THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL IV, No 10 July 31, 2000 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson MALE GODS . . . . . . . . .by Dave Talbott and Rens van der Sluijs PARADIGM PORTRAITS VI: NASA BUILDS PLASMA LABS. . . by Amy Acheson FAILED STAR OR FAILED SCIENCE?. . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS By Mel Acheson Think of the scientific method as the methodical application of human cognitive abilities. Everyone uses cognition to some extent; scientists use it methodically. It works through the interplay of three activities: observing or experiencing or paying close attention to some particularly interesting thing or event; thinking of or imagining some idea that might explain the thing or event, giving it meaning; and testing the idea, verifying whether it stands up to further observation and experience and thinking, judging its truthfulness. (Although described here as three separate activities, they occur together and recurrently.) One characteristic of the scientific method - and of any knowledge based on cognition - is that it seldom provides absolute certainty. Risk is an essential part of it. This is what makes it dynamic, adaptable, and, hence, useful. We are small people in a big and changing universe. There are always more things and events to experience, more viewpoints from which to observe them, and more ideas to make sense of them. This means the particular theories of science at any particular time are apt to change. In biological terms, they are "selected" by the intellectual environment of their times. Usually, they change in small ways. The big theories (such as evolution, atomic theory, and gravitation) are adaptable and can be modified to accommodate many new observations. But occasionally new observations are so different and so many that a consensus arises to abandon a big theory and to develop an altogether different one. This is what happened when Copernicus' idea of a heliocentric arrangement of the planets "succeeded" Ptolemy's geocentric idea. The intellectual establishment of the time resisted the change, but the leap in progress of knowledge that accompanied the new theory abundantly repaid the "transaction costs". The multitude of discoveries in the last few decades has opened modern science to the opportunities of adopting new big theories. The competition of proposals is itself a process of discovery: Which proposed theory not only explains the new observations better but holds the greatest promise of aiding further discoveries. I'll use the term 'paradigm' for only these big theories. Some of their properties are: They provide guidelines for "where to look" and "what to look for". They set standards for what constitutes a problem worthy of research and what qualifies as a solution. One of a paradigm's greatest benefits is also one of its greatest liabilities: It provides guidelines (or excuses) for what to ignore. This saves time (that can be devoted to details of research) not having to consider "crackpot" ideas, meaning other paradigms that are substantially different. The history of science provides many examples of a new discipline making little progress, squabbling over fundamentals, until a paradigm is adopted. But at the other end, when a paradigm is becoming obsolete, the ignoring of alternatives results in "paradigm paralysis" that wastes time and resources trying to force-fit big anomalies into the undersized clothes of the established paradigm. A paradigm does more than just make sense of existing observations. It leads to new observations, new data, new places to look and new ways to look, and to new technologies. This tension constitutes a creative dynamic. Paradigms enable discoveries that go beyond the limits of the paradigm, observations that can't be explained by the paradigm, thus motivating a search for a more inclusive paradigm. This continues the process of articulation and succession. But there are things that obstruct this process. One I'll call "scientific correctness": The (proper) concern that a theory is "correct" or "right" or "true", that it "fits" or explains the relevant data, becomes confused with a pseudo-religious "Right" or True" that exceeds the cognitive domain of the paradigm. All other ideas come to be judged by the standards of the one. "Crackpot" becomes a term of dismissal rather than one of mere differentiation. The process of discovery gets lost in defensiveness. A recent example of this is the behavior of the astronomical establishment toward Halton Arp. His observations of connections between quasars and galaxies put the brakes on the expanding universe and exploded the Big Bang hypothesis. But instead of saying, "Here's an interesting observation; we don't have time for it, but let's see what he can make of it," the reaction was, "Deny him telescope time and refuse to publish his findings and crop out quasars on photos of galaxies." Contrast "scientific correctness" with the concept of "domain of validity". The former assumes that its paradigm is "right" and that all further observations can be explained, requiring at most tinkering with the details. This assumption of continuous cumulation of knowledge becomes absolute and straitjackets further discovery. It leads to stasis and intellectual death. With the latter, science is seen not as the establishment of a catechism but as a process of discovering the borders. It assumes the continuous cumulation of knowledge within a paradigm will reach a limit. The cup of the paradigm will fill up, will reach a limit of explanatory power, and observations will spill over, that is, will be ill explained or unexplained. A new, bigger cup will be needed, a paradigm with a larger domain. In deference to Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, this could be called "punctuated cumulation". Thus, one mark of a good paradigm is that it leads to its own replacement. This is the effect of Popper's criterion of falsification. It means "true" knowledge is, in this larger sense, ultimately "false". That doesn't mean the knowledge isn't useful for its time. It merely means we need to maintain a sense of humility in the face of our, and our theories', mortality. Scientific correctness rejects old paradigms as "wrong" and their proponents as stupid or evil. There can be only one "right" paradigm. With domains of validity, many paradigms can be accepted as true within their limits. Their intelligibility and the intelligence of their innovators can be appreciated. Science becomes a tool box with many tools (paradigms) that can be chosen according to their appropriateness for solving particular problems: geocentrism for siting a house, heliocentrism for sending a robot to Mars, something yet to be worked out for explaining quasars. Scientific correctness masquerades in the dress of science, but it's only a mannequin without the vitality of science. In contrast with the three aspects of cognition, scientific correctness refuses to look at new observations, refrains from considering new ideas, and disdains to verify new insights. It's essentially anti-intelligent. It confuses verification with conformity; it replaces the innovations of intelligence with the parroting of dogma; it lacks the provisionality that keeps science always on the move. It's a tyrant of stasis. Mel Acheson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ********************************************************** MALE GODS By Dave Talbott and Rens van der Sluijs Ev Cochrane recently forwarded to me a note from Rens van der Sluijs, dealing with "the problem of identification of the male gods within the Saturnist framework." Rens van der Sluijs wrote: "My conclusion is that the godly assembly is variously referred to as either One God, having an acting Inner Soul, or Father and Hero-Son. The suffering Mystery God, in so many disguises, being torn apart is the One God, but on a deeper level it is his own acting Inner Soul that kills him. He can thus appear as Warrior and Victim in two separate beings. Mythologically speaking, this implies that the same story can be rendered in various ways. Thus we reach the startling conclusion that Zeus killing Kronos is identical with the various Mars-gods killing the rightful King, whereas the story of the infant Zeus is directly identical with the numerous accounts of young Herakles, et cetera. Jupiter at face value is, therefore, not always simply to be equated with the archetypal Jupiter God that David Talbott had thus far established. When Zeus kills Kronos we envision the Mars God as Inner Soul overcoming the Golden Age God. The soul, i. e. Venus with Mars, subsequently reenters another body, notably the planet Jupiter, and in this way the same Zeus is said to have achieved kingship. As Inner Soul he is then identical with the body of Jupiter as a planet, i. e. the King acquired a new heart, or rather, the heart acquired a new body (sic!). This sounds like ancient mystery language and in fact it is. Nevertheless, it seems to be the only adequate solution and enlightens the ancient lore not a bit. This view predicts that the same divinity can alternately be described from the viewpoint of the acting Inner Soul or from that of the entire god. Methodically, this means that it gets harder to make a divine biography. A divine biography can only be set up once we split the united story in several versions with different role assignments and viewpoints. This is a challenge that I am greedy to face. All of this I hope to address sooner or later in an article, also paying attention to related issues: [1] The story of Kronos castrating and ousting Ouranos is different. This is not the common parricide myth, but describes an earlier transformation in the life of the Golden King, giving birth to Venus, as can be deduced from the themes and attributes involved in the myths. It is not as widespread. Dave Talbott Responds: 1. Re: Kronos and Ouranos. Rens is correct here. This is not the parricide myth. It is the story of Saturn's emergence as a separate power, in events synonymous with the birth of the goddess and hero. The subject is the "first activity" of the planetary configuration. Unified heaven (proto-Saturn) gives way to differentiation. In the Egyptian myth the birth of Shu and Tefnut from the originally inert and unified form of Atum gives rise to THREE--Re, Shu and Tefnut--Saturn, Mars and Venus in the Saturn reconstruction. The Hindu system also presents the story of a primeval sacrifice of Unity (first form of Brahma-Prajapati) in connection with the birth of male and female principles. Originally, the male and female powers stood in conjunction. In other words, the variants all answer directly to the Great Conjunction of Saturn's epoch, when Saturn's giant sphere, extremely close to the earth, stood behind the juxtaposed, much smaller spheres of Venus (goddess) and Mars(warrior-hero), these two orbs appearing as the luminous eye, heart or soul of Saturn. The comparative approach will confirm that the severed "testicles" of Ouranos correspond to the "seed" of the Egyptian Atum, holding the goddess and hero in conjunction. This male-female "seed"-- the_BEN_ stone--typically appears as a single eye (the goddess) together with its "pupil" (hero), though the emerging male and female forms may also be called the "two eyes" in later elaborations of the myth. "Castration" and "blindness" thus go together in archaic symbolism (as Jungian symbolists have already noticed). In the Hindu system as well, the primeval conjunction of Rudra/Shiva and Sati defines the original Unity of heaven. The original male-female seed--the BINDU--is depicted as a small circle in the center of a much larger circle. That is the primeval condition of undifferentiated Unity: unborn goddess and hero in conjunction in the center of the vast sphere called "heaven" the gas giant proto-Saturn). The sign for this condition is among the two or three most common symbols in the world. (It is the sign of Re, for example.) Of course none of this will make sense unless you have the visual imagery very clear in your mind. The human memories trace to concrete forms in the sky, behaving in a highly specific way that can be tested from one culture to another. The fate of the primeval Unity, however, is the most archaic story element, and as such it reveals much less detail than you will find in the more richly elaborated accounts of the goddess and hero. It is a less defined background memory, and rapidly fades over time. That is why one will do best to concentrate on the oldest available sources. The symbolism of the Egyptian Atum and the Sumerian An/Akkadian Anu will give the most reliable data. 2. Re: Difficulties in establishing a divine biography. Correcto mundo on this point also. The universal sovereign (Saturn- Jupiter) tends to be a passive figure, while the goddess and hero are highly active. In later literature the Martian figure, the warrior-hero, will appear as the servant, messenger, or assistant in the service of a great king. BECAUSE the story was consistently localized, it was impossible for the original relationships to be maintained. Archaically, the hero figure does not just act on behalf of the universal sovereign--he is the masculine, innermost soul of the god, the active voice going forth as a visible "command," the externalized "will" or "desire" of the sovereign. In the margins between the most authentic (earliest) sources, and the highly fragmented (later) sources you will find both versions of the hero--i.e., both the original servant of the universal sovereign and the later "prideful," "foolish," rampaging hero acting AGAINST the sovereign, even "murdering" him. They are same figures. Thus, comparative analysis will reveal that the Greek Eros and Ares, who appear so unlike each other, reflect the SAME archetype. The evolution of the archetype through interpretation and storytelling, however, has taken the two figures in entirely different directions. Eros, the visible, external will or desire of Zeus is thus seen as a little male figure on the shoulders of Zeus--exactly where we should expect him. The poetic treatment of the Mars god Ares, however, will typically emphasize the rogue aspect--the warrior, the fool, the murderer. The ambiguous middle zone will be occupied by Heracles, whose name was also a name for the planet Mars in Greek astronomy. Here the poets have retained many separate traditions relating to the hero's labors on behalf of "great kings," while including as well the accounts of his murderous rampage, all the while attempting to rationalize the behavior. In truth, this ambiguity shows up in virtually all of the well- documented warrior gods around the world, though the chroniclers endlessly strove to separate the heroic and chaos-monster aspects by treating them as independent mythical figures. That way, one figure could represent the enemy (prototype of the devil in all his mythical forms) and the other a standard to be celebrated without ambivalence. (I will return to this tendency as soon possible, in discussing another point raised by Rens.) 3. Zeus and Kronos. Bingo on this one too. The overthrow of Kronos by Zeus refers to the same events which--through nothing more than a subtle twist of interpretation--were seen as the warrior Mars murdering or displacing the elder form of the universal sovereign Saturn. To this observation I would add a further principle, relating to the archetypal "birth of the hero." (I am speaking here not of the first appearance of the hero with the differentiation of the unified sovereign, but the RE-BIRTH of that figure in the great crisis at the conclusion of Saturn's epoch.) Hesiod's story of the birth of Zeus (Jupiter) within a cave is really the story of the HERO "born" in the cave. It was not Jupiter that was carried off by the goddess. It was the unborn hero, as in the universal legend. It is the story of what happens to the masculine, innermost heart of the sovereign, as it passes from the FIRST form of the sovereign (elder god Saturn) to the SECOND(younger god Jupiter). At this juncture, neither form of the sovereign is necessarily visible, while the externalized Martian "soul," "heart," or "will" of the sovereign--the hero--is very visible and highly active. In these events, the focus is on the activity, the transmigrating "soul," not its more passive owner. Remember that in the discussion of the labyrinth motif, I noted that the entry of the hero into the cavernous labyrinth is the story of the hero's re-birth. Typically, a goddess such as Isis, pregnant with the hero, finds a secret hiding place. These myths, I said, relate directly to the transition between Saturnian and Jovian epochs, the dissolution of a world age followed by renewal. Theseus enters the labyrinth where he slays the hidden or imprisoned Minotaur, transcript of the archetypal Bull of Heaven, the primeval form of Saturn. Though a lot of ground would have to be covered to make the equation clear and convincing, there is no doubt in my mind that the archetypal "birth [i.e., rebirth] of the hero" IS the story of the passage from Saturnian to Jovian sovereignty. Dave Talbott ********************************************************** PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: NASA BUILDS PLASMA LABS By Amy Acheson Well, they aren't calling it the electrical, but it looks like somebody at NASA has been taking hints from Alfvén and Lerner and Peratt and Juergens and Thornhill. Okay, I'll admit that it's not likely they've been reading old issues of Kronos. It's more reasonable that the electrical nature of the universe is just impossible to overlook. The Electric universe resets their space probes' computers and breaks their satellite's tethers and surprises them with new discoveries even when they want to overlook it. Their terminology still carries the old gravitational overtones, though. They are not studying plasma reactions in a vacuum. They are "bombarding dust particles with radiation." Anyway, here's the story of the latest experiments: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast31jul_2m.htm?list Excerpt from the website: "To better understand how dust grains respond to conditions in space, researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have built an apparatus in the Dusty Plasma Laboratory (DPL) that can suspend individual dust grains in a near vacuum. Once a dust grain is captured, scientists can bombard it with forms of radiation found in space and see what happens. 'What we're doing here is taking one particle and exposing it to these space-like environments and studying what happens to its (electrical) charge and other properties,' said Catherine Venturini, who worked on the project for more than four years while pursuing her master's degree in physics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. More from Amy: The web site also has the a marvelous quicktime animation of the rotation of the magnetic spokes on Saturn's rings. Don Scott's website article about Wal Thornhill http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm also has a picture of the spokes, with his comment that they almost scream for an electrical explanation. Here's what the NASA website says about them: "Saturn's rings are marked by strange dark radial features called spokes. Since they have been observed on both sides of the ring plane, spokes are thought to be microscopic dust grains that have become charged and are levitating away from the ring plane. Another possibility is that a meteoroid punched through Saturn's rings, lifting dust particles away from the plane of the rings. When the Voyager spacecraft first observed these spokes, their movements seemed to defy gravity and had the scientists very perplexed. Since the spokes rotate at the same rate as Saturn's magnetic field, it is likely that electromagnetic forces are at work. This is still an unsolved puzzle." Amy again: It really seems to me that mainstream science is uncovering hundreds of tiny pieces of evidence for an electrical universe. The only thing they are missing is the most important part -- the big picture. And that big picture is the understanding that the whole universe (or as much as we know of it today) is electrically driven. It's interacting electrically, its connected and organized by plasma reactions. Gravitational forces, squeezing stars into H-bombs and galactic cores into collimated jets do not drive the universe. These concepts are the result of stretching the theoretical domain of gravitational math beyond its breaking point. Even gravity itself is electrically driven. Amy Acheson ********************************************************* FAILED STAR OR FAILED SCIENCE? by Wal Thornhill A Brown Dwarf Solar Flare From NASA Science News for July 12, 2000 Astronomers were surprised when NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected an x-ray outburst from a failed star only 60 times more massive than Jupiter. NASA's latest observatory, designed to see the most violent and stunning cosmic phenomena, captured something unexpected. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, orbiting in space about one-third of the way to the moon, saw the first-ever flare from what's known as a brown dwarf, or failed star. "We were shocked," said Dr. Robert Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA, the lead author on the discovery paper to appear in the July 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We didn't expect to see flaring from such a lightweight object. This is really the mouse that roared." Wal Thornhill Comments: On 15 December 1999 I wrote: "All of these puzzles are simply explained by an electric star. There is no lower limit to the size of a body that can accept electric power from the galaxy so the temperatures of small dwarfs will range down to levels conducive to life. The light of a red star is due to the distended anode glow of an electrically low stressed star." There are no "failed" stars in an Electric Universe. Since the power source for stars is external rather than internal, brown dwarfs can be expected to show most of the same kinds of variability as brighter stars. That includes sudden discharges (flares). The study of the bright X-ray flare will increase understanding of the explosive activity and origin of magnetic fields of extremely low-mass stars. Chandra detected no X-rays at all from the object called LP 944-20 for the first nine hours of a twelve-hour observation, and then the source flared dramatically before it faded away over the next two hours. The energy emitted in the brown dwarf flare was comparable to a small solar flare, and was a billion times greater than observed X-ray flares from Jupiter. The flaring energy is believed to come from a twisted magnetic field. "This is the strongest evidence yet that brown dwarfs and possibly young giant planets have magnetic fields, and that a large amount of energy can be released in a flare," said Dr. Eduardo Martin, also of Caltech and a member of the team. For the first 9-hr 36-min of Chandra's observation, no X-rays were detected from the brown dwarf (left panel). Then the brown dwarf turned on with a bright X-ray flare (right panel) that gradually diminished over the last few hours of the observation. The grainy appearance of the image on the right is due to a shorter exposure time. The bright dots in the background are other X-ray sources, 7 of which have been identified as stars. Professor Gibor Basri of the University of California, Berkeley, the principal investigator for this observation, speculated that the flare "could have its origin in the turbulent, magnetized hot material beneath the surface of the brown dwarf. A sub-surface flare could heat the atmosphere, allowing currents to flow and give rise to the X-ray flare -- like a stroke of lightning." LP 944-20 is about 500 million years old and has a mass about 60 times that of Jupiter, or 6 percent of that of the Sun. Its diameter is about one-tenth that of the Sun and it has a rotation period of less than five hours. Located in the constellation Fornax in the southern skies, LP 944-20 is one of the best-studied brown dwarfs because it is only 16 light years from Earth. The absence of X-rays from LP 944-20 during the non-flaring period is in itself a significant result. It sets the lowest limit on steady X-ray power produced by a brown dwarf, and shows that the million-degree Celsius upper atmospheres, or coronas, cease to exist as the surface temperature of a brown dwarf cools below about 2500 degrees Celsius. "This is an important confirmation of the trend that hot gas in the atmospheres of lower-mass stars is produced only in flares," said Professor Lars Bildsten of the University of California, Santa Barbara, also a member of the team. Brown dwarfs have too little mass to sustain significant nuclear reactions in their cores. Their primary source of energy is the release of gravitational energy as they slowly contract. They are very dim -- less than a tenth of a percent as luminous as the Sun -- and of great interest to astronomers because they are poorly understood and probably a very common class of objects intermediate between normal stars and giant planets. Comment: On October 11 1999 I wrote: "... images from Chandra will be important evidence for the Electric Universe because x-rays are only emitted where electrical activity is strongest." Astrophysicists are unable to interpret the information from Chandra sensibly because their training does not include plasma electrical discharge phenomena. The unfortunate result is "pathological science" that employs magnetic fields that are generated by poorly understood and unseen theoretical "dynamos" inside cosmic bodies. The resulting hypothetical magnetic fields are then trapped in plasma despite the fact that plasma is not superconducting. Then magical "reconnection" of magnetic field lines is invoked to explain sudden energetic outbursts classified as being "like lightning". If we don't use magnetic reconnection in storm clouds to explain lightning, why use it in deep space to explain a similar phenomenon? As further evidence that magnetic models are inadequate, on July 12 the following image was posted on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website. A Giant Starspot on HD 12545 Credit & Copyright: K. Strassmeier (U. Wien), Coude Feed Telescope, AURA, NOAO, NSF Explanation: What could cause a star to have such a large spot? Our Sun itself frequently has sunspots, relatively cool dark magnetic depressions that move across its surface. HD 12545, however, exhibits the largest starspots yet observed. Doppler imaging - the use of slight changes in color caused by the rotation of the star - was used to create this false-color image. The vertical bar on the right gives a temperature scale in kelvins. This giant, binary, RS CVn star, also known as XX Trianguli, is visible with binoculars in the constellation of Triangulum. The starspot is thought to be caused by large magnetic fields that inhibit hot matter from flowing to the surface. Comment: The explanation of sunspots has been contrived to fit the idea of an internally powered star. Common sense suggests that any break in the photosphere should allow the hotter and brighter material beneath to show through. Sunspots should be brilliant blue-white rather than cooler and darker. Once again astrophysicists have invoked magical magnetic fields to "solve" the problem. However, HD 12545 strains the magnetic theory of starspots past breaking point. Where does all of the throttled heat flow go? If it is diverted around this colossal starspot, the edges should be much brighter than the rest of the star. The electric star model expects this kind of transition between a star like our Sun and a red giant like HD 12545. Bright anode tufting is a feature of mercury arc rectifiers when the current load is high. Anode tufts tend to clump together while retaining their identity. Our Sun is a relatively small stellar anode so the photosphere is densely packed with bright granulations or anode "tufts". A red giant is a large anode so that "tufting" is not required to carry the current load. As a result, the red anode (chromospheric) glow predominates. A red star with a binary partner may also have an asymmetric anode glow due to a distortion in the current supply created by the partner. Starspots will be cooler because the power that drives the stellar electric discharge is being diverted. Starspots can be any size on an electric star. ................................................................ The 12-hour observation of LP 944-20 was made on December 15, 1999, using the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The ACIS instrument was built for NASA by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Pennsylvania State University, University Park. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, manages the Chandra program. TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, CA, is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, MA. ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ********************************************************** PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/html/sales.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm http://www.science-frontiers.com Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
