Lightning in the Wind

Thunderbolts Project | Nov 25, 2014 | Stephen Smith

Lightning from a supercell captured in
Paducah, Texas. Image credit: Kelly DeLay

Ionized particles from the Sun contribute to electric discharges on Earth

Electric Universe theories propose that plasma discharge behavior is a better model for solar activity than most consensus opinions would like to accept. Experiments using a positively charged sphere show that a plasma torus forms above its equator. Charged plasma bridges the torus, coupling the sphere’s middle and lower latitudes, consistent with the principle of “anode tufting,” a plasma discharge effect expected from a positively charged electric Sun.

Sunspot filaments, seen clearly in sunspot penumbrae, indicate that they are rapidly rotating charge vortices. Electric discharges in plasma form rope-like, hollow tendrils, so looking down into a sunspot will reveal its rotating discharge columns in profile. Since they are funnels of plasma, their centers are darker, where convection cells would appear darker at their edges.

Since the Sun is the most powerful electrical entity in the Solar System, it stands to reason that its influence will extend outward as far as its heliospheric boundary. That influence, as previous Pictures of the Day argue, instigates many electrical phenomena on Earth.

A recent press release ignores the primary electrical aspect of the Sun, preferring to focus on magnetic reconnection as the major factor in the Sun’s impact on lightning generation. It is a step forward for heliophysicists and planetary scientists to acknowledge the Sun-Earth connection, but it is disappointing to see them rely on such a poorly supported theory like magnetic reconnection.

Briefly, according to the announcement, solar magnetic field lines “stretch between two points…twist and entangle”, forming magnetic flux ropes that snap, releasing enormous energy that blasts away from the Sun as a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection. The field lines then relax until the next energy build-up.

Electric discharges in plasma create tube-like magnetic sheaths along their axes. If enough electric charge flows, it will cause the sheath to glow, sometimes creating a number of other sheaths within it. The sheaths are called “double layers.” Powerful electric fields appear between regions in the double layers, which accelerate charged particles. Sometimes, the stored electrical energy will be catastrophically released in a “Langmuir burst.” Those bursts are what conventional astrophysicists incorrectly call “magnetic reconnection”.

It is a confirmed fact that the movement of electric charges in plasma forms electromagnetic fields that constrict the current. As previous Picture of the Day articles point out, the constricted channel is known as a “Bennett pinch,” or “z-pinch.” The pinched electric filaments remain coherent over long distances, forming helical structures that can transmit power through space. It is that phenomenon that scientists refer to as flux ropes. They are also known as Birkeland currents.

Electric fields freely accelerate charged particles, which move outward in opposite directions, activating an electric current that follows the Sun’s magnetic field. That field is carried into Earth’s electrical environment along gigantic Birkeland current filaments. It was reported elsewhere that in September 2002 a major premise of Electric Universe theory was confirmed: weather systems on Earth are electrically connected to a field of charged particles called the ionosphere. Dual bands of plasma shining in ultraviolet light were found by the IMAGE satellite. The plasma streams are circling the Earth in opposite directions along the equator, carrying positive and negative electric charges.

Along with that observation, the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) satellites found what were called “space tornadoes” (Birkeland currents), electrified plasma vortices rotating faster than 1,600,000 kilometers per hour, about 64,000 kilometers from Earth. The THEMIS satellites, together with Earth-based stations, verified that those charged plasma formations are connected to the ionosphere. This means that the Sun is directly coupled to lightning generators on Earth—otherwise called thunderstorms.

As previously written, the capacitor effect is probably what contributes to lightning discharges. Capacitors are usually made of two conductors separated by an insulating medium, or dielectric insulator. An electric charge on one conductor attracts an opposite charge to the other conductor, resulting in an electric field between them that acts as an electrical energy reserve. Thunderstorms are most likely behaving like capacitors: the clouds are one plate, the ground another, and the atmosphere is the dielectric insulator.

Since the clouds are connected to the ionosphere, electric charges carried into the ionosphere by the solar wind cause increases in the electrical energy in the clouds, which also increases the stored charge in the ground. That accumulated charge overcomes the atmosphere’s ability to keep the two separate, so they reach out to each other in the form of “leader strokes.” When the two lightning leaders meet, a circuit between the clouds and the ground (or between one cloud and another) is completed: lightning flashes.

Stephen Smith

Click here for a Spanish translation

The Conditions of Solar Maximum

June 2014, the Sun emits 3 X-class solar
flares in 24 hours. Credit: NASA/SDO

Thunderbolts.info | Jun 25, 2014 | Stephen Smith

Sunspot activity has dramatically increased.

The Sun exhibits a solar cycle that lasts approximately 22 years, oscillating in output strength and the number of sunspots visible across its surface. This last 11 year period, when the number of sunspots was expected to increase, there was a “delay”; the Sun remained quiescent past its predicted time.

Since late February 2014, however, that quiescent period ended with the eruption of a large solar flare from an active sunspot region, and then several other powerful shocks from ever more energetic sunspots, as shown in the image at the top of the page. Solar max has arrived.

According to consensus opinions, solar flares, or coronal mass ejections (CME), occur when magnetic loops in the Sun’s atmosphere “reconnect” with each other, causing a short circuit. The explosive release of “magnetic energy” is said to accelerate the superheated gases out into space. No one knows what “magnetic reconnection” is, but it is offered as the only explanation by heliophysicists for the flaring phenomenon.

Since CMEs increase auroral brightness and frequency when they meet Earth’s magnetic field, they are a flow of charged particles. Although space scientists refer to the ion stream pouring out of the Sun as a “wind,” and that atomic fragments “rain down” on Earth, that they are attracted to and follow the polar cusps should definitively establish their electrical nature.

Wal Thornhill states that: “While enormous time and resources have been poured into the effort to understand stars based on a single outdated idea, those familiar with plasma discharge phenomena have been paying close attention to the observed phenomena on the Sun and finding simple electrical explanations. After 100 years of neglect, an electrical model of stars is just beginning to emerge.”

Conventional thinking suggests that the Sun accelerates charged particles into space in the same way that sound waves are amplified. Eruptions in the photosphere travel outward through “acoustical wave-guides,” known as magnetic flux tubes. Structures called spicules rise thousands of kilometers above the photosphere and carry the hot gas with them. Its overall behavior suggests that it is electromagnetic in nature, and not kinetic or acoustic.

The Sun is the locus of positive charge with respect to interstellar plasma. Sunspots appear when electric discharges penetrate the photosphere, allowing electric current to flow into its depths. Electromagnetic flux tubes expose the Sun’s cooler interior. No doubt those flux tubes are also involved with connecting the Sun’s electromagnetic environment with Earth’s ionosphere, as well.

As the electric Sun theory relates, sunspots, flares, coronal heating, and all other solar activity most likely results from fluctuations in electrical input from our galaxy. Birkeland current filaments slowly rotate past the Solar System, supplying more or less power to the Sun as they go. The Sun could experience cyclic influences involving its galactic circuit, as well.

The circuit connecting the Sun is of unknown length, but probably extends for thousands of light-years. How much electrical energy might be contained in such magnetically confined “transmission lines”? No one knows, but astronomers are continually “surprised” by the incredible detonations that they observe from solar flares.

Warped Space Time for Warped Minds

The Crab Nebula pulsar, a hypothetical neutron star.
Credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al.

Thunderbolts.info | Apr 30, 2014 | Stephen Smith

May 01, 2014

A University of Michigan press release announces “warped space-time” around a so-called “neutron star”. Could electricity provide a better explanation?

The smeared lines of an iron spectrum have given NASA and University of Michigan astronomers another mystery to solve when it comes to explaining the universe. Using the XMM-Newton and the JAXA/NASA X-ray observatories, high-velocity particles in orbit around Serpens X-1 seem to indicate relativistic effects. According to Sudip Bhattacharyya of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:

“This is fundamental physics. There could be exotic kinds of particles or states of matter, such as quark matter, in the centers of neutron stars, but it’s impossible to create them in the lab. The only way to find out is to understand neutron stars.”

Part of what they are trying to understand is the observation of spectral lines from “hot iron atoms” that appear to be orbiting close in to the surface of the neutron star. As interpreted by conventional theory, the spectra indicate that some of the material is moving at over 40 percent light-speed. Since iron atoms glow at certain optical frequencies when heated to their incandescent state, there should be dark lines within the specular distribution of the color bands. Called Fraunhofer lines, they mark places within the spectrum of any material where the emission energy is absorbed, leaving a dark line within the band of color generated by a prism.

Because Fraunhofer lines are supposed to occur at specific frequencies identified in the spectrum by the kind of element that is being absorbed, if they are in a different location, then they have been Doppler-shifted because of their acceleration. This forms the backbone of galactic-scale distance calculations and the supposed speed of recession that the galaxies display.

Using this system of “redshift” some galaxies are measured to be moving away from Earth at an unbelievable 90 percent of light-speed. The velocity assumption is derived from a gravity-only version of the cosmos. A supermassive object composed of tightly packed neutrons is the only mechanism that could provide the gravitational strength needed for the iron ions to achieve such fast orbits.

In a previous Picture of the Day, an analysis of neutron stars revealed that the science behind their hypothetical existence does not support the very idea of such objects. As previously written, a foundational concept in nuclear physics is the “island of stability”.

Plotting the number of neutrons against the number of protons in the nuclei of all elements demonstrates that the ratio is about one-to-one for light elements and one-point-five-to-one for the heavy ones. An atomic nucleus outside the range will spontaneously decay so that it reaches a stable configuration and remains in equilibrium. If there are too few neutrons, the atom will emit protons in order to stabilize and vise-versa. A nucleus – or star – composed of neutrons alone would be completely unstable and would immediately decay.

The hot iron that has been found around the Serpens X-1 stellar phenomenon is most likely the result of electrical discharge action on and around the star. Stars exist as anodes in a galactic circuit that causes the majority of them to blaze in arc mode. No “millions of continuous H-bomb explosions” are taking place at the core and the observational data leads to the conclusion that they are actually giant balls of plasma. The information gleaned from the Hinode spacecraft and other science experiments observing the sun has confirmed that understanding.

If ad hoc conjectures must be invented to save theories that do not directly explain new observations, then discovering the true nature of the Universe will be hampered.

Stephen Smith

CLICK HERE FOR THE 2013-11-14 SPANISH TRANSLATION

Star Forces

Zeta Ophiuchi in infrared.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Star Forces
Jan 15, 2014 | Thunderbolts.info | Stephen Smith

What model best fits heliospheric behavior?

“How now, wit! Whither wander you?”

— William Shakespeare: As You Like it, Act 1, Scene 2

Space, it is said, is a vacuum. Since the best pumped vacuum on Earth reaches a 0.1 millimeter spacing between individual atoms, while, in comparison there is about one atom per cubic centimeter between stars, the label is not far off the mark

The Interstellar Medium (ISM), through which all stars move, consists of gas and dust composed of hydrogen and helium, with one-tenth of a micron dust grains. One micron equals one-millionth of a meter, so the dust is smaller than the wavelength of blue light (0.450 microns).

The ISM contains ionized particles, as well as neutral molecules. It is those electrons and positive ions that are critical to understanding the behavior of the ISM and how stars interact with it. Even though the ISM is extremely diffuse, since charge separation takes place in different regions weak electric fields can develop. Electric fields, no matter how weak, initiate electric currents.

Astronomers using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have located a star whose “…powerful winds push gas and dust out of its way and into what is called a bow shock.”

It is assumed that the star’s velocity compresses gas and dust in front of it as it flies through space because its “stellar wind” shoves gas and dust out of the way. The so-called “bow shock” heats up the ISM until it glows in the infrared frequencies WISE can see.

However, instead of treating the ISM like an inert medium, the Electric Universe model sees it as a magnetic, electrically charged material that is affected by the plasma sheaths around stars known as magnetospheres. Stellar plasma and the ISM are different plasmas, so they develop Langmuir plasma sheaths, or “double layers,” between them. Stars are where galactic electric discharges are focused, so the double layers form “virtual cathodes.”

Whenever electric discharges take place in plasma, the current flow is compressed inward by induced magnetic fields. This effect is known as a “z-pinch,” and is a foundational principle of Electric Universe theory. The compression can be so intense that plasma is squeezed down into solid particles. Indeed, stars and galaxies are thought to owe their existence to massive electric currents forming cosmic z-pinches in the vast clouds of plasma propelled through the Universe by larger electromagnetic fields.

When Voyager 1 experienced “events unlike any encountered before in the mission’s then 26-year history” as it approached the boundary between our own Sun and the ISM, physicist Wal Thornhill wrote that the spacecraft was penetrating a Langmuir plasma sheath that insulates the solar plasma from that in the ISM.

Since electric currents generate magnetic fields, and magnetic fields strong enough to hold tenuous clouds of gas and dust together have been found in the ISM, then electric currents must be flowing through it in order to create those fields. Magnetic fields cause filamentation of space plasma. The filamentary nature of the “bow shock” around Zeta Ophiuchi points to electric currents and not kinetics as the more likely explanation for its appearance.

Stephen Smith

Dusty Plasma: Spiraling filaments suggest electric currents in space

The Eagle Nebula (M16). Credit: T.A.Rector
(NRAO/AUI/NSF and NOAO/AURA/NSF)
and B.A.Wolpa (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Dusty Plasma
Dec 19, 2013 | Thunderbolts.info | Stephen Smith

Spiraling filaments suggest electric currents in space.

Dust at a temperature near absolute zero shows up in the image above as a blue fog deep in the heart of the Eagle nebula. The Eagle nebula, located in the constellation Serpens approximately 7000 light-years away, is supposedly an active “star nursery”. It is a multi-spectral cloud of gas mixed with microscopic particles of dust.

The consensus view is that cold dust is a necessary ingredient when stars condense out of a nebula. When gas and dust start to collapse into a new star it naturally warms up and radiates energy. As the theory states, outward pressure is created that opposes the inward force of gravity. If the outward force wins and overcomes the force of gravity, the atoms in the gas will never be compressed enough to undergo nuclear fusion. However, if the dust in the nebula is cold enough, it allows the heat created in the gravitational collapse to be radiated away, therefore a new star can ignite.

On the other hand, when the Electric Universe theory is considered, cold nebulae are evidence of electrical activity even at temperatures near absolute zero. Bipolar symmetry is typical of most nebulae, and most of them are dense enough to emit light because they are extremely hot in some regions. The middle of the Eagle Nebula is cold: radio measurements indicate the dust clouds around the inner part are only one degree above absolute zero.

The filamentary structure of the “fingers” and the way the filaments spiral away from the central stars indicates Birkeland currents, named after Kristian Birkeland, who first proposed their existence in the late 1800s. These currents form scalable tubes of plasma that can transmit electric power all around the galaxy. Electromagnetic forces sometimes cause them to pinch down to smaller and smaller sizes.

Plasma confined within the center of the pinch is crushed and increases in current density until the so-called “z-pinch” produces a star. Plasma surrounding the star will often glow as an emission nebula, but in some conditions of opacity and density the surrounding plasma can be cold, as in the Eagle Nebula, revealing its presence only in infrared light.

Conventional astronomers do no know how stars through off clouds of gas and dust that eventually become other stars because stars are not made of gas and dust. A star is the focus of Birkeland currents that make up circuits flowing around the galaxy. The electromagnetic pinch that squeezes plasma into the star also forms a toroidal current around the star’s equator. The density of the current causes the plasma in the ring to glow. The Electric Universe explanation is that we are looking at plasma structures when we look at nebulae, and they behave according to the laws of electrical discharges and circuits.

Instead of mechanical action and cold gas, the Eagle Nebula’s radiant new stars were created in a boost of electric current. It is not necessary to prevent young stars from heating up by shielding them in cold dust. The electrical sheath around a new star receives input from the galactic Birkeland currents in which it is immersed and gets pushed into the glow mode discharge state. Gravity has little if anything to do with the processes of star formation.
Stephen Smith

The Powers of Darkness

Galaxy cluster RDCS 1252.9-2927. Purple
color indicates x-ray emissions.
Credit: X-ray NASA/CXC/ESO/P.Rosati
et al. Optical: ESO/VLT/P.Rosati et al.

The Powers of Darkness
Dec 12, 2013 | Thunderbolts.info | Stephen Smith

Was the early Universe powered by “dark matter annihilation”?

According to modern cosmologists, the Universe is composed primarily of dark matter. More than 95% of all that exists is unseen and undetectable by the most sensitive instruments yet devised. Many astrophysicists claim that the earliest stellar formations were (and perhaps still are) driven by Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) instead of thermonuclear fusion reactions.

Their premise is based on several assumptions, not the least of which is the age and size of the Universe. Current estimates conclude that it is 13.7 billion years old because redshift measurements from galaxy clusters seem to indicate they are located at enormous distances from Earth. Since the redshift theory associates time with speed and distance, the greater the redshift, the greater the distance and the farther back in time the measured object must be.

Consensus hypotheses about age and distance allow astronomers to propose many ideas that are built on the aforementioned assumptions, one of which is that the first stars formed soon after the Big Bang and subsequent expansion of the Universe. Since the Big Bang Universe is 13.7 billion years old, the first stars are no longer around. However, there is sufficient confidence in the theory that computer simulations can be written and models of what took place in that primordial era can be studied.

The galaxy cluster image at the top of the page is said to represent a time almost nine billion years ago, since redshift calculations place its central structure approximately nine billion light-years from Earth. It is conventionally thought to be so remote in space and time that it can be placed at a period when the first stars were in their maturity. As the majority of astrophysicists maintain, that means it coalesced out of many sub-clusters when the Universe was dominated by “cold dark matter“.

During that early epoch, stars must have contained high concentrations of dark matter, since theory states that dark matter densities were significantly greater than they are today. Due to that line of thought, an entirely new physical model has arisen with ramifications for the way scientists in the near future will investigate how stars and galaxies operate.

Dr. Naoki Yoshida of Nagoya University in Japan and Dr. Lars Hernquist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts created a program that simulates “what they know” about the early Universe in order to study those conditions. Their simulations revealed that gravity created small variations in materials that were then extant, including dark matter, causing it to condense into “proto-stars” that slowly accumulated additional matter until they became large enough for dark matter interactions to generate enough heat and initiate radiant output.

An article in Physical Review D puts a more ironic stamp on this bizarre line of “reasoning.” Scientists from the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and Harvard University present a theory that includes dark matter annihilation products, a new force carrier, a way for dark matter to disintegrate into electrons and positrons, and a way to account for the ionization observed in deep space.
It is these concepts that prop up the current scientific pronouncements about “dark stars” that shine from dark matter annihilation, as well as the computer simulations that are supposed to be “confirming” the environment in which those so-called dark stars can exist.

Dark and dark and dark—Electric Universe proponents wonder if there will ever be any light from the heavily funded institutions that are supposed to be the pinnacle of scientific research.

As physicist and Electric Universe theorist Wal Thornhill reiterates: “I suggest we stop wasting tens of billions of dollars searching for new particles and forces invented by mathematicians chasing fame and a Nobel Prize and spend one percent of that sum investigating the dense plasma focus. Science used to be about simplification. It is the way of the Electric Universe. It is the way out of science’s black hole.”

Stephen Smith

Electric Disconnection

The Sun’s changing electromagnetic
field. Credit: NASA/SDO.

Electric Disconnection
July 1, 2013 | Thunderbolts.info | Stephen Smith

Problems with various theories could be resolved if mistaken identity were considered.

It has been demonstrated over the centuries that the worst possible witnesses in court are often those who were present at the scene of the crime. There are documented cases of people being held for crimes they did not commit because one or more eyewitnesses swore to their guilt under oath. It becomes known only later when overwhelming evidence, such as DNA, proves that the alleged perpetrator could not have done what was claimed.

Often, the problem with mistaken identity is one of prejudice. Suspects are categorized by their racial profiles, their affiliations with radical groups, previous behavior, or association with those who are known lawbreakers. Lacking a confession from some other individual, law enforcement personnel are sometimes unable to prevent themselves from focussing on guilt by association, or circumstantial evidence. Assistant District Attorneys do not last long without convictions.

Similarly, professors at prestigious universities are compelled to follow “party lines” and to be prolific in their output of published articles. In order for funding to continue, the physics department must conduct experiments and turn out a steady stream of Ph.Ds for the scientific establishment in the military and the commercial sectors. Their experiments are usually expensive and take months to set up, so the funders expect results that will profit them in some way. LIGO and the Large Hadron Collider are two of the most notorious in a long list of experiments that are searching for phantoms.

When research groups are faced with a lack of evidence for their theories (the “confession”), they too resort to circumstantial investigations. One such case is “magnetic reconnection”—one of the worst examples in modern physics of ad hoc theorizing.

The most significant obstacle to nuclear confinement fusion is supposed to be magnetic reconnection events in the reactor, creating instabilities that cause the reaction to stop. Since no one has the slightest idea how or why this hypothetical process works—how magnetic lines of force separate and recombine—no one can suggest a way to prevent it. It is a further hinderance to a fruitless 60 year attempt at manufacturing thermonuclear fusion power systems.

This is not the first time that magnetic reconnection has been used as an excuse when observational data is missing. Today, it is a common “explanation” for Earth’s aurorae. As the consensus view states, the magnetosphere surrounding Earth stretches and deforms like a teardrop because it is being bombarded by a powerful stream of charged particles from the Sun. As the field is pushed on the sunward side, it is stretched out on the other side of our planet, where the field lines are said to “unravel” and “flap like a flag waving in the wind.”

According to the theory, when those magnetic field lines cross and “reconnect” through some unknown mechanism, they are supposed to detonate, releasing large quantities of heat, light and electrical energy. That power flows down the field lines into Earth’s poles, where it causes the air molecules to glow with brilliant auroral colors. The potential energy that ignites the aurorae is said to be “stored” in the magnetic field lines.

Magnetic field lines cannot be the storehouse for magnetic energy because the field lines are no more real than the arrows that are used to describe an electric field, or the curved lines that trace out a sine wave. Those are character symbols, just as magnetic field lines are symbols that describe a magnetic field’s schematic. A magnetic field acts as a continuum—it is not quantized into discrete bands. To say that magnetic field lines can cross, or flap, or break and reconnect is tantamount to saying that weather diagrams can produce rain.

Kristian Birkeland is not only spinning in his grave, he is doing cartwheels.

Strong magnetic disturbances are detected when bright aurorae are seen. It was in 1903 that Kristian Birkeland’s observations led him to propose electrically powered aurorae. Since electric current moves through a closed circuit, and since the currents and the glow seemed to be caused by processes in distant space, he theorized that the circuit’s beginning came down from space at one end of the auroral arc and looped back out to space on the other end.

In 1973, the U.S. Navy satellite Triad flew through this electrically charged layer. The onboard magnetometer found two electric currents in gigantic sheets, each carrying a million amperes or more, one descending on the auroral zone’s morning side and one ascending on the evening side. Since Birkeland’s research had predicted the currents that link Earth with space they were called Birkeland currents.

It is a case of mistaken identity for scientists to create a theoretical entity called “magnetic reconnection”, when the forces and effects can be easily associated with solid evidentiary conclusions. Rather than electromagnetism acting in ways that are beyond the prevailing theories, why not use the evidence gathered by Birkeland more than a century ago as the explanation? It is the unfortunate character of modern research institutions that they cling to what has been pontificated from above and follow the well-worn path. That tendency goes so far as to ignore information, carefully documented by a dedicated scientist, in favor of fantastical speculations about what has never been seen.

Stephen Smith

What Is Electricity?

Image Credit: William Biscorner, Memphis, Michigan

What Is Electricity?
May 22, 2013 | Thunderbolts.info | Stephen Smith

The Electric Universe hypothesis proposes that electricity lights the stars and forms the web of galaxy clusters in the Universe. But what is it?

First, “electricity” is a catchall term that describes several different phenomena: piezoelectric, thermoelectric, and even bioelectric activity are all forms of electricity. In a similar vein, “heat” has many faces: radiant heat, contact heat, convective heat, etc. One thing to keep clear, though, is that heat is a form of energy while electricity is not. However, continuing with the analogy, a flood of molten lava is not a flow of heat, nor is an electric current a river of electricity.

Defining what is meant by electricity often depends on who is providing the definition. Physicists and mathematicians define it in one way, while the “man on the street” defines it in another. Electricity is a fundamental quality of matter, so it is used to characterize other things, thus consensus opinion is lacking precision.

Like all bedrock presumptions such as “gravity” or “time”, reducing electric terminology into smaller units is impossible because it lies at the bottom of the lexical well. All we can do is draw water from the well, but we can’t make more water. So, electricity must be defined in comparison to other observations that appear to have a relationship with one another.

It may be dissatisfying to realize that we can go no further than that in our search. However, neither can we go deeper into ideas such as “length”. Length is the end of the line when units of physical measurement are considered. No matter how small or how large an object is, length remains as a principle that underlies all units, whether meters, or light-years. The question, “how many lengths of string does it take to reach the Moon?” is illustrative of the point. The unit measure of length must be considered. It depends on the unit value before the question can have meaning.

Scientists use the word “electricity” when they mean “the flow of electric charge”. Maxwell and other early investigators thought of it in that way, and that is how it is used today when electric current is discussed. That leads into significant inconsistency when the expression is used among other groups of people, though. For example, consider this definition from a website designed for high school students:

[Electricity] is a form of energy, evident from the fact that it runs machinery and can be transformed into other types of energy such as light and heat.

Electrical energy is a valid phenomenon, but it is not the same as electric charge. Electrical energy (otherwise called, “electromagnetism”) is measured in units called “joules”, while electric charge is measured in “coulombs”. Electricity, which we define as the flow of electric charge, travels through a circuit continuously when there is sufficient voltage to push it along through the wiring. It moves slowly.

Electromagnetic energy is different; it flows in only one direction at near the speed of light. Whereas electric charge is conserved in the circuit – it cannot be created or destroyed, only moved from place-to-place – electrical energy is converted into another form. It moves out from the source to the load and then away from the circuit as light or heat, never to return.

In a direct current (DC) circuit, electric charge hardly moves at all. In fact, electricity in DC circuits has been measured at speeds of only meters per hour. The electromagnetic energy in a circuit, on the other hand, travels like a wave through water, moving at speeds of millions of meters per second. Just as waves travel “through” water molecules in the ocean, electromagnetic energy travels “through” electric charge.

As previously mentioned, electric current is measured in coulombs per second (amperes) while electromagnetic energy is measured in joules. There is no way to convert one to another, they are unrelated – electric current is matter (charged particles) and electromagnetism is energy.

Electricity moves through a DC circuit in the wires as particles of charge. Electrical energy travels outside the wires as units of electromagnetism: it is a “field” rather than packets of material charge. In alternating current (AC) circuits, the movement of electricity is different, but the distinction between matter and energy remains. In AC circuits the electric charge does not flow. Instead, charged particles in the wires oscillate back and forth at 60 times per second in America, or 50 times per second in Europe. The energy flow is identical. However, it travels along outside of the wires at close to light speed.

So electric charge is not electrical energy. Electrons and protons are not carriers of electrical energy. Both are necessary in the Electric Universe, but each must be considered as unique phenomena.

Written by Stephen Smith from information provided by William Beatty.

Electric Discharge Scarring of Planets and Moons: Interview with Stephen Smith

Electric Discharge Scarring of Planets and Moons: Interview with Stephen Smith
Jan 13, 2013 | ThunderboltsProject

In this interview Stephen Smith, editor of the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day (TPOD) reviews evidence for a former epoch of planetary instability and massive electrical scarring of planets and moons. http://www.thunderbolts.info