Self-Luminous Formations
There are many names given to the glowing plasmas that are found in the atmosphere, and there are a broad spectrum of these self-luminous effects that include ball lightning, upper atmospheric effects called sprites and elves, earthquake lights, the aurora borealis or northern lights, and glowing orb-like balls of light.
Dmitriev chooses to call all of these natural self-luminous formations (NSLFs) or vacuum domains. For simplicity, they are referred to here as plasmoids, which is defined simply as any coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields. Plasmoids have been proposed to explain natural phenomena as diverse as ball lightning, magnetic bubbles in the magnetosphere, objects in cometary tails, and structures found in the solar atmosphere.
Anomalous Behavior of Plasmoids
Plasma physicist Dr. T. Matsumoto has shown that atmospheric plas-moids exhibit various anomalous behavior such as hopping over land, skimming across water surfaces, and passing unchanged through glass, water, and air. Changes in atmospheric pressure and other conventional meteorological explanations are unable to explain these anomalies.
Matsumoto describes plasmoids as possessing these unique properties:
They emit a wide range of electromagnetic waves.
They have the ability to penetrate solid objects.
They are able to draw dust in and bring it to rotation.
They form electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields around them.
They are able to divide themselves into several parts.
The frequency of their occurrence rises abruptly with peaks of solar activity.
Tornadoes
The mechanics of tornado formation are not well understood. Spectators close to funnel clouds, the swirling vortices that do not reach the ground, have reported little or no wind surrounding the funnel cloud while it is airborne. But when a tornado touches the ground, it can have devastating effects, easily destroying houses, lifting cars into the air, and displacing objects and people — in some cases, for miles. Many viewers also report seeing lights at the center of tornadoes.
There has been an ongoing scientific debate on the nature of these reported sightings of tornado lights. Some meteorologists have denied that they exist at all and have tried to explain them as just anecdotal folklore based on the exaggerated descriptions of untrained observers. The meteorologist and chemist Dr. B. Vonnegut and photographer James R. Weyer settled this last point definitively when they were able to photograph two luminous tornadoes. Their photos were subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny: The original negatives were analyzed using equipment called an isodensitracer. The results of this densitometric study concluded, “The luminous pillars constitute a genuine exposure and are not an artifact of either exposure or development.”
In the United States, an average of 800 tornadoes are reported nationwide each year, resulting in eighty deaths and more than 1,500 injuries. The most violent tornadoes are capable of wind speeds of 250 mph or more. Damage paths can be in excess of 1 mile wide and 50 miles long. A tornado in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, carried a motel sign 30 miles and dropped it in Arkansas!
Luminous Eye Phenomena
Dmitriev's department of the Russian Academy of Sciences has made an extensive study of the effects of tornadoes, collecting reports of a wide variety of luminous eye phenomena in tornadoes that have been witnessed by observers. These include:
“[a] Ball of fire . . . lightning in a funnel . . . yellow shining surface of [a] funnel . . . incessant lightning . . . [a] fiery column . . . glowing clouds . . . brilliant shine . . .[a] brilliant luminous cloud in a funnel . . . beaded lightning . . . exploding fireballs . . . [and] a rotating band of deep blue light.”
The conclusion of their research has been that these plasmoids are fundamentally inherent to tornadoes and that it is the vortexes created by these plasmoids that are responsible for creating the funnel clouds, not the other way around.
This is quite different from the conventional meteorological explanation of a tornado, known as the Brooks model. This states that tornadoes are a thermodynamic effect produced by a parent storm cloud. However, Dmitriev cites examples of tornadoes appearing without any clouds overhead. In cases like these, what appeared to be a parent cloud actually formed around the central vortex as the tornado progressed. In the electrogravi-dynamic model of Dmitriev, the tornado is actually caused by the rotating central tube of plasma. This model has the advantage of being able to explain many of the anomalous behaviors that occur in and around tornadoes that the conventional Brooks model cannot.
Effects of tornadoes that are better described by the plasma vortex model include:
Funnel clouds are seen to travel over the surface of the earth in jumping movements, suggesting that other forces besides atmospheric pressure are causing them.
When a tornado is just slightly above the ground no lifting effects are seen, but as soon as it touches the ground levitation begins. The area inside the tornado has been measured to have a lower air pressure, but this does not occur beneath the cloud.
As tornadoes cross rivers, they have been seen to form trenches in the water, sometimes up to twenty feet deep. This suggests that they are sources of powerful, anomalous gravitation.
Tornadoes have been observed to emit pitches or hissing noises whilst airborne, indicating very high levels of electrostatic charge.
Tornadoes can transport objects and even living creatures over long distances without damaging them. This suggests that the lifting power of a tornado is being caused by levitation, not by suction and rotation.
Many types of luminous phenomena have been associated with tornadoes. Lights have been seen both before a tornado appears and inside its central vortex.
Microcomets and Miniature Black Holes
Dmitriev has attempted an alternative explanation of how tornadoes and their funnel clouds arise. He suggests they may originate in small atmospheric holes made in the upper ionosphere by tiny microcomets. These holes are well documented and have been seen and recorded in the ultraviolet spectrum. The cause of this is thought to be incoming helium nuclei from the sun that react with the upper ionosphere to create miniature black holes.
These mini black holes of spinning gravitational waves create a vacuum effect and a pulsed heat release. This, in turn, produces a wide variety of self-luminous phenomena, depending on a number of variables. Self-luminous formations or plasmoids as proposed in the Dmitriev model are luminous effects created by the combined forces of electromagnetism and gravity because of these cosmic collisions.
It is an elegant theory, but a hugely controversial one for conventional meteorology. The incidence of these formations, he believes, is related to solar activity. Similar storms found on other planets are thought by Dmitriev to be created by the same mechanism and increase in frequency when the sun is most active. Essentially, tornadoes on Earth can be seen in this model as a sympathetic response to similar storms on the sun.
