Wallace Thornhill: The Long Path to Understanding Gravity | EU2015

[Reality Check]

On another note, I had a re-read of Tim Thompson's put down of Scott and Thornhill from a decade and a half ago. Devastating, and still stands today.
http://www.tim-thompson.com/electric-sun.html
http://www.tim-thompson.com/grey-areas.html

One sign that Don Scott is not a total Thunderbolts cult follower is that he updated his web page The Sun maybe in response to Tim Thompson's criticism. An example is the first point at On the "Electric Sun" Hypothesis about the no longer missing neutrinos. The quoted text is not longer on Scott's web page.

But there are still delusions abut solar neutrinos at The Sun

It has reportedly been observed that the neutrino flux from the Sun varies inversely with sunspot number. This is expected in the ES hypothesis because the source of those neutrinos is probably z-pinch produced fusion which is occurring in the double layer - and sunspots are locations where there is no DL in which this process can occur. The greater the number of sunspots, the fewer the number of observed solar neutrinos

• No citation for those observations.
• An imaginary double layer producing an more imaginary z-pinch.
• A fantasy that there is no DL at sunspots.
• The delusion that these z-pinches on or above the photosphere can produce the observed solar neutrinos without the required gamma rays (which then fry the Earth!).

 

[Slings and Arrows]

One sign that Don Scott is not a total Thunderbolts cult follower is that he updated his web page The Sun maybe in response to Tim Thompson's criticism. An example is the first point at On the "Electric Sun" Hypothesis about the no longer missing neutrinos. The quoted text is no longer on Scott's web page.

But there are still delusions...

Donald Scott's number one delusion is that anyone will ever take his work seriously when Thornhill, Talbott and Crothers are involved. As long as he continues to hang out with the crackpot crowd, his credibility will hover near zero.

 

[jonesdave116]

........maybe in response to Tim Thompson's criticism........But there are still delusions.........

Indeedy. He also seems to be in denial over the existence of negative ions (i.e. electrons) in the solar wind. and how they are supposed to be escaping the positively charged Sun.

Positive ions stream outward from the Sun's surface and accelerate away

No mention of what the electrons are up to in this quasi-neutral plasma.

And then, of course, the rather touching nod to Ralph Juergens at the end of this fictional piece. Juergens; the man whom, as Tim Thompson pointed out,
couldn't tell the difference between the Reynolds number and the Rayleigh number!

Scott's big mistake was believing Juergens. Juergens made two big mistakes of his own. First, he thought that convection was controlled by the Reynolds number, which it is not; it is the Rayleigh number that does that. Second, while the Reynolds number does have a "critical value", its function is to separate laminar flow (low Reynolds number) from turbulent flow (high Reynolds number). So, in reality, the high Reynolds number of a stellar photosphere guarantees that any convective motion will be turbulent, a result that is consistent with the observation of turbulent convection in the solar photosphere.

http://www.tim-thompson.com/electric-sun.html

 

[jonesdave116]

One sign that Don Scott is not a total Thunderbolts cult follower is that he updated his web page

Not so quick, RC! Click on "Next page" at the bottom of the opening page, and you get to..............http://electric-cosmos.org/sudbury.htm
Still in denial, I'm afraid.

 

[ferd burfle]

Still in denial, I'm afraid.

The woo abides.

 

[ben m]

Not so quick, RC! Click on "Next page" at the bottom of the opening page, and you get to..............http://electric-cosmos.org/sudbury.htm
Still in denial, I'm afraid.

It's hilarious that his criticism is entirely directed toward textual criticism of press releases from 2001 about the SNO results, and not to actual science papers of that or any other year.

I mean, he sees a "99% confidence" mentioned in an article and asks "Is that derived from a statistical analysis, or is it something you made up out of thin air?" I think you have to be a crackpot in order to even have the idea of "just making up" confidence limits.

 

[Reality Check]

Not so quick, RC! Click on "Next page" at the bottom of the opening page, and you get to..............http://electric-cosmos.org/sudbury.htm
Still in denial, I'm afraid.

It looks like Scott may have tried to hide his denial by removing it from the page about the Sun and putting it in this quite stupid web page. As ben m points out he bases his "analysis" on what he says are press releases/announcements from 2001! But what he links to is a copy of the 2001 paper: SNO First Results - Page 1 of 6
The "analysis" is an argument from ignorance. We know the amount and type of neutrinos that fusion produces. We observe the Sun and detect 1/3 of that type of neutrinos. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory detected another type of neutrino from the Sun in 2001. The rational conclusion is that some solar neutrinos converted to other types during the flight from the Sun to us.
Since 2001 multiple experiments have confirmed neutrino oscillations.
Scott repeats what looks like a myth of of "why does the total flux seem to be a function of the sunspot cycle". He evidence is citing the Wal Thornhill's deluded holoscience web site!
Scott ends with a delusion of "There simply is no way that a measurement taken at only one end of a transmission channel can reveal changes that have occurred farther up the channel. ". A simple example - drop red balls down a pipe. If you detect blue balls coming out the other end of the pipe then changes in the balls have occurred farther up the channel !

There is a Next Page link to Electric Cosmology where the delusions become truly obvious.
Photospheric granules are "arc discharges".
The delusion that he can explain the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram with fairy stories about his electric sun and an imaginary current density at the star's surface.
Supports Wal Thornhill's total delusion abut stars "fissioning".
Scott's ignorance leads to lies about examples that "falsify" the mainstream model. There are things called variable stars. They change stellar types, e.g. his example of FG Sagittae

When first noted in 1943, it was noticed to be a variable star, and its spectrum was registered as of B4Ieq ("blue") in 1955. Since then it has expanded and reddened to G ("yellow") in 1991,[2] and then further to about K[3] ("orange"). FG started to pulsate when becoming an A-type star (soon after being registered as B4Ieq) with a period of 15 days, now the period has increased to over 100 days.

Ditto for V838 Monocerotis, V605 Aquilae, and V838 Mon. The V (for variable) as part of the name is a big clue!
The ignorance of calling a picture of the day an "official announcement": Astronomy Picture of the Day 2002 October 3

Explanation: A leading candidate for the most mysterious star found in recent times is variable star V838 Monocerotis. ...

A fantasy abut the electric sun explaining the broadening of spectral lines in various types of stars.
The delusion that the difference between Population I and II stars is "vastly different in electrical activity" areas in galaxies.
More dependence on APOD leads to a delusion about "an electrical discharge is taking place between Mira and its companion" - probably suggested by the deluded Wal Thornhill who thinks electrical discharges explain everything!
Scott lies about a 1998 (!) NASA explanation for the source of gamma-ray bursts. This cause was an explosion that causes shock waves that accelerated charged particles that emit gamma rays. That is not Scott's fairy story about stars magically splitting apart!
Scott goes onto the irrelevant topic of pulsars and displays his ignorance of neutron stars. What a surprise! Neutron stars are not as he fantasizes made of normal matter with neutrons added. Neutron stars are made of matter under a big enough gravitational force that electrons are forced into protons to form neutrons. Scott rants about the popular term of neutronium that is rarely used in scientific literature.
Scott states his usual delusions about electrical discharges explaining pulsars. Scott even has the insane phrase "electrical arc (lightning) interaction between two closely spaced binary stars". Lightning requires the breakdown of a dielectric medium such as air. There is no dielectric medium between stars. There is a conducting medium called plasma between stars.

Along the way Scott exposes his ignorance of stellar physics with ignorant questions.

• Red giants: "How do stars at this low a temperature maintain an internal fusion reaction?". The temperature of at the surface of any star is not the temperature at the core of the star!
• Asks how white dwarf stars got their name. When they first form they emit white light! The first discovered white dwarfs happened to be young and white. As white dwarfs age their spectrum reddens.

 

[Reality Check]

Scott continues with delusions on the next page about Galaxies.
There is what looks like a lie about Hannes Alfven: "The shape that characterizes most galaxies was first described by Hannes Alfven in 1981". The shapes of galaxies was known in astronomy by 1981. There are a couple of paragraphs of fantasies about double layers.
Scott mentions Halton Arp's invalid theory about quasars being ejected from galaxies which happens to a non-electric universe theory!
Lots of "I see bunnies in the clouds" fantasies with not cited figures next to no-cited images.

 

[Reality Check]

The next page is The Solar System which continues with Scott's delusions and ignorance.

• The delusion that solar flares and coronal mass ejections are electrical currents when they are electrically neutral!
• Scott lies about planetary magnetotails - they are electromagnetic phenomenon that are primarily affected by magnetic fields.
• Scott states correctly that the magnetotail of Venus almost touches the Earth but fantasies that "Jupiter's plasma sheath has the same relationship with Saturn".
• The usual delusion that all "stringy things" in plasma are Birkeland currents.
• Fantasies about "double layer sheathes" allowing "violent electric discharges" even planetary bodies get close enough.
• Mindlessly parrots a Wal Thornhill delusion about the Jupiter-Io flux tube electrically machining Io.
• Scott lies about what he quotes: "On October 10 Galileo passed within 611 kilometers of Io, using its solid state imager to reveal features as small as 9 meters across near the volcano Pillan. But radiation took its toll, zapping a critical bit in Galileo's computer memory and blurring many images." Tis is not the entire computer being zapped by an imaginary high intensity electric field is. This is exactly what we expect from high radiation - bits in memory being corrupted.
• The delusion that obvious impact craters on Mars were formed by electrical discharges. Mindless parroting of Wal Thornhill's delusion that Valles Marineris was "produced by electric arc machining".
• Scott is ignorant about Saturn's rings.
  No one knows exactly what causes the seasonal spokes in the B-ring. What they "scream" is real ELECTRIC FIELDS (not electric universe delusions about them), i.e. electrostatic repulsion lifting dust particles above the plane of the B-ring.
• Scott has an insanely bad non-cited quote mine of what looks like the original 1980 discovery of a braided F ring !
  As soon as this was observed, scientific explanation began to emerge, e.g. The ‘braided’ F-ring of Saturn by Stanley F. Dermott; Nature 290, 454 - 457 (09 April 1981

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Please note that I've removed your ludicrous and dismissive statement about Wal from the citation above, and more of the same is going to get you removed from the Forum. ... This Forum is for discussion between people still learning what the EU means, or could mean, for science. People who think they are god's messenger to the unwashed typically do not last long here.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15913&start=210#p110445

Over at the Thunderdolt's Forum, censorship and banning is becoming a common occurrence.

Any criticism of Thornhill's dipole gravity theory is a sure fire way to get banned.

There is only a handful of people over there as it is, and their numbers are steadily dwindling.

 

[JeanTate]

Over at the Thunderdolt's Forum, censorship and banning is becoming a common occurrence.

Any criticism of Thornhill's dipole gravity theory is a sure fire way to get banned.

There is only a handful of people over there as it is, and their numbers are steadily dwindling.

Yes, it looks like desperation is setting in.

What's particularly interesting (?) is that many of the criticisms/questions about that 'theory' are from people who seem to understand at least a modicum of physics, and who also profess to be staunch supporters of the EU. That Talbott apparently cannot stand any questioning of that 'theory', and his openness re not having actually read the content of the challenges (much less understood them), surely reveals 'electrical theorists' true colors, right?

Question: how does the EU differ from a religious cult?

 

[jonesdave116]

Originally Posted by David Talbott (January 18, 2016)

Please note that I've removed your ludicrous and dismissive statement about Wal from the citation above, and more of the same is going to get you removed from the Forum. ... This Forum is for discussion between people still learning what the EU means, or could mean, for science. People who think they are god's messenger to the unwashed actually know what they are talking about typically do not last long here.

FTFY

 

[jonesdave116]

Question: how does the EU differ from a religious cult?

Indeed. I posted something similar on Brian Koberlein's blog earlier, but it hasn't been through moderation yet.

 

[JeanTate]

Indeed. I posted something similar on Brian Koberlein's blog earlier, but it hasn't been through moderation yet.

I think it's now up; scroll to the bottom of this (very long!) webpage: Testing the Electric Universe

 

[tusenfem]

Question: how does the EU differ from a religious cult?

They consider mainstream science to be a cult, at least according to be_a_chooser on the thunderdolts forum.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Interesting article that delves into the history and inspiration for Thornhill's gravitational theory:

The People Who Believe Electricity Rules the Universe

Thornhill began his obsessive study of cosmic electricity in high school, when he read Immanuel Velikovsky’s book Worlds in Collision, published in 1950.

When a young Thornhill read Velikovsky’s book, he recognized a kindred spirit. Here, he thought, was a true scientist, not afraid to be a heretic.

He never forgot about Velikovsky, though. And in the early 1970s, he heard about a magazine called Pulsate: 10 issues, all devoted to his scientific hero. The publication was written by brothers Steven and David Talbott. He soon met these two, along with Velikovsky himself, at a conference called “Velikovsky and the Recent History of the Solar System.” Five years later, he found himself in Velikovsky’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. There, Velikovsky “planted the seed of an idea that gravity is related to the electrical structure of neutral matter,” Thornhill told me.

That seed would eventually grow into a framework called “electric universe” theory, which Thornhill and David Talbott would later develop together and which would gain a fervent worldwide following...

Petroglyphs that look like the cartoon Suns in the top-right corners of kindergarten art—bore witness to catastrophic plasma events. Plasma, the idea went, pervades the universe in filaments. Those filaments carry electric current, and that current controls the cosmos. “Magnetism, gravity and the nuclear forces are all different manifestations of the electric force at vastly different scales,” Thornhill said of the basis of the theory...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/electric-universe-theory-thunderbolts-project-wallace-thornhill

 

[jonesdave116]

Interesting article that delves into the history and inspiration for Thornhill's gravitational theory:

Oh dear, they're not very happy about it over at woo central:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16181

 

[JeanTate]

Oh dear, they're not very happy about it over at woo central:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16181

Indeed.

I found this to be particularly telling, in the context of this thread (my bold):

The EU theory has made a number of astounding qualitative predictions, predictions which seemed absurd according to the standard misconception of the universe, but which came true nonetheless. This indicates that EU theory is a promising area of research.

The numbers will be nailed down in time. Work on this has already begun: <link to Eejet vid snipped>

For how many years has this been an EU refrain?

And this is a classic example of, um, internal inconsistency:

When Thornhill says that mathematics is not physics, he is saying that physics must be a physical science connected to empiricism and experimentation, not driven exclusively by mathematical theories ever more removed from reality [...]. EU does not shun math as a descriptor, but it recognizes that putting math first is putting the cart before the horse.

Empiricism and experimentation without mathematics? What century is gocrew living in?

But the kicker has got to be the sort of comment which conflates "the EU" with plasma cosmology, which claims - with no hint of irony - that Kristian Birkeland, Hannes Alfven, Anthony Peratt, and Eric Lerner are (or would have been, had they been alive) staunch supporters of "the EU", and so on.

I think we can be quite certain that all those would have been (or would be) horrified at being classed as supporting Thornhill's "dipole theory of gravity". As Eric L is an ISF member, perhaps he might comment on Scoles' article, and on Thornhill's 'theory'?

 

[JeanTate]

Related to this thread, if only tangentially.

Susan Scoles' article has set off a flurry of comments at 'woo central' (to use a phrase used upthread). Almost all have, directly or indirectly, staunchly insisted that "the EU" is science-based (or scientific).

Yet ... less than ten (?) have posted to the "WT dipole gravity" thread, and just two (three?) have expressed dismay at WT's crazy idea.

A recent post by querious is quite revealing: apparently EU acolytes are not the least bit uncomfortable with there being many, mutually inconsistent, ideas re what powers the Sun. There's the "Sun is an anode", "Sun is a cathode", "Sun is powered only somewhat by (Birkeland) currents", "Sun is powered totally by such", "fusion takes place on/near the surface of the Sun" (this accounts for the observed neutrino flux), "no fusion in/on any part of the Sun", etc, etc, etc.

What's even weirder - than having so many wildly inconsistent ideas re a core EU precept - is that no one is, apparently, the least bit interested in resolving these conflicts!

Of course, none of the EU fans are the least bit hesitant about jumping on any perceived internal inconsistency/conflict within "the mainstream", and claiming this as irrefutable PROOF that the universe runs on electricity.

 

[jonesdave116]

What's even weirder - than having so many wildly inconsistent ideas re a core EU precept - is that no one is, apparently, the least bit interested in resolving these conflicts!

Of course, none of the EU fans are the least bit hesitant about jumping on any perceived internal inconsistency/conflict within "the mainstream", and claiming this as irrefutable PROOF that the universe runs on electricity.

To be fair to them, it is difficult to resolve issues that are all of equal merit; that is, there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the models are correct! However, that is not really a problem to people who believe that Earth used to orbit Saturn. Start from that level, and even Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are back in the game (sorry to any children reading this).