Electric Universe: has there ever been a scientific research program?

[JeanTate]

To be fair people have been asking for that since 2dFgrs ended much too quickly. I don't quite think even a scientific titan like Thornhill could convince the AAO TAC (particularly now that they have HERMES), we will all just have to wait for 4MOST.

But seriously the thing that irks me is despite 10 years of endless 'Arp wins again' comments in every article even mentioning Quasars I have never seen a single one even try to use SDSS. SDSS started releasing spectroscopy way back then. The only discordant redshift papers using SDSS is one that beautifully disproves Arp's idea that QSOs are more common near galaxies and another one which was withdrawn. The database was written practically for children, it's not difficult to use.

"But the establishment would never give us telescope time" is not an excuse if you've never even bothered to look at one of the many data archives. These people don't need a new survey, they need to actually look at the ones which exist.

I find it deeply disturbing that an "astronomical revolution" are not actually interested in doing any astronomy. It would be funny if there weren't so many people falling for it.

You are right, of course, and I should have highlighted this better.

In fact, much earlier in this thread, tusenfem made a similar point. And he has made just this point, many times, re freely available data on comets (in a different thread).

As I frequently use SDSS data myself, I continue to be astonished that no EU zealot has even bothered to look at it, much less test EU hypotheses with it (so it seems).

There was some recent activity in the comments on the "Testing the Electric Universe" blog post, in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time. Two recent commenters tried to defend "the EU", and there was more of the whinging (excuses) about how development of "the EU" (as a theory) was being hindered by lack of funds, etc.

None of the three (new to that commentary) EU fans mentioned that it takes essentially zero $$, and not too much effort, to write a detailed description of possible tests, which could be done by limited time on the Hubble (say), or simply by using publicly available datasets such as SDSS. In replying to them, I concluded "Why has no fan of “the EU” ever done anything like this?"

I mean, the time it took SteveR (say) to write, edit, and post his whines was surely longer than the time it'd take him to outline a possible astronomical test of "the EU", using SDSS data!

Oh, and I've been dipping into the TD forum every now and then, to see if someone there is revolutionary enough to at least suggest that such astronomical tests are not only possible but relatively straight-forward to do (or at least describe). Nothing, nada, zip.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

From the EU people I mean...........

I missed this post earlier and I guess I should reply. :sigh:

The Stark Effect (as Wikified in my earlier post) is the broadening of lines in spectra of light caused by the passage of the light through an electric field. If space was full of electric fields strong enough to whip planets around, the effect would measurably affect light the spectra of visible stars. It does not. The Effect can be seen astronomically under the right conditions and has been since the mid-1920s. See: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1937Obs....60..235W for one reference.

 

[Steve001]

There are, IMHO, thousands of such questions, and they get asked - of EU fans - all the time.

To the extent that there are any meaningful responses, none - it seems to me - include the concept that someone could devise an experiment or observation to actually test the EU claims. Yeah, EUers couldn't do any such tests anyway, even with extensive support; however, the most puzzling thing is why they seem so completely uninterested in any tests, ones designed starting from core EU concepts.

For most of them, in their daily lives, they surely are not so uninterested, are they?

For example, if the lights in the kitchen go out, they surely think of seeing if a circuit breaker has tripped, or that lights in other rooms still work, or that other houses in the street still have lights on, or ... don't they? I mean, they don't immediately conclude the local grid has gone down, and call their electrical utility's hotline, do they?

Or they light a candle.

 

[jonesdave116]

Or they light a candle.

Under the circumstances, given their strange misconceptions about things electrical, this may be the safest thing to do!

 

[jeffreyw]

My sense is: EU fans are genuinely "crackpots" rather than "physicists with an unpopular idea."

I don't think it is that simple. Your sense is off.

Case in point, what about fans who are entertained? There is entertainment value in thunderbolts, and I think the money men are playing that out to the extreme. Think about movies that have fantastic claims, like in Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, etc.

Do you not watch those movies because the physics is all wrong? Or like Captain America's shield doing weird stuff? Or the fact that only the rightful ruler of Azgard (sp?) is the only person who can pick up Thor's hammer?

I have read all the comments, besides the short mention of there being a controversy (it should be noted that controversy sells), then there is nothing of content here. Just the same ole whining that they are not doing testable predictions or whatever. There are other reasons for things people do, fact is, I think the EU fans are probably less closed minded than the people in this forum, even myself. That is a golden attribute if anything.

TLDR: EU is more for entertainment than science, that's why they don't bother with experiments.

 

[Andy_Ross]

In the UK we are having a referendum on EU.

Or is that something else?

 

[Reality Check]

I don't think it is that simple.

You seem ignorant about the deluded nature of the Thunderbolts "cult", jeffreyw. They have a couple of deluded "prophets" who follow neo-Velikovskian nonsense. It is that simple.
David Talbott wrote a book putting Saturn above the Earth's North Pole because of myths!
Wallace Thornhill has the delusion that electrical discharges created the Grand Canyon and that lying to his readers works (well it does for the cult followers!).
Which leads to the delusion that comets are rocks blasted off the surface of the Earth in recent times when Venus swung by, maybe for the third time !
10th April 2015: The ignorance, delusions and lies in the Thunderbolts web site, videos, etc. mostly cited by Haig.

There is no "whining": Anyone who can read can read about Talbott's delusions and see that Wallace Thornhill lied about the Deep Impact results back in 2005 (two flashes observed on and after impact is not a confirmed prediction of a flash before impact!). That no one in the forum has pointed this out suggests that the forum posters have fallen for the Thunderbolts dogma. Or are banned as soon as they try to talk about the real world.

 

[jonesdave116]

^^^Preeeeecisely. That is why the genius Wal hasn't written anything about the Rosetta mission for about 18 months. Just waiting to figure out how to spin it. Too much moolah to be lost by actually admitting he was wrong. Badly. Just con the idiots into believing he had it right all along! Easy. At least it is with what remains of those loons.
tl;dr? It's a joke.

 

[Dancing David]

I don't think it is that simple. Your sense is off.

Case in point, what about fans who are entertained? There is entertainment value in thunderbolts, and I think the money men are playing that out to the extreme. Think about movies that have fantastic claims, like in Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, etc.

Do you not watch those movies because the physics is all wrong? Or like Captain America's shield doing weird stuff? Or the fact that only the rightful ruler of Azgard (sp?) is the only person who can pick up Thor's hammer?

I have read all the comments, besides the short mention of there being a controversy (it should be noted that controversy sells), then there is nothing of content here. Just the same ole whining that they are not doing testable predictions or whatever. There are other reasons for things people do, fact is, I think the EU fans are probably less closed minded than the people in this forum, even myself. That is a golden attribute if anything.

TLDR: EU is more for entertainment than science, that's why they don't bother with experiments.

Hi,
there is plenty of astrophysics that the EU could look at, and guess what, the numbers don't match.

There are no electrical currents existing strong enough to make stars shine. Period.
Full stop.

 

[JeanTate]

There was some recent activity in the comments on the "Testing the Electric Universe" blog post, in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time. Two recent commenters tried to defend "the EU", and there was more of the whinging (excuses) about how development of "the EU" (as a theory) was being hindered by lack of funds, etc.

None of the three (new to that commentary) EU fans mentioned that it takes essentially zero $$, and not too much effort, to write a detailed description of possible tests, which could be done by limited time on the Hubble (say), or simply by using publicly available datasets such as SDSS. In replying to them, I concluded "Why has no fan of “the EU” ever done anything like this?"

I mean, the time it took SteveR (say) to write, edit, and post his whines was surely longer than the time it'd take him to outline a possible astronomical test of "the EU", using SDSS data!

Oh, and I've been dipping into the TD forum every now and then, to see if someone there is revolutionary enough to at least suggest that such astronomical tests are not only possible but relatively straight-forward to do (or at least describe). Nothing, nada, zip.

UPDATE:

There were some responses to my ISF post, over in la-la-land (a.k.a. Thunderdolts), mostly just more excuses and bleating; it's crystal clear, by now, that a key reason why no EU acolyte has proposed even the sketchiest tests of "EU theory" is that they are, collectively, innumerate. For example, the steady stream of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" comments/images/etc are never followed by even the slightest hint of "here's how to estimate the current, based on the images" (or similar).

On a slightly positive note, there was a suggestion that it's not doing zero-cost astronomical research (based on what-Arp-would-have-given-his-first-born-for, e.g. SDSS, etc) that will test "the EU", but rather reproducing Birkeland's experiments (no, don't laugh; I think the comment was made in all seriousness). Of course, today we know far more about the density, temperature, composition, etc of the IPM (inter-planetary medium), from the solar corona out to 1 au (and beyond) than Birkeland did, so EU fanatics have a far better chance of testing Birkeland's ideas than he did.

So, is there a concrete proposal or two, for what a lab-based, empirical test might be? An outline of how to appropriately scale a terrella, for example, to represent the IPM density gradient? Nope; not even the slightest hint ... (lots of gratuitous "recommendations", of course, that it should be "professionals" who do all this work; EU fans are nothing if not honest about their inability to do any work of this kind, and their lack of intent to ever learn).

 

[tusenfem]

Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

 

[JeanTate]

Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

Cool!

... but I doubt the EUtians know about that

I'm pretty sure you're correct; in all my reading of TD - including its "peer-reviewed EU papers" (basically, any astronomy/astrophysics/planetary science paper which seems to contain the words "current" or "electric field" or similar) - no mention of planeterrella.

Unrelated (I forgot to include this in my earlier post): there's a new project, currently in beta, in the Zooniverse, which seems as if it could have been proposed by a numerate EU groupie (but wasn't); when it's launched, I'll write about it. In advance, however, my predictions re EU fanatics' responses:
* pages and pages of excuses as to why it won't/can't test EU ideas
* lots of venom about how mainstream scientists ignore the EU
* for those who participate in the project, lengthy rants about the EU (for which they may eventually be banned)
* on certain, cherry-picked interesting images, lots of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" style posts
* essentially zero understanding of what the images actually show/are
* (that'll do for now)

 

[tusenfem]

And another point:
Three weeks ago I was at an AGU Chapman conference on "currents in geospace and beyond".
A week long presentations on all kinds of currents and electric fields in space plasmas!
Here is the link to the program: http://chapman.agu.org/spacecurrents/

 

[Reality Check]

Interestingly, mainstream does still work with terrella experiments, sometimes called planeterrella.
There are at least 12 abstracts in the 2000s, but I doubt the EUtians know about that.

The EU ignorance also seems to extend to the past - they treat the terrella experiments of Birkeland as the one and only set of experiments. But they were around for about 300 years before him! William Gilbert explored the magnetic field of a spherical magnet representing the Earth in 1600.

 

[JeanTate]

Unrelated (I forgot to include this in my earlier post): there's a new project, currently in beta, in the Zooniverse, which seems as if it could have been proposed by a numerate EU groupie (but wasn't); when it's launched, I'll write about it. In advance, however, my predictions re EU fanatics' responses:
* pages and pages of excuses as to why it won't/can't test EU ideas
* lots of venom about how mainstream scientists ignore the EU
* for those who participate in the project, lengthy rants about the EU (for which they may eventually be banned)
* on certain, cherry-picked interesting images, lots of "looks like a duck Birkeland current" style posts
* essentially zero understanding of what the images actually show/are
* (that'll do for now)

It's still in beta, but is now public. This is a recent Zooniverse tweet:

gravityspy ‏@GravitySpyZoo

Help @LIGO improve the search for #gravitationalwaves - join our beta test of http://gravityspy.org with @the_zooniverse

 

[JeanTate]

There's been some recent activity in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time blog, on "the EU". It's in the comments to his blog post (dated 25 February, 2014) Testing the Electric Universe. Scroll down to the bottom, and read the last ~dozen or so comments.

One new thing I learned: Alfvén and Klein published a paper, "Matter-Antimatter Annihilation and Cosmology", in 1963. The reference is "Arkiv för Fysik 23: 187–194". I was unable to find a copy, on the internet; surprisingly it's not in ADS or Google Scholar (except for the abstract). Does anyone know how to get a copy? E.g. a URL, or if you have a PDF (say), can you email it?

I did learn of an excellent opportunity to do some lab-based research into the EU! One that, despite the Thornhill claim being some 15 years' old, seems to have been overlooked by all EU fanatics. Here it is (source):

The electric Sun model expects far more complex heavy element synthesis to take place in the natural particle accelerators in the photospheric lightning discharges. In that case the various neutrino “flavours” are all generated on the Sun and do not need to “oscillate” on their way to the Earth to make up an imagined deficit.

Yep, you read rightly ... according to Saint High Priest Thornhill, "photospheric lightning discharges" can, and do, generate "the various neutrino “flavours”"

Now according to a member of "the EU/PC community", "every cause/effect claim that is associated with EU/PC theory has the potential of being tested in the lab under controlled conditions".

Wonderful! Let's see a proposal, by an EU fan, for a test in the lab, under controlled conditions, in which a simulation of photospheric lightning discharges produces electron neutrinos (and antineutrinos), muon neutrinos (and antineutrinos), and tau neutrinos (and antineutrinos). Given the wide range of "in the lab" neutrino experiments either planned, under way, or finished, I'm sure such a proposal would be warmly welcomed!

But I won't stop at one; here's another: apparently, in "EU/PC cosmological theory", a simple scattering of starlight in plasma can easily produce the CMB. Seems a perfect concept for being tested in the lab under controlled conditions, right?

 

[ferd burfle]

It's still in beta, but is now public. This is a recent Zooniverse tweet:

Thanks bunches, JT! I started classifying signals and was a little bored until I came to one that was a "chirp" that might be a g-wave! Seems roughly every 30-50 signals has the "chirp" signature; I'm hooked!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[tusenfem]

There's been some recent activity in Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time blog, on "the EU". It's in the comments to his blog post (dated 25 February, 2014) Testing the Electric Universe. Scroll down to the bottom, and read the last ~dozen or so comments.

One new thing I learned: Alfvén and Klein published a paper, "Matter-Antimatter Annihilation and Cosmology", in 1963. The reference is "Arkiv för Fysik 23: 187–194". I was unable to find a copy, on the internet; surprisingly it's not in ADS or Google Scholar (except for the abstract). Does anyone know how to get a copy? E.g. a URL, or if you have a PDF (say), can you email it?

There is a book by Alfvén on matter-antimatter, which I have, but at the office. Will give you more info tomorrow.

ETA: Here is the book on Amazon

 

[JeanTate]

There is a book by Alfvén on matter-antimatter, which I have, but at the office. Will give you more info tomorrow.

ETA: Here is the book on Amazon

Thanks!

I was interested in the Arkiv för Fysik paper, because of the claim that it clearly shows that Alvfén had a firm grasp of GR, as applied to cosmology. I am no longer interested; the person who made this claim was likely lying when he claimed that he'd actually read it. Also, I think it's highly unlikely that this particular paper would show that Alfvén's really did understand GR (as applied to cosmology), when none of his other publications on the topic do.

 

[JeanTate]

Thanks bunches, JT! I started classifying signals and was a little bored until I came to one that was a "chirp" that might be a g-wave! Seems roughly every 30-50 signals has the "chirp" signature; I'm hooked!

Glad you're enjoying it!

It's still in Beta, so you'll likely encounter some rough edges.

I find it particularly interesting that those who are clicking away seem to be continuing to find new classes (or sub-classes) of glitches. And yeah, every now and then, something which looks like a chirp.