Following is an excerpt from an unpublished 1974 article, entitled “The Universal Nature of Discharge Phenomena”:
We intuitively sense that such classic spiral phenomena as hurricanes and galaxies (like our own Milky Way) are somehow related… A hurricane represents the continual production of an excess of rotational energy, which radiates or discharges from its source at the eye of the storm as irrotational wave modes… The individual air parcel contracts to a critical radius beyond which the rotational wave breaks… The turning of the vortex tubes occurs wherever rotational waves break to create irrotational waves, which then subsequently may break to re-create rotational energy. Likewise, spiral galaxies sometimes exhibit small, energetic rotational phenomena breaking off at the outer reaches of larger, galactic spiral arms… Blackbodies and blackholes exist within the spacetime domain of the Earth’s atmosphere, the nonlinear dynamics of which lead to a mathematical singularity in potential-temperature q-space (horizontal rotation disappears within an isentropic framework). This would remain an unsolved mystery, if our only point of view were the Newtonian… The progressive gravity wave is a manifestation of the transition from rotational to irrotational energy… We have a process whereby a cluster of intense squalls radiates irrotational waves from its perimeter, a process in which energy from the rotational wave is perfectly absorbed and then re-radiated in the form of irrotational waves… The trajectories of the energy feeder bands attached to the convective nucleus of this atmospheric comet take on the appearance of spiral helices adjoining the forward portion of the rotating storm and are comprised of undulating laminar flow along the axis of a roll cloud… Several comets, such as Mrkos in 1957, have been photographed with distinct twisting filaments resembling the spiral helices described above. More often than not, these feeder bands of ionized gas or plasma are probably obscured by the more diffuse matter sweeping out of the tail behind the nucleus… These cometary helical motions are also supplying fuel for maintaining the cometary nucleus, a nucleus which is born as rotational energy absorbed from the plane of the primary planetary orbits within the solar system.
A strange twist in Maxwell’s ideas has always been disturbing. In using his approach, one treats the system as though there are no compressible components; and one goes for the most elegant, simplified description of the mapping of the rotational elements being exchanged between two fields: electric and magnetic. But what one ends up obtaining is a coupled equation set descriptive of an acoustic wave, which requires eliminating all but compressible physics. This incompressible-compressible reentry in the logical structure of the conception! Paradoxical, to say the least. Maxwell’s field equations fall out of taking formalities from fluid dynamics descriptive of a wave phenomenon propagating through an incompressible medium. We are talking here of rotational waves, not those that propagate by compression and decompression (i.e., sound waves), the rotational waves engaged in the 100% efficient transfer of rotation between the electric and magnetic fields. Oh, that oh-so-important 90-degree twist so long associated with imaginary numbers and magical beings like demons! PATHOLOGICAL this twist, you might say.
The “sorting demon”, Maxwell imagined, sits at a trap door, which itself is frictionless (no information loss). His function is to be omniscient. He knows how to raise the door in such a manner that it will permit the flow of order into the reservoir (of one of the fields), then shut the door to disallow entrance to random information. This opening and shutting is an integral part of the 90-degree twist between the two field quantities. The demon is himself the fanciful representation of an ordering principle that transcends the Second Law of Thermodynamics; he is required to guarantee the 100% efficiency of the process. Why didn’t Maxwell call him a “sorting angel”? The being is, after all, performing a positive, almost heavenly, service. Electromagnetic fields cannot work without him, as Maxwell well knew. Surely the demon couldn’t be PATHOLOGICAL. But what if one doesn’t want to leave this essential feature of electromagnetic behavior as a mere “philosophical” explanation? What if one wants to write him right into the equation set? Who is this demon? Who is he really?
The demon is an “operator” who opens and shuts a magical door that controls the flow of order and disorder; he is an operator somehow involved with the limiting velocity, for only at this absolute limit does the PATHOLOGICAL 90-degree twist transpire which accomplishes the 100% efficient transfer of energy between the two field quantities. And only at this speed limit does linear-time stop! Which, of course, Maxwell did not know, as this was Einstein’s discovery published in 1905. My, my. Could the demon be operator-time? That’s active time, mind you. Time that does things. It doesn’t just sit there and act like a measuring stick; it opens and shuts thermodynamic doors, engages in topological twists, thumbs its nose at the Second Law of Thermodynamics (following the right-hand rule). Some people call this behavior PATHOLOGICAL; others think it is HEAVENLY.