'..major changes in science..' - Wal Thornhill

<blockquote>'Mackay was spot on in 1852 when he wrote, "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds." It is a fundamental caution against academic hubris that is sorely missing in university curricula. It amplifies the hollow ring of the claim that science is logical and self-correcting. History shows that many major changes in science have had to wait upon "eminent outsiders." Bernard Newgrosh describes these people as an "interesting and important group of people who earn their living in one field whilst undertaking a hobby or other leisure study in a quite different discipline. Their amateur deliberations often result in crucial groundbreaking developments. Many of the laws of science can be credited to these people, also the foundation of new disciplines. This select band has had ideas which were truly new, momentous in the history of science."

Newgrosh continues, "It is a curious fact that almost none of these outsiders had any qualification or academic background in the discipline in which they shone - indeed many were entirely self-taught. Some are not all that well known, having just the single claim to fame but others are polymaths of astonishing intellectual calibre. I am going to call this group 'the eminent outsiders'."

The Eminent Outsider
• Occupation unrelated to discipline of achievement
• Work on hobby or other outside interest leads to discovery
• Initially purely amateur researches, etc.
• Entirely unqualified in discipline of hobby study
• Makes fundamental discoveries

Some examples of eminent outsiders are Hooke, Leibniz, Ben Franklin, Lavoisier, Priestley, Coulomb, Herschel, Young, Fresnel, Carnot, Lyell, Faraday, Ohm, Darwin, Pasteur, Westinghouse, Edison, Bell, and Einstein.

- Wal Thornhill, The Madness of Black Holes, 30 July 2006


'Electric discharge machining of planetary surfaces is the most powerful sculpting force in Nature. Until planetary scientists recognize this fact they will continue to be surprised and puzzled by images and data returned from other bodies in the solar system.'

- Wal Thornhill, Enceladus' Cometary Plumes, 12 March 2008


'Global warming has been deemed a fact. However, the inconvenient truth is that humans are not causing it. Al Gore has been given poor advice. Like Darwin's theory of evolution and Big Bang cosmology, global warming by greenhouse gas emissions has undergone that curious social process in which a scientific theory is promoted to a secular myth. When in fact, science is ignorant about the source of the heat — the Sun.

The really inconvenient truth is that we cannot control Nature. But we can begin to learn our true place in the Universe and figure out how to cope rationally with inevitable change. Clearly, reducing air pollution is an admirable goal in itself. But we must not be deluded into thinking it will affect climate significantly. The connection between warming and atmospheric pollution is more asserted than demonstrated, while the connection with variations in the Sun has been demonstrated.

...

What has the electrical model of the Sun-Earth connection have to offer for our understanding of ENSO?

Climatologists base their predictions on Coupled General Circulation Models. These are computer models that try to mimic the interplay of the atmosphere and the ocean with energy coming from the Sun. The contradictory results prompted the Chairman of the World Climate Conference in 2003, Prof. Yuri Izrael, to ask, "What is going on, on this planet — warming or cooling?"

Now some geologists are beginning to take a broader look at climate drivers, from the perspective of Aristotle's four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. In other words, it seems that what goes on inside the Earth also affects climate.

The possibility that something internal to the Earth affects climate was raised by Daniel Walker first in 1988 and then again in 1995 and 1999. He pointed out that increased tectonic activity (seismicity, magma upwelling and hydrothermal venting) along portions of the East Pacific Rise (EPR), precede (by up to six months) each El Niño event studied since 1964. The association was so significant that Walker called the increased seismicity along the EPR "Predictors of El Niño."

Geophysicist Bruce Leybourne has found a link between global climate oscillations and small changes in the Earth's gravity, which alters storm tracks and affects sea levels. "The evidence so far available indicates that tectonic events precede ocean/atmospheric changes. The evidence comes from gravity measurement studies... These studies indicate strong correlations or 'teleconnections' between barometric pressure change and the force of gravity... This establishes an unmistakeable link between gravity fluctuations and ocean-atmosphere dynamics."

It would be preferable to find a cause that doesn't rely on tectonics—the science of hypothetical activity within the Earth. I have already made the connection between earthquakes and solar activity. "The missing link between the sunspots and earthquakes is the fact that the electric discharges to the Sun that cause sunspots can also affect the Earth's ionosphere. The ionosphere forms one "plate" of a capacitor, while the Earth forms the other. Changes of voltage on one plate will induce movement of charge on the other. But unlike a capacitor, the Earth also has charge distributed in rock beneath the surface. And if the subsurface rock has become semi-conducting because of stress, there is an opportunity for sudden electrical breakdown to occur through that rock.

We should expect similar processes to occur underground as are found in atmospheric lightning. ...in a large earthquake, the entire circuit may be involved, from below the Earth, through the atmosphere to the ionosphere. This would explain the massive disturbance of the ionosphere over a large area accompanying a major earthquake. Subterranean lightning causes earthquakes! Seismic waves are the rumble of underground thunder." The 'weather' beneath the ground is linked to the weather above. So what is the connection with the fluctuations in gravity?

This brings us to one of the most intransigent myths of the 20th century: that Einstein gave us a real understanding of gravity. He did not. He was the most significant physicist to cross the line between physics and metaphysics. His imaginary description of gravity in terms of matter curving space, in some non-physical extra dimension, explains nothing. How can you curve nothing?

Newton had shown that gravity is related directly to mass. But what causes matter to exhibit mass remains a fundamental mystery. Also, Newton's gravity operates instantaneously (time does not appear in his gravitational equation). Yet Einstein would have us believe that the Earth has no information about where the Sun is until 8 minutes after. He bequeathed us a disconnected, incoherent universe that simply cannot work or give rise to life. That is why cosmology reads like science fiction. This ignorance of the real nature of gravity may have significance in relation to climate.

Einstein published his theory of gravitation, or general theory of relativity, in 1916. And so a new paradigm, or set of beliefs, was established. It was not until 1930 that Fritz London explained the weak, attractive dipolar electric bonding force (known as Van der Waals' dispersion force or the 'London force') that causes gas molecules to condense and form liquids and solids. Like gravity, the London force is always attractive and operates between electrically neutral molecules. And that precise property has been the most puzzling distinction between gravity and the powerful electromagnetic forces, which may repel as well as attract.

So it seems the clue about the true nature of gravity has been available to chemists — who are not interested in gravity — and unavailable to physicists — who are not interested in physical chemistry (and view the world through Einstein's distorting spectacles). Look at any average general physics textbook and you will find no reference to Van der Waals or London forces. What a different story might have been told if London's insight had come a few decades earlier? Physics could, by now, have advanced by a century instead of being bogged in a mire of metaphysics.

The London force originates in fluctuating electric dipoles caused by slight distortion of otherwise electrically neutral atoms and molecules. The tiny electric dipoles arise because the orbiting electrons, at any given instant, cannot shield the positive charge of the nucleus equally in all directions. The result, amongst a group of similar atoms or molecules is that the electric dipoles tend to resonate and line up so that they attract each other. An excellent illustrated lesson on the London force, or Van der Waals' dispersion force can be found here.

Obviously, gravity is distinct from the London force. It is much, much weaker. That should be a clue. What if we are looking at gravity being due to a similar electrostatic distortion effect in the far smaller constituents of each atom, in the electrons, protons and neutrons? Of course, this is heresy because the electron is supposed to be a fundamental particle, with no smaller constituent particles. However, there are experiments that challenge this belief.

If gravity is an electric dipolar force, we can understand why the so-called "universal constant of gravitation" is so infernally inconstant. There is no reason to assume it is universal. Changes in charge distribution within the Earth contribute most of the variability in gravity. And sudden changes in charge distribution within the Earth cause earthquakes and thermal, volcanic events. They will occur most often in regions having peculiar electrical properties. The common thread can now be seen. The Sun's radiant output remains fairly steady while the electrical power in its galactic circuit has a superimposed cyclic "hum." The Earth receives the hum plus the static from solar flares, which simply adds "noise" to our average climate and earthquake activity.

A final word about our place in the Universe. We live with the fable of Newton's clockwork solar system and the constancy of the Sun over past aeons. Scientists chart past climate and blithely assign periodicities to various warming and cooling episodes extending back millions of years into the past. All of the numbers and charts bestow the appearance of being in control of the facts. But it is mere wishful thinking. Here, science unconsciously takes on the mantle of religion—providing assurance in an uncertain universe.'

- Wal Thornhill, Global Warming in a Climate of Ignorance, 15 February 2007