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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."
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."
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/...
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.
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.