Can Electricity Travel Through Space on Astrophysical Jets? (mdpi.com)

Slashdot reader Chris Reeve writes: An October 2017 paper titled Electric Currents along Astrophysical Jets reports that "Several researchers have reported direct evidence for large scale electric currents along astrophysical jets." A review of the citations at the end of that paper and others (here and here, for instance) would seem to suggest that one of the great Internet science debates has finally been settled: Electricity does indeed travel through space over vast cosmic distances.

What has been interesting to watch about this unexpected development is that science journalists have so far not explicitly reported this as a shift in theory, and commenters on sites like phys.org appear to deny that any change has even occurred: "The jets have been shown not to be electric currents, the energy and the physics involved are certainly not electromagnetic." This comment completely rejecting these new findings was highly rated by other phys.org readers, suggesting that the failure to explicitly report this as a change in theory has left this controversial topic in a highly confused state.
The paper summarizes what it calls "observational evidence for the existence of large scale electric currents and their associated grand design helical magnetic fields in kpc-scale astrophysical jets." And the original submitter details the history of the question in a follow-up comment arguing that at our current moment in time, "a mistaken bias against electricity in space continues to dominate conversations."

Comments

An epic failure in science journalism

[paradigmsareconstruc]

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

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[Goldsmith]

I am a physicist. You caught one, congratulations.

I think you're spending a lot of time looking at web forums and not spending any time learning actual physics. In 11 years, you could have started from scratch with a Physics BS and finished a PhD by about now. If you'd done that, you would see that actual physicists have long ago incorporated much of what you're saying we don't acknowledge, and thrown out the things that don't match actual observations. It's great to be inspired by interesting theories to enter physics. I love science fiction, and it's why I got into physics. Being a professional physicist doesn't keep me from still appreciating science fiction.

Modern models can incorporate MHD at galactic scale, along with all of the other physical interactions we know of, and so we do incorporate all those things. If you don't like the way it's done, I encourage you to go get a Physics PhD and write your own models. If you don't like the typical assumptions, spend more time coding and less time complaining. Modeling is so easy today that these questions can be posed in a homework assignment for a grad student. (Really, you're getting worked up over homework assignment level physics.)

To physicists, "The Electric Universe" is an antiquated idea, with arguments many generations out of date. You're quoting 30 year old computer models, the proceedings of a minor conference 20 years ago, and a "this is your life, Jim Dungey" review focused on 1960s physics to complain about how modern astrophysics is done. You're referencing a theorist who's a retired engineer. The detail required for a convincing publication has increased dramatically over the last few decades, vocabulary changes every few years, and an understanding of what is "mainstream" changes about every year. It's hard to keep up for full time physicists. Referencing writing published to a much lower standard than what we're used to reading is not convincing.

I've worked with an older theoretician who wanted to get a modern take on his old approach. He sponsored (paid the salary & tuition of) a grad student in a different group with modern computational resources. That's the appropriate way to make the argument you're trying to make. Instead the Electric Universe guys are pretending that 30 year old techniques and publishing standards are good enough. They're not.

Last point, I promise. IEEE is an engineering society with no astrophysics community. It is inappropriate to publish an astrophysics paper there. That's journal shopping, and it is a violation of scientific ethics.

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[lgw]

Or, you know, angular momentum from before formation being conserved. From your one scientific link:

When examined as a function of distance from the filament axis, a much stronger correlation is found in outer parts, suggesting that the alignment is driven by the laminar infall of gas from sheets to filaments.

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[Goldsmith]

Wow, you picked the wrong person to argue with here.

I spent my time in grad school leading the student government, and bringing to light the issue of the 50% of people who leave PhD programs. There is a lack of a link between dropping out and academic problems. I got bad administrators fired, I talked about this nationally, I lobbied Congress. What are you doing? Posting online?

I've chewed out Chancellors, Deans, Admirals, Grant Managers, and CEOs. I've quit jobs, left tenured positions, and put myself in financial distress to prove my points. And I'm a more successful, better scientist for it.

You don't study physics because it's too hard for you.

"Physics" isn't a side. It's work. It's offensive to use people like Jeff in your argument. He's put in the work. And the physics community ended up supporting him.

Go away back to the corners of the internet and know that you can't compete with people like me. You're too lazy to walk into the room where the discussions happen.

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[joe_frisch]

Science is a very complex web of interacting theories and experiments. Any new theory has to not only explain a particular phenomena, but to not contradict a great many other experiments. This rules out a great many alternate theories. This isn't taking "sides", it is just trying to find theories that are consistent with experiments.

There is some "bias" against non-scientists, but that is because people outside of the field are unlikely to know all of the measurements that have been done. Scientists don't have infinite time, so they are not likely to be willing to do the leg-work of doing research for people who haven't already done a lot of that work themselves.

It is pretty rare for someone outside of a well established field to make a major contribution.

Scientists do try to find entirely new theories. I was at conference where one of the speakers mentioned how many theories had died the day that LIGO saw gravity waves from the neutron star collision - the measurement that gravity waves traveled at the same speed as electromagnetic radiation to very high precision, ruled out a range of alternative gravity theories.

In this case though, there are lots of effects that depend on the strength of magnetic fields in galaxies so they can't be very far from what is predicted by conventional astrophysics.

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[DamnOregonian]

Worse, really.

Some bullshit theory about how the extremely macro-scale universe is predominantly shaped by the electromagnetic force is vindicated by scientific paper that indicates there's more electricity in the universe than was generally thought.

It's a lot like claiming your theory about perpetual motion cars has been vindicated because you slightly miscalculated your car's fuel economy.

Re:An epic failure in science journalism

[BadDreamer]

So, your suggestion for resolving the debate seems to be that I should just study one side of it.

The suggestion is that in order to resolve the debate, you should learn what the debate actually is about, and how to evaluate the claims made on all sides. You do that by learning physics.

Physics is not a series of dogma you memorize. It is methods to analyze the world, and tools you use to examine whether a proposal actually matches up with observed reality.

If you study physics, you do not study either side of this debate. You study the tools used to determine what is actually consistent with reality, and learn to use them, and then you can use them to analyze all sides of the debate to see what actually matches up with observation.

Your "freedom" now is to treat both sides as dogma, because you do not have the tools to evaluate either side. And dogma is not physics, and physics is not dogma, so you end up doing nothing at all.

If it takes that many words

[DCFusor]

To say someone is wrong, Wolfgang Pauli would say "you're not even wrong".

I will agree, and after reading the utter BS, not even rational, and very self and observation-contradicting commenters on phys.org who keyboard-warrior instead of do real science and make actual observations, I'm glad I didn't sign up. One might as well sign up to some alt-politics conspiracy theory site...for all the effect it'll have.

At least physorg keeps the nuts all together.. maybe one grenade....

Quoting tons of other errors doesn't make it right. Truth isn't up for vote.

Re: If it takes that many words

[paradigmsareconstruc]

"Again and again Alfvén reiterated the point: the underlying assumptions of cosmologists today 'are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not 'understand' how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them.'"

Re: If it takes that many words

[Fluctuating Matter]

Plasma seems to be the quintessential complex system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Although the underlying equations governing plasmas are relatively simple, plasma behavior is extraordinarily varied and subtle: the emergence of unexpected behavior from a simple model is a typical feature of a complex system. Such systems lie in some sense on the boundary between ordered and disordered behavior and cannot typically be described either by simple, smooth, mathematical functions, or by pure randomness. The spontaneous formation of interesting spatial features on a wide range of length scales is one manifestation of plasma complexity. The features are interesting, for example, because they are very sharp, spatially intermittent (the distance between features is much larger than the features themselves), or have a fractal form. Many of these features were first studied in the laboratory, and have subsequently been recognized throughout the universe."

Re:If it takes that many words

[quenda]

homosexuality was Scientifically acknowledged by Scientific experts to be a disorder.

Not to contradict the point you are awkwardly trying to make, but this part is wrong.
Whether or not homosexuality is classified as a disorder, or a benign variation, has little to do with science. Like the medical definition of addiction, it depends on how it affects your life.
If you live in a society where sodomy is frequently punished by death, but you keep doing it, you have an illness.
Societies fault perhaps, but an illness still. Social context can change the medical classification, without any changes in the hard science.

Re:If it takes that many words

[ceoyoyo]

There's a fair amount of scientific study of sexuality, and homosexuality in particular. The fact that homosexuality is very widespread among other species suggests the trait has some fairly general survival utility (i.e. it's normal, as asserted by the OP). Your observation that the basis of homosexuality is complex tends to agree with the idea that it plays some fairly important role.

Your observation that if a preventative supplement existed "every mother would be popping it down" is an observation about your society. Which is why we usually prefer that medical definitions follow science, rather than fashion. Admittedly, that idea isn't very old, and it's certainly not universal yet.

Re:If it takes that many words

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The fact that homosexuality is very widespread among other species suggests the trait has some fairly general survival utility (i.e. it's normal, as asserted by the OP).

It's probably more than just a speculation at this point.

Here we go

[flopsquad]

"All aboard the armchair astrophysics train! Next stop, Electric Universe! Red Line right to Not Even Wrong, making stops at Time Cube, Flat Earth, Luminiferous Aether, and Turtles-All-the-Way-Down Town."

Do not be misled

[rknop]

It is telling that all papers by this author and his collaborators seem to be in a closed ecosystem of citation where they only are cited each other. I am not familiar with the "Galaxies" journal. At least one of these papers is from A&A, which *is* a real peer-reviewed journal.

There are many red herrings here. First of all, the whole "we have a model that can explain galaxy rotation curves without dark matter" is not nearly as meaningful as some seem to say it is. There is a whole host of observations explained by dark matter, in detail, and with precision. Explaining just one of them doesn't do much if you can't explain all of the rest of the observations.

Likewise, the Big Bang model has a host of observations that support it, in detail, and with numerical precision.

The "electric universe" is not something that is worth paying attention to.

For popular-level information about the problems with the whole electric universe business, see this site: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

Good grief

[93 Escort Wagon]

So the submitter is apparently extremely distressed regarding what goes on in internet discussion threads, both on phys.org and on Slashdot (based on his extremely long comment further up), for some reason.

My advice is - don’t get so worked up over what people say on the internet.

Mistaken Bias?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

The submitter write, "a mistaken bias against electricity in space continues to dominate conversations." What dominates conversations is a complete lack of credible evidence for this. It reminds me of the old days when Archimedes Plutonium invaded sci.physics and talk.origins.