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Spiraling Magnetic Signal Shows Up In the Cosmic Background
pln2bz writes "Astronomers looking for confirmation for emissions from early stellar formation in the cosmic microwave background radiation instead found a signal indicating large amounts of unaccounted-for spiraling magnetic fields in space, but without any accompanying infrared emissions. The discovery possibly dredges up the claims of plasma cosmologists like Eric Lerner, who claim that the intergalactic medium is a strong absorber of the CMB with the absorption occurring in a fog of narrow filaments. These filaments are the result of plasma's natural tendency, as observed within the plasma laboratory and in novelty plasma globes, to form braided, ropelike structures which are collimated by coiled magnetic fields."
This news is too nerdy to understand. Can someone explain it in more detail?
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann joke/reference goes here :)
Hi Simon!!
Experimental data speculation + crackpot plasma theory = Slashdot science?
Three letters spring into mind - DNA
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Funny, it was my impression that the "electric cosmos" viewpoint consisted largely of pseudoscience...
He has a history of posting any story that can possibly be interpreted as supporting the electric universe theory, along with his speculations as to why the story proves EU correct. Just saying...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yet, it has been the few, the daring to be different, not the ones feeling safe in the crowd, that have contributed the most to major knowledge in the early history of experimental and observational science.
Other early scientists, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur and others also had to fight the majority status quo establishment, but were finally, after a long uphill battle proven to be right.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- attributed to Carl Sagan
But then again, I could be wrong.
...the Sun can be modeled as a plasma glow discharge based upon our observations of the glow discharge in the plasma laboratory.
No, it can't be. Laboratory plasmas are small; stars are not. In your example, the Sun is a very massive (n.b.: "having mass") plasma, about 2*10^30kg, concentrated in one place. Such balls of plasma have very high temperatures and pressures at their cores which cause nuclear fusion to occur, and they certainly cannot be contained in any literal "laboratory" in the sense you meant it.
The Electric Universe is based upon [that] simple premise...
The problem is that the premise is incorrect; it is indeed a "simple" premise though.
It really shouldn't even be controversial
Agreed.
And you shouldn't dismiss it until you can at least rattle off all of the key characteristics of both a glow discharge and the heliosphere.
You shouldn't accept it until you can at least rattle off all the key characteristics of stellar equilibrium, stellar fusion, helioseismology, spectroscopy, stellar dynamics in aggregate, and from the looks of things basic thermodynamics as well (you can't have that much hydrogen in one place and expect it not to fuse!).
If [granules in the photosphere] were convection cells, they would be light in the centers.
First, that is primarilty what is actually observed. Second, that some slightly cooler material in the centers of some granules is expected from the laws of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, and this has been fairly well understood for half a century. Third, spectral analyses of the cells reveals exactly the convective action expected from such convection cells.
Those are tornadic cells...
No, they are convection cells.
...rotation comes directly from electromagnetism.
Yeah, nothing rotates that wasn't set into rotation by electromagetism? This is the kind of claim that rightly causes people not to take the claimant seriously.
Use your head, people.
I second this. But, note that there are correct and incorrect answers, and merely "using one's head" (as implied by this anthropocentric appeal that the universe is somehow constrained to be amenable to our common sense) is not likely to improve on the state of the art in knowledge; everyone has such intuition, and it has proven too unreliable on its own-- thus the rise and subsequent success of scientific rigor.
Science is inherently controversial...
No, Science is about extending the boundaries of our understanding. There are right answers and wrong answers, and we need not find our attempts to extend these boundaries "controversial" at all, though in practice it can indeed happen.