MY EXPLANATION Part 2 What about the tides? They're supposed to be due to the gravitational effect of the moon. Why are there two tides for each moonrise? There are two a day and they peak on a full moon.  Does the moon's mass increase and decrease each month?  There is a lot of variation between the tides on any one day and between one day and the next.  The solution lies in the fact that light has a measurable pressure that we currently ignore. This pressure of light is at work in the universe depite our ignorance. It pushes down on one side of our planet depressing the ocean in one place and causing it to pile up in two others.  

At the same time the light reflected from the moon adds to this effect by varying amounts depending on its phase. The new moon adds a little and the full moon adds the most. This is enhanced by the fact that the full moon occurs directly opposite the sun. As far as I know the official version is that while the moon attracts the tidal waters so that they stand up on one side of the planet, for some strange and unknown reason, they also stand up on the opposite side, 180 degrees away .

        When David Attenborough accidentally tipped me to how silly it was I couldn't help wonder why more people hadn't spotted that there are two tides a day and only one moonrise.                                                                                                                                                                                                       Let's look at some other things we use gravity to explain.  The orbit of the earth around the sun is a case in point.  I used to think about this all the time because to me gravity just didn't seem to fit the facts. The analogy that is often given is the parable of the bucket on a string.  How can this model the solar system?  The fact that water stays in a bucket when you swing it around over your head is all down to centripetal force. Gravity is supposed to be to be represented by the string in the famous analogy but no mention is made of where the earth or the bucket get their angular momentum. The bucket has a person turning it what does the earth have?  The main problem I can see with gravity as a motor to drive terrestrial rotation is that it just isn't logical. How can a force acting at right angles to the observed motion be responsible for it. The main factor, though, is that a gravity based model for planetary orbit and rotation is just not robust enough and relies on too many special conditions at the outset.  It amounts to a kind of wind up universe in which every moving part has been carefully placed in exactly the right place relative to all the other parts. It's not really feasible and it creates the necessity for an absolutely massive amount of energy to get the universe started. None of this is necessary.                                                                                                                                                                 
      A more robust and satisfactory model exists in the equilibrium set up between two opposing electromagnetic forces that we've already encountered and that we already know to exist.  One is the attraction that exists between the negative charge on most of the surface of a planet and the powerful positive charge on the vortex lying close to the centre of the solar system.  The other is the pressure of light from the sun. If these forces seem weak or insignificant compared to the "crushing" strength of terrestrial gravity it helps to remember that our experience of the universe is not universal. We live within the terrestrial field. If we were to live constantly on board the ISS the evidence of our senses might more closely resemble the actual physics that goes on in 99% of the universe.  All objects in space are weightless. This includes the planets and stars. Hard to get your head around but true. Weight is an illusion charged bodies within an electromagnetic field effectively constitutes a generator of electrical current and two is that the propagation of lines of current or flow in space simultaneously produces a scalar electromagnetic field at right angles to the direction of that flow.  I explained above the way in which the proto-stellar disc or nebula organises itself using static electricity. The negatively charged particles of dust and debris on the outer edge of the disc begin to circle around each other trying to reach the positively charged centre.  The motion imparted by static charge to the proto-stellar disc is like a kick start. Once moving, the system begins to generate its own light and power.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         All objects carry a static charge and static electricity obeys the inverse square law.  A further example of this kind of organisation of objects in space into solar systems can be seen in the gas giants?  Likewise, the rings of Saturn show beautifully the factors influencing their orbits. Contrary to popular belief, these factors are charge and reflectivity.  Saturn and Jupiter are like suns that don't have enough energy to fully come into focus and shine. They produce gas and heat but not in the correct conditions.  In the rings of Saturn you can see that there is a kind of order but that it has very little to do with mass.  Gravity theory  predicts a simpler arrangement of debris in the rings with size as the main differentiating factor. What we see is a number of groups of rings with each group appearing to display a variety of sizes ranging from large to small. This is because the debris within the debris field is arranged according to its reflectivity to light and its ability to hold electric charge.                               The main problem with the gravitational model of planetary orbit, as far as I can see, is its lack of a propelling impulse. It has to assume, from a cosmological viewpoint, that all of the orbiting bodies in the universe had their motions imparted to them at some time in the past. This might be simple enough while we're only really aware of a handful of planets but I can see problems for the future of any cosmology that depends on or includes gravity. Every planet and moon would have to have exactly the right velocity imparted to it to allow its continued orbit. Anything that slowed them down would cause them to eventually come to rest somewhere.  Without the equallibrium that exists between the pressure of light pushing outwards and the electromagnetic attraction  between the orbiting bodies and the central vortex pulling inwards the universe would lack its observed stability.   A system as universal and robust as the one we can see can't be wind-up or clockwork. It must be self organising and self sustaining and I think I've shown how that can be.                                                                                                                                                         To digress slightly - the fact that the solar system is a huge dynamo of the kind I have described is bad news for those pinning their hopes on nuclear fusion. What looks like fusion to science at the moment is in fact the formation of protons and electrons across the boundary between two areas of intensely powerful electromagnetic charge.  As these are generated through work done by the rotation of the entire solar system it is unlikely that we will ever generate sufficient power to propagate a star of our own. We would be better employed looking at the enormous amount of energy already in our environment and finding ways of putting it to use.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Continuing with my description of the mechanism for planetary orbit there is one more motion integral to this that we haven't yet touched on.  I am unaware of any official explanation for the earth's axial rotation . I may have missed it but I'm sure I've never seen a theory put forward to explain the way planets and moons rotate on their axes.  I was tipped off when I walked past a shop in Mt Eden Rd in Auckland and saw a number of little radiometers spinning away busily in the afternoon sunlight.  Just as very high altitude parachutists can get into an uncontrollable spin in the thin upper atmosphere so the earth, moon and planets are effectively radiometers.  A potential difference exists between the side of the planet that is in darkness and the side that's in the light.  If the earth was to stop spinning for some reason, perhaps the close approach of a comet holding it in place electro- magnetically, it would slowly start up again once the comet moved on.  It could turn in either direction but sensitivity to initial conditions also known as the "butterfly effect" will determine which way. The fact that most of the bodies in our solar system rotate on their axes and orbit the sun in the same direction is most likely because due to the fact all of these motions began within the same galaxy which is itself rotating.  Also, most of the orbiting material acquired an impetus when it was still negatively charged dust particles rotating around the positively charged system centre trying to get to the central in the protostellar disc .                                                                                                                                                                                           To summarise the case of our mistaken belief that gravity holds the moons and planets in orbit we so far have the following.   All spherical objects in space are charged negative in relation to the space around them. The orbit of all these charged bodies within the system's  magnetic field constitutes work done by what is effectively an enormous natural generator.  The scalar field this propagates focuses into a vortex at the system's centre of gravity. Very close to this vortex a plasma bubble grows from the protons and electrons created around it.  With enough rotating bodies the energy levels are sufficient for the plasma bubble to go to photon emission and this is the difference between a star and a gas giant. (I feel I should also mention that although light is not visible in a complete vacuum it still exerts a pressure on anything it comes into contact with.) We have the pressure of light from the sun pushing the planets etc. outwards away from the centre at the same time as the positively charged central vortex attracts them inwards. These two opposing forces create a tension that is the main driver behind planetary orbit. They produce an equilibrium that is far more robust than the model gravity requires. It also has a driving force such that if the system were to somehow be prevented from turning, once the impediment moved away it would start to turn again.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

       There are a couple of secondary forces that require identification in the orbit of planets.  One is the combined role of the sun and central vortex in a kind of push-pull arrangement a bit like the con rod in a car engine or an old steam locomotive and the other is axial rotation. The pushing and pulling occur simultaneously but from two separate positions which allows these opposing forces to gain purchase on the surrounding planets.
      You can see in the diagram below that the sun orbits around the vortex in the same direction as the earth and planets. If the pressure of light from the sun and the attraction between the the vortex and the planets originated from the same point in space they would cancel eachother out. The fact that they originate from points at some remove from one another means they can create a potential difference that causes bodies within the field to begin circling around "looking for" a way to get closer to the center but all the time being kept at bay and in orbit by the pressure of the sun's light. In the diagram the long blue arrows represent the lines of the scalar field that intersect at the central vortex. These are produced by the circular motion of the earth and all the other material moving in orbit around the central vortex.  In our solar system the sun takes about the same length of time to orbit the system centre as the earth takes. About a year. This means the earth is constantly being pushed from just slightly behind by the sunlight and pulled from just slightly in front by its electromagnetic attraction for the vortex. What it means for the other planets is another thing. There are times when the push of the light will come from behind and others when it comes from in front of the other planets. This causes them to speed up and slow down making their orbits irregular and eliptical.

I appreciate it can be hard to get your head around a lot of this stuff. I still have trouble with one of the simpler aspects of orbital rotation - the moons in their secondary orbits. I don't know why, it's probably my conditioning because it really isn't very complicated. A good analogy can be seen if you join a pair of ping-pong balls together with a length of light thread, holding it in the middle so that the balls hang down about a foot or so and touch eachother. Now if you put the balls (stop snickering) in front of an electric fan you will see them move apart with each ball starting to spin on its own axis.                                                                                  

        In the diagram above you can see that in the gap between the moon and planet the reflected light creates a pressure that pushes the bodies apart like the ping-pong balls in front of the fan. The pressure of light at these angles is not countered other than by our length of string which represents the attraction due to gravity. Except that while I go on calling it gravity for convenience we could just as correctly call it the earth's electrostatic field.