The SAFIRE Project Is Not Real Science (Electric Sun Model Debunked)

Hey everyone, so some of you may remember my Electric Universe debunk that I released a couple months ago, which dismantled the Velikovskian nonsense put forward by the Thunderbolts Project and a handful of other pseudoscientific YouTube channels. You may also remember the bizarre interaction that immediately followed when Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observers decided to send me physical threats by email completely unprompted, so I had to then make a video exposing him as nothing more than a lawy

er who pretends to understand astrophysics in order to make money on the internet. Unbeknownst to me prior to these videos, there are a lot of people out there who have fallen for these types of “alternative cosmology” hoaxes, and quite vocally defend them when provoked, which consists of regurgitating the rubbish spewed by their idols, blissfully unaware of the firmly established science they are contradicting. Beyond simply lashing out like toddlers who have been told Santa Claus isn’t real, h

undreds of these folks will reference one thing ad nauseam. That is the so-called SAFIRE Project, which they view as a cutting-edge experiment that vindicates their worldview and is poised to revolutionize physics. So, for those of you who are not familiar, what is the SAFIRE Project? Let’s go ahead and tell this sordid tale, starting from the beginning. In the 1970s, there was an electrical engineer named Ralph Juergens who was a supporter of a guy named Immanuel Velikovsky. This science-illite

rate crackpot was the original L. Ron Hubbard type behind the Electric Universe, who proposed that Earth used to orbit Saturn, and that Venus used to be inside of Jupiter and was very recently ejected to fly across the solar system like a comet and suddenly settle into its current orbit in a way that defies the laws of physics. Meanwhile, lightning bolts magically erupted all around the solar system to carve planetary features, even though we can’t see that happening anymore, nor is it possible

in the first place, and all of this not because of science but because of some arcane religious mythology he was fond of. This is the nutjob that inspired the people at the Thunderbolts Project and many other similar figures, and they all regularly cite him as some kind of visionary, which is enough to discredit all of them point blank. Now, Juergens extended this mythology with the claim that the way we know the sun to operate isn’t accurate. As any astrophysicist will tell you, lots of matter

means lots of gravitational pressure, so it gets real hot in the core such that nuclei slam together and fuse, and energy is released during nuclear fusion which keeps the star in equilibrium, also making it shine in the process. Basic stuff. However, according to Juergens, stars are not powered by fusion, but instead by electricity, and he came up with the electric sun concept. In a blatant display of projecting his area of personal expertise where it does not belong, Juergens proposed that the

sun, and all other stars, are anodes for galactic discharge currents. This means that like a giant capacitor, the sun would have to be a positively charged body, somehow powered by a source at the center of the galaxy, with no evidence and no real science done to back it up in any way. We will expand at great length on how unbelievably wrong this is in a moment, after we get a little more context. Juergens died in 1979, and a fellow named Don Scott later picked up where he left off. Take note t

hat like Juergens, Scott is an electrical engineer. And although he is a good one, as we continue, try to remember that electrical engineers are not astrophysicists, and are not presumed to understand astrophysics. That’s why his book, “The Electric Sky”, describing the sun as an electronic transistor, is an impossible bunch of gibberish, another arrogant projection of expertise onto an area where it does not fit or belong. In roughly the same time period, we encounter the Thunderbolts Project.

The electric sun model is similarly embraced by Wallace Thornhill in 1998, although it’s not really the same one as that of Juergens, or of Scott, or of many others that had been proposed, which in truth are as numerous as they are ridiculous. Thornhill essentially takes aspects of plasma cosmology, which had been thoroughly discredited and abandoned over the 80s and 90s, mixed it with a version of the electric sun model, a hefty dose of the Velikovsky woo, and some nonsense about cave paintings

courtesy of Anthony Peratt, and in doing so he developed the flavor that this pseudoscience currently operates under. This amalgamation goes far beyond stubbornly clinging to obsolete science. Thornhill, along with colleagues like David Talbott, push a hoax so mystical in its delivery that it is currently featured on Gaia.com alongside pseudo-documentaries about ancient aliens, quantum healing, and all sorts of other frivolous nonsense exclusively for suggestible simpletons to watch while high.

Thunderbolts is a transparent cash grab in the way of videos with action movie soundtracks and expensive-to-attend conferences, a true three-ring circus. Now given that it is in Thornhill’s best interest to make it seem as though they are scientists doing science, they need some science to point to. With his crew he hatches a plan to manifest such a monstrosity by way of the SAFIRE Project, which means Stellar Atmospheric Function in Regulation Experiment. Catchy, no? Now, it is also in their b

est interest to pretend that they are not affiliated with such a project, in order to claim that independent researchers are corroborating their hypotheses. So in order to get the project going, they make up a charity called International Science Foundation, and funnel money through that to pay Montgomery Childs, another engineer located in Canada with whom they were previously acquainted, despite their outright denial of this fact. It is easy to prove that this is what they did. When the ISF we

bsite first went up, the contact for the group was Susan Kaye Schirott, and her email was listed as susan@thunderbolts.info. In addition, a little digging shows that trustees of the ISF include other names associated with Electric Universe, going all the way back to associates of Velikovksy, like Bruce Mainwaring, and his son Scott, who is part of Thunderbolts. The Mainwaring Archive Foundation supplied the money for ISF, and also directly pays David Talbott of Thunderbolts. ISF was a front char

ity that served to fund an international venture since private foundations like MAF can’t do this by law. Case closed. I’ll put links in the description if you want to go down this rabbit hole yourself. So clearly, the SAFIRE Project is Thunderbolts attempt to demonstrate the validity of the electric sun model, and we will discuss everything about the project in a moment. But first, it is important to understand how spectacularly idiotic and objectively wrong the electric sun model is. Like much

other pseudoscience, it was initially put forward largely by citing incomplete aspects of an accepted scientific model. So decades ago, we knew that if fusion is happening in the sun, there should be an incredible number of neutrinos being produced every second, which pass through the earth all the time. We should therefore be able to detect them. And in fact, we were able to do this even in the 60s, but we only detected a third of the amount expected. This was later solved in 2002 by detection

s from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, paper linked below. We have since detected neutrinos from the first step in what is called the proton-proton chain, which account for 99% of neutrino production in the sun and confirms the accepted model. We can even image the sun based on neutrinos. In other words, we are all good on neutrinos. Because of this, electric sun proponents have had to revise their position, saying that fusion actually does happen, but it only happens near the surface of the s

un, to produce these detected neutrinos. Beyond the fact that this is not possible as it is neither hot enough nor dense enough way out there, this also does not account for the number of neutrinos that are being produced, nor do we see all the associated gamma radiation that would inevitably reach the earth and fry us all to hell if fusion was happening at the surface of the sun rather than at the core, where it is indeed happening. Monty Childs himself has even complained about all the gamma r

adiation we should be seeing even with fusion happening in the core, somehow unable to comprehend the process by which that radiation has to travel through all the layers of the sun, and is thus attenuated along the way, finally being emitted at lower frequencies. This is basic physics that is completely lost on the leader of the SAFIRE Project. We should also shine some light on another shady tactic used by electric sun proponents, which is to cite phenomena that are electromagnetic in nature b

ut are acknowledged by astrophysicists and completely compatible with accepted science. Yes, the sun has a magnetic field. Yes, sunspots form because of the magnetic field. Yes, the corona is super hot most likely due to magnetic reconnection. None of that is controversial or denied by the scientific community, nor does it in any way support any of their pseudoscientific claims. So clearly, pushers of the electric sun model continue to pretend as though the accepted model of star structure and f

unction is full of holes when it absolutely isn’t. It works just fine. But that’s only part of the problem. It also violates basic physics in ways that even an undergraduate physics student could easily point out. For example, this anode sun is supposed to be powered by an undetectable incoming current of electrons from the galactic center. How do they fight their way past the solar wind and the magnetic field it carries? And this solar wind which consists of positively-charged ions and negative

ly-charged electrons, if it were being accelerated by an electric field, these oppositely-charged entities would be accelerated in opposite directions. Why aren’t they? And we are also to believe that this huge anode is simultaneously attracting the electrons from the galactic current and repelling the electrons in the solar wind? What sense does that make? None whatsoever. The sun is not positively charged. Bulk matter is electrically neutral. If the sun were lit by electrically excited plasma

instead of nuclear fusion, we should see a discontinuous spectrum of bright lines rather than the continuous spectrum we do see. Where’s the explanation there? The sun is not a space lamp magically getting its power from some stream of electricity that permeates the galaxy, which we somehow can’t detect even though it is supposed to connect all the stars. Beyond what objectively doesn’t work with the electric sun model, there is the mountain of observations readily explained by accepted science

that the electric sun can’t account for and doesn’t even attempt to. It’s like they took a snapshot of the sun as it is today and tried to superimpose bad physics upon it, completely disregarding all aspects of stellar evolution, which we know a lot about. Stellar evolution has many branches, all of which correlate with some change that occurs due to the material available for fusion in the core. When stars become red giants, how do they explain that without invoking fusion? Why do stars go supe

rnova if not by gravitational collapse once fuel for fusion runs out in the core? How do they explain the relative abundance of the elements in the universe that makes perfect sense in the context of fusion within stars? Why is iron so abundant if it’s not because of the limit of fusion in stellar cores due to iron-56 having the highest binding energy per nucleon? Then let’s zoom out to imagine this enormous galactic circuit that is postulated. Consider the massive 10^18 amp Birkeland currents t

hat would have to exist, stretching over the galaxy to power all these stars. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest they exist beyond whimsy. In addition, this claim requires the galaxy to be a relatively flat disk, like ours indeed is. But what about elliptical galaxies? 15-20% of galaxies are elliptical or even totally amorphous, a proportion which will only increase as more galaxies merge, very obviously due to gravitational attraction. When a galaxy is just a big blob, it defies their model

of how a galaxy is powered, so how are those stars doing just fine? This is the level of idiocy we are dealing with. Furthermore this all requires a denial of the existence of black holes, in particular the supermassive black holes that sit at the center of every galaxy. But it’s not the 1970s anymore. We know without a doubt that they are there. Newer and better telescopes equipped to detect a wide variety of types of radiation are able to visualize the galactic center, and monitor the motion

of stars around the supermassive black hole that is there, not only speeding up as they approach the seemingly black nothingness they orbit around, but also exhibiting perhelion precession immaculately and quantitatively predicted by general relativity, just like the planet Mercury which originally vindicated the model. For crying out loud, we recently captured an image of the event horizon of a black hole. Black holes exist. Period. Whatever ounce of mystery used to exist surrounding quasars an

d active galactic nuclei and other such phenomena, which was the only reason that plasma cosmology ever gained even an inch of traction, was demolished decades ago. We are past this. The WMAP and Planck satellites got more and more refined measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, further and further corroborating the age and nature of the universe predicted by big bang cosmology, making it consistent far beyond reasonable doubt. This is a distinction that must be made. Plasma c

osmology was once semi-legitimate science, being explored by legitimate plasma physicists that had contributed to the field of astrophysics, until it was proven wrong. On the other hand, Electric Universe was never legitimate science. Electric Universe is just baseless claims that the sun is an anode and that there were once magic lightning bolts in space, all without any model, without any math, without any evidence. It’s the space equivalent of the Loch Ness monster. Thornhill and other frauds

combine all of the above ingredients to create a recipe of nonsense meant to dazzle laypeople for financial gain and nothing else. This is the main point. Electric Universe pretends that our current model for how stars work is broken when it definitely is not, and then attempts to replace the working model with literally nothing, a farce with zero explanatory power, zero verifiable predictions, and zero legitimate publications. We know how stars work. When I say this, it is not a dogmatic state

ment. Humans know things. We know the earth is round. We know that molecules exist. And we know how the sun works, because we know the laws of physics. We know how to do calculations regarding mass and temperature that dictate how and when fusion will occur. We know what kinds of fusion will happen in different stars according to their masses. We know the ranges of masses for which certain elements can be fused, and we see the signatures of these elements in spectroscopic analysis. We know that

below a specific mass we get a brown dwarf, and we see these all over the galaxy. We know that a byproduct of fusion is neutrinos, and we detect neutrinos, with the precise frequency that the model predicts, and indicative of the first step in the type of fusion we predicted should happen in the core. This is less than one percent of the firm science that could be cited which is all interconnected and demonstrates conclusively that we know how stars work. But once again, Thornhill and pals need

their pretend science to point to, so now it’s on to the SAFIRE Project. In 2013 the project began with a quaint experiment. Childs and company did some business in a bell jar. It was claimed that plasma self-organized. This was scaled up to a larger apparatus, which appears to be able to contain and control plasmas at high temperatures. Fine, not particularly revolutionary, but more importantly, perpetually vague in its description. What materials are being used? This is somehow never discussed

. Childs regularly just says things about how something melted that shouldn’t, and something that should melt but didn’t. There’s a lot of talk about double layers. Why should we care about those? Does any of this correlate with star structure? Can you demonstrate that in any way other than vague similarity in visual appearance? Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning of the problems. Given that we know there are lots of elements in stars, and given that the electric sun model proposes that the

se are not produced by nuclear fusion, the main thing they then have to focus on is demonstrating the transmutation of elements as an electromagnetic phenomenon. They indeed claim that this has been achieved, but again, it is all astoundingly vague. There are lots of images and videos, but next to no explanation of what we are seeing. There’s a glowing ball, what is it? Again, what’s the material? How is the power being conducted? What are these smaller balls referred to as tufts? What is happen

ing? How is it happening? Are elements being made? How do you know? Can we see how you know? Gee, it sure would be great if you would publish some science with numbers in it so that people could have a look. Now, rather than remaining helplessly skeptical, I felt that I should dig a little deeper, so I took a look at the personnel of the SAFIRE team. When the project got started, they hired a few people, primarily with backgrounds in engineering or some aspect of technology. Only one of them was

an actual plasma physicist, named Lowell Morgan. Rather interested in his take on SAFIRE, I have been in personal contact with him by email. He has quite a lot to say about the project and about Montgomery Childs, and he’s given me permission to share all of it publicly. I want you to be able to read all of it, because it’s quite enlightening, so I’m going to display all the text, though I will only specifically highlight and discuss key points. Let’s take a look. Ok, right off the bat Dr. Morg

an understands that Electric Universe is hogwash to the nth degree. It reeks of snake oil, and is peddled by snake oil salesmen, most notably Thornhill himself, who as it turns out is not actually a physicist. And here we see the nature of Dr. Morgan’s employment, which began in 2013, during the initial design phase. Now we get to the meat of it. It is clear that Dr. Morgan was the only one capable of comprehending and explaining what was being done, and we also see quite clearly that the only p

aper published by SAFIRE was about standard laboratory plasma, and had nothing to do with the electric sun model whatsoever. Again, a pretty harsh appraisal of their abilities, and the descent into pseudoscience is outlined clearly, which is what prompted Dr. Morgan to quit in order to avoid professional embarrassment. And again, more evidence that the whole thing is just a dog and pony show for Thunderbolts, either by self-funding through secretive channels, or scamming investors. And wrapping

up with some words of caution to any potential investors from here on out. To reiterate, Lowell Morgan is the only plasma physicist that has ever worked on the SAFIRE Project, which is supposedly about plasma physics. His views on what they are doing are shared by every other authority on the subject that comes across this or any other aspect of electric universe woo-woo, which aren’t that many, because most scientists don’t care about what crackpots do, since they are busy doing real science. A

s for Montgomery Childs, it seems plausible that he is not specifically a fraud, but rather someone who has deluded himself into thinking that he understands physics. He certainly does not hide the fact that he has no interest in actually publishing peer-reviewed science, and flat out says as much in this interview I found. Right, because no physicist could possibly comprehend physics, so why even bother trying to participate in legitimate scientific discourse? You don’t have to prove to anyone

that what you’re doing is real science, you’re a rogue! I’m sorry, but this is a blatantly transparent shirking of scientific responsibility, due to the fact that he just doesn’t have the expertise in math and physics required to publish anything. If you can’t summarize your research in a paper and publish it, like every graduate student learns how to do, you are not doing real science, period. At this point we have to make something abundantly clear. With most varieties of pseudoscience like th

is, there are always two camps. First, there are people that are knowingly pushing a hoax to make money. In my estimation, that’s what the Thunderbolts Project is doing. They make a lot of money off of their videos and conferences, and that’s all it is to them. Money and status. Then there are the people who believe they are doing real science, filtering out whatever doesn’t fit their narrative along the way. This behavior is enacted by people who desperately want to be a revolutionary figure in

the history of science, and have convinced themselves that this is what they are doing, against authoritarian opposition from the dogmatic scientific establishment that simply does not possess the capacity to comprehend their brilliance. Sometimes competent scientists fall into this trap in their later years, even Nobel prize winning ones, when they stubbornly pursue unsupportable claims. Scientists are human. They have desires, they have egos, and that’s just the way it is. Electric Universe i

s a healthy mixture of these two types of people, united by one common thread, nothing they are saying is remotely compatible with reality. Accepted science is not dogma. Citing scientific consensus is NOT an argument from authority. On the contrary, citing a single figure like any of these people we have just mentioned, THAT is an argument from authority. It’s the idea that this guy says it, so it must be true. Citing globally accepted science is just pointing towards what we have evidence for,

and the electric sun model is such a spectacular bust that it doesn’t do it justice to simply say that it is wrong. It doesn’t even qualify for the assessment of being called right or wrong. It is magnificently at odds with basic scientific principles and observations from uncountable areas of investigation. It does no math, and it has zero explanatory power. So I believe that’s pretty sufficient. The SAFIRE Project is ridiculous. The electric sun model is ridiculous. Hopefully if you had just

a passing interest in these ideas, you are now able to discard them. But if you are actually sitting there frantically searching for ad hoc responses to these issues which you don’t even remotely understand, stop. You are not looking for truth. You don’t care about science. You care about your precious little narrative, and your infantile iconoclastic identity. You just like the idea that all the world’s scientists are wrong, and you’re part of a little club that knows the truth, which is why yo

u react aggressively when this narrative is challenged, because it bursts your fantasy bubble, and demolishes a part of your identity that makes you feel special. Pause for as long as it takes to admit that to yourself. Most importantly, if this SAFIRE nonsense was real science, it wouldn’t be relegated to a YouTube channel. There would be publications. Instead, there are none, because unlike real science, which makes quantitative predictions that can be verified by experiment, pseudoscience nev

er does this, as any such predictions would instantly be falsified thereby killing the con. SAFIRE is nothing more than Thunderbolts personnel funding a magic show to boost their own credibility. It’s an attempt to look like real science, because to the suggestible person, vaguely resembling real science is all it takes. Yes, they use complicated jargon that makes them sound like they know what they are talking about, and yes, this may be indistinguishable from real science to the layperson. Unf

ortunately, that’s part of their angle. They are gaslighting you. When they tell you that the big bang cosmological model is wrong, they are lying. It’s been thoroughly corroborated by many different threads of inquiry. When they tell you black holes don’t exist, they are lying. We see how stars move around them, and we even have an image of one. When they tell you that relativity is false, they are lying. The list of observations that are directly and precisely predicted by the theory is encylo

pedias long, and technology we all use every day literally could not function if relativity were not true. And when they pretend that dark matter is an absurd concept, they are lying, and the truth is that if it was called something less mystical-sounding, like nonbaryonic matter, you wouldn’t even know or care about it. If you feel disenfranchised by this loss, don’t worry. You’re not the first to fall for a hoax. But be sure to understand that it doesn’t require much knowledge of science to se

e through these things, you just have to take the time and learn, from credible sources, not self-proclaimed revolutionaries without qualifications. And above all else, you have to acknowledge the degree to which you are enacting a confirmation bias towards anti-establishment narratives. This is currently an epidemic in every sector of society, from the chemical, to the medical, to the astrophysical. Don’t be embarrassed, just recognize it and grow. Until next time.