The universe's filamentary web is slowly being revealed...

[MGmirkin]

Well, it seems there's something possibly big afoot at NASA, as they've scheduled a press release for May 14th.

(NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt)
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/ma ... isory.html

NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt

WASHINGTON -- NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations.

Now, I don't claim to know what exactly NASA is planning to announce. However, a colleague online has pointed me to a recent news release from ESA which may have a bearing on the NASA release (or it may not). Today I'll simply be covering the ESA release and some related bits and pieces. Will adopt a wait-and-see holding pattern with respect to the NASA upcoming release.

My colleague online pointed me to the following article:

(Space oddity: European probe finds missing matter; May 7, 2008)
http://digg.com/space/Space_oddity_Euro ... ing_matter

PARIS (AFP) - An orbital X-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter in the universe whose existence had long been theorised but evidence for which had been lacking, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.

The discovery made by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which comprises less than five percent of the cosmos.

Most of the universe consists of matter and energy of an unknown nature, which astrophysicists call "dark" and which is believed to be distributed in a web-like structure.

[...]

The new claim is based on observation of a pair of distant galaxy clusters called Abell 222 and Abell 223 located 2.3 billion light years from Earth.

Images and spectra found the two clusters were linked by a bridge of hot gas of a very low density.

The astronomers believe that such low-density gas permeates the filaments of the cosmic web around the universe.

They were able to spot this one because of its high temperature and because of a stroke of luck. The thread was luckily in the telescope's line of sight, rather than visible from a narrower angle.

"The hot gas that we see in this bridge or filament is probably the hottest and densest part of the diffuse gas in the cosmic web, which is believed to constitute about half of the baryonic matter in the universe," said lead researcher Norbert Werner of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

"This is only the beginning," he said.

"To understand the distribution of the matter within the cosmic web, we have to see many more systems like this -- and ultimately launch a dedicated space research laboratory with a much higher sensitivity than possible with the current satellites."

Which then pointed me (via additional related links) to this article:

(Piece of Missing Cosmic Matter Found; May 12, 2008)
http://digg.com/space/Piece_of_Missing_ ... er_Found_2

Astronomers have found a piece of the universe's puzzle that's been missing for awhile: a type of extremely hot, dense matter that is all but invisible to us.

Engaging in something like cosmic accounting, astronomers have tried to balance the scant amount of matter that has been directly observed with the vast amount that remains unobserved directly. The latter constitutes about 90 percent of the universe's matter.

[...]

Dark matter remains a total mystery. But the new study squares the balance sheet a bit in regards to baryonic matter.

Previously, only about half of the baryonic matter in the universe was accounted for by the known gas, stars and galaxies. A team of astrophysicists has now found evidence of part of the missing half in a bridge-like filament connecting two clusters of galaxies. The finding is detailed in the May 2008 issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters.

Along with dark matter, the missing baryonic matter is thought to form an enormous spider web of tendrils that connect galaxy clusters, which sit on threads and knots in the web.

The missing part of this matter was thought to be a hot, ultra-thin gas haze of very low density between larger structures. Its hellacious temperature means that it only emits far-ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

[...]

"So far we could only see the clusters, the dense knots of the web. Now we are starting to see the connecting wires of the immense cosmic spider web," said MPE study team member Aurora Simionescu of the discovery of this missing baryonic matter.

A similar baryonic haze, 150 times hotter than the sun's surface, was indirectly detected surrounding the Milky Way and connecting about three dozen other galaxies known collectively as the Local Group in 2003 by astronomers at Harvard and Ohio State Universities.

It is thought that these hot intergalactic hazes were created from material that did not fall into galaxies when they first formed more than 13 billion years ago. Finding and analyzing these filaments could help astronomers better understand what happened after the Big Bang and what forces are dominating the universe today.

I found their reference to the "connecting wires" of the intergalactic web (grid? ) to be particularly poignant / amusing, in light of a general reticence to say anything electrical about space. Perhaps they didn't mean "conductive wires" so much as the bunch of cosmic chicken wire and duct tape holding the Big Bang together?

I've linked to the Digg pages I put up 'cause the URLs are much shorter... Plus, you can Digg it, if you like it! Two birds with one stone!

I then ran across this article from way back in time (c. 2001):

(Early Universe Was Spongy, Like Brain; May 22, 2001)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/a ... 522-1.html

Were Sherlock Holmes a cosmologist, he might have said, "It's filamentary, my dear Watson."

The acute Watson might have argued, however, that it's more like a spider web. And if word of Holmes' theory got around, other big thinkers might have insisted, "No, it's spongy, just like your brain!"

[...]

They'd all have been arguing the same cosmic case: That the early universe contained a series of threads and clumps, not unlike a spider web dappled with water droplets, and that this structure set the stage for the growth of galaxies and galaxy clusters seen today.

Of course, like a good murder mystery, this theory began without much to go on. A small bit of circumstantial evidence here. A wild hunch there.

and no support from "inflation" theory which suggested that the universe should have been generally flat and homogenous with very little overt structure in the early universe, if I recall correctly? Perhaps someone can cite a reference from an authority on inflation to that effect, or correct me if I'm wrong. Pretty please?

Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, they have spotted a string of dense clumps of hydrogen, which glow because inside them a few hot young stars are forming. The clumps are galaxies-to-be, or protogalaxies, the researchers say. And they were found to lie within a tubular region of space -- a filament -- supporting a popular theory of the cosmic web, involving filaments stuffed with protogalaxies.

"This discovery certainly bolsters the concept of the cosmic web," said Lev Kofman, professor of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.

[...]

Since its discovery in 1965, the CMB had appeared to be a uniform temperature in every direction of space. But COBE found tiny variations, lumps and bumps that researchers now believe were seeds of structure. Computer models see these variations as leading to the first large-scale architectural components of the universe -- long filaments connected at nodes. The spider web.

Clumps of hydrogen -- think of them as the drops on the spider web -- developed along these filaments. Each would have had mass, gravity and some random velocity, the computer modelers say. And they would have streamed along the filaments toward the nodes.

[...]

"Most of the hydrogen is still there after the first stars were formed, so it is mostly a hydrogen cloud still, but now it is a hydrogen cloud with hot young stars inside it. This makes the hydrogen glow, much the same process as in the old neon signs of the pop-art generation, and the glowing hydrogen is what gives us a chance to find them."

Another aside: weren't neon signs powered electrically? If they're positing the same mechanism (neon signs), must they not also posit the same powering mechanism? Just wondering. They opened the door; hope they don't mind I walked through it...

While some researchers insist on a spider web analogy for the early universe, Møller prefers a sponge. He says there were a lot of huge voids, bubbles that were nearly empty of matter.

"Separating the voids are thin over-dense regions, which will be walls between two voids at first," he explained. "But as the voids grow they break through the walls, which become thin filaments."

[...]

Take a sponge, any sponge, but preferably a real sea sponge. "Cut it halfway down the middle with a knife and look down into the cut," Møller suggested. "That is pretty much what the early universe looks like."

Interestingly, as you think about the universe and this sponge, some scientists would say you're employing a structure of nature very similar to the one you are pondering.

"The forces that hold a sponge, a spider web and a brain together in the shape they have are all electromagnetic," Møller said. "The structure serves a function, and it was in each case most likely the cheapest way for nature to achieve that function."

I also just remembered this recent article:

(Cosmic Finger Taps Our Galaxy's Shoulder; Feb 5, 2008)
http://digg.com/space/Cosmic_Finger_Tap ... Shoulder_3

As if reaching out with a come-hither motion, a giant gas finger emanating from two neighboring galaxies has hooked into the starry disk of the Milky Way.

This extremity of hydrogen gas is actually the pointy end of the so-called Leading Arm of gas that streams ahead of two irregular galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

[...]

"We're thrilled because we can determine exactly where this gas is plowing into the Milky Way," said research team leader Naomi McClure-Griffiths of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility.

Called HVC306-2+230, the gas finger is gouging into our galaxy's starry disk about 70,000 light-years away from Earth. In the night sky, the contact point would be nearest the Southern Cross.

[...]

new Hubble Space Telescope measurements revealed the clouds are paying our galaxy a one-time visit rather than being its lunch.

McClure-Griffiths' results, however, are more in line with the previous tale pegging the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds as long-time companions. McClure-Griffiths remarks that this isn't the final word and that both theories are still on the table.

By pointing out the spot of contact between the Leading Arm and our galactic disk, the recent study will help astronomers to predict where the clouds themselves will travel in the future.

"We think the Leading Arm is a tidal feature, gas pulled out of the Magellanic Clouds by the Milky Way's gravity," McClure-Griffiths said. "Where this gas goes, we'd expect the clouds to follow, at least approximately."

The long and short of it is this: the universe is filamentary. What's more, they're now beginning to see the interconnection of galaxies along filaments of "hot gas." (*cough* PLASMA! *cough*)

So, how long will it be before they join the plasma cosmology camp?

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[Grey Cloud]

Grid day Michael
(Sorry, couldn't resist and apologies to Dave Smith
I can't wait for this NASA announcement. It said it was something they had been 'hunting for more than 50 years'.
Whatever it is was found with Chandra and ground-based observations. Chandra doesn't appear to do other stuff beside X-rays. So can anyone think of anything X-rayish they have been after for over 50 years? All speculations and rumours welcome.

I read the piece about baryonic matter last week but had never heard of it before.

Roll on Wednesday. Damn, just realised it will probably be Thursday for me due to the time diff. Or will it be Wednesday morning?

[Grey Cloud]

Found this on the 'big event'
Liveblog: NASA Announcement of "Success of Long Galactic Hunt"
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008 ... asa-a.html

Boring.

[MGmirkin]

Here's an answer to the minor question of the first post: "what was NASA's press release to be about?"

(Discovery of Most Recent Supernova in Our Galaxy; NASA's release)
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/ma ... rnova.html

(Others carrying the story, just in case)
http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/08_rel ... 51408.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131118.htm

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

Addendum: Let's fork this thread over into a discussion of the supernova on a different thread, so this thread stays on the topic of the filamentary connections between objects in the universe.

[upriver]

May 1, 2006
Astronomers have known since the early 1990s that galaxies cluster in filaments and sheets surrounding vast voids in space. Now, an international team of astronomers has found that spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, line up like beads on a string, with their spin axes aligned with the filaments that outline voids. The finding supports current galaxy-formation theories and forges a rare observational link between the large-scale distribution of mass in the universe and galaxy-size structures.

Astrophysicists Ignacio Trujillo at the University of Nottingham in England and Conrado Carretero and Santiago Patiri at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Spain made the discovery by studying 470 of the largest voids — galaxy-studded shells hundreds of millions of light-years across. They found the voids by sifting through the two largest studies of galactic redshifts to date: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey.

Earlier researchers had tried to find signs of galaxy alignment in the supergalactic plane — a slab of galaxies that includes the Milky Way — or in more distant planes, but with inconsistent results. Trujillo and his colleagues think those attempts failed because the high velocities of individual galaxies blur the results when Hubble's Law is used to estimate distances from redshifts. "The planes are smeared out because there is no direct way to translate redshift into distance," Trujillo says.

He and his colleagues solved that problem by utilizing the largest cosmic voids. "It's like searching for the pentagons of a soccer ball in a room full of balls," says Carretero. "It is easier to first find complete balls rather than the pentagons themselves."

Once they had mapped a void, they could accurately locate its center. The tidal torque theory, which derives a galaxy's rotation from the uneven distribution of the visible and dark matter from which it coalesces, predicts a galaxy's axis should be more-or-less perpendicular to the line between the galaxy and the center of the void.

Trujillo's team found that significantly more spiral galaxies spin with their axes aligned with the filaments they are embedded in than would be expected by chance. Although the researchers can reject random orientation with 99.7-percent confidence, they need more data to specify the range of orientations. The work appears in the 1 April issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"It's a very interesting finding," says Alan Heavens, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Edinburgh, and it has the potential to tell us more about how galaxies form.
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4215

[MGmirkin]

May 1, 2006
Astronomers have known since the early 1990s that galaxies cluster in filaments and sheets surrounding vast voids in space. Now, an international team of astronomers has found that spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, line up like beads on a string, with their spin axes aligned with the filaments that outline voids. The finding supports current galaxy-formation theories and forges a rare observational link between the large-scale distribution of mass in the universe and galaxy-size structures.

[...]

Trujillo's team found that significantly more spiral galaxies spin with their axes aligned with the filaments they are embedded in than would be expected by chance. Although the researchers can reject random orientation with 99.7-percent confidence, they need more data to specify the range of orientations. The work appears in the 1 April issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"It's a very interesting finding," says Alan Heavens, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Edinburgh, and it has the potential to tell us more about how galaxies form.
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4215

This has been like one of the greatest weeks ever! Well, aside from the week or two around Christmas last year when they found the Birkeland currents (again)...

I mean, damn that's cool news! Figured they'd start mapping it all out eventually. Seems like things are really coming together! And about time...

There was also a link to a video from the article. Though, I haven't yet watched it (on dialup).

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/objects/mm ... axies.mpeg

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

Addendum: Digg it if you love it! I seem to be the first to submit it over at Digg! I love breaking stories over there!

[pln2bz]

Incredible.

If spiral galaxies are in fact the result of a pinch of two twisting Birkeland Currents, and if filaments of galaxies in fact represent numerous of these rope-like structures (as postulated by the EU), then at the risk of stating the obvious, one would expect their axes to generally line up with the flow of current. It's not really very different from how current would be imagined to flow through a small wire. Individual electrons wouldn't always travel parallel to the wire itself, but in a general sense, you will see a net movement of electrons according to the potential difference.

In fact, I would have to imagine, until notified otherwise, that currents within wires somewhat resemble the behavior of currents within space since they are in fact both plasmas. Rather than, as we've been taught, assuming that electrons act in an independent manner within copper wires, I'd be willing to bet that they in fact form rope-like filaments. And when a wire is chomped by a rat or otherwise damaged, such that the current is forced through a constricted pathway, I'd be willing to bet that, just like in plasma physics, you will achieve a pinch -- which will in turn set the wire on fire and burn your house down. Pinches in space are good. Pinches in wires, very bad.

Am I crazy for suggesting this?

[StevenO]

Incredible.

If spiral galaxies are in fact the result of a pinch of two twisting Birkeland Currents, and if filaments of galaxies in fact represent numerous of these rope-like structures (as postulated by the EU), then at the risk of stating the obvious, one would expect their axes to generally line up with the flow of current. It's not really very different from how current would be imagined to flow through a small wire. Individual electrons wouldn't always travel parallel to the wire itself, but in a general sense, you will see a net movement of electrons according to the potential difference.

In fact, I would have to imagine, until notified otherwise, that currents within wires somewhat resemble the behavior of currents within space since they are in fact both plasmas. Rather than, as we've been taught, assuming that electrons act in an independent manner within copper wires, I'd be willing to bet that they in fact form rope-like filaments. And when a wire is chomped by a rat or otherwise damaged, such that the current is forced through a constricted pathway, I'd be willing to bet that, just like in plasma physics, you will achieve a pinch -- which will in turn set the wire on fire and burn your house down. Pinches in space are good. Pinches in wires, very bad.

Am I crazy for suggesting this?

I think this is a good thought! For me it looks like EM is a recurring fractal pattern since the structures are so similar from deep down the atomic level up to what happens in our universe.... Still...EM is shaped by boundary conditions, which are different at each level, but the recurring patterns look very similar.

So, I was thinking, did anybody look into modelling plasma behaviour as a fractal pattern instead of all this magneto/electrohydrodynamic wizardry?

[pln2bz]

So, I was thinking, did anybody look into modelling plasma behaviour as a fractal pattern instead of all this magneto/electrohydrodynamic wizardry?

David Thomson in chapter 4 of "Secrets of the Aether" attempts to discuss the subject of how recurrence follows from quantum spin. To be honest, it's not his best chapter. It could use some work, but as usual, his approach seems right to me. If you want to talk about fractals in physics, you need to establish at all steps of the process the physical reason for the fractals. What at the quantum level induces recurrence? The mistake that most discussions of fractals make -- to my knowledge at least -- is that the discussion rarely leaves the mathematical domain. But, as we learn time and time again, mathematics never occur in the absence of some sort of process. If your math doesn't at all times correspond to a physical state of being, then it doesn't truly represent reality. It's just a mathematical shortcut that selectively explains the data. So, the right approach is to ask why does recurrence follow from quantum-level behavior? Any theory of everything must grapple questions like: what about quantum structure or dynamics leads to a Lichtenberg figure as the preferred shape for the flow of charged particles in a lightning bolt? And what about these boundary conditions differs from those others that result in smoother contours of twisting Birkeland Currents? The tests for our TOE's in fact surround us.

This is not intended as bait for a debate, by the way, on the APM ... Just food for thought. The APM discussion must remain on the back-burner for now.

[StevenO]

David Thomson in chapter 4 of "Secrets of the Aether" attempts to discuss the subject of how recurrence follows from quantum spin. To be honest, it's not his best chapter. It could use some work, but as usual, his approach seems right to me. If you want to talk about fractals in physics, you need to establish at all steps of the process the physical reason for the fractals. What at the quantum level induces recurrence?

Thanks. You made a very clarifying point for me... I could imagine that the difference between coherent(collective) and incoherent(random phase) behaviour of (EM) waves could be viewed as a broken dimension, but I cannot see how this pattern becomes universally recurring.
We know what goes for collective behaviour inside atoms (QM) and that it establishes collective behaviour in our local world (lasers, hall effect, bose-einstein,...), but what would be collective behaviour at the cosmic level? Solar system, galaxy, ...?

[Steve Smith]

Mel Acheson and other Eu proponents have been grappling with these issues for many years. This is an article from Thoth (June 2003) in which Mel addresses the seemingly fractal nature of reality and the "waving" particle theory (and what does "fractal" mean anyway?). I'll Let Mel's sagacious insights speak to the issue

WHAT MOVES?
By Mel Acheson

When you're in a boat, you see waves of water lap against the hull. If you could tie a flag to a molecule of water, you could see that molecule move up and down.

When you're at a concert, you hear waves of sound press against your ear. If you could tie a flag to a molecule of air, you could see that molecule move back and forth.

When you tune your radio to your favorite station, you set its sensory organ—the antenna and tuning circuit—to respond to waves of electromagnetic potential energy. If you could tie a flag to ... um, what exactly could you tie a flag to?

The water or air molecule moves. You can measure its spatial displacement as it varies with time, and you can plot those measurements on a graph with displacement along one axis and time along the other. The result is a sinusoidal curve that resembles the form of the water's surface which we call a wave.

Hence we speak of water waves, usually without distinguishing the "real" surface feature from the metaphorical mathematical form. And we speak of sound waves, usually without being aware that the term is, in this instance, entirely metaphorical. We have developed mathematical manipulations that enable us, on the basis of metaphorical resemblances, to predict and to utilize various attributes of periodically moving water and air molecules. The wave theory of water and the wave theory of sound have been wondrously productive cognitive tools.

So, too, we speak of electromagnetic waves. And we have developed mathematical manipulations that have been wondrously productive. We measure voltages or currents; we graph their variation with time; and the graphs have the form of a wave. But what moves? The variation is a changing potential, not a changing location. I could plot the changes in my thinking against time and produce a wave of opinion. Would Quantum Mechanics then apply? Opinions do become entangled and they frequently collapse, but this is hardly what Dr. Schrodinger had in mind with his wave equation. He was thinking of something _material_ that moved.

The assumption that light is something that moves from one place to another goes beyond even the analogy with water: In water and sound waves, the particles only move back and forth in place. The water molecule doesn't move from the boat to the beach; the air molecule doesn't move from the horn to your ear. The apparent movement "from-to" is a sequential periodicity in the oscillations of the molecules.

The idea that light is something that moves from one location to another gives rise to the further ideas of a "ray" of light and, if interrupted into segments, a "bullet" of light. The shortest segment imaginable we imagine to be a tiny particle, a photon, shot out of an emitting atom, traveling to another atom, and being absorbed. The analogous image with water or sound is not associated with waves but with such things as fire hoses and jet engines—"streams" of water or air.

The question of what, if anything, moves with light is an open one. This question goes back 300 years. And— surprise!--it was never settled. It was decided, but not settled:

A Danish astronomer, Olaus Roemer, measured variations in the times of occultations of Jupiter's innermost moon, Io, when the Earth was at opposite points in its orbit. He attributed the differences to the travel time of something that moved from Io to the Earth, i.e., to the speed of light.

The director of the Royal Observatory in Paris, Gian Domenico Cassini, the first of four generations of Royal astronomers, disagreed. He thought light might instead be a cumulative response of the eye, perhaps to variations in some force acting instantaneously at a distance like Newton's gravity. He noted that Roemer's measurements were dependent on a great many variables—different velocities of Earth and Io, different angles of view, different intensities of light, different observing conditions, etc.—any one of which, or some combination of which, could account for the variations in his (Roemer's) observations. Cassini also took measurements, not only of Io but of the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter. And the other satellites did not show the same variations as Io.

Edmund Halley, of Halley's Comet fame, who had helped publish and promote Newton's Principia, became enamored with Roemer's idea (that light was something that moved) and promoted it in the scientific press of the time. Roemer and Cassini died. Halley carried the torch, and Roemer's idea caught on. The mob of scientists rushed down Something That Moves Street and vacated Cumulative Response Street. No one even thought to look for other streets of explanation in the Village of Electromagnetism. Even Cassini's son, who succeeded him at the Royal Observatory, abandoned his objections.

[See http://users.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdfpp. 51-7]

As I said, the issue was decided—by mob rule—but not settled. What _really_ is the case? Light _might_ be something that moves—but what else could it be?

That light is something that moves is plausible. That assumption explains many observations—though not all. But plausibility is not reliability: Unless a systematic effort is made to seek out what else light might be and to devise tests that will distinguish among the various plausibilities, no one will ever know if "something moving" is the truth or merely a plausible artifact of selected data.

Roemer simply reversed the older intuitive idea that understood seeing as analogous to touching: something—an "ocular ray"—reaches out like a finger and touches/sees the object seen. Roemer assumed rays come not from the eye but to the eye, and that too is intuitive. But as more observations accumulated, things got more complicated. Today, Quantum Mechanics has had to abandon intuitiveness altogether and embrace "Quantum weirdness". Its justification is that it gets results: The math goes from an empirical start to an empirical finish. It's predictive to a very, very, very great degree of accuracy.* Who could doubt that? The mob must have gone down the Street of Truth after all. What else could light be!

That exclamation mark begs a question that should be taken seriously. It's a question that lies at the heart of reliability. It lies at the heart of scientific discovery. What else, indeed, could light be? The math (of Quantum Mechanics) goes from 1, which we observe, to 4, which we also observe: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. But there's no guarantee reality goes that way: Maybe the real path is 1 + 3 = 4. Quantum weirdness may only be ambiguity in our categories (of waves/particles that move) rather than in light.

What if light is a "cumulative response"? No one has bothered to develop a mathematical theory for that ... yet. What if light is something else? No one has bothered to peer down the cognitive alleyways for a third or fourth possibility: Consider that plasma discharge phenomena are scalable over at least 14 orders of magnitude, from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms. Why stop with "fundamental" subatomic particles? What if the "zoo" of subatomic particles are merely tiny electrical sparks—plasmoids—observed at different stages of their evolution or under different discharge conditions? (Imagine a subatomic-sized Herbig-Haro star or active Seyfert galaxy—the "doughnut on a stick" form typical of so many plasma discharge phenomena.) What if reality consists of larger sparks driving smaller sparks all the way down the scales, and there is no such thing as a "particle" or a "wave"?

With electromagnetism, the electric and magnetic fields vary in strength and polarity. It's not immediately obvious that _anything_ moves—except scientists' opinions about it. And they move more like a mob:

Fervency of belief so easily obscures enlightenment. It's been 300 years, and the question is still open: What moves?

Mel Acheson

[Solar]

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

I can understand these filaments from what we might call an EU perspective. But if astronomers have known this since "the early 1990's" how are they to reconcile this with supposed "dark matter filaments" ??

Did they just falsify their own creation? Or does the supposed "baryonic" classification of the matter composing the filaments make them different from theoretical "dark matter (non-baryonic) filaments"?

[MGmirkin]

Did they just falsify their own creation? Or does the supposed "baryonic" classification of the matter composing the filaments make them different from theoretical "dark matter (non-baryonic) filaments"?

A good question... One I'd meant to ask, but forgotten. Too much to do. ;o]

Was wondering the same thing. Astronomers have called "Dark Matter" something totally different than regular matter in the way it interacts (or doesn't interact). It's also not supposed to be visible since it apparently doesn't emit anything we can detect. But, as you say, it's supposed to be something "other" than regular "stuffs" of the universe like hydrogen gas, plasma, etc.

So, it's a good question whether discovering this "regular matter" will inevitably invalidate "different stuff" "dark matter."

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[Solar]

I think my quandary stems from trying to resolve mainstream inventions ("non-baryonic" dark matter entities) with evidence that simply supports the electric universe (inter-galaxy filaments). That's why it's not making sense. I don't have to compare the recent findings with theoretical "dark matter filaments" because the later simply doesn't exist and my confusion didn't start until I started contrasting the EU supportive evidence with that nonsense.

"... cosmologists have been forced to invent various types of "nonbaryonic" dark matter, composed of exotic fundamental particles or neutrinos with a small mass..." - At last, an ordinary Universe

I do have the sensation that another "scenario" is going to be needed though. Because now there are two types of filaments in the realm of astrophysics. One real, the other imagined. And it appears to me that the real filaments are sitting smack dead on top of where the imaginary ones are supposed to have been. LMAO!!!

If correct, I can't wait to see what falls out of the gravity only trash compactor to reconcile this one.

[MGmirkin]

I do have the sensation that another "scenario" is going to be needed though. Because now there are two types of filaments in the realm of astrophysics. One real, the other imagined. And it appears to me that the real filaments are sitting smack dead on top of where the imaginary ones are supposed to have been. LMAO!

Man, that's gives me an idea for another Thunderblog. "The Real vs. the Imaginary!"

But, I see your point. Yes, it seems that astronomers have painted themselves into an imaginary hole because they've been unable to see the "real stuff" that may well explain the anomalies that required the "imaginary stuff" to begin with.

The fact that they're now finding "real stuff" with real properties where they were expecting "make-believe stuff" (dark matter) with imaginary properties is rather amusing...

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin