More Electric Universe Bozos

JEG pointed out an "article" that appeared on slashdot the other day, basically claiming that everything we know about the Sun is wrong and proposing yet more ludicrous electric universe ideas. I seem to run into these types of nuts all the time, they can usually be found hanging around the APOD or badastronomy discussion boards, explaining how everything in the Universe is made and controlled by electricity, and how all of astronomy ignores this (and them).

I've reprinted the post in full below, the original slashdot page can be found here, with a great amount of put downs by people that actually know something about science. It's nice when other people do your work for you, now if only I can get someone to teach that problems class tomorrow.

Once again professional astronomers are struggling to understand observations of the sun. ScienceDaily reports that a team from Saint Andrew's University announced that the sun's magnetic fields dominate the behavior of the corona via a mechanism dubbed the 'solar skeleton.' Computer models continue to be built to mimic the observed behavior of the sun in terms of magnetic fields but apparently the ball is still being dropped; no mention in the announcement is made of the electric fields that must be the cause of the observed magnetic fields. Also conspicuously absent from the press releases is the conclusion that the sun's corona is so-dominated by electric and magnetic fields because it is a plasma. In light of past and present research revealing the electrical nature of the universe, this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing.

What can you say really? They don't even get the name of St Andrews right for a start, and sadly its downhill from there. I mean what are they actually claiming here? That scientists don't think that the suns corona is a plasma? Er come on it has a temperature of a million degrees and its reasonably dense, of course its a damn plasma. Even the wikipedia page manages to get this right. In case your wondering, yes it is the work of the loons over at Thunderbolts.info (why do all crank sites have to go for a .info page?). I'm going to have to have a bit of a closer look at these cranks and do a more substantial post. In the meantime, slashdot hang your head in shame, how did this nonsense ever get posted?