Abraham and the Electric Universe

by John P. Pratt
14 Feb 2018, 1 Birth (V), 1 Wind (SR)

©2018 by John P. Pratt. All rights Reserved.

Index, Home

Contents

1. Nuclear Sun

2. Abraham's Sun

2.1 Kae-e-vanrash: Sirius?

2.2 Power Boosters: Orion's Belt?

3. Electric Sun

4. Conclusion

Notes

The Book of Abraham states that the sun gets its light from other stars, similar to the scientific theory that it comes from an electric plasma stream in a spiral arm of our galaxy.

Fluorescent fish in our electric universe.

The belief that the sun is powered by nuclear reactions at its core is so entrenched that it usually taken as a scientific article of faith. Yet the Book of Abraham teaches that the sun is powered from light "borrowed" from a series of other stars, going back to Kolob, the governing star nearest to the residence of God. So which is it? Is the sun powered from within or from without? Let us first review the evidence for the usual nuclear theory, then what is taught in the Book of Abraham and Egyptian traditions, and finally consider the alternate scientific theory of an electric universe in which the stars receive their power from an electric plasma stream traveling down a galactic spiral arm.

In 1908 there was an excellent summary article in Scientific American of theories of the age of the sun and the earth as derived from physics known at that time.[1] The source of energy for the sun was thought to be from its slow gravitational contraction. As the sun very slowly contracts half of the energy would go into light and half into heating up the sun. As for the earth, digging deep holes showed that the interior of the earth gets hotter. Putting numbers into how long gravitational processes could last put the estimates of the ages of both sun and earth to be from 10-30 million years old.

Fig. 1. Standard nuclear sun theory.

That article noted that geologists were pushing for a much greater age of the earth in billions of years based on the assumption of "uniformitarianism" which supposes that there have been no catastrophes in the past, but that all of the sedimentary rock built up slowly as it appears to be doing today rather than having been put down quickly as in a Great Flood. That geologic theory was not given much credence in the article because it was not based on hard science but rather only on unfounded speculation.

Conflict between the two sciences of physics and geology mounted until the theory that the earth is billions of years old became accepted by the general public and those funding scientific research. Then astrophysicists became pressured into thinking of some alternate theory of what could keep our sun shining for billions of years, which supposedly would give life enough time to create itself into what is seen today. What could possibly do that? Understanding creation and life is much harder, if not impossible, when God is not allowed to participate!

Finally, when the nuclear age dawned in the 1930s, it was proposed that nuclear reactions at the center of the sun could give it an age of constant shining for billions of years. Keep in mind that this theory was created solely to please the geologists (and those who fund scientific research). Now the question was whether any evidence whatsoever could be found to support this speculative conjecture. After all, who could know what is going on in the center of the sun?

When I was working on my PhD in astronomy in the 1970s at the University of Arizona, this was a hot topic. The only predicted physical evidence for nuclear reactions at the sun's core was that there should be a certain amount of neutrinos detected. Neutrinos are massless particles which would result from nuclear reactions which could penetrate the entire mass of the sun to come to earth to be detected. The problem was that none could be detected at that time. Then the experimenters kept improving their detection equipment so they could say that the level of emission was lower than expected by the computer models of the sun. Then the theoreticians would adjust the parameters in their models and announce that in the latest models they expected fewer neutrinos, which number was just below the detection level of the equipment. These adjustments went through several iterations until finally some neutrinos were believed to have been detected and the issue was felt by many to have been resolved.

Now it turns out that the latest refinements are showing that the neutrinos from the sun being detected are actually more likely to originate from the sun's surface and/or corona (high, bright solar atmosphere or halo) rather than from the interior. So again the problem arises that there is no compelling evidence that nuclear reactions are powering the sun.

2.1 Kae-e-vanrash: Sirius?

We can ask about the stars in our solar neighborhood. Might it be possible to identify this Kae-e-vanrash star which governs and powers the sun? It turns our that there is one star of those nearest the sun which is a clear candidate to be Kae-e-vanrash. It is much brighter than the sun and is indeed the brightest star in the sky! Sirius is the fifth nearest star to the sun, being only eight light years away, whereas the nearest star is some four light years away. A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, which is some six trillion miles! Sirius is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. If we were to pick one star that would be the governing star of a local group of fifteen stars, Sirius would be the logical choice.

It turns out that the star Sirius was incredibly important to the ancient Egyptians, which suggests that Abraham might have taught them about it. After all, he had been commanded to go teach the Egyptians about the astronomy the Lord had revealed to him (Abr 3:15). Their calendar was based on the annual heliacal (with the sun) rising of Sirius (Sothis) in the summer that heralded the beginning of the all-important flooding of the Nile plain. It was by far their most important and worshipped star.

Fig. 3. Orbit of double star Sirius by Dogon tribe versus modern version. How did they know?

Sirius is a double star, with a white dwarf companion that is very small, dense and dim. The sun is a million times the volume of the earth. A white dwarf has all of the matter of a sun crammed into the volume of the earth! A thimbleful of it weighs as much as an elephant!

The native Dogon tribe in Mali, Africa, has worshipped that little star for centuries, saying it is really the more important star of the pair. They call it the heaviest star and know that it takes fifty years to orbit Sirius. All of their information appears to be correct, right down to the shape of the orbit (See Figure 3). It has been a real mystery where they got such detailed information about a star not visible to the unaided eye. In fact, they themselves may be unaware of the source of that information which they have carefully preserved.[2]

Thus, it sure looks as if Sirius could be identified with Kae-e-vanrash and hence be called the sun's governing star. But the governing is not gravitational as it would be if Sirius were at the center of a local star cluster to which the sun were gravitationally bound. The governing would have to be a different sort. And indeed the Book of Abraham points out that the type of governing is that Sirius provides light to the sun on the light's journey from Kolob.

In passing, we know that there is another bright star near to Sirius which also could be a second-in-command governing star of the sun. It is roughly in the same direction from the earth as is Sirius and only eleven light years from us. It is Procyon, another bright star which is the main star in Canis Minor, the Little Dog. Moreover, Procyon is also a double star with a white dwarf companion. Sirius and Procyon are not only near each other, they are connected in the mythology about the stars, both being the hunting dogs of Orion, the Great Hunter.

Fig. 4. Nearest sun-like or bright stars
Click to see 50 nearest stars and map.

Most stars are red dwarfs and are so dim that even though they constitute most of the nearby stars, they are invisible. When considering which stars are likely to support life as we know it, red dwarfs do not qualify, being too cool and dim. Most of the stars we see are much brighter than the sun, but they are very distant. For example, the stars in the belt of Orion are some 1,000 light years away. The fact that they look so bright to us is because they are intrinsically extremely bright to still look so bright even though they are so far away. The stars Sirius and Procyon are exceptions. They both appear bright because they are so close to the sun. While they are both significantly brighter intrinsically than the sun, yet they are nowhere near as bright as the giant beacons in the belt of Orion. Figure 4 lists a few of the nearby stars which are not red dwarfs. Clicking on that illustration shows the entire list of over fifty nearby stars which are indeed mostly red dwarfs.

If the fifteen stars governed by Kae-e-vanrash are stars with planets with people on them (D&C 76:24), then there are only a few nearby stars which would qualify. One of them is the very nearest star, alpha Centauri (α Cen), the brightest star in the Centaur. Another likely candidate is τ Ceti which has a habitable planet. Of the nearby stars, many have now been discovered to have planets that could be habitable with life as we know it. Click here for an illustration of several nearby stars with habitable planets.

Thus, looking at nearby stars with habitable planets along with the nearby stars listed in Figure 4, there may indeed be about fifteen that could be governed by the bright star Sirius and/or its white dwarf companion, even as taught in the Book of Abraham about Kae-e-vanrash. It is interesting that the number fifteen is explicitly mentioned for the group to which the sun belongs. Fifteen is reminiscent of a First Presidency of three and a Quorum of Twelve. As we've just looked at our local area, there are two bright stars, Sirius and Procyon and a white dwarf companion to Sirius which could constitute a local presidency, and then there are about twelve stars either similar to the sun in size and color or known to have planets. Thus, they could be like the Quorum of Twelve (D&C 88:61)

2.2 Power Boosters: Orion's Belt?

Other links mentioned in the Book of Abraham Facsimile 2 in the chain going back to Kolob apparently include the two stars on either side of Kolob: Kli-flo-ises and Hah-ko-kau-beam, which are shown as numbers 22 and 23 on either side of Kolob (See Figure 2).

Fig. 5. Were the Giza pyramids built to represent Orion's Belt?
Click to see detailed overlay.

If I had to pick other stars in our chain of command and/or power transmitters, it would be hard not to include the stars in the Belt of Orion, at least the star Alnitak. It is apparently that star to which one of the shafts of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is pointed. Moreover, there is a popular theory that appears to have merit that the three largest pyramids at the Giza complex in Egypt were in fact built in locations meant to symbolize Orion's belt (see Figure 5). If so, then the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Greek for Khufu) would correspond to Alnitak.

In summary, Abraham was shown a series of important stars for our sun. Then he was commanded to go teach the Egyptians about it, and then the Egyptians began to single out the star Sirius and those in the belt of Orion as not only important but perhaps even making shafts in pyramids to point to and selecting pyramid locations to represent them. Thus, there is circumstantial evidence that those stars are likely some that Abraham pointed out to them. But what about the idea that those stars actually transmit light to power the sun? How could that be?

Fig. 6. A plasma ball!
Click to see the Eye of God (Helix Nebula).

Let us now take a brief look at the "electric sun" model, which is only a part of a new comprehensive theory of comets, galaxies and the entire universe. It turns out that it explains a host of baffling enigmas about the sun such as what heats its corona, but all of those are beyond the scope of this article. To study the electric sun model, the excellent book The Electric Universe[3] is highly recommended. Be warned, however, that it is rather technical, so hopefully you still remember something from your high school physics class. There are also several introductory videos on YouTube.com.

What causes the spiral arms possessed by many galaxies to form? This has been a total mystery to astronomers. The best theory at the time of my schooling was that something caused a shock wave to go through practically empty space to form stars which just happened to be in a spiral. The electric universe theory explains that electrical currents in space naturally form into spiral currents. I bought a toy plasma ball much smaller than that in Figure 6 and when the batteries ran low it only formed two current streams and they immediately formed into a little spinning spiral of two currents opposite of each other just like a little spiral galaxy. Most spiral galaxies have two main arms coming out opposite sides of the center. One of ours in the Milky Way is shown at the bottom of Figure 7. So rather than inventing ad hoc theories to explain the mysterious spiral arms, one can do simple experiments to see the arms form in the laboratory.

The aurora are plasma streams from the sun!

The electric sun model states that the energy for the sun comes from an electric stream of particles flowing down our local arm of the galaxy. This stream is made of charged particles like electrons rather than entire atoms. Such a group of charged particles is called a "plasma". Natural examples of electric plasma currents are lightning strikes and the aurora or northern lights. Electric currents in free space tend to run in tightly confined lines like lightning or the streams of light in the plasma balls, almost as if they were in a wire. They do not spread out evenly all over. When one looks at many of the beautiful high resolution photos of nebulae, one often sees filamentary patterns (click on Figure 6).

Fig. 7. The Orion Nebula (M42) and the center star in Orion's Belt are 1300 light years from our sun!

What is our local arm of the Milky Way galaxy? It is called the "Orion Spur", which contains the main stars of Orion, and in particular his belt. That is, Orion is much more than a few bright stars: it marks an entire arm of our Milky Way spiral galaxy! (See Figure 7.) Those stars are exceedingly bright but very far away, being some 1300 light years away. The huge size of our galaxy is indicated in Figure 7, which shows the locations of both the sun and also the Orion Nebula (M42) which is very near to Alnitak (both 1300 light years away). They look close to each other, both being in one spur of one arm of our Milky Way galaxy but those stars are some of the most distant we can see with the unaided eye. So both the electric universe theory and the ancient Egyptians speak of the importance of Orion. Thus, that forms a double witness from very difference disciplines of the importance of Orion.

Notes