CHAPTER NINE
The physical history of Solaria Binaria may be divided into three major periods according to the intensity of quantavolution occurring: a primary period of violent changes and rapid development, extending perhaps to a quarter of a million years; a secondary period of relative balance among the elements within the system, extending almost to the present; and a shorter tertiary period of system breakdown, when Super Uranus, the planets, the sac and plenum, and the electrical arc with its magnetic tube underwent abrupt transformations.
A biosphere was generated during the primary period and produced its main forms. That is, there was first a time of radiant genesis, a proto-zoic stage, followed by a time of the escalation of basic biological types, a palaeo-zoic stage. Then occurs a meso-zoic period of formal and ambient stability, which coincides with the secondary period of relative balance in physical history. These are the subjects of the present chapter. The Cenozoic, which we redefine as a period of explosive quantavolution, corresponding to the period of system breakdown, is the subject of Chapter Twelve; there the origins of human nature will be discussed (see also Table 6).
The prevailing theory among scientists conjectures that a sequence of chance chemical combinations occurring over time produces the "self-replicating molecule" deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). For the moment we pursue this idea of chance chemical combinations.
In Solaria Binaria, the sac is the vat of chemical evolution. Its gases are hydrogen-rich but contain, by inheritance from the body of Super Sun, all simple ingredients found in life forms. The energy sources which catalyze the process are ultraviolet radiation, electric discharges (lightning bolts), and ionizing particles (from cosmic rays or radioactivity). Using a variety of gaseous mixtures, energy sources and temperatures, experimenters have been successful in producing a multitude of prebiotic compounds in short times [63] . The ultimate step, the creation of life, has not been reproduced in the laboratory ! Presently, experimenters are searching vigorously for some means of reproducing the "reproducer" -- DNA -- in the laboratory.
The composition of the plenum gases varied significantly over time, though for a long time the gas density remained fairly constant. Once Solaria Binaria came into existence, electrical forces produced => electrophoresis among the electrified atoms throughout the system; in electrified gas mixtures the components apportion themselves within the mixture in relation to their ionization potentials. "The component with the lowest ionization potential becomes more concentrated at the => cathode, that with highest ionization potential at the => anode " (Francis, pp195ff). The rate at which separation of the constituents occurs depends upon the => mobility of the ions. The mobility of an ion is of the order of one to ten centimeters per second for each volt per centimeter of electrical field (at standard atmospheric temperature and pressure -- S. T. P.). At constant temperature the product of ion mobility and pressure is approximately constant (Papoular, p94).
The least => massive ions are the most mobile and so they will migrate soonest ; the heavier ions will take longer to separate. In Solaria Binaria only a partial separation was effected, but this was sufficient to contribute to the anomalously low abundance of lithium, beryllium and boron noted in the solar spectrum (Ross and Aller).
The effect of the discharge was to reapportion the plenum gas mixture, changing the local percentage of hydrogen relative to the heavier atoms. This would effect greater efficiency in producing organic compounds in certain regions within the plenum (Dayhoff et al., p1462).
After the nova (see behind to Chapter Four) the plenum occupied a large volume; it was honeycombed with variously electrified domains producing a state of great electrical dis-equilibrium. Held together by pervasive cosmic electrical pressure, the gases of the plenum assumed the smallest volume consistent with their charge density. In reaction to the nova, electric flow within the plenum worked to equalize charge densities within the sac, while maintaining an outward radial gradient of increasing charge density in concession to the external demand from the continuing cosmic transaction.
The result was an initial implosion of the sac, as charges were redistributed, superposed upon a much slower expansion of both the sac and the rest of the system as galactic charge accumulated. Consequently, over most of their history, the Earth and the other primitive planets were immersed in a dense plenum of gases which was opaque to radiation; this gas was at least as dense as the present atmosphere at the Earth's surface.
The nutritive soup from which living forms emerged was not wholly the primitive vapors of Earth (conventionally the oceans and atmosphere) but the total surface of the planets and the volume of the sac. Appropriate temperatures were available in most of this volume within thousands of years of the nova of Super Sun. Various organisms can survive temperatures well above the Earth's present temperature. Fish, fly larvae, and aquatic metazoans survive in hot springs where temperatures approach 320 K (Dicke, 1964, pp119ff; Wickstrom and Castenholz). Live bacteria have been discovered in an oil well where temperatures approached the boiling point of water (Dicke, 1964). Thus it is argued that the Earth could have had a much warmer climate in ages past when life arose. Urey concludes that temperatures have been below 425 K since the Earth's crust separated (Miller and Urey). Fox (1960, p203, p206, 1970), maintains that certain chemical processes preceding the genesis of life were accomplished by heat. He now considers the debate over past temperatures irrelevant since the critical processes can occur at temperatures well below 425 K.
If we consider only that portion of the plenum which enveloped the planetary region (a cylinder 35 gigameters long by 100 megameters diameter) we have a reactor volume which is sixty million times the combined volume of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, in which life otherwise is believed to have been generated. The energy source for the plenum was the electric arc. The early arc may have liberated about 10 23 watts to the plenum, compared with 3 X 10 13 watts received as ultraviolet radiation by the Earth's atmosphere [64] , or with 3 X 10 11 watts received as lightning discharges (see Chalmers for data).
If Solaria's plenum at the edge of the central flow zone is compared with the outer surface of the Earth's atmosphere with regard to energy density, Solaria's plenum will have had an advantage by a factor of 500 000.
At the other extreme, if the energy is spread throughout the entire volume of both reactors, the advantage in energy density still is with Solaria fifty-fold.
If the time taken to generate life in an energized primitive environment depends primarily upon the rate at which the primitive gases can be excited to produce chemical changes, then life ought to have been generated within the plenum after a time somewhere between two thousand and two hundred million years! [65]
Should the initial photolysis not be the rate-controlling step, then the immense volume factor greatly favors a more rapid biosynthesis in the plenum than supposedly occurred in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans aeons ago. Furthermore, a highly electric environment may speed up generation time, and therefore the intergenerational opportunities for mutation. As we see it, the plenum was an ideal reactor in which living systems could be synthesized and sustained [66] .
Evidence that the generative environment was highly magnetic can be inferred from the sensitivity of many living organisms to magnetism. Both animal and plant life respond to strong magnetic fields (above 100 milliteslas), showing modified growth or behavior (Kolin, pp40ff). Magnetic fields more closely approximating the Earth's field today have also been used to stimulate organisms. In some instances the magnetic field seemingly applied directional clues (Barnwell and Brown, p275, p277, Pittman).
Where steady magnetism, regardless of strength, seems to be beneficial (Hays), magnetic variability seems to induce pathological effects, even in modern humans; coronary arrest correlates strongly with extended intervals of disturbed magnetism (Malin), psychiatric hospital admissions correlate less strongly (Friedman et al.). Sudden biological extinction has been linked to periods of magnetic confusion in the paleontological record (Whyte, p681). Such periods, in our view, would be more likely produced by cosmic large body encounters that would inject magnetic disturbances along with other disastrous effects upon the biosphere.
To summarize, in regard to the time available for the origin and development of species, the Solaria (SB) model is 2000 times less "effective" than the Evolutionary (E) model. With respect to the volume of the life-generating region, the SB model is six million times more effective. Considering the energy density, SB is five hundred thousand times more effective following the establishment of the binary arc. Actually, before its establishment, the nova phase, lasting for months, would have organized the Solaria Binaria system to the equivalent stage of two billion years (2 aeons) of conventionally ascribed Earth history. Hence the SB model, assessing energy density, would well exceed by a millionfold the E model. Since mutagens work upon mutable forms, and branching of species is an exponential concept, the effectiveness of Solaria Binaria in quantavoluting life is multiplied again by the volume of the life-generating region. So, even on a short time schedule, Solaria Binaria appears to be millions of times more capable of producing the species of today.
Still, even this might not be enough to originate and develop the species. The first stages of life are of such low probability, and the alter stages of higher but still low probability, that a "guiding factor in life development " must yet be sought. For example, an average protein is formed of a chain of about one hundred amino acids. To quote a creationist: "If all the stars in the Universe had ten earths, and if all of the earths had oceans of 'amino-acid soup', and if all the amino-acids linked up (randomly) in chains 100 acids long every second for the entire history of the Universe, even then the chance occurrence of a given very simple protein [10 -130 ] would be inconceivably remote" (Stengler, p16) [67] . And the building of a protein is only one of many complex arrangements adding up to life as we know it [68] .
The model of Solaria Binaria might only serve to supersede conventional theory of the evolutionary process, and not to discount it and provide an alternative positive theory, were it not for its electrical features. Life begins by microscopically mimicking its gigantic progenitor, the sac. It has no choice. Every atom, in endeavoring to hold its electrons or gain others, seeks to surround itself with the smallest and densest complete electrical perimeter possible. This is usually an octet of electrons. Whenever necessary, atoms aggregate into molecules where a compromise sharing of electrons will lead to a higher density electrical perimeter [69] . From here the molecules proceed to more complicated systems that ultimately come alive.
The concept of life therefore is an extension of the concept of the "cavity" with which our book began. Life is a way of gaining, hoarding, and begrudgingly doling out electricity. In countless numbers organic molecules determinedly build themselves micro-sacs of chemicals in reaction to electric gradients, capture raw materials, manufacture compounds within the sacs, fire themselves with ever accumulating electric charge, until, incapable of continuing this process without bursting their sacs, they force out unused parts. Usually these are excreta. In critical cases, they are replications of themselves -- if not exactly so, then in fundamentally similar ways. No cell divides itself in mirror like fashion, uniformly, in the beginning. But every deviant is a candidate for the first exact mitosis.
The step from excreta to exact reproduction is critical. The sac of organic electrical activity is not "intelligent" except by human prejudices, ex post facto. But the sac can most efficiently -- effectively and reliably -- excrete if it separates its ingredients on the binary principle of "one for you and one for me". Least change, least imbalance, and therefore longer life ensure if the sac polarizes uniformly prior to excretion, setting half of its contents opposite the other half and splitting itself down the middle, closing the gap at the instant of its division. Excretion becomes reproduction.
Sacs that thus form cells which divide offer more chances of survival and conquest of space by numbers than sacs that either hold their accretions until they burst or bifurcate inequitably from an electrical standpoint, thereupon having to internally reorganize their electrical accommodation upon every mitosis. One notes the terrific speed with which life can develop and reproduce under rules of uniform mitosis. Within a few thousand years the plenum might be filled with such cells. Indeed, perhaps large areas were filled with them.
One is not permitted logically to adjudge life as superior to rocks, which have their own form of durability. The biosphere today is a tiny fraction of the rock masses and space of the Universe. As an offshoot of universal change it has a special interest and importance in the perspective of the human mind. Life has a special mode of material extension which, after all, could fill the Universe promptly under proper conditions, and this is a constant challenge to the entropic concept of the Universe [70] .
Life's arrangement of electrical signals is perhaps its chief embedded characteristic. "Electrical potentials occur in all cells studies thus far, although their biological importance is recognized in only a few cases" (" Cell and Cell Division", Ency. Brit., 1974, Macro. vol. 3, p. 1050). The surface of cells is negatively charged. The cell membranes are 6 to 10 nanometers thick and are highly resistant electrically (from 1,000 to 10,000 ohm/ cm 2 ). They produce voltage gradients which drive the biological functions (as noted ahead) and produce a cell interior that is more highly negatively charged than the surface layer of the cell. That cells are so electrically arranged is understandable when one considers charged cells in a charged universe. In metaphorical language, the overall picture of the cell, and the image of the primordial cell, then, is one in which a peculiar combination of chemical compounds survives by erecting an electrical screen to admit nutrients and to repel destructive invaders, then organize its internal components to sustain itself and to resist random escape from the community.
Several varieties of cell growth and transformation are observable. The "main" type of self-duplication ensues as a permissible, organized, collective escape, or excretion, providing for the maintenance of a complete defense system. Cell division would operate by an electrical signal system. The members are an electric grid (as in a vacuum tube), and acts as a gatekeeper among the elements in and surrounding the cell and during mitosis.
Cells make macro-molecules, including genetic molecules, which do not exist elsewhere in nature and are not allowed exit through the cell membrane. Inasmuch as macro-molecules are concentrators of electricity, this synthesis permits the cell to sustain longer than otherwise would be possible its quest for additional electrical charge. The cell thus builds a higher concentration of charge than is available elsewhere in the plenum mixture. This process is the essence of metabolism.
Metabolism concentrates electricity in the macro-molecules, thus depleting of its nutrients the medium trapped in the cell. (The analogies of cell as sac and of nutritive medium as plenum are close and possible homologous.) The cell responds by excretion of water, ions and gases (by-products) and ingestion of electron-rich nutrients.
Strain is imposed upon the cell membrane, for it must both contain the increased material and at the same time defend the cell against penetration by electron-deficient atoms and molecules. The membrane signals the cell nucleus concerning an imminent site of charge deficiency and leaking. Then the genetic macro-molecules of the cell, which are the only ones capable of dividing themselves more or less equally, and have been so doing since their last episode of cell division, respond to the signal of impending disaster by completing their synthesis, and by lining up on the two sides of a perimeter membrane that is being electrically trenched through the nucleus at the future site of fission. Actually, the division line-up is provoked by an electric polarization of opposed centrioles, each representing a focus of peak negative charge on the edge of the nucleus.
Midway between the two centrioles, the newly forming perimeter constitutes an electron-poor trench. Following the genetic molecules, the other materials of the cell are drawn electrically to flow in equal amounts to either side of the perimeter-to-be, pursuing the two centrioles. By contrast the cellular material that is to constitute the cell wall itself flows into the trench from both sides. Thus, without breeching its old perimeter membrane, the cell has doubled its surface and has divided. Electrical forces move the two new cells apart. Never are two cell membrane in contact even in a densely packed tissue. Some 15-20 nanometers of intercellular space, filled with a sugary fluid, separate them.
From the self-reproducing cell to the hominid of a few thousand years ago requires passing by many landmarks in the organization of life.
Close to the solar nova and birth of Solaria Binaria at the beginning of the Period of Radiant Genesis, one may position groups of critical developments: the provision from solar debris of chemicals and transmutations in the plenum; and prebiotic organic molecules (amino acids, sugars, nitrogen bases, plus other compounds).
Cell membranes, left-handed symmetry of organic macro-molecules [71] , proto-enzymes, porphyrins and => nucleotides -- these developments would readily follow. The cell probably took in the latter three constituents after proto-proteins had been formed independently in the plenum. Some cells, instead of dying, began to engage in mitosis, whereupon self-duplication, as described here, would soon follow.
Large cells would ingest small cells, or form around them, performing two types of action: digestion, the beginning of animal behavior [72] , with the breakdown of the electrical defenses of the smaller cells, and in other cases the formation of cell colonies using the membrane of the host cell as a super-membrane or skin of the smaller internal cell or cells. Large cell colonies would float in the magnetic tube and, later on, settle upon solid bodies.
From the development of the cell, the mode of basic change in life forms ever thereafter can be surmised. Time after time it happens that some portion of the excreta of the organism is retained within the sac of the colony and supplied with the coded electrical signals that connect with the master genetic material so that its descendant in the next generation can draw upon its experience and existence. The developing special organ excretes within the organism and returns signals to make demands, denote satiety and share directiveness in the behavior of the full organism.
For example, the eye is always close to the mouth. The photo-receptive organ that perceives food chances is close to the sac opening that can employ opportunities for ingestion. The organism as a whole is, as it always has been, ready and eager to accept charge-bearing contributors which allow it to increase its density. (It rejects cations for this reason). It permits and then becomes dependent upon the vision, with the genetic material duly recording and perforce returning in the form of instructions the interrelated, combined signals of the eye-mouth.
The genes do not "know" that they are building an eye to go with the mouth; nevertheless, they do so with despatch, as they eagerly accept extensions of all such special organs in the Period of Radiant Genesis; for the environment has a plenitude of electron-rich chemicals, a state of affairs that does not persist beyond the first half-million years of Solaria Binaria. In more modern times, the cell (and hence the organism as a whole) is more hard-pressed to find energy-rich molecules and in the very stress to obtain nutrients it has bureaucratized itself so to speak, and is hence even less equipped to obtain them. In the modern electrified environment, vital processes take much longer.
The plenum of Solaria Binaria was the creator, cradle, and mutagen of life. The broad sculptures of plants and animals were completed during the first half of its existence. If fossils represent the basic variety of life, the phyla and the orders came into being then. No new general forms have originated in recent times (Brough). Despite great waves of extinction, slightly over one million living species are named today. The fossil record should show millions of ancestral species to provide the present number, but in fact shows only about one hundred thousand species. This contrast has excited comment: why were large changes peculiar to early existence; why were small changes more common in recent times (ibid.)?
Set up in this manner, the questions seem to accept answers from Solaria Binaria theory. The plenum promoted creation initially, as would be expected, promoted it less when the binary was stabilized, and became quite destructive and conservative as it exponentially decayed and collapsed. The agents of these change may be identified. The first period provided an immense number of prototypes and access to abundant nutrients, so testing their viability (Ayala). The second period provided a stable environment of abundant nutrients but an end to the easy method of forming combinations. Further, the more distinctive and specialized the species, the less likely its electrical transformation would eventuate in new designs of life.
In the final period, environmental disasters extinguished many species, but also promoted very many, already genetically deviant individuals to the status of families, genera and species.
To acknowledge that a great many of these lesser, less creative designs have emerged in the later history of Solaria Binaria requires a theory of genetic realization. The genetic material can carry far more instructions for the construction and behavior of any organism than are required at any given time (Ayala). Under lower (but higher than present) solar system quantavolutionary conditions, suppressed instructions can be triggered. It is conceivable that every living species carries in its genetic code instructions for metamorphosis (monsterism). Cosmic rays, nuclear explosions, radiation fall-out meteoroids, electromagnetic typhoons, encounters of Earth with large bodies (comet, meteoroid), viral epidemics, and "silent" significant changes in electrical discharges within Solaria Binaria and the Solar System may be the means of suddenly extinguishing some genetic instructions and releasing others, quantavoluting a species into a similar but substantially modified species that is altered anatomically, physiologically and behaviorally.
Success has not attended the search for transitional forms that bridge the "gap" of development from one species to another under conventional Darwinian theory. It may be maintained that transitional forms, such as reptiles with half developed wings or hominids that spoke but poorly, never existed (Rodabaugh, p119). All orders of mammals appear with their "basic ordinal characters" (Simpson, 1944, p106). Many of the plant species, it is believed, are replicas of other species (=> polyploids), differing almost entirely in size alone, with the physiology and behavior appropriate to giantism and dwarfism [73] . That the horse, a favorite instance of evolution since Lyell, has evolved its peculiar configuration by means other than genetic realization seems unlikely. The millions of years authorized to complete this series of changes (among others) are unnecessary and probably even insufficient unless supported by a theory of genetic realization, a position that has forced its way into contemporary evolutionary thought to evade the constraints of ever greater stretches of time and of evolution by random mutation under uniform Solar system conditions.
The problems of explanation that remain are historical and technical, inasmuch as a common electrical process is followed in all biological changes. The applications of the process -- to change marine animals into amphibians, reptilian types into mammals, one animal into another with all the anatomical, physiological and behavioral changes involved -- occur according to a simple set of principles. Nor are these adaptation, nor survival of the fittest, nor random successful experimentation with mutations, all of which are minor aspects of quantavolutionary change. Rather, electrical claims are provoked by opportunities, encounters and transactions, and organize themselves into genetic storage and release.
Evidence from the surface of the smaller remaining planets shows total devastation and almost total loss of atmosphere. On Mars, where some atmosphere remains, no biological residues survived (Horowitz, p55). The Martian surface was found to be so deficient in organic material that a mechanism for their removal is being sought. The inner Solar System is now sterile, excepting Earth's biosphere, which thrives.
A final short period follows the period of evolution; it is an epoch of explosive quantavolution that comes down to the present. It witnesses catastrophes of life forms, quantavolution through genetic realization, and the rise of Homo sapiens. On the physical side, it carries the record of the destruction of Solaria Binaria and the advent of the Solar System. Though short, this period contains the full human experience. Its story forms the second part of this book.
Notes on Chapter 9
63. The work of Stanley L. Miller and Cyril Ponnamperuma stands out.
67. Insertions ours, taken elsewhere from Stengler's paper.