Many pleasures for from and to you, Fran!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

(This really is birthday season here... I feel so out of place as a summer child...)

I was talking chemistry-physics with a guy this evening.  I want a periodic table poster for my midwinter present.  Electricity!

I'm not sure how you relate to youtube vids.  

Electricity!

The aurora...(it works for me to listen to the previous video while watching this one)

...the song, for me, has the instant-backwards timemachine effect...

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Warmth for the northern soul.

Northern Lights July/11/2007

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Joe Kittenger, oh man, oh woman, oh human!  I could never do that--I don't have the training.  

btw, I was discussing lo these many ideas this evening--one of which is what makes a solid solid, what makes water a liquid, and why the noble gasses are all gasses.

But I think most people (these days) don't really understand--at a physical level--that they are on a spinning ball in space, travelling around the sun.

I also think that the largest thing comparable to human complexity that I have intimate knowledge of is the atmosphere--and I live at the bottom!

Did I mention that water is a liquid because hydrogen is so willing to spare that unbalanced electron, and oxygen is willing to take it...ach....chemistry...

Water (molecule) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Water is primarily a liquid under standard conditions, which is not predicted from its relationship to other analogous hydrides of the oxygen family in the periodic table, which are gases such as hydrogen sulfide. Also the elements surrounding oxygen in the periodic table, nitrogen, fluorine, phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine, all combine with hydrogen to produce gases under standard conditions. The reason that oxygen hydride (water) forms a liquid is that it is more electronegative than all of these elements (other than fluorine). Oxygen attracts electrons much more strongly than hydrogen, resulting in a net positive charge on the hydrogen atoms, and a net negative charge on the oxygen atom. The presence of a charge on each of these atoms gives each water molecule a net dipole moment. Electrical attraction between water molecules due to this dipole pulls individual molecules closer together, making it more difficult to separate the molecules and therefore raising the boiling point. This attraction is known as hydrogen bonding. Water can be described as a polar liquid that dissociates disproportionately into the hydronium ion (H3O⁺(aq)) and an associated hydroxide ion (OH⁻(aq)). Water is in dynamic equilibrium between the liquid, gas and solid states at standard temperature and pressure, and is the only pure substance found naturally on Earth to be so.

From a point far enough north, you won't see the sun, cos you're tilted so far up and the sun is so far down... you never see it!  Those who live close the equator don't see this....

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

For my birthday (for example) all the pubs put up decorations.  Not for my birthday, but it is impossible for me to go the pub on my birthday without finding midwinter decorations abounding. If you're born in May that doesn't happen--something else does (all the flowers are in bloom!)

Grab that basic fact, twist it around star formations (which we can no longer see, so "astrology" is no longer the funky edge of "looking at stars") and....voila!  I would say that in the sense of the I Ching and the Tarot, the star signs are integrated: there are no "good ones" or bad ones, every one can be read out of every other one, so you have this closed system which is open, sorta like Go, where simple rules build complexity and connection....heh!

The important point is that Saggitarians have no faults--except for those who do, and their faults are obviously due to rising or falling moons, on any one of a variety of planets.

And, talking of natural effects:

Crop Circles (Morgana's Observatory)

Whirlwind Vortex (also known as Plasma Vortex)

The first theory proposed by Dr. Terrence Meaden in the 1980's attempted to explain all spirally generated circle patterns as a product of entirely natural atmospheric phenomena. Meaden likened the vortex to dustdevils, tornadoes, etc., but also including friction-generated plasma which could account for the anomalous light phenomena which many eyewitnesses had seen. Meaden claimed the forces involved were hitherto "unrecognized helical or toroidal forces" which had "subsidiary electromagnetic properties due to self-electrification." The vortex would presumably form high above the ground, then suddenly "breakdown" to the ground level in an axial strike. The theory was plausible for a number of years, with further corroboration obtained in Japan by Dr. Y.H. Ohtsuki and Prof. H. Ofuruton. Their lab research produced similar vortices by electrostatic discharge and microwave interference. Theoretical work on the plasma-vortex was carried out by Prof. H. Kikuchi, Japan, who modeled the vortex using energy potentials including an interaction term between an axial electric field and the earth's magnetic field.

Although Dr. Meaden was possibly the first to equate a meteorological event with a plasma-vortex, the term is not new to plasma physics. A 1970 Nobel Prize winning physicist, Hannes Alfven, developed several theories of wave propagation in plasmas. His broad vision embraces interstellar and laboratory phenomena, for he was interested in those properties of lab plasmas which could be used to form a cosmogony (a theory of evolution). The bulk of his work relates to magnetohydrodynamics, an area of plasma physics which investigates acoustic and magnetic interactions within an electrically conductive fluid or gas. It is an advanced subject, but Alfven wave concepts are at heart quite intuitive.

Basically, Alfven waves are ripples or propagating waves on top of plasma-vortex structures. The vortex structures themselves form spontaneously within a plasma from shear flows and instabilities. Once formed, however, they can propagate waves in various modes, as well as deliver momentum across large distances. How does this relate to crop circles? A plasma-vortex structure such as a toroid, or a moving spiral, can explain the gentle "groomed" appearance of the plant stalks after a formation has occurred. The stalks show no mechanical chafing or damage, which would be the case if struck by a sudden whirlwind or tornado. I believe that Alfven waves create the final "push" which pulsates along the axes of vortex structures. How these are generated, and where they begin is still quite an intriguing mystery.

The whirlwind vortex, or upward-axis vortex as it was promulgated by Dr. Meaden, was sufficient to explain all of the true "circles" appearing in the 1980's. However, the whirlwind theory became public "disinformation" as soon as the first large-scale pictograms began appearing in Britain as early as 1990. This new dimension to the shape of the phenomena began to inform people that much larger, more complex forces were at work. It could no longer be a simple combination of "hitherto unrecognized" natural forces. In addition to the anomalous light phenomena, several more reports of a 5KHz "trilling sound" were taken from witnesses in the vicinity of the formations, none of which could be explained by revolving wind and charge clouds. Straight lines began to appear in the pictograms, with stems of the plants lying parallel to the outer contours of the lines. Obviously, Meaden's theory was in need of modification.