Welcome to The Thunderbolts.info
Podcast for December 11, 2015
We're just a few weeks away
now, from the start of 2016,
and I believe that 2016 is going to be
a huge year for the Electric Universe.
There are so many things happening
now, on so many different fronts.
I think 2016 could be the game-changing
year (to use a political term).
We have, of course, the
latest scientific papers
from the Rosetta
mission to Comet 67P.
If you follow the Space News videos
on the Thunderbolts YouTube channel,
then you've likely seen the
analysis of Dr. Franklin Anariba.
His specialty is
electrochemistry,
and the direct physical
evidence now that is available
for electrical activity on a comet is,
I believe, the absolute best to date.
And we have the New Horizons
mission to Pluto which,
of course, has just upset all of the
expectations for planetary scientists.
In fact, searching my mind
it's really hard to think
of a significant
revelation for Pluto
that was in alignment with the
quote, "mainstream's predictions".
And, so many things happening
on so many fronts,
it was my decision as the
creator and host of Space News
to begin branching out and to offer some
new content to The Thunderbolts audience.
Space News is a very topic specific
format - we focus on one topic
and we try to do a really
tight and seamless production
but doing a Space News is very time consuming
and we only cover one topic at a time.
And given all of the
really interesting figures
that compose the Electric
Universe community
it was my decision to restart
the Thunderbolts Podcast.
You might remember this feature
was available in 2012,
but we're restarting it now.
And this will be a really good
opportunity, I think, to sit down
with the principles of the
Electric Universe community,
and be more conversational and
explore all of the topics
 that are the most
relevant at the moment.
And today, we're going to be
interviewing one of the rising stars.
If you follow Space News, then you've
recently been introduced to the name
Eugene Bagashov,
a speaker at EU2015.
He's been talking a lot about the
New Horizons mission to Pluto,
and what makes Eugene's
research and his contribution
to the Electric Universe
community so significant
is he's going right into the heart of the
fundamental question of the space sciences:
does gravity alone really
dominates the universe?
Whenever a person is speaking publicly 
about really complicated scientific issues,
the first thing that comes to the
audience's mind is, 'Who is this guy?
Does he really have the expertise to speak
as a "authority" on scientific issues?'
So, why don't you begin by talking a
little bit about your own background,
and what it was that led your interest
in the Electric Universe theory.
[Eugene] Thanks Michael,
for this introduction.
As for my background, I have a Bachelor of
Physics from Belarusian State University,
and then I studied physics at the National
Academy of Sciences of Belarus
at their Researchers Training Institute -
there I had my Master's degree in physics.
So, I have an education of a physicist,
but now I'm doing my PhD studies
but my research field is more in theoretical
physics studying quantum field theory,
in particular, quantum chromodynamics
- the theory of strong interactions.
So, I'm working with theoretical
physics on a sub-nuclear level,
but I find that my general
education allows me
to tackle a lot of other
stuff that's going on,
and I have access to
some of the journals.
I read papers often, for example, papers
on Rosetta mission, and about Pluto.
So, if any topic interests me, I just
do a independent research (of sorts)
and I try to find any EU
relevent stuff there.
And, as for the question
why do the EU interest me?
I've actually always been interested
in space since my youngest years.
But, then around 15 years old it just came
to stop because well, I thought, 'well,
I already know the edge of science' because
I read a lot, and nothing excites me.
And, it's going to be decades since
something new would be known,
because we are limited by the
velocities we cannot get to stars.
So, my interest waned.
But 1½ years ago I stumbled upon Ben Davidson's
Suspicious 0bservers channel on YouTube
and he gave a lot of references
to the Thunderbolts channel and
Symbols of an Alien Sky movie, and I've
watched it and was shocked, you know.
Absolutely, this paradigm took almost
all of my extension at that period
and I started researching
like crazy and watching
all those YouTube videos
from Thunderbolts channel.
Well, I think this is a pretty regular story
among the proponents of the EU theory.
At least, I've heard a couple
of times something similar
when I spoke to people at the
conference at EU2015 in Phoenix.
By the way, I want to just say thanks
to all the people from the community
because I've gathered so much warmth and
greetings and the meetings with people.
And I want to say thanks especially
to Susan Schirott and David Talbot.
They were very kind to me, and I hadn't
expected such a warm welcome in Phoenix
- it was warm in all
senses...very hot in there.
[Michael] Yeah, the thanks
will be well received.
It's interesting because you have the
more conventional educational background
I'm wondering when you came across
the Electric Universe theory
- and, you say you were introduced
through Ben Davidson's channel,
then you come across
Symbols of an Alien Sky
- you are becoming aware
of these radical theories,
the idea of recent chaos
in the solar system;
and, the idea of incredibly intense
electromagnetic interactions between planets;
and the idea that gravity is not the
dominant force in the universe;
the universe is pervaded by conductive
plasma, and you have electric currents
flowing along the arms of galaxies,
and electric currents powering stars.
These are considered
extremely radical ideas but,
did you come across anything in your
consideration of the Electric Universe theory
that you would call like,
a fatal objection?
Obviously, no theory
is going to be perfect
(especially in its early
days of development),
but was there anything that, for you,
that was a big red flag and just said,
well no, the people who are arguing
for this are doing 'fringe science',
and it's just not worth
my consideration.
[Eugene] Well, there were a
couple of points, for example,
I read Velikovsky
some time later
(after I was already familiar
with The Thunderbolts channel)
and he had ideas like, you know for example,
the spin of the Earth would be changed.
I mean, when Venus passed by, the Earth
started rotating backwards for some time.
For me, as a person who
knows theoretical mechanics
(at least, from the standpoint
of the current theories)
it is basically impossible if you would
make such a radical turn
of the rotation of a planet
in a very short time period,
it would most likely be destroyed
because of the inertia.
Other than that, I only had numerical
problems because, example:
for something like Great Canyon to
be excavated by electric pulses
it would take really
high amounts of charge,
and current and voltage so,
it's very hard to believe in.
I'm not saying that it is
a flag or something,
it's a hardship that should be
evident for everyone, I think.
But other than that,
there are some ideas
here and there that might
sound contradictory
but, core ideas of the Electric
Universe like how the galaxies behave,
how the galactic clusters behave,
it doesn't look impossible to me.
Electricity is the most
powerful force in the universe.
If we talk about large distances, we're
not talking about nuclear physics
but, then again, it might be electricity
that governs the nuclear interaction
(but that's another topic).
But on a large-scale, the electricity is
the most powerful force in the universe
and it's much more impossible, I think,
to consider that gamma ray bursts
(or something like that) are caused by
gravitational accumulation of energy
because that would take a really impossible
amounts of mass, gravitation, etc.
We get these ideas about black holes
and other really, really wicked stuff
- I think, this should be
considered a flag, as you said.
[Michael, laughs] The red flag.
Now, in some of your earlier
Space News,
you were talking about the New
Horizons mission to Pluto.
In fact, you made some predictions,
I think, that were interesting
and I don't know how many of them have,
"panned out or could have panned out",
based on the technology that was
available on the spacecraft.
But, I'm sure you've noticed that all
over the headline-grabbing discoveries
in the Plutonian system have come as a
surprise for the conventional story
of planet formation, and the
history of the solar system.
We see these unexpected features, for
instance, on Pluto we see sand dunes,
we see on Pluto an unexpectedly
low number of craters,
we see deep chasms and trenches
on some of the moon's,
there are two double-lobed
moons in the Plutonian system
- I believe it's
Hydra and Kerberos.
- and so, these are highly
unexpected discoveries.
So, what are your thoughts on just the
basic ideas about planet formation?
Do you think that the Electric
Universe theory, for instance,
of the electrical
capture of planets,
is that a theory that has
potential validity to it?
[Eugene] Yeah, I think that
this idea that, for example,
Pluto and maybe other objects in the solar
system could have been satellites of some
other planet that passed through or was
also captured, like the Saturnian theory
that Earth was once the satellite of
Saturn, and was captured by the Sun.
I think it is a good alternative for a work
in contrast to the nebular hypothesis;
a good alternative framework
to construct a coherent theory
to compose the
observational data into
- it's like a skeleton to
which we attach what we know.
I think it works fairly well.
It has some evidence, for example,
the one that I've mentioned
in the latest Space News with me
on Pluto about the atmospheres.
For example, that we have a couple of
groups of planets with atmospheres
with very similar composition -
like we have this nitrogen group
of Pluto, Triton, Titan and Earth
have nitrogen rich atmospheres.
And, it looks pretty messed up.
For example, Mars, Callisto and Venus
have carbon dioxide atmospheres
but, it's very hard to believe that something
like that was created by gravitational,
or centrifugal
division of elements.
So, probably some
chaos was there.
And, this idea of capture works here fairly
well because there should have been chaos
with some other planet, or even a
brown dwarf star passed nearby.
That's where we could get this cratering,
and when the asteroids and comets
could have been torn out from
the rocky planet surfaces,
as the Electric Universe
proponents state.
And, really a lot of new
discoveries say that there are
inconsistencies in the nebular
hypothesis, you know.
For example, we find stuff on comets
that could have been formed only in
high-temperature environment, like
olivine and other minerals like that.
But, at the same time, it is
frequently stated that all the comets
were formed really far
away from the Sun
so, the temperature was really low,
etc., and it just doesn't work.
[Michael] Yes, and so
Eugene, I know that
you've been following the Thunderbolts
Project's discussions of the Rosetta mission,
going back to well before the
landing of the Philae probe,
and you're familiar with the electric comet
theory, and I know that you've followed
the analysis that Dr. Franklin
Anariba has offered of the most
exquisite direct physical evidence of
electrical activity at a comet.
So, I'm just wondering
what are your thoughts
on the success of the
electric comet theory,
in terms of anticipating
these endless surprises
that have been revealed
by the Rosetta mission?
[Eugene] Well here's
a couple of points:
I think the mainstream idea
about the 'dirty snowball',
it's still alive only because
of the 'inertia of thought'
because people just find something
new, and find something else
but, they don't question the
paradigm, so it survives
- no matter how much of the
contradictory material is accumulated.
They have developed some of the answers (we
might say) to the stuff that was observed.
For example, as for the hardness
of the comet's surface, you know,
that the Philae lander bounced from it -
they weren't expecting such a hard surface.
Actually, there were fears that
the lander might just be buried
in the comet's fluffy snow when
they were designing the lander.
But, what
they say about this hardness is that well,
probably it's because the ice gets what
they say 'sintered'.
So, it kind of melts a little
bit, but then gets fused
and gets much more strength
than it was before.
So, that's how they
answer this one.
But, in general, I think that the EU
paradigm really works well with this case
because for example, there's
actually a lot of observations
that support this but, I
might just name a few.
For example, CONSERT
experiment that was conducted
with the Philae lander
and Rosetta orbiter.
They were basically probing the
comet's interior with radio waves
- very long radio waves - and
what they found was that
the comet is mostly (well, you know,
is based on some of the assumptions,
but still, the conclusion is)
that the comet is 70-85% void.
So, it's porous to such a degree
that it is almost 80% void.
But, that means that the material
density is much higher, you know,
that the average density of the
comet is something like 400kg/m³,
which is almost twice as low as
water-ice but, if it's so porous
that it has 80% cavities inside then the
actual density might be I don't know
- I haven't calculated this but, I
don't know - maybe 2,000-2,500 kg/m³,
which is fairly close to the rock
density for the density of asteroids.
So, this is just one example, and
as for the strength of the material,
I mean the bounce of the Philae, I remember
Wal Thornhill said in one of the videos
- I think it was Space News before Rosetta
approached the comet, maybe in August,
I'm not sure - but, I remember
literally Wal Thornhill said
they might underestimate the
rockiness of the comet.
And what we got in the end, the
lander was buried somewhere
under the rock, you know,
somewhere, shadow.
I think this is a really good,
if not a full confirmation,
but at least everything that you were
stating - it was fulfilled, in this sense.
It turned out to be true.
And, another thing is that for example,
when Philae was landing when it was
dropped from the Rosetta probe,
they were trying to measure
the electric potential
and their measurements was spoiled
because the reading was saturated.
Well, I'm not sure of the
particularities of this experiment
but, I might give you a
reference: Anthony Lethuillier.
He was one of the people from the SESAME/PP
experiment onboard the Philae lander,
and he said that when they were
trying to measure the electric potential
during the descent stage of the Philae
landing, the measurement was saturated.
I'm not sure what this
means technically
but, I think this is something
that no one was expecting.
And the other thing that was detected
was that the Rosetta probe itself
had detected a minor energetic beam
of electrons coming from the comet
on multiple occasions,
and that was,
I think it was in the energy range of
a couple of hundred electron volts.
And, what this means is that since it's minor
energetic means that there's no spectrum,
per se there is a very thin band of
energies and this means that probably
it is because the electrons were
accelerated by electric field,
and this electric field if
(they were accelerated by it)
there was a couple of hundred volts
between the comet nucleus and the probe
and, I think the distance was like
10 or 20kms at that time.
So, I remember that EU
proponents have long-stated
that the comet bears
negative charge, you know,
going out in the far reaches
of the solar system
where the positive influence
from the Sun is attenuated
- there's much more, much higher
negative influence, negative potential
 and so, the comet
accumulates this nagative charge.
And again, I remember there was a recent
paper on the observation
of negatively charged dust grains on
the comet.
So, I considered this as (again) a
direct observational evidence for the
Electric Universe paradigm, at least
in the cometary section of it.
[Michael] Well, Eugene, it's been lots of
fun here.
As I said at the beginning, you're
a rising star within the community
so, I know that the members of The Thunderbolts
Project's YouTube subscription base,
and the people within
the community,
they're really excited to have seen
your addition in the last year or so.
So, we're definitely going
to stay in touch with you.
We want to bring you back
as a Space News guest,
and a Podcast guest,
just as much as we can.
And so, we like
to ask you to just keep your eye out,
keep your eye out for any news items and other
developments that you want to talk about
and we'll be happy to to hand
the microphone over to you soon
so you can give your two cents
to the Thunderbolts audience.
[Eugene] OK, thank you very much,
it was a pleasure talking to you.
Again, I want to say thanks
to The Thunderbolts Project™
and the EU community in general - thank
you all guys, for being out there.
[Michael] Alright. Thanks a lot, Eugene.
[Eugene] Yeah, thank you.
