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Re: "if you want to take on mainstream cosmology, then create a consistent and testable hypothesis, and publish it."

The hypothesis that we can use observations of electric discharges in plasma laboratories to inform inferences about what we are seeing in space has proven to be wildly successful at predicting the features of space. There is a very long history of successes which are generally not taught to American graduate students; IEEE, the world's largest technical organization, publishes a journal which runs science papers on this topic (IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science); the U.S. government has employed one of the world's most authoritative experts in electrical cosmology - Anthony Peratt - to run some of its most expensive classified experiments. Peratt is the intellectual descendant of Hannes Alfven, who received the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his creation of magnetohydrodynamics. There can be little doubt that Alfven's work has been put to great use in a variety of U.S. military applications. Kristian Birkeland, e.g., actually invented the electromagnetic rail gun.

But you'd not realize any of this by listening to Big Bang proponents. Let's review the history they like to ignore, and take a closer look at the misleading ways that they prefer to tell the story.

Despite a half-century of resistance led by the Royal Astronomical Society, Kristian Birkeland's theory that the aurora is caused by the Sun is now the accepted theory. So, what were the types of reasons proposed for why we should reject Birkeland's hypothesis?

"After Kristian Birkeland [1] (1867-1917) suggested in 1908 that Earth’s auroras were powered by corpuscular rays emanating from the Sun that become deflected into Earth’s polar regions by the geomagnetic field, the existence of such magnetic field-aligned currents was strongly disputed based partially on the idea that currents could not cross the presumed 'vacuum' of space."

Birkeland became the world's first laboratory astrophysicist when he constructed his terrella - a "mini-Earth" - in order to help formulate his model. Birkeland's success would prove to be a major loss for the Royal Society, and as Ian Tresman documents, it took many years for mainstream astrophysicists to finally acknowledge that Birkeland was right: [pay close attention to the parts they leave out!]

"The history of Birekland Currents appears to mired in politics.[17]

After Kristian Birkeland suggested 'currents there are imagined as having come into existence mainly as a secondary effect of the electric corpuscles from the sun drawn in out of space,' (1908), his ideas were generally ignored in favour of an alternative theory from British mathematician Sydney Chapman.

In 1939, the Swedish Engineer and plasma physicist Hannes Alfvén promoted Birkeland's ideas in a paper published on the generation of the current from the Solar Wind.[18] One of Alfvén's colleagues, Rolf Boström, also used field-aligned currents in a new model of auroral electrojets (1964).[19]

In 1966 Alfred Zmuda, J.H. Martin, and F.T.Heuring reported their findings of magnetic disturbance in the aurora, using a satellite magnetometer, but did not mention Alfvén, Birkeland, or field-aligned currents, even after it was brought to their attention by editor of the space physics section of the journal, Alex Dressler.[20] [this part is not mentioned in the wikipedia article]

In 1967 Alex Dessler and one of his graduates students, David Cummings, wrote an article arguing that Zmuda et al had indeed detected field align-currents.[21] Even Alfvén subsequently credited (1986) that Dessler 'discovered the currents that Birkeland had predicted' and should be called Birkeland-Dessler currents.[22]

In 1969 Mi

Re: "I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe."

Let's review the situation then:

NASA: Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere

Plasma often behaves like a gas, except that it conducts electricity and is affected by magnetic fields. On an astronomical scale, plasma is common. The Sun is composed of plasma, fire is plasma, fluorescent and neon lights contain plasma.

"99.9 percent of the Universe is made up of plasma," says Dr. Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Very little material in space is made of rock like the Earth."

Such acknowledgements are common enough that we can list out all of the references.

Big Bang proponents have left the mistaken impression that the only way to explain microwaves coming at us from all directions - the "cosmic microwave background" - is with a Big Bang. In fact, this is totally incorrect:

"High-power microwave generation on earth belongs exclusively to devices using relativistic electron beams ... A relativistic electron beam that does not produce microwave radiation is unknown. These same basic mechanisms are likely to have their natural analogs in cosmic plasmas."

Then there is the problem with the CMB temperature predictions:

[Eric Lerner] First of all, the temperature of the microwave background - basically the amount of energy - was not what the Big Bang supporters had predicted. They had predicted a much higher temperature.

[Anthony Peratt] So, it was 50 degrees Kelvin that was being compared against the 2-5 degrees Kelvin from the steady state universe. This may not sound like much, but energy density - where we measure the absolute differences - the difference is four orders of magnitude: 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 difference. So, there is an enormous difference between 50 degrees Kelvin - a rather poor indicator of what is happening in the universe - and 3 degrees Kelvin.

A universe dominated by plasmas must be a filamentary universe. This claim was originally stated by Hannes Alfven in 1963 in a text titled "Cosmical Electrodynamics". He is referring here to cosmic plasmas:

"medium-density plasma (and perhaps also low-density plasmas) seem very often to be strongly inhomogeneous, exhibiting a filamentary structure which often may be parallel to the magnetic field."

Peratt noted:

"The suggestion that the universe be filamentary and cellular was generally disregarded until the 1980s, when a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the Galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scale."

Alfven predicted it, and anybody who has taken the time to learn the plasma-based model can see that without lots of filamentation at interstellar and intergalactic scales, there can be no plasma universe. That's because plasmas tend to form into filaments when they are conducting electric currents.

Like many of Alfven's successful predictions, it was ignored:

"According to some scientists and philosophers of science, a theory is or should be judged by its ability to ma

Re: "The part that annoys me most about the whole Electric Universe thing is that nowadays you basically can't talk about electromagetism in astrophysics at all."

Astrophysicists' problems with magnetic fields did not begin with the Electric Universe; they began with the former mistaken assumption that the space between stars is basically empty. That unfortunate assumption guided the creation of scientific theories in the space sciences up until the first instrumented rockets definitively demonstrated that space is not actually empty. To this day, the most popular theories in the space sciences remain rooted in a pre-Space Age set of assumptions. The situation was properly stated in a 1963 Popular Science interview with James van Allen:

"'Space' was invented on Earth before we knew what was out there"

Once rockets were finally sent into space - in 1958 - the mistake was immediately realized because those rockets returned to the ground radioactive. Once it was realized that the space between planets and stars is permeated by an ionized medium, the introductions of many graduate-level textbooks were updated with explicit mention of the importance of the plasma state:

"Today it is recognized that 99.999% of all observable matter in the universe is in the plasma state..."[4]

"It is estimated that as much as 99.9% of the universe is comprised of plasma."[5]

"..the plasma state is the most abundant state of matter. It is thought that more than 99.9% of matter in the universe is in plasma"[6]

"plasmas are abundant in the universe. More than 99% of all known matter is in the plasma state"[7]

"It is an interesting fact that most of the material in the visible universe, as much as 99% according to some estimates, is in the plasma state"[8]

"Probably more than 99 percent of visible matter in the universe exist in the plasma state."[9]

"It is estimated that more than 99 percent of matter in the universe exists as plasma; examples include stars, nebulae, and interstellar particles"[10]

"It is sometimes said that more than 99 percent of the material in the universe is in the form of plasma"[11]

"about 99% of matter in the universe is plasma"[12]

"99.9 percent of the Universe is made up of plasma," says Dr. Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center" [13]

"How was it determined that 99% of the Universe is in a plasma state? Most of the gas in interstellar space is ionized (astronomers can tell by the wavelengths of light the gas absorbs and emits), and all of the gas in stars in ionized, that's where the 99% comes from. The 99% ignores any dark matter which might be out there."[14]

"It has often been said that 99% of the matter in the universe is in the plasma state.[15]

"And yet these radio-frequency links must survive the complexities of the plasma which comprises well over 99.9 percent of the universe".[16]

"This fourth state of matter probably comprises more than 99.9 per cent of the matter in our Universe."[17]

(sources are available at here.)

What is not widely recognized is that, based on observations of the ionosphere, a gas can start to behave as a plasma with less than 1% ionization.

To give an explicit example for how the empty vacuum of space mistake has shaped the direction

Setting aside the fact that the existence of mathematics does not somehow make it correct, it is absolutely misleading to assert that there is no mathematics associated with either electrical cosmology (for example here) or the Electric Universe (for example here). In fact, understanding both require a deep appreciation for the Lorentz Force and Maxwell's Equations. Mathematics has been a part of electrical cosmology from its inception (for example here).

Math is crucial for understanding the critical ionization velocity effect; it has been used to show how Marklund convection can replace gravitational accretion as a system for forming stars (and unlike the idea of stars accreting gravitationally, the geometry matches observations of actual stars forming all at once in a burst). Don Scott could not have accurately predicted the structure of AGN jets without significant amounts of mathematics. He's a retired EE professor, so he has spent his life immersed in these mathematics which you claim the EU does not include.

Attempts to model space without electrodynamic plasma physics concepts are destined to fail. We know this because it's already been tried, and the approach has failed to explain the nature of the many cosmic plasma structures we observe.

Think about it this way: What is the first plasma we encounter as we leave the Earth? It's the ionosphere. You may not know a whole lot about the ionosphere, but if you've been paying attention at all, you will at least understand that it is layered. You might spend some time thinking about why that is. Why should differing concentrations of charge exist in layers at all? Why not just a smooth gradient of charge that tapers off as one leaves Earth? Why should differing, adjacent regions of charge not neutralize one another?

The math here explains why.

"As neither double layer nor circuit can be derived from magnetofluid models of a plasma, such models are useless for treating energy transfer by means of double layers. They must be replaced by particle models and circuit theory.

A simple circuit is suggested which is applied to the energizing of auroral particles, to solar flares, and to intergalactic double radio sources ... Double layers in space should be classified as a new type of celestial object." ("Double Layers and Circuits in Astrophysics", Hannes Alfven, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Dec 1986)

In a 1992 paper titled, "Double Layers Do Accelerate Particles in the Auroral Zone," the authors plainly state:

"the direct observational evidence for substantial (multi-kV) electrostatic potential structures in the auroral zone is plentiful [16-27].

The Earth's auroral zone is far from being fully understood, but observations clearly show that electrostatic-potential structures (called double layers or electrostatic shocks) reside in the auroral magnetosphere."

Observations of laboratory plasmas have shown that double layers are what lend plasmas their structure. When you see a plasma filament in a novelty plasma globe, you should be asking: Why is charge confined to this thin filament? Laboratory plasma physicists point to the double layer as the source of this structure.

You should also be asking these same types of questions about the Van Allen Radiation belts: How can it be that these belts have all of this

Re: "To answer the is it even worth considering question, though- of course it is. And it has been, at great lengths. And plasma physics play a huge role in even standard cosmology. They just don't play a huge role in large-scale cosmology."

Let me give you a very simple example which I hope you will recognize as an earnest attempt to demonstrate how difficult it is to judge vindications when we are not actively tracking scientific controversies.

Today, for the first time, I noticed that a couple of galaxy artists were suddenly drawing the Milky Way's galactic bulge as a pair, as if a memo went out (which I missed). I had never before noticed this, but having learned about Anthony Peratt's galactic simulation as a pair of rotating Birkeland currents, I immediately tuned into this pattern.

To somebody who has not paid any attention to Peratt's simulation, the explanation offered in a July 2016 article would seem good enough to assume the issue is basically settled:

Many disc galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have a central bulge that resembles either a box or an unshelled peanut. This bulge may form when the circular orbits of stars become elongated, creating a “bar” of stars that runs through the centre and tilts out of the disc’s plane. The combined effect makes the once-flat galaxy look like it has buckled under enormous pressure.

But, hold on just a second. This is a completely ad hoc explanation. Although I have no doubt that somebody somewhere can generate a tweak to the original galactic models -- perhaps involving dark matter -- which can explain with actual numbers why this may occur in the conventional model, the fact of the matter is that this is a completely expected feature when you are modeling a galaxy as an interaction of two Birkeland currents. -- and the choice to refuse to systematically track the Electric Universe controversy has left everybody failing to recognize that this actually vindicates the against-the-mainstream claim.

You think that's just a coincidence? Okay, let's go back a few days to the release of these new pictures from the Juno spacecraft of one of Jupiter's poles in infrared. The article states:

Jupiter’s poles are a stark contrast to the more familiar orange and white belts and zones encircling the planet at lower latitudes. Its north pole is dominated by a central cyclone surrounded by eight circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers) across. Jupiter’s south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter. Almost all the polar cyclones, at both poles, are so densely packed that their spiral arms come in contact with adjacent cyclones. However, as tightly spaced as the cyclones are, they have remained distinct, with individual morphologies over the seven months of observations detailed in the paper.

“The question is, why do they not merge?” said Adriani. “We know with Cassini data that Saturn has a single cyclonic vortex at each pole. We are beginning to realize that not all gas giants are created equal.”

Once again, I sprung into action because I have tracked Peratt's work sufficient to understand the inherent geometry of electricity over plasma. In his efforts to explain petroglyphs as z-pinch instab

Re: "Ok explain to me how the electric universe works on materials that are not magnetic. Gravity works on everything that has mass. Take me same physics problem and explain how it works on non ionized carbon."

You seem to be asking how electric forces at the largest scales can influence the structure of the universe, even when we are talking about neutral matter.

If you've played with an electrostatic lifter, then you basically already know the answer to this question: The air in the atmosphere is of course an insulator, yet the application of an electric field induces a movement of this neutral air such that it can temporarily raise the lifter.

So, what is going on there? What appears to be happening is that the movement of the charged particles is exerting a drag upon the neutrals. In the plasma laboratory, you may see this mentioned as an "ion sump" or part of a larger process known as "Marklund convection". There would seem to be little discussion of this phenomenon in astrophysics circles, yet notice this observation from Herschel:

the material along filaments is not at all static: astronomers have detected what appear to be accretion flows, with the most prominent filaments drawing matter from their surroundings through a network of smaller filaments.

At the point where we are talking about a complex field of accretions along filaments, it's important to realize that we have really strayed rather far from the original idea of gravitational accretion, as it was portrayed within the textbooks; and people need to be cognizant of the tendency to push parameters in simulations towards unrealistic numbers, in order to replicate these observations with gravity.

It's worth noting, further, that plasma is widely acknowledged as the most common state for matter. It's important to never forget this even as you observe radio astronomers discussing neutral HI filaments. The instruments detect the neutral matter, but this should not be confused as meaning that this region is dominated -- either in terms of its forces or by the percentage of matter present -- by neutral matter. The Marklund convection process can easily explain why the cores of these electrodynamic plasma filaments should be neutral, and it is arguably a better fit for the morphology of these accretion fields revealed by the Herschel observations.

Re: "Where are the mathematical models?"

An excellent place to learn about the numerous scientific papers which relate to this subject is at Ian Tresman's site here.

However, learning the subject in this manner could be slightly confusing, as it can be difficult for people to learn new frameworks. Our tendency is to view the world through the lens of the theories we know. So, other sites have been constructed to help with this difficult process of switching frameworks. There are three sites which have been created for this purpose of facilitating the transition: here, here and here.

There have also been a couple of essential books published on these subjects: The Electric Sky offers a technical discussion for laypeople, whereas Anthony Peratt's Physics of the Plasma Universe can be used to understand some of the more technical details at a specialist science level. That said, it is also important to read Halton Arp's published work.

A couple of very good documentaries have also been created to try to convey these ideas -- like here and here.

Many of us who follow these matters also keep personal libraries of papers which relate to these subjects. These libraries involve literally thousands of scientific papers, but they are typically hidden behind paywalls. So, whatever point you think you are making, it would seem that what is really happening is that you've failed to even identify the sources where these models are discussed.

The reality of the situation is that you did not make it to first base, but this did not stop you from going online to criticize these ideas which you did not learn about.

Dear Slashdot Community,

Some 11 years ago, I watched a curious thing happen in the comments of a Slashdot article, and it would forever change my life. I watched on as members of the tech community labeled as pseudoscience the simple idea that electricity can travel through space over plasma (and actually do stuff of importance at the largest observable scales). Since that day, I have systematically tracked this electricity in space debate, and I have come to view the reporting on this topic as the greatest science journalism failure of our time.

To review, a plasma is just a gas with some percentage of unbound charged particles. We call it plasma, rather than gas, because it observably behaves differently. With less than even just 1% ionization, the ionospheric gas is observed to respond to electromagnetic fields. In the laboratory, plasmas can form into very complex structures like filaments. These filaments exhibit a long-range attraction and short-range repulsion with one another, which causes them to pair up without combining. Careful inspection of a novelty plasma globe will reveal that the filaments will tend to separate when they come into contact with the glass. The filaments can also link up with one another into very complex networks. All of this complexity is rather remarkable given that we are just talking about the "fourth" state of matter.

Now, let's review the current state of this electricity in space debate as it should be reported by science journalists.

1. It is not widely known, but definitely a fact that proper galactic rotation curves were simulated in the early 80's on government supercomputers by one of the world's leading plasma physicists, without the need for any dark matter. The reason that the arms appear to rotate as almost fixed plates, in this view, is that they are conducting electrical currents.

Galactic expert, Tim Thompson, has claimed that Peratt's decision to publish in IEEE was an attempt to avoid scrutiny. He admitted that no galactic researcher has ever read IEEE and they wouldn't know that the journal even exists (it's the largest technical organization in the world); and Thompson even went so far as to advise that galactic researchers intentionally avoid reading IEEE. You can see an annotated snapshot of his online forum post here.

2. We have been left with the impression that the CMB can only be explained as a remnant of the Big Bang expansion. This is simply not true:

"High-power microwave generation on earth belongs exclusively to devices using relativistic electron beams ... A relativistic electron beam that does not produce microwave radiation is unknown. These same basic mechanisms are likely to have their natural analogs in cosmic plasmas."

That quote comes from one of the world's leading plasma physicists, Anthony L. Peratt (Physics of the Plasma Universe, Second Edition, 2015, p.33-34.) Peratt would go on to publish a paper revealing more than a hundred local hydrogen filament structures which he claimed correlate with structures in the WMAP cosmic microwave background.

It would seem that people are not yet connecting the dots here between these recent admissions by astrophysicists that large-scale electric currents are real, and this faint microwave fog that is apparently coming at us from all directions. There is, without a doubt, more than one way to explain this cosmic microwave background; but you'd never know this from the science

I'm probably butchering this but. They think the sun is a result of a massive voltage potential and it's power is controlled from the outside by electrostatics. This could make the radioactive decay not controlled by the sun but both controlled by the electrostatic field. http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac http://www.plasma-universe.com/Plasma-Universe.com

He had claimed that he could reach Mach 2, and send a two ton projectile 90-miles, see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9906E0DF1330E733A2575BC0A9639C946397D6CF

A little more on Birkeland's electromagnetic cannon can be found here: http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Kristian_Birkeland#Electromagnetic_cannon

Though I don't have a copy of either in front of me at the moment, I believe this topic is covered in either The Electric Sky by Don Scott or The Electric Universe by Wal Thornhill and Dave Talbott. You might want to pick up a copy. Other interesting reads include Lerner's The Big Bang Never Happened, and Arp's Seeing Red. Though they're on slightly different topics.

My understanding is that there is a drift of electrons toward the sun. Yes, a drift. It doesn't take much. Electrical motion is often a very slow process (especially in "dark" currents; IE, currents not in "glow" or "arc" mode) on the order of a few centimeters per hour?

But, in the meanwhile, here are some links to a few abstracts / articles that deal with various bodies as unipolar inductors.

From links found at Plasma-Universe.com:

(Cosmic electric currents and the generalized Bennett relation)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988Ap%26SS.144...73C

(Unipolar Induction of a Magnetized Accretion Disk around a Black Hole)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AstL...29..153S

(A force - free field theory of solar flares I. Unipolar sunspots)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981ChA%26A...5...77Y

(Electric current in a unipolar sunspot with an untwisted field)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1990GeoRL..17.2273O

(Sheath-limited unipolar induction in the solar wind)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975Ap%26SS..36..177S

(Establishment of a Lunar Unipolar Generator and Associated Shock and Wake by the Solar Wind)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1967Natur.216..340S

(Unipolar Induction in the Moon and a Lunar Limb Shock Mechanism)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1969Moon....1....7S

(The Earth as a unipolar generator)
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0022-3727/11/5/020

(Io, a jovian unipolar inductor)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1969ApJ...156...59G


I might also point out a great repository of peer-reviewed papers on various subjects related to plasma cosmology:

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/papers.html

Plasma Physics from Laboratory to Cosmos--The Life and Achievements of Hannes Alfvén
Cosmology in the Plasma Universe: An Introductory Exposition
Introduction to Plasma Astrophysics and Cosmology
Birkeland and the Electromagnetic Cosmology
The Evidence For Electrical Currents in Cosmic Plasma
The Role of Particle Be

"So to sum up your entire post for those that come after me, you are saying "electric universe rules"." -Kagura

No, I think that what he's saying is something to the effect that this shouldn't be news to anybody, but the fact that it is happens to be disheartening.

Specifically, Kristian Birkeland predicted this in his book Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition (section 2, I believe).

Specifically, if one references the images contained in the book, things become clear quite quickly:
Chapter VI: On Possible Electric Phenomena in Solar Systems and Nebulae

Take, for instance, an extreme case of his terella in operation:
Figure 259

How do you like them "flux ropes?"

This image hows the terella operating in a mode that exposes the electrical currents for what they are. In this shot, the currents are in "arc mode" (akin to sparks or lightning). Whereas the auroras around Earth are akin to a "glow mode" discharge. Birkeland currents in interplanetary space are a "dark mode" discharge (IE, not glowing, but still slowly transferring electric charges in a "dark" current, much like an electrical wire, but in this case a plasma filament). Look it up. Standard plasma physics.

In essence, the solar system can be likened to a virtual "plasma globe." In the "plasma globe" model of the solar system, the sun is the central electrode. The planets are akin to people pressing their fingers to the outer glass because it's cool to watch the filaments connect to the spot you touch. The "magnetic flux ropes" are akin to the plasma filaments connecting the central electrode to the outer glass where fingers touch. The "magnetic flux ropes" are a byproduct of the electrical current (flow of charged particles) connecting the sun to the Earth.

Here's a colorized version of a plasma globe I made for reference:
Plasma globe "sun"

So, yeah, it's something like that.

I really wish it would let me put images in this thing. Ohh well, I said it better over on BAUT anyway (assuming they don't immediately MOD it out of existence, for being presumptuous enough to mention astronomers' apparent blindspot regarding electricity in space).

Did I forget to mention NASA's own rather candid admission that there's an electrical link between the sun and the Earth? "Flux rope" pumps 650,000 Amp current into the arctic! (30 kV battery in space) (Noted on this page: Multimedia for the Press Event for THEMIS.)

In all, what Pln2bz says is quite sage, and I suggest that we listen to him... Rather carefully. He may not be quite as "insane" as some think. It's quite necessary to review the argument based on its merits, and see where it leads. Might just turn science on its ear.

After all, we've just re-learned that Birkeland currents power the magnetosphere. This was confirmed in t he 60s / 70s when we started shooting satellites into space, and it was predicted in the 1900s (appx 1902-1903 was when Birkeland went north; 1908 was when he published Norewgian Aurora Polaris Expedition, to great acclaim pretty much everywhere, except England and America, where an electrically neutral/sterile cosmology had already taken hold, unfortunately, setting us back a

"So to sum up your entire post for those that come after me, you are saying "electric universe rules"." -Kagura

No, I think that what he's saying is something to the effect that this shouldn't be news to anybody, but the fact that it is happens to be disheartening.

Specifically, Kristian Birkeland predicted this in his book Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition (section 2, I believe).

Specifically, if one references the images contained in the book, things become clear quite quickly:
Chapter VI: On Possible Electric Phenomena in Solar Systems and Nebulae

Take, for instance, an extreme case of his terella in operation:
Figure 259

How do you like them "flux ropes?"

This image hows the terella operating in a mode that exposes the electrical currents for what they are. In this shot, the currents are in "arc mode" (akin to sparks or lightning). Whereas the auroras around Earth are akin to a "glow mode" discharge. Birkeland currents in interplanetary space are a "dark mode" discharge (IE, not glowing, but still slowly transferring electric charges in a "dark" current, much like an electrical wire, but in this case a plasma filament). Look it up. Standard plasma physics.

In essence, the solar system can be likened to a virtual "plasma globe." In the "plasma globe" model of the solar system, the sun is the central electrode. The planets are akin to people pressing their fingers to the outer glass because it's cool to watch the filaments connect to the spot you touch. The "magnetic flux ropes" are akin to the plasma filaments connecting the central electrode to the outer glass where fingers touch. The "magnetic flux ropes" are a byproduct of the electrical current (flow of charged particles) connecting the sun to the Earth.

Here's a colorized version of a plasma globe I made for reference:
Plasma globe "sun"

So, yeah, it's something like that.

I really wish it would let me put images in this thing. Ohh well, I said it better over on BAUT anyway (assuming they don't immediately MOD it out of existence, for being presumptuous enough to mention astronomers' apparent blindspot regarding electricity in space).

Did I forget to mention NASA's own rather candid admission that there's an electrical link between the sun and the Earth? "Flux rope" pumps 650,000 Amp current into the arctic! (30 kV battery in space) (Noted on this page: Multimedia for the Press Event for THEMIS.)

In all, what Pln2bz says is quite sage, and I suggest that we listen to him... Rather carefully. He may not be quite as "insane" as some think. It's quite necessary to review the argument based on its merits, and see where it leads. Might just turn science on its ear.

After all, we've just re-learned that Birkeland currents power the magnetosphere. This was confirmed in t he 60s / 70s when we started shooting satellites into space, and it was predicted in the 1900s (appx 1902-1903 was when Birkeland went north; 1908 was when he published Norewgian Aurora Polaris Expedition, to great acclaim pretty much everywhere, except England and America, where an electrically neutral/sterile cosmology had already taken hold, unfortunately, setting us back a

man, you are good at baiting (no offense, please :-) but where does electric astrophysical theory create a better (aka: better predictability) GUT than the standard model and Einsteinian relativity coupled into string theory? This is what you are getting at, yes?

Me need links and math. I'm a sucker for new ideas.

There are some good resources available with papers here:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Plasma_Universe_resources

I would point out that although Don Scott (who wrote The Electric Sky) and perhaps some others are not big fans of Relativity, others don't believe that Relativity precludes the existence of an aether. I believe that all of the EU Theorists believe in an aether and there is detailed work underway to understand David Thomson's Aether Physics Model well enough to integrate it into EU Theory (if it is possible). The thing is, Thomson was able to create a physical model for his aether that successfully predicts the electron binding energies associated with *every* single element of the periodic table. It was thought that one of his values was off, actually, but they went back and apparently found support elsewhere for the value that his model predicted. David Thomson does not discount Relativity. Wallace Thornhill, who successfully predicted all of the results of the Deep Impact mission -- including the existence of a pre-impact flash -- has stated that he believes that gravity waves in fact travel exceptionally faster than we can currently measure -- on the order of here to the opposite end of Andromeda in one second. He argues that if he is right that the Relativity equations simplify to absolute time. I'm still filling in the blanks on all of the details. There's so much to learn that it's rather overwhelming sometimes, but when you find a situation like the current one where the mainstream theory may not in fact be correct and this ridiculed theory has lots of validity to it, that is a big motivating factor for learning about it.

The general point though that this group all agrees upon is that there has been an over-reliance upon mathematics and an under-appreciation of physical models and reality checks within the mainstream theories. That would include string theory. I would argue -- and I often do -- that there are philosophy of science, history of science and even human psychological issues playing prominent roles within our failed attempts to fully understand our surroundings right now. People basically believe that the conventional models are right, and this dissuades nearly everybody from considering against-the-mainstream theories. The problem is that this leads to a situation where very few people are comparing and contrasting the two models with each new observation, and that's a big big problem because as it turns out, the mainstream is slowly co-opting the EU Theory arguments (minus electrical currents over plasmas, of course). Their models are without a doubt trending towards the EU view, and there is an alarming realization that if we don't break through the media real soon that the EU Theorists are going to watch the mainstream astrophysicists publicly "discover" everything that the EU Theorists are arguing except the electric current portion. The thing is, without the electric currents, you still do not understand the system of the universe and how it moves energies and forces around. You fail to realize the interconnectedness of it all. For instance, I've seen mention that people have done very interesting work studying the periodicity for supernovae for particular galaxies. I heard one person on a mailing list mention off-hand that when he plotted supernovae for a particular galaxy, he noticed that they tended to move outwards from the center in waves. If you weren't looking for something like this, you could completely miss it.

If Thornhill is right about his ideas about gravity,

But all I'm seeing right now is a Richard-Hoaglandish theme: whining about being Kept Quiet By The Establishment(TM) while pointing out "amazing" and "undeniable" details in fuzzy images instead of writing serious scientific papers that include testable predictions.

Do you have a link to a web page that doesn't look like it's trying to sell you something? Something for scientists/engineers rather than lay people?

Why not make a prediction based on EU and then attempt to disprove that prediction? If the prediction is valid, EU would gain some credibility.

I followed up on this a little bit more and it appears that quasi-neutrality is a *modeling* tool that only demonstrates the impossibility of charge separation and electric currents in plasmas, if and only if cosmic plasma is treated as a pseudo-plasma, as defined here:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Pseudo-pl asma

Under many circumstances, it is quite legitimate to assume plasmas have infinite electrical conductivity, which makes charge separation and electric currents impossible. In practice, however, space behaves as a *real* plasma that may have finite electrical conductivity, charge separation and electric currents.

The heliospheric current sheet is an example of a real plasma in space, in which three trillian amps of current flows throughout our own Solar System:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Heliosphe ric_current_sheet

We can opt to believe that this is somehow an aberration and/or that this phenomenon does not scale to larger scales for galaxies, but Anthony Peratt has written papers explaining that electrical plasma phenomenon do appear to in fact scale over vast scales, and can quite easily explain why spiral galaxies rotate as a fixed plate. We'd be wise to seriously consider this as an explanation, in fact, before supposing the existence of particles that have never been directly observed (dark matter), even after 20 years of trying (colored NASA press releases don't count). To argue that EU materials are a "flagrant abuse of plasma physics" appears to be suggesting that the equations that are currently being used to model plasmas take precedence over the physical phenomenon of plasmas that we observe within laboratories and even space (which Hannes Alfven liked to say did not always understand the beauty of the equations themselves).

Lastly, I'd like to direct you to the following recent discovery:

http://caribjournal.com/2007/04/22/scientists-disc over-plasma-stretching-6-million-light-years-acros s/

It's emitting synchrotron radiation, so we know that there are double layers present and that this is electrical in nature.

If you actually pay close attention to what's happening, you will in fact notice that as time moves forward, the evidence for electricity in space continues to expand. At this rate, you won't find yourself in the majority with your beliefs about electricity in space for too many more years.

I followed up on this a little bit more and it appears that quasi-neutrality is a *modeling* tool that only demonstrates the impossibility of charge separation and electric currents in plasmas, if and only if cosmic plasma is treated as a pseudo-plasma, as defined here:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Pseudo-pl asma

Under many circumstances, it is quite legitimate to assume plasmas have infinite electrical conductivity, which makes charge separation and electric currents impossible. In practice, however, space behaves as a *real* plasma that may have finite electrical conductivity, charge separation and electric currents.

The heliospheric current sheet is an example of a real plasma in space, in which three trillian amps of current flows throughout our own Solar System:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Heliosphe ric_current_sheet

We can opt to believe that this is somehow an aberration and/or that this phenomenon does not scale to larger scales for galaxies, but Anthony Peratt has written papers explaining that electrical plasma phenomenon do appear to in fact scale over vast scales, and can quite easily explain why spiral galaxies rotate as a fixed plate. We'd be wise to seriously consider this as an explanation, in fact, before supposing the existence of particles that have never been directly observed (dark matter), even after 20 years of trying (colored NASA press releases don't count). To argue that EU materials are a "flagrant abuse of plasma physics" appears to be suggesting that the equations that are currently being used to model plasmas take precedence over the physical phenomenon of plasmas that we observe within laboratories and even space (which Hannes Alfven liked to say did not always understand the beauty of the equations themselves).

Lastly, I'd like to direct you to the following recent discovery:

http://caribjournal.com/2007/04/22/scientists-disc over-plasma-stretching-6-million-light-years-acros s/

It's emitting synchrotron radiation, so we know that there are double layers present and that this is electrical in nature.

If you actually pay close attention to what's happening, you will in fact notice that as time moves forward, the evidence for electricity in space continues to expand. At this rate, you won't find yourself in the majority with your beliefs about electricity in space for too many more years.

While the Red Square nebula may well include dust and cooler material, many nebulae are observed to contain matter in the plasma state [Ref], and the material is moving through interstellar space which also contain significant amounts of plasma (ionized material).

Partially ionized plasmas, even less than 1% ionized, and containing dust and smaller grains will behave as a plasma, and will still be highly electrically conductive. For example, the F-ring of Saturn has been suggested to carry a "dust ring current"[Ref]

Dust and gas does not rule out a current through the plasma in a nebula, which is further supported by its morphology (hourglass shape), any observed synchrotron radiation (due to the acceleration of charged particles by electric fields through magnetic fields), and filamentation (pinched currents).

Regards,
Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com