1. Introduction
What if everything you were taught about electricity was incomplete?
Current theory describes what happens — charges attract and repel, current flows through wires, lightning strikes. But it never explains why. We’re given labels for behaviours without any insight into mechanism. It’s like describing gravity as “things fall down” and calling that an explanation.
This document offers a fundamentally different view. One where electricity and gravity are not separate mysteries but two ways of looking at the same thing. One where “empty” space is not empty at all, but an ocean of energy — and matter is what happens when that energy binds itself into stable patterns.
The ideas here align with serious theoretical physics (Superfluid Vacuum Theory, Stochastic Electrodynamics, Zero-Point Field research) but are presented without the jargon. You don’t need a physics degree to understand this. You need only be willing to question what you were taught.
2. The Central Idea: Space is an Ocean of Energy
Imagine the universe as an infinite ocean.
Not water, but energy. A field that fills all of space, vibrating at frequencies beyond our perception. Waves move through it in every direction, passing through each other and continuing on — just as ocean waves do. This field has pressure. It has flow. It has the capacity to store and transmit energy.
Matter is not separate from this ocean. Matter is the ocean, locally bound.
Think of a whirlpool in water. The whirlpool is not made of different stuff than the water around it — it is water, organised into a stable, self-sustaining pattern. Matter works the same way. An electron, a proton, an atom — these are standing waves in the energy field. Stable resonances. Patterns that persist.
The technical term is “oscillon” — a localised oscillation that maintains itself through its own dynamics. But you can simply think of it as a knot in the fabric of space. Energy tied up in a pattern that doesn’t easily untie.
This single insight — that matter is bound energy, not something separate from space — resolves mysteries that have puzzled physics for a century.
3. What Electricity Actually Is
3.1 The Confused State of Current Teaching
Ask ten physicists “what is electricity?” and you’ll get ten different answers. The word is used to mean:
- Charge (the stuff on a charged balloon)
- Current (what flows through wires)
- Energy (what you pay for on your power bill)
- Phenomena (sparks, shocks, lightning)
Students are taught that electricity “flows in a loop” (conservation) but is also “consumed by your appliances” (conversion). Both cannot be true of the same thing. The confusion isn’t in the students — it’s in the teaching.
3.2 Clear Definitions
Within the energy-field framework, everything becomes clear:
| Term | What It Actually Is |
|---|---|
| Electric Field | A pressure gradient in the energy field. High pressure pushes toward low pressure — just like air or water. |
| Magnetic Field | Rotation (spin) in the energy field. When energy flows, it creates swirls — like water spiralling down a drain. |
| Voltage | Pressure difference between two points. A battery maintains a pressure differential; that’s all it does. |
| Current | The drift of matter (electrons) through the field. Electrons are oscillons — tiny standing waves — being pushed by the pressure gradient. |
| Electrical Energy | Pressure waves travelling through the field at the speed of light. Energy doesn’t travel in wires — it travels in the field around wires. |
| Resistance | How hard it is for oscillons to move through the material. Resistance converts directed flow into heat (random vibration). |
3.3 The Speed Paradox Resolved
Here’s something your teachers probably couldn’t explain:
Electrons in a wire drift at about 0.1 millimetres per second. Yet when you flip a light switch, the light comes on instantly. How can electricity travel at near light-speed if electrons move slower than a snail?
Answer: The signal isn’t the electrons. The signal is a pressure wave in the field.
Think of a long tube filled with ping-pong balls. Push one ball in at one end, and a ball pops out the other end almost instantly — even though no individual ball travelled the length of the tube. The pressure propagated instantly; the ballsbarely moved.
Electrical signals work the same way. The pressure wave (energy) travels at near light-speed through the field surrounding the wire. The electrons (oscillons) drift slowly, pushed by local pressure. Two completely different phenomena — which is why using one word (“electricity”) for both creates endless confusion.
3.4 Where Does the Energy Actually Go?
Energy doesn’t flow through your appliances. It flows into them.
The field carries energy from the power station to your home. At the light bulb, the pressure wave does work on the electrons (oscillons) passing through the filament. The directed pressure is converted into heat and light. The electrons continue around the loop — they’re not consumed. The pressure is what’s used up.
Your power bill measures how much pressure-wave energy you converted into heat, light, and motion. The electrons are just the medium through which that conversion happens.
4. Electrostatic Pressure and Matter
4.1 The Inverse Relationship
Here’s an observation that standard physics acknowledges but doesn’t explain:
The atmospheric voltage gradient shows approximately 100-120 V/m at sea level, increasing with altitude to a total potential difference of 250,000-400,000 volts between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere.
As you move away from concentrated matter (Earth), the electrostatic pressure increases. Why?
Because matter displaces field energy.
Where matter concentrates, it has “borrowed” energy from the ambient field to bind itself into stable patterns. The local field pressure drops. Where matter is absent, the field returns to its natural, higher-energy state.
This is directly observable. It’s not theory — it’s measurement.
4.2 The Vacuum Capacitor Experiment
Standard theory says a vacuum should be a perfect insulator. There are no particles to carry charge. Yet experiment shows the opposite:
In my tests, a vacuum chamber filled with electrostatic pressure from a charged plate exhibited remarkable behaviour:
- The charge distributed immediately and evenly throughout the chamber
- A self-organising magnetic field formed around the chamber
- The charge persisted for days after the source was disconnected
Rather than acting as an insulator, the vacuum acted as a perfect conductor. Empty space isn’t empty. It’s a field that stores and distributes energy.
(Note: Alternative explanations exist — dielectric absorption in chamber walls could contribute. Rigorous replication with controlled materials would distinguish between possibilities. The observation stands regardless of final mechanism.)
4.3 Why Both Polarities Appear on One Object
Using a coulomb meter on a “single polarity” charged object reveals something conventional theory cannot explain: both positive and negative readings at opposite ends of the same object.
If charge were merely electrons moving from one object to another, this would be impossible. An object with excess electrons should read negative everywhere.
But if charge is a flow pattern in the field — a current, not a substance — then it necessarily has directionality. The charge flows through the object, entering at one end and exiting at the other. This is field behaviour, not particle transfer.
4.4 The Triboelectric Effect
Quickly pull two plastic sheets apart and both become charged — and both repel each other.
Standard theory says one should be positive (lost electrons) and one negative (gained electrons). They should attract. Yet they repel.
This framework explains it simply: The rapid separation creates a momentary low-pressure zone (like pulling a suction cup off a window). The field rushes in to equalise. Both sheets are charged by the same pressure transient — not by exchanging particles with each other.
The air itself is violently expelled, the same way a charged ball is flung from a Van de Graaff generator.
5. Attraction and Repulsion: The Bjerknes Mechanism
5.1 How Like Charges Repel
In 1906, physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes discovered something remarkable: two spheres pulsating in a fluid exert forces on each other. The mechanism is pure hydrodynamics — no mysterious “charge” required.
When Sphere A pulsates, it creates pressure waves. These waves reach Sphere B, which is also pulsating. Depending on their phase relationship:
- In phase (pulsing together): They attract
- Out of phase (pulsing oppositely): They repel
The force follows an inverse-square law — exactly like Coulomb’s Law for electric charges. This isn’t coincidence. It’s the same phenomenon.
5.2 What “Positive” and “Negative” Actually Mean
In the energy-field framework, electric charge is not a substance. It’s a phase relationship.
All matter oscillates (that’s what standing waves do). “Positive” and “negative” describe whether two oscillons are pulsating in sync or out of sync with each other, relative to the background field.
- Same phase → repel (like charges repel)
- Opposite phase → attract (unlike charges attract)
This explains why positive and negative charges have exactly equal magnitude. They’re not different substances — they’re the same structure in opposite phase relationship to the field.
5.3 Why Charge is Quantised
Why can’t you have half an electron’s charge? Standard physics has no answer.
In the energy-field framework, it’s geometric necessity.
A standing wave that sustains itself must close on itself — the phase must match up after going around the loop. This is only possible for integer multiples of the wavelength. You can’t have 1.5 windings in a vortex. You can’t have half a knot.
Charge is quantised because topology is quantised. It’s geometry, not magic.
6. Gravity as Field Gradient
6.1 The Same Phenomenon, Different Measurement
High atmospheric pressure = low electrostatic pressure. High electrostatic pressure = low matter density.
This is not coincidence. It’s the same gradient measured two ways.
Gravity measures the slope inward — toward where energy is concentrated (matter). Voltage measures the slope outward — toward where the field returns to its natural state.
If matter is condensed energy — stable patterns that have withdrawn energy from the ambient field — then where matter exists, the field is depleted. The voltage gradient isn’t something being added as you go up; it’s the field returning to normal as you move away from the energy sink that matter represents.
6.2 Why Gravity is So Weak
Physics calls this the “hierarchy problem”: why is gravity 10³⁶ times weaker than electromagnetism?
The framework answers simply:
Electromagnetism operates at the scale of the oscillon itself — electron shells, atomic bonds. The coupling is direct and strong.
Gravity is the residual pressure gradient from matter displacing the ambient field. Since matter represents an infinitesimally small perturbation of the field’s total energy, the gradient is correspondingly tiny.
Imagine a cup of water removed from an ocean. The “gravity” of that cup is the slope of the ocean surface caused by its absence. It’s real, but it’s a perturbation, not a fundamental force.
6.3 Why Vacuum Chambers Don’t Float
If gravity is field displacement, why doesn’t a vacuum chamber float?
With air inside: The matter (gas molecules) has borrowed energy from the field. The pressure outside is higher than inside.
With vacuum inside: You’ve removed the matter, so the field rushes back in to fill the deficit. The “empty” space inside now has the same field energy as outside. There’s no differential.
The vacuum doesn’t float because there’s no energy imbalance to act on. To create buoyancy, you would need to maintain an actual energy deficit — prevent the field from equalising, not just remove matter.
7. Lightning: Equilibrium Restoration
7.1 The Standard Theory’s Problem
Conventional theory says lightning requires ice crystals colliding in clouds, separating charge through friction. But lightning occurs in “warm clouds” — tropical systems where cloud tops are warmer than 0°C. No ice exists. The standard mechanism cannot function.
7.2 The Pressure Explanation
Thunderstorms are low-pressure systems. This is directly observable — air rushes inward, clouds build rapidly.
When atmospheric pressure drops suddenly, the corresponding electrostatic pressure spikes (the inverse relationship). The field energy that was displaced by the now-absent matter surges back.
When rain begins, it creates a conductive path. Lightning is the discharge — the system restoring equilibrium.
Lightning doesn’t generate the global electrical circuit. It corrects disturbances in an already-stable system.
7.3 Supporting Evidence
Studies of tropical cyclones show strong correlation between rapid pressure deepening and bursts of lightning activity. The pressure-drop explanation requires no ice: rapid pressure drop → lower matter density → increased field pressure → discharge.
This is testable. Compare lightning timing to pressure transients (dP/dt) rather than ice content. If pressure changes predict lightning better than ice signatures — especially in warm clouds — the mechanism is confirmed.
8. The Speed of Light
8.1 Not a Geometric Constant
Standard physics treats the speed of light as a fundamental constant of geometry — the universe’s speed limit, built into spacetime itself.
The energy-field framework offers a different view: c is the speed of sound in the field.
Just as sound travels at a specific speed through air (determined by air’s density and compressibility), light travels at a specific speed through the energy field. The speed depends on the medium’s properties.
This is why light slows down in glass or water — the medium’s properties change. In “empty” space, c represents the acoustic limit of the vacuum field itself.
8.2 Variable Speed of Light
If c depends on field properties, then c might vary under extreme conditions.
Near massive objects (where the field is stressed by matter displacement), c might differ from its value in empty space. In the early universe (higher energy density), c might have been different.
This could solve the “horizon problem” in cosmology — why regions of the universe that have never been in causal contact have the same temperature. If c was higher in early epochs, information could have propagated further, establishing equilibrium across regions now separated by cosmic distances.
9. Why “Empty Space” Isn’t
9.1 The Zero-Point Field
Even at absolute zero temperature, with all matter removed, space contains measurable energy. This “zero-point energy” is not theoretical — it’s confirmed by the Casimir effect (an attractive force between conducting plates) verified experimentally in 1997.
“Empty” vacuum buzzes with electromagnetic fluctuations. Space is not nothing. It’s a field with intrinsic energy — the ocean in which all matter forms and through which all forces propagate.
9.2 The Vacuum Catastrophe
Quantum Field Theory predicts the vacuum energy density should be approximately 10¹¹³ joules per cubic metre. Astronomical observations show it’s approximately 10⁻⁹ joules per cubic metre. This 120-order-of-magnitude discrepancy is called the “vacuum catastrophe” — the worst prediction in the history of physics.
The energy-field framework resolves this through equilibrium thermodynamics. The immense microscopic energy exists, but it’s in equilibrium — like pressure in a deep ocean that doesn’t crush a submarine because it’s equalised inside and out. The field has enormous energy but zero net pressure because the system is balanced.
Gravity isn’t generated by absolute energy. It’s generated by perturbations from equilibrium — by matter disturbing the balance.
10. What This Means
10.1 A Unified Picture
For a century, physics has treated electricity, magnetism, and gravity as separate phenomena requiring separate explanations. The energy-field framework reveals them as aspects of a single reality:
- Space is an ocean of energy
- Matter is that energy bound into stable standing waves (oscillons)
- Electric fields are pressure gradients in the ocean
- Magnetic fields are rotation (vorticity) in the ocean
- Gravity is the slope toward where energy has been concentrated into matter
- Light is sound — pressure waves propagating through the ocean
- Charge is phase relationship — oscillons pulsing in or out of sync
We’ve been measuring the same thing from different angles and calling it by different names.
10.2 Testable Predictions
This isn’t just philosophy. The framework makes predictions distinct from standard theory:
| Prediction | Test Method | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Lightning correlates with pressure changes more than ice content | Compare dP/dt sensors to ice radar | Months |
| Static charge depends on separation rate, not just humidity | Controlled separation experiments | Weeks |
| Voltage potential in vacuum chambers equalises with standard materials | Measure internal vs external voltage | Months |
| “Warm lightning” (no ice) follows pressure transients | Analyse tropical storm data | Exists now |
10.3 Technologies Beyond Current Reach
If gravity and electrostatic pressure are inverse expressions of the same field gradient, then manipulating one should affect the other.
Current technology can manipulate electromagnetic fields easily. If those fields are fundamentally connected to gravitational gradients, then gravity modification may not require exotic physics — just a deeper understanding of what we’re already working with.
Not by fighting gravity. By understanding what gravity actually is.
11. Conclusion
The conventional model of electricity — positive and negative particles hopping between objects — explains observations adequately but provides no mechanism. It’s description, not understanding.
This framework proposes that what we call “electricity” and what we call “gravity” are inverse expressions of the same underlying reality: an ocean of energy that fills all space, from which matter condenses as stable patterns, and through which all forces propagate as waves and gradients.
The evidence surrounds us:
- The atmospheric voltage gradient (field returning to its natural state away from matter)
- The behaviour of charge in vacuum (field, not particles)
- Lightning in warm clouds (pressure-driven, not ice-driven)
- The quantisation of charge (topological necessity)
- The exact equality of positive and negative charge magnitudes (same structure, opposite phase)
The ocean is real. The waves are real. Matter is the ocean, locally bound. And we’ve been standing on the shore, measuring ripples, without realising we were looking at the same water the whole time.
Appendix: Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Oscillon | A stable standing wave — energy bound into a self-sustaining pattern. What we call “particles.” |
| Field pressure | The energy state of the ambient field. What we measure as voltage. |
| Vorticity | Rotation in the field. What we measure as magnetic field. |
| Phase | The timing of an oscillon’s pulsation relative to others. Determines attraction or repulsion. |
| Equilibrium | The balanced state of the field. Disturbances (matter) create gradients that appear as forces. |
| Zero-Point Field | The electromagnetic background of the vacuum — not empty, but filled with fluctuating energy. |
Further Reading
For the rigorous mathematical framework underlying these ideas:
- Volovik, G.E. — The Universe in a Helium Droplet (Oxford University Press, 2003)
- Haisch, B., Rueda, A., Puthoff, H.E. — “Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force” (Physical Review A, 1994)
- Harrison, R. — Harrison’s Theorem of Anti-gravity (Zenodo, 2026)
- Harrison, R. — Hydrodynamic Quantum Gravity: Theoretical Foundations (Zenodo, 2026)
- Harrison, R. — Hydrodynamic Electromagnetism: Maxwell’s Equations in the Superfluid Vacuum (Zenodo, 2026)
The ocean has always been here. We just forgot to look at the water.