It'd be nice if the woos could show any evidence that the filaments of which they speak are by their nature made of plasma.
ROTFLOL! How much of the observable matter (of which we speak) do you think is made of plasma? Here's a clue:
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast07sep99_1.htm "99.9 percent of the Universe is made up of plasma," says Dr. Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030905072028.htm "Plasma is a hot, ionized, gas-like matter -- a fourth state of matter, distinct from solids, liquids and gases -- believed to make up more than 99 percent of the visible universe, including the stars, galaxies and the vast majority of the solar system."
http://www.physics.umd.edu/news/News Releases/Cassini.htm " Plasmas are the most common form of matter, comprising more than 99 percent of the known visible universe including the Sun and other stars. These ionized gases generate and interact with magnetic and electric fields around planets, stars and other astrophysical environments. Plasma processes can accelerate some ions to incredible energies."
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2004/04-171.html "Geveden also was project manager for several other successful NASA efforts, including the Optical Transient Detector and Lightning Imaging Sensor Earth-orbiting satellites, which produced data for the world's first global map of lightning. He also served as chief engineer for the Waves in Space Plasmas project, a study which involved the measurement of the characteristic frequencies of plasma, the form of matter which comprises more than 99 percent of the visible universe."
See? Even NASA says the answer is over 99 percent. So what do you think the odds are that the filamentary structures we observe ubiquitously in space are not made of plasma or influenced by known processes that influence plasmas? Hmmmmmm?
Such a large-scale filamentary structure does exist, but the filaments are due to the distribution of galaxy clusters, which as far as I know, don't constitute humongous chains of plasma stretching across the universe.
And what form of matter do you think makes up the bulk of observable matter in galaxies? I'll tell you ... Plasma. Before stars form, a galaxy is just clouds of plasma which will be influenced by whatever forces and processes affect plasmas. So if we see chains of galaxies (and we do), there must automatically have been a chain of plasma "stretching across the universe." And even after stars form, much of the matter in galaxies is still not bound in stars but exists as free floating clouds of plasma still subject to whatever forces influence naked plasma. Whereever we look we see galaxies (and the stars in galaxies) strung out in long chains. And everywhere we look around, between and within those structures we see plasmas, often organized, again, into filamentary structures.
For example ...
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/CIV.html "IMMENSE FLOWS OF CHARGED PARTICLES DISCOVERED BETWEEN THE STARS"
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/499556 "Massive Coronae of Galaxies ... snip ... There is reason to suspect that about half of the baryons in the universe are in pressure?supported plasma in the halos of normal galaxies"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v341/n6244/abs/341720a0.html "Discovery of intergalactic radio emission in the Coma–A1367 supercluster"
http://www.physorg.com/news96301312.html "
Scientists discover vast intergalactic plasma cloud, April 20, 2007, Combining the world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico with a precision imaging, seven-antenna synthesis radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO), a team of researchers led by Los Alamos scientist Philipp Kronberg have discovered a new giant in the heavens, a giant in the form of a previously undetected cloud of intergalactic plasma that stretches more than 6 million light years across."
Now plasma cosmology has no problem explaining how these strings of stars and galaxies would form from plasmas because plasmas naturally organize themselves into filaments and interact in a way that would seem likely to have helped form stars and galaxies. But mainstream cosmology has to call on that still undefined and unseen *substance* called dark matter and imbue it with all sorts of unique properties in order to even begin to explain these string-like arrangements of stars and galaxies. And even then, they encounter big problems with their model. For example ...
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0107filament.html "2004,
GIANT GALAXY STRING DEFIES MODELS OF HOW UNIVERSE EVOLVED,
Wide-field telescope observations of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age (redshift = 2.38), have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can't explain how a string this big could have formed so early. ... snip ... The astronomers have detected 37 galaxies and one quasar in the string, but "there are almost certainly far more than this," said Palunas. "The string probably contains many thousands of galaxies." ... snip ...
The team compared their observations to supercomputer simulations of the early Universe, which could not reproduce strings this large. "The simulations tell us that you cannot take the matter in the early Universe and line it up in strings this large," said Francis. "There simply hasn't been enough time since the Big Bang for it to form structures this colossal". "Our best guess right now is that it's a tip-of-the-iceberg effect," he said. "All we are seeing is the brightest few galaxies. That's probably far less than 1% of what's really out there, most of which is the mysterious invisible dark matter. ... snip ...
"To explain our results," said Francis, "the dark matter clouds that lie in strings must have formed galaxies, while the dark matter clouds elsewhere have not done so. We've no idea why this happened - it's not what the models predict."
Furthermore, plasma cosmologists have no problem explaining the formation and observed structure of the stars and galaxies themselves, and the forms of radiation they observe coming from and around them. They have no trouble explaining the observed jets of ... you guessed it ... plasma. But mainstream astrophysicists have to again call on dark matter to explain galactic structure (and formation), as well as electromagnetic physics that stand in stark contrast to what those outside the astrophysics community believe correct in order to explain the observed structure of stars and the existence of jets. They also have to treat plasma as if it were just ordinary neutral gas dominated by phenomena such as "wind", "bow shock" and "sound" to explain many observations that EM/plasma physicists have no problem explaining. And even then the mainstream astrophysicists encounter problems and unexplained surprises, perhaps because "wind" and "sound" are phenomena more appropriate to neutral particle environments like the Earth's atmosphere or oceans than the depths of space.
Anthony Peralt, a plasma physicist at LANL, summarizes the plasma cosmology/electric universe case this way in a paper titled "Plasma and the Universe: Large Scale Dynamics, Filamentation, and Radiation" (linked below): "One of the earliest predictions about the morphology of the universe is that it be filamentary (Alfvén, 1950). This prediction followed from the fact that volumewise, the universe is 99.999% matter in the plasma state. When the plasma is energetic, it is generally inhomogeneous with constituent parts in motion. Plasmas in relative motion are coupled by the currents they drive in each other and nonequilibrium plasma often consists of current-conducting filaments. In the laboratory and in the Solar System, filamentary and cellular morphology is a well-known property of plasma. As the properties of the plasma state of matter is believed not to change beyond the range of our space probes, plasma at astrophysical dimensions must also be filamentary. During the 1980s a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the Galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scale. By this time, the analytical intractibility of complex filamentary geometries, intense self-fields, nonlinearities, and explicit time dependence had fostered the development of fully three-dimensional, fully electromagnetic, particle-in-cell simulations of plasmas having the dimensions of galaxies or systems of galaxies. It had been realized that the importance of applying electromagnetism and plasma physics to the problem of radiogalaxy and galaxy formation derived from the fact that the universe is largely a plasma universe. In plasma, electromagnetic forces exceed gravitational forces by a factor of 10^^36, and electromagnetism is 10^^7 times stronger than gravity even in neutral hydrogen regions, where the degree of ionization is a miniscule 10^^–4. The observational evidence for galactic-dimensioned Birkeland currents is given based on the direct comparison of the synchrotron radiation properties of simulated currents to those of extra-galactic sources including quasars and double radio galaxies."
And retired electrical engineering professor Donald Scott puts it this way in his book "Electric Sky": "A plasma universe and a gravitational universe have gross observational differences. A plasma universe should be filamentary - stringy - at all size scales (in the atmospheres of planets, in the Sun's corona, in groups of stars, in galaxies and in strings of galaxy clusters). It should be energetic, a source of electromagnetic radiation over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and it should be endless in space. The gravitational universe - the "big bang" universe - is supposed to have produced all the elements originally, should now be quiescent in the absence of mass collisions, and should be increasingly smooth on the large scale. The filamentation, chaos, and radio-frequency radiation that we now observe were not expected in the original big bang model."
I would add that not only were those observations unexpected, in order to explain them Big Bang has had to introduce a score of undetectable, untestable, bizarre particles, energies, forces and events. Gnomes is the word I like. And it's sad that while the astrophysics community is finally coming around to recognizing the filamentary nature of the universe, it still doesn't begin to grasp the significance of plasma in that universe.
For example, here is a report on the largest computer model the mainstream has built yet of the universe:
http://www.physorg.com/news116170410.html "December 06, 2007, Supercomputer simulation of universe may help in search for missing matter ... snip ... Much of the gaseous mass of the universe is bound up in a tangled web of cosmic filaments that stretch for hundreds of millions of light-years, according to a new supercomputer study by a team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder."
The very heart of the problem with the mainstream's approach is aptly demonstrated by that article. It doesn't refer even once to the material in the filaments as being "plasma" and they don't seem to recognize that electromagnetic effects naturally tend to organize plasmas into long filaments. Their model doesn't include any of those effects ... only gravity.
Here's another example of this, even closer to home. In the 2006 paper "The Galactic Center Magnetosphere" by Mark Morris, Department of Physics & Astronomy, UCLA, Morris mentions the recently discovered Double Helix Nebula. Here are several images of the nebula.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7082/images/nature04554-f1.2.jpg
http://www.broad.mit.edu/news-images/TRC-032306.jpg
He states "At a distance of ~100 pc toward positive Galactic latitude from the Galactic center, a nebula having the form of an intertwined double helix extends over at least 50 pc, with its long axis oriented approximately perpendicular to the Galactic plane (Figure 2). This feature was interpreted as a torsional Alfven wave propagating away from the Galactic center along the magnetic field, and driven by the rotation of the circumnuclear gas disk (CND). ... snip ... The presence of two strands has been attributed to an apparent ”dumbbell” asymmetry of the driving disk (see [65]); the magnetic field threading the disk is concentrated into two diametrically opposed density maxima. A potential weakness of the torsional wave hypothesis is that the wave cannot yet be followed all the way down to its hypothetical source, the CND. However, this also raises the question of why the double helix is visible in the first place; its mid-infrared emission is most likely thermal emission from dust, so the visibility of the nebula at its present location presumably requires that the wave has levitated charged dust grains. ... snip ...
There is so far no explanation for how a long bundle of linear, nonthermal filaments could culminate in helically wound, thermal structures."
What a shame that Morris is apparently unfamiliar with force-free Birkeland filaments (
http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Filamentation) as they easily explain the shape and other features of the nebula. Instead, he believes in the black hole and "anchored" magnetic field gnomes, as is noted in
http://www.physicalsciences.ucla.edu/research/doublehelix.asp. He'd either rather believe in gnomes than consider the possibility that these are Birkeland currents or he's totally unaware of the proven phenomena of Birkeland currents. Either way it's rather sad.
MattusMaximus, can I suggest you try reading more about that which you criticize. Start here:
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/AtHomeMag.html,
then go here:
http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Plasma_Universe_resources
I suggest these two papers, in particular:
"Plasma and the Universe: Large Scale Dynamics, Filamentation, and Radiation", A. L. Peratt, 1995, Astrophysics and Space Science, v. 227, p. 97-107.
"Electric space : evolution of the plasma universe", A. L. Peratt, 1996, Astrophysics and Space Science, v. 244, p. 89-103.
