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THOTH
A Catastrophics Newsletter
VOL III, No. 16
Dec 1, 1999
EDITOR: Amy Acheson
PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong
LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart
CONTENTS
CLOSING THE GAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Amy Acheson
MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE part III . . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott
CATASTROPHIC WORD ORIGINS . . . . . . . . . Kroniatalk Discussion
THE ABSURDITY OF NEUTRON STARS . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill
----------------------------------------------
CLOSING THE GAP
By Amy Acheson
When Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision was published, in
1950, the mention of catastrophism in any form was anathema to
science. Ideas have changed rapidly since then. Plate tectonics
and the Spokane floods have crept into geology. Punctuated
equilibrium and mass extinctions by asteroid impact have become
fashionable. It's no longer beyond the scope of science to see
the destruction of Atlantis in a Mediterranean volcano or Noah's
deluge in the sudden filling of the Black Sea. A fast-growing
contingent of astronomers are concerned with the perils of Earth-
crossing asteroids. Galactic collisions and pole flips, albeit
billions-of-years-ago, are common threads in modern
science.
But the gap between Velikovsky and orthodox science still looks
formidable. After all, Velikovsky said that planets moved in
different orbits within the memory of humanity. Surely orthodox
science will never reconsider a hypothesis that absurd.
Let's not be so hasty. Here's part of a press release dated
Nov. 19, 1999:
"Jupiter's fiery moon Io is providing scientists with a
window on volcanic activity and colossal lava flows similar
to those that raged on Earth eons ago, thanks to new
pictures and data gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft...
... Dr. Torrence Johnson, Galileo project scientist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA
[said], "Io is the next best thing to traveling back in
time to Earth's earlier years. It gives us an opportunity
to watch, in action, phenomena long dead in the rest of the
solar system".
By conventional dating, the press release defined the term "eons
ago" with this phrase: "The last comparable lava eruption on
Earth occurred 15 million years ago." Any catastrophic event of
global proportions could drastically shorten that date. They're
talking about very recent history in terms of planet Earth, about
lava flows in which North American rhinoceroses were trapped.
The activity on Jupiter's fiery moon Io is due to its unusual
orbit, in close proximity to the electrical and gravitational
fields of the gas giant, Jupiter. The convergent mythical record
of human cultures around the world remembers the gas giants
Saturn as dominating the Earth's sky before it fled or was driven
away. Has the time come to consider the possibility that there is
a connection between these two statements, one the latest
scientific observation and the other the oldest story known?
Amy Acheson
thoth at whidbey.com
----------------------------------------------
MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE part III
By Dave Talbott
More than once I've expressed the belief that the echoes of an
original unity pervade our language. The patterns, however, will
not be recognized until one sees the true source of the unity in
a planetary configuration. My contention has been that this
configuration was an obsessive focus of human attention in the
crucial phase of language formulation.
To illustrate the point it may be useful to go back to the "first
condition", the earliest-remembered time and the concepts which
it inspired. These integrated concepts were reflected in written
language at its inception and, as a whole, they cannot be
understood apart from the Saturn model. Prior assumptions of
historians, anthropologists, and etymologists cannot account for
the complex of meanings attached to those ancient words
describing the primeval condition, the age of Saturn.
Keeping to the most fundamental concepts, here are some of the
archetypal themes one might explore in relation to the language
of the First Time: Chaos, Water, Seed, Sky, Formlessness, One,
All, Unity, Conjunction, Rest, Peace, Whole, Holy, Universe,
Wheel, Cycle, Becoming, Turning, Time, Heaven, High, Hollow,
Void, Chasm, Yawning.
This may look like a rather long list, and yet the underlying
principles are both simple and unified.
The age of Saturn means the transition from primeval chaos to
order, from non-differentiation to diversity, from formlessness
to form, from inactivity to activity, from no-time to time, from
a pre-dawn glow to a cycle of day and night. That is what the
archetypal "creation" myth is about, and Saturn is the creator-
king. But the meanings of the ancient words need to be
clarified. What does "formless" mean, for example? What does
"chaos", or its "yawning" aspect, mean? Present experience
offers no basis for visualizing any of these concepts in terms of
the archaic STORY itself.
As interpreted by the Saturn model, these concepts are vitally
connected, and it is only to be expected that the concepts would
be embedded in the meanings of ancient words--even the building
blocks of language itself--and carried forward to retain at least
some of the archaic nuances even into modern times. Where this
has occurred the observed patterns will appear anomalous.
That doesn't mean that you can decipher the connections by simply
tracking down the roots of the English words. In fact, some of
the root meanings behind the English words listed here would
immediately mislead you. Our words "heaven" and "high", for
example, will trace to more archaic words relating to the
"heaping up" of a "hill" or "mountain", and that could be
confusing if you are not already quite familiar with the model.
So too, our word "sky" will trace to ancient concepts of a watery
"cloud" which is extremely significant to the model but can leave
one confused if the model is not clear.
Instead of taking on the whole list in one shot, I'll start with
a few of the basics.
CHAOS AND THE RISE OF NEGATIVES. The earliest-remembered
condition is the state of "not". That is the most fundamental
meaning behind the words that are translated as "chaos", and it
provides the first tier in an evolving ancient language of
negatives. It means the condition out of which an exemplary
order, the model for all sacred order, arose. The negative state
of chaos must be interpreted specifically in terms of the
contrast between that state and what followed. It is the
condition before motion, activity, differentiation, time, order,
form. The Saturn model defines this as an EXPERIENCED condition
of the world, not a primitive speculation on "how it all began".
Hence, if language arose from these experiences in the direct and
literal sense we are claiming, the root meanings of negatives
should reveal the remarkable nuances of this earliest condition-
though we certainly would not expect these embedded meanings
under the normal theories of language formation.
There is no malice, evil, or suffering implied by this original
state of chaos, just an "absence of", in contrast to the distinct
attributes of the revered order emerging from chaos. In the
Egyptian creation accounts, this negative condition is applied to
both the creator and the primeval "waters" of chaos. The god
emerges from the waters, and the waters from which he appears are
his own essence. The creator (Atum, Re, Khepera) recalls his
original "state of inactivity" and the "inert watery mass" of his
"father" Nu (with which he himself was closely identified). He
was "alone" in these cosmic waters. He "had no companion" to work
with him. And in this state of "not" he had "no resting place".
There is a great deal of meaning in these images of the cosmic
waters, and perhaps we can return to certain details later. The
relationship of Atum to this original state of "not" is
emphasized by the fact that the hieroglyphs used for his name,
_tem_ mean (among other things) "not".
You see this relationship most prominently in the use of the n-
sound (secondarily, the m-sound) in the hieroglyphic system. The
essence of the formless god is "water", which appears in both a
singular and a plural sense. The waters are the undifferentiated
"plurality" of the unified state, the primeval condition of
"not". These are, in fact, the core meanings of the hieroglyph
for the n-sound, which is a simple wavy line. The meanings are
expressed explicitly through all of the common n-roots in the
hieroglyphic system-n, ni, an, nu, nun, na, enen, nini, and a
large number of variants: primeval waters, undifferentiated
plurality, negative state prior to "creation"..
PRIMAL UNITY: THE "ONE" AND THE "ALL". The creator-god
personifies the state of undifferentiated "chaos", but emerges
from that state in an event called "creation". Originally, he
appears as a solitary god, called "the god One" in the Egyptian
texts. He is the "all-containing" god, though other powers are
clearly present within him as latent potential. "I came into
being of myself in the midst of the Primeval Waters", states the
god in the Book of the Dead. More than once the Coffin Texts
recall the time when Atum "was alone, before he had repeated
himself" (referring to the process of subsequent
differentiation). He "was alone in the Primeval Waters", the
texts say. "I was the Primeval Waters, he who had no companion
when my name came into existence". (As I will note in a
subsequent post, the "name" coming into existence is nothing else
than the gods created "form", and only this celebrated form will
make sense of the statement that the god was previously "without
form" and without a visible "name".)
Atum can thus be translated (and IS often translated) as "the
All" in the fundamental sense of the original Unity holding all
that was later differentiated in the creation. The Greek Ouranos
is "all-containing heaven", as is his counterpart, the Hindu
Varuna. The name of the Sumerian creator An (Akkadian Anu) is
translated "heaven", but An contains within himself the divine
male and female powers which are subsequently highly active as
independent powers.
It would be absurd, therefore, to separate the Egyptian concept
of the "god One" from the related idea of "the All", and we
should expect any language tracing to these concepts to reflect
the underlying equation. The original condition of "heaven"
(when "heaven was close to the earth") means literally the
visible sphere of the universal sovereign in the beginning. The
Saturn model interprets this as the gas giant looming huge in the
sky, extremely close to the Earth. The planetary system moved
through a gaseous, highly electrified environment, viewed
imaginatively as cosmic "waters". Insofar as this environment
reflected ambient light of the Sun, it was experienced only as a
diffuse and benign glow--a shimmering, water-like cloud from
which the gas giant appeared to emerge.
CREATION. All myths relating to what arose from chaos are
"creation" myths, perhaps the most misunderstood concept in all
of world mythology. It is the creation that produces the First
Time or "beginning" of time, form, and motion--events which occur
in direct relationship to the emergence of secondary powers from
the unified god.
Atum, the All, spits out or exhales the female power Tefnut and
the masculine power Shu--"and from one god I became three", he
says. (This is the specific meaning of the reference above to
when the god "repeated himself".) The "three" are Atum-Re (the
archaic "sun" god, whom we now know to be Saturn), the god Shu
(first form of the warrior-hero, identifiable astronomically with
Mars) and the goddess Tefnut (first form of the divine mother,
the planet Venus).
For the concepts listed above to begin to make sense, we only
need to understand the idea which underlies Saturn's identity as
the primeval "Unity"--
CONJUNCTION. Here again we have a fundamental concept that is
either misunderstood or completely overlooked in common
treatments of the creation legend. The "unity" of the creator-
king cannot be separated from the principle of conjunction. In
his original unified state Atum has a single, central eye, which
means the goddess prior to differentiation. The eye has a
"pupil" which is the unborn warrior hero. But the experts have
not considered the principle of conjunction because they are
seeing neither the ancient concepts nor the language in the
concrete terms explicitly given by the ancient texts themselves.
[For an illustration of the planetary conjunction in one of its
most prominent phases, go to: www.kronia.com and click on the
"Saturn theory" on the left menu.]
The primeval conjunction means first and foremost the visible
alignment of celestial powers (Saturn, Venus, Mars, extremely
close to the earth) producing the image of a unified, "all-
containing" power in the sky, a god standing "alone" in the
cosmic waters. Even after differentiation of these powers, they
continue to stand in conjunction, though the alignment is then
more dynamic, the activity of goddess and hero revealing a marked
contrast to the more passive, "resting" quality of the sovereign
himself. The primary powers, together with a company of lesser
lights, "gather" or stand "together" in the sky--a "congregation"
of gods, or divine "assembly". As such they are attributes or
aspects of the unified creator-king, remembered as his own
radiant "limbs". Apart from the principle of conjunction or
"standing together", the concepts are entirely meaningless.
Since there are so many lines of potential linguistic inquiry we
might pursue, I'll limit my initial comments to the five core
ideas listed below, which I believe are still evident in our
language today: Before we take up some of the related words, it
will be helpful to be sure that the archaic concepts we claim to
be still reflected in modern language are clear:
1. ONE. Original relationship of the number one to the concept
"the whole" rather than to the counting of separate items or
units of anything.
2. ALL. Relationship of the root concept "all" to "one" and
"unity".
3. NO, NOT. Foundation of the negative in the original unity.
4. CONJUNCTION. Relationship of the original unity to
"gathered" or "joined" powers, subsequently differentiated.
(Again, the mythical "Great Conjunction" of Saturn's golden
age IS the unity of the sovereign god.)
5. PRIMEVAL CONDITION. The subject is a former world. The
universally-remembered condition no longer exists.
We also need to put an exclamation point to the contrast between
the principles suggested here and all conventional suppositions.
It is commonly assumed, for example, that one of the primary
catalysts for language development was the act of counting. In
contrast, I will suggest that the language of numbers possesses
such a direct relationship to imagery of an evolving planetary
configuration as to entirely discredit the common view.
Moreover, once discerned, the original pattern will leap out from
our own language today, despite the millennia of evolution and
fragmentation which preceded it. Consider these English words
and roots, and the five-fold pattern suggested above should
become quite obvious to you--
The English indefinite article _a_ is a phonetic variant of _an_
derived from the Old English _an_ meaning "one", German _ein_,
Latin _unus_, Greek _oine_
Our word _unity_ comes from the Latin _un(us)_, "one",
"together", "joined". As a general rule the language of the
number "one" appears to be derived from the language of "the all"
or the whole, not from the counting of separate "things". Our
word _unit_ is said to be a back formation from _unity_;
_integer_ comes from the Latin word meaning "whole" (as seen in
our word _integral_, "belonging to the whole"). I am also quite
confident that our words _single_ and _number_ both trace back to
concepts relating to the undifferentiated "all" rather than to
any primitive idea of counting--"one of this and two of that",
etc. The word _alone_ is derived from Middle English _al one_,
"all (whole) one". (I'll take up our word "sole" shortly and
suggest a similar relationship. The archaic reference, I
believe, will be the primeval, unified power who "stands alone".)
The English prefix _an-_ is borrowed from Latin and means "not",
"without", "lacking". Our prefix _un_, is akin to Latin _in_
Greek _an_ meaning "not". _Un_ is also a prefix meaning to
reverse, remove, or deprive, akin to the Old English _and_, Latin
_ante_, Greek _anti_, and Sanskrit _anti_, "opposite of",
"against". Thus, the meanings include both a negative condition
and a "return" to a negative condition from something that is
"ordered", as in "un-do" (As I said above, the original state of
formlessness, prior to the emergence of the created "order", is
negative, but with no sense of violence or catastrophe. The un-
doing of creation, the "return to chaos", is invariably
catastrophic. But we'll get to that.)
The roots _anti_ and _ante_ also mean "before", "prior".
The word _conjunction_, Latin _conjunctus_, from the root
_jungere_, means "to unite", "to be joined or yoked as one".
We use the Latin word _ana_ for information placed "together",
items constituting a coherent whole (as in Americana), i.e., the
"conjunction" principle.
Our word _and_ is the German _und_, the Sanskrit _anti_. We call
the word a "conjunction", and the word itself MEANS "together
with", or the conjunction of two or more parts of a whole. (Other
words called "conjunctions"--but, or, nor, for, so, yet, while--
do indeed join thoughts in a sentence, but the words themselves
do not MEAN a joining in the more direct sense of "and".)
For the time being, at least, I do not propose to follow the
various lineages backward to establish a more complete and
definitive profile. It should be sufficient to note that there
is simply no way to separate the meanings of these words and
roots from the listed five principles relating to the "original
condition".
Obviously this fact does not require one to believe that the
roots are all connected (though some of the connections would be
beyond dispute, such as the kinship of our words _one_ and
_unity_). What about the relationship of our word _one_ to the
Latin roots _an_ and _in_, with the meaning "not"? Of the
original kinship I am highly confident, but if anyone knows of
verifiable facts which would discredit the proposed relationship
I'd like to hear from them. The fact that the Sanskrit _anti_
mean "and", but also the negative, certainly provides a clue,
The relationship to the Latin _anti_, _ante_, in reference to
PRIOR conditions or events, or an undoing to return to a prior
condition, should also be investigated.
The point here is that patterns which will appear meaningless in
the absence of the Saturn model may become highly meaningful as
one explores the implications of the model. And if exploration
lends support to common lineages, two crucial questions arise:
1) can you see anything in the familiar natural world which might
have prompted the full complex of relationships? 2) if you grant
the Saturn model, would you EXPECT such relationships?
----------------------------------------------
CATASTROPHIC WORD ORIGINS
A Kroniatalk Discussion
Roger Wescott said (previously):
... The word "comma" has a root "kop" ("to strike or mark"). So
there is a semantic connection with "apostrophe" et al., even
though that connection isn't morphological. All best! --Roger
To which Mark Newbrook responded:
WHY ARE SEMANTIC CONNECTIONS IMPORTANT IF WORDS ARE NOT COGNATE
OR OTHERWISE MORPHOLOGICALLY CONNECTED? I SUPPOSE RW MEANS
MERELY THAT THESE WORDS WERE AT SOME TIME IN THE SAME SEMANTIC
FIELD (WHEN USED MORE 'LITERALLY'?) - WHICH IS NOT WITHOUT
INTEREST.
DAVE TALBOTT:
>From the vantage point of the Saturn model, I suspect that
semantic relationships were originally much broader and more
complex than generally supposed, but progressively narrowed due
to distance from the original celestial references. It was these
original references which made the complexity meaningful. The
respective fields would include a broad range of meanings linked
to identifiable celestial forms and events which are no longer
visible. This is a point that needs to be illustrated
concretely, and a few days ago I offered an example with respect
to the "omphalos/umbilicus" and the shadow effect on Mars. Here
the integrated meanings include the center, navel, nave, knob or
boss, shadow, dark, red. The connections as a whole are not
prompted by natural experience familiar to us today, but they
would be expected under the Saturn theory.
Dave Talbott (previously):
The meaning of the root _kop_ to strike, brings the _comma_ into
alignment symbolically with the Great Star/Great Comet Venus,
though I would add the sense of the "break" in a linear sequence,
which is the effect of both the comma and the coma (comet).
Mark Newbrook:
IS THIS MEANT SERIOUSLY? A DOUBLE MEANING FOR comma (ON WHAT
EVIDENCE) AND AN ETYMOLOGICAL LINK WITH coma/comet (DITTO)?
Not a "double" meaning. A triple meaning (for starters), which I
interpret as a reflection of broader semantic relationships than
generally imagined. If my underlying assumption is correct we
should find many instances in which, enigmatically, quite
different roots carry forward the SAME complex of nuances.
Here, the nuances would be: 1) to strike, 2) a break in a
sequence, and 3) a spiraling or turning stroke or mark. In the
symbolism of the Great Star/Great Comet these concepts are
inseparably connected. I find it significant, therefore, that
both the comet and comma reflect the same complex of ideas or
functions, despite the fact that natural experience today seems
to offer little or no support for the integrated meanings. I
also SUSPECT an etymological connection of _kop_(comma) and _kom_
(coma, comet). I've suggested privately to others that we should
look for the possibility of an archaic feminine and masculine
relationship between the two roots, reflecting the relationship
between the masculine and feminine aspects of the Great Star.
Remember that the archetypal "star" represents the conjunction of
Mars and Venus--the masculine is lodged within the feminine, then
separates to become an independent power. Since both
conjunction and separation (the famous "birth of the hero", for
example) are so prominent in the symbolism of the hero and
goddess, I simply cannot believe that language would fail to
reflect this relationship in very fundamental ways. On this
question I'll have a lot more to say and am prepared to voice a
hundred "suspicions" that may or may not prove fruitful.
Roger Wescott (private note):
Dave, linguists who recognize consonantal apophony accept kop-
and kom- as related, like pa/ma or skip/skim in English.
DAVE
This revelation accords so well with my original suspicions that
I would like to pursue the connection further, with specific
reference to the feminine and masculine nuances of the Great
Star. The radiating "splendor" of the Great Star is the _kom_,
generally a feminine principle. Is it possible that the goddess'
counterpart, the warrior-hero, might reveal an archaic
relationship to _kop_ as the head, the one who wears the _kom_ as
hair, headdress, or crown, and wields the _kom_ as a weapon or
emblem of power and authority? When you think about it, it's hard
not to notice that the p- and m- sounds do seem to carry
respective masculine and feminine associations (as in pa and ma
for that matter). So my first guess would be that the principle
of apophany Roger noted did indeed have its reference in the
conjunction of male and female aspects in the Great Star.
>From Pam Hanna:
One small comment on Dave T's article which I wanted to mention
- about the word "sacred" - not to contradict "holy" &
"wholeness" but to insert that 'sacer' (from my Partridge 'Word
Origins') has 3 important full compounds: 'sacerdos' a priest;
'sacrificium,' an offering to a god; 'sacrilegus,' a stealer of
sacred things. Sacerdotal, sacristy, sacrament, - all relate to
sacrifice, i.e. sacred does mean 'holy' and may mean 'wholeness,'
but i believe the wholeness would derive from sacrifice. The
priest is sacrificer, and he sacrifices in the sacristy which is
holy because that's where he sacrifices. "Sacramentus" is "...a
deposit made to the Gods, hence, from the accompanying oath...."
Hyam Maccoby stressed this . . . in *The Sacred Executioner.*
And i believe it relates directly to Catastrophic word origins.
We've already established that one of the human reactions to the
polar configuration was to initiate blood sacrifice. They
couldn't feel holy and whole without blood sacrifice, que no?
Dave Talbott said:
More than once I've expressed the belief that the echoes of an
original unity pervade our language. The patterns, however, will
not be recognized until one sees the true source of the unity in
a planetary configuration. My contention has been that this
configuration was an obsessive focus of human attention in the
crucial phase of language formulation.
Dave said previously:
So you have to ask yourself two crucial questions: 1) can you see
anything in the familiar natural world which might have prompted
the full complex of relationships? 2) if you grant the Saturn
model, would you EXPECT such relationships?
Amy again:
The answer to the first question, "can you see anything ... ?"
depends on the viewpoint (paradigm again) from which you're
looking. From a uniformist paradigm, the definition of evolution
precludes the possibility of sudden change. Although that
viewpoint is changing, even from within the walls of mainstream
academia. Concepts like Stephen J Gould's "punctuated
equilibrium" and Forese Carlo Wezel's "anastrophic speciation"
are eroding the "gradualist" paradigm.
These concepts may be a stone's away throw from the catastrophist
viewpoint, but they don't actually throw the stone. They say
"sudden evolutionary changes", they say "following catastrophic
extinctions", they say "species appear fully-formed and there is
very little change once the species stabilize". But what they
mean is that the same almost-unnoticed gradual changes took place
"remarkably fast", over hundreds of years, rather than millions.
Many catastrophists use more radical concepts. Ev Cochrane feels
that only something as immediate as "Larmarckian" would be able
to cope with catastrophic change. Charles Ginenthal suggests
metamorphosis. I am willing to settle for "parallel mutation"
(it's been demonstrated in fruit flies under laboratory
conditions), which means speciation in a single generation under
catastrophic conditions. Or a combination of the above (life is
polymorphous, after all.)
So let's go on to Dave's second question, "if you grant the
Saturn model," what would I expect to find in the biological
sphere? Spoken language is an intricate part of Homo sapiens.
It involves several complex phenomena, including a "hard-wired"
grammar function and a unique placement of the human larynx, plus
probably more things I'm not aware of. All of the above, or one
crucial component, could have appeared at once in many members of
the Homo sapiens predecessor.
If I grant the Saturn model, I would expect to find clusters of
Homo sapiens inventing language for the first time under the most
dreadful of situations -- the world has changed around them, and
they are desperate to find out why, remember the way it was
before, deal with the new conditions, keep it from happening
again. I would expect to find what Dave suggests; that most,
maybe all, of human language would be connected to the event
which also triggered the ability to speak.
Michael Armstrong adds:
. . . the above paragraph mirrors my conception of what
happened. The evidence suggests that oral language arose
suddenly, not from a previous "mother" or proto-language but from
radically new conditions, needs and context, and arose in the
context of a crucially dramatic shared experience.
----------------------------------------------
THE ABSURDITY OF NEUTRON STARS
By Wal Thornhill
Nowhere is the gravitational paradigm of cosmology shown to
exhibit more strangeness than in compact high energy phenomena in
deep space. A report in the journal Nature of 15 November
proposes that a recently discovered star "is made of an exotic
stuff called 'strange matter', never yet seen on Earth". In other
words, it may be a "strange star". This bizarre suggestion comes
out of the mathematics describing stars that generate rapid
pulses of radiation, commonly called "pulsars". The x-ray pulses
are thought to be due to a rotating beam of x-rays that flashes
toward the Earth once per revolution like a cosmic lighthouse.
See picture at:
http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_strange.htm
This seemingly simple model began to show signs of strain many
years ago when the first millisecond pulsar was discovered. In
order to flash (rotate) several times a second a pulsar would
need to be very compact indeed, only a few kilometres in
diameter. But to generate x-rays gravitationally requires an
extreme concentration of matter to accelerate particles to a
sufficiently high energy so that when they strike the star x-rays
are produced. The only objects that theoretically meet that
requirement are neutron stars and black holes. Both kinds of
object are well outside our experience.
The discovery now of an x-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 (J1808 for
short), located in the constellation of Sagittarius, that flashes
every 2.5 thousandths of a second (that is 24,000 RPM!) goes way
beyond the red-line even for a neutron star. So another ad hoc
requirement is added to the already long list - this pulsar must
be composed of something even more dense than packed neutrons -
strange matter!
When astrophysicists are having difficulty with their models they
traditionally turn for rescue to the nuclear physicists. (They
were called in to explain away the missing solar neutrinos).
The news report goes on: "The most fundamental building blocks of
nuclear matter are thought to be particles called quarks. The
'regular' nuclear particles or 'nucleons' - protons and neutrons
- are composed of 'up' and 'down' quarks: two up quarks and a
down quark make one proton, while a neutron consists of two downs
and an up. But there are at least four other, more exotic, kinds
of quark, amongst them the so-called 'strange' quark. In
nucleons, quarks are supposed to exist in inseparable groups of
three, which is why no one has ever seen an isolated quark. But
at extremely high densities of matter, quarks may become
uncoupled or 'deconfined'. 'Strange matter' is a melange of
deconfined up, down and strange quarks. Physicists are hoping
that the new particle colliders currently under construction,
such as the Larger Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, will create
conditions extreme enough to break quarks free. But the Universe
may have got there first. X.-D. Li of Nanjing University, China,
and colleagues' suggestion that J1808 is a strange star follows a
small number of similar proposals for other astrophysical objects
that emit bursts of X-rays. The X-ray bursts from these objects
are signs of violent activity of a sort that becomes possible
only when matter is pushed to extremes."
Wal Thornhill comments:
I think J R Saul highlighted the language problem we are seeing
here when he wrote, "Ten geographers who think the world is flat
will tend to reinforce each other's errors. If they have a
private dialect in which to do this, it becomes impossible for
outsiders to disagree with them. Only a sailor can set them
straight. The last person they want to meet is someone who, freed
from the constraints of expertise, has sailed around the world."
J R Saul, Voltaire's Bastards.
The Nobel Laureate, Irving Langmuir, coined the term
"pathological science" for "the science of things that aren't
so".
Two key symptoms of such science are:
(1) the resort to fantastic theories contrary to our
experience, and
(2) the use of ad-hoc requirements to save the appearances.
If we apply these criteria, two disciplines that share line
honours for pathological or strange science are cosmology and
particle physics. They both deal with unseen objects - neutron
stars, black holes, quarks, etc. They both produce fantastic ad-
hoc requirements to explain new discoveries - dark matter, super-
heavy objects and exotic particles. They cross-infect each other
with their theoretical requirements both to save appearances and
convince governments to spend large sums of research money for
super-colliders to replay bits of a hypothetical Big Bang, or to
build gravity-wave telescopes when we have no proof such waves
exist. The above report brings such strange science sharply into
focus.
It is not ordinary matter, but scientific models that are being
pushed to extremes. Einstein warned: "Most mistakes in philosophy
and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol
for reality". Neutron stars and quarks have never been seen. They
are derived from mathematical symbols. Let's take quarks first.
There is little to suggest that any of the shrapnel from high
energy colliders exists in normal matter. If enormous energy is
spent in shattering a proton to unlock the hypothetical quarks
then the energy itself may manifest as particles that don't play
any part in ordinary matter. Flying a 747 into a mountainside and
picking over the ruins is not the best way of finding out how an
aircraft works. Suggesting that a star can be composed stably of
unobserved particles simply because a theory of invisible, super-
heavy objects demands it is asking too much!
Here are some of the many unstated assumptions underpinning the
X-ray pulsar model:
1. It is assumed that the physics of neutral matter and ideal
gases on Earth can be used to explain the operation of the
glowing balls of plasma we call stars.
Wal: 99.999% of the universe is made of plasma. It is not
necessarily electrically neutral and does not behave like an
ideal gas.
2. It is assumed that all interstellar plasma is mostly an
ionized, uncharged, superconducting gas that can trap and carry
magnetic fields.
Wal: Plasma is not a superconductor so magnetic fields cannot
be trapped in it. The origin of the magnetic fields is not clear
from standard theory. The Electric Universe proposes that
magnetic fields and plasma filaments in space are formed by
electrical currents in charged plasma. (No book on astronomy
mentions electrical effects).
3. It is assumed that we understand how our Sun and other stars
shine, evolve, and someday die or form neutron stars.
Wal: We do not understand the Sun's magnetic field, the hot
corona, solar wind, solar cycle, x-ray variability, coronal mass
ejections, sunspots, low neutrino count, etc., etc.
4. It is assumed that we understand what causes a supernova
explosion.
Wal: The number of ad hoc assumptions required for a mechanical
explosion following a sudden stellar implosion results in a
highly unlikely explanation. SN1987A showed that such explosions
are not spherically symmetrical.
5. It is assumed that a supernova can "squeeze" stellar protons
and electrons together to form neutrons.
Wal: A first-order wild conjecture. The model incorporates many
unproven assumptions about the unseen internal structure of
stars. If the implosion is not spherically symmetrical there may
be insufficient "squeeze" to force protons and electrons to
merge, even if that were possible. No account is taken of
electrical effects. Our own Sun with a mean density only slightly
above that of pure hydrogen shows that electrostatic forces are
at work within stars to offset compression forces.
6. It is assumed that it is possible to form a stable neutron
star.
Wal: When not associated with protons in a nucleus, neutrons
decay into protons and electrons in a few minutes. Atomic nuclei
with too many neutrons are unstable. If it were possible to form
a neutron star, why should it be stable?
7. It is assumed that a supernova can further squeeze neutrons
until they "pop their quarks".
Wal: A second-order wild conjecture.
8. It is assumed that it is possible to have a stable massive
object composed of quarks.
Wal: A third-order wild conjecture based on the pathologies of
both astrophysics and nuclear physics. It is an unseen object
composed of unseen matter.
9. It is assumed that a neutron star can convert the energy of
infalling matter into tightly collimated, pulsed x-ray beams.
Wal: It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely way of
achieving this effect.
10. It is assumed that a spinning object is required to cause the
pulsations.
Wal: Only required in a purely mechanical model.
11. It is assumed that Nature overlooks the normal (and
infinitely easier) method of creating x-rays by accelerating
electrons in an electric field.
12. It is assumed that Nature overlooks the simplest way of
creating pulsed radiation by a charge-discharge relaxation
oscillator cycle (where electric charge builds up slowly until a
threshold is reached and a sudden discharge occurs).
13. It is assumed that Nature ignores the simplest way of
creating a highly collimated x-ray beam and particle jet (if one
is required from the observations) by the use of the plasma focus
effect.
The Electric Universe model assumes that Nature knows best. It
does not require strange matter or a strange star. The x-ray
pulses are caused by regular electric discharges between two or
more orbiting, normally constituted, electrically charged bodies.
It is a manifestation of a periodic arc instead of a spinning
star. If beaming of the radiation is occurring then that should
be verifiable here on Earth in the lab by studying the plasma
focus device.
For diagram of the plasma focus device, go to:
http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_strange.htm
The Electric Universe model lets go of the Newtonian dogma that
gravity is the driving force in the cosmos. It allows for the
possibility that the fundamental characteristic of normal matter
- its electric charge - plays the most significant role. So if
gravity wave telescopes detect anything at all, it won't be
gravity waves from super-heavy objects. And particle physicists
who are trying to work out how the universe was constructed from
strange matter early in the Big Bang are wasting their time. The
astronomer Halton Arp, author of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies,
has conclusively disproven the theory of an expanding universe
and so knocked out the foundation of the Big Bang theory.
Meanwhile the plasma physicists and electrical engineers are
waiting in the wings for those astro-and nuclear-physicists
parading their strange science in public to get off the stage. It
would be entertaining if it weren't so serious. But it is costing
us dearly and holding up real progress.
[Ed. note: For the latest developments in the Electric Universe,
visit the rest of Wal Thornhill's www.holoscience.com website.]
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