“The conformist propensity of social
institutions is not the only reason that erroneous theories persevere.
However, once embedded within a culture, ideas exhibit an uncanny
inertia, as if obeying Newton’s law to keep on going forever until acted
upon by an external force.” —Henry Zemel.
"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, in a kind of toy theory, is no better than the others. Consequently, we come up against a big question mark." — Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, Hypothèses Cosmogoniques.
"Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure." —Hannes Alfvén.
"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, in a kind of toy theory, is no better than the others. Consequently, we come up against a big question mark." — Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, Hypothèses Cosmogoniques.
"Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure." —Hannes Alfvén.
In an Electric Universe x-ray and radio astronomies are very
important; x-ray because it reveals discharge activity that produces
x-rays; and radio because it traces the cosmic power transmission lines
in deep space through the polarization of radio waves from electrons
spiralling in a magnetic field — known as ‘synchrotron radiation.’
>> The Very Large Array (VLA) of radio antennae in its most
compact configuration ("D-array"). The VLA is 50 miles west of Socorro,
New Mexico on U.S. Highway 60. Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Kristal
Armendariz, Photographer.
A recent report
from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) highlights the
usefulness of radio astronomy in discovering some of the electrical
secrets of galaxies. However, it also demonstrates the “uncanny inertia”
of “erroneous theories.”
New VLA Images Unlocking Galactic Mysteries
Astronomers have produced a scientific gold
mine of detailed, high-quality images of nearby galaxies that is
yielding important new insights into many aspects of galaxies, including
their complex structures, how they form stars, the motions of gas in
the galaxies, the relationship of "normal" matter to unseen "dark
matter," and many others. An international team of scientists used more
than 500 hours of observations with the National Science Foundation's
Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to produce detailed sets of
images of 34 galaxies at distances from 6 to 50 million light-years from
Earth. Their project, called The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey, or THINGS*,
required two years to produce nearly one TeraByte of data. HI ("H-one")
is an astronomical term for atomic hydrogen gas.
"Studying the radio waves emitted by atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies is an extremely powerful way to learn what's going on in nearby galaxies.”
"Studying the radio waves emitted by atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies is an extremely powerful way to learn what's going on in nearby galaxies.”
Comment: The reference to “dark matter” in the outline of the
THINGS project should be of concern to all taxpayers. The invention of
undetectable “dark” matter in a gravitational model of galaxies should
be ringing alarm bells and flashing warning lights for anyone with
commonsense. It is saying that there may be something we don’t know
about gravity or that simple Newtonian mechanics does not apply to
galaxies. Perhaps both are true. Clearly, we need a better explanation
than “an invisible tooth fairy did it.” To be confident we understand
galaxies we need a working model that can be demonstrated in the
laboratory. Is there such a model?
The Electric Galaxy
The scandalous truth is that there is a model of spiral galaxy
formation that has long been demonstrated by laboratory experiment and
"particle in cell” (PIC) simulations on a supercomputer. But instead of
using stars, gas and dust as the particles, subject to Newton’s laws,
the particles are charged and respond to the laws of electromagnetism.
This seems like an obvious approach when we know that more than 99.9
percent of the visible universe is in the form of plasma.
Plasma is a gas influenced by the presence of charged atoms and
electrons. Plasma responds to electromagnetic forces that exceed the
strength of gravity to the extent that gravity can usually be safely
ignored. This simple fact alone suggests why gravitational models of galaxies must fail.
>> The plasma universe may be eternal and infinite, directly
contradicting the Big bang model. In this picture, swirling streams of
electrons and ions form filaments that span vast regions of space. Where
pairs of these filaments interact the particles gain energy and at
narrow “pinch” regions produce the entire range of galaxy types as well
as the full spectrum of cosmic electromagnetic radiation. Thus galaxies
must lie along filaments, as they are observed to do on a large scale.
The bulk of the filaments are optically invisible from a distance, much
like the related Birkeland currents that reach from the Sun and cause
auroras on Earth. —Credit: A. Peratt, Plasma Cosmology, 1992.
[Click on this and all following images to enlarge]
The simplest geometry for galaxy formation is two adjacent Birkeland
currents of width 35 kiloparsecs separated by 80 kiloparsecs. The
interaction region, and hence the thickness of a galaxy is 10 kpc. By
scaling the current flows in astronomical objects by size, it is
determined that the average flow in a galactic Birkeland current is
approximately 1019 amperes; the Alfvén galactic current. The synchrotron radiated power is of the order of 1037 watts, that is, the power recorded from double radio galaxies.
>> These images from a supercomputer simulation trace the
development of spiral structure in two interacting plasma blobs over a
span of nearly 1 billion years. At the start of the interaction at upper
left the filaments are 260,000 light-years apart; all 10 panels are
reproduced at the same scale. Simulations such as this can reproduce the
full range of observed spiral galaxy types using electromagnetic
processes rather than gravitational ones. — Credit: A. Peratt, Plasma Cosmology, 1992.
And so that there can be no objection, the computer simulations have
been backed up by experiments in the highest energy density laboratory
electrical discharges—the Z-pinch machine. The experiments verify each
stage in development of the PIC simulations. This important work
demonstrates that the beautiful spiral structure of galaxies is a
natural form of plasma instability in a universe energized by electrical
power.
>> Electrical discharges (Lichtenberg figures) illuminate the
surface of the Z machine during a recent shot. The most recent advance
gave an output power of about 290 trillion watts for billionths of a
second, about 80 times the entire world's output of electricity focused
onto a target the size of a cotton reel.
NOTE: Clearly, the production of a spiral galaxy requires the input of prodigious electrical power!
But nowhere in astrophysical theory will you find any mention of
electrical energy. In stark contrast, cosmologists are content to invent
“dark matter” and “dark energy” on the basis of their universe built
with the weakest force in the universe – gravity. Meanwhile magnetic
fields are found throughout space, plainly signaling the electric
currents required to sustain them.
>> Most of the galaxies studied in the
THINGS survey also have been observed at other wavelengths, including
Spitzer space telescope infrared images and GALEX ultraviolet images.
This combination provides an unprecedented resource for unraveling the
mystery of how a galaxy's gaseous material influences its overall
evolution.
Analysis of THINGS data already has yielded numerous scientific payoffs. For example, one study has shed new light on astronomers' understanding of the gas-density threshold required to start the process of star formation. "Using the data from THINGS in combination with observations from NASA's space telescopes has allowed us to investigate how the processes leading to star formation differ in big spiral galaxies like our own and much smaller, dwarf galaxies," said Adam Leroy and Frank Bigiel of the Max-Planck Insitute for Astronomy at the Austin AAS meeting.
Because atomic hydrogen emits radio waves at a specific frequency, astronomers can measure motions of the gas by noting the Doppler shift in frequency caused by those motions. "Because the THINGS images are highly detailed, we have been able to measure both the rotational motion of the galaxies and non-circular random motions within the galaxies," noted Erwin de Blok of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Analysis of THINGS data already has yielded numerous scientific payoffs. For example, one study has shed new light on astronomers' understanding of the gas-density threshold required to start the process of star formation. "Using the data from THINGS in combination with observations from NASA's space telescopes has allowed us to investigate how the processes leading to star formation differ in big spiral galaxies like our own and much smaller, dwarf galaxies," said Adam Leroy and Frank Bigiel of the Max-Planck Insitute for Astronomy at the Austin AAS meeting.
Because atomic hydrogen emits radio waves at a specific frequency, astronomers can measure motions of the gas by noting the Doppler shift in frequency caused by those motions. "Because the THINGS images are highly detailed, we have been able to measure both the rotational motion of the galaxies and non-circular random motions within the galaxies," noted Erwin de Blok of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Comment: The observations of ‘motions of gas’ in galaxies
will be valuable to plasma cosmologists but will only serve to further
confuse gravity models because it is not 'gas' that is in motion but
plasma. And as for star formation, the same electrical plasma processes
that form galaxies are involved at the stellar scale. A later article
will show that astronomers’ understanding of stars is little advanced on
the aboriginal ‘campfire in the sky.’ There will be no new light on
astronomers' understanding of stars until electric light dispels the
darkness.
>> Comparison of rotational velocity with radius in a spiral
galaxy versus a supercomputer simulation of the rotation of an
equivalent mass object formed at the intersection of two interacting
plasma filaments. No dark matter need be invented to reproduce the
peculiar rotation curves of spiral galaxies because the electromagnetic
forces acting on plasma are so much stronger than gravity. —Credit: A.
Peratt.
...................................................
There is an important lesson here. The notion that gravity
governs celestial mechanics has been "embedded within our culture" for
hundreds of years and is as difficult to dislodge as was Ptolemy's
epicycles. Science is essentially a cultural activity and is not as
objective as we like to fool ourselves. It seems that the cultural
imperative remains strong enough to deny prima facie evidence and defy
logic and commonsense. As Max Planck lamented, “An important
scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and
converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents
gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with
the ideas from the beginning.” But our growing generation is not
being familiarized with important scientific innovation, that history
shows often comes from outsiders to a discipline who have not been
imbued with the culture of that discipline. Innovation from outside a
discipline is actively suppressed by academia and generally ignored by a
lazy media.
Meanwhile there is a blizzard of high-tech computer simulations**
presented to a growing generation as real science. Science has entered
the age of virtual reality. And our understanding of the universe has
become as contrived as a computer game.
** The PIC supercomputer simulations referred to earlier are simply
based on the known behavior of charged particles obeying Maxwell’s laws
of electromagnetism. So it is no surprise that the simulations mimic the
lab results. However, most cosmological simulations are derived from a
priori mathematical theory where there are no experiments or direct
observations to serve as a brake on speculation. The result is continual
astonishment at new data.
...................................................
>> The new survey also showed a
fundamental difference between the nearby galaxies -- part of the
"current" Universe, and far more distant galaxies, seen as they were
when the Universe was much younger. "It appears that the gas in the
galaxies in the early Universe is much more 'stirred up,' possibly
because galaxies were colliding more frequently then and there was more
intense star formation causing material outflows and stellar winds,"
explained Martin Zwaan of the European Southern Observatory. The
information about gas in the more distant galaxies came through
non-imaging analysis.
These discoveries, the scientists predict, are only the tip of the iceberg. "This survey produced a huge amount of data, and we've only analyzed a small part of it so far. Further work is sure to tell us much more about galaxies and how they evolve. We expect to be surprised," said Fabian Walter, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.
These discoveries, the scientists predict, are only the tip of the iceberg. "This survey produced a huge amount of data, and we've only analyzed a small part of it so far. Further work is sure to tell us much more about galaxies and how they evolve. We expect to be surprised," said Fabian Walter, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.
Comment: The expectation of surprise has become a
hallmark of astronomy. It is symptomatic of the non-predictive nature of
astrophysical theory based on the big bang and gravitational cosmology.
Successful prediction is the principal test of a good theory, not
surprises.
In the Electric Universe, the lynchpin of big bang theory — the
equation of redshift of stellar spectra with velocity of recession — is
shown empirically to be false. The inability of astrophysicists to
accept the manifest evidence of intrinsic redshift
(a high-redshift quasar in front of a low redshift galaxy should be
blatant enough) may be due to a reluctance to admit that modern physics
has no explanation for the phenomenon of mass in matter and therefore
cannot explain how subatomic particles like the proton and electron
might exhibit the lower mass required to produce lower energy spectra
(redshift). Observations of connections between high- and low-redshift
objects requires that the redshift is intrinsic to the matter in distant
quasars and galaxies and cannot be due to some modification of the
light on its journey to Earth. It calls into question our understanding
of quantum theory because it has been discovered that the redshift of
quasars and companion galaxies is quantized!
Quantum theory has no real explanation, it is merely a set of
rules that match some limited real world observations. On that basis it
is a very shaky pillar to support cosmology. Quantum theory is thought
to apply exclusively to the submicroscopic realm of atoms and subatomic
particles. But that is not so. Redshift has been observed to be
quantized across entire galaxies — no galaxy has been found in
transition from one redshift to another.
Intrinsic redshift of quasars and galaxies means an end to the big
bang. Instead of being seen “when the universe was much younger,” highly
redshifted objects are merely young, nearby and faint. Observations
show that quasars are “born”
from the nucleus of active galaxies. They initially move very fast away
from their parent, usually roughly along the spin axis. As they grow
older they grow brighter and seem to slow down as they gain in mass and
evolve into companion galaxies. This gain in massiveness points to a
process whereby normal matter can pass through a number of small
quantized increases in mass, which gives rise to the observed quantized
decreases in redshift. This discovery points the way, at last, to an
understanding of the phenomenon of mass.
The "stirred up" gas in highly redshifted objects can be simply
understood as being due to unruly youthfulness and electrical
hyperactivity. It has nothing to do with an imaginary early epoch of
galactic collisions. In fact, “galactic collisions” are a recently
popular catch-all to try to explain the formation of spiral galaxies and
many of their anomalous features. Collisions are as unlikely and
unnecessary as they are forbidden in an Electric Universe. The following
exceptional example clearly favors the Electric Universe explanation.
One simple electrical model fits all galaxies naturally.
>> “A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue
stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as
Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a
face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars. The entire galaxy is about
120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way
Galaxy. Ring-shaped galaxies can form in several different ways. One
possible scenario is through a collision with another galaxy. Sometimes
the second galaxy speeds through the first, leaving a ‘splash’ of star
formation. But in Hoag's Object there is no sign of the second galaxy,
which leads to the suspicion that the blue ring of stars may be the
shredded remains of a galaxy that passed nearby. Some astronomers
estimate that the encounter occurred about 2 to 3 billion years ago.” —
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Ray A. Lucas (STScI/AURA)
Comment: In stark contrast to standard ad hoc attempts to
explain Hoag’s object in terms of a collision, the Electric Universe can
point to a simple explanation, which fits neatly the plasma cosmology
model of formation of galaxies in a magnetic pinch at the intersection
of cosmic Birkeland current filaments. Hoag’s object shows the detailed
features of the ‘penumbra’ of a plasma focus discharge.
>> Penumbra of a dense plasma focus from a discharge current
of 174,000 amperes. The rotational structure of the penumbra has a
periodicity of 56 as shown by the 56-dot overlay pattern. —Credit A.
Peratt.
See also the earlier image of the active galactic nucleus of NGC
1097 as another fine example of a dense plasma focus penumbra. The
astronomer Halton Arp
has shown that NGC 1097 is one of the most compelling examples of
quasar ejection from an active nucleus. He describes it as "a busy
quasar factory."
>> The plasma focus is the simplest of devices. Two coaxial
cylindrical electrodes have a very high voltage and current applied
between them at one end. A radial discharge is initiated (shown in
blue), which moves axially along the electrodes (1), under the influence
of its self-generated magnetic field, until it reaches the end of the
electrodes. There it balloons out in a filamentary penumbra (2). Image
credit: E. Lerner.
The Birkeland current filaments are caused by the magnetic pinch
effect and they space themselves evenly apart in a characteristic number
of 56 filaments. With time, the 56 filaments coalesce in two’s and
sometimes threes. The result is a sequence of 56 (by far the most
common), 49, 47, 41, 39, 33, 30, followed by a large number of 28
filaments. The convergence continues through 20, 16, 8, 7, 6, and 4, the
latter being the minimum number of Birkeland filaments recorded.
The energy of the discharge becomes focused at the center of the
inner electrode (3) where a ‘kink’ plasma instability causes the
filaments to form a ‘coiled coil’ like a coiled telephone cord. The kink
instability twists upon itself to form a tiny donut shaped ‘plasmoid’
of extremely high energy density. Eventually, the plasmoid breaks down
and electrons and ions are accelerated from the plasmoid in opposite
directions along the axis in intense, narrow beams (4).
>> The left hand image shows the kink instability at the dense
plasma focus. The right hand image shows the form of the plasmoid and
the particle jets created when the magnetic field begins to collapse.
Image credit: E. Lerner.
The natural formation of highly focused jets from some stars and
active galactic nuclei is now clear. And the rapid motion of stars close
to our own galactic center may be explained by the assemblage of matter
there in the form of a dusty plasmoid constrained by powerful magnetic
fields.
Below is an image of the galactic jet of M87 with (by way of
contrast) the best explanation that gravitational theorists can muster.
>> The jet blasting out of the nucleus
of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy 50 million light years away in the
constellation Virgo [false color]. At the extreme left of the image, the
bright galactic nucleus harboring a supermassive black hole shines. The
jet is thought to be produced by strong electromagnetic forces created
by matter swirling toward the supermassive black hole. These forces pull
gas and magnetic fields away from the black hole along its axis of
rotation in a narrow jet. Inside the jet, shock waves produce
high-energy electrons that spiral around the magnetic field and radiate
by the "synchrotron" process, creating the observed radio, optical and
X-ray knots.
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