'A New Science of Heaven'
by Robert Temple
Chapter 7: Kristian Birkeland’s Miraculous Discovery
Excerpts have not been perfectly edited, and the greater context will be found by reading the book 📖.
“Kristian Birkeland (1867–1917) is famous in Norway, and his picture was until recently on their 200 kroner banknote, so between its appearance in 1994 and its withdrawal in 2018, the Norwegians were reminded of him every day when they went shopping. He was a very brave man, who spent years freezing in the Arctic wastes in the north of Norway making detailed observations of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights as they are often called. He concluded that the Northern Lights (and there are southern ones too at the South Pole, known as the Aurora Australis) must be caused by streams of charged particles pouring in from the Sun towards the Earth’s poles. These particles then glow and cause all the beautiful lights.
This theory caused the utmost outrage, and astronomers all over the world called Birkeland a madman. Did he not realize that space was empty? Charged particles could not pass through empty space! And so instead of facing Birkeland’s carefully presented evidence, the world’s ‘astrophysical community’ stuck with their insistence upon empty space and decided that Birkeland was a crank. He died unrecognized in 1917. His theories about the Aurora were not proven.
“In 1913, Birkeland also may have been the first to predict that plasma is ubiquitous in space. He wrote:
It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the Universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in ‘empty’ space. (Quoted on Wikipedia with no reference.)27”
“Since Isaac Newton (1643–1727), science and the world had moved towards a material mechanical view of the Universe, picturing solid objects in dead and empty space, held in orbit by gravity. It was a picture to inspire a certain cold wonder, perhaps; gravity was king here. Then Birkeland discovered that electric currents travelling from the Sun were entering Earth’s atmosphere. This was a profound and important mystery because electricity can’t cross empty space.
It would be another forty years before two scientific geniuses solved this mystery and began to build up a picture of the Universe filled with a web of electrical impulses like a macrocosmic brain.”
by Robert Temple
Chapter 7: Kristian Birkeland’s Miraculous Discovery
Excerpts have not been perfectly edited, and the greater context will be found by reading the book 📖.
“Kristian Birkeland (1867–1917) is famous in Norway, and his picture was until recently on their 200 kroner banknote, so between its appearance in 1994 and its withdrawal in 2018, the Norwegians were reminded of him every day when they went shopping. He was a very brave man, who spent years freezing in the Arctic wastes in the north of Norway making detailed observations of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights as they are often called. He concluded that the Northern Lights (and there are southern ones too at the South Pole, known as the Aurora Australis) must be caused by streams of charged particles pouring in from the Sun towards the Earth’s poles. These particles then glow and cause all the beautiful lights.
This theory caused the utmost outrage, and astronomers all over the world called Birkeland a madman. Did he not realize that space was empty? Charged particles could not pass through empty space! And so instead of facing Birkeland’s carefully presented evidence, the world’s ‘astrophysical community’ stuck with their insistence upon empty space and decided that Birkeland was a crank. He died unrecognized in 1917. His theories about the Aurora were not proven.
“In 1913, Birkeland also may have been the first to predict that plasma is ubiquitous in space. He wrote:
It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the Universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in ‘empty’ space. (Quoted on Wikipedia with no reference.)27”
“Since Isaac Newton (1643–1727), science and the world had moved towards a material mechanical view of the Universe, picturing solid objects in dead and empty space, held in orbit by gravity. It was a picture to inspire a certain cold wonder, perhaps; gravity was king here. Then Birkeland discovered that electric currents travelling from the Sun were entering Earth’s atmosphere. This was a profound and important mystery because electricity can’t cross empty space.
It would be another forty years before two scientific geniuses solved this mystery and began to build up a picture of the Universe filled with a web of electrical impulses like a macrocosmic brain.”