A research paper I wrote for a philosophy class. The ideas are a little out there but it's interesting to think about.

1. Brigham Young University
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Gravity is bringing us down, it’s time for a change.
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Wade Wagner
Philosophy 423
Prof. David Grandy
12 December 2013
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2. Science is dying. Looking back in time through the goggles of modern science it is
easy for one to laugh at old theories and scoff at preceding science that was held on
to with white knuckles. However, in our own day, we are hanging on to some
principles with the same white-knuckled stubbornness that we so readily look down
upon. It is because of this, as it always has been, that scientific "progress" is
stagnated and squelched. The best part of science is we can never really believe that
the things that we know now are completely irrefutable, because if we did then we
would not be where we are now as a human race. Call it progress or call it state of
change, either way it's hard to argue that we're not better for it. So why do we hold
on to old traditions and theories so desperately and vigorously? Shouldn't we
welcome new ideas and support research that pushes the boundaries of modern
science? I know there are talented and able people out there doing just that, but
sadly they are far outnumbered by the traditionalist population and therefore are
burdened by the weight of prior bias and knowledge. Have we reached the peak of
civilization or is there still room for improvement?
The scientific answer, of course, is that there is always room for growth,
knowledge, and, if necessary, paradigm shifts. I believe that there is room for change
even today; concerning principles that are being taught as fact around the world. I
wish to shed light on the common misconception that gravity is the primary force
that drives the mechanics of the solar system, and ultimately, the universe. I believe
that gravity, while still a contributing factor, is not the sole force that drives celestial
movement but that electricity and plasma, the electric universe theory, does. Herein
I will visit a brief history of astronomy and how our modern astronomical theories
came to be in order to paint a picture of how science, revolutionary ideas, and
paradigm shifts have brought us where we are today. It is my hope that after our
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3. current science has been shed in this light, and a simple explanation of the electric
universe theory, that together we will see that gravity is not the end-all-be-all force in
the universe. I hope to break down the walls of traditionalism in order to allow
innovation to stimulate our creative minds and possibly change the way we look at
the world, again, for the better.
The way that we look at the world, and especially the heavens, has drastically
changed many times over. Early astronomers thought "...that if the hours and the
seasons depended upon the course of these distant lights, then history in its turn
must also come under their influence; man himself and his fate must be governed by
the stars and planets." (Reichen pg. 6) Thus the "science" of astrology was born from
some of the earliest proponents of celestial observation. In these early societies
priests were often the watchers of the heavens because the stars were divine things of
gods and spirits. Other early ideas were things like the earth being flat, the earth
floating on a great river which it is also surrounded by, above the earth there were
"upper waters" or the rain, and it connected to the "lower waters" through canal-type
areas so that the lower water was never empty. These early theories have long since
been proven false by physical and other numerous means. Although astrology has
been smothered and re-kindled many times, it still even has a small following today,
it was utterly dismissed as well as more critical and mathematical minds came upon
the scene.
Thus came the Greeks, whose self-entitled job it was to "...sweep away all of
these fables and to insist that a valid explanation of natural effects cannot be sought
in theology or the supernatural." This was a revolutionary mutation in the thought
process of how people looked at the heavens. Humanity began to look at these things
rationally instead of through religiously-biased spectacles. This process, as we still
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4. see today, was of course slow. Thales began postulating with a disc-like flatness to
the earth and water as the core element from which everything came and went.
Anaximander thought of the earth as cylindrical with humanity living only on the top
surface but free-floating in a heavenly environment, and the stars were more holes in
an opaque wheel as everything revolved circularly around the earth. The school of
Pythagoras came along, first claiming the earth to be spherical in shape. This school
of thought was also geo-centric and believed the decimal system to be the foundation
of everything, with one of their most important theories being universal harmony.
Then came the great Aristotle, giving strength to the geo-centric model and
mathematically coming up with 55 concentric spheres to account for the heavenly
bodies and their motion, among many, many more great things that cannot be
adequately addressed here. Heraclides angered his contemporaries by claiming that
the earth actually spun about its own center, a fact not supported until much later by
Copernicus. Aristarchus pushed the limits even further and theorized the sun to be
motionless while the other bodies, including the earth, revolved around it. Thus
introducing a helio-centric model for which he was almost killed, and why, because
people were stubbornly holding fast to the more popular belief of Aristotelian
astronomy so that a fully supported helio-centric model would not come in to place
until some 1,800 years later. In Alexandria, however, Greek science still made
progress, with the Ptolemaic system, complicated as it was, being the foundation of
astronomy from that time throughout the middle-ages, where astronomy and
astrology were terribly intertwined and progress seemingly stopped.
As the sun finally broke over the horizon of the dark ages, people finally
started to question the complete authority of the church, although this reformation
was a bit slower for science and astronomy, for when Copernicus finally began again
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5. the helio-centric model of thought, even protestant Martin Luther was slow to
change his mind, he said, "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to
show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the
moon...This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred
Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
earth." (Reichen 44) We see here that even a man who fought for religious freedom
and new interpretation, was still slow to change his mind when it came what he
believed to be scientific, and in this case religious, fact. So Copernicus was not even
able to see his ideas to full fruition in his lifetime. Contemporaries Tycho Brahe and
Johann Kepler made significant progress in breaking down old notions. Brahe,
though not a full proponent of Copernicus, worked to break down the Ptolemaic
system through his numerous observations and data. Kepler was able to use this
wealth of information to provide a mathematical basis for the work of Copernicus
and also describe the planetary patterns as elliptical rather than perfectly circular. At
the same time, despite the great accomplishments Kepler was making, a greater man
would overshadow and claim the spotlight of Kepler, Galileo Galilei. I cannot fully
describe here the import of Galileo's contributions to astronomy with his use of
lenses that sent astronomy rocketing in to a new era. His observation of mountains
and valleys on the moon, the four satellites of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus,
among others gave a completely new set of data with which the minds of that day
were able to work. It took overwhelming evidence such as this to finally awaken and
begin to convince people of the change that needed to take place. Though, again,
even Galileo was not fully appreciated in his day as a supporter of Copernican helio-
centricism, as the leaders of the church would force him to house arrest for the rest
of his life. Finally, we come to Isaac Newton, the father of our modern gravitational
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6. theory. That wonderful apple, coupled with his formulated laws of motion helped
him explain a gravitational orbit and motion that could more accurately explain the
motion of the heavens. Though Newton approached this subject with more caution
and tact than did Galileo, people were finally starting to come around, and thus we
have the basis for almost all modern astronomy up to today. After all, we rocketed to
the moon upon the theoretical work and physics of Newton. But as we look back,
how long did it take us to get there?
There is no doubt in my mind that all of these men were inspired, directed,
and even saved for their times to accomplish the amazing things that they did, but it
begs to ask the question, would we have discovered them sooner if mankind was
more open to the challenging of existing science? One would think that after all of
this time we could look at the past and realize numerous occasions on which we as
humanity have completely failed to recognize that we are wrong and are determined
to continue to wade in stagnant waters for a while longer instead of choose to change
and progress. It is a deep philosophical debate in and of itself to consider the nature
of the human attitude to change and to all that is new and different. Suffice it to say
here that I believe we should be getting better at it, not worse, and we continue
forward in science.
So where are we now? Newton's apple incident supposedly happened in 1666,
and here we are, almost three and a half centuries later, still pondering over those
same principles. I understand that we have come quite a long way on these
principles, but despite that, I don't believe that should stop us from continuing to
find a better way. There are, after all, weaknesses to even Newton's laws; specifically
about what we know of gravity.
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7. The law of gravity works very well for what we need it to do in our own solar
system regarding planetary and orbiting motions, but as we became able to view
farther and farther into space, we viewed observed motion that would require
enormous amount of mass to generate, according to modern laws of gravity, and that
mass simply wasn’t there. Without going in to too much detail, suffice it to say that
modern science came up with “dark matter” and “dark energy” in order to get these
distant observations to fit our small-scale model. This matter that was “created” still
had issues even with Einstein’s famous equation relating mass to energy. This new
matter basically acted like pure energy despite what Einstein had deduced about
matter, having no mass, can have no energy, thus they created the “dark energy” that
the “dark matter” created. It seems to me that this is a little far to stretch a theory,
when, we have plenty of other ways to explain these type of phenomenon without
creating new, unexplainable and untested matters and energies. Perhaps one could
turn to electricity? (Thunderbolts)
When I say electricity, though, I do not mean the form of it that powers your
house, although that also plays a part. I am talking more broadly about
electromagnetic radiation and plasma, or electrically charged (ionized) gas. Anthony
Peratt, in his book “Physics of the Plasma Universe” says, “The space environment
around the various planetary satellites and rings in the solar system is filled plasma
such as the solar wind, solar and galactic cosmic rays (high-energy particles) and
particles trapped in the planetary magnetospheres.” (8) This plasma and
electromagnetic energy fills this “empty space” that we used to think the planets just
floated around in like isolated islands. But according to recent observations that
allow us to see wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum, we can see that this is not
the case, in fact, the planets are all intertwined in a vast network of charged particles
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8. and electromagnetic energy. This power, to me, seems much more explainable than
some invented “dark matter” and its resulting inexplicabilities.
This point of view has also started to change the way some think about the
sun, which has long been viewed basically as sustainable fusion that continues to
react over and over for billions of years. But we have started to observe that the
electric field of the sun extends for billions of miles from the sun, which scientists
theorize could actually light the sun electrically. (Thunderbolts) It seems to me like
we are making observations that are, like Galileo observed when he took a closer look
at the moon, revolutionary and should make us question the world around us.
Because who’s to say that the driving force in the universe couldn’t be this intricate
electromagnetic web that we have observed filling the empty space in both our galaxy
and in most of space. After all, we had to invent matter in order to explain the
mechanics of other galaxies.
All in all, I believe that there are more driving forces in our universe than we
have observed or been able to explain thus far. We can observe easily the power of
electricity over gravity all around us: lightning, magnetic forces that defy gravity, and
many more examples that are all, even in this small reference frame, much greater
than gravity. “Even weakly ionized plasma reacts strongly to electromagnetic field
since the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force is 39 orders of
magnitude” (Peratt 17) I strongly believe that gravity, while still a contributing factor,
is not the sole force that drives celestial movement but that electricity and plasma,
the electric universe theory, does. It is my hope that we will learn from our
predecessors and keep our minds open to new science that falls in to our laps, while
still practicing and perfecting the science that we know. We’ve seen even from our
own laborious trek through astronomy that everything we learned along the way
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9. built the foundation for what was to come, so let us be the foundation for the future
and not let it fall through the weak floor of doubt and traditionalism.
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10. Works Cited
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Peratt, Anthony (1992). Physics of the Plasma Universe. Springer-Verlag New
York Inc.
Reichen, Charles-Albert. A History of Astronomy. New York: Hawthorn, 1963.
Print.
"Thunderbolts.info." Thunderboltsinfo. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
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http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
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