Electric Universe
| Style over substance |
| Popular pseudosciences |
| Random examples |
“”Science has a very poor understanding of Electricity.
Electric Engineers have a great understanding of Electricity. |
| —SaveTheLivingEntities, Godlike Productions[1] |
The "Electric Universe" (EU) is an umbrella term that covers various pseudo-scientific cosmological ideas built around the claim that the formation and existence of various features of the universe can be better explained by electromagnetism than by gravity. The exact claims are diverse and vary from crank to crank author to author. A common motif is the insistence that all science should be done in a laboratory — an attempt to throw away gravity from the very beginning, because one can't put a solar system or a galaxy in a laboratory. Most Electric Universe proponents claim some kind of relation to the "plasma cosmology" of the Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén. Too bad his model was rendered obsolete by the missing observations of the radio emission predicted by his cosmology.[2]
EU advocates can be roughly split into two groups: garden-variety physics cranks who are convinced that they have a legitimate revolutionary scientific theory, and various woo-peddlers who use EU claims to prop their main ideas (because mainstream physics would blow them apart). One subset of the latter comprises some of the more loony global warming deniers (such as Vault-Co), who try to use it to "prove" that climate change is being caused by some process outside human control.
Immanuel Velikovsky was an enthusiastic early adopter of electric universe ideas, seeing in them a possible mechanism to explain his scenario of planetary billiards, cosmic thunderbolts, and the notion that Earth was previously a satellite of Saturn.
Contents |
[edit] Claims
- Stars do not shine because of internal nuclear fusion caused by gravitational collapse. Rather, they are anodes for galactic discharge currents.
- Impact craters on Venus, Mars and the Moon are not caused by impacts, but by electrical discharges.[3] The same applies to the Valles Marineris (a massive canyon on Mars) and the Grand Canyon on Earth.[4]
- The Sun is negatively charged, and the solar wind is positively charged -- the two systems forming a giant capacitor (this is James McCanney's particular erroneous belief.)
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Supporters
- thunderbolts.info, probably the most popular EU advocate website, run by David Talbott
- Electric Cosmos (by "Donald E. Scott, Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering)")
- The Electric Universe, László Körtvélyessy's website
[edit] Dissection
- Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy, a blog that deals with Electric Universe claims along with other things (posts labeled Electric Universe)
- Electric Universe category at the Exposing PseudoAstronomy blog
- Electric Universe Theory debunked, a blog entry which discusses 5 major claims by EU
- Electric Universe Theory, RIP: New Discovery of Why Sun's Corona is Hot, thread at Above Top Secret
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1540489/pg1#25433260 (the thread is about Comet Elenin)
- ↑ The Electric Sky, Short-Circuited, page 2:
- This loss of interest was very possibly the result of the all-sky microwave maps of COBE and later WMAP, which exhibited no evidence of radio emission from these galaxyforming currents.
- ↑ http://www.electric-cosmos.org/planets.htm
- ↑ http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_mars.htm