Understanding The Cosmos - The Electric Universe

As you may have noticed, I am interested in cosmology, the study of the cosmos; everything that is out there.

Over the years, the “standard model”, based largely on mathematics way beyond my comprehension, has gotten very weird. Black holes, for example, have led to a controversy as to whether or not matter can be destroyed. Steven Hawking has contended for thirty years that matter sucked into black holes can disappear when the black holes themselves eventually disappear. Recently, he reversed himself (sort of, by claiming that there are probably other universes without black holes so across all universes matter is conserved), but the question still remains as to where the matter goes when it is sucked into a black hole.

The “standard model” is fundamentally based on gravitational force (electrical and magnetic forces are pretty much left out) and the existence of red shift. Red shift is a kind of Doppler effect for light instead of sound. Starlight from stars further away and traveling faster is shifted toward the red end of the visible light spectrum. This “fact” is very basic to our current “understanding” of the universe. Unfortunately, there are many examples (120+ anomalies - identified by Halton Arp) of stars with higher red shift values connected to stars with lower values. There are also stars with higher values in front of stars with lower values. Ooops. Doesn’t fit the “standard model”.

Add in “dark matter” and “dark energy”, made-up concepts to account for all of the “missing” matter in the gravitational model, and it starts to sound like untestable fantasy.

In addition, satellites sent out to measure the magnetic field around the earth, which protects us from injurious cosmic particles, have found magnetic fields far out in space beyond the earth's field. In fact recently, the standard physicists have been surprised to find that “empty” outer space is actually crammed with plasma, the fourth and most abundant form of matter. This plasma seems to flow in very interesting ways between stars and galaxies.

In my internet wanderings, I ran across an alternative theory, the Plasma Universe. The work of David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill really grabbed me. I wanted to write about it here but couldn’t quite motivate myself to do the work required to get it all down. Now that problem is solved with their new DVD. The first part of this work is available on Google Video here, or just search on Thunderbolts of the Gods. Also check related sites here, and here where you can buy the books or DVDs.

I’ll warn you that if you get into this like I did, it will take you 4 or 5 hours to start to get your head around it. Have a nice trip.