Thunderbolts and Lightning (very very frightening)

By Katrina Borthwick

This is about my unexpected adventure in skepticism a very long time ago in a galaxy not so far away.

So winding the clock back to around September 2011, I was a regular contributor for an astronomy group newsletter. At the time I was playing around with a blog page, and as part of that I uploaded a couple of articles I had put in the print newsletter, to the blog site. This was just testing everything was working and all, and whether I might ever want to use the blog site…….and then I completely forgot about it.

One of the articles covered a report at the time saying the neutrinos were breaking the speed of light (I had doubts), and the other one was called “Electric Universe Debunked”. The latter article is the one that took on a life of its own.

For those who haven't come across it, the electric universe ‘theory' is essentially saying the sun isn't powered by nuclear fusion and is instead a giant bag of plasma, the reasons for which tend to change depending on who you are talking to, but just aren't very plausible. You can blame this guy for quite a bit of it https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Talbott . The description of him on Wikipedia starts with “….self-taught comparative mythologist and long-time promoter of neo-Velikovskian nonsense.”

The TLDR version is that to accept the electric universe theory you need to reject that nuclear fusion occurs at the centre of star and then it follows you would end up rejecting thermodynamics, gravitation, nuclear physics, statistical physics, electromagnetism, hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics as we know it. In other words ‘physics'. As well as this they:

1. Cite the wrong number as controlling convection in the sun, resulting in them saying convection in the sun is impossible;
2. try to apply the inverse square law, that only works in vacuum for radiant energy, to convection and conduction, then say it breaks that law;
3. say oscillations in the sun were evidence the sun was plasma based on a theory that was disproven in 1976; and finally
4. disprove their own theory by trying to use the solar wind as proof the sun is electric – it's actually proof it is not as an electric sun would be positively charged and everything would stick to it.

So my article was up there, linked from absolutely nowhere, and I am very far from being a subject matter expert on the topic. If you are going to have an argument with someone on this topic, you are probably better off talking to your uncle who has built a couch on the deck with beer cans. He has good command of the consequences of physics at least. So as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it.

But then comments start trickling in the first half of 2012. I'm thinking this is a bit strange, but I was really busy renovating an old house and being the general all round gofer for the astronomy group, so I just ignore it as weirdness.

Then in July 2012 I got this message from a person called Michael Mozina. Michael MOZINA | Research profile (researchgate.net)

“In case you're interested, your blog article was mentioned on Thumderbolts (sic). I posted a relatively lengthy reply to your blog entry on that website. Keep in mind that it is very easy for someone outside of the PC/EU community to confuse the fact that there are multiple "electric sun" solar models to choose from, and the issue is still in debate within the EU community. In fact there are at least a half a dozen different solar models under consideration, all which make slightly different predictions, and all of which have various strengths and weaknesses. For a full reply, see the link below:”

My first thought was that he had completely misspelt ‘Thunderbolts' and it annoyed me. But this was closely followed by my second thought that went ‘oh boy here we go…'

So, it turned out that there is a website called the Thunderbolts Forum (spelled correctly this time) which is filled with people totally sold on the Electric Universe (EU) theory. They put my humble blog up there and proceeded to try to tear it apart. I didn't respond to anyone or even read their rebuttal (I keep meaning to do that), but what I did do was leave it up to piss them off.

272 comments, 128,655 views and over 11 years later it's still there. Some of the comments are thankful, some are nasty, some are trying to say how I'm wrong, a few are trying to sell stuff and I had at least one romantic proposal.

I know the electric universe theory has been covered in a more up-to-date manner in this newsletter and the podcast, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but if you want to read my article, it's still there, warts and all. Neutrino Dreaming: The Electric Universe Theory Debunked.

I'm no astrophysicist or anything so I'm sure it is far from perfect, but I am sure the electric universe theory is bunk.

On re-reading my article I can see there is a sentence I forgot I put in there that might be causing some of the internet rage:

“… I found a notation on Wikipedia about why “Electric Universe Theory” had been removed. Apparently there are only a few people who currently publish ideas on the “electric universe” and those people publish exclusively on the internet or vanity presses. They use very misleading citations gleaned from mainstream sources in an attempt to lend credibility to the “electric universe theory”. Most papers listed as peer reviewed are not about the “electric universe” but about plasma cosmology (a different idea). The “electric universe” has no single paper subject to peer review about its ideas.”

Poor wee sods.