h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

WOBBLY GRAVITY & WOBBLY MAGNETISM
Strange things happen during eclipses everything goes dark and the sky goes dark blue, temperatures drop, dogs bark, superstitious people pray and the Sun’s corona flashes out surrounding the dark disc of the Moon..
But there may be more to an eclipse than this, things that sensitive animals and human beings interpret subliminally. Roger Coghill, a writer on the effects of geomagnetism, from Pontypool, Gwent, has made a study of the effect of solar eclipses of the Moon on the terrestrial magnetic field. There are, of course, small, daily variations in the field strength of geomagnetism of about 30 – 50 nT, the cause of which is unexplained. In the eclipse seen in Britain on 12th October 1996 Coghill’s instruments registered a fall in the field strength of 100 – 200 nT during the peak time of the eclipse, and at no other time during that day.
A Mersmann BPM2001 geomagnetometer made in Germany was used in conjunction with a Grant Instruments datalogger, and it was difficult to believe that the observed effect was an artifact. Both instruments were battery driven to rule out the possibility of mains variation.
Magnetic fields normally pass through non-magnetic solid objects as though they weren’t there, being reinforced and deflected by magnetic materials. The fields attenuate as the cube of distance. The Moon is unlikely to have a ferrous interior, but its tiny magnetic field might produce some effect.
Disturbance of the Solar Wind and the Van Allen radiation belts around the earth might also help to produce the variation .The Solar Wind consists of charged, high-velocity particles from the sun that are usually deflected away from the earth by its magnetic field at a distance of five earth radii. The drop in field strength suggests that the Solar Wind may serve to partly generate geomagnetism when the deflected particles arrive at the Poles.

In addition to the disturbance of geomagnetism, pendulums are also affected by eclipses, as if their inertial oscillations were subject to a secondary oscillation in a plane vertical to that in which the pendulum swings. This violates Newton’s Laws of Motion, which states that a body will continue moving in a straight line unless deflected by a force. The eclipse variation suggests that there is a secondary type of inertial action at right angles to the first one. This has implications as regards Einstein’s General Relativity Theory, that suggests the force of gravity may be replaced by the effects of space curvature. Einstein’s Theory rests on the Principle of Equivalence – that inertial mass is equivalent to gravitational mass. The appearance at eclipses of a secondary aspect of inertia would imply that a simple framework of spatial action is subject to modification by some kind of hidden variable, in the manner suggested by David Boehm. If gravity can wobble like this then Einstein’s Theory is flawed. Whereas previous efforts to disprove General Relativity have been dismissed as ‘fringe science’ this unequivocal phenomena cannot be brushed under the carpet. Researchers everywhere are packing their pendulums and preparing to chase eclipses across the globe to get further correlations.
Sensitive gravimeters also seem to give variations at the time of an eclipse, as if to reinforce the behaviour of the pendulums. An increase in the earth’s gravitational field occurs regularly every twelve hours due to the moon’ gravity and high tides occur when the sun and moon are lined up. The changes at the time of an eclipse are something else and should not occur if, as we are lead to believe, gravity can pass through any large body without being attenuated. What the changes at the time of an eclipse suggest is that gravity has an angular component, only revealed when the direct gravitational attraction of the sun was accentuated. This would of course explain angular momentum and why the planets first came to circle around the sun, since its rotation would somehow be conveyed outwards through its system of planets. Hence Allais’s conclusion that this component resulted from the existence of an aether in space that was entrained by the sun’s rotation. See below.

The problem of the behaviour of pendulums during eclipses was first explored in 1954 by Maurice Allais at the School of Mining in Paris. Appropriately enough, since it was at Paris in 1851 Foucault first showed that the earth was rotating when he suspended a pendulum from the Dome of the Pantheon. The path traced by his pendulum swung back and forth during twenty four hours in an angle related to the sine of the Latitude. Allais saw that the pendulum’s rate of swing varied during the day. But more strange than this, during a partial solar eclipse on 30th June 1954 his assistant noted that the pendulum ‘went mad’.Its swing was reversed and veered backwards twenty minutes before the eclipse maximum. After the eclipse it went back to normal. At a repeat experiment during the partial solar eclipse of 22nd October 1959 Allais again saw his pendulum swing wildly. Similar effects were also observed by three Romanian scientists who were unaware of Allais’s results. Other experiments in Finland and India showed the effect was less noticeable at high latitudes than nearer the Equator, as might have been expected, since the angle of swing was less. The same effects on a smaller scale are witnessed during lunar eclipses.
The papers reporting these experiment were written by Alais only in French and did not receive the attention they deserved. His major work ‘Anisotropie de l’espace’ has still not been translated and did not highlight the true nature of his discovery Allais committed a serious blunder in proposing that his results implied the existence of an aether. In addition he was trying to prove that there was a connection between gravity and magnetism. Although criticized he still remains defiant at the age of 93.
Erwin Saxi and Mildred Allen of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts also studied the behaviour of pendulums during an eclipse and in their paper concluded that “gravitational theory needs to be modified” (Physical Review D, vol.3,p823). With all these results being swept under the carpet it will soon be showing a suspicious bulge.
The eclipse effects are not the only gravitational anomalies that have been detected. NASA’s Poineer 10 and 11 spacecraft, bound for the limits of the Solar System have been experiencing a mysterious deceleration and veering off their expected course, suggesting either that gravity does not attenuate exactly as the square of distance, or that there is some kind of invisible medium in space of very low, but not quite zero, viscosity. Ha! Could it be the aether, circulating around the solar system in the form of a vortex?
The coincidence of gravitational and magnetic anomalies occurring at the time of eclipses and their being of the same type does suggest a linkage between them. The linkage between gravity and electric emissions is implicit in Relativity and where electric effects go, so also does magnetism. Let us consider one other anomalous form of behaviour of magnetism in the case of Brooker’s Sweeping Magnetic Field.

THE EARTH’S SWEEPING MAGNETIC FIELD.

This relates to investigation of claims by the late Charles Brooker (retired Chief Engineer of the B.B.C.) . Name]y, that the earth’s magnetic field contains a measurable component which sweeps steadily from East to West at the rate of the Earth’s rotation.
This field may be due to the Solar Wind, consisting of Protons and Electrons which are expelled from the Sun and enclose the Earth in a Magnetosphere. It could be the rotation of the Earth within this Magnetosphere, centrered on the Sun, that produces the sweeping effect of the Magnetic field.
The sweeping field may be responsible for cases of geopathic stress and the ‘sick building syndrome’. It can be detected using a Split Coil Generator designed by Charles Brooker. The apparatus needs to be duplicated and the experiments repeated in different parts of the world to test the theory.
Where does the Earth’s permanent magnetic field come from? It is due in the main to magnetism impressed in the igneous rocks of the Earth’s surface as they solidified. This is called Paleomagnetism This type of magnetism extends down to about 20 Kilometres below the Earth’s surface, where the temperature reaches the Curie point and magnetism cannot be retained. Below this magnetism must be generated by the movement of currents of charged magma, a process known as magnetohydrodynamics, something dynamic, dependent on movcmcnt.
The diagram shows a segment of the Earth. The thickness of the crust, up to 30 Km. is the black line. The Upper Mantle, extending down to 700 Km. and the Lower Mantle going from there down to 2,900 Km. These two layers circulate within each other to convect the inner heat of the Earth to the surface. The Outer Core of molten Nickel—Iron goes down to 5,150 Km. and the Inner Core of solid Iron forms the centre of the Earth. During the life of the Earth the Core has grown in size as the heavy metal has sunk to the centre of the earth, so the radial distance in which the Mantle can circulate its convection currents has shrunk. Initially there may have only been one circulation cell, going around the whole Earth, and thus one supercontinent on the crust, called Pangea. As the Mantle shrunk, the number of circulation cells increased, so Pangea was broken up. There are now five circulating cells around the earth, which explains the existence of the major continents.
The inner and outer cores of iron probably account for the major part of the magnetic field of the Earth, due to the movement of charged particles within them, the process called magnetohydrodynamrcs.
The thing that hasn’t been explained is the Gutenberg Layer, 150 Km. down. Don’t forget this layer, it is very important and we will come to it in a minute.
The Earth’s magnetism does not remain constant. There are changes taking place over hundreds of years, months, days and even seconds. It has proved very difficult to relate the short-term changes to anything happening at the Earth’s Core, because of its size. Let us look at the world map of the magnetic field. The arrows represent the horizontal direction of the field and the contours the vertical strength. You can see that there are peaks and troughs which don’t correspond with continents or oceans. We’ have peaks over North America, Africa and Asia, but also a peak over the South Atlantic and a trough over Australia and Greenland. The effects must therefore be due to something happening deep within the Earth. The important thing to remember is that this map is moving, as a whole, from East to West, at the rate of twelve miles a year. This implies that the Earth’s crust is moving as a whole from West to East and completes one rotation more than the core every two thousand years. The map is now back to where it was two thousand years ago. The place where the movement takes place is at a depth of 150 Km., the Gutenberg Layer, where the molten rock has a lower plasticity. You won’t find this movement mentioned in modern text books on Geophysics, because it can’t be explained by any mechanical process. In theory, the crust should turn slower than the core, due to the tidal friction of the Sun and Moon. But it turns faster. This can only be explained as a magnetohydrodynamic action, causing the crust to move like the rotor of an electric motor, due to its permanent residual paleomagnetism.
It has been the custom to explain the Earth’s field as being due to something like a self-excited dynamo, which is the next illustration.
The spinning of the Iron Core creates a movement of charged particles towards its rim. This the effect discovered by Faraday. The charge is tapped off the rim by these convection currents in the Mantle and flows back to the Core at the Poles by a circular path. This path forms an induction coil which keeps the dynamo action going. The path of the current can be in either direction, so self—excited dynamos have a tendency to flip over from one polarity to the other. North becomes South. In the case of the Earth, this flip—over was supposed to take 10,000 years, slowly the magnetism decreases in one direction, as it is doing now, and then It was supposed to build up in the opposite direction. But watch this space, the theory has now had to change.
Where does the sweeping ‘field come from? Sec the next Diagram. It is due to the effect of the Sun’s magnetic field and Solar wind upon the earth. The Solar wind consists of streams of charged particles shooting out from the Sun. This creates a magnetosphere around the Earth and gives rise to the Van Allen radiation Belts. As the Earth turns on its axis relative to the Solar Wind coming from the Sun, so the Sun’s magnetic influence sweep~ across the Earth’s surface from East to West. At these latitudes the speed of the wind is about 500 miles an hour. At the Equator it is 1000 m.p.h. - so even a slight variation of magnetic effect is noticeable.
Geologists make use of aircraft for magnetic surveying with proton magnetometers because the speed of the aircraft amplifies the readings they get, even small variations of 1 nT. can be detected this way. This is a consequence of the Biot¬Savart Law, which relates the strength of magnetic effects to velocity. The faster a dynamo turns, the greater the voltage it. produces.
Solar flares and storms due to sunspot activity can produce changes of up to eight per cent in the Earth’s magnetic field. Radio and T.V. communication is interrupted and Satellites have been moved off course or shut down by false noise signals. We are discovering what profound effects the Sun has on our moods and abilities through magnetic changes - see the Mayan Prophecies by Cotterell and the details of Solar Astrology. Which will be dealt with this later.
The depth to which magnetic effects, such as Solar Flares, can penetrate the ground is dependent on the conductivity of the soil and the frequency of change. As the conductivity rises and the frequency falls the penetration is greater. The oceans and the relatively thin rock crust below them, which cover three fifths of the earth’s surface, have a high conductivity. The frequency at which the Earth turns, once a day, is very low. So the penetration of the Sun’s magnetism is very large.
To return to Charles Brookèr and the Sweeping Magnetic Field. When he retired from the B.B.C. Charles Brooker resolved to discover the means by which dowsers were able to locate buried objects and materials. He started with the presumption that they could detect small changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. So he built a large De-gaussing coil, on the lines of coils used to neutralize the magnetism of ships to counter magnetic mines. This coil neutralized the Earth’s magnetic field around the dowser, but they were still able to dowse. Brooker then theorized that the Earth’s magnetic field had another component which varied in such a way as to be detectable even inside the de-gaussing coil. A component which oscillated back and forth would be cancelled by the coil, but a sweeping component, which changed in one direction only, would not be cancelled, it produced a gradient, or slope of the field across the coil. This gradient could be detected by the periphral nerves of the human body, in the arms or legs, because the electro-chemical impulses along these nerves travel in one direction, there is no return path, as in any other kind of coil or electric circuit. A dowser can therefore orientate himself in this sweeping field, which travels from East to West constantly, and detect changes in it, like gusts or eddies, caused by the local conditions.Birds and animals can also navigate using the sweeping field, which passes like a wind across their body when moving North and South, becoming stronger as they go South and weaker Northwards.
Brooker also conducted experiments with magnetometers separated by a distance of 40 miles at the same Latitude and found that small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field, occurring in seconds, were first detected at the Eastward magnetometer and then repeated at the Westward magnetometer after an interval which corresponded to the Earth’s rate of rotation. This again illustrated how the field swept from East to West, following the Sun.
The sweeping field causes eddies around all structures, especially steel structures like electricity pylons. Brooker measured these changes around pylons in the country and asked residents in houses near them if they had had any effects from the currents. The cottages upwind, on the Eastward side were OK. The cottages immediately downwind could not be checked because they were empty, no one had stayed in them for long. Similarly, cows in the meadows could be seen clustering immediately below the Pylons, where the turbulence was least.
After Brooker died his equipment was donated to Surrey University where Roger Coghill found it and took it to his lab in Pontypool. He had not studied the lengthy MSS Brooker had written about this theory. He was putting it off until he retired and had more time. ‘it was not until Brooker’s work was publicized by me that he realized its importance. Roger has written several books about the effects of Electromagnetic waves on the body and has put together many sensitive instruments for detecting these effects. After Lucy Pringle and I visited him he realized the importance of the equipment he held and agreed to put in hand a project to validate Charles Brooker’s findings.
Footnote: There are enormous possible applications for Brookcr’s ideas, which explain the ‘sick building syndrome’. Possibility of predicting earth changes and the ‘Bio-locator’ an instrument which the Russians use to detect people buried in the ruins after earthquakes.
It is interesting to note that the ‘proton magnetometer’ uses a cylindrical container of fluid rich in Hydrogen (Water or Kerosene) . This is surrounded by a coil through which current is passed to deflect the alignment of the Hydrogen atoms away from the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. The current is then switched off and the effect generated by the realignment of the Hydrogen atoms with the earth’s field is recorded. Of course our bodies are 90% water, with a lot of Hydrogen. Brain waves are constantly realigning these atoms away from the Earth’s field and then switching off so the atoms return to their previous state and this forms the basis of modern scanners.. No doubt dowsers, like proton magnetometers, have the ability to notice the effect when this happens.
To recap. The Earth’s Magnetic Field is supposed to be due to some kind of self-excited dynamo, but the forces which drive it are not known. Permanent magnetism can exist in the solid rocks of the Earth’s crust, but the molten rock of the earth’s core is above the Curie point and therefore cannot behave like a permanent magnet. It. needs current flowing through the core to create a magnetic field.
Part of the Earth’s magnetism is the Dipole Field. This means that the Poles are close together at the centre of the Earth. This creates a horizontal, North South orientation at the Equator and a vertical field at the Poles, with varying degrees of orientation in between. The Dipole Field varies over the Earth from 25 to 70 millionths of a Tesla. The cause of this variation is the permanent magnetism frozen into the surface rocks. The magnetic Poles are at 78.5 Degrees North and South, or 11.5 Degrees from true North. Magnetic North is in N.W. Greenland. The apparent direction of Magnetic North can vary by 20 percent from place to place and this variation is not correlated with any surface feature, like oceans or mountains, so the cause lies within the Earth.
The direction of magnetic North at London varied by 35 degrees between 1580 and 1820. There was a 30~ decrease in the horizontal component of the magnetic field at Cape Town during the last 100 years. Studies of volcanic rocks, which arc magnetized by the earth’s field at the time they solidify, show that the Earth’s field reverses every few hundred thousand years and that the reversal was thought to take one or two thousand years. Our ideas on this have been changed recently. The chart shows how the field has varied over the last 4.5 Million years. It is 780,000 years since we last had a reversal, so we are about due for one now. The chart also shows how magnetic reversals coincide with geological ages, that is, radical changes in the flora and fauna of the earth laid down as fossils. The implication is that some kind of disaster has occurred at these times, which wiped out most of life on the Earth. This is reinforced by the next chart which shows the core samples taken in Antarctica at different points, correlating the geological ages with magnetic reversa1s.
Referring to the article in the New Scientist on 30th March 1966. ‘When North Flies South’ . It reports magnetic surveys of lava flows on Stcens Mountain in Eastern Oregon. These lava flows occur regularly and are 16 million years old. Scientists from UCAL found that, in two of the flows, the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field changed by 6 degrees a day while the flow was solidifying. The edges of the flow, which cooled first, show a field reversed from the centre, which cooled last, in 13 days. This reversal therefore occurred a thousand times faster than had ever been previously imagined.
When the reversal takes place the Magnetosphere around the Earth collapses and particles of the Solar wind can penetrate the atmosphere. If the change was spread over thousands of years the flux of such particles would not pose any hazard to the biosphere. But suddenly dumping the particles in 13 days is another matter. It would lead to the formation of Ozone in the air which produces irritation in the lungs.

A map of the variations in intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field shows that there are high points in central Asia, North America and the Antarctic .Ocean, with a low point in Africa. These areas of diversity do not remain fixed but move from East to West at twelve miles a year. This is generally taken to mean that the Earth’s crust moves with respect to the lower mantle and core from West to East, that is, turning faster than the core and completing an extra revolution every 2,000 years. There is a plastic zone in the upper mantle called the Gutenberg Layer one hundred and fifty kilometres below the Earth’s surface, which is the layer where the relative movement between crust and upper mantle takes place.
If one takes account of the braking action of the tides raised by Sun and Moon one would assume that the Earth’s crust would rotate more slowly than the core. There is no explanation in either Newtonian nor Relativity physics to account for this direction of movement of the Earth’s crust. The only explanation for it is electromagnetic. The core of the Earth must have electric currents passing through it like the armature of an electric motor which are powerful enough to drive the crust around it, faster than it rotates itself. The Earth must then behave both like a free-running dynamo and an electric motor, at the same time, however difficult this may be to accept. The magnetic fields of the inner planets show a similar disregard of any theory. Mars, Venus and the Moon have fields of only a thousandth that of the Earth, due to the permanent magnetism of the solid surface rocks. This means that even the Moon must, at some time in the past, have had a dynamo mechanism in its interior to produce such magnetism. Because of its slow rotation and small size it was predicted that it would have no magnetism. However, in 11974 Mariner 10 found Mercury had a field one percent that of the Earth. If Mercury had such a field why did Venus not have one? Mercury’s field must be due to the Solar Wind or some mechanism as yet unexplained. Or perhaps we are looking at a fluctuating phenomena among the inner planets, and at this point Mars, Venus and the Moon arc at their low points. In a thousand years time the position may be reversed, the Earth may have no field and Mars, Venus and the Moon may be magnetic.

TELLURIC CURRENTS.
Other evidence for the effect of the Sweeping Magnetic Field comes from the existence of Telluric Currents of electricity in the Earth’s surface which follow circular patterns that stay fixed in relation to the Sun. They normally flow in sheets parallel to the surface and extend to a depth of several kilometers, varying at low frequencies. The mean potential at the Earth’s surface is 10 mV/Km. This does not sound much, but over the full extent of the Earth facing the Sun, say over 16,000 Km. you have a potential of 160 volts. As the Earth has very low resistance this can cause large currents to flow. Telluric currents are used by geologists to detect the presence of metals and for oil prospecting, because it is the only electrical method capable of penetrating the earth to the depths required by the oil industry. It is customary to use non-polarizing electrodes, made of lead, separated by anything up to 600 Meters. Zones of differing conductivity deflect the flow of current from the horizontal and distort the potentials measured at the surface. A salt dome, sometimes found over oil deposits, has a lower conductivity, which deflects the current around it.
CONCLUSION
Charles Brooker’s work was ignored by orthodox scientists because he dabbled in dowsing and geopathic stress, which were deemed to be ‘fringe sciences’. Likewise he did not realize that his Sweeping Magnetic Field violated Relativity Theory, which maintained the constancy of the speed of light for electromagnetic phenomena, irrespective of the velocity of the source. Brooker’s findings would have re-opened the case of the Michelson Morley Experiment, upon which Einstein’s Theory was based.

Dear psychotechnician,

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