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Re: "The current flows predicted by the debunked EU theory have not been observed."

Observations with ESA's Herschel space observatory have revealed that our Galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures on every length scale. From nearby clouds hosting tangles of filaments a few light-years long to gigantic structures stretching hundreds of light-years across the Milky Way's spiral arms, they appear to be truly ubiquitous.

The column density map, derived from our 70-500 micron Herschel data, reveals a complex network of filaments, and confirms that these filaments are the main birth sites of prestellar cores.

(they infer "turbulence" as the cause of the 27 star forming filaments, which plainly appear to branch off of one another! lol!)

Neutral hydrogen (HI) surveys at high galactic latitude show that the interstellar gas is filamentary.

Fig. (1) is an adaptation of Verschuur’s Neutral Hydrogen Filaments at High Galactic Latitudes [31]. The HI plasma filaments are formed by the scavenging action of interstellar Birkeland currents flowing in our galaxy. Seen from Earth the filament twists gives the misleading impression of a puzzling HI ‘cloud’ seen as an ‘enhanced emission feature’ (EEF) in the 21-cm radio telescope beam. The closed ellipses in the right-hand schematic are EEFs where the filament orientation twists away from the plane of the sky. Verschuur concludes that “...much of what is observed to be ‘cloud’ structure in the interstellar medium is telling us about geometry of filaments and not about the physics of ‘clouds.’”

These long and narrow magnetised filaments were discovered in the 1980s using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, but their origin has remained a mystery.

Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, 'Hypothéses Cosmogoniques', states:

One fact that strikes everyone is the spiral shape of some nebulae; it is encountered much too often for us to believe that it is due to chance. It is easy to understand how incomplete any theory of cosmogony which ignores this fact must be. None of the theories accounts for it satisfactorily, and the explanation I myself once gave, is a kind of toy theory, is no better than the others. Consequently, we come up against a big question mark.

our results have now yielded firm evidence that many — possibly all — AGN jets have inward currents along their axes and outward currents in a more extended region surrounding the jets. This provides fundamental information about the conditions leading to the formation and launching of the jets, as well as key input to theoretical simulations of astrophysical jets. It also indicates that astrophysical jets are fundamentally electromagnetic structures, which must be borne in mind when interpreting observed features in the distributions of both their intensity and linear polarization.

The mention of cosmic-scale magnetic fields is still likely to met with an uncomfortable silence in some astronomical circles – and after a bit of foot-shuffling and throat-

Re: "The filaments (having no similarity whatsoever with discharges inside globe toy nor with lightning) though are real and were discovered in mid 80s."

Filamentation is a fundamental aspect of plasmas conducting charged particles, and has been observed countless times in all sorts of plasma laboratories. The novelty plasma globe has been pointed to simply because the public will be most familiar with it.

Filamentation was also the most important prediction by Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven insofar as it distinguishes a universe dominated by plasmas from one that is not. Filaments do not naturally follow from the radial force of gravity, so those who might assert that they are not currents would have to rely upon either a creation event, chance observation from "shocks", or some other esoteric phenomenon forcefully imposed upon the observation in order to avoid the simple inference of electric currents.

Among the earliest predictions about the morphology of the universe that differed significantly from the common astrophysical assumption is that the universe be filamentary (Alfven, 1950, 1981, 1990).

If you have an alternative scientific explanation for why these filaments are magnetized and how it is that they remain coherent over light years distances, then you should post it.

http://www.ska.ac.za/releases/20160716.php shows a small patch of it and says that image "spans about the area of the Earth's moon". Assuming they meant to say the moon's diameter it would mean that the big image is approximately 3 degrees square.

It would be nice to know exactly where that patch of sky is though; to match it up with a visible image.

Little thing, but what an amazing name for a telescope. According to the site, it's 'more KAT' (the original name for the array), as well as, of course, the unbearably cute mammal that lives in the area. But that, along with the "standing up to look around" mission of the array itself makes me absolutely convinced that I live in a novel of some sort (most likely Dickens, who liked to name his characters with oddly appropriate names (I'm lookin' at you, Ms. Malaprop)).

They not only upgraded the dish design, but they upgraded the electronics package. The new boards have about 2 times more memory with 4 times as much bandwidth, 5 times more processing power, and twice the I/O bandwidth.

What has been proposed, and should be technically feasible, is dividing the array up by frequency band. The plan already calls for three overlapping arrays of different types of telescopes in order to capture three different frequency bands. (Phased array dipole antennas work great at 100 MHz, whereas you need dishes for 10 GHz.) In principle, one could put the low- and mid-frequency arrays on one site and the high-frequency arrays on another.

Note that MEERKAT is going ahead in South Africa regardless of the outcome of the decision on SKA, and will operate from 0.5-14 GHz.

Technology in South Africa is being developed at a rapid pace as their bid for SKA is gaining ground. With the completion of the first 7 antennas on the KAT-7 project, the first use of composite materials for dish reflectors. With Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya and Ghana partnering with South Africa in the bid, Africa seems to have overcome all the major obstacles associated with the project. Nokia is willing to supply the 15 petabyte per second infrastructure and EMSS Antennas have already built the first seven cryogenic low noise amplifiers. 64 dishes for the MeerKAT project has just been approved and after completion it will be one of the largest, most sensitive radio telescopes in the world."
Link to Original Source

1. The passing of the South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007 declares almost the whole of the Northern Cape province (an area about 1.5 times that of the UK) into an astronomy advantage area. Amongst other things it means that light pollution will be limited and that the whole area will eventually be turned into a radio quiet zone.

The Australian desert is an empty, extremely radio quiet right now, and has also been declared as a no-building zone. In comparison, the million cell towers make South Africa is extremely noisy.

2. Much of the technology used in South Africa's pilot program (MeerKAT) will be directly useable in SKA. By comparison, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project has much less tech that will be useable in SKA without major redesign and modification.

I'd be interested in hearing more about that. Why is the one more directly reuseable?

3. Price. From the start keeping the price down was a very high priority goal for the SA bid. E.g. they developed a new process to manufacture the dishes that is much cheaper than conventional methods. Now, after the credit crunch where many scientific budgets are getting cut, this strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer 1: I am a South African and therefore far from neutral
Disclaimer 2: The last time I read extensively on this is more than six months ago, so if there were significant developments recently then I might not be aware of them

Interesting.

4. Baselines: The NZ-AUS baseline is going to be extremely long.

There is also a "5. Politics & political stability", which is a bit more complex and probably has some FUD.

Cheers

1. The passing of the South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007 declares almost the whole of the Northern Cape province (an area about 1.5 times that of the UK) into an astronomy advantage area. Amongst other things it means that light pollution will be limited and that the whole area will eventually be turned into a radio quiet zone.

The Australian desert is an empty, extremely radio quiet right now, and has also been declared as a no-building zone. In comparison, the million cell towers make South Africa is extremely noisy.

2. Much of the technology used in South Africa's pilot program (MeerKAT) will be directly useable in SKA. By comparison, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project has much less tech that will be useable in SKA without major redesign and modification.

I'd be interested in hearing more about that. Why is the one more directly reuseable?

3. Price. From the start keeping the price down was a very high priority goal for the SA bid. E.g. they developed a new process to manufacture the dishes that is much cheaper than conventional methods. Now, after the credit crunch where many scientific budgets are getting cut, this strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer 1: I am a South African and therefore far from neutral
Disclaimer 2: The last time I read extensively on this is more than six months ago, so if there were significant developments recently then I might not be aware of them

Interesting.

4. Baselines: The NZ-AUS baseline is going to be extremely long.

There is also a "5. Politics & political stability", which is a bit more complex and probably has some FUD.

Cheers

I've been following the bid process for SKA for quite a few years. As far as I can tell South Africa (together with its other Southern African partners) have a clear advantage over Australia (now together with NZ)

There are a few reasons for this:

1. The passing of the South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007 declares almost the whole of the Northern Cape province (an area about 1.5 times that of the UK) into an astronomy advantage area. Amongst other things it means that light pollution will be limited and that the whole area will eventually be turned into a radio quiet zone.

2. Much of the technology used in South Africa's pilot program (MeerKAT) will be directly useable in SKA. By comparison, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project has much less tech that will be useable in SKA without major redesign and modification.

3. Price. From the start keeping the price down was a very high priority goal for the SA bid. E.g. they developed a new process to manufacture the dishes that is much cheaper than conventional methods. Now, after the credit crunch where many scientific budgets are getting cut, this strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer 1: I am a South African and therefore far from neutral
Disclaimer 2: The last time I read extensively on this is more than six months ago, so if there were significant developments recently then I might not be aware of them

I've been following the bid process for SKA for quite a few years. As far as I can tell South Africa (together with its other Southern African partners) have a clear advantage over Australia (now together with NZ)

There are a few reasons for this:

1. The passing of the South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007 declares almost the whole of the Northern Cape province (an area about 1.5 times that of the UK) into an astronomy advantage area. Amongst other things it means that light pollution will be limited and that the whole area will eventually be turned into a radio quiet zone.

2. Much of the technology used in South Africa's pilot program (MeerKAT) will be directly useable in SKA. By comparison, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project has much less tech that will be useable in SKA without major redesign and modification.

3. Price. From the start keeping the price down was a very high priority goal for the SA bid. E.g. they developed a new process to manufacture the dishes that is much cheaper than conventional methods. Now, after the credit crunch where many scientific budgets are getting cut, this strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer 1: I am a South African and therefore far from neutral
Disclaimer 2: The last time I read extensively on this is more than six months ago, so if there were significant developments recently then I might not be aware of them