The Electric Universe; Why Stephen Hawking is wrong

The Electric Universe Doesn’t begin with a Big Bang

By Coral Wynter

There are now two major theories of the origin of the universe in existence. One is the official story and the other most likely few have never heard of or even guess of its existence. The unofficial one is virtually underground, with books, web pages, blogs and DVDs and active discussion groups, circulating on the internet. Both are advocated by people with degrees in science, cosmology, physics, electrical engineering or electronics and a few sprinkling of Nobel prizes in both camps. The unofficial version is certainly not mystical or shrouded in New Age spiritualism but based on solid experiment and proven observation. One is considered legitimate and the other to be advocated by total nutters or madmen. The official story is based on the Big Bang theory, proposes the existence of Black Holes, that spits out matter and even a Black Hole having the mass of a billion Suns as well as advocating a warped 11 dimensional space, and physically impossible Neutron stars. All of these theories are put forward as it is the only way to solve the mathematical equations.

In addition, the official story proposes that 96% of the matter in the universe is made up of Dark Energy as well as Dark Matter that emits no light and is invisible. But no one knows the composition of Dark Matter or Dark Energy and there are no ideas forthcoming on possible candidates. Further, there is no experimental evidence for the graviton or the Higgs Boson particle, despite all the billion dollar efforts of the Large Hadron Collider, the cyclotron, built in Geneva, Switzerland by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research or CERN. It is still impossible to unify quantum mechanics with gravity. Gravity waves have still not been detected after two years and building two 4 kilometre machines underground, one in Louisiana (USA) and the other in Washington to detect them (LIGO project). Writing mathematical equations to his very last breath, Albert Einstein died in the attempt, trying to reconcile gravity with quantum theories.

Those supporting the unofficial story have been denied publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the life blood of a scientific career. The unofficial story says there are no Black Holes, there was never a Big Bang and in short that the Universe is electric, that it is based on electromagnetic forces that are a trillion, trillion times stronger than the forces of gravity. It maintains that gravity, a very weak force, cannot explain the formation of galaxies nor the planets. The official version states that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old but others have shown that the Universe is structured with vast ribbons of galaxies that could not have reasonably formed in less than 200 billion years. The Electric Universe can explain many of the gamma ray and X-ray phenomena, seen in the Hubble telescope, floating in space way above the Earth with much improved resolution of images of stars and galaxies.

The Electric Universe also offers a totally different story about the energy of the Sun and its source. This theory also questions the redshift of the Doppler effect, codified as Hubble’s Law, which is used to calculate the distance of galaxies from our own solar system and the actual age of the Universe. It also questions the fact that the galaxies are accelerating away from us and that this rate is accelerating, so that in the long run, the sky will be totally dark at night as the stars have all moved away and the only visible galaxy will be Andromeda. For this last discovery, a US born, Australian citizen Brian Schmidt and collaborators in the USA were given the Nobel Prize in Physics, 2011, once again putting the official stamp on the unknowable and unseen Dark Matter.

The unofficial story maintains that the present, accepted theory of the Universe was derived from Olympian leaps of abstract thinking using mathematics, without any verification from direct experimentation or observation but accepted simply because the equations could be solved mathematically. It is also partly a result of the success of Einstein’s thought experiments. This method is known as deductive, deducing how the universe must be, ignoring observation and experimentation. Astronomy has lost its way, ending in a mathematical cul-de-sac. No wonder the unofficial theory is regarded as heretical, challenging Black Holes, the sacred Hubble Doppler effect and the Big Bang itself.

They are not questioning the existence of gravity; simply that it plays a much lesser and secondary role behind the much larger forces of electromagnetism. Newton’s law of gravity explains the motions of falling bodies on Earth and placing satellites into orbit. However inside the nucleus of an atom, Newton’s gravity laws do not work and we have to resort to the strong and weak nuclear forces. But the strong and weak nuclear forces do not work in the macroscopic domain. Newton’s laws also fail to explain the way galaxies rotate because it is outside its domain of validity (6). The very large distance domain is best described by electromagnetism, using Maxwell-Lorentz laws.

The official story is everywhere. I was on a plane going from Chile to Australia and one of the documentaries available was the origin of the universe and the Big Bang story, going back to the micro, micro second, or to be exact 10^-35 of a second after the Big Bang when everything was reduced to a singularity, impossible in physics and the real world but possible using mathematics. Science fiction writer Terry Pratchett has parodied the Big Bang and the Bible in one of his books, saying ‘’In the beginning there was nothing—which exploded.’’ (1) The Big Bang theory has been given a massive boost by the Catholic Church and religion in general. This is because the Big Bang fits neatly into a schema where God created the Universe in a Big Bang. Therefore, end of story; it proves God must exist and there is no need to talk of what happened before the Big Bang, what precipitated the weird Bang and who created God in the first place. The Big Bang gives the idea of a Creator a certain scientific validity. In addition, it adds an apocalyptic view of the universe, doomed to decay in a final annihilation, a universe hostile to human endeavour; a very suitable vision for the Catholic Church. We shall all burn in hell, which might be a singularity, except the believers.

Catholic Church

Science and scientific knowledge is a great threat to the Catholic Church, which has had to fight vigorously against the perception as anti-Science. The whole world knows about Galileo Galilei and how he was forced to recant in 1632. The Catholic Church even has a web site devoted to this question and how to reply to critics of their treatment of Galileo. It mentions that Galileo was never tortured, just confined for the rest of his lifetime at home, with no visitors allowed and no access to books. In 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo.

But two years previously, in 1990, in a speech delivered at the Sapienza University of Rome, Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) referred to the sentiment of great doubt in the modern age and justified the church’s treatment of Galileo, saying it was rational in terms of the church having to consider the social consequences of those new ideas. Ratzinger even asserted "It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views.´´ The Catholic Church never mentions its treatment of astronomer, Giordano Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar who first proposed that the planets moved around the Sun. After seven years imprisonment, where he refused to recant, he was burnt at the stake by civilian authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy and pantheism.

The idea of the Big Bang was first proposed in 1927 by a Belgian Catholic priest, lecturing at the Catholic University of Louvain, who was also a scientist, Abbe Georges Lemaitre. Lemaitre proposed the Universe had expanded from an initial point, which he called the ‘Primeval Atom.’ Lemaitre stated, who else could have created something out of nothing but God? Fred Hoyle, a British scientist, who at first laughed at the notion, gave it the common name of the Big Bang. Even Einstein commented, telling Lemaitre, "Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable." Another eminent plasma cosmologist Hannes Alfven, said ‘’I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory," he recalled. ‘’Lemaitre said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.’’ http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/alfven.html. The Vatican has given large sums of money to astrophysicists who adhere to the official story. The Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana) is an astronomical research and educational institution supported by the Holy See. Originally based in Rome, it now has headquarters and laboratory at the summer residence of the Pope in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, and an observatory at the Mount Graham International Observatory in the United States. Dr Guy Consolmango is one of a team of 12 astronomers, all of them Jesuits, working for the Vatican. The group specialises in galaxy formation and inflationary universes, which is also a key concept of the Big Bang.

Paul Davies a well known physicist and popular science writer has attended many conferences hosted by the Vatican and has written books, titled ‘’The Mind of God’’, ‘’The Last Three Minutes,’’ ‘’God and the New Physics.’’ Paul Davies was awarded the US based Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, in 1995 worth about AUD$1,000,000 for showing ‘’extraordinary originality’’ in advancing humankind’s understanding of God or spirituality. Previous winners included Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mother Teresa, evangelist Billy Graham and Charles Colson, infamous as the Watergate burglar in President’s Nixon’s time, who on his release from prison, found God. Davies maintains that ‘’science offers a surer path to God than religion.’’ Davies succeeded in injecting mysticism and religion into science (2). The Pontifical Academy of Science, of which Stephen Hawking used to be a member, kept the senior cardinals and the Pope up-to-date with the latest scientific developments. Even Stephen Hawkins for a long time bought into the God stuff, but has now changed his thinking talking about many universes or parallel universes, operating at the same time. Perhaps he can sniff that the wind is changing direction.

Fig 1. Vatican Observatory Telescope in Castel Gandolfo. The stone engraving says ‘God the Creator, Let us adore Him.’

Marxism

Why should Marxists be interested in the origin of the Universe anyway? Well, it is an important topic. How did the universe start or did it start? Where is it going, if we survive the present looming and much more immediate environmental and capitalist crisis on Earth? Could life evolve on other planets? Could other intelligent life eventually communicate with us? How long do we really have? Marx and Engels expressed the view that the universe was infinite, that it has always existed, that order evolves out of chaos and that it is always evolving and will continue to evolve with no limits imposed, and that it had no beginning and no end (3). They also surmised that if life ended on Earth, it would begin on other planets by similar mechanisms. They were writing at the very beginning of the scientific discoveries, when it was still thought that the universe was wrapped up in an aether, through which light travelled. Dividing up the tasks, Engels took on the study of science and nature to explain its relation to philosophy and dialectics, while Marx concentrated on the economic questions and societal implications but they were never in disagreement over either project, fully collaborating to the end. Engels was never able to finish his major work ‘’The Dialectics of Nature’’ as he was busy editing Marx’s ‘’Capital’’ after his untimely death.

In the short term, I guess it doesn’t really matter as we have so many problems, we have to solve here and now, if we are to survive as a race. But a better understanding of where we came from and our relative place in the Universe might give us the extra motivation to fight for a better world here on Earth, for all life forms, including our precious animals and plants. In addition, it would give us the tools to fight religious, false, idealist, superficial and spiritualist answers. Most people take up religion partly because they are too scared of dying and facing their mortality, many charlatans taking advantage of their vulnerability.

The unofficial group is totally on the margins. The two groups do not talk to each other, do not go to each other’s conferences and do not publish in the same journals. How could astrophysics get to this point? It is a very dismal state of affairs where two contrasting points of view cannot be debated in an open, friendly, respectful manner. The exchanges on the internet are vitriolic and poisonous, one naming a recent post, ‘’A blind man in a dark room, looking for a Black hole,’’ followed by a picture of total blackness. One group of scientists are pushed out into the cold, silenced, ignored, maligned and ostracised, with very little funding while a tiny few have access to billions of dollars to pursue their research. However it is probably the deeply embedded interests of officially sanctioned scientists, who control the peer-reviewed publications, that have the strongest influence in distributing the vast research funds, rather than religion. There are enormous vested interests supporting the present Big Bang theory. A lot of mathematical academics have staked their careers on it, including famous figures, Stephen Hawking, George Gamow, Brian Greene, Paul Davies, Alan Guth, Sir Martin Rees, John Wheeler who invented Black Holes and thousands of lesser known mathematicians. It is much easier to play around with complex mathematical equations, which can’t be understood by the 99.9% of the population then to make direct observations of the universe and to understand the complex relationships of plasma, electric charge and magnetism.
In his 1991 book ´´The Big Bang Never Happened,’’ Eric J. Lerner was the first to alert the general public to the crisis in astrophysics (4). He linked the appalling state of cosmology to the dwindling research funds for science in the USA because of the exorbitant cost of the Vietnam War and the downturn of the Apollo projects run by NASA. Theoretical cosmologists needed no funding at all, just pen and paper, manipulating equations, running programs all day on desk top computers. It was research on the cheap. The massive growth of the theoretical side created a bias against the collection of observational data. Lerner also thought that science and society inevitably influence each other through events occurring in the general society. He wrote ‘’the faltering universe of the Big Bang became a metaphor for the faltering economy—both equally inevitable processes, beyond the control of mere mortals.’’ More importantly, the collapse of the Soviet Union no longer made advances in space exploration necessary for propaganda purposes, to prove capitalism could achieve a consumer utopia for the masses better than communism ever would.
It is not clear to me why NASA has bought into the Big Bang since a lack of understanding of the electrical nature of the sky puts all their launches at risk. It is possible that a plasma discharge bought down the shuttle Colombia in 2003, with the loss of all seven astronauts on board. A solar storm reached the Earth at the same time and an amateur photographer had a photo, but the possibility was disregarded by NASA blaming the engineers. NASA has an annual budget of US$15 billion, and has stated openly that they simply will not fund any cosmological research that is adverse to the Big Bang, which for them has assumed a religious conviction. More than anything, this situation is an indictment of the peer-review scientific publication system, which will automatically fail to promote new hypotheses as the entrenched editors and reviewers have invested their careers on the old outmoded ideas. The situation is so drastic that a letter from cosmology dissidents was finally accepted in the New Scientist in 22 May 2004, complaining bitterly about the bias and discrimination. It was signed by noted astronomers, Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold, Eric J Lerner as well as another 218 astronomers at various institutions around the world and 187 independent researchers http://www.cosmologystatement.org/. The letter said in part
‘’in cosmology today, doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding. Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry. Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.’’

The Electric Universe

I will concentrate on explaining as far as I can, the Electric Universe, mainly because it has had so little exposure to the general public. I will try to keep the information simple so that non-scientists can follow it. My information has come from a number of web sites principally http://www.thunderbolts.info and two books ‘’The Electric Sky’’ by Donald Scott (5) and ‘’The Electric Universe’’ by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbot (6). I will refer to those adhering to the official story as astrophysicists and the unofficial story as plasma cosmologists. The three pioneers of plasma cosmology are Kristian Birkeland, Irving Langmuir and Hannes Alfven.

Basically the Electric Universe states that electrical forces have to be taken into account when studying the cosmos. That 99% of the visible universe is charged due to the loss of electrons from atoms, leaving positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. A molecular cloud of very cold gas and dust can be ionized by nearby radiating stars or cosmic rays, with the resulting ions and electrons taking on organized plasma characteristics. This leaves a very thin smattering of material throughout virtually empty space. In outer space, there is perhaps one particle per cubic centimetre (1 p/cc), compared to 10¹³ p/cc in Earth’s atmosphere. This mixture of neutral and charged matter is called plasma, and it is suffused with electromagnetic fields. The proportion of ions is quantified by the degree of ionization. The degree of ionization of a plasma can vary from less than 0.01% up to 100%, but plasma behaviour will occur across this entire range due to the presence of the charged particles and the charge separation typical of plasma behaviour throughout the entirety of interstellar space. The first person to use the term plasma to describe ionised gases was Irving Langmuir.

This is a very different situation to what we find on Earth, where we only have to deal with matter in the form of solid, liquid or gases. Earth is a cool stable and almost neutral planetary environment but this is a rare situation in the cosmos. Both Newton and Einstein lived in the 0.001 % of the universe that is not plasma, at the bottom of the atmosphere of a rocky planet. So they could not be expected to understand plasma in 1687 and 1905, respectively. Plasma is generally an unknown entity on Earth. However flames, fire, neon lights, electric arc welding and lightning are all examples of a plasma. Any time electric charges move, they generate magnetic fields. Without moving electric charges, magnetic fields cannot exist. Because of this moving electric current in space, a magnetic field is produced. The astrophysicists always refer to this material as a gas, instead of its proper name, a plasma. This is very confusing as a plasma never acts as a gas and doesn’t obey Boyle’s laws for gases.

Magnetic fields around the Earth and the Sun are recognised by the official story but deny their origin in plasma or electric currents, saying electrons will move at the speed of light to short-circuit any electric differential. If charged particles are moving, however, they are accompanied by magnetic fields and this changes the magnetic configuration. Changes in a magnetic field in turn create electric fields and thereby affect currents themselves, so fields that start with moving particles represent very complex interactions, feedback loops and messy mathematics. In the Big Bang theory, moving electrical charges and its effects causing magnetism have been totally left out of the picture. Changes in the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field, for instance, cannot be explained by the official theory. More than 200 polar reversers have taken place in the last 65 million years here on Earth and at least 4 have occurred in the last 4 million years. About 700,000 years ago, the north magnetic pole was located in the Antarctic and vice versa. We are in the process of a weakening of Earth’s magnetic field, which will eventually end in a new reversal (2).

The Big Bang is based on two assumptions that a) that gravity alone determines the structure and movement of stars and galaxies and b) the redshift of objects in space indicate are a true reflection of their distance and that objects are receding. Dark matter and dark energy had to be invented and added to the official story as the movement of stars, galaxies and supergalaxies cannot be explained by the forces of gravity, as it is far too weak. Dark energy is supposed to be akin to gravity that has a repulsive force but up till now, it does not represent any known physical force. Dark matter is invisible and therefore totally unknowable.

The electric theory is partly based on the pioneering work of Norwegian scientist, Kristian Birkeland, in 1902-10. He was the first person to propose that electric currents come from the Sun, flow into the Earth’s upper atmosphere and cause the auroras. These currents pass through and excite the plasma high above the Earth’s atmosphere to such a degree that it becomes visible, that it glows. He built a magnetised metal sphere, suspended in a vacuum and generated electrical discharges to the sphere, he called a Terrella. He was able to reproduce aurora-type display, analogues of planetary rings, sunspots and other effects seen in the cosmos. He risked his own life and those of his assistants, measuring the electric field under auroras in the bleak 24-hour winter darkness and howling winds of the Arctic snowfields.

Birkeland showed that electric currents flow preferentially along filaments shaped by current-induced magnetic fields. The filaments form a twisted rope but are insulated from each other by the short-range magnetic, repulsive force. This causes them to rotate faster and faster around each other, a plasma vortex. These twisted current pairs produce an alignment of current flow along the magnetic field, and is called a Birkeland Current. The behaviour of plasma can be scaled up to any orders of magnitude, that is, small-scale examples of plasma in the laboratory which produce the observable results can be scaled up to the dimensions necessary to explain plasma behaviour in space. The similarity between these experiments and the observable Universe are extraordinary and can be seen be seen in the following photos.

Fig. 2 Active galaxy M87 in the Virgo Cluster, with its 5000 light-year long electric current along a plasma filament (its "jet"), exhibiting occasional kink instabilities as bright knots. You can see the Faraday dark space, the visible light at the anode, (Bottom, RH) and the cathode, also glowing in the top LH corner. Image credit: Space Telescope Institute, Hubble/NASA

Whether plasma is visible to the human eye is determined by three different steady-state operating modes, Dark Current Mode, Normal Glow Mode and Arc Mode (5). The Earth’s ionosphere sheath is in a ring of plasma but the strength of the electric current is very low and does not glow. In Normal Glow Mode the strength of the electric current in the plasma is significant. Its brightness will depend on two things, the intensity of the current and the density of the plasma. The color depends on what gas is being ionized. Examples are auroras, emission nebulae and comet tails. The sun’s corona is also a plasma in the Glow Mode. In the Arc Mode, the strength of the electric current in the plasma is very high. The plasma radiates brilliantly over a wide spectrum of frequencies. Examples are lightning, the Sun’s looping prominences and the filaments in sunspots. Almost all space is occupied by plasma, mostly in the Dark Current mode.

The electric field or the Coulomb force between an electron and a proton is 10³⁹ more powerful than gravitational attraction between the two. In addition, gravity falls off inversely to the square of the distance, whereas electricity decreases only linearly with the distance between the forces. Therefore Birkeland currents are far more effective than gravity for organising very thin gases and dust into stars and galaxies. To get an idea of the huge distances involved, imagine the Sun and its nearest star Proxima Centauri, over 4.2 light years away (40 x 10¹²kms), being the size of just two dust particles (0.25mm). On this same scale as the dust particles, they would be over 6.4 km away so that it is easy to understand that the gravitational attraction is miniscule and that they would never randomly bump into each other.

Probes have found that space contains atoms, dust, ions and electrons. Although the density of matter in space is very low, it is not zero. In space, gravity only becomes significant in those places where the electromagnetic forces are shielded or neutralized. As early as 1937, Hannes Alfven, proposed that our galaxy, the Milky Way contains a large spiral, magnetic field and that charged particles move in spiral orbits within it, owing to forces exerted within the field. Plasma physicists can trace the evolution of observed galactic forms from basic electromagnetic principles, that can be repeated by experiments on Earth in the laboratory. Alfven’s student, Anthony Peratt showed in the laboratory that electric forces can organize spiral galaxies, why they form in strings and why they rotate, without resorting to a massive Black Hole in the centre of the galaxy. Thus galaxies are not simply collections of stars but are made up mainly of plasma.

 

Fig. 3 The Veil Nebula, NGC 6960, with its gauzy, glowing filamentary plasma currents and current sheets spanning the light years. Image credit: T.A. Rector, University of Alaska, Anchorage, and Kitt Peak WIYN 0.9m telescope/NOAO/AURA/NSF

The hero of this story is Hannes Alfven, Swedish Nobel prize winner, who died in 1995, aged 86 years. He was the founder of the modern field of plasma physics, the study of electrical discharges in low pressure gases. It’s ironic that Alfven received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 for the wrong theory, which he tried to repudiate, during his acceptance speech. Now the astrophysicists use this wrong theory on magnetism to justify their work. Alfven firmly believed that ‘’astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs.’’ Thus the scientific method must be embedded in observation in the laboratory, space probes and the Hubble telescopes in the sky, leading to theories derived from observation, not beginning with abstract theory and pure mathematics, inventing weird and impossible objects to account for anomalies.

As well Alfven was a politically engaged scientist, a rare breed. He ran foul of the Swedish government in the 1960s when he defeated their plan to build nuclear reactors, pointing out the infeasibility as well as huge, technical errors. He was threatened with loss of research funding and he had to partially move his research to the US to survive. An interesting aside is that he wrote a political scientific satire called ‘’The Great Computer’’ under a pseudonym about the takeover of the planet by computers. As Lerner says, ‘’Alfven used it as a vehicle not only to ridicule the growing infatuation of government and business with the then novel power of the computer but to pillory a large part of the Swedish establishment. In the novel, Alfven made it clear, it was the greed of the corporate leaders, the short-sightedness of the government bureaucrats and the power hunger of the politicians that led to the future, he wryly outlines, as a utopia-- for the computers.’’ (2) We still face that problem today, on a global scale.

Double Layer

Another property of plasma physics we need to understand is its ability to isolate one section of itself from another. The isolating wall is made up of two closely spaced layers one with a positive charge and the other with a negative charge. This is called a double layer and was discovered by Langmuir in the 1920s (5). If there is a significant voltage difference between the two locations, within a plasma, then a double layer will form between them. This effect makes it difficult to insert voltage sensitive probes into a plasma, as the double layer will surround it and isolate it from the plasma. Thus a space probe cannot measure voltage directly but the electric field can be measured. The Sun’s plasma sheath protects the solar system as a whole from the enveloping galactic plasma. The entire voltage difference between the Sun’s own plasma sheath and its galactic environment occurs across the sheath of the heliosphere, the outer boundary of the Sun’s plasmasphere at 1.3 x 10¹⁰ km, a little bit further than the distance to Pluto at 5.9 x 10⁹ km.

Langmuir was a brilliant chemist and physicist, inventing the argon filled incandescent light bulb, seeding of clouds to produce rain, the chemistry of monolayers and the valence structure of atoms to explain the mechanism of chemical reactions. In another aside, for those who enjoy science fiction, according to author Kurt Vonnegut, Langmuir was the inspiration for his fictional scientist Dr. Felix Hoenikker in the novel Cat's Cradle. Dr Hoenikker’s invention of ice-nine, caused everything to freeze over and eventually destroyed the world. Vonnegut's brother, Bernard had worked with Langmuir. Perhaps the similarity to Dr Hoenikker is a little harsh.

Now stars can actually divide into two, something akin to mitosis in biology, due to a shift in the double layer, which can also explain a nova (visible light) eruption. As Wal Thornhill writes, ‘’Internal electrostatic forces prevent stars from collapsing gravitationally and occasionally cause them to give birth by electrical fissioning to form companion stars and gas giant planets. Sudden brightening or a nova outburst marks such an event. That elucidates why stars commonly have partners and why most of the giant planets so far detected closely orbit their parent star’’ (5). Some 61% of the 60 nearest stars to Earth are components of a double or triple star system. If the incoming electric current increases so that the velocity of the ions and electrons in the plasmas exceeds the value of the thermal velocity, it can set up a double layer. The double layer may move down into the star. If the current density increases to a very high value, the double layer may explode, splitting the star into two or more parts in order to reduce the electrical stresses. The splitting provides an increase in the total surface area and a reduced level of current density, with reduced stress. The splitting may be very unequal, so that the smaller one may even have such as low current density as to drop it to a ‘’brown dwarf’’ or even a giant gas planet. There are four such gas giants in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. An example of this fission process, is the binary pair called Y Cygni. This is a pair of giant stars that orbit each other in a period of a mere 3 days. Each star is 8 million kms in diameter and 5000 times brighter and 17 times the mass of our Sun. The stars are only 19.3 million kms apart. A similar history can explain the star FG Sagittae, which became a binary pair in our lifetime, with a corresponding change in brightness (5).

What is wrong with the Redshift and Distance Calculation?

A very common element in space is hydrogen. If you look at the spectrum of ordinary light shone through hydrogen, it will show a signature spectrum, specific to hydrogen that has features at regular intervals. If the same pattern of intervals is seen in an observed spectrum from a distant source, say a star or a galaxy, but occurring at shifted wavelengths, it can also be identified as hydrogen but it is said to be red-shifted. The dimmer the galaxy is, the more its light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Redshift (and blueshift) may be characterized by the relative difference between the observed and emitted wavelengths (or frequency) of an object. In astronomy, it is customary to refer to this change using a dimensionless quantity, as a redshift of z. Because of Edwin Hubble’s work in 1929, the inference was drawn that a red shift implies distance, that there was a linear relationship and that the distance of the galaxy could be measured. He based the actual distance on Henrietta Leavitt's formulation of the period-luminosity relationship (for which she received no credit in her lifetime). No one questioned the possibility that a galaxy may just be dimmer and relatively closer to earth. The assumption that the star is moving away from us to explain the redshift was based on the well-known Doppler effect in sound waves, the pitch of a train whistle decreasing as it moves away. Thus the explanation that redshift implies recessional velocity became dogma in astronomy.

Hubble to his credit pointed out that contrary to Lemaitre's ideas, the red shift was probably not due to the Doppler effect. One of the main objections Hubble had to the Big Bang theory came from his study of the brightness of certain stars. He maintained that if stars were receding at the rate indicated by their red shift, their brightness should seem diminished. He observed that there was no such diminishing of brightness. While Hubble was alive and of sound mind, he had grave doubts about the Big Bang theory. He saw that the only evidence directly supporting it was the observed red shift. But Hubble began losing his memory in the early 1950s and was never able to show the cause of the red shift. After his death at 63 years, most scientists gradually accepted that Hubble's red shift was caused by the Doppler effect. Another influential figure in this drama, was Milton La Salle Humason, who began working at the Mount Wilson Observatory as a mule driver and janitor in the early 1900's during the time that Edwin Hubble did his research (http://photontheory.com/bigbang.html). Finally Humason advanced to become secretary of the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories. Until his death on June 18, 1972, Humason continued to support the big bang theory over all other accounts of creation. Supporters of the big-bang theory had easy access to the observational instruments controlled by Humason, while opponents of the Big Bang did not.

US scientist, Halton Arp was Hubble’s student and won many prizes in astronomy, including the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award for the 1966 publication of his ‘’Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies,’’ which examined 338 unusual galaxies in order to study their evolution. Detailed information can be obtained from his web site http://www.haltonarp.com. He has several galaxies named after him such as Arp 220, one of the brightest redshift galaxies. While compiling the catalogue he found that many Quasi-stellar objects, (QSO) which had very high redshift values were physically associated with galaxies with low redshift values. He found a quasar in the galaxy NGC 7319. with a z value of 2.114 whereas the galaxy where this quasar is attached, has only a red shift of z equal to 0.0225. He realised the QSO object is actually a quasar, close to the core of the galaxy, silhouetted in front of the opaque plasma clouds with a jet extending from the core to the quasar (Fig. 4).

Fig 4. Photo of nearby spiral galaxy NGC 7319 with high red-shift quasar at arrow (below). Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

A quasar is a compact star that emits incredibly high levels of electromagnetic radiation, including light. The amount of energy emitted by a quasar, dwarfs even the brightest stars and there are over 60,000 known quasars. Arp believes the quasar was being ejected from the active galactic nuclei. Arp argued that the redshift was not due to Hubble expansion or physical movement of the objects, but must have a non-cosmological or "intrinsic" origin. It is very possible that light moving through space continuously shifts toward a less energetic state--red shift. Even Carl Sagan was candid enough to write in 1980 in his book, Cosmos, ``There is nevertheless a nagging suspicion among some astronomers that all may not be right with the deduction from the redshift of galaxies via the Doppler effect that the universe is expanding. The astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases where a galaxy and a quasar or a pair of galaxies, that are in apparent physical association have very different red shifts… If Arp is right, the exotic mechanisms proposed to explain the energy source of distant quasars, supernova chain reactions, supermassive black holes and the like—would prove unnecessary. Quasars need not then be very distant.’’

Arp has shown that faint, highly-red-shifted objects, like quasars, are intrinsically faint because of their young age and it has nothing to do with their distance from Earth. Quasars are ‘born’ episodically from the nucleus of active galaxies. They initially move very fast along the spin axis away from their parent. As they mature they grow brighter and slow down, as if gaining in mass. Finally they evolve into companion galaxies. The decreasing quasar redshift occurs in discrete steps which points to a process whereby protons and electrons go through a number of small, quantized increases in mass as the electrical stress and power density within the quasar increases. The charge required comes via an electrical ‘umbilical cord,’ in the form of the parent galaxies’ nuclear jet. So they play an important role in the creation of new galaxies. Arp realised that the standard model of astronomy is totally wrong, based on these observations. The redshift is now thought to be due to photons of light interacting, or colliding, with the electrons in the plasma of intergalactic space and thus losing energy. The more interactions they make, the more energy they lose and the lower their frequency becomes. As the frequency reduces the wavelength increases and thus the photons are redshifted, utilising the Mossbauer effect http://www.lyndonashmore.com/.
Arp was denied time on the Palomar telescope for questioning the redshift assumptions, and forced to move to Germany after being a staff astronomer for 29 years. He still has trouble getting papers published in American referred journals. According to the standard theory, quasars are thought to be powered by supermassive rotating black holes at their center of all galaxies and are billions of light years away.

Fig 4. Arp's galactic 'family tree' showing birth of quasars with high-redshift (z) which decreases stepwise as they age and eventually form companion galaxies and progenitors of galactic clusters. The new companion galaxy has an initial z=2, then 1, then 0.6, then 0.3 and finally 0.061.

The Sun

It is commonly thought from theories by Fred Hoyle and George Gamov that the energy of the sun is produced by the continuous conversion of hydrogen into helium by a fusion reaction, deep in the interior of the Sun and is carried to the surface by radiation and convection, which is supposed to take 100,000 to 200,000 years. When all the hydrogen is converted to helium, after a total time of 9.5 billion years, then our Sun will collapse and the Earth will be consumed by the explosion. We are supposed to have just another 4.5 billion years left on Earth. It is often repeated that all the heavier metals we find on Earth were initially formed inside a star, much like our Sun, so that all the elements in our bodies were initially forged in a star. But after 80 years of experimentation, no sustained controlled fusion reaction has ever been experimentally performed in a physics laboratory. In addition in the conversion of hydrogen to helium, there must be an ejection of electron type neutrinos. The measurement of neutrinos coming out of the Sun are only one third of the predicted value, a continual embarrassment to solar astronomers. The official model gives no explanation for the existence of the corona, the plasmasphere or the solar wind.

Instead in the Electric Universe, the Sun is dominated by electrical and magnetic properties, implying that the Sun possesses a massive positive electric charge. The Sun is a ball of plasma. The Sun is charged positively by a gravitationally induced flow of electrons towards the surface and electrical repulsion will prevent collapse, not the conversion of hydrogen into helium. The Sun because of its size receives charge from cosmic currents that exist in our arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Stars can be thought of as giant spheres of slow-motion lightning. It is this simple hypothesis that best matches observational evidence. Any fusion takes place on the surface of an electric star and not “deep in its core.” Molecular oxygen can be created in electrically intense outer layers of a star. The primary indicator for a star’s behaviour is the current density at its surface. Current flow from the solar wind can be observed at planets with magnetic fields which have polar “cusps” or “holes” that guide charged particles down to and through the body, creating auroral displays in the upper atmosphere. Thus the charged particles from the Sun are responsible for the auroras in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

Fig. 5 Aurora, photographed by L. Zimmerman, Fairbanks, Alaska. Image courtesy spaceweather.com, Aurora PhotoGallery

Ralph Jurgens, a civil engineer, who died in 1979, proposed a model of the Sun where it has a high voltage anode imbedded in galactic plasma of lower voltage. ’In the electric model the Sun beneath the photosphere is simply a cool body not at a temperature of a million degrees. The magnetic field of a sunspot is due to a strong field aligned current punching a hole through the photospheric plasma. This produces a Birkeland Current. The solar flares behave like lightning and are due to the electrification of the Sun’s atmosphere, analogous to electrification of storm clouds on Earth.´´ Juergens was the first to describe the electric discharge of the Sun in the 1970s and some day, maybe his genius will be recognised.

The key variable that determines the apparent size, brightness and color of a star is electrical stress. The Sun is immersed in an extremely low density plasma so those atoms which can be excited to emit visible light are those very close to the Sun in the corona. The corona is heated to 2 million degrees where oxygen atoms are ionized but lying above a vastly cooler surface. We also see bright and ionized tornados, thousands of kilometres high and flecked with lightning, that provides the heat and visible light of the Sun. There also exists a virtual cathode, an invisible cellular boundary at the limit of the Sun’s electrical influence. The Sun’s virtual cathode was found by Voyager I beginning about 100 times further from the Sun than the Earth.

This also means that the universe is connected through these voltage difference and electrical phenomena. A charged body in plasma forms a bubble or sheath around it to provide a smooth transition between the differing electric potentials of the two plasma regions, due to the formation of the double layer. The Sun’s plasma sheath is what the official model calls the heliosphere boundary. The current is carried throughout the solar system by a relatively low density of ionization, where the planets orbit. The sun is simply exhibiting the plasma glow discharge of a positively charged body in space in the same way as a glow discharge tube (Fig.2). The weak electric field causes the acceleration of the solar wind in the inner solar system and a slow drift of electrons toward the Sun. The weak but constant electric field explains the steady deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft which become negatively charged in space. Recently a satellite above the Earth’s pole detected electrons streaming from the Earth toward the Sun as you would predict from the positively charged Sun. Hydrogen to helium fusion does not exist and cannot explain the reverse of the temperature gradient on the Sun.

This means that the Sun can continue forever as long as it has a positive electric charge, created by galactic currents. However there is down side to this. Conditions in a star can change very quickly. The future of our Sun is not quite so certain and we may not have 4.5 billion years left. We cannot know whether or when the Birkeland current powering our sun will experience a surge or blackout and there is no light. This could be the reason in ancient Mayan society, hundreds of thousands of their most beautiful youths and maidens were sacrificed by having their hearts torn out by the priests to ensure that the Sun came up. Wild speculation on my part.

The Planets

Similarly all the planets in the solar system are charged bodies, as well as the moons, comets and asteroids. Each planet is surrounded by its own plasma, called a plasmasphere. A double layer separates the plasmasphere from the solar plasma. Venus and Saturn’s moon Titan have little or no magnetic field but do have a large plasma sphere. Thus a magnetosphere is not interchangeable with a plasmasphere. All four of the large moons of Jupiter lie within its plasmasphere. They are therefore electrically connected to the planet. Io the inner most of these four moons, is presently experiencing electric discharges from Jupiter (Fig. 6). The famous volcanos on Io cannot be volcanos as we know them, as they move around over many miles. But electric arc discharges have a tendency to wander so that the ‘’volcano’’ on Io should be regarded as an electric arc and offers astronomers here on Earth the opportunity of studying electric plasma discharges. A 2008 press release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that Jupiter’s rings are electrically charged. The ions flow in an electric circuit to and from Jupiter to Io. When NASA launched New Horizons on a mission to study Pluto and Charon, the “plumes” of Tvashtar, the gigantic volcano on Io, were found to be filamentary in structure, with indications that they are actually corona arc discharges from the electric “hot spots” linking the moon with Jupiter.

Fig. 6 Moving through Jupiter's intense magnetic field creates strong charge separation (voltage differential) and a resulting electrical current in a circuit of some 2 trillion watts power flowing between Io and Jupiter's polar areas.

On another matter, Jupiter has at least 63 moons and five of the smaller moons of Jupiter rotate in the opposite direction to Jupiter. Clearly this means the moons could not have formed from the same ‘’accretion disc’’ as proposed by the official theory as their angular momentums should all be in the same direction. A similar situation applies with Neptune and its moon Triton.

Saturn should be considered more like star than a planet. Saturn emits more energy than it receives: 2.3 times more, so it is being powered by another source. There is good evidence that Saturn once existed as an independent body from the Sun http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/tag/saturn/. As such, it would have received more energy in the recent past, its power source having since been usurped by the Sun. The plasmasphere of Saturn is an electrical environment, causing everything from dark-mode plasma discharges, to gigantic lighting bolts that flash across the ring plane (Fig. 7). When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft got close enough to finally start observing Saturn, lightning of immense power, up to a million times more powerful than anything on Earth, was discovered. Planets with magnetic fields can capture ionized particles to form a giant electrified magnetosphere. Enceladus, a small moon that orbits within Saturn’s ring plane, causes Saturn’s magnetosphere to bend. The effect is due to a flow of electric charge that occurs when particles from Enceladus interact with the magnetosphere of Saturn. Thus a demonstrable electrical effect is occurring between Saturn and Enceladus.

Fig. 7 The Saturn aurora's reddish color is characteristic of ionized hydrogen plasma. Powered by the Saturnian equivalent of (filamentary) Birkeland currents, streams of charged particles from the interplanetary medium and solar wind interact with the planet's magnetic field and funnel down to the polar regions. Double layers are associated with filamentary currents and current sheets, and their electric fields accelerate ions and electrons. Omage credits: Wiki Commons; J.Trauger (JPL), NASA, Hubble Space Telescope

The “Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation” (CMB) is also used as evidence to support the Big Bang even though this has absolutely nothing to do with the Big Bang. The CMB is just the temperature of the observable universe. To new initiates, all this new information and reinterpretation of data may seem extraordinary and at times bizarre, but I urge you to look at the web sites and read the books. Even if you are not convinced at least remain sceptical of the Big Bang proponents as the full story is not being told.

Actually the Electric Universe fits very neatly into the main thesis of Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. That is that matter is always in motion, always changing, according to its own specific laws. Matter can’t be formed out of nothing but is always undergoing transformation and evolving. The Big Bang theory never did fit into this general philosophy. Many Marxists had alarm bells ringing over the Big Bang theory even before the electric universe was proposed. There is a lot more information available than I have been unable to convey in a small space. There are detailed explanations why the official stories of the Red Giants, Neutron stars, Supernovae, White Dwarfs, asteroids, particularly the comets, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which classifies stars according to temperature and cosmic rays are all wrong. The Electric Universe can explain many aspects that defy explanation by the official theory and more importantly can make predictions.

Today’s astrophysicists are like the Catholic cardinals of the Dark Ages, refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. Their dishonest distortions and cavalier dismissal of the problems surrounding the theory of the Big Bang cannot continue for much longer. Very soon there will be an avalanche of information and data destroying the Big Bang hypothesis along with Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, the Hubble constant, the age of the universe, accelerating galaxies and much more. There will be a paradigm shift in cosmology, on the scale of Galileo’s gigantean struggle with the Catholic Church, coming our way soon. A lot of now famous astrophysicists, especially mathematicians will end up with egg on their face and an awful lot of reputations will end up in the rubbish bin of history. Until we know better it is wiser to treat the Universe as infinite, continually evolving, with no beginning and no end and definitely no God as the creator. As they say, ‘’in the beginning was the plasma.’’

REFERENCES

1) Terry Pratchett in ‘’Lords and Ladies’’

2) Alan Woods and Ted Grant, ‘’Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science’’ Wellred Publications, London, (1995)

3) Engels in The Dialectics of Nature

4) Eric J Lerner ‘’The Big Bang Never Happened; A startling refutation of the dominant theory of the Origin of the Universe’’ Simon and Schuster of Australia, Sydney (1992)

5) Donald E Scott ‘’The Electric Sky; A challenge to the Myths of Modern Astronomy’’ Publishing, Portland Oregon. (2006)

6) Wallace Thornhill and David Talbot ‘’The Electric Universe´´ Mikamar Publishing, Portland Oregon. (2007)

Rapa Nui or Easter Island not an example of Ecological Collapse

Rapa Nui-- Fight for Independence and the Myth of Ecocide Perpetrated by Jared Diamond

By Coral Wynter

I have always been fascinated by the story of Easter Island, the European name fro Rapa Nui, due to a complete accident in my childhood education, when at the age of 10 years old, I did a school project on the strange, mysterious statues on the island, known as Moai. My partner has always laughed at my obsession, referring to the Moai as those weird statues of Malcolm Fraser, adding why would you want to see that? (Fraser being the archetypal right-wing leader of Australian politics in the 70s, who had dismissed a well-liked Labour leader, Whitlam under shonky circumstances). This is completely wrong as the 887 statues represent ancient and revered leaders of island society and the sculpture on top of their head represents their hairstyle of a red coloured topknot and not a hat. They bear little resemblance to Malcolm Fraser, wearing a hat. Despite this lack of support, I had always wanted to visit Easter Island or Rapa Nui as the indigenous people call their island. I had criss-crossed the Pacific Ocean many times on my way to Latin America and Venezuela but had never been able to break my journey. In 2010, I was determined to do so and made a special journey from Santiago de Chile to Rapa Nui in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2000 kms from the closest habitation, Pitcairn Island with only 100 people. Rapa Nui is the most isolated inhabited island in the world, lying 3800 km directly west from Santiago de Chile. There are only two places from which there are flights to Rapa Nui, either Santiago or the French colony of Papeete, Tahiti. When I arrived, I was absolutely stunned by the natural beauty of Rapa Nui.

Several years before I had read, like many others concerned with the environmental destruction staring us in the face, Jared Diamond’s book ‘’Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.’’ Diamond had toured Australia, given interviews on national radio and his book had won the US Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1998. The image that has stuck in everyone’s mind, after reading that book, is of a few remaining miserable, starving natives, standing on the shores of Rapa Nui, staring glumly out to sea, the sad remnants of a people who had cut down all the forests and trees on the island to carry the huge statues of Moai to the shoreline in a competition between twelve clans. This had meant in turn there was no wood to build boats and consequently they could not go fishing to feed themselves and their bizarre society had degenerated into chaos and cannibalism. How could they be so stupid and what were they thinking?

Diamond states ‘’That leaves us with just two main sets of factors behind Easter’s collapse: human environmental impacts, especially deforestation and destruction of bird populations; and the political, social and religious factors behind the impacts, such as the impossibility of emigration as an escape valve because of Easter’s isolation, a focus on statue construction for reasons already discussed and competition between clans and chiefs driving the erection of bigger statues, requiring more wood, rope and food.’’ (1)

It is important to examine this question of societal and environmental collapse as it has implications for our present predicament of dealing with massive climate change. In the case of Rapa Nui, Diamond’s assertions are a million miles from the truth. Rapanui people have been seriously misrepresented and maligned, another case of blame the victim. Diamond’s research is seriously flawed and slipshod. Diamond did not train as an anthropologist, nor a historian, nor as an archaeologist but as a biophysicist. He is currently professor of geography at UCLA. He has deliberately underplayed one of the worst atrocities that was ever committed by white colonists in the South Pacific. It was this horrendous catastrophe in the 19^th century that wiped out Rapa Nui’s civilisation and resulted in the physical extermination of its peoples. Diamond adjusted the story of Rapa Nui and selected certain facts to support his theory of ‘’ecocide.’’ One cannot remove environmental and cultural changes from the historical and social context of the epoch: the most important of these is imperialism. There was no ecocide, just colonial barbarism and Western diseases. The ‘germ’ title in his book is correct in this instance. Rather than ridicule their alleged stupidity, we should honour the Rapanui people for their tenacity, resilience and ingenuity. The tragedy of Rapa Nui is genocide caused by European ferocity and utter greed.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Rapa Nui is the high point of a volcanic island in the Pacific, consisting of three extinct volcanos, which came together with some 70 lesser volcanic cones. They formed in the last 3 million to 750,000 years with the most recent eruption occurring 100,000 years ago. The island is the highpoint of an enormous underwater mountain range caused by a hotspot under the Nazca tectonic plate. This causes the island to move 15cm closer to the South American continent each year. The triangular-shaped island is dominated by volcanic basalt flows, rich in iron, from which the Moai statues were carved. Rapa Nui is now thought to have been settled much later than previous studies. Most archaeologists had once believed that Rapa Nui had been settled early, perhaps 400 CE or at late as 800 CE. This tentative date has changed due to 12 radiocarbon dating readings from bones and charcoal obtained from sand dunes at Anakena Beach. Archaeologists Hunt and Lipo put the time of first arrival of Polynesians at1200 CE (2). The Polynesians may have navigated in canoes from the Marquesas Islands, 3200 km away or Mangareva, 2600 km away in the Austral group of French Polynesia. The Polynesians speak of the arrival of the founder of the population as Hotu Matu’a in their legends. The earlier dates of island settlement have been shown to be unreliable and better techniques have brought forward the dates not only for Rapa Nui but also for Hawai’i, the Marquesas and Cook Islands as well as New Zealand.

The extraordinary architecture and statuary and carving of the Moai began soon after the initial settlement. So these intrepid Polynesians travelled over 3000 kms in a hand made boat, bringing everything with them to start a new society- enough people, plants and animals. There is absolutely no evidence for Thor Heyerdahl’s well publicised theories that links Rapa Nui to South America. The linguistic, archaeological and genetic data of Rapa Nui give ample evidence that the culture is derived from another island in Polynesia. They certainly have nothing to do with Chilean culture, present or past. The political necessity for Chile to link Rap Nui with South America may have been the reason for Heyerdahl’s extraordinary successful publicity stunt, taking a balsa raft from Peru to French Polynesia in 1947.

The environmental record for Rapa Nui reveals ancient vegetation, once dominated by millions of Jubaea palm trees. The palm tree forests had been established on the island for tens of thousands of years, going back to at least 37,000 years ago. However because of the isolated island geography, evolution could only produce a very simple community of plants and animals. The Jubaea adapted to environmental climate changes, including drought, but more importantly the palms had no predators on the island. However together with the cargo of animals such as chickens, plants, food supplies and seeds for the small group of pioneers, in the canoes came another hidden species, the rats. They were almost certainly introduced accidently to Rapa Nui. Consequently rats reached an island with no native predators and an unlimited food supply in the form of the nuts of the Jubaea palms. It is estimated there were millions of palm trees, with each tree producing 100 kg of nuts every year, an unbelievable bonanza for a hungry little rat (3).

Under these ideal conditions, the rats reproduced at a truly staggering rate, capable of doubling their numbers every 50 days. Laboratory figures indicate that a single mating pair of rats, with unlimited food, could become 17 million in just three years. Kure atoll, in the northwest Hawaiian islands have an average density of 45 rats per acre. At this density, Rapa Nui would have had a rat population of over 2 million and could have reached more than 3 million rats within a very short time of the arrival of the canoes in 1200 CE. The Pacific rat Rattus exulans is an agile climber, virtually living in the trees, running on palm fronds and passing from tree to tree. Ecologists have reported on thousands of rats living in the tops of coconut trees in Pacific atolls. Unlike birds, rats can eat through the hard seed cases and destroy all of the seed with no possibility of it reproducing into a palm tree. As the rats devoured the seeds, forest regeneration was stopped in its tracks. In fact hundreds of seed cases of the Jubaea palm found in cave sites around Rapa Nui show signs of rat gnawing and seed destruction. There is absolutely no evidence of massive felling of trees to transport the Moai to the shores.

Evidence for this scenario of millions of rats taking over an island, has been found in Hawai’i itself where before the arrival of Polynesians, the O’ahu island of Hawai’i had been covered in native palm trees of the Pritchardia species. Then around 1000 CE, with the arrival of Polynesians, the palm forest began to disappear but without any evidence of local fires. So it could not have been due to new settlers burning the forests to clear land for agriculture. Within 100-200 years the forests had totally collapsed (4). At the same time, native birds suffered a massive decline, with many becoming extinct. As proof of this, islands where rats had never been introduced, still have their native forests such as the Nihoa in northwest of Hawai’i. Dense forests of the native palm, Pritchardia remota are present despite intensive occupation by Hawaiian people, some use of fire in clearing land and the growing of sweet potatoes.

Thus it was the rats that destroyed the native forests on Rapa Nui not the people. Archaeological evidence indicates that the forests took 400 years to disappear from about 1250 to 1650 CE. By the late 18^th Century when the number of visits by Europeans had increased, certainly the forests of 16 million palm trees and 20 other woody plants had disappeared. In addition six species of land birds and an unknown number of sea birds had become extinct. A native woody shrub, Sophora toromiro, survived to this day on the island, but that is because rats can damage the seed casings of this tree but not enough to stop seed germination.

Another example of colonial stupidity, are the groves of the alien Australian species of Eucalyptus, across the centre of the island, introduced at the beginning of the 20^th century. The eucalypts were to provide the wood for a furnace to provide electricity for the island but it was never built. The eucalypts are absolutely thriving in the sub-tropical climate (5). Eucalypts are a pest in foreign soils as they soak up all the water, and the resins and oils in the roots prevent the growth of native trees. Although a fast growing tree, eucalyptus trees shed bark, creating an acidic dry litter beneath the trees, and the roots draw the moisture of the soil away from less hardy native plants. Nothing will grow under them. By making so-called improvements on the land, the colonial sheep managers caused the final demise of the native woodland. Various birds were introduced, such as a Chilean partridge and hawks. The latter were brought in to kill off rats and sparrows, another introduced pest. However, the variety of hawk that was imported lacked an interest in sparrows, and seldom met up with the nocturnal rats. Without natural enemies, pests and predators all flourished. Jared Diamond never mentions the eucalypts, the hawks nor the sparrows and only has a brief mention of the sheep.

On a more positive note, there has been a successful re-introduction of the toromiro tree as in 1956 Heyerdahl took seeds of the last tree growing on Rapa Nui, back to the botanical gardens of Berlin, London and Stockholm. The toromiro, highly prized for carving wood, is now growing in the small botanical garden near the airport (6). Thus the last man on Rapa Nui did not cut down the last tree for reasons of clan warfare, cultural domination and senseless competition to build the biggest Moai. Instead the last tree may have simply died as rats ate the last seeds. As Hunt and Lipo so aptly put it ‘’what were the rats thinking?’’ (3).

The dread of rats even occurs in the Rapanui rituals surrounding childbirth, as described by the Swiss ethnologist, Alfred Metraux. (7) During the third or fifth month of pregnancy, the father-in-law would offer his daughter-in-law an elaborate meal. It was the contents of an underground oven in which tasty titbits were given especially to the pregnant daughter. However it was believed that if a rat came and gnawed the food scraps left behind, the future baby’s life was endangered. This seems to imply that rats were regarded with some fear and trepidation and seen as an evil portent.

It is calculated that the maximum population of Rapa Nui was about 3000 -5000 people by about 1370 CE growing from an initial number of 50 who arrived in canoes. It is thought the population remained in balance, depending on the food resources and despite occasional droughts and salt-laden winds. There are no permanent streams on Rapa Nui, only three craters with fresh water. The soil was not particularly fertile and devastation of the forests would have increased soil erosion. This may account for the thousands of basalt rock walls around the fields and mulching for the cultivation of crops but another explanation could be due to the sheep. During this time up to 1600 CE, the population grew, even though the forest was declining at the same time. There is no evidence that the island ever supported a population of 15,000-30,000 as declared by Diamond. (8) This figure of 15,000 is baseless, often quoted to dramatise the supposed ‘’ecocide.’’ Even today in a travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald of October 22, 2011, an article on holidaying in Rapa Nui, mentions the destruction of the forests and environmental degradation. So it would appear the islanders used their natural resources and supplies of chicken, vegetables and fish in plenty, to allow their people to survive and live happily, as would any group of people living within a small territory.

The appearance of stone statues on Rapa Nui is neither mysterious nor unexpected. Stone statues are found in the Marquesas, Austral Islands and Tahiti. And, although each island group displays some variation in form and style, they are clearly related and spring from common belief systems and religious practices. The production of the Moai was part of an elaborate, ancestor worship. The Moai represented chiefs or leaders, some fat, some tall some with long ears, whose spirit would protect them and for this reason they all faced the village. No where else did the carving of statues reach to such an extent as on Rapa Nui. Statues have a considerable size range, from 2 meters to over 9 meters tall. One giant Moai still attached to the matrix of rock in the quarry is over 20 meters long, and has an estimated weight of 270 tons. Perhaps it remained unfinished when the carvers realized that it would have been impossible to move. Once completed, the statues were ready to be transported to the platforms or ahu, for which they had been carved. Scholars are still debating how this major effort was accomplished. Some researchers claim the Moai were laid on wood sledges and moved along by means of log rollers. Others believe they were moved while standing up on a sledge. It is probable that the means of transport varied from time to time, depending upon size and form of the statue involved. The islanders always say they walked to the shore, which may mean they had a system of pulleys and rope, using a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled by 200 men using ropes made from tough bark.

There is evidence that the islanders suddenly walked off the job of carving the large Moai, as many have been left in a state of being half finished. It is possible to see how they were carved first with their backs still attached to the cliff, then the head, nose and ears followed by arms and hands, and then the back was cut away from the rock face. It is thought that as resources diminished due to the rat infestation, warriors of the 12 clans gained more power and the construction of Moai ended about 1540. (9) If this is verified, then the Rapanui people stopped carving about 100 years before the forests totally disappeared. The concept of ‘’mana’’ or power which previously had been invested in hereditary leaders was modified to a Bird Man Cult. It was believed the ancestors represented by the Moai still provided for the descendants but the Bird Man cult slowly gained more prominence. The new cult maintained that the medium through which the living could contact the dead was through human beings, chosen through a competition. A wonderful film called simply ‘’Rapa Nui ‘’by Kevin Costner describes this Bird Man Cult where the winner was the first warrior who retrieved an egg deposited by the sooty tern sea bird off a tiny rock pinnacle, Motu Nui, in the shark infested ocean, swim back and climb up the cliff face with the egg intact. The victor was bestowed with special privileges and honours for the year. There are 480 Bird Man petroglyphs carved into the ceremonial village at Orongo. The 1993 film was instrumental in bringing thousands of tourists to the island in recent times. Petroglyphs representing the Bird Men are exactly the same as some on Hawai’i but the competition aspect was unique to Rapa Nui. A fabulous festival called Tapati takes place in February with some of these cultural aspects included, plus rolling down the hill on the trucks of two banana trees tied together. The Bird Man cult ended a few years after the arrival of the Catholic missionaries in 1864.

Diamond also states that cannibalism was evidence of widespread hunger, he writes ‘’In place of the former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest hitherto unused sources available to them: human, whose bones became common not only in proper burials but also (cracked to extract the marrow) in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was ‘’the flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.’’ (10) Cannibalism occurred on all Polynesian islands in times of both plenty and famine. It was partly a ritualistic activity where women and children were not allowed to be present or partake. Its presence on Rapa Nui is not definitive evidence for the collapse of civilisation.

The first sign of population decline came after 1750 to 1800 with the advent of Europeans. The arrival of the Dutch ship captained by Jacob Roggeveen took place on Easter Sunday in 1722, hence the English name for the island. Roggeveen fired on the natives because they surrounded the boats, killing more than a dozen and wounding several others.  James Cook visited in 1774, the Frenchman La Perouse in 1786, Russian explorer Otto Kotzebue in 1815 and English Captain Frederick Beechey in 1825. Beechey describes groves of banana trees, well-cultivated fields of yams, potatoes and sugar cane as well as fishing nets. All of these explorers estimated the population as between 1500 to 3000, although they went ashore for only a few days, if that. Whalers also came in the early1800s, looking for whales, water and women. Islanders eventually became infected with various diseases, including tuberculosis, for which they had no immunity.

An American ship, Nancy, arrived in 1805. The captain was looking for laborers for a seal-hunting colony in the Juan Fernández group, a group of sparsely inhabited islands 600 km off the coast of Chile They kidnapped 22 men and women, intending them as labourers to work on the island of Alejandro Selkirk, the small island 170 km from Robinson Crusoe island, the inspiration for the classic book by Daniel Defoe. After several days of sailing, the islanders were allowed on deck. The men immediately jumped overboard. Unable to recapture them, the crew shot at them. It is said that one man managed to swim back to the island; the others drowned. What happened to the women is unknown. Later on, other whaling ships kidnapped islanders when they needed to replace crew members, or desired women. Although the islanders were very curious, the behaviour of these European ships was unpredictable and sometimes deadly. Over-excited islanders, hanging onto the small boats were assumed dangerous and some were shot for little or no reason. Such occurrences caused them to violently reject later-arriving European ships, particularly if a previous one had caused trouble.
Disaster arrived in December 1862 when Peruvian slavers came looking for captive to sell. Rapa Nui was not the only island to suffer but it was the hardest hit because it was closest to the South American coast. Eight ships arrived to Easter Island in December 1862. About 80 seamen assembled on the beach while goods such as necklaces, mirrors and other items were spread out to entice the population. At a signal, guns were fired and islanders were caught, tied up, and carried off to the ships. In the confusion, at least ten Rapanui were killed. A second and third landing was attempted in the following days, but defensive measures forced a retreat back to the ships. Some 2000 Rapanui islanders were finally kidnapped. That was more than half the population and among the men were the chief or king of the island and his successor as well as all of those who were well versed in the culture and knew how to write the rongorongo script. This script was the only Polynesian script to have been found to date and so far no one has been able to decipher it.
Some of the kidnapped were sold in Peru as domestic servants; others for manual labour on the plantations and others for the guano mines. Food was inadequate and discipline harsh; medical care was virtually non-existent. Islanders sickened and died as the working conditions were grim. As word of the activities of the slavers spread, public opinion in Peru became hostile to this trade in human beings.(11) Newspapers wrote angry editorials and the French Government and missionary societies protested. Convinced that the entire so-called immigration scheme was damaging the reputation of Peru in the eyes of the rest of the world, the Peruvian Government announced that they would henceforth “prohibit the introduction of Polynesian settlers.” A similar practice, called blackbirding had occurred in Australia, with the kidnapping of Pacific islanders to work in the sugarcane fields of Queensland.
The Peruvian government decided to send the captured islanders back. A barely seaworthy ship was selected to return them. Although large enough for 160 passengers, the Peruvians packed 470 islanders on board. The captain of the ship knowingly embarked carriers of smallpox and settled them on each of the islands. The ship became an unsanitary pest-ridden hellhole, filled with smallpox and dysentery victims. By the time the ship sailed, 162 islanders had already died and many others were ill. The ship headed to Easter Island to drop off 100 Rapanui islanders but when they reached the island, only fifteen were still alive. They were put ashore, along with the infected men carrying smallpox. The ship sailed on to the west with its miserable cargo, heading to other islands that had been hard hit by the slaving trade. (12) This inhumane evil deed created devastating epidemics for the Polynesians from Rapa Nui to the Marquesas Islands, nearly wiping out all of the islands’ indigenous populations. This was the cause of the death of the Rapa Nui culture, as it had been practised up till then-- the rapaciousness of European white slavers.
The Catholic missionary Eugene Eyraud, who in 1867 also died from TB, contracted on the island, got the message back to his superiors that the population were in dire straits and were on the brink of extinction. With 97% of the population dead or gone in less than a decade, much of the island’s cultural knowledge had been lost. Worse was to come. During this period, a company based in Tahiti, called Maison Brander half owned by a Tahitian Alexander Salmon Jr, had been buying up all the land that had been previously owed by the Rapanui who had perished in the slave trade, with the aim of creating a large sheep ranch for exporting wool. The ranch was to be managed by the megalomaniacal convicted murderer Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier. who had acquired additional land. Dutrou-Bornier, already with a reputation of fraud, gambling debts, gun-running, having abandoned a wife and child in France, had arrived on the island in April 1868. He quickly visualized the opportunities on a largely unpopulated island without European jurisdiction. Dutrou-Bornier bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around the township of Hanga Roa in exchange for trivial gifts, built a fancy wooden house, proclaimed himself lord of the island and took a Rapanui wife. Two daughters were born and their descendants still live on the island today. Dutrou-Bornier aimed to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui. With this purpose, Dutrou-Bornier moved off a few hundred Rapanui to Tahiti, as indentured labour on the coconut and oil plantations on the islands of Cook, Tahiti and Marquesas, also owned by Maison Brander. He wanted to ship islanders to Tahitian plantations, but the missionaries had their own plans to ship the Rapanui to missions in southern Chile or Mangareva Island. For three years the Church and Dutrou-Bornier skirmished. Then the Frenchman led a group of his supporters against the missionaries. With guns, a cannon, and burning down the islander huts, he and his supporters ran the island for several years as self-appointed ‘’governor’’ having evicted the missionaries.
Later, the island was further depopulated, as many Rapanui were induced to leave for other islands: Nearly 200 went to Tahiti to work on plantations and another 150 were moved to the Gambier Islands. Only about 175 islanders, mostly older men, remained under Dutrou-Bornier’s control, and the island was turned into one vast sheep ranch. In 1877, Dutrou-Bornier’s despotic reign ended when he was murdered by islanders after 9 years of a living hell. ON the death of his manager, Alexander Salmon Jr returned to Easter Island and bought up any remaining land. As owner of nearly all the island and sole source of employment, Salmon then became de facto ruler. As he was not a religious man, and a Jew, the priests did not like him. Bishop Jaussen in Tahiti appointed a Rapanui, Atamu te Kena, ‘king’ to protect church interests from Maison Brander, but Salmon ignored him. However, Salmon was an honest man and was said to be interested in the welfare of the people, and so the population started to recover. This was the era of the strong Tahitian influence on the Rapanui language and culture.
In 1868, J. Linton Palmer came on the HMS Topaze; Admiral Lapelin came on the La Flore in 1872, Lieutenant-Capt. Geiseler arrived on the Hyane in 1882, and the USS Mohican came to the island in 1886. All of these visitors collected artefacts for various museums, including some statues that were laboriously removed from the island. Due to the enormous loss of the population, the deaths and the kidnapping of the island’s leadership, an island census in 1877 revealed there were only 111 islanders left and only 36 of them had any offspring. All of the Rapanui people today claim descent from those 36.
Although Chile claimed it had the most warships in the Pacific, the government desired to acquire other symbols of power, which meant capturing the only unclaimed, inhabited island in the South Pacific. In 1888 a Chilean Captain, Policarpo Toro Hurtado, took formal possession of the island in the name of the Republic of Chile. The Chilean government signed an agreement with the remaining few landowners. It was called the ‘’Treaty of Annexation of the Island,’’ written both in Spanish and the Rapanui language. The latter translation stated that Chile was offering ‘’protection’’ and ‘’friendship’’ but certainly not annexation which occurred in the Spanish version.(13) After the Chilean government fraudulently annexed Easter Island in 1888, it was leased to Enrique Merlet, a businessman from Chile, who took control of the island by purchase lease and occupation. The whole island had been turned into a sheep ranch, and all the Rapanui islanders were confined to Hanga Roa village. A wall was constructed around the village and islanders were forbidden to venture into the rest of the island without permission. To secure the wall, it was supplemented by guards, gates, and fencing. If islanders protested against forced labour, Merlet burnt their crops.
Merlot sold his control to the Williamson-Balfour Company. Known as CEDIP (Compania Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua), it became the next effective sovereign of Rapa Nui and continued running the island as a sheep farm from 1903 for the next 50 years. Williamson-Balfour Company was a Scottish owned Chilean company, founded in Valparaiso in 1863 as a subsidiary of the Liverpool shipping company Balfour Williamson, founded by two Scots, Alexander Balfour and Stephen Williamson. The company was involved in the export of nitrates and wool to England. The company kept the boundary wall around Hanga Roa. The company had 70,000 sheep on the island, which would have caused enormous erosion and loss of vegetation as well as destruction of the unique cultural remains of the Moai. Stone walls were erected all over the island, with stones taken from the ceremonial platforms. During the company's rule and for several years after, the Rapa Nui people were confined to the township of Hanga Roa, literally fenced in for fear they would steal the sheep. They were not allowed to leave without permission, virtual prisoners in their own homes. The company put a barb wire fence across the entire island although the enterprising islanders managed to disappear 3000 sheep in one year.
Neither the general public in Latin America nor the government of Chile paid much attention to Rapa Nui over the years. It was, simply, a Chilean colony. But life for the islanders was so grim that they revolted in 1914. By that time, living conditions on the island were appalling; islanders were deprived of their land and access to nearly all drinking water. People were without clothing and often food. If a despairing islander stole a sheep to feed his hungry children, he was deported to the mainland. Leprosy was endemic. In desperation, the Rapanui petitioned the Chilean government to allow them to emigrate en masse to Tahiti. The Chilean Bishop Rafael Edwards heard of the plight of the islanders, and came to see things for himself in 1916. He found the conditions desperate and shocking, and he laid responsibility directly on the sheep company which had given all the good water to stock, deprived the islanders of land, confined them to the village, and extracted forced labour from them. Edwards exposed these problems and his efforts resulted in termination of totalitarian company rule. There were several uprisings against the company but their lease was again renewed in 1936 by the Chilean government, although the Rapanui could now have limited access to a little bit of their own land.
In 1953, the Chilean government didn’t renew the lease and transferred the island to the Chilean Navy and the sheep farming operations finally ceased. When I was there last year, I noticed there was not one single sheep left on the island. Perhaps a sheep is a reminder of so much deprivation and horror. Williamson Balfour Motors S.A. is still owned by the British company, Inchcape Inc, and is now the importer and distributor of BMW and Honda cars in Chile. By the late 50s, a few Rapanui people had been educated in Chile and complained bitterly about Navy rule, travel restrictions, suppression of their language, unpaid labour, inability to vote, and arbitrary Naval decisions that could not be appealed. One islander, Alfonso Rapu, became a leader of this discontent. However it was not until 1966 that the Rapanui people were allowed to freely move around their own island, when they gained Chilean citizenship. On July 20, 2007 a constitutional reform in Chile, gave Rapa Nui and the Juan Fernandez Islands (also known as Robinson Crusoe Island) the status of ‘’special territories’’ of Chile. This island continues to be governed as a province of the V region of Valparaiso, the coastal city near Santiago which harbours the headquarters of the Chilean Navy.
Another great theft from the Rapanui people occurred, a robbery few would be aware of or acknowledge. Two and a half million years ago, a volcanic eruption created the beautiful crater of Rano Kau about one km in diameter, on the south west corner of the island. The lake’s surface is covered with fresh water reeds, floating on top of 10 meters of water. The steep walls of the crater offer protection from the salt winds and grazing animals. This is where the last Toromino tree was found growing and saved from extinction. In soil samples taken from the far side of Rano Kau in 1965 the drug rapamycin was found in the bacteria Streptomyces hygroscopicus and given the name relating to its origin of discovery. It is a very important immunosuppressant, used to suppress the normal immune response in human transplants, especially kidney. Rapamycin also inhibits a key protein complex involved in signalling pathways in cancer progression, named mTOR. The pharmaceutical companies use this drug for clinical trials and extensive cellular research. I would bet a million dollars, no royalties have ever been paid to the Rapanui people for this discovery. The only acknowledgement is a small plaque on the far side of the Rano Kau crater. Rapamycin is marketed under the name rapamune and licensed by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth. At present prices, a chemically synthesied rapamycin costs $600 for 1 mg.

As I was wondering around the township during my visit last August, I came across an occupation outside the mayor’s office, with tents, a make-shift kitchen and a large number of the Rapanui flags. I was curious as to the protest and their demands. I recorded an interview with a member of the Rapa Nui council, ‘’We want to get back our land. We have a treaty of 1888 and we are demanding that Chile fulfil this agreement. It’s a big problem as Chile won’t talk to us. We began to occupy 5 years ago. We are putting pressure on the international tribunes to mediate this situation. We are the rightful owners of all of the island of Rapa Nui. We want to take back the control of immigration; there is a lot of contraband, the environment is being destroyed and there is too much rubbish. The mayor (Luz Zasso Paoa who is Rapanui) is also working on this and helps us with the occupation.’’

This was confirmed by other sources. Along with huge increases in tourist numbers, the population on Rapa Nui continues to grow with the immigration of Chileans from the mainland. The total daily population of tourists and locals combined is expected to reach 10,000 this year. Island waste management and water sanitation systems are not designed for these numbers of people and there is no infrastructure to support the increases in visitors and residents. Some times the visitors give nothing back to the economy as too often they visit for only one day and return to their ship to sleep, sometimes 1000 tourists at a time. Unchecked development to accommodate the increased numbers of tourists is unsustainable. The isolation of Rapa Nui and their dependency on imported items limits Rapa Nui’s options for dealing with increased pressure on their already over-taxed resources. One of the partners, International Help Fund Australia, is actively working to alleviate some of these pressures on Rapa Nui by promoting recycling and composting programs, water sanitation projects and installing composting toilets at the most heavily visited tourist sites.

Another occupier at the protest camp gave me a short history of Rapa Nui and the terrible atrocities that was inflicted on them. ‘’In the year 1888, we made a treaty between our king and the state of Chile. Essentially, Chile became a friend of Rapa Nui, whereby Chile has to respect the investiture of our king, and his authority. There is still a king here who represents the people of Rapa Nui. Moreover this piece of paper said the Rapa Nui people will administer their territory. The flag of Rapa Nui will fly at the top and the Chilean flag will fly at the bottom, that was one of the points. This treaty did not deliver the territory to Chile. The territory should be given up to the king and the council. Chile was to pay for education and protect all of Rapa Nui. It was not that Chile plant its flag and is the owner of the territory. No, that wasn’t it. It was suppose to be a friendly collaboration.

‘’After the treaty was signed, in 1895, the island was handed over to the Chilean treasury and leased to a company for 1800 Chilean pesos. The company (Maison Brander) with the Chilean police administered the island. At the point of a gun they were removed from their land, they were rounded up and placed into the centre of the island, the children, the elderly, men, women, about 200 people, without food or water, nothing. They were kept in the church for 7-8 years, actually a ghetto in 1895-6. The women were also tortured. ‘’Then there was a change in the administration, the armed Chilean Navy took over the administration. They ran Rapa Nui like a ship. It was really a period of slavery, the people were still locked up on their own land. In 1933, the Chilean Treasury signed Rapa Nui into their own name. They didn’t allow us to return to our land but left us locked up in our homes and people were tortured again.´´ The Easter Island Foundation (www.islandheritage.org) confirms this statement. Military control was arbitrary and any hint of ‘mutiny’ was quickly dealt with. Islanders were still restricted to the village and the Navy had the necessary personnel and firepower to enforce the rules. The Rapanui people were frustrated and angry. Overbearing and often arrogant Naval Commanders had little regard for their Polynesian subjects, flogging wrongdoers and publicly shaving the heads of men and women, who displeased them.

‘’We are here because of the situation. We demand of the Chilean Treasury that it removes their title and return it to us, the owners. Rapa Nui has fulfilled her side of the agreement, when is Chile going to fulfil theirs? If Chile does not withdraw its title, Rapa Nui will move towards independence. It is not up to the free will of Chile. I give them 1 to 2 years. The rest of the people here who don’t have links with Rapa Nui should leave. If they are married to a Rapa Nui they can stay but the rest should leave. The mayor is in agreement with some things but she can’t make any decisions.

‘’It has been a fight for many years, not just now, we have had four occupations. We want to control the economy as well, the administration, the policies social and political.’’ Chile earns millions from the tourist industry as each visitor pays $60 to enter the park and very little of this money is returned to the Rapanui people.

‘’Rapa Nui is very rich, not only the land but the future of the island is with the ocean. We have minerals as well as oil. We, the original inhabitants have to live with what we have, the cultural aspects, the archaeology, and the natural resources to resolve our social problems. It is a big fight. If Chile continues ignoring the treaty, we are going to die. They are bringing over 100 planes a year here but we must control this aspect. The profits must return to the original people. Chile is a big country, much bigger than us. Chile has its own natural resources, why does it have to take ours? We have our Parliament of Polynesia, where we all met two years ago. We were there also because we have a convention with the triangle of Polynesian islands, where we all want independence from the colonial powers. We do not want o continue being under their control.’’

This unlikely civilisation thrived on Rapa Nui for at least 500 years. Despite limited resources a few thousand islanders carved and transported more than 8000 tons of massive stone sculptures across a hilly landscape. This story is one of the impact of people and the transportation of unwanted species onto the fragile ecosystem of a remote island in the Pacific. The victims of cultural and physical extermination by imperialism and megalomaniacs have been turned into the perpetrators of their own demise, according to Diamond. We can learn a lot from the Rapanui people, powerful, innovative geniuses of their race, who have survived the most ghastly atrocities.

The BBC reported that the occupation camp was broken up on December 3, 2010. At least 25 people were injured when Chilean police used pellet guns to evict the occupation after three months. The occupiers declared the land the buildings were on had been illegally taken from their ancestors.

I owe a debt to the recently published book, ‘’Questioning Collapse´´ edited by Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee for bringing my attention to this injustice.

REFERENCES

1) Diamond, J. 2005. ‘’Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Collapse’’ Penguin Books, p118.

2) Hunt, TL and Lipo, CP 2007. Chronology, Deforestation and ‘Collapse’ Evidence vs Faith in Rapa Nui Prehistory. Rapa Nui Journal 21, 85-97.

3) Hunt, TL and Lipo, CP 2010. ‘Ecological Catastrophe, Collapse, and the Myth of ‘Ecocide’ on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) p32-36 in the book ‘’Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire’’ eds McAnany, PA and Yoffee, N Cambridge University Press.

4) Athens, JS 2009. Rattus exulans and the Catastrophic Disappearance of Hawai’i’s Native Lowland Forest. Biological Invasions 11, 1489-1501.

5) Peterkin, JG 2010. ‘A Companion to Easter Island A Concise Guide to the History, Culture, and Individual Archaeological Sites at Rapa Nui.’ p36 Impreso en Grafica LOM

6) Peterkin, JG 2010 ibid p117.

7) Metraux, A. 1957 ‘Easter Island: A Stone Age Civilisation of the Pacific.’ Translated by Michael Bullock. New York, Oxford University Press.

8) Diamond, J. 2005 ibid p91.

9) Haun, B. 2008. ‘Inventing Easter Island’ University of Toronto Press p8.

10) Diamond, J. 2005 ibid p109.

11) www.islandheritage.org. Easter Island Foundation ( Non-profit Organisation)

12) www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter _Island﷒

13) Peterkin, JG 2010 ibid p22.