current study reveals new information about the moon's red, green and blue auroral lights and how they relate to Io's tenuous atmosphere. Last October, a team of American and Taiwanese space scientists reported their discovery in images taken by the Galileo spacecraft of colorful auroral emissions from Io during eclipse by Jupiter. In tomorrow's issue (Aug. 6) of Science, they publish results from an in-depth study of those images. The tenuous atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Io partially collapses in the darkness of the giant planet's shadow, they now find. At the same time, bright blue glows emanating from stealthy volcanic plumes grow even brighter. "This is our first detailed look at visible aurorae on a solar system satellite", said Paul Geissler of the University of Arizona, lead author of the report. "The pictures help us to understand Io's atmosphere and the processes that generate the emissions." Co-authors of the Science article are Alfred S. McEwen, also with the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Wing Ip of the Taiwan National Central University, Michael J. Belton of National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Torrence V. Johnson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, William H. Smyth of Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Cambridge, Mass., and Andy Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology. Io's aurorae, like those on Earth, are caused by the impact of electrons on atmospheric gasses. Io is bathed by a swarm of charged particles that are trapped by Jupiter's magnetic field, similar to the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding our own planet. In addition, a powerful electric current flows from Io to the poles of Jupiter, caused by an enormous electrical potential some 400,000 volts generated by the motion of the jovian magnetic field past Io. When these electrons collide with the gasses in Io's atmosphere, they set off a dazzling light show of red, green and blue emissions bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. The red and green glows may be caused by neutral oxygen and sodium atoms, respectively, Geissler said. The bright blue emissions are probably due to sulfur dioxide vented from volcanoes on the moon's surface. Some of these plumes are invisible in daylight, owing to a lack of entrained dust particles, and can only be seen during eclipse, he added. The currents cause the gasses to light up, much the same as the glows from florescent lamps. Io's eerie glow dims noticeably with time as the satellite lingers in Jupiter's shadow. The likely explanation, concludes the international team of scientists that analyzed the pictures, is a partial collapse of the moon's atmosphere during eclipse. Some of Io's patchy atmosphere is derived from sulfur dioxide ice on the surface of the satellite that is warmed by the Sun and sublimes (evaporates). This component probably begins to recondense in the absence of sunlight during eclipse. More surprisingly, the blue glows associated with volcanic plumes appear to intensify while Io is in darkness. This may indicate that some of the current flow between Io and Jupiter is conducted through the interior of Io, particularly during periods when the atmospheric conductivity is low. Images and further information are available at URL: http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/hiips/Science COMMENTS BY WAL THORNHILL: The last paragraph is particularly revealing of paradigm paralysis: "More surprisingly, the blue glows associated with volcanic plumes appear to intensify while Io is in darkness. This may indicate that some of the current flow between Io and Jupiter is conducted through the interior of Io, particularly during periods when the atmospheric conductivity is low." The Io volcanic plume paradigm requires that the volcano can only brighten if fed with more energy beneath the surface of the moon. There would be a considerable delay associated with such a mechanism, probably exceeding the duration of the brief eclipse of Jupiter's swiftest moon. The electric arc model is much simpler and would have a response time perfectly in step with the reduction in atmospheric pressure during eclipse. The reason for that deduction is that with decreasing pressure the effective surface area of the Io electrode would diminish. As a consequence the arcs at the hot spots on Io would intensify to carry the same current load. The same phenomenon was observed in the experiment recorded on my CD that modeled the situation on Io (and Europa in the past). As the gas pressure fell the discharge became less diffuse and the bright spots intensified. Note too the insistence that the observed electrical activity between Io and Jupiter forms a closed system. The energy is attributed entirely to conversion of orbital energy through magnetic induction into electrical energy. That is merely an assumption. It is the same assumption that led to the loss of the tethered satellite through unexpected electrical arcing. Obviously no lesson has been learnt from that expensive experiment. Has anyone calculated how long it will take Io to crash into Jupiter if it continues to lose orbital energy at that rate? It makes you wonder how long it can have been a moon of Jupiter according to standard theory. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- CIRCULAR ORBITS by Donald Scott and Wal Thornhill DONALD SCOTT WROTE: It also appears that Jupiter's plasma sheath extends almost all the way to Saturn (much as Venus' does toward Earth). I'm wondering if any more of the planets have plasma sheaths that extend to just short of their next outward neighbor's orbit. If that were the case, it certainly seems consistent with the idea that the electric charge on each planet (together with the electrical potential of the solar plasma at that orbital distance) determines the length of the planet's sheath - and this, in turn, causes circularization and the spacing between the orbits of adjacent planets. WAL SAYS: You have the argument for orbit spacing precisely, but I consider it to be a secondary effect. There would also seem to be a primary mechanism at work where the annual charge exchange with the solar plasma sheet is smoothed out. Comets are an extreme example of varying charge exchange throughout an orbit and we know that they exhibit so-called non-gravitational accelerations. I have suggested that those accelerations *are* due to gravity but that it is gravity itself that is changing as a result of strong charge exchange with the solar plasma. Such an orbit circularising mechanism would be more powerful since it operates continually and not just when planets are in line with the Sun. It would explain the near circular orbit of Jupiter since any effect from Mars would be negligible. Also the number of oppositions of the outer gas giants since the proposed Saturnian system breakup, ca. 10,000 years ago, would be quite small. So you might expect their orbital eccentricities to be much higher if they were involved and the mechanism you mentioned was the only one to cause circularisation of orbits. ---------------------------------------------- DEFINING PLASMA By Mel Acheson and Wal Thornhill MEL SAID: . . . the taken-for-granted textbook definition of a plasma as an ionized gas. Some semanticist (or politician) once said, "He who controls the definitions of words controls the culture." There's something to that, at least as far as paradigm shifts go. So why accept the established definition, especially in view of the dichotomy that's developed between magnetohydrodynamics (MHD = ionized gas behavior in magnetic fields) and Alfven's repudiation of his own discovery that started all that? It seems to me the most important aspects of a plasma are the electrical structures and dynamics, the properties of pinching, filamentation, characteristic velocities, sheaths, etc. The ionized gas is the medium or maybe the by-product. If you start with the gas, you end up with--MHD. Taking a cue from Reich, who replaced the ideational focus of psychoanalysis with a focus on bodily energetics, plasma might be better explained by focussing on the structure and dynamics of the energy and regarding the ionized gas as incidental. WAL RESPONDS: Absolutely. Plasma physics papers are sprinkled with phrases like "we don't fully understand ..." so I believe the way ahead for plasma cosmology is on the basis of pattern matching between effects seen in the lab and in the atmosphere and out there in deep space. Alfven made a special point about the enormous scalability of plasma phenomena. No one seems to have been paying attention. It raises an interesting possibility that plasma effects are repeated in some sense at the subatomic level. Mel: For one thing, it opens the question of whether there can be such a thing as a "solid-state" plasma, or "cold" plasma, or "non- ionized" plasma. In the late 1800s (I think), Birkeland traveled to the Arctic and measured the electric field under auroral streamers. He found "stringy things" (modern technical term) impinging on the ground--Birkeland currents from aurora to ground. WAL: I would like to see a reference to this info please. MEL gives references: It was in _THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED_, pg. 178. The story starts, however, on pg. 177: Quote: In 1903, in order to raise funds for his planned expedition, he [Birkeland] organized a public demonstration of his biggest gun. In a large hall he pointed the gun at a three-inch-thick plank of wood and explained its operation to the assembled crowd.... He later described what followed: "'Ladies and Gentlemen,' I said, 'you may be seated. When I pull that switch, you will not see or hear anything except that slam of the projectile against the target.' With this I pulled the switch. There was a flash, a deafening and hissing noise, a bright arc of light due to three thousand amperes being short-circuited and a flame shot out of the cannon. Some of the ladies shrieked and a moment later there was panic. It was the most dramatic moment of my life. With this shot, I shot my stock from 300 to zero. But the projectile hit the bull's eye." Unquote. In the next year, Birkeland collaborated with Sam Eyde to build giant sparking machines to produce fertilizer. He used the profits to pay for expeditions to study auroras. p. 178: "Birkeland's measurements showed that the magnetic fields generated by the aurora are so localized on the ground that they can only have been produced by nearly vertical currents--aligned along the magnetic field of the earth. By studying the correlation of magnetic storms on earth with the rotation of sunspot groups on the sun, he also confirmed the source of the charged particles, and estimated quite accurately their speed--around 1,000 km/sec. "In the succeeding decade Birkeland generalized his theory of the aurora to other astronomical phenomena, asserting that sunspots, Saturn's rings, and even the formation of galaxies can be explained by electrical currents and magnetic fields moving through the tenuous conducting gasses of space. In 1904 he wrote that 'space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds.' For the first time, he had glimpsed the plasma universe." MEL AGAIN: An epistemological/psychological note here: Notice that Birkeland_measured_ magnetic field strengths, _reasoned_ that they were produced by "vertical currents", then adds the unwarranted "aligned along the magnetic field of the earth." The (unasked) question: Do the currents produce the magnetism, or does the magnetism produce (align) the currents? is co-opted by the inserted assumption of the primacy of magnetism. And to this day astronomers talk about magnetism but mention currents as occurring only in small, localized patches that are induced by the magnetism. Perhaps it's because we can easily detect magnetic fields, but electric fields are practically invisible, especially if you're inside them (like a bird on a wire). Anyway, this business of assuming (unconsciously) the primacy of magnetism when we _know_ "it's electro-magnetism, stupid" is paradigm paralysis at work: The good part is that you can get up in the morning without having to invent a new way to tie your shoes. The bad part is that you will never invent a new way to tie your shoes. So where do you want to go today?! MEL has more questions: What happened to them (Birkeland currents) in the ground? How does this connect with Tesla's measurements of earth currents? The energy must form a circuit, so the earth currents must connect back somehow with the upper end of the auroral streamers. WAL has answers: Not necessarily. Juergens struck the same question regarding electric stars. What happens when the bucket is full? He proposed that the galaxy is becoming more electrified continuously. That fits neatly with Arp's discovery of quantised redshift jumps by galaxies as they evolve and my interpretation of that as the addition of electrons via Birkeland current strings between the parent galaxy and its offspring. If such a model is correct, planets will also need to continuously adjust by accepting charge too. All of this, of course, raises interesting questions about the ultimate fate of galaxies. MEL: The nature of plasma energy is to form filaments, so the currents in the earth must be filamentary, like the Lichtenberg patterns left after a lightning stroke. (See the excavated fulgurites in Plates XLII to XLIV of The Lightning Book by Viemeister.) The conventional assumption is that the energy diffuses into the earth, but there's evidence to the contrary: Mountain climbers are warned to avoid hiding from storms not only under tall trees but under rock overhangs (lightning striking the peak has been known to appear quite some distance away between an overhang and the rock below). And a local telephone company had to dig a trench through one town and bury a conductor because the ground wouldn't carry a return current from one side of town to the other. The principle is that the orderliness is in the energy, not in the matter. This would have to be verified by experiment. But on the most general level, if matter is one form of ordering of energy, the assumption of materialism is in the untenable position of trying to explain all other forms of ordering of energy in terms of the one--explaining a universal in terms of one instantiation--sort of like explaining trees and animals and air in terms of rocks. One footnote to this idea of changing focus is the mention (further on in The Electric Universe) that thunderstorms provide convenient paths to ground for ionospheric discharges, resulting in the elves and sprites recently discovered above the storms. What if it's the other way around? In the process of establishing a path to ground, the discharge generates a thunderstorm? WAL: Of course, it is quite possible that an increased atmospheric electric field predisposes toward cloud formation and subsequent storm activity. A high atmospheric electric field can create an upward "electric wind" from high points on the Earth's surface. It is interesting that most electrical storms occur over land rather than the oceans, despite the fact that salt water is a great electrical conductor. The relative flatness of water surfaces may have a lot to do with that. It seems to me that the fact that storms preferentially form over certain land areas may have as much to do with the electrical characteristics of the bedrock as with micro-climatic effects. You mention one example concerning a telephone company. Some areas (like here in Canberra) are notoriously bad for propagating radio signals. That is another manifestation of the same kind of thing. Electrical discharges initiate from high points on a surface so increasing the height, roughness and conductivity of a surface will predispose toward lightning storms. Another influence comes from the shape of the current streams circling through the ionosphere which gives rise to some of the latitudinal preferences of storms. ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.ames.net/aeon/ 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/ Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée 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. ---