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Space Shuttle Struck
By Megalightning?

By David Talbott
Thunderbolts.info
2-23-5
 

This picture has been temporarily withdrawn at the request of Peter Goldie.

 
It has now been more than two years since the fiery destruction of the shuttle Columbia on
February 1, 2003. The disaster killed all seven astronauts on board and dealt one of the most severe blows ever to America's space program.
 
But as astronauts now prepare to ride another shuttle into space, few Americans are aware of the most critical issue raised by the Columbia disaster. Did a super-bolt of lightning--called "megalightning"--strike Columbia, causing the breakup of the craft?
 
Shocking evidence that this is so includes the once-censored photograph above, taken by amateur astronomer Peter Goldie. It shows a purplish corkscrew trail of "something" merging with the ionized plasma trail of Columbia early in its descent, while Columbia was still 63 kilometers above the earth. One might have expected this photograph to catch the attention of media around the world. But NASA officials seized both the camera and the photograph itself, prohibiting the San Francisco Chronicle from publishing it after the newspaper had received the picture.
 
Most shocking of all is the explanation given by experts who examined the photograph. They said that the luminous corkscrew trail was an "artefact" caused by a camera wobble. The explanation left critics aghast, since the Columbia trail in the photo is crisp with no evidence of camera movement. Nor is any wobble evident in other similar photographs taken by Goldie. The explanation relegates to "coincidence" the fact that the Columbia trail brightens precisely at its juncture with the corkscrew trail. This brightening is an electrically predictable occurrence when two plasma channels merge.
 
Proponents of the "Electric Universe" have maintained for many years that ideology within official science has limited the ability of working scientists to look at pictures objectively, to see what would otherwise be obvious. Popular doctrines say that Earth is a neutral body in the neutral environment of the Sun. When lightning strikes, its source must lie in the mysterious ability of clouds and temperature gradients to "separate charge." A bolt of lightning in the rarified atmosphere 63 kilometers above the earth is unthinkable within this framework. Therefore, the alleged lightning strike on Columbia could not have happened.
 
Alternative viewpoints do not suffer from these limitations. In the Electric Universe, our Earth is an integral part of solar system circuitry, fed by currents streaming along our arm of the Milky Way. An electric field between Earth's surface and the ionosphere, separated by an insulating layer of atmosphere, is responsible for thunderstorms. In weather conditions favoring breakdown of this insulation, electric currents leak through the atmospheric layer (in the fashion of a "leaky capacitor"), creating the electrical displays we see in thunderstorms. And this is why, far above thunderstorms, meteorologists have discovered powerful discharges called "red sprites" and "blue jets" reaching many kilometers into the ionosphere. In fact, electrical interactions associated with powerful thunderstorms have now been traced outward to the Van Allen Belt.
 
Since the discharge of a sprite is diffused over a large area, meteorologists have doubted that a sprite could damage aircraft. But here is how Wallace Thornhill, a pioneer of the Electric Universe hypothesis, views the issue:
 
"The electromagnetic 'pinch' effect will ensure that the energy of that sprite will be focused onto any large electrical conductor that blunders into its domain - as we see in the time-lapse photograph. The brightening of Columbia's trail where the lightning joined it is due to the sudden release of energy in the more dense plasma of that trail. It is that kind of energy that was released over a few square centimeters of Columbia's wing. Temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees would have resulted. The Shuttle's tiles are designed to withstand 2900 C."
 
This is where Professor Edgar Bering, a physicist at the University of Houston in Texas, comes in. He heads a team from NASA's National Scientific Balloon Facility to study sprites by flying a high-altitude balloon above major thunderstorms. His work, preceding the Columbia disaster, led to some surprising conclusions about sprites. He found that the charge released in sprites is not generated within the clouds, but lies in the mesosphere above the thunderstorms. And the energy is far greater than previously thought.
 
But according to Thornhill, all of the data will fall into place if the charge in the mesosphere "comes from space via the ionosphere above," not from charge separation within the clouds below. It will then make sense that Bering found the current released in a sprite to be around 12,000 amperes, rather than the 3,000 amperes predicted by conventional models of cloud-generated charge.
 
It does not appear, however, that NASA scientists have followed Bering's discovery to its logical conclusion: "None of the existing models will survive when people finally pay attention to what our data actually says," Bering writes.
 
If the fate of Columbia was indeed the result of megalightning, then scientific misperception has cost human lives. And it is now placing other lives at risk as well.
 
Photo credit: David Monaghan Productions/HTV West, from the TV program: "Megalightning."
 
Read more on the Columbia disaster at:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y424y



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