These findings are the apparent result of a $2 million investigation by Sicily's Civil Protection Agency (funded by the Italian government), which reportedly included the participation of a NASA scientist.

The World Net Daily article reads: "Leaked copies say the bizarre fires were 'caused by high-power electromagnetic emissions which were not man-made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts.'

"The report also references a possible UFO landing close to Caronia where 'burned imprints which have not been explained were found in a field.'"

[SNIP]

The full article may be read here:

Initially, popular opinion in Italian culture was that the fires were created by "demonic" forces. And since no other "unknown force" seems readily to blame, "aliens" have become the culprit of choice.

I have had a lifelong interest in UFOs, and I don't dismiss anything out of hand. But in this instance, I feel very confident in saying that "space alien" theories are an unnecessarily esoteric explanation for what is most likely a perfectly natural, yet poorly understood, phenomenon.

From the Electric Universe perspective, the Earth, like all of the planets in our solar system, is an electrically-charged body. We are in continuous electrical relationship with the Sun, which is the focus of a glow discharge, receiving its power EXTERNALLY from galactic currents. We see sprites and giant jets that reach from Earth TO space -- lightning above the clouds that was considered absurd until it was definitively validated in the early 1990s. (See Giant Lightning TO Space --)

The basis to suspect a natural, electrical origin of the fires is quite extensive, and many reasonable explanations can be proffered.

Some 2004 reports suggested that the Italian fires were due to a combination of "piezoelectricty" (electricity produced by mechanical pressure on certain crystals) and/or an underground electromagnetic field:

http://www.hwh22.it/xit/S03_ricerche/caronia00.html

http://www.guidasicilia.it/ita/main/news/index.jsp?IDNews=10413

Other reports note that the fires continued well after electricity to the area had been cut off. Mobile phones and disconnected fuse boxes reportedly burst into flames, and even the locking systems of cars mysteriously blocked up, adding to the suspicion that mysterious electromagnetic forces were at work. (See Piezoelectric Fires in Messina, Italy, )

ET may not be the source of the apparent electromagnetic forces, but something else from space well could be. The earth is electrically dynamic, and when it encounters other charged bodies, such as comets and meteors, electric discharges can occur, sometimes with catastrophic results.

In the Thunderbolts series The Comet and the Chicago Fire, presented was the possibility that the terrible conflagration was caused by the close passage of fragments from Comet Biela (whose nucleus "mysteriously" split in two in 1845). Among the oft-forgotten facts around the case: 1) Simultaneous conflagrations -- each a case of apparent "spontaneous combustion" -- erupted hundreds of kilometers apart in three different states -- Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois. (Mrs. O' Leary's cow must have been quite busy, indeed!) 2) In 1852, when Biela's twin comet-heads reappeared, a BRIGHT JET was seen between the two heads, which were over 2 MILLION KILOMETERS apart; 3) On November 27, 1872, Professor W. Klinkerfues of Berlin, calculated the trajectories of a major meteor shower (several thousand meteors an hour), and concluded that they were the remains of the comet. 4) Witnesses of the fire reported fire descending from the sky, descending balloons of fire, buildings exploding with fire when no fire was yet present (and many other instances of "spontaneous combustion"), fusing of fireproof building material, colorful flames running along cornices of buildings (a typical description of "St. Elmo's Fire" witnessed in electrical storms), and a rain of fire and sand from the sky.

Since at least one of Biela's comet heads had presumably disintegrated by 1871, it is only reasonable to question whether Earth's orbit may have encountered the debris. (To read the full three-part series, see here)

Electromagnetic effects from comets, meteorites, and meteor fireballs have been heavily discussed on the Thunderbolts site. Scientists do not really understand why bolides flicker, flare up, and explode as they streak toward the Earth. Nor do they understand why some meteors are accompanied by electrophonic sound that is simultaneous with their flaring up. See The Peekskill Meteor,

The possibility of the Earth having an electrical interaction with a meteoric intruder should certainly be considered by the Italian investigators, at least before they began speculating about aliens experimenting with electromagnetic weaponry!

Another natural explanation for the fires might be volcanism, since the nearby Eolian Islands is one of the most volcanically active zones in Europe. In the Electric Universe hypothesis, volcanoes are dynamically related to the electric Earth. In fact, the World Net Daily report mentions an electrical volcanic effect as the possible causative agent of the fires: "One natural hypothesis that had been considered was electrical energy related to volcanic activity beneath the land's crust being released near the village. Supercharged ions, it was speculated, might then spark the fires once meeting up with electronic devices in the homes.

"'The cause of the fires seems to have been static electric charges,' Tullio Martella, the head of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency told the New York Times in 2004. 'What we don't understand is why there were these static electric charges.'"

Volcanic eruptions are sometimes accompanied by spectacular displays of lightning, but the cause is poorly understood, and new discoveries have only deepened the mysteries. A recent news story reports on a study into volcanic electrical phenomena occurring in the eruption of Mt. Augustine in Alaska. The website LiveScience.com writes: "The lightning in a volcanic eruption occurs because the ash and other debris blasting out of the volcano are highly charged....Though lightning was known to occur in the debris clouds above the volcano, the researchers found an EARLIER phase of volcanic lightning that had never before been observed and occurred right at the volcano's mouth just as it began erupting."[Emphasis added]

In other words, the lightning preceded the supposed "charge separation" process from friction that has traditionally been claimed to occur in billowing volcanic clouds. One of the researchers described this phase of the volcanic lightning as "big sparks maybe going just from the mouth of the volcano up into the column that's shooting out of the volcano, and then some lightning that went upward from the top of the volcano up into the cloud that was forming." (See Lightning Strikes from the Mouths of Volcanoes)

These observations add direct support to the claims of the electrical theorists, who emphasize that the electric field of the Earth is an indispensable environment for both volcanoes and volcanic lightning. As pointed out by plasma scientist Anthony Peratt, magma is a conductive plasma. A jet of magma will short-circuit the electric field through which it is moving. So of course, it should not surprise us to discover electrical arcing along the column of erupting material. (See Volcanic Lightning)

The irony in all of this cannot be lost to those who have followed the Thunderbolts project, and its attempt to reconstruct catastrophic (electrical) events in human history. The ancients witnessed stupendous plasma discharge displays in the sky, and could only attribute the events to supernatural deities and other mystical intelligences. Today, well-documented (but poorly understood) natural electrical phenomena are being viewed in much the same light. Even more disturbingly, 21st century official science seems much more inclined to indulge in bizarre, unprovable esoterica and "metaphysical mathematics" -- including black holes, dark matter, dark energy, string theory -- than they are in exploring the real-world disciplines of plasma science and electrical engineering. A new "enlightenment" is needed to pull our species from a dark age more likely to harm us than any "alien weaponry." And the light that can guide us is a real-world understanding of electricity.

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