The Way

We know we have the Sun to thank for our daylight, and our warmth - but how many of us have ever shown the Sun any kind of gratitude for our planet's rotation? The basis of Leedskalnin's theory is that it's not energy conserved by the Earth's mass which drives the forces of rotation, but energy supplemented by the Sun. What's more, the forces at play in the rotation are implemented by a hitherto unseen substance. Below, is an extract from his book "Magnetic Current". Magnetic current is Leedskalnin's terminology for what we call electricity. A copy of the book is available here, thanks to:
http://keelynet.com/unclass/magcurnt.txt

"North and South Pole magnets are not only holding together the earth and moon, but they are turning the earth around on its axis. Those magnets which are coming down from the sun they are hitting their own kind of magnets which are circulating around the earth and they hit more on the East side than on the West side, and that is what makes the earth turn around."

This one little paragraph is so potent with new insight about the physical world, blatantly contradicting everything that we think we know about the Universe, that it becomes virtually impossible to know where to even begin the attempt to try and explain it. It appears that what Leedskalnin is describing somekind of mechanism that is responsible for the rotation of the planet, and he speaks of it in such a way, that he might just aswell be talking about the effect of water striking a paddlewheel.

"The North and South Pole magnets they are cosmic force, they hold together this earth and everything on it. Each North and South Pole magnet is equal in strength, but the strength of each individual magnet doesn't amount to anything. To be of practical use they will have to be in great numbers.

In permanent magnets they are circulating in the metal in great numbers, and they circulate in the following way: Each kind of the magnets are coming out of their own end of the pole and are running around, and are running in the other end of the pole and back to its own end, and then over and over again."

If I am interpreting Leedskalnin correctly (and there's every possibility that I'm not!) I think that his circulating "magnets" are describing a substance from which a magnetic field is made. The magnetic fields of both the Earth and a bar magnet are seen as examples of a magnetic dipole. If we pretend that the Earth's core has a gigantic bar magnet inside it, then it's easier to imagine how the Earth's magnetic field, or geomagnetic field, might look. A magnet's magnetic field is seen as being static, or at rest, while the Earth's geomagnetic field is constantly changing.

Image: Dipole field from NASA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole

In current theory, the magnetic field lines of a bar magnet are considered to be a mathematical concept, and as such, do not physically exist. The field line is an imaginary line in a field of force, and is used only to indicate that the direction of the line at any point is the direction of the force at that point. Mathematical theory dictates that the magnetic field lines of a magnetic field must form closed loops, and must not intersect. A magnetic field (and also a static electric field) is supposed to consist of a flux of particles, known as "virtual photons," which pop in and out of existence so fast that they fail to obey the laws of natural physics, making them impossible to pin down, and practically non-existent.

Virtual particles are subatomic particles that form out of "nothing" (vacuum fields conceptually analogous to lines of force between magnetic poles) for extremely short periods of time and then disappear again. Such particles permeate space, mediate particle decay, and mediate the exchange of the fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, strong, and—in accord with quantum theory—gravititational forces). Virtual particles are real and have measurable effects, but the same uncertainty principle that allows them to come into existence dictates that they cannot be directly observed.
http://science.jrank.org/pages/7195/Virtual-Particles.html

Leedskalnin on the other hand, implies that field lines are not simply imaginary, but are describing a physical phenomena, one that is made up by an invisible, yet material substance - his so-called "magnets." The idea that the magnetic field is describing a physical substance is not as far-fetched as it at first might appear. The question of whether magnetism was indeed describing a material, or immaterial substance had been something which, before we settled on it being nothing more than a mere mathematical entity, has incessantly bothered philosophers for centuries.

Up until the triumph of the Newtonian philosophy in the eighteenth century, the metaphysical reality of magnetism was the primary problem. That reality could not be denied; magnetism existed, even though the metaphysical conditions of its existence were difficult to define. Magnetic influence could not be dismissed as unreal, or occult, or magical, or erroneous superstition. Hence the nature of this magnetic reality or “substance” was the primary focus of philosophy. The main question was, is magnetism material or immaterial. For Tales it was immaterial soul, Empedocles saw it as a corporeal substance, like air that could only be detected indirectly by its effects.
http://www.wbabin.net/science/ricker10.pdf

When Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) first investigated the phenomena of magnetic fields produced by electromagnets, he too thought of the field lines, or as he called them "lines of magnetic force," as representing a physical substance. Quite the most startling relevation to be drawn from this, is that Faraday is describing force itself as a substance. This point is made succinctly by historian Nancy J. Nersessian in her paper "Faraday's Field Concept":

"The specific features of Faraday's field concept, in its 'favourite' and most complete form, are that force is a substance, that it is the only substance and that all forces are interconvertible through various motions of the lines of force."

The term "lines of force" was first introduced by Faraday to help explain the apparently continuous curves being traced out in metallic filings near a magnet - what we today refer to as the magnetic field. Faraday believed that these physical lines of force described stresses and strains in a medium which occupied the vacuum of space. After all, iron filings seem to reveal that physical forces are taking place in the space surrounding the magnet. What was the nature of this medium that supported the lines of force, exactly?

Magnetic lines of force of a bar magnet shown by iron filings on paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field

Faraday imagines the lines of force as a material substance, but from what I can gather from history books, he is somewhat reluctant to draw conclusions about the space surrounding the lines of force. It appears that Faraday was quite content to imagine that the vacuum of space was, erm... well, nothing but space. But if the lines of force were made from a material substance, where did the material come from? Surely, the lines of force have not simply materialised from "nowhere," but have come into effect through a surrounding medium?

There are instances however, where Faraday seems to have no problems acknowledging that space was not just empty void. In one instance, when referring to the magnetic power of a vacuum, Faraday concedes that the medium of space may be thought of, not as a material substance perhaps, but as something a bit more immaterial; he writes:

"What the magnetic medium deprived of all material substance, may be, I cannot tell, perhaps the ether."
http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup6/Magnetism-In-Its-Relation-To-Induced-Electromotive-Force-And-Current.html

Material or immaterial, it remains that the medium of space has substance - something ethereal, and untangible, but a substance nonetheless. The aether was a substance that had been familiar to philosophers throughout the ages, and prior to Einstein, some physicists believed it to be the very substance responsible for supporting the propagation of electromagnetic waves.

"Contrary to popular myth, modern science isn't incompatible with, and does need, the aether concept. In fact, modern science could not be defined without incorporating some form of its definition into its foundation. Let's remember that the basic definition of aether is nothing more than a "physical medium permeating the entire universe, endowing it with measurable physical qualities". Currently, modern science uses the term "fields" or "fabric" instead of aether, since the term aether has become associated with a specific set of 19th century conceptual models considered to disproven and thus invalid."
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aeth_faq.htm

If we adopt the aether as an all-permeating, all-pervading substance of space, magnetic lines of force can now be seen as lines of tension in a physical medium - which is precisely how James Clerk Maxwell came to interpret Faraday's results. This led directly to Maxwell producing his famous equations, from which he was able to formulise the electromagnetic field in the 1860s.

James Clerk Maxwell (1839 - 1879) enjoyed great success when he found a set of equations which beautifully described how light waves could travel through such a luminiferous aether. He showed that light waves are composed of oscillating electric and magnetic vectors in an x-y plane for a wave traveling in the z-direction. For a waves to exist at all, it is natural to suppose that there is some sort of supporting medium. Such a medium must possess elasticity (a spring like property) and also inertia, (a mass like like property). In fact, the velocity of a wave in any medium is equal to the square root of the stiffness divided by the density of the medium.
http://ldolphin.org/studynotes/space.htm

In 1864 Maxwell presented his paper "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," which includes a revealing quote taken from Faraday. It is a shining example of just how much Faraday was instrumental in influencing Maxwell's perception of the medium of space. In the quote, we find that Faraday not only mentions the aether as the medium responsible for supporting the propagation of light, but also includes the pioneering suggestion that it could be the exact same medium responsible for magnetic, and electric phenomena. The quote Maxwell used is given below:

"For my own part, considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic force and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet, I am more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force there is such an action, external to the magnet, [rather] than that the effects are merely attraction and repulsion at a distance. Such an action may be a function of the [medium] aether; for it is not at all unlikely that, if there be an aether, it should have other uses than simply the conveyance of [light and heat] radiations."
http://home.netcom.com/~sbyers11/

One of the facts to emerge from Faraday's experiments, reinforced incidentally by Maxwell's equations, is that a changing magnetic field creates an electric current in a conductor, and an electric current in a conductor creates a magnetic field. In 1831, Faraday carried out numerous experiments in his attempt to prove that electricity could be generated from magnetism. He demonstrated that when a magnet was moved into, or moved out of, a coil of wire, the motion produces, while it lasts, currents of electricity in the coil. Such currents are known as "induced currents."

"Electrical current can be generated by moving a metal wire through a magnetic field... Besides moving a wire through a magnetic field, you could also create an electric current in the wire by moving the magnets and keeping the wire stationary.

Another technique to create a current is to keep both stationary but vary the magnetic field. That method is used to change the voltage of AC in electrical transformers."
http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/electrical_generation.htm

The meaning behind the term "induction" is, I think, highly suggestive. It's taken from the Latin "induco" - I lead, bring or conduct in or into somewhere. To induce is to lead, as to a course of action, by means of influence or persuasion. It had been known since antiquity that a permanent magnet, or lodestone, could "induce" temporary magnetization in a bar of soft iron. It could be said that a permanent magnet is leading, or bringing something into the iron, thereby influencing a change in the soft iron's behaviour.

A lodestone is any strongly magnetized rock, especially one containing magnetite. Of some interest perhaps is the fact that the word "lode" is derived from Old English, meaning the "way or path" - making a lodestone a "way-stone." Now, it could be seen that the lodestone is showing us the way, such as being a tool for navigation, or it could be telling us something about a property of the stone itself. Is the path that we ultimately seek to be found hidden inside the lodestone?

Magnetism can be induced in a magnetic material by several means. The magnetic material may be placed in the magnetic field, brought into contact with a magnet, or stroked by a magnet. Stroking and contact both indicate actual contact with the material but are considered in magnetic studies as magnetizing by INDUCTION.
http://www.tpub.com/neets/book1/chapter1/1i.htm

When the permanent magnet is removed, the temporary magnetization of the soft iron is then lost. Magnetic, or ferromagnetic materials can be divided into magnetically "soft" materials like annealed iron which can be magnetized but don't tend to stay magnetized, and magnetically "hard" materials, which do. One way to make a permanent magnet is to heat a bar of magnetic hard material to redness, and then let it cool in the presence of a strong magnet.

With soft magnetic materials such as iron, small external fields will cause a great amount of alignment. However, because of the small restraining force only a little of the alignment will be retained when the external field is removed.

With hard magnetic materials such as Alnico a greater external field must be applied to cause alignment of the domains, but most of the alignment will be retained when the field is removed, thus creating a stronger permanent magnet, which will have one North and one South pole.
http://www.coolmagnetman.com/maghow.htm

If the applied magnetic field is strong enough, such as one produced by an electromagnet, it's also possible to induce permanent magnetization without heating the material. An electromagnet is a type of magnet whose magnetic field is produced by the flow of electric current. When the field is applied by an electromagnet, the iron may retain some of the magnetization, and become a permanent magnet itself. The process of inducing magnetism in this way is known as electromagnetic induction.

If the lines of force which emanate from a magnet are describing tension in a surrounding medium, it would therefore suggest that it is the structure of the magnet which is responsible for producing the effects of stress and strain in the medium. Put another way, the magnetic material is inducing, it is leading the aether through its' structure, thereby generating tension in the surrounding medium. What is the defining structure of magnetic material that enables it to produce the effects of magnetism?

~~Continued in Part III

Crystal At The Centre Of The Earth?

There's a giant crystal buried deep within the Earth, at the very center, more than 3,000 miles down. It may sound like the latest fantasy adventure game or a new Indiana Jones movie, but it happens to be what scientists discovered in 1995 with a sophisticated computer model of Earth's inner core. This remarkable finding, which offers plausible solutions to some perplexing geophysical puzzles, is transforming what Earth scientists think about the most remote part of our planet.

"To understand what's deep in the Earth is a great challenge," says geophysicist Lars Stixrude. "Drill holes go down only 12 kilometers, about 0.2 percent of the Earth's radius. Most of the planet is totally inaccessible to direct observation." What scientists have pieced together comes primarily from seismic data. When shock waves from earthquakes ripple through the planet, they are detected by sensitive instruments at many locations on the surface. The record of these vibrations reveals variations in their path and speed to scientists who can then draw inferences about the planet's inner structure. This work has added much knowledge over the last ten years, including a puzzling observation: Seismic waves travel faster north-south than east-west, about four seconds faster pole-to-pole than through the equator.

This finding, confirmed only within the past two years, quickly led to the conclusion that Earth's solid-iron inner core is "anisotropic" -- it has a directional quality, a texture similar to the grain in wood, that allows sound waves to go faster when they travel in a certain direction. What, exactly, is the nature of this inner-core texture? To this question, the seismic data responds with sphinx-like silence. "The problem," says Ronald Cohen of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, "is then we're stymied. We know there's some kind of structure, the data tells us that, but we don't know what it is. If we knew the sound velocities in iron at the pressure and temperature of the inner core, we could get somewhere." To remedy this lack of information, Stixrude and Cohen turned to the CRAY C90 at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Earth's layered structure -- a relatively thin crust of mobile plates, a solid mantle with gradual overturning movement, and the outer and inner core of molten and solid iron.


Getting to the Core

Don't believe Jules Verne. The center of the Earth is not a nice place to visit, unless you like hanging out in a blast furnace. The outer core of the Earth, about two-thirds of the way to the center, is molten iron. Deeper yet, at the inner core, the pressure is so great -- 3.5 million times surface pressure -- that iron solidifies, even though the temperature is believed to exceed 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the sun.
Despite rapid advances in high-pressure laboratory techniques, it's not yet possible to duplicate these conditions experimentally, and until Stixrude and Cohen's work, scientists could at best make educated guesses about iron's atom-to-atom architecture -- its crystal structure -- at the extremes that prevail in the inner core. Using a quantum-based approach called density-functional theory, Stixrude and Cohen set out to do better than an educated guess. With recent improvements in numerical techniques, density-functional theory had predicted iron's properties at low pressure with high accuracy, leading the researchers to believe that with supercomputing they could, in effect, reach 3,000 miles down into the inner core and pull out what they needed.

Three crystal structures of iron. Yellow lines show bonds between iron atoms.

Rethinking Inner Earth

On Earth's surface, iron comes in three flavors, standard crystalline forms known to scientists as body-centered cubic (bcc), face-centered cubic (fcc) and hexagonal close-packed (hcp). Working with these three structures as their only input, Stixrude and Cohen carried out an extensive study -- more than 200 separate calculations over two years -- to determine iron's quantum-mechanical properties over a range of high pressures. "Without access to the C90," says Stixrude, "this work would have taken so long it wouldn't have been done."

Prevalent opinion before these calculations held that iron's crystal structure in the inner core was bcc. To the contrary, the calculations showed, bcc iron is unstable at high pressure and not likely to exist in the inner core. For the other two candidates, fcc and hcp, Stixrude and Cohen found that both can exist at high pressure and both would be directional (anisotropic) in how they transmit sound. Hcp iron, however, gives a better fit with the seismic data. All this was new information, but even more surprising was this: To fit the observed anisotropy, the grain-like texture of the inner core had to be much more pronounced than previously thought.

"Hexagonal crystals have a unique directionality," says Stixrude, "which must be aligned and oriented with Earth's spin axis for every crystal in the inner core." This led Stixrude and Cohen to try a computational experiment. If all the crystals must point in the same direction, why not one big crystal? The results, published in Science, offer the simplest, most convincing explanation yet put forward for the observed seismic data and have stirred new thinking about the inner core.

Could an iron ball 1,500 miles across be a single crystal? Unheard of until this work, the idea has prompted realization that the temperature-pressure extremes of the inner core offer ideal conditions for crystal growth. Several high-pressure laboratories have experiments planned to test these results. A strongly oriented inner core could also explain anomalies of Earth's magnetic field, such as tilted field lines near the equator. "To do these esoteric quantum calculations," says Stixrude, "solutions which you can get only with a supercomputer, and get results you can compare directly with messy observations of nature and help explain them -- this has been very exciting."

Researchers: Ronald Cohen and Lars Stixrude, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Hardware: CRAY C90
Software: User-developed code
Keywords: Earth, inner core, geophysics, seismic waves, anisotropic, iron, crystal structure, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, hexagonal close-packed, quantum mechanics.

Related Material on the Web:
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Projects in Scientific Computing
Ronald E. Cohen's homepage
Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Lars Peter Stixrude's homepage
Georgia Technical Institute, School of Earth and Atmospheric Studies
References, Acknowledgements & Credits
http://www.psc.edu/science/Cohen_Stix/cohen_stix.html

The General Scholium to Isaac Newton's Principia mathematica

Published for the first time as an appendix to the 2nd (1713) edition of the Principia, the General Scholium reappeared in the 3rd (1726) edition with some amendments and additions. As well as countering the natural philosophy of Leibniz and the Cartesians, the General Scholium contains an excursion into natural theology and theology proper. In this short text, Newton articulates the design argument (which he fervently believed was furthered by the contents of his Principia), but also includes an oblique argument for a unitarian conception of God and an implicit attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, which Newton saw as a post-biblical corruption. The English translation here is that of Andrew Motte (1729). Italics and orthography as in original.[1]


G e n e r a l S c h o l i u m:


The hypotheses of Vortices is press'd with many difficulties. That every Planet by a radius drawn to the Sun may describe areas proportional to the times of description, the periodic times of the several parts of the Vortices should observe the duplicate proportion of their distances from the Sun. But that the periodic times of the Planets may obtain the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances from the Sun, the periodic times of the parts of the Vortex ought to be in sesquiplicate proportion of their distances. That the smaller Vortices may maintain their lesser revolutions about Saturn, Jupiter, and other Planets, and swim quietly and undisturb'd in the greater Vortex of the Sun, the periodic times of the parts of the Sun's Vortex should be equal. But the rotation of the Sun and Planets about their axes, which ought to correspond with the motions of their Vortices, recede far from all these proportions. The motions of the Comets are exceedingly regular, are govern'd by the same laws with the motions of the Planets, and can by no means be accounted for by the hypotheses of Vortices. For Comets are carry'd with very eccentric motions through all parts of the heavens indifferently, with a freedom that is incompatible with the notion of a Vortex.

Bodies, projected in our air, suffer no resistance but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is done in Mr. Boyle's vacuum, and the resistance ceases. For in this void a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with equal velocity. And the parity of reason must take place in the celestial spaces above the Earth's atmosphere; in which spaces, where there is no air to resist their motions, all bodies will move with the greatest freedom; and the Planets and Comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explain'd. But though these bodies may indeed persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first deriv'd the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.

The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts and almost in the same plan. Ten Moons are revolv'd about the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those Planets. But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being form'd by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances from one another.
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all: And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator[2], or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: These are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God usually a [3] signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God; a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a Living, Intelligent, and Powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is Supreme or most Perfect. He is Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from Eternity to Eternity; his presence from Infinity to Infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not Eternity and Infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; he is not Duration and Space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever, and is every where present; and, by existing always and every where, he constitutes Duration and Space. Since every particle of Space is always, and every indivisible moment of Duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where. Every soul that has perception is, though in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent parts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent, not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him b [3] are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. 'Tis allowed by all that the supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and every where. Whence also he is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, not touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of anything is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; but their inward substances are not to be known, either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds; much less then have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion. For we adore him as his servants; and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find, suited to different times and places, could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build. For all our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind, by a certain similitude which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy. [5]
Hitherto we have explain'd the ph�nomena of the heavens and of our sea, by the power of Gravity, but have not yet assign'd the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centers of the Sun and Planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force; that operates, not according to the quantity of surfaces of the particles upon which it acts, (as mechanical causes use to do,) but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides, to immense distances, decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances. Gravitation towards the Sun, is made up out of the gravitations towards the several particles of which the body of the Sun is compos'd; and in receding from the Sun, decreases accurately in the duplicate proportion of the distances, as far as the orb of Saturn, as evidently appears from the quiescence of the aphelions of the Planets; nay, and even to the remotest aphelions of the Comets, if those aphelions are also quiescent. But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from ph�nomena, and I frame no hypotheses. For whatever is not deduc'd from the ph�nomena, is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferr'd from the ph�nomena, and afterwards render'd general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough, that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.

And now we might add something concerning a certain most subtle Spirit, which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which Spirit, the particles of bodies mutually attract one another at near distances, and cohere, if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighbouring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this Spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be explain'd in few words, nor are we furnish'd with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic spirit operates.


Notes
[1] Isaac Newton, The Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte (London, 1729), pp. 387-93.
[2] Pantokrator: original in Greek.
[3] Newton's note a: Dr. Pocock derives the Latin word Deus from the Arabic du (in the oblique case di,) which signifies Lord. And in this sense Princes are called Gods, Psal. lxxxii. ver. 6; and John x. ver. 35. And Moses is called a God to his brother Aaron, and a God to Pharaoh (Exod. iv. ver. 16; and vii. ver. 1 [correction for the 1729 edition, which reads: 8]). And in the same sense the souls of dead princes were formerly, by the Heathens, called gods, but falsely, because of their want of dominion. [This note was added to the 3rd, 1726 edition].
[4] Newton's note b: This was the opinion of the Ancients. So Pythagoras in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. Thales, Anaxagoras, Virgil, Georg. lib. iv. ver. 220. and Aeneid. lib. vi. ver. 721. Philo Allegor. at the beginning of lib. i. Aratus in his Ph�nom. at the beginning. So also the sacred Writers, as St. Paul, Acts xvii. ver. 27, 28. St. John's Gosp. chap. xiv. ver. 2. Moses in Deut. iv. ver. 39; and x. ver. 14. David, Psal. cxxxix. ver. 7, 8, 9. Solomon, 1 Kings viii. ver. 27. Job xxii. ver. 12, 13, 14. Jeremiah xxiii. ver. 23, 24. The Idolaters supposed the Sun, Moon, and Stars, the Souls of Men, and other parts of the world, to be parts of the supreme God, and therefore to be worshiped; but erroneously.
[5] 1713 edition: Experimental Philosophy.
http://www.isaacnewton.ca/gen_scholium/scholium.htm

Power From The Earth's Magnetic Field

On a web forum I frequent, a person asked if it would be possible to extract energy from the Earth's magnetic field. He was told no - static magnetic fields can't transfer energy. For all practical purposes this is true, but in fact we also know that the earth's magnetic field isn't static. It changes from day to day and from year to year - and even second to second. The changes are small over small timescales, but in fact the magnetic poles do drift around and the solar wind does perturb the fields and so forth.

Wikipedia gives a reference saying that typical local variations in the magnetic field at the surface are of the order of 1 nanotesla per second. This is pretty small compared to the total field of perhaps 50 microtesla, but it is measurable with sensitive equipment. Can we extract that energy and free ourselves from reliance on coal and oil? We expect the answer is "no" because otherwise someone would have done it, but we can crunch the numbers to make sure. First, Faraday's law:



Looks bad, but it's not. In this simple physical situation the calculation above will only involve multiplication.

The right hand side says "Make a closed shape out of a bent wire. A square, a circle, a heart, whatever. Now hold it in place and look at the local magnetic field as it passes through the loop. Take that total magnetic flux and look at the rate at which it's changing with time."

The left hand side is just the total potential difference in volts that each electron gains after making one circuit of that loop. It's that number which will tell us something about how useful this might be as a power source.

Magnetic flux is just the magnetic field multiplied by the area of the loop, assuming the field is perpendicular to and uniform within the loop. We're interested in the time rate of change of this flux, and let's say we have a circle with a diameter of 1 meter. The rate of change of the flux is thus (1 nanotesla/second)*(3.14 meters^2).

Which is 3.14x10^-9 volts. Three one-billionths of a volt per square meter of flux-collecting surface. If you tried very hard you might be able to finagle some useful energy out of such a small potential, perhaps with very long superconducting solenoids. But it would be less cost-effective than pretty much any other form of renewable energy by many orders of magnitude.

Still, it was worth a try!

~~Matt Springer is a graduate student of physics at Texas A&M university. He is also an occasional writer and tinkerer, and he is probably too curious for his own good.
http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/06/power_from_the_earths_magnetic.php

Magnetic fields causing ghosts?

Magnetic Hallucinations
by Maurice Townsend

There is now so much laboratory evidence in favour of magnetically induced hallucinations that some paranormal researchers are taking it as read that they are the source of certain anomalous experiences, notably some kinds of ghost. However, the field evidence for such magnetic fields is slight at present. But that could soon change as equipment capable of detecting them is now being deployed at haunted locations. If these magnetic fields exist outside the laboratory, what exactly is causing them?

There have been several articles in Anomaly recently concerning theories on the true nature of ghosts. In particular, there has been a lot about the possibility that they may be hallucinations induced in susceptible people by suitable ambient magnetic fields. While the results of lab experiments are impressive and compelling, there is still little evidence from the field to back this theory up. Initiatives like MADS (described in Anomaly 34) are designed to fill that gap. It will, at last, be simple to measure relevant magnetic fields in allegedly haunted locations.

An important question concerns the detailed nature of any such fields found at haunted locations for MADS to research. They are unlikely to be just like those produced artificially in the laboratory, so we need to investigate what they really ‘look’ like in the field. Once we know that, we can try to ascertain what aspects are absolutely necessary for strange experiences to occur.

Once such fields, and their principal components, have been identified then the next intriguing question becomes, ‘where do they come from’. At first sight, there seem few obvious sources for such fields, perhaps explaining why ghosts are not common. I decided to research the possibilities so that the search could be narrowed down. I hope this will assist investigators when they are researching possible field sources in haunting cases.

Defining the Fields

Before we can identify possible sources of relevant magnetic fields, we need to define exactly what we are looking for. I am indebted to Dr Jason Braithwaite for reviewing the relevant papers (from Persinger et al) concerning the laboratory experiments which have induced ghost-like hallucinations.

The best results have come from what could be broadly described as weak, complex, time-varying magnetic fields. Because the nature and potential sources of such fields are difficult to characterise at this stage, Braithwaite introduced the general term Experience- Inducing Fields, or EIFs for short. This definition relates to all, or any, fields that could have experience-inducing properties. This distinction is helpful for a number of reasons. Firstly, while not all magnetic anomalies will have implications for experience, some will have the ability to influence equipment (which could be interpreted as paranormal) but will not alter the operation of the brain in any way. Those fields could be characterised as Event-Related Fields (ERFs) as they pertain to a tangible physical event. Secondly, it focuses the researcher theoretically on the potential relevance such fields might have.

There are three main aspects to EIFs that have been demonstrated experimentally to be of crucial importance. The following figures are by no means absolute limits: things might happen outside them. However, experiments within these bounds have produced reliable, strong results. So it makes sense to look for fields within these parameters first, at haunted locations.

At present, the evidence suggests that EIFs are varying magnetic fields with low frequency (approx 0.1 to 30 Hz, and certainly under 50Hz) and a moderate intensity (from 100 to 5000 nT) or amplitude (or, more correctly, flux density). For comparison, the average geomagnetic field, which is not generally considered strong and does not vary greatly over time, is around 50,000 nT. An important point to remember is that EIFs are most likely to overlay whatever ambient static magnetic field is present in the area. This would usually be the geomagnetic field itself. Confusion often arises here because the geomagnetic field is usually described as being ‘static’ (ie. does not change over time), whereas, in fact, it does change over time, but very slowly (over hours). There might also be other local permanent distortions to the local magnetic field, such as the presence of the mineral magnetite in the geological strata below the site. At present, such permanent static fields are NOT considered important to inducing hallucinations, however. Therefore, EIFs, if present, would most likely appear as fluctuations on top of the local static field (though see discussion below).

There is another important factor that greatly enhances the chance of hallucinations: field complexity. This is more difficult to characterise. As an example, a typical laboratory experiment may use a simple 30 Hz sine wave field but pulse it for, say, 1s every 3s for a period of 30mins (during this time the field may also vary in amplitude across the pulses as well). Thus, the field fluctuates overall, in addition to the fundamental sine wave. Such overall variance could involve any, or all, of the major field variables: amplitude, frequency and direction. Laboratory studies have used amplitude-modulated, frequency-modulated and complex pulse-patterned sequences with great success. Overall field variations might be repetitive, with the field eventually returning to its original state after a certain period, or they may be chaotic with no obvious repetition. The time period over which fields need to vary is probably (from experiments) in the millisecond to multiple minute region. Simple continuous waveforms, like sine waves, are not at all as effective. The reason for this is that such simple fields are considered not to ‘contain’ the complex information profile that a brain would accept as sensory information. Incidentally, the direction of a magnetic field (which is conventionally said to flow from the north pole of a bar magnet to the south pole) determines which way it will produce a force on another nearby magnetic object.

There are two other important issues concerned in producing magnetic hallucinations, not directly related to the field characteristics. The first is that not everyone is susceptible to hallucinating when subjected to the EIFs outlined above. Current estimates suggest that only around 20 - 30% of the population show a substantially increased susceptibility, due to increased neuronal instability in specific brain regions. Secondly, susceptible people need to be subjected continuously to the EIFs for a significant time, say 20 to 30 minutes, before hallucinations are reported. This applies if the person is static. I will mention people moving around in fields later on. There is, therefore, an important exposure component to EIFs – the effects are not instantaneous.

The hallucinatory phenomenon is thought to arise because the frequency of the external magnetic waves is similar to that used internally by the brain for cognition. This stimulates brain activity, through a process called neural entrainment, which can confuse the brain into producing hallucinations (see ‘Magnetic Fields and the Brain’, this issue).

The table below summarises the factors involved.

Factor
Magnitude
Magnetic field frequency 0.1 to 30 Hz
Magnetic field amplitude (flux density) 100 to 5000 nT
Time varying ‘complexity’ 1ms to 100s+ period
Brain susceptibility Some 20 - 30% of the population
Length of exposure to EIFs Over 20 minutes [if static]
Naturally Occurring EIFs

Could fields with the relevant characteristics occur naturally? The first obvious place to look is the geomagnetic field. This is the magnetic field that is constantly present at the Earth’s surface and in which we are all immersed continuously. It is what makes a compass point north. It is caused by a dynamo effect in the molten core of our planet. Though this effect produces a highly stable field, like that of a bar magnet, the field is constantly changing, primarily due to the effects of the sun impinging on it. The sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with the solar wind, which consists of highly energetic, charged particles. These interact with the geomagnetic field and cause changes reflecting the sun’s own activity. Features such as solar flares can have a major effect on the geomagnetic field. The most significant changes to the geomagnetic field take place over periods of hours. Thus, from a human perspective, the geomagnetic field appears relatively stable.

The geomagnetic field might appear, given its slow variations, an unlikely candidate for EIF, at first sight. Having said that, there have been some studies that have reported correlations between geomagnetic activity and the occurrence of spontaneous hauntings. These correlational studies did not involve field investigations and are considered controversial. As any statistician will tell you, a correlation does not always imply a causal link.

There are certain geomagnetic variables that change at frequencies required for EIFs. Unfortunately, it turns out that these variables, though they have relevant frequencies, are far too weak to produce EIFs, as shown in the table (Campbell, 2003).

Factor
Typical frequency
Typical Amplitude
Comments
Pc1 pulsations 0.2 - 5Hz 0.1 nT Pc = pulsation continuous, caused by magnetosphere processes
Schumann resonances 7.8, 14, 20, 26Hz 0.05 nT Caused by lightning energy resonating between the earth and ionosphere.
Atmospherics 5 - 100+ Hz 0.05 nT Caused by distant lightning
Geomagnetic storms can bring larger amplitude changes in the geomagnetic field. A storm is defined as a period (usually of several days) when there is a large reduction in the horizontal component (parallel to the ground) of the geomagnetic field. On average, one big geomagnetic storm per year might bring a field reduction of around 250 nT, but most will be much less (maybe 10 per year bringing about 50 nT reduction). Therefore, only the largest, most infrequent storms have the sort of amplitudes we are looking for in EIFs. However, these changes typically occur over hours, or minutes at the fastest. Even the Pc1 pulsation component of the geomagnetic field, which has the correct frequency, varies only by a maximum amplitude of a few tenths of one nT (Belyaev, 2003). In summary, there are no natural variations of the geomagnetic field that provide both the amplitude and frequency together to be classed as EIFs, even during geomagnetic storms. Indeed, as we will see later, most of us live in an environment where such natural magnetic variations are entirely swamped by more powerful local artificial sources. So the geomagnetic field can, effectively, be dismissed as a likely source of EIFs.

Another natural source of EIFs that has been suggested is tectonic strain. Essentially, the Tectonic Strain Theory (TST) states that stresses within the Earth’s crust, less than those required to produce an earthquake, may result in highly localised surface electromagnetic disturbances through piezoelectricity in sub-surface rocks. Piezoelectricity is the phenomenon whereby certain crystals, notably quartz, produce an electric charge across opposite crystal faces when under physical pressure or strain.

The TST is the reason why many ghost researchers these days get excited if a geological fault lies near an allegedly haunted location. A fault is a crack in the Earth’s crust. Like any crack in a solid object, it is an indicator of strain, or pressure for movement, in the local area. Strain generally builds up around a fault until it is released through a physical movement (usually) underground, resulting in an earthquake. Thankfully, the vast majority of earthquakes are, in fact, tremors and are so small they are only noticed by seismologists using sensitive equipment.

The TST looks attractive, in principle, but it does have its critics. I have always had problems understanding it, when considering the physical details of the processes involved. Quartz generally occurs underground within other rocks, like granite, where its crystals are separated by other minerals. If you crush granite, an electric charge will build up across individual quartz crystals. However, since the crystals are orientated randomly, the charges (on opposite sides of each crystal) do not align. Therefore, they tend to cancel each other out rather than combining to form a strong overall electric field. There is a tiny overall field where stressed granite (under strain from lateral stress near a fault) is exposed at the earth’s surface, due to the fact that there are no crystals above the surface to completely cancel the field. But it is very small indeed.

Another problem that arises is that any electric field that might conceivably be produced by straining quartz underground will, in any case, be static. There is no movement (except for extremely slow tectonic movement, usually measured in mm per year) in the rocks and so no change in any field produced. This means there could be no magnetic field. In order to get a magnetic field you need to move electric charge through an electric field (such as when current flows down a wire). With no physical movement, there is no magnetic field.

Things change dramatically if the rock fractures, as has been demonstrated in granite crushing experiments (Zhu, 2001). Then, measurable electric (and magnetic) fields can be generated, through both the piezoelectric effect and something called seismoelectric conversion (caused by acoustic waves). The effect is amplified by the presence of water. While this process produces magnetic fields, you have to bear in mind that it involves the rock fracturing, not simply getting strained. There is little or no evidence for underground rock fracturing, even near faults, except during and immediately prior to an earthquake (Robb, 2005).

We do have some measurements of the kind of magnetic fields that might be produced by rock fracturing immediately prior to an earthquake. As a method of predicting earthquakes it is controversial, but the evidence does exist. One of the best known examples was the Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1989. This was preceded by a weak (up to 60 nT) magnetic field with low frequency (0.01 to 10 Hz) up to 55 km away from the epicentre and three hours prior to the quake. However, even this field is not quite up to the strength required for an EIF and it took a 7.1 magnitude earthquake to generate it.

A further problem with TSTs is the very specific locality of the phenomena they set out to explain. In particular, the phenomena are often restricted not just to a single house but to particular rooms or even parts of rooms (sometimes in upper storeys). Houses nearby are seemingly unaffected. It seems unlikely that widespread tectonic strains could give rise to phenomena localised to just a couple of metres. However, it is possible that environmental factors within a house may amplify (or even attenuate) more widespread field disturbances. Also, a house may appear haunted, though next door does not, merely because an EIF-susceptible person lives in one and not the other.

In spite of these problems, I will outline later a variation on the TST that might make it work better than the existing one.

Artificially Occurring EIFs

In a paper on the electromagnetic environment around Moscow (Belyaev, 2003), it was found that the magnetic fields at frequencies around 1 Hz were around 10 times higher in the suburbs, and 100 times higher in the city centre, compared to the countryside. In the city centre fields up to 250 - 300 nT at a frequency of 0.5 Hz were measured. These are strong enough to constitute EIFs. The fields were attributed, unsurprisingly, to electrical equipment in the city. This indicates, quite eloquently, that we should probably look first for artificial sources of EIFs in investigations before looking for, generally weaker, natural alternatives.

Artificial sources contribute significantly to the magnetic fields in a domestic environment, as a quick survey with an EMF meter will show. However, the 0.1 to 30 Hz frequency range of varying fields is generally quiet. This is because most electrical and electronic devices operate using a mixture of DC (for motors, electronic power supplies, etc.), mains frequency (50/60 Hz) and higher. The DC (static) element is rarely pure, being derived from mains supply with rectifiers (often accompanied by transformers). The resultant DC current has a slight voltage ripple on it. However, due to the way rectifiers are designed, this ripple will typically be at mains frequency or above and so not contribute to EIFs. Similarly, the mains supply itself can be distorted by the electrical loads placed on it by various bits of electrical equipment. This gives rise to harmonics but these, too, have a higher frequency and lower amplitude than the mains fundamental frequency. So most domestic electrical appliances, as well as the mains supply itself, will not contribute to EIFs.

Probably the most important source of low frequency magnetic fields is the simple movement, or mechanical vibration, of magnetic materials. By magnetic materials I mean metals with a high magnetic permeability. This means that magnetic fields prefer to flow through them, rather than through the air. Common examples include objects made of iron and steel. The object itself does not have to be magnetised, so long as it has high permeability. You can test if an object is highly permeable by seeing if a magnet is attracted to it. It may, or may not, be able, in turn, to attract other bits of unmagnetised steel (eg. paper clips) to itself. All objects with high magnetic permeability (let’s call them HMPs, for short), whether magnetised or not, distort the earth’s magnetic field around them. In the accompanying figure you will see two objects, one weakly magnetic, the other merely highly permeable. Both distort the surrounding geomagnetic field dramatically. When such objects are vibrated, they drag the magnetic field distortion around with them.


An unmagnetised HMP (top) distorts the geomagnetic field nearly as well as a weak magnet

To produce an EIF frequency disturbance in the ambient magnetic field, all we need to do is vibrate an HMP at a rate of between once every ten seconds (0.1 Hz) and thirty times a second (30 Hz). It doesn’t need to be a constant frequency motion since, as we have seen, varying fields actually work better! The distortion to the ambient magnetic field will move in sympathy with the movement of the HMP, so inducing an EIF frequency change.

The possible examples of such moving HMPs in the domestic environment are almost endless. A sheet of corrugated iron vibrating in the wind, an iron bedstead shaken by nearby heavy traffic, a steel filing cabinet in a seaside office swayed gently by the crashing surf. Anything made of a suitable metal, whether magnetic or not, vibrated at a suitable frequency, will give us the EIF frequency disturbance. Whether it attains a suitable amplitude for an EIF depends on the degree of vibration of the object and the amount of distortion the HMP brings to the ambient field.

As well as bits of metal, there are also machines that can act as moving HMPs. An electric motor can be imagined as a permanent magnet being rotated, pole over pole, between the opposing poles of two other permanent magnets. In the real world, all the magnets are electromagnets but the effect is the same. A rotating magnetic field will be produced with a frequency reflecting the rotation rate of the motor’s armature. Most motors in domestic use are likely to produce rotating fields at EIF frequencies. That’s because few will go round faster than 1800 rpm, which equates to 30 Hz. In addition, DC motors may spark where brushes meet the commutator. This would introduce a sharply pulsed field, at twice the frequency of rotation, which might still be low enough to contribute to an EIF.

There are many motors used in the domestic environment. They commonly occur in such things as pumps (central heating, fridges, air-conditioning), fans (computers, air-conditioning, some ovens), washing machines, vacuum cleaners, even hi-fi equipment and hair dryers. Such appliances can produce quite powerful rotating magnetic fields.

Vibrating HMPs may produce the right frequencies, but will they give us the right amplitudes for people nearby? It comes down to your physical distance from the source of the field disturbance. Assuming the amplitudes exceed minimum EIF level at their source, there is bound to be some critical distance, or zone, away from the source where the field amplitude will be correct. All you have to do is stay in that critical area for long enough and, if you are susceptible and the field varies enough over time, you may well get hallucinations. It is difficult to predict how far such a zone would extend without doing experiments. Magnetic fields decline quickly away from their source, falling with the inverse square law. As a guess, I would say EIFs would probably extend no further than a metre or two from a source likely to be encountered in a domestic situation, assuming the average geomagnetic field as a background. If there was a higher than usual ambient magnetic field, the range would decrease. Conversely, in an area of lower than usual ambient field, the range would increase. One might reasonably ask, how can you live in an area of lower than normal geomagnetic field? HMPs can distort the local magnetic field, as we have seen, and create areas where the local magnetic field is actually lower than average. Such HMPs would, obviously, not need to be moving to produce such an effect. This is the principle behind magnetic shielding. The magnetic field is ‘dragged’ into the HMP, so attenuating the ambient field around it. A place where the ambient field is low could be particularly promising, as it would require less of a field distortion to produce an EIF.

Interestingly, the degree of distortion caused by HMPs to ambient fields depends on such things as the shape of the source and its angle to the field, as well as the permeability and magnetisation of the metal. Long thin HMPs (like sheet metal) and curved ones (think of a horshoe magnet) disrupt the local magnetic field more than short, fat ones. Also, HMPs aligned with the ambient field will produce a larger effect than those at right-angles to it. Note, also, that the presence of vibrating HMPs would mean that hallucinations would only be experienced in quite small areas inside a house. This would fit in with the often observed fact that only certain rooms, or even particular spots, regularly produce ghosts.


Transformers and a relay (middle curve) combine transitions to produce seemingly chaotic fluctuations (top curve)

Another possible source of EIFs is combined magnetic transitions in mains frequency equipment. There are many pieces of electrical equipment that can produce such magnetic transitions. Though transitions are not EIFs in themselves, if you get enough of them in a small area, over a short period of time, they could have the same effect. By a transition, I mean a significant, slow (by electronic standards) change in the mains frequency magnetic field produced by electrical equipment. This would appear to a DC magnetometer (insensitive to mains-frequency) as a pulse. A transformer, for instance, though it operates at mains-frequency, takes time to become fully energised or drained (because the magnetic field induced is resisting the current change) when it is switched on or off. This produces a change in the magnetic field slow enough to be ‘seen’ by a DC magnetometer. Another example is a relay, which contains an electromagnet. When a relay is switched on or off, a static magnetic field will either rise or fall, producing a magnetic transition. Transformers and relays are common in the supply and switching sections of domestic electrical, and particularly electronic, equipment. Electrical house wiring may also show transitions (though not as powerfully) when equipment downstream is switched on or off or has a changing load.

In the accompanying illustration you can see three imaginary transformers powering on and off, as well as a relay being operated once. The transformers only produce brief pulses, as explained above. The relay, by contrast, maintains a steady magnetic field, while on. The picture shows the way a DC magnetometer would ‘see’ the resultant magnetic fields. The top line shows the net fluctuations in the ambient static (DC) field. It looks, more or less, chaotic and could, with suitable frequency and amplitude, constitute an EIF.

In a house with lots of electrical equipment in use there may sometimes be enough pulses, close enough together, both in space and time, to constitute EIFs. If there are a few vibrating HMPs about as well, so much the better. It might seem unlikely that you would get enough pulses to constitute an EIF this way. But consider this, you only need one 100 nT pulse every ten seconds to qualify! As more and more electrical devices are operated in a house at once, the combined fluctuations will show a rise in amplitude and frequency as well as appearing increasingly chaotic.

Another important, though rarer, possible artificial source of EIFs is malfunctioning electrical equipment. This could include the mains supply itself. There are only a few ways most bits of electrical equipment can operate correctly, but any number in which they can malfunction. Therefore it is difficult to list particular examples of malfunctioning equipment producing EIFs. In general, though, accidental capacitances and inductances could possibly, in certain circumstances, give rise to low frequency currents (and hence magnetic fields). Fields can leak, unintentionally, from electrical equipment to nearby conductors (such as water pipes) through induction. Though these would be at the mains frequency, there might be resonances set up by the plumbing configuration that could be at a different frequency, possibly lower. Earthing problems are another possible source of unintentional fields. As I said before, it is difficult to come up with a concrete example, but it might happen and should be considered.

Of course, you may just happen to live in a magnetically dense area. As we saw with the unfortunate inhabitants of central Moscow, some places may be bathed perpetually in a sea of fields that qualify as EIFs. There may be nearby industrial users, such as factories, that could produce EIFs through HMPs and densely packed electrical equipment. So artificially produced EIFs may be outside the premises that are allegedly haunted. You should not assume EIFs are produced naturally just because they have no obvious source inside a house.

Another interesting source of EIFs is human movement! Although you may not have any moving fields within your home, you might move through reasonably strong, complex static fields sufficiently often to produce an EIF in your brain. If you think about it, walking between two areas of high magnetic field, with a low area in between, is no different from having a varying field pass through your head as you sit still. Given that you need to be exposed to such varying fields for some time, however, it might involve a lot of walking! It should be considered, however, particularly in a workplace that might well combine a lot of walking and a complex static magnetic environment. A probable example of this is an instance of a'haunted bed' (where some people lying in it experience strange ghostly sounds of a child crying). What is extremely interesting is that the bed has been found to magnetic, so that anyone tossing and turning in it would be exposing themselves to EIFs. This research is decribed here, on the MADS website.

The Tectonic Strain Theory Revisited

A scientist called Friedemann Freund (of San José State University in California) has suggested that electric charges could be induced to flow by applying unusual pressure (through tectonic stress) to igneous rocks (normally insulators), turning them temporarily into semi-conductors (Enriquez, 2003). He has done experiments, crushing rocks, to demonstrate this effect. When the rocks are turned temporarily into semiconductors, holes (positively charged discontinuities) can flow rapidly through the rocks and might even reach the surface. The charges are conducted underground both by rocks, in their semi-conductor state, and by water.

Such moving charges would generate magnetic fields. It is thought these would be low-frequency fields, though there is no prediction, as yet, concerning exact intensity or frequency. The whole idea is still very new, but it could possibly result in natural EIFs near tectonically strained areas around geological faults. The strengths of the theory are that the electric charges are not cancelled out and that they move around (unlike the piezoelectric theory), so producing magnetic fields. The theory is still being developed, but it looks promising. Researchers should still, therefore, investigate local geology (particularly the presence of faults and igneous rocks, such as granite, diorite, gabbro, basalt, etc.) thoroughly in their investigations and see if any EIFs detected can be traced to an underground source.

Detecting EIFs

Unfortunately, the equipment required to detect EIFs satisfactorily is not cheap. That explains the lack of convincing field evidence to date. To have a chance of detecting EIFs, you will need a sensitive magnetometer capable of giving a flat response to fields from 0 to 30 Hz. You will also need to be able to sample the field sufficiently frequently to capture waves up to 30 Hz (requiring 60 samples a second). In practice, it would be better to sample waves up to, say, 100 Hz to include mains frequency (50 Hz). So a sample rate of 200/s or better is required. You will need to sample for extended periods of time (hours) to capture any time variance in the field. The magnetometer should be sensitive to changes down to 50 nT (and preferably 1 nT) to capture waveforms accurately. In addition, it should measure over three axes simultaneously. This allows the whole field to be sampled accurately.

A suitable setup would be a tri-axial, fluxgate magnetometer linked directly to a computer recording device. Fluxgates are most suitable and typically operate from DC upwards and give a good, flat response at low frequencies. In fact, you’ll need something very like the MADS system. Unfortunately, many of the cheaper EMF meters on the market are not suitable for scientific measurement of EIFs. Many are deliberately frequency-biassed towards mains frequency as they are designed to measure electromagnetic pollution. They rarely cover the sub-mains frequencies accurately. Some only register changes in the ambient magnetic field and so do not allow absolute amplitudes to be measured. In addition, few such meters respond quickly enough to field changes or allow attachment to a computer.

The infrasound - magnetic field connection

Infrasound has also been implicated in giving people ghostly hallucinatory experiences. Infrasound is sound at too low a frequency for people to hear (generally below 20 Hz). Interestingly, infrasound shares a frequency range with EIFs. In addition, some potential sources of EIFs could also produce infrasound. In particular, moving HMPs (see above) could, potentially, produce infrasound at the same time and at the same frequency as EIFs. So an electric motor, for instance, might produce infrasound and/or EIFs. It is therefore important to check for EIFs if you find strong infrasound sources in a haunted location. The laboratory evidence for infrasound producing ghostly hallucinations is not as clear-cut as that for EIFs. Therefore, to establish a case for infrasound alone producing ghostly experiences, EIFs must first be eliminated.

References

Campbell, Wallace H., 2003, Introduction to Geomagnetic Fields, Cambridge University Press.
Belyaev, G.G., Chmyrev, V.M., Kleimenova, N.G., 2003, Hazardous Ulf Electromagnetic Environment of Moscow City, “Physics of Auroral Phenomena”, Proc. XXVI Annual Seminar, Apatity, Kola Science Center, Russian Academy of Science.
Zhu, Zhenya, Morgan, F. Dale, Marone, Chris J., Toksoz, M. Nafi, 2001, Experimental Studies of Electrical Fields on a Breaking Rock Sample, Earth Resources Laboratory (MIT) consortium report.
Robb, Laurence, 2005, Introduction to Ore-forming Processes, Blackwell Publishing.
Enriquez, Alberto, 2003, The Shining, New Scientist, vol 179 issue 2402.
http://www.assap.org/newsite/articles/Magnetic%20ghosts.html

Rock 'N' Roll

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. "
~~Buddha

On July 20, 1969 the Apollo 11 Lunar Module landed on the Moon in the first of six Apollo landings, and paved the way for astronaut Neil.A.Armstrong to become the first human being to set foot on the Moon. I don't doubt it. This post is not concerned with conspiracy theories about whether or not Man (Woman) has put his stamp on the Moon, and stuck a flag in it. I'm more interested in an elaborate lie that we all tell ourselves, seemingly unaware of a simple truth that is staring us in the face.

"Earthrise" ~ Earth as viewed from the Moon during the Apollo 8 mission, Christmas Eve, 1968 (NASA)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8)

If the Earth did not rotate, a whole day would thereby last an entire year. The Earth would travel around the Sun in a fixed position, and it would take a year before the entire surface of the Earth had, at some stage, recieved sunlight. Therefore, a day would not be completed until the Earth had finished its orbit of 360 degrees around the Sun.

We could elaborate on this scenario still further, and try to imagine the Earth rotating around the Sun in what is known as a tidally-locked orbit. A tidally-locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. The Moon is tidally-locked to the Earth, meaning that it always points the same face towards the Earth. If the Earth was tidally-locked to the Sun, then a day, as it is classically known, would simply not exist. It would mean that the same side of the planet was continously scorched by the Sun, year-in, year-out, while the other-side, the dark-side, would recieve no Sun at all.

The far-side of the Moon, the side that we don't normally see, is sometimes inaccurately called the dark-side, when in-fact, it recieves about the same amount of sunlight as the near-side. Maybe it was called the dark-side because it has always, at least in terms of human observation, faced the blackness of space. The far side of the Moon had managed to elude mankind for thousands of years, and was seen only for the first time after being photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959.

Apollo 16 metric camera image of the Moon's eastern limb and far side. The lower left part of the image shows a portion of the Moon visible from Earth. The dark area at the 8:00 position on the edge is Mare Crisium. To the right of that is Mare Smythii. The upper right area shows the heavily cratered lunar far side. The Moon is 3475 km in diameter and North is at 10:30 in this image. (Apollo 16, AS16-3021)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a16_m_3021.html

If we think about our own personal relationship with the Moon, and how over the years, we have watched it wax and wane with every passing month - just how many of us fully appreciate that it is always the same side of the Moon which faces us? We have become so used to observing the Moon throughout our lives, that it has evolved into being nothing more than part of the furniture making up the night sky. The Moon is so familiar to us, as familiar perhaps as the face in the mirror, that we seldom remember to doubt its presence. On one particular site, I found the question raised by the author has since passed onto me, in much the same way that someone might hand-over a relay baton:

"I've always wondered why the Moon's rotation matches that of its revolution around the Earth. Hard to believe it's coincidence. Is there something keeping this synchronization? Why do we always see only one side of the Moon?"
http://www.digipro.com/Trials/moon.html

It's really quite remarkable, isn't it? The Moon's rotation period is precisely equal to its period of revolution about the Earth - 27.3 days. If the Moon did not rotate at all, then we would not see the same side always facing us, and we would eventually get to see all sides of the Moon as it completes one revolution. But it just so happens that the Moon's rotation period is precisely equal to its period of revolution around the Earth, so the same side is always facing us.

The Moon moves with variable velocity around its elliptical orbit, while its own rotation is constant. The orbit speeds up as the Moon nears perigee each month, and then slows down again as it passes apogee. At perigee, when the Moon is closest to Earth, that distance is 225,740 miles (363,300 km), while at apogee, the furthest position, the distance is 251,970 miles (405,500 km). Sometimes the rotation leads the revolution by a bit, and sometimes it lags a bit, and so the Moon appears to wobble by a few degrees in the sky in a phenomenon knowns as "libration".

What is it that sets apart the rotation of the Earth, compared to that of the Moon? The Earth is rotating a lot faster than the Moon. The speed at which the Moon rotates when measured at the lunar equator is around 10.3 mph (16.7 km/h). That's very slow when compared to the speed experienced at Earth's equator - 1038 mph (1669 km/h). The Moon takes 27.3 days to make one rotation, while the Earth, having a diameter that is nearly four times greater, manages to perform one rotation in only twenty-four hours. I wonder why we have such a vast difference between the rotational speeds experienced by the Earth in relation to the Moon? What is it that makes the Earth rotate faster?

Current theory dictates that the Earth's rotation is due to forces played out when the Earth was first formed 4.6 billion years ago. Apparently, the Earth was slapped in a collision with a planet-sized rock that has sent us reeling ever since. The Earth's mass allows it to conserve, or store, the energy that came from its' collision, and with no forces in space to resist the rotation, it thereby allows the Earth to spin indefinitely.

I've always hoped to find the Earth being pushed round by Atlas (I've always pictured him a bit like one of those blokes who spins the cars on fairground Waltzers' - you know, the one's that grab the car, and persist until you are sick,) and so it's a little disappointing to discover that he's not there. Indeed, space is no longer considered the hang-out of ancient gods, or even the hang out of anything in particular, because all you get in space is "nothing" - nothing but cold, empty, vacuous void. However, not everyone agrees with current theory.

I'm investigating a theory put forward by reclusive genius Edward Leedskalnin (who is sadly no longer with us) which implies that the Earth's rotation is not driven by an age old collision that took place billions of years ago. On the contrary, Leedskalnin believes that the Earth spins on its axis because of an unrelenting, continuous collision which began when the planet was first formed, and is consequently, taking place right now. The revelation of Leedskalnin's theory is that it is energy from the Sun which is responsible for driving the Earth's rotation.

~~Continued in Part II~~ "The Way"

Electricity in Space

Electricity in Space

Hannes Alfvén

First published in 1948 in the book The New Astronomy , Chapter 2, Section III, page 74 -79

Hannes Alfvén is an original contributor to the potent new discipline of magnetohydrodynamic, to which he brings a background of work in such varied and related fields as cosmic rays, fundamental electronics, aurorae, earth magnetism, sunspots, and the design of electron tubes. He was born in 1908 at Norrköting, Sweden, and educated at the University of Uppsala. Since 1940, he has been professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. [He died in 1995. Biography]

Nearly everything we know about the celestial universe has come from applying principles we have learned in terrestrial physics: Newton's laws of motion, our studies of the spectrum of light, our explorations of the nucleus of the atom and other major discoveries in our physics laboratories have contributed to our enlightenment about the stars-their motions, their chemical composition, their temperatures and their source of energy.

Yet there is one great branch of physics which up to now has told us little or nothing about astronomy. That branch, is electricity. It is rather astonishing that this phenomenon, which has been so exhaustively studied on the earth, has been of so little help in the celestial sphere. Electricity has illuminated our cities but has shed no light on stellar phenomena; it has linked the earth with a dense net, of communications but has given no information about the universe around us.

Certainly we have seen plenty of evidence of electrical phenomena out in space. Within the last few decades we have discovered several important electrical effects in the heavens: strong stellar magnetic fields such as could only be caused by large electric currents, radio waves emanating from the sun and from many star systems, and the energetic cosmic rays, which are electrically charged particles accelerated to tremendous speeds.

These phenomena, however, are still very mysterious. We have no idea how electric currents may be generated and transmitted in the stars or in space. Although we know a great deal about electricity, almost everything we know is based on its behavior in wires. We generate electricity by moving copper wires in a magnetic field, and we can transport, broadcast and use electrical energy only by means of wires. Any electrical engineer, asked what he could do without using metal wires at all, would certainly say nothing.

But there are no wires in the stars. They consist entirely of hot gases. While physicists have given much study to the behavior of electric currents in gases, we know of no means by which gases can generate electricity. Hence the electrical phenomena in stars present us with a completely new problem.

We cannot bring the stars into our laboratories. But we can investigate electrical behavior in a medium roughly comparable to the gaseous body of a star and under comparable conditions. We know that there are magnetic fields in stars. We also know that very hot incandescent gases, such as makeup a star, are good electrical conductors. In the interior of a star the gases are under such great pressure that they may be much denser than ordinary liquids. Since we cannot work with gases under such pressure in a laboratory, the closest we can come is to use a liquid. .Of the common liquids, mercury is the only one which is a good conductor of electricity.

We have recently conducted some simple experiments with mercury in a magnetic field and observed several very curious and striking results.

Everyone is acquainted with the "mercurial" behavior of mercury. If you tap the side of a vessel containing a pool of mercury, the surface quakes and ripples as if it were alive: We found that when we placed such a pool in a strong magnetic field of 10,000 gauss, its behavior instantly changed. It did not respond to jarring of the vessel; its surface stiffened, so to-speak. The magnetic field gave a curious kind of viscosity to the mercury. This was illustrated dramatically when we dipped the two ends of a bent metal wire into the liquid and moved them through-it. Ordinarily an object dragged through mercury moves as easily as through any liquid. But when the magnetic field was applied, the wire pulled the mercury with it, producing a big surge in the pool. It was like moving a stick through honey or syrup.

This behavior is easily explained. The wire and the surface of the mercury between its ends form an electricity-conducting circuit. When the wire is moved across the magnetic field, it creates an electric current. Since an electric current always produces a magnetic field, the new current creates a second magnetic field. This interacts with the one we have already applied to the pool of mercury, just as, two magnets attract or repel each other. The force between the two magnetic fields opposes the motion which is producing the current. As a result the wire sticks to the mercury as if it were a very viscous liquid.

Let us now consider another experiment that disclosed a more remarkable and illuminating phenomenon. We fill a small tank with mercury. The tank has a movable bottom which can be rotated back and forth like the agitator in a washing machine. In the absence of a magnetic field, the slow oscillation of this agitator, stirring the mercury at the bottom of the tank, will not disturb the surface of the mercury at the top of, the tank; the mercury molecules slide past one another so that the motion dies out before it proceeds very far up the tank. A mirror floating on the surface, with a beam of light shined on it to show any slight movement, stays perfectly still. When a strong vertical magnetic field is applied to the tank, however, the motion at the bottom is quickly communicated to the top.

What we have created here is a new kind of wave, which was predicted theoretically about ten years ago but was actually produced for the first time in this experiment. The wave is the result of a coupling between magnetic and hydrodynamic forces. When, the mercury at the bottom moves in the magnetic field, it generates electric currents. These currents, with there attendant magnetic fields, produce mechanical motion in the mercury immediately above, which in turn creates new currents that act on the next layer. Thus the movement is communicated up through the whole body of the liquid. This rising wave of motion is called a magnetohydrodynamic wave. It has three characteristics: it produces (1) mechanical motion, (2) a magnetic field, and ( 3 ) an electric field.

What has all this to do with the stars? It is possible to show that our mercury model reproduces many of the essential properties of stellar matter. To be sure, the magnetic fields in the stars are very much weaker than the 10,000 gauss of our experiment ( the sun's general field is estimated at between 1 and 25 gauss). But our theory tells us that if we made the vessel larger, we could produce the magnetohydrodynamic effects with a smaller magnetic field; the magnetic force required would decline in proportion to the increase in size of the vessel. Hence in a star, which is, say, 10 billion times as large as our experimental vessel, the magnetic field need be only one 10-billionth of the laboratory field. The stars' fields are much stronger than this.

The results of our experiments lead to an entirely new way of looking at the behavior of stellar matter. It has always been assumed that the movement of gases in stars obeys the laws of hydrodynamics, as they apply to ordinary liquids and gases. But if a magnetic field drastically changes the properties of the dense stellar gases as it does in the mercury model, then they must behave very differently from ordinary fluids. Let us see whether the curious behavior of mercury in a magnetic field can shed any light on some of the great mysteries in astronomy.

Consider sunspots. Few astronomical phenomena have been more thoroughly studied. We have charted their paths across the sun's surface, discovered their cycle of activity and their effects on solar radiation, analyzed their light and learned from the splitting of their spectral lines (the so-called Zeeman effect) that they have strong magnetic fields. But what sunspots are, how they originate, how they can produce magnetic fields -- that seems more difficult to explain. It was once thought that sunspots were great eddies in the solar atmosphere, similar to cyclones on the earth. The motions of gas in sunspots, however, are not at all like those of the air in cyclones.

The pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place if we think of the mercury model. We can assume that the energetic nuclear reactions in the interior of the sun cause violent motions of the matter there. This would correspond to the stirring of the mercury at the bottom of the vessel. In the sun's general magnetic field, whose lines of force apparently run from the center of the sun out to the surface, these motions would generate magnetohydrodynamic waves that would travel to the surface. The waves would account for the strong magnetic fields associated with sunspots.

As we have seen, magnetohydrodynamic waves also generate an electric field. This may well account for some of the other phenomena observed on the sun's surface. The very high voltages generated by the waves may discharge into the sun's atmosphere, very much as a discharge tube in the laboratory produces corona discharges into the air. Such discharges would explain the solar prominences. The marvelous motion pictures of solar prominences taken at Pic du Midi in the Pyrenees and at the High Altitude Observatory near Climax, Col., give a vivid impression that they are electrical discharges.

The sun's emission of radio noise, another great mystery, would also be accounted for by this method of generating electricity. As radio listeners know too well, all sorts of electric currents -- in transmission lines, household appliances and so on -- produce radio noise. The large electric currents generated in stars by magnetohydrodynamic forces would give rise to radio waves and broadcast them into space.

Finally, the magnetohydrodynamic process seems to offer a plausible explanation for the great energy of the cosmic rays. How these particles are driven to their fantastic energies, sometimes as high as a million billion electron volts, is one of the prime puzzles of astronomy. No known (or even unknown) nuclear reaction could account for the firing of particles with such energies; even the complete annihilation of a proton would not yield more than a billion electron volts.

But if we suppose that the cosmic-ray particles are driven by electric and magnetic fields in space, in the same way as we accelerate particles in our big laboratory accelerators, it is easy to see how they could reach very high energies indeed. We know that interstellar space is not absolutely void. Although the matter in it is very thin, certainly not more than an average of one atom per cubic centimeter, in the vastness of the universe it adds up to an enormous amount of material. In at least some regions the interstellar matter is ionized, so that it is a good electrical conductor. Furthermore, there are good arguments for assuming that a weak magnetic field (some millions of a gauss) pervades all of space. It is likely, therefore, that magnetohydrodynamic waves roam ceaselessly througlr space, generating weak but very extensive electric fields, especially near the stars. If so, we can picture charged atomic nuclei being propelled across electrified space, gathering speed as they go and crashing into the earth's atmosphere with energies far beyond any that could ever be generated within any star or planet.
http://www.catastrophism.com/texts/electricity-in-space/