howdy folks,
Ok, I will be the very first to admit that either way most of this stuff is way above my head and I don't think that I could really anylize it to provide an argument for or against, however I do have a question...

Would the experiments that are to be conducted on Gravity Probe B prove or disprove any of this? As I recall, Gravity Probe B's primary mission is to prove (or disprove) a couple of Einstiens theory's in relation to gravity. If this is found to be true, would it not disprove some of what they are trying to say with this "electric universe" idea?

I'm not apposed the the idea of plasma and such floating around the universe and that it could in fact explain a -few- things and the idea probably shouldn't be ignored completely, but even with my limited knowledge of the subject, I think conventional ideas on astronomy and how the universe works will still prevail or at least seem logical. We still have to rely very much on "arkomes razor" (sorry if thats mis-spelled) and assume that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. On the other hand, we really won't know for sure on most of this till we really get out to the stars and see things "first hand"...I got a feeling we have a few surprises in store for us out there :-)

Bright Blessings,
Jim

I am moving this topic to the Alternative Theories section, as it really belongs there. The topic was started before that forum was in existance.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

It is usually spelled Occam's Razor, but some other spellings are accepted. It is named after William of Ockham (1280-1350), the great 14th century Ontologist, who's Summa Logicae (last edited in 1349) has been translated into several languages, and has received numerous favorable comments.

Side note, he died in Munich at about age 70 during the height of the Great Plague, but we do not know whether the plague killed him, or some other cause.

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Hey Duane, did you by any chance change the topic description from "Why this is utter nonsense" to "Is this utter nonsense"? Whoever did that, it is much appreciated, it was one of my early complaints.

Meanwhile I've been comparing the Electric explanation with mainstream work and I have the impression (indeed nothing solid) that the lack of recognition for electrical effects anywhere outside our modern societies' applications, suffers from the problem that plasmas are not described by simple formulae and understandable math. Plasmas behave unpredictable and are subject to large-scale changes when only minor differences are induced.

Cheers.

Here's an interesting paper that describes how galactic magnetic fields could replace dark matter as a way to account for the rotation curves without employing MOND.

Note that this assumes gravity as an important force, but claims that in the outer spiral arms, the magnetic field of the galaxy supplies as much or more force than the galaxy core does.

ROTATION CURVES OF SPIRAL GALAXIES

I haven't gone over this paper in detail yet. Let me know what you think.

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Thanks Antoniseb,

The authors tell us that magnetic fields must be present in spiral galaxies because there are "wriggly" structures that cannot be formed by gravity. Furthermore they calculate that the outer regions of these galaxies matter has a 100-fold lower density, and therefore the magnetic component (non-Newtonian acceleration, whatever that may be) can "overwhelm gravity".
This is probably not the first time that magnetic fields are called upon, but maybe the fist time in connection to dark matter (or actually it's non-existance).
It is a attempt to explain the rotational features of spiral galaxies and a tentative step towards the realisation that magnetic (I prefer to call it electric) fields are also important in large-scale structures. There is no mention of the underlying mechanism that tells us how these magnetic fields are powered, and I never heard of Vaidya metric before (although having heard of Schwarzschild metric doesn't mean I understand it :unsure: ), so I'm unsure how to interpret this.
All in all, imo, it's a brave attempt to step outside the gravity dominated view of the Universe, but fails to produce a coherent picture.
We need more of these thoughts and continue to explore every possibility.

Cheers.

The biggest problem with the EM universe theory is that there isn't enough matter spread through the galaxy to conduct electricity. No movement of electrons, no electro-magnetic field.

There simply isn't enough "stuff" in the open reaches of space to form a closed circuit.

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Actually no, the EM fields can be found everywhere, and it takes only very little matter and charge to make a plasma. The fun is that a plasma can move matter around, just like we know gravity can.
The real problem with the EM universe is that it is difficult to measure directly and even more difficult to model the behaviour of a plasma.

Cheers.

That's the question though: where is this interstellar plasma that EMU relies on? I've never read of a reliable observation of it.

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Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
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Hi Kesh,

You're right, that is the question. We know space is not empty and we can see some of the plasma's because they give off radiation. If there is mention of gas, clouds, filaments, jets or shocks you can be sure it is a plasma. Now these plasma's can be dense like in our Sun, or very thin like in the solar wind.
Maybe you can start here reading about Plasma cosmology and follow the link to Los Alamos Natonal Laboratoy (or go there directly http://plasma.lanl.gov/). It explains that 99.99% of all matter in in the plasma state, meaning that apart from some rocky planets and moons everything is in the plasma state and responds to electric/magnetic fields.

Cheers.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but seems too far-fetched. Gas does not equal plasma. Solar wind does not equal plasma. And by the time solar wind reaches interstellar distances, I don't see how it could transmit electro-magnetic fields even if it were plasma.

__________________
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

Hmm, you're right that gas doesn't equal plasma here on Earth, but gas in space does, because there are already electric fields that the gas responds to. It's a bit of the chicken and the egg; the reason that the solar wind exists (and that we call it a wind) is the idea that the particles leave the Sun because they are "boiling off" the Sun, taking a magnetic field with them. The electric model says that the reason there is a solar wind, is that the Sun is dissipating electric energy (powering the Sun) responding to the currents in space (which incidentally is the reason that stars are variable).
The solar wind is therefore not energizing the surrounding interstellar medium.

I hope this makes some sense,

Cheers.

Here's a recent paper that talks about the search for [and possible observation of] inter-galactic plasma filaments.

Hot Baryons in Supercluster Filaments

This paper does not mention the electric universe theory, nor does it discuss the plasma universe. It is a main-stream paper that simply is looking for Lyman alpha and beta absorbtion in the spectra of AGNs placed where possible "nearby" filaments might be observed.

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Thanks Antoniseb,

The authors have first theoretically derived the existence/location of the filaments and are now trying to verify them experimentally. These filaments are interesting, their (yet to be proven) existence is something the plasma model predicts, galaxies are formed in "strings" ( ) and through these filaments are connected to each other, "feeding" off the currents. The enormous structures are already recognizable in the large-scale structures of the Universe that have been around for awhile (although they suffer from the "redshift=distance" interpretation).

Cheers.

"The Expanding Universe" that was televised (and on a DVD) depicts an animated map of the universe that looks sort of like a transparent box with filaments inside connecting blobs of galaxy clusters. I think it represents the concepts you are discussing. Everything is interconnected but spreading out. Helps to have a visual frame of reference.

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Electric sun doesn't work. Everything we know says that it can't, and it would take extraordinary evidence to disprove a fusion-based sun in favor of it.

The solar wind is ejected material from the sun, particles. They don't "carry" an EM field any more than gas leaving the Earth's atmosphere carries Earth's EM field.

Also, simply being in space does not make a gas into a plasma. It has to be extremely hot and energetic, plus electrically neutral. Just hit Dictionary.com:

If there were observations of enough plasma-state matter in interstellar space, I'd be willing to give EMU another look. That won't change the fact that the sun is fusion-powered, however.

antoniseb, I'll look into that link sometime soon. Thanks.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
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"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

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

Hi Kesh, don't take my word for it, but check the above site and the plasma researchers there will tell you that almost everything is in the plsma state, also space.

Cheers.

This is a recent article that shows how in a plasma Universe starformation is thought to happen.

http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0407608

Although the authors try to model the "clumpy filaments" to existing models that assume that "shocked gas" forms the clumps (while dispersion is a more likely effect when explosion happen), they admit that the findings do not fit with the large-scale magnetic fields of the cloud. In an electric/plasma model the filaments are Birkeland currents and the "clumps" are the result of the Z-pinch effect where neighbouring filaments attract each other magnetically and form helical structures where matter is "pinched-off" giving rise to "clumps" and ultimately form into stars. The filaments are the current-carriers that power the stars showing up as "pearls-on-a-string".

Cheers.

Well, they can say it, but that doesn't make it true.

See, the problem is, plasma is a high-temperature, high-energy state of matter. Without a source of energy, that matter will not remain in a plasma state in the near-vaccuum of space.

It seems that these guys get around that by using circular logic: plasma is found throughout the universe in order to allow a circuit for electrons, and this circuit of electrons is what keeps it in a plasma state.

Even if that were the case, we should be seeing a lot of residual heat from all this plasma, and it just isn't there.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

I don't buy into the Electric Universe model. However, I'd like to point out that a sizeable amount of the intergalactic medium is temperatures in the millions of Kelvins. That being said, the medium itself is so thin that a solid object in the medium would rapidly chill down to 2.72 Kelvins, since the medium would do next to nothing to heat the object.

This plasma has been observed recently, so this is not a simple way to attack the theory.

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I do plan on studying the plasma universe proposal at the sites suggested.
Before I do, I just have a few suspicions that they may or may not clear up.
Curent does coil around flux lines forming into filaments. That little I do know.

My background in "on Earth" electronics leaves me with doubts about this subject.
Perhaps my doubts are unjustified. These are a few expressions of doubts:


Current can't leave and return to the Sun without a dialectric within the star and a
difference of potential across that dialectric.
Secondly, as Tim Thompson has pointed out in his critique of the electric universe,
both electrons and protons are coming from the star in the solar wind. They don't loop back and return.

If current was as high as is claimed by the electric universe model, the density
of charged particles would have to be greater and should remain constant as is the case of a closed circuit in the electronic world.

Spectroscopy should reveal absorption lines at the location of the current's exit
and emission lines at its return location.

Using my arc weldor's mask I can see the arc quite readily
which is confined to a small area..The stick or wire still needs a gap...a precise
gap to maintain arc. I shouldn't need a H alpha filter to see prominances. My
weldor's mask should do the trick..

Like I say, these are suspicions and I may be in error..

blueshift

Well, since the people claiming this are plasma researchers, I tend to take their claims serious. Besides, stars are considered balls of plasma and they are thought to be the major component of the Universe. Ok, dark matter is unknown, but my guess is that it will stay unknown because it only means we forgot to include plasma behaviour into the gravity equations.

Another point is that plasma can be found in 3 distinctly different forms:
1. dark mode (current density too low for 2)
2. glow mode (like the nebulae, clouds and visible filaments in space)
3. arc mode (current density too high to be accomodated by the plasma, resulting in discharging).

So this means that the tenuous interstellar medium is according to the "plasmologists" in the dark mode and difficult (but not impossible) to detect.

And another point is that currents don't need to be high everywhere, it is just that space is enormously big and a small charge differential can result in massive effects on these large scales. But see for yourself at the websites,

Cheers.

Question...

We know moving charges create a magnetic field. Is this supposed to apply to ?plasma? moving in a vacuum as well as electrons in a conductor. Would an electrically nuetral plasma create a less intense magnetic field?







------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
..terminally confused

Good questions, all the laws of electromagnetism apply for plasmas anywhere. Electrically neutral plasmas are the most common sort, only a small part of a rarefied gas needs to be ionizad/charged to show the plasma behaviour.

One point to add; plasma behaviour is very complex. The basic ingredients are not that difficult to describe, but what happens to plasmas and how they respond to small variations is quite complex and should be studied much better than has been done up till now.

Cheers.

Just to clarify: "electrically neutral plasma" is not the correct term; the description "plasma" indicates that there is an electrical charge differential present. The percentage can be very low which sometimes makes it hard to differentiate between gas and plasma (unless a specific behaviour is apparent).

Cheers.

There does not have to be a macroscopic electric charge differential. Plasma strictly means that some or all electrons are not bound to the nuclei in the media. There can be small differentials on the scale of a few atoms, but there is no need for an overall charge differential. Such a neutral current would not create a massive magnetic field, or large electric charge. In fact if there were a large charge differential for a few moments, there would be little to prevent the free electrons from moving rapidly to neutralize it.

True, in the dense plasma created here on Earth an electric current is one of the easier ways to create a plasma, but there is no need for it, especially when you are talking about one proton and one electron per cubic centimeter. The plasma in space can be, and probably is charge neutral at any practical scale.

BTW, there is also a microscopic charge differential in solid matter. This is the differential between the electron clouds and the nuclei.

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I don't buy into the Electric Universe model. However, I'd like to point out that a sizeable amount of the intergalactic medium is temperatures in the millions of Kelvins. That being said, the medium itself is so thin that a solid object in the medium would rapidly chill down to 2.72 Kelvins, since the medium would do next to nothing to heat the object.

This plasma has been observed recently, so this is not a simple way to attack the theory. [/b][/quote]
Oh, I'm not trying to 'attack' the theory. Just pointing out something that didn't sound right to me.

And to the best of my recall, the background radiation was measured at extreme distances, ie extreme age. My understanding was that, yes, the early universe was a very hot, plasma-filled region. But the local universe appears quite cool and solid/gaseous now.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

Charge differences in plasma is btw quite easily shown because the plasma self-organizes into double layers, where the differential is located at a point (depending on density of the plasma and the amount of charge) between the "cathode" and "anode". Examples of double layers in space are the Van Allen belts, the Sun's corona, what we call magnetospheres of planets, comets and the Sun, at least this is claimed by the Electric model people and there is evidence for this by the laboratory experiments by the plasma researchers. These double layers are important indicators for electric activity because they produce radiation (X-rays when the current density is high enough).

Cheers.

You are assuming that the plasma in space is not simply caused by high temperatures, where no anode or cathode is required. I don't think that's a safe assumption. The physics of electric arc plasmas include some items that thermal plasmas don't obey.

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I'm assuming that thermal emission is a very inefficient way to produce X-rays (these millions degrees K are indeed not "hot" as you explained, Antoniseb), and indeed that is why the Electric people claim their model better explains all the X-ray sources, including black holes.
All this is disputed though, so imo it needs verification by showing that electric fields are responsible for the X-rays in most cases. I'm not sure how this can be verified, any ideas? Thermal X-ray emission is also an assumption of course, but maybe based on the fact that there is no electricity in space?

Cheers.