Electric Universe: has there ever been a scientific research program?

It used to be, some years' ago, that Electric Universe (EU) proponents were many, and highly vocal. Look at the number of EU-related threads in the archives of ISF, for example.

These days, those proponents have retreated to Eejet-Tube vids, and unmoderated fora; even their fave forum today has little traffic.

One thing has always baffled me about the EU, and its fanatics: an apparent, complete, lack of any research proposals.

For example, all over the internet you'll find people asking EU fans things like "if you had total control over all the world's leading astronomical facilities - telescopes etc - where would you point them?" or "given unlimited funds, what experiments, here on Earth, would you conduct?" Yet, aside from SAFIRE and perhaps Lerner's Focus Fusion, there are no answers!

At least, none that I could find.

Which I find baffling.

I mean, isn't there even one EU adherent who is curious enough to think about doing an experiment, or making an observation, to test EU ideas? It seems to me that it'd take just one such to vastly improve the EU's standing (assuming the results of such experiments or observations were consistent with "EU theory", whatever that is).

Hence this thread: do any of you, dear readers, know of any published research projects/programs/experiments/observations, proposed by EU supporters (other than SAFIRE and Lerner's Focus Fusion)?

JeanTate said:

One thing has always baffled me about the EU, and its fanatics: an apparent, complete, lack of any research proposals.

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Or unique Predictions backed by Test Results - they certainly haven't produced that!

To be honest, Jean, I don't think there is anyone there sufficiently qualified to do research of the nature required. As you say, most of their 'proposals' come from boobtube vids and comment streams of pop-sci websites, and science blogs.
They seem to expect the 'mainstream' scientists they so distrust, to actually do all the work for them. Hence all the uneducated comments such as: "whine....whine...whine....they haven't considered x, y,or z before they decided it was a."
I've lost count of the amount of times I've told them that the author's email address is on the paper; "contact him, ask him why they didn't consider x, y or z. Publish the reply here."
Never heard of it happening, other than one of the more prolific posters at phys.org telling me he'd contacted someone re the electric comet nonsense, and the guy had told him (somewhat dismiissively) what we've been telling them for years!
So I think they are now reduced to criticising the mainstream, and trying to win over more scientifically illiiterate recruits, as if science is a bit like the top 40. They've got some catching up to do to reach the level of belief for things like astrology and homeopathy. And look how seriously science takes those.
The SAFIRE thing is pure silliness, and is bass ackwards; find some evidence that sufficient electrons/ protons whatever, are actually observed heading for the Sun, and then we can look at the effects they might have. As it stands, any decent peer reviewer is going to say "you plugged your sphere into the mains. What is the solar system equivalent? Where is it? All you've done is show how a metallic sphere behaves when you shoot a zillion volts through it." It might convince them, but it sure as hell isn't going to make any impression on scientists. Find the electrons, protons, Z-pinches, Birkeland currents, all of which will be easily seen, and then they might have a reason to do the experiment.
As for Thornhill's latest ramblings on dipole gravity.....oh dear.

There no serious research into magic pink unicorns either, and for similar reasons.

jaydeehess said:

There no serious research into magic pink unicorns either, and for similar reasons.

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I do believe I have asked this possibly rhetorical question before but, "How do you explain the lack of evidence of the Stark_effect^WP in the presence of the monstrously huge electric fields that rule the Solar System? Galaxy? Universe?"

My sense is: EU fans are genuinely "crackpots" rather than "physicists with an unpopular idea." They genuinely think they're doing fine, and they genuinely look at their annotated NASA videos and think they see a slam dunk. "Obviously the truth is now clear! If the opposing cabal hasn't accepted it yet---if that two-hour Wal Thornhill video didn't convince everyone, what good would more evidence do?"

Jules Galen said:

Or unique Predictions backed by Test Results - they certainly haven't produced that!

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I'm thinking we should introduce Maartenn 100 to them - or vice versa!!!!!!!!!!

I also think that they are scared shootless of actually trying to look at data.
As the EC is now the most active, all they want is to see the pictures and the data released (which will happen, some of it is on PSA/PDS), but they also want the interpretation from mainstream of the data, so they can critisize the analysis. But never ever do they take the high quality older data (from e.g. Giotto) and actually work with them. There are some on thunderdolts whom I think would be able to do something with real data. But working with data would possibly show that they are wrong, and that cannot be, of course.

So therefore, mainly handwaving and half-baked ideas, and the ever useful "plasma is so complex that we cannot understand it with current theories."

ETA: and actually, because the interplanetary magnetic field is in a Parker spiral, the heliospheric current sheet actually has a small radial component, but don't tell it any futher.

I think there's an important distinction which I may have fudged in the OP

jonesdave116 said:

To be honest, Jean, I don't think there is anyone there sufficiently qualified to do research of the nature required.

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tusenfem said:

I also think that they are scared shootless of actually trying to look at data.

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While there certainly are some EU acolytes who convey confidence in their 'data analysis' abilities, I think most are honest enough to recognize that they couldn't possibly do any analysis (worth anything), on their own. Of course, few are open enough to admit this, but some do.

My puzzlement is somewhat different, not so much the doing of any research, but at EU adherents' apparent complete absence of curiosity about any aspect of 'the EU' which could, potentially, be studied.

Some examples.

'Arp woz rite!', about discordant redshifts, is a common EU belief. To me, an obvious thing to do would be to point Hubble at some of his most famous examples, to get better resolution data, spectra, etc. Yet almost no EU fan seems ever to have thought this would be a good idea! Another: a sky survey like SDSS, but of the southern sky.

'Plasma phenomena are scale invariant!' is another (OK, few express it like this). Again, an obvious thing to me would be to build a ~100m scale plasma lab, to test this. Or to mess with the Earth's plasmasphere, by injecting ions. Or ... yet no EU believer seems to ever have suggested such things! (OK, I realize that the second example has actually been done, but as it's not visible in daily popsci pieces it seems no EUer knows about it).

'The Sun is powered by galaxy-wide Birkeland currents!' You'd think this would have huge implications for astronauts going to the Moon (or beyond), not to mention the ability of space probes to function as planned, right? Ditto re 'you can't see the currents because it's a plasma dark mode!' Yet apparently no EU follower has even thought of doing some plasma experiments to see what sorts of particle fluxes might be encountered by astronauts or space probes if the Sun is, truly, powered by giant Birkeland currents, of the ISM is a 'dark mode' plasma discharge (or whatever). FWIW, Tom Bridgman has several good posts on just this topic; EU fanatics who have responded have, IMHO, completely ignored this ... not that they don't think it's an important question, just that they seem to believe it cannot possibly be tested. Period.

It's true that one of the leading 'electrical theorists', David Talbott, is on record as saying that any quantitative analysis is 'a ruse'*. However, even with this restriction, EU supporters seems remarkably silent on suggesting even qualitative new tests/experiments/observations.

*Yes! He actually said that!! In the EC thread, here in ISF. I don't really understand his position on this; he seems to think that, in a true scientific enquiry, one must first establish 'qualitative truth' (my term), and only once that's firm start considering quantitative analyses. Yeah right ... makes no sense at all.

Gord_in_Toronto said:

I do believe I have asked this possibly rhetorical question before but, "How do you explain the lack of evidence of the Stark_effect^WP in the presence of the monstrously huge electric fields that rule the Solar System? Galaxy? Universe?"

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There are, IMHO, thousands of such questions, and they get asked - of EU fans - all the time.

To the extent that there are any meaningful responses, none - it seems to me - include the concept that someone could devise an experiment or observation to actually test the EU claims. Yeah, EUers couldn't do any such tests anyway, even with extensive support; however, the most puzzling thing is why they seem so completely uninterested in any tests, ones designed starting from core EU concepts.

For most of them, in their daily lives, they surely are not so uninterested, are they?

For example, if the lights in the kitchen go out, they surely think of seeing if a circuit breaker has tripped, or that lights in other rooms still work, or that other houses in the street still have lights on, or ... don't they? I mean, they don't immediately conclude the local grid has gone down, and call their electrical utility's hotline, do they?

ben m said:

My sense is: EU fans are genuinely "crackpots" rather than "physicists with an unpopular idea." They genuinely think they're doing fine, and they genuinely look at their annotated NASA videos and think they see a slam dunk. "Obviously the truth is now clear! If the opposing cabal hasn't accepted it yet---if that two-hour Wal Thornhill video didn't convince everyone, what good would more evidence do?"

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Yes, but ...

Even the most fervent of physics crackpots do, at least sometimes, consider what novel tests might be done to confirm their paradigm-shifting discoveries ... put an electron in an octopole magnetic field, crossed with a quadrupole electric field, ... send a Planck-like probe to orbit the L2 point of Neptune ... create a plasma with these characteristics and measure the induced redshifts ...

What EU acolytes never seem to do is think about how their firmly held ideas might be tested, in ways that have not already been done by mainstreamers.

jonesdave116 said:

As for Thornhill's latest ramblings on dipole gravity.....oh dear.

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This provides a good illustration: his idea has been criticized, in the Thunderdolts forum, e.g. by 'querious'. And at least one simple test has been proposed (by querious). Yet aside from someone who has a competing, equally crackpot, 'theory of gravity', no one seems to take the idea of actually testing Thornhill's idea at all seriously!

I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which EU fans are actually interested in scientific truth and inquiry. What they're really after is just a smug feeling that they know more than the mainstream, and have the inside scoop on reality.

Wunover137 said:

I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which EU fans are actually interested in scientific truth and inquiry. What they're really after is just a smug feeling that they know more than the mainstream, and have the inside scoop on reality.

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The way too warm and smug feeling of people who have way overdosed on psychotropics and anesthetics in combination with bad gin!!!!!!

Wunover137 said:

I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which EU fans are actually interested in scientific truth and inquiry. What they're really after is just a smug feeling that they know more than the mainstream, and have the inside scoop on reality.

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You can extend this to most adherents of pretty much ANY conspiracy theory... and you would be right.

Wunover137 said:

I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which EU fans are actually interested in scientific truth and inquiry. What they're really after is just a smug feeling that they know more than the mainstream, and have the inside scoop on reality.

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It's certainly true that a great many EUers fit that description.

However, by no means all.

For example, there's a relatively new thread in Thunderdolts in which a journalist asks "Which aspects of EU resonate most with you?" (I'm not giving a link). One of the questions she asks is "Why do you prefer EU to traditional modern physics?" While the number of public responses, so far, is small (~ten), those who have replied all seem very keen, and their answers at least strongly imply a deep interest in scientific truth and inquiry.

Yet, as far as I can tell, none of them have ever proposed anything remotely resembling a novel test (even if only in principle)*

Ditto the high priests, Scott, Talbott, Thornhill.*

Ditto the Thunderdolts admins and mods (there are ~a half dozen).*

*with the exception of the two I've already mentioned, SAFIRE and perhaps Lerner's Focus Fusion

JeanTate said:

*with the exception of the two I've already mentioned, SAFIRE and perhaps Lerner's Focus Fusion

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I missed one: in the ISF thread, Wallace Thornhill: The Long Path to Understanding Gravity | EU2015, there's mention of a thread in the Thunderdolts forum, questioning Thornhill's idea. Some posts in that thread mention possible (novel) tests of his idea. However, I think it's fair to say that the majority of responses to the idea of tests have been reasons excuses why such tests are invalid (David Talbott's implied dismissal is particularly revealing, IMHO).

New twist: a lot of the EU stuff emphasizes 'multi-disciplinary' research, presumably a genuflection to Velikovsky (V). Even if you accept this, and many a EU acolyte apparently does, why then is there no apparent work done to test EU ideas? For example, in the decades since V, there has been a vast amount of new material published on previously uncontacted people's myths, artifacts, etc, and perhaps even more new archaeological findings. At least some of these are surely pertinent to core EU ideas, yet apparently no EU fan has even thought to suggest tests of the EU by digging into such data.

Apparently even a multi-disciplinary approach, per the EU, is devoid of any and all novel testing ...

We should also remember, Jean, that scientific evidence against their ideas is summarily dismissed as being wrong. It's nothing to do with science, for the most part. Take Peratt; came up with his hypothesis on galactic formation etc., and at least had the decency to propose how it would be falsified; i.e. the emission of synchrotron radiation, which we should have seen in various all-sky surveys. Never been seen.
EU then just find another fruitcake to say that the surveys are just seeing reflections of the oceans, or some such nonsense!
tl;dr?
It's not science. It's a quasi-religious cult, based on mythology. Anything that doesn't fit their world view is dismissed a being wrong, purely on the basis that they must be right.

JeanTate said:

I mean, isn't there even one EU adherent who is curious enough to think about doing an experiment, or making an observation, to test EU ideas?

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Possibly because there's no point trying to test an idea that's not coherent enough to be able to produce testable predictions?

You'll have to wait until they come up with a mathematical model for the EU hypothesis, so they can calculate exactly how the EU model differs from the standard model. Until they do that (and they probably never will), any possible test, experiment or observation will be inconclusive, because there's no possible way for them to know whether or not the results support or contradict the EU hypothesis.

The preliminary (first) SAFIRE "paper" provides some clues to their attitude toward EU experiments. Their so-called hypothesis is, boiled down, the Sun is primarily electric in nature. The heart of their apparatus was a spherical anode in a vacuum jar. No points to anyone but a total newbie for guessing why it was sperical. They declared the details of their electrode configuration "proprietary". Like they were going to patent it or something. More like it prevented anyone from easily finding a paper, perhaps many decades old, where someone already explored that electrode geometry. They used the JMP statistics analysis package, which made their results look sciency and also allowed them to "publish" their paper on a user forum on the JMP maker's web site. The payoff at the end of the paper was a comparison of a photo of granules on the Sun's surface with tufts of plasma on the surface of their anode. This was claimed as evidence the Sun is powered by electricity.

All in all, they get a lot of mileage out of stuff like this. Something to point to to counter claims they don't do research that looks good enough to fool the great unwashed. A basis to solicit contributions so they can "scale up" their apparatus to get more supposed evidence. I can't wait until the SAFIRE update comes out from behind their paywall; it should be, uh, interesting. Apologies to the OP if this has been too OT.


ETA: I have a copy of the preliminary report in pdf; PM me if you'd like me to send a copy.

JeanTate said:

I mean, isn't there even one EU adherent who is curious enough to think about doing an experiment, or making an observation, to test EU ideas? It seems to me that it'd take just one such to vastly improve the EU's standing (assuming the results of such experiments or observations were consistent with "EU theory", whatever that is).

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The only experimentation ever done by the Electric Universe swindlers (Talbott and Thornhill) is to test the ease at which they can fleece money from gullible cult members -- this test is conducted each year and promoted as an "EU Conference".

Their next test is scheduled for June 17, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The flimflam price is $350 per deluded fool.

https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2015/12/30/eu2016-home-page/