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The People Who Believe Electricity Rules the Universe<\/p>\n
Written by Sarah Scoles<\/p>\n
February 18, 2016 \/\/ 09:30 AM EST<\/p>\n
Copy This URL<\/p>\n
They call themselves The Thunderbolts Project.<\/p>\n
They subscribe to an idea called \u201celectric universe,\u201d and sometimes describe themselves as \u201cgetting EU eyes.\u201d Like slipping on rose-colored glasses, the conversion changes their perception of the entire universe. The objects and events remain the same. But they\u2019re tinged with truth. And in EU theory, the truth is that electricity rules.<\/p>\n
Electric currents that flow along plasma filaments shape and power galaxies. The currents stream into stars, powering them like fluorescent bulbs. They induce the births of planets. Craters on those planets come from electrical arcs, like lightning bolts, that sear the surfaces.<\/p>\n
Also, black holes don\u2019t exist, and neither does dark matter. Nor dark energy.<\/p>\n
The Big Bang? Never happened.<\/p>\n
Einstein\u2019s two relativities are laughable fiction.<\/p>\n
Electricity can explain away all that stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story of the cosmos that you see in the media now is virtual reality,\u201d said Wallace Thornhill, one of the founders of EU.<\/p>\n
???<\/p>\n
The electric universe concept does not meet the National Academy of Sciences\u2019 definition of a \u201ctheory,\u201d which is \u201ca comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence\u201d and \u201ccan be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In physics, theories need math. That\u2019s how you predict, gather evidence, verify, disprove, and support. But EU theory isn\u2019t big on math. In fact, \u201cMathematics is not physics,\u201d Thornhill said. While that equation aversion makes the theory pretty much a nonstarter for \u201cmainstream\u201d astronomers, it is the exact thing that appeals to many adherents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don’t blind you with science,\u201d said Rasjid Smith, who learned EU theory from YouTube. \u201cIt is understandable to a capable schoolchild.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea that outsiders (\u201cthe people\u201d) will revolutionize physics, in a way that those outsiders understand, is powerful.<\/p>\n
“What doesn’t seem to vary is the dissident psychology behind the involvement.”<\/p>\n
\u201cScience is returned to the people\u2014the garage tinkerer, the practical engineer, and the natural philosopher,\u201d Thornhill told Motherboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say to me that it has changed their lives because it makes sense for them,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd because it is a real cosmology, there is something for everyone, be they scholar, artist, engineer, or the \u2018man on the street.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
EU is completely at odds, however, with everything modern science has determined about the universe.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt best, the \u2018electric universe\u2019 is a solution in search of a problem; it seeks to explain things we already understand very well through gravity, plasma and nuclear physics, and the like,\u201d said astronomer Phil Plait, who runs the blog Bad Astronomy at Slate. \u201cAt worst it’s sheer crackpottery like homeopathy and astrology, making claims clearly contradicted by the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet something about it sparks fervor in the hearts of people-on-the-street, more fervor than casual believers in the Big Bang have. Despite the gaps, logical fallacies, and evidence to its contrary, EU appeals deeply to adherents, lighting a fire not unlike a tent revival does. The question is, what is it about EU that grabs people?<\/p>\n
Thornhill began his obsessive study of cosmic electricity in high school, when he read Immanuel Velikovsky\u2019s book Worlds in Collision, published in 1950.<\/p>\n
Velikovsky was an author known mostly for his controversial \u201ccomparative mythology\u201d books, which recast and reinterpreted ancient history. In Worlds in Collision, he said that Jupiter ejected to Venus around 1500 BCE. From there, the newborn planet flew close to Earth, causing all sorts of catastrophes. When Venus came back around a half-century later, it stopped Earth\u2019s spin (briefly), making for a long night.<\/p>\n
The resulting disasters, Velikovsky claimed, showed up in mythology around the world. Astrophysicists pointed out that this Jupiter-born Venus idea violated theories about orbits and gravity. But Velikovsky had gone rogue: He suggested gravity didn\u2019t cause orbits. Electricity did.<\/p>\n
When a young Thornhill read Velikovsky\u2019s book, he recognized a kindred spirit. Here, he thought, was a true scientist, not afraid to be a heretic. After studying physics and electronics at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Thornhill briefly did upper-atmosphere research at IBM, but he, too, identified as a heretic. It wasn\u2019t long before he left the establishment.<\/p>\n
He never forgot about Velikovsky, though. And in the early 1970s, he heard about a magazine called Pulsate: 10 issues, all devoted to his scientific hero. The publication was written by brothers Steven and David Talbott. He soon met these two, along with Velikovsky himself, at a conference called \u201cVelikovsky and the Recent History of the Solar System.\u201d Five years later, he found himself in Velikovsky\u2019s home in Princeton, New Jersey. There, Velikovsky \u201cplanted the seed of an idea that gravity is related to the electrical structure of neutral matter,\u201d Thornhill told me.<\/p>\n
Talbott. Image: Che Saitta-Zelterman<\/p>\n
That seed would eventually grow into a framework called \u201celectric universe\u201d theory, which Thornhill and David Talbott would later develop together and which would gain a fervent worldwide following.<\/p>\n
Thornhill and Talbott began their official EU collaboration at another conference, years later. \u201cSince my university days, I had been prepared to assist those leading the fray in any way I could,\u201d Thornhill said. \u201cBut at that 1994 conference, I realized that the leaders were gone and it was up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In preparation for that meeting, which was called \u201cPlanetary Violence in Human History,\u201d Thornhill spent a month sleeping on his friend\u2019s office floor. He wanted to convince Talbott that the ancient images he\u2019d been studying\u2014petroglyphs that look like the cartoon Suns in the top-right corners of kindergarten art\u2014bore witness to catastrophic plasma events. Plasma, the idea went, pervades the universe in filaments. Those filaments carry electric current, and that current controls the cosmos. \u201cMagnetism, gravity and the nuclear forces are all different manifestations of the electric force at vastly different scales,\u201d Thornhill said of the basis of the theory.<\/p>\n
Thornhill called his conference talk, \u201cThe Electric Universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
???<\/p>\n
Today, it\u2019s not just Thornhill and Talbott. EU also has the backing of a fervent community, those in The Thunderbolts Project. Since Thornhill and Talbott founded this movement, the internet has spread it.<\/p>\n
The Thunderbolts website has 1,800 forum participants, with about 130 online simultaneously at peak traffic. The Thunderbolts Facebook page has around 10,000 followers.<\/p>\n
One hundred seventy-five people donate $1,905 per month to the Thunderbolts Project Patreon campaign for video production. On its YouTube page, six feature-length documentaries have anywhere between 300,000 and a million views. The group holds annual conferences. This year\u2019s is at the Sheraton in Mesa, Arizona.<\/p>\n
Reddit user NeeAnderTall, an EU follower and Thunderbolt subreddit peruser, began life wanting to be an astronaut. NeeAnderTall, who didn\u2019t want to use his real name, consumed science fiction like fuel. But as the years supposedly depicted in Space 1999 and 2001: A Space Odyssey approached without measuring up, he grew frustrated.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything I wanted to experience was always 20 years away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So he decided to reverse-engineer a UFO (something he no longer believes in). In the classifieds at the back of Popular Science magazine, he found an ad for High-Energy Electrostatics Research, a tome that deals with \u201canti-gravity.\u201d Soon, he enrolled in college astronomy and geology classes. He gave status-quo answers to get good grades, but he didn\u2019t buy into all of it, especially dark matter.<\/p>\n