Active galaxy NGC 3862 showing bright knots in a collimated jet. Credit: NASA/ESA/E. Meyer (STScI).
Jun 5, 2015
What force creates energetic beams that span distances measured in light-years? What confines them into narrow jets?
Explaining the jets of ionized particles and X-rays often seen erupting from various galaxies and quasars ranks as one of the most difficult tasks facing modern astronomers. The prevailing theory of “compacted gravitational point sources” (black holes) exciting gas and dust as they orbit does not address the existence of collimated jets. There is only one force that can hold such a matter stream together over those distances: magnetism. The only way to generate that magnetic confinement is electricity flowing through space.
According to a recent press release, “Such extragalactic jets are not well understood.” They are normally considered to result from matter falling into the putative gravity field of a black hole. As stellar matter orbits closer to the black hole, it is accelerated to extreme velocities, causing violent collisions among the particles that can generate X-rays and other high frequency radiation. Eventually, somehow, the acceleration creates a powerful filamentary jet.
Magnetic fields are only one part of the story, and failure to realize that electric charge flow creates magnetic fields has led many physicists to model plasma in space without considering electricity. Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén, a pioneer in the field of plasma cosmology, stated that plasma is “too complicated and awkward” for the tastes of mathematicians. It is “not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories” and requires laboratory experiments.
Alfvén observed that the plasma Universe had become “the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong”. He thought that the underlying assumptions of cosmologists “are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not ‘understand’ how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them”.
As previously written, galaxies are nodes in electrical circuits. Like stars, their electromagnetic energy could be stored in the equatorial current sheets surrounding them until some trigger event causes them to switch into a polar discharge. The electric jet could receive its energy from a natural particle-accelerator, a “plasma double layer” with a strong electric field. Toroidal magnetic fields would form because of the polar plasma discharge, confining it into a narrow channel.
Electric Universe advocate Wal Thornhill wrote: “All of the features of galaxies have been modeled by plasma physicists without the need for ad hoc additions of unseen dark matter or black holes. Plasma cosmology has one great advantage in that the phenomena are scaleable from galaxies down to stars, planets and the lab. So it is possible to bring cosmology back down to earth and do away with invisible dark matter, neutron stars, black holes and the Big Bang. They are unnecessary when the electric force is a thousand trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity!”
Stephen Smith
