An M-class solar flare from April 2012. Credit: NASA/SDO
July 11, 2012
Could wild electromagnetic activity hold the key to the madness that is war and revolution?
You lie strapped to a bed as 800 Milliamps of electrical current pounds through your brain. Your depressive numbness is slowly replaced with elation. Miraculously your suicidal brain has reprogrammed. But no one understands why!
Electro convulsive therapy (ECT) is still used in severely depressed patients with predictable, if cloudy, results. In Royal Hobart hospital a new electromagnetic therapy, rTMS, uses pulsating magnets of 1.5 Tesla in strength to achieve relief from intractable depression. This spectacular new therapy changes the brain’s mood and drive. How can electromagnetism do this? Can a changing electromagnetic environment affect everyday life?
The brain’s electrical nature was first measured in the 1924 by the Swiss eccentric Hans Berger with his invention of the EEG machine. The brain produces microvolt discharges of incredible complexity. The whole body is a vast electromagnetic synchronized labyrinth. Even neurohormones rely on ionic connection, or electrical polarity, to function.
But this steady purr can go haywire! As we are electrical beings, we must hum to the oscillating electromagnetic forces of the Telluric currents within our Earth, the magnetosphere, the Sun and other cosmic influences. The medical magnetic resonance imager (MRI) device demonstrates that magnetic fields can polarise every atom within the body and cause them to release energy. What other effects could a powerful magnetic field have on our behaviour?
The brain can be sent haywire by ionic imbalance bought about by seasonal weather change! Fred Soyka recognised the effect that electrically charged atmospheric ions had on mental states. Certain areas of the world at certain times of the year experienced dramatic behavioural and psychological change. The Middle Eastern wind known as the Sharav literally sent many people bananas.
Magistrates even allowed for its ability to bring on symptoms from aggression to depression. The Sharav is literally a hotbed of excess positive ions electrically affecting people’s lives. Melbourne’s irritable hot northerlies echo this. But this is a relatively mild departure from normality. Our Sun is a major determining factor when it comes to weather. Henrik Svensmark believes cosmic rays (positive ions) are the major driver.
From coronal mass ejections (CME) to solar flares, the Sun influences our planet with chaotic electromagnetic stimulus. It is postulated that these excessive electromagnetic discharges directly affect our demeanour, attitude, behaviour and sanity. The collective brain of the human race might become overstimulated. Could it then degenerate into erratic and aggressive behaviour? Can electrical chaos send us to war?
An episode in aboriginal mythology supports this bizarre theory. “Mungan’s Fire” (widely held to represent an Aurora Australis gone crazy) is blamed by the tribal elders for terror and war. They despairingly lament, “Mungan’s fire filled the whole space between the earth and the sky. Men went mad with fear, and speared each other, fathers killing their children, husbands their wives”.
Claude Schaeffer who studied the demise of civilizations, is famously quoted as saying: “Those great crises will explain better than before, the historical development of the most ancient civilizations and its mechanism, and they will definitely take out of the hands of man the command of the great historical happenings we thought he possessed!”
Peter Mungo Jupp