Star cluster Westerlund 2. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team
Nov 19, 2015
What takes place on Earth most likely reflects large-scale phenomena.
In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the image at the top of the page. The star cluster known as Westerlund 2, along with the surrounding view of the nebula, Gum 29, is considered to be one of Hubble’s more aesthetic images. An accompanying video simulates a three-dimensional fly-through of the structure.
Westerlund 2 contains some of the most massive stars ever observed, with higher energies than most stars, and extreme radiant emissions at high frequencies, primarily X-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths. In fact, the pillars, curls and other shapes in Gum 29 are thought to be caused by excessive radiation from the intensely bright stars in the cluster.
Electric Universe theorists propose that what is observed on other planets, within galaxies, or in free space should be used as examples of what can occur on Earth, as opposed to using our planet to model the Universe. We are part of a cosmic “ecology” that maintains a coherent physical aspect, so that aspect ought to apply here.
There are “particle accelerators” in thunderstorms on Earth and in galaxy clusters. Both phenomena are most likely manifestations of Birkeland currents pouring electricity into double layers. It is streamers of plasma that can be seen flowing through Westerlund 2—Gum 29 and the surrounding dust clouds also exhibit striations and filamentation. In time, it may become evident that the scalable nature of the plasma Universe reveals itself through electrical events both large and small.
Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén maintained that double layers are unique, and that intense X-ray sources could be due to double layers “shorting out” and exploding. Double layers can accelerate charged particles up to enormous energies in a variety of frequencies, forming “plasma beams.” If the charge density becomes excessive, they explode, drawing electricity from the entire circuit, discharging more energy than was contained in the double layer. Double layers dissipate when they accelerate particles and emit radiation, so they must be powered by external sources. Birkeland currents are theorized to transmit electric power over many light-years through space, perhaps over thousands of light-years.
Previous Picture of the Day articles discuss electric fields that build up in and around thunderstorms. Since Earth is electrically charged, it maintains an electric field at its surface of between 50 and 200 volts per meter. In other words, for every meter of altitude the voltage increases by that measure.
Electromagnetic fields beneath thunderstorms increase to 10,000 volts per meter because the storms and the Earth act like the plates of a capacitor, storing electrical energy from the surrounding environment. A “wind” of charged particles blows toward the developing storm, pulling neutral air molecules along with the current, creating powerful updrafts that can occasionally rise into the stratosphere. Once the storm reaches a critical threshold, the stored energy is released as a lightning bolt.
In that same way, stellar clusters can also store electric charge that is released like lightning: rapid fluctuation, multiple wavelengths, and output energies that are surprising to astrophysicists.
As mentioned, thunderstorms act like particle accelerators, launching massive discharges upward to space, as well as downward to the ground. The upward strokes are known as red sprites and blue jets but are not easy to detect, since they last just a few milliseconds and are at high altitude.
Red sprites are massive, diffuse flashes above active thunderstorms, coinciding with normal lightning strokes. They can be single events, or multiple, with filaments above and below, often extending to altitudes close to 100 kilometers. Some of the largest sprites contain dozens of individual smaller sprites, covering horizontal distances of 50 kilometers, with a volume of 10,000 cubic kilometers.
Blue jets are distinct from sprites, since they propagate upward in narrow cones that disappear at an altitude of about 50 kilometers. They are also more powerful because the electric discharges are confined within a smaller spatial volume. Geophysicists are beginning to realize that sprites and jets are part of every moderate to large storm system and are an essential component in Earth’s electric circuit.
So, Earth and other celestial objects share common characteristics because they share in plasma’s protean aspect.
Stephen Smith
