The Electric Universe (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 09, 2011, 11:57 (5007 days ago)

The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies publishes a Review and two "Workshops" a year, and in the latest of these are two articles that are highly relevant to our discussions. The first article is a report by Jill Abery on a talk given to the Society by Wallace Thornhill, co-author with David Talbott of The Electric Universe. It's too long to quote in full, and I can't find it on the Internet, but the following will give you the flavour:-"Modern cosmology is based on the sacrosanct belief in an expanding universe and progress has been completely stifled. Maths is not physics; it should only be the tool of physics, but the relationship has been turned on its head and theoretical physics is ruled by maths instead, resulting in a mass of confused ideas. The EU [Electric Universe], by contrast, offers a coherent 'big picture'.-A true understanding of the cosmos will only be achieved by following the principles of physics. i.e. to observe and to experiment. Wal mentioned several researchers whose work had led to a realization that the universe consists of plasma, the 4th state of matter, which generates the complex behaviour observed in the sky via the flow of electric currents, the power of which so exceeds that of gravity as to make the latter practically negligible. Orthodox cosmologists don't believe that electricity in space does anything, but the work of people like Hannes Alfvén and Kristian Birkeland shows that the spiral forms and constrictions which appear in plasma perfectly describe features of the cosmos, such as supernovae and chains of new stars forming in galaxies. The findings of quantum physics and the action at distance of gravity imply that all matter has a resonant substructure and its apparent cohesion at all scales requires that information passes between bodies at near-infinite speed. In relation to living organisms, this conclusion supports the theory of 'morphogenetic fields' as proposed by Rupert Sheldrake and provides an explanation for evolutionary change which Darwinian selection cannot explain."-Perhaps coincidentally the second article, by Stephen Smith, discusses a Swiss publication The Primeval Code (Der Urzeit-Code) by Luc Bürgin. Again, I can only quote parts of it:-"In laboratory experiments the researchers there Dr. Guido Ebner and Heinz Schürch exposed cereal seeds and fish eggs to an 'electrostatic field' ... in other words, to a high-voltage field, in which no current flows. Unexpectedly primeval organisms grew out of these seeds and eggs: a fern that no botanist was able to identify; primeval corn with up to twelve ears per stalk; wheat that was ready to be harvested in just four to six weeks. And giant trout, extinct in Europe for 130 years, with so-called salmon hooks. It was as if these organisms accessed their own genetic memories on command in the electric field, a phenomenon which the English biochemist Rupert Sheldrake, for instance, believes is possible."-"Electric Universe advocates recognize that plasma is a self-organizing phenomenon. Indeed, Irving Langmuir coined the name because he saw that collections of charged particles isolate themselves from their surroundings in ways that are similar to biological systems. A cell membrane could be thought of as a Langmuir plasma sheath, sustaining a voltage difference between the negatively charged interior and the positively charged exterior. Electric currents most likely maintain charge separation across the membrane layers.
Perhaps these observations can all be tied together. Sheldrake's 'morphic fields', protein jitter, gametic alteration that leads to speciation, and the electric charges in cells might all be manifestations of plasma's emergent properties. [...] it might not be too great a stretch to think that electric currents might cause proteins to shake at varying rates, thus changing their behaviour, or triggering morphic fields to change state, creating new forms of life. Symbiosis, a longtime thorn in the side of evolutionary biology, might find its genesis in electricity." -I'm in no position to judge the scientific merits of this theory, but it would be interesting to know what our own scientists think.