The Hourglass Milky Way
Dec 28, 2010

Information obtained by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope has given astronomers another puzzling knot to unravel: the twin lobes of a gamma ray hourglass shape extend outward beyond the Milky Way's central bulge. Each structure measures approximately 65,000 light-years in diameter.

Plasma physicists are familiar with hourglass shapes. Rather than "bubbles" of radiation, the funicular formations are the unmistakable signature of Birkeland currents squeezing plasma and charged dust into a z-pinch compression zone. The intense magnetic fields associated with Birkeland current filaments cause electrons to accelerate with velocities close to light speed. Those excited electrons emit synchrotron radiation, the principle source for gamma rays in space.

Electric Universe advocates have long known that "radio lobes" far above the poles of active galaxies are the signature of Birkeland currents. Almost every body in the Universe displays some kind of filamentation. For example, the jets from energetic galaxies, such as M87, resolve into braided filaments, while the spiral arms of some galaxies exhibit twisted strands of material extending from their cores.

All those filaments are Birkeland currents, but they only represent the visible portion of an entire circuit. Every element in a galactic circuit radiates energy, and it must be powered by its coupling with larger circuits. The extent of those larger circuits is unknown, but since galaxies occur in strings, they must traverse millions of light-years.

As more data accumulates from an ever-increasing array of telescopes, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Milky Way shares characteristics with the rest of its galactic family. A halo of stars, filamentary structures, lobes of radiation, a microwave "haze," and other observed phenomena point to its electrical nature.

Stephen Smith