Maybe this Russian scientists guy knows what is going on. People link to this article when they discuss NASA saying about the huge EMP and solar storms in 2011/2012. It all has to do with unusual and not-understood electrical activity in the solar system.

PLANETOPHYSICAL STATE OF THE EARTH AND LIFE
By DR. ALEXEY N. DMITRIEV

Summary of the article: I have broken it up into paragraphs (maybe in the wrong places)

Current PlanetoPhysical alterations of the Earth are becoming irreversible. Strong evidence exists that these transformations are being caused by highly charged material and energetic non-uniformity's in anisotropic interstellar space which have broken into the interplanetary area of our Solar System.

This "donation" of energy is producing hybrid processes and excited energy states in all planets, as well as the Sun. Effects here on Earth are to be found in the acceleration of the magnetic pole shift, in the vertical and horizontal ozone content distribution, and in the increased frequency and magnitude of significant catastrophic climatic events.

There is growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 10,000 years ago. The adaptive responses of the biosphere, and humanity, to these new conditions may lead to a total global revision of the range of species and life on Earth.

It is only through a deep understanding of the fundamental changes taking place in the natural environment surrounding us that politicians, and citizens a like, will be able to achieve balance with the renewing flow of PlanetoPhysical states and processes.

Image source, nice.  But overall, the writers of the article you linked to do not understand exactly what is going on.

Lightning strikes the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. Credit: Alisdair Miller

Dielectric Breakdown

Jun 16, 2011

Glass, plastics, and various metal oxides are efficient dielectric insulators. Dry air is another example.

A capacitor is used to accumulate and store electric charge. 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.

As charges inside the capacitor increase, the electric field increases, stressing the insulator's ability to keep them separate. If a high enough potential grows between the two conductive plates, the dielectric insulator will fail and the capacitor will short circuit, suddenly releasing the stored energy.

It is that phenomenon that most likely contributes to lightning discharges. Stored electrical energy in the clouds and in the ground overcome the atmosphere's ability to keep the two charges 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 and a burst of electric current flashes along the conductive pathway.

Lightning's "arc mode" effect is only one way that the electricity can behave. There are also so-called "glow discharges," often observed high above the clouds as "red sprites" and "blue jets." There might also be what are known as "dark" discharges. These could be powerful electric currents but they are unseen and difficult to detect. An "ionic wind" can reveal the presence of a dark discharge, such as that from an electric air purifier.

In thunderstorms, dark mode discharges drag surrounding neutral air molecules along with the charged particles. The strong winds into and out of such storms appear as updrafts and downdrafts. A mark of their power can be seen in any rapidly rotating system, like a tornado. They can lift dirt and rocks, erode surfaces, and accelerate materials to extreme velocity. In an Electric Universe, those storms are therefore not produced solely through hot air convection. Instead, thunderstorms could be a secondary phenomenon driven by an invisible dielectric breakdown of Earth's atmospheric insulator.

Electrostatic forces would be responsible for suspended dust or water in storms. This explains why hailstones are most often spherical. An electric field carries charged water molecules more easily than would powerful winds trying to hold several grams of ice up against the pull of gravity. If winds are pushing hailstones back up into the cloud to add layers of ice each time, they ought to show distorted and random shapes from the chaotic nature of wind.

Human beings are not well-equipped to sense electric and magnetic fields. However, the feel of a breeze or the chill of a wind are readily detected. This can lead to an idea that all weather is convective in nature, depending only on the rise of hot air and the fall of its cold analog. In consensus viewpoints, lightning appears to be an aftereffect of that convection, so the electrical interactions between Earth and its surrounding charged plasma sheath are overlooked.

Electrical phenomena are scalable: they demonstrate characteristics that are alike whether the spark spans a millimeter or thousands of kilometers. Tiny electric arc scars are seen with a microscope on insulators and semiconductors. As previous Picture of the Day articles have shown, those arc scars can be seen on the faces of planets and moons, as well. How powerful might be an interplanetary lightning bolt? Plasma physicist Anthony Peratt estimated that a single such bolt could be as powerful as a 3,000,000 megaton nuclear explosion.

Stephen Smith

Comet Hartley 2 supposedly surrounded by "snowballs" of water ice.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

Snowballs in Hell

Jun 14, 2011

Frozen clumps of ice are thought to be spewing from the nucleus of comet 103P/Hartley 2.

Comets are assumed to be icy conglomerations of dust, gases, and mineral grains from the earliest days of the Solar System. As many Picture of the Day articles have argued, that assumption leaves many puzzles unexplained.

As early as July 2004, Electric Universe advocates have provided analytical data that contradicts the theory of comet "snowballs." For example, some comets demonstrate comas, tails, and jets when they are far from the Sun, supposedly the energy source for all cometary activity. If the Sun is what causes water ice to melt, or as a recent press release has announced with some surprise, dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) to sublime and form "jets," then a comet past the orbit of Jupiter should not exhibit those features.

Now, the EPOXI mission website has stated that water ice has been detected by the infrared camera onboard the recommissioned Deep Impact spacecraft. Despite some differences between the spectrum of pure water and the emissions from Hartley 2, NASA scientists state: "Data collected by Deep Impact's onboard infrared spectrometer show without a doubt that the particles are made of frozen H2O, i.e., ice."

An electric comet hypothesis was proposed by Ralph Juergens in the early 1970's as a part of his electric Sun model. His physicist colleague, Dr. Earl Milton, and Wal Thornhill developed the model after Juergens' untimely death in 1979. The first article on electric comets on Thornhill's website appeared in October 2001 along with his predictions for the Deep Impact mission. Later articles appeared in January 2004 when the Stardust mission encountered comet Wild 2. And some results of the Deep Impact experiment were reported in July 2005.

As Thornhill writes: "The EU model predicts that all active comets will exhibit frequent, short outbursts in different spots on their surface. The outbursts happen because they are electrical discharge phenomena, known technically as (cold) cathode jets. Their onset will be as sudden as an electric spark (described in one report as 'nearly instantaneous') and their duration extended only because space plasma has a limited current carrying capacity. The jets will focus on an extremely small bright area generally situated on a raised point or edge of the comet surface."

The cathode sparks erode minerals from the surface of comets (such as carbon) and, as Thornhill elucidates, they can dissociate comet minerals containing oxygen atoms so that the ionized O- atom combines with H+ ions, or protons, from the Sun's solar wind, forming the OH hydroxyl molecule. "It is an assumption," Thornhill insists, "that it is formed by the breakdown of H2O 'vapor' by solar UV radiation." The carbon from comet minerals may similarly combine with ionized oxygen to form carbon monoxide in his electric comet model.

Since comets are probably the blasted out debris left over from catastrophic events in the recent past, then they are most likely composed of many different substances. In that scenario, there could be comets in the Solar System that are composed of water ice, since ocean water could have also been explosively launched into solar orbit at the same time as the chunks of rock. However, those water-based objects have not been seen by space borne imaging equipment.

As Wal Thornhill has made abundantly clear, mission specialists from the EPOXI team are relying on assumptions to make their observations fit. Comets that have been lately investigated all appear to be rocky bodies, lacking snow fields or icy plains. Since they are most likely stoney, then they could be composed of silicon dioxide, as well as several other mineral compounds. If silicon is present, then the cloud of large particles could be small rocks with hydroxyl coatings. Research done in 1964 demonstrated that the surfaces of silica gels can contain hydroxyl groups.

Stephen Smith

Hat tip to Thane Hubbell

The Martian “Worms”

There are some people who claim complex life on Mars. They sometimes cite interesting rock formations, EDM geology, and mysteriously clean boulders as support for their views.

So it isn't particularly surprising for one to wonder aloud if the mysterious EDM formations in these photos are giant worms, digging through the soil. Now most of you can probably tell that the idea is rather preposterous, and you wouldn't be wrong.

Here's why: I know with absolute certainty that they are not worms, because of their immense size.

The largest land animal on Earth right now is the African Bush Elephant. This creature is massive, 6000 to 9000 kilograms. On Earth, its weight is about 13,000 to 20,000 lbs. This is already a heavy animal, approaching the limit for a land dwelling creature in Earth's present gravity. Scaling of muscle tissue and bone strength provides strong evidence for this.

The largest known land animal on Earth ever was Amphicoelias, a sauropod dinosaur approaching 200 feet long. Now mainstream weight estimates place it over 100 tons, but that weight estimate is based off of a discredited assumption about gravity as well as the ignorance of how much weight muscles and bones can support. In reality, Amphicoelias probably wasn't much heavier than an elephant due to the lesser force of gravity, which is estimated by some to be around a third or a fourth of what it is today. But if that's large for a creature on Earth, that's still nothing compared to the mysterious form you see on Mars.

Another problem with the worm theory is that the creature would simply be too big to dig through dirt, especially at that depth. One of the best ways to move, as a worm, is to propel yourself forward through compression and expansion, like an accordion, with a sharp tip on the front end, pushing dirt to the sides. This is fine for small worms, but when you get big, you evolve to be longer, as you are at a disadvantage if you're large and wide.

The greater your width, the deeper you would need to go. The increasing weight of the dirt on top of you, coupled with the great amount of pressure and the more tightly packed dirt, makes this a disadvantageous trait.

Also, there is no explanation given as to what the worms are supposed to be living off of. This is a serious problem.

-Eaol-

From Thornhill's site.

Alfvén Triumphs Again (& Again)

09 May 2011

The lack of news reports in recent months has been due to a very heavy workload in preparing papers, a course and presentations. This work continues with the upcoming Natural Philosophy Alliance’s 18th annual conference at the University of Maryland, July 6-9, where I will give two papers including the invited John Chappell Memorial Lecture.

Meanwhile I attend scientific meetings and accumulate reports supporting the Electric Universe paradigm. A science journalist dubbed me “the boundary rider of science.” And it is from that broad perspective that I see our sciences like juggernauts speeding down their blind tunnels of specialization and one can only wait for the inevitable crash. Modern science attempts to describe our reality using meaningless language (e.g. “the fabric of space-time”) and invalid metaphors with the result that ever more forces, unreal dimensions and invisible or virtual matter are invoked. It seems to me that our salvation lies with engineers who must deal with the real world. For it was an outstanding and outspoken electrical engineer and physicist, Hannes Alfvén, who gave us an electrical engineer’s practical explanation of many of the mysteries of the universe—known as plasma cosmology. But in a classic academic ‘Catch-22,’ because it’s not mainstream students are not given the opportunity to consider it at any university.

Alfvén emphasized the influence upon him of Kristian Birkeland’s earlier research into the electrical nature of the aurora and other phenomena in the solar system. Birkeland seemed to intuitively sense the real electrical nature of space but was too far ahead of his time. The theory of electric discharges was still in a very primitive state. He wrote, “It seems to be a natural consequence of our point of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying ions of all kinds. We assume each stellar system in evolution throws off electric corpuscles into space. It is not unreasonable therefore, to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in ‘empty’ space.”

>> The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory (formerly called Far Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope or FIRST) has the largest single mirror, at 3.5-metres in diameter, ever built for a space telescope. It is an infrared telescope, named after Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of the infrared spectrum. The telescope has been giving astronomers an unprecedented look inside the cosmic womb of stars, known as molecular clouds, to find (surprise, surprise) that stars are formed in “an incredible network of filamentary structures, and features indicating a chain of near-simultaneous star-formation events, glittering like strings of pearls deep in our Galaxy.” Although described as “incredible” by astronomers, this description precisely matches the decades-old expectations of plasma cosmologists! 

>> "An incredible network of filamentary structures" seen in a cloud of cold gas in the constellation of the Southern Cross. The ESA report dated 2 October 2009. “That a dark, cool area such as this would be bustling with activity, was unexpected. But the images reveal a surprising amount of turmoil: the interstellar material is condensing into continuous and interconnected filaments glowing from the light emitted by new-born stars at various stages of development.” 

In an ESA report last month the high-resolution of the Herschel space observatory produced another surprise, “The filaments are huge, stretching for tens of light years through space and Herschel has shown that newly-born stars are often found in the densest parts of them... Such filaments in interstellar clouds have been glimpsed before by other infrared satellites, but they have never been seen clearly enough to have their widths measured. Now, Herschel has shown that, regardless of the length or density of a filament, the width is always roughly the same. “This is a very big surprise,” says Doris Arzoumanian, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU, the lead author on the paper describing this work. Together with Philippe André from the same institute and other colleagues, she analysed 90 filaments and found they were all about 0.3 light years across, or about 20,000 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. This consistency of the widths demands an explanation.” 

On May 3, the New Scientist published an important article by Anil Ananthaswamy, “Strange cosmic ray hotspots stalk southern skies.” 

Cosmic rays crashing into the Earth over the South Pole appear to be coming from particular locations, rather than being distributed uniformly across the sky. Similar cosmic ray "hotspots" have been seen in the northern skies too, yet we know of no source close enough to produce this pattern. 

"We don't know where they are coming from," says Stefan Westerhoff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Westerhoff and colleagues used the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole to create the most comprehensive map to date of the arrival direction of cosmic rays in the southern skies. 

>> IceCube uses neutrino detectors buried at the South Pole. IceCube detects muons produced by neutrinos striking ice, but it also detects muons created by cosmic rays hitting Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic ray muons can be used to figure out the direction of the original cosmic ray particle. (Image: NSF/B Gudbjartsson). 

Between May 2009 and May 2010, IceCube detected 32 billion cosmic-ray muons, with a median energy of about 20 teraelectronvolts (TeV). These muons revealed, with extremely high statistical significance, a southern sky with some regions of excess cosmic rays ("hotspots") and others with a deficit of cosmic rays ("cold" spots). 

Over the past two years, a similar pattern has been seen over the northern skies by the Milagro observatory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the Tibet Air Shower array in Yangbajain. "It is interesting that the pattern can be matched between [these experiments], at least qualitatively. They have very different techniques and systematic effects," says cosmic-ray physicist Paul Sommers at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "I regard those hotspots as a good mystery." 

It's a mystery because the hotspots must be produced within about 0.03 light years of Earth. Further out, galactic magnetic fields should deflect the particles so much that the hotspots would be smeared out across the sky. But no such sources are known to exist. 

In the 1920s Irving Langmuir and Harold Mott-Smith showed that in a discharge tube the plasma sets up a thin boundary sheath which separates it from a wall or from a probe and shields it from the electric field. The electric field in this sheath, or ‘double layer’ of separated charge, accelerates charged particles. In 1958 Alfvén suggested that this phenomenon might be important in space plasmas. Sources of cosmic rays situated along the Sun’s axes were predicted by Alfvén in 1986 in an IEEE publication and NASA Conference Publication 2469, “Double Layers in Astrophysics.” [Warning: 13 Mb pdf file]. He explains, “Since the time of Langmuir, we know that a double layer is a plasma formation by which a plasma — in the physical meaning of this word — protects itself from the environment. It is analogous to a cell wall by which a plasma — in the biological meaning of this word — protects itself from the environment. If an electric discharge is produced between a cathode and an anode there is a double layer, called a cathode sheath, produced near the cathode that accelerates electrons which carry a current through the plasma. A positive space charge separates the cathode sheath from the plasma. Similarly, a double layer is set up near the anode, protecting the plasma from this electrode. Again, a space charge constitutes the border between the double layer and the plasma. All these double layers carry electric currents.” 

>> Alfvén’s Heliospheric Circuit. The Sun acts as a unipolar inductor (A) producing a current which goes outward along both the axes (B2) and inward in the equatorial plane along the magnetic field lines (B1). The current must close at large distances (B3), either as a homogeneous current layer, or — more likely — as a pinched current.

Analogous to the auroral circuit, there may be double layers (DLs) which should be located symmetrically on the Sun's axes. Such double layers have not yet been discovered. Credit: Original diagram by H. Alfvén, NASA Conference Publication 2469, 1986, p. 27. 

In the circuit model, it was noted that every circuit that contains an inductance is intrinsically explosive. This is true because a conductive circuit will tend to supply all of the inductive energy to any point of interruption of the circuit. Double layers are known to tend to interrupt current in a plasma. Hence, the entire energy of a circuit can be released at the point where a double layer forms regardless of the source of the energy of the circuit. 

Because of their property of generating cosmic rays, synchrotron radiation, radio noise, and occasionally exploding, Alfvén proposed, “DL's may be considered as a new class of celestial objects... For example, the heliospheric current system must close at large distances, and it is possible — perhaps likely — that this is done by a network of filamentary currents. Many such filaments may produce DL's, and some of these may explode.” To give an idea of their omnipresence in space, DLs are implicated in the earth's auroral regions, extragalactic jets, stellar jets, novae and supernovae, X-ray and gamma-ray bursts, X-ray pulsars, double radio sources, solar flares, and the source of cosmic ray acceleration. 

It seems that Alfvén’s DLs have been detected in the form of “cosmic ray hotspots” generated in Birkeland current filaments “less than 0.03 light years” from the Sun. The hotspots should be found to align with the local interstellar magnetic field. The median energy of the cosmic rays reported at 20 TeV is within the range expected from a cosmic DL. 

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POSTSCRIPT: Alfvén didn’t go so far as to consider a star as an electrical discharge phenomenon. But if stars are electrically powered from a galactic circuit then the consequences of this fact alone for science and society are profound. We have been following a mirage of knowledge that leads into a desert of ignorance. Our story of the Sun is a myth. The holy grail of nuclear fusion energy “like the Sun" is a false trail. In fact our entire cosmology of the big bang, galaxy formation, the formation of the Sun and its family of planets, and the history of the Earth is fiction. It ignores the most powerful organizing electric force in favour of the feeblest force— gravity. Most of our ‘big’ science, like the costly fusion experiments and space missions, has been misdirected and wasteful. All sciences must be re-examined from a fresh interdisciplinary perspective based on an interconnected Electric Universe. 

And a final word from Alfvén, who took the unprecedented step of predicting in his December 11, 1970 Nobel prize acceptance speech the eventual crash of astrophysics at the end of its long dark tunnel: “In conclusion, it seems that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of theoretical astrophysicists who have gotten their education from the listed textbooks. The multibillion dollar space data from astronomical telescopes should be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics, circuit theory, and, of course, modern plasma physics. More than 99 percent of the Universe consists of plasma, and the ratio between electromagnetic and gravitational forces is 1039." 

—H. Alfvén, NASA Conference Publication 2469, 1986, p. 16. 

Wal Thornhill

Interesting video.  I love Reginald's videos.  Sometimes pretty insightful.

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http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2011/arch11/110609ornament.htm">The Ornament Not Seen

Supernova Remnant 0509: X-ray in blue and green, optical in red. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Hughes et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

"This image of the Christmas Ornament nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud looks the same to Electric Universe and Gravity Universe proponents alike. Their radically contrary descriptions of what it is result from their ideas about what they don't see."

Gravity Universe proponents describe a star that exhausted its thermonuclear fuel and exploded. It blasted its outer layers into a rarified interstellar gas, generating spherical shock waves that compressed and heated the gas to the extent of emitting x-rays. They call the nebula a supernova remnant.

It helps to know ahead of time that they're looking for spheres because, at that distance, everything looks flat to the human eye. They don't see depth. Depth is constructed from the assumptions and calculations of some theory. It also helps to know ahead of time that they’re looking for hot gas because, at that distance, they can’t stick a thermometer into it. Temperature is constructed similarly to depth. So it is with most of the other elements of the description.

Electric Universe proponents describe an hourglass-shaped z-pinch in a galactic Birkeland cable—a tubular configuration of current filaments rotating around an axis. Such a configuration is the "wiring harness" of all stars, which is usually invisible. In stars that are under heightened electrical stress, the plasma in the harness is pushed into glow mode and emits optical and x-ray light. Z-pinches viewed down the axis—as is this one—appear as rings. From the side, they appear as hourglasses, and from other angles they may appear as entangled circles or even as squares.

The red sheath around the outside of the cable, excited to emit optical light, appears as a ring. The brighter region at upper left is where the electrical stress is greatest. Significantly, a diocotron instability—the curlicue bend in the ring—is developing there.

The inner filaments, in which current carriers spiraling in the magnetic field emit x-ray synchrotron radiation, appear as the 26 x-ray "spots." The number 26 is typical in electrical discharges in plasma - which is the Electric Universe description of stars. They tend to pair up—as seen especially in the "hot region" at upper left.

Another characteristic feature of such glow mode cables is the braided appearance of the ring currents. Also, the ring is actually two concentric rings but with only half of each emitting light—the outer one at upper left, the inner one at lower right. A similar configuration exists in the auroral circuit around Earth’s poles: the luminous half of each ring corresponds to current flowing in one direction; the dark half to current flowing in the other.

It helps to know ahead of time that they're looking for 26 spots because the x-ray image is not all that clear. They don't see 26. Differentiating the several pairs of spots and the occasional single one is constructed by analogy with lab experiments and repeated trial-and-error counting. It helps to know ahead of time that they're looking for concentric rings of current because they can't stick an ammeter into them. Current flows are constructed similarly to paired spots. So it is with most of the other elements.

The important observation (for this essay) is what's not seen. If explanations were limited to only what's seen, they would make little sense. Sensation (data) gives only glimpses: a theoretical model composed of things not seen provides context, a bigger picture, that enables us to do things, or at least to do more things and new things. Mere facts tend to be merely confusing.

The sprockets of a theoretical model into which the cogs of facts can fit animate the machine. Because cogs and sprockets can be fit together in more than one way, we have the opportunity to see and to do new things. The choice of a model, then, as Karl Popper and many others since have claimed, is a decision directed by what we want to do.

Mel Acheson