May 09, 2006
Seeing More Electricity in Space
As laboratory
research documents the behavior of plasma, many unexplained events in
nature become understandable. Electrical “double layers” are a powerful
example, offering the most efficient answers to many observational
mysteries. In these cases, popular speculations based on pure
mathematics are no longer useful.
The pinching of plasma into
filaments is due
to both magnetic and electric forces. We can detect the magnetic
fields at a distance and understand why the filaments behave as they
do. But another common formation in plasma is purely electrical. We
can only detect it by sending a probe through it.
Anthony Peratt, an associate of Nobel Laureate
Hannes Alfven, describes this formation in his textbook, The
Physics of the Plasma Universe. He writes about “...two thin and
close regions of opposite charge excess which give rise to a
potential drop....” The two regions are called a “double layer”.
Because we’re familiar with the idea that positive and negative
charges attract each other, the idea that a layer of positive
charges could persist close to a layer of negative charges is
counterintuitive.
But these “thin and close regions of opposite
charge” don’t just lie isolated in space: They form in a current—in
a flow of charged particles—and they act as part of a filamentary
circuit.
Double layers originate in a chicken-and-egg kind of
ambiguity. Fluctuations in the charge density and particle velocity
of a current will produce a potential drop; a potential drop will
accelerate charged particles and produce fluctuations in density and
velocity.
In a current, negative electrons stream in one
direction and positive ions stream in the opposite direction. A
potential drop will increase the velocity of particles on the
“downstream” side—electrons move faster on one side of the potential
drop, ions on the other.
The increased velocity means that the density
decreases. To maintain charge neutrality in the circuit, other
particles with the same charge are “trapped” on the downstream side.
These trapped particles make up the layers of the double layer, with
electrons on one side, ions on the other, and an electric field—the
potential drop—between them.
With the ebb and flow of the many conditions in a
filament (density, velocity, composition, temperature, etc.), double
layers can form and dissipate. And the amplitudes of variations in
these conditions can become large. A double layer can accelerate
particles to cosmic-ray energies. It is “radio noisy”, radiating
across a wide band of frequencies. It accelerates particles in
beams. It can exert pressure on the plasma and expand across the
magnetic field. It may explode and draw inductive energy from the
filamentary circuit, releasing vastly more energy than was present
in the double layer itself.
Because double layers dissipate energy—by
accelerating matter and emitting radiation—they must be powered by
an external source. The ability of Birkeland filaments to transmit
electrical power over great distances means that the source could be
many light-years—hundreds or thousands of light-years—away.
In the plasma universe, energetic events cannot be
explained by reference to local conditions only. The effects of an
entire circuit—which may encompass a whole galaxy or cluster of
galaxies—must be considered. For this reason, while the prevailing
scientific view allows only for isolated galactic and stellar
islands in space, the electric view emphasizes
connectivity.
(In the image of Fornax A above, for example, a tiny
but energy-dense plasmoid at the center of the galaxy discharges
energy along oppositely-directed Birkeland filaments (invisible in
this image) into the radio lobes. Diffuse currents loop back from
the lobes to the spiral arms, where their increasing density
triggers star formation as they return to the central plasmoid.)
Irving Langmuir, one of the early pioneers in the
study of plasma, discovered double layers in his laboratory in the
1920s. Hannes Alfven, the father of plasma cosmology, proposed their
existence in cosmic settings in 1958. Double layers in space weren’t
discovered until 1978, when artificial satellites orbited through
them and measured the characteristic changes in their electric
fields.
This fact is undeniable. But the traditional
theories of astrophysics—gas kinetics and gravity and particle
physics—provide no electrical framework to make this fact
meaningful. And meaningless facts are simply ignored. They are often
not even perceived.
The phenomenon of double layers became a ghost that
haunts conventional astrophysics. Astrophysicists can detect and
recognize the existence of magnetic fields in space. They use the
conceptual tools of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD—the physics of fluids
that are affected by magnetic forces) to explain magnetic influences
on gases.
But because double layers are purely electrical and
can only be detected by sending a probe through them, conventional
astrophysicists are unable to recognize their existence. Because the
electric field in Birkeland filaments is aligned with the magnetic
field (field-aligned currents), the electric field in double layers
is also aligned with the magnetic field and MHD doesn’t apply.
Astrophysicists’ concepts have created a blind spot in their
percepts.
Astrophysicists see only the double layers’ effects,
and so they are at a loss to explain them. Energetic events occur
without commensurate causes, as if a poltergeist were loose in the
universe. In the left image above, loops of filaments on the sun
suddenly expand and explode, throwing off massive bubbles of plasma
that
accelerate to significant fractions of the speed of
light.
Jets from opposite poles of a galaxy end in energetic
clouds (right image above) that radiate copiously in radio and x-ray
wavelengths.
(The text in the last link—written from the
conventional point of view—displays astrophysicists’ blind spot: The
attempt at explanation begins with “plasma” but regresses to “gas”
and ends with the “belief” that magnetism can somehow explain the
anomalous acceleration and collimation.)
Conventional
theorists grasp at mathematical artifacts—such as black holes and
magnetic reconnection—to fill in their empirical blind spot. But
science is based on fact, not artifact. And the fact is that double
layers can be produced in a laboratory and directly detected in
space. Black holes and magnetic reconnection can’t.
________________________________________________________________________
Please visit our new "Thunderblog" page
Through the initiative of managing
editor Dave Smith, we’ve begun the launch of a new
page
called
Thunderblog. Timely
presentations of fact and opinion, with emphasis on
new
discoveries
and the explanatory power of the Electric Universe."
new: online video page
The Electric Sky and The Electric Universe
available now!