Doubting the Dark
Aug 18, 2011

Another in a series of announcements from NASA and the European Space Agency reports "the confirmation" of dark matter. Dark matter, as its name implies, is non-luminous, invisible to telescopes, and weakly interacting (at best) with the "baryonic" matter around it. However, its existence has been considered an essential aspect of cosmology because, as an ESA scientist put it a few years ago: "Our own galaxy should have fallen apart by now, so dark matter—this unseen force—is somewhere keeping it glued together."

After studying the Coma Cluster of galaxies in 1933, Fritz Zwicky found that his calculations for orbital acceleration and stellar mass within it were off by a factor of about 160. He thought that something invisible to his instruments was holding the cluster together. That "something" later became known as "dark matter." His hypothesis was supposedly confirmed in 1979 with the announcement of "gravitational lensing" (another theory of Zwicky's) and the "twin quasar" QSO0957+561 A, which are not topics of this paper.

It should be noted that some astrophysicists are not convinced that dark matter or its enigmatic twin "dark energy" are justified because the data used to support their existence is questionable. Observations from both COBE and WMAP might have calibration issues that "...could indicate that fluctuations measured in the intensity of the CMB radiation are actually smaller than they originally appeared. The size of these fluctuations is a key parameter used to support the existence of dark matter and dark energy. With smaller ripples, there would be no need to invoke exotic concepts like dark matter and dark energy to explain the CMB observations."

Since dark matter cannot be seen by optical telescopes and can be analyzed through inference alone, could it be that something else is taking place? Something that NASA and the ESA observers have failed to consider as an active force? That "something" is electricity.

Electric Universe theorists see electricity flowing through plasma driving galaxy clusters, galaxies themselves and their associated stars. Birkeland currents create z-pinch compression zones between spinning magnetic fields in electrical vortices. The compressed ions form spheres of glowing plasma, some in arc mode, some in glow mode, and some that vary between the two states.

Electric currents pouring into them from the outside power the stars and galactic wheels. What should we expect to see in their shapes and behavior in that case?

1. Around the galaxies and throughout the cluster will be Birkeland current filaments slowly fluctuating in their intensity, causing mass density variations that will be difficult to interpret (without the “blank check” of dark matter) as gravitational effects.

2. The plasma in which the galaxies exist contains magnetic fields that map the Birkeland current flows, interconnecting each galaxy with its neighbor and forming electrical bridges between them.

3. Electrical charges separate from one another across a double layer in a Birkeland current filament. Double layers may break down if too much current flows in the circuit. In that instance, there will be a stellar flare, a gamma-ray flash, a nova or a supernova.

Since Birkeland currents are drawn toward each other in a linear relationship, dark matter is unnecessary when electric currents flowing through plasma are recognized as the most powerful long-range accretion force.

Stephen Smith