The Electric Sky

By Donald E. Scott, Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering)

Author of the book - The Electric Sky

& the Comeback of Cas A 

by Mel Acheson

The M1 Pulsar - X-ray Image by Chandra

  There is a revolution just beginning in astronomy/cosmology that will rival the one set off by Copernicus and Galileo.  This revolution is based on the growing realization that the cosmos is highly electrical in nature.  It is becoming clear that 99% of the universe is made up not of "invisible matter", but rather, of matter in the plasma state.  Electrodynamic forces in electric plasmas are much stronger than the gravitational force.

    Mainstream astrophysicists are continually “surprised” by new data sent back by space probes and orbiting telescopes.  That ought to be a clue that something is wrong.  New information always sends theoretical astrophysicists "back to the drawing board".  In light of this, it is curious that they have such "cock-sure" attitudes about the infallibility of their present models.  Those models seem to require major "patching up" every time a new space probe sends back data.

    Astrophysicists and astronomers do not study experimental plasma dynamics in graduate school.  They rarely take any courses in electrodynamic field theory, and thus they try to explain every new discovery via gravity, magnetism, and fluid dynamics which is all they understand.  It is no wonder they cannot understand that 99% of all cosmic phenomena are due to plasma dynamics and not to gravity alone.

    When confronted by observations that cast doubt on the validity of their theories, astrophysicists have circled their wagons and conjured up pseudo-scientific invisible entities such as neutron stars, weakly interacting massive particles, strange energy, and black holes.  When confronted by solid evidence such as Halton Arp's photographs that contradict the Big Bang Theory, their response is to refuse him access to any major telescope in the U.S.

    Instead of wasting time in a futile battle trying to convince entrenched mainstream astronomers to seriously investigate the Electric/Plasma Universe ideas, a growing band of plasma scientists and engineers are simply bypassing them.  A new electric plasma-based paradigm that does not find new discoveries to be “enigmatic and puzzling”, but rather to be predictable and consistent with an electrical point of view, is slowly but surely replacing the old paradigm wherein all electrical mechanisms are ignored.

    This web site is dedicated to explaining the basis of this ongoing scientific shift.  It also presents links to other sites where you can investigate the details of what is happening.

       These pages are designed to be read through in order, starting with the Introduction.  If you do this, the background information needed for understanding any given page will have been presented in an earlier page.  However, each of the topics below is discussed in a reasonably self-contained way for anyone who just wants to pick and choose.  Enter the site by clicking on the link to the Introduction below.

Introduction

A Model of Interstellar Space

Plasma - The Fundamental State of Matter

Missing Matter

Our Sun

Solar Neutrino Problem

Stars

Galaxies

Solar System

Red Shift

Summary

 Links

Electromagnetic Fields in Space (Published, Peer Reviewed, IEEE paper)

 Solar Surface Transistor Action

Bayes Theorem

Reply to Tim Thompson

The Comeback of Cas A

A New Light on the Cosmos

Jan 23, 2009

Cassiopeia A double layer explosion. Image in twelve-times ionized silicon light.
Credit: NASA/CXC/GSFC/U.Hwang et al

Phenomena and their explanations are moving targets. What’s considered to be a phenomenon changes over time and requires a new explanation.

If an explanation lasts long enough to enable us to do something with it, it’s a good explanation. Often the explanation will contain the seeds of its own overthrow: it will enable us to make new instruments and observations that contradict the explanation and reveal the phenomenon to be something other than what we considered it to be. The nature of considering—the ways that nerve activation evolve in our bodies—ensures that there will always be other possibilities for categorizing phenomena and explaining them.

An illustration is Cassiopeia A (Cas A) in the image above. Before modern instruments, astronomers found a few objects like Cas A: a ring of light around a central star. Since astronomical imagination was limited to mechanical explosions, the objects obviously were exploded stars. Few people doubted the accepted explanation that the ring of light was caused by limb brightening of a sphere of hot gaseous debris thrown off by the explosion.

The puzzle to be solved was imagining a mechanism that could produce the astronomical amount of energy required to blast so much matter so far from the gravitational center with so large a velocity. Compared with the explosions that were imagined to cause ordinary novas and flares, these were super-explosions. The events were named supernovas and the rings were called supernova remnants (SNRs). It all made sense.

Now modern instruments are bringing a rain of observations to sprout the seeds of overthrow. The ring is a cellular structure of plasma filaments. The filaments “flicker” over periods of about a year, and they emit cosmic rays and synchrotron radiation. They contain strong magnetic fields, and their velocities are too slow. Inside the ring are a disk and several jets composed of material that is enriched with such elements as silicon and iron.

Many more objects like Cas A have been discovered, and the modern image has diverged from what was imagined. It is no longer a SNR. The libraries of explanation that burden the name of supernova are obsolete. A new name is required for the new phenomenon, and a new explanation must be imagined.

Judging from similar objects that are observed at different angles, the ring of Cas A is a region of brightening in an hourglass-shaped interstellar Birkeland current as it pinches down to power the central star. In Cas A, we’re looking down the axis of the current.

Discontinuities and leakage discharges generate webs of filaments with instabilities that flicker like lightning through clouds. In close-up views of the regions at upper left and near the center, the braided spiral structure of Birkeland-current filaments is apparent. In the videoof images spanning several years, the braids appear to twist around each other. Bright knots of instabilities emerge and fade.

Fluctuations in the currents generate double layers, and the strong electric fields act as particle accelerators. Electrons and ions are boosted to speeds that are comparable to that of light. The ions escape as cosmic rays; the electrons spiral in the magnetic fields of the filamentary currents and emit synchrotron radiation. Neutral atoms may be swept along with the ions and generate shock waves—in exactly the opposite causal relationship from what is imagined for SNRs.

Nearer the center of the pinch, a toroidal (disk-like) current collects charge from the larger circuit. Occasional discharges produce narrow jets: because they are electrical currents that generate their own pinching magnetic fields, the jets tend to be self-collimating over long distances.

The attractive force of the pinch effect in Birkeland currents causes them to act like cosmic vacuum cleaners: they sweep up surrounding material. The influx of that material depends on ionization potential. Where the outward gas pressure from the increasing concentration of material balances the inward transport, elements with that ionization potential build up. The process is called Marklund convection. It sorts elements into enriched regions, such as the iron and silicon concentrationsin Cas A.

Flares are the result of double layers that form and explode in one or a few of the Birkeland currents in a star’s corona or photosphere. Those double layers arise from current surges that are generated in local instabilities. Novas and supernovas may be double layers that explode from the entire surface of a star. They are like cosmic sparks that “jump the gap” when instabilities switch off the current in galactic Birkeland filaments. The sudden interruption of current in such transmission lines will cause the energy that is distributed throughout the circuit to be dumped into the spark that bridges the gap. The resulting explosion will dissipate more energy than was originally present in the circuit element that “blew”—in this case, the star.

The expansion velocities of these whole-star exploding double layers respond to the forces of the surging currents within them. Double layers explode more like a rapidly expanding balloon than like a firecracker: the force of expansion acts continuously in the layer instead of impulsively from an origin. Velocities cannot be treated as if they were the ballistic results of an initial explosion. They can speed up or slow down from moment to moment. This kind of non-ballistic behavior is typical of prominences and coronal mass ejections. That Cas A has velocities which are “too slow” for the estimated energy of a ballistic explosion is no surprise for an exploding double layer.

Supernovas and their remnants were appropriate explanations for a universe that was imagined to consist of gas and gravity. But the past century revealed a universe that consists of plasma and electricity. Now we need explanations that are appropriate for it.

Thanks to Wal Thornhill for his review and comments.

By Mel Acheson

 From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00current.htm

See http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm

See ‘NASA’s Dim View of Stars’

And see

Enlightenment Today

Save the World from RamPage

TimeSpace

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

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