07.03.2013 Views

A Beginner's View of Our Electric Universe - New

A Beginner's View of Our Electric Universe - New

A Beginner's View of Our Electric Universe - New

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

The relative location within this scale <strong>of</strong> things where we humans experience reality, is a very tiny place indeed;<br />

it is somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. Attempting to study these vast differences in scale has<br />

been very enlightening for me and it has helped bring a measure <strong>of</strong> clarity to my perspective on everything.<br />

It seems (to me) that to claim what astro-science has already seen fit to claim about the crazy enormity and<br />

operation <strong>of</strong> the universe from the position <strong>of</strong> our couple <strong>of</strong> hundred years <strong>of</strong> modern experience and learning<br />

within our tiny biosphere, is just silly and typically arrogant <strong>of</strong> us. All I believe we really can do is to build<br />

worthy research programs from science that we already know works, then from what we discover, form further<br />

impressions <strong>of</strong> our reality with which we can live until we refine these through similar good science.<br />

The 0.01% not included in the 99.99% figure for plasma in the universe is a token amount that represents the<br />

electrically neutral matter left over, such as what we have in Earth’s biosphere, after taking into account all<br />

the other forms in our universe that are in a charge differentiated state. Remember here that the EM force is<br />

overwhelmingly more powerful than the force <strong>of</strong> gravity. So, since we are talking about charge differentiated<br />

plasma on galactic and stellar scales that carries enormous electrical power, we are reminded yet again to<br />

question the ‘do-it-all’ claims that the puny force <strong>of</strong> gravity has been associated with.<br />

The EM Spectrum<br />

This is one <strong>of</strong> my favourite areas for it touches so many aspects <strong>of</strong> our lives and acts as a foundation on which<br />

to build an understanding <strong>of</strong> a great many important things in our environment. Here I have in mind that we go<br />

through life not usually paying too much attention to the objects that surround us and the natural events that<br />

occur; things such as …<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

•<br />

What we physically feel when we enjoy a bright sunny day.<br />

How music is received and played to us by the radio in our car.<br />

What takes place when we go to hospital to get that sprained wrist X-rayed.<br />

What burns our skin if we stay out in the sun for too long.<br />

How we produce images from space that would otherwise be invisible to our normal telescopes.<br />

How our microwave oven bakes those potatoes.<br />

Why our toast burns if we leave it under the grill for too long.<br />

Why everything, especially our natural world, appears so colourful to us.<br />

How the military and security folks have the ability to see in the dark.<br />

And, how we can control tiny robots on the surface <strong>of</strong> Mars from here on the Earth.<br />

74 | Some basic theory that will help

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!