Star Streams

The Milly Way and the Magellanic Clouds from Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Credit: ESO / Y. Beletsky.

 

 

Nov 25, 2015

Electrical interpretations are often a better fit.

Two dwarf galaxies, known as the Magellanic Clouds, are orbiting the Milky Way and might have once been part of it. Both reside at the beginning of a filamentary structure known as the Magellanic Stream.

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is approximately 200,000 light-years from Earth, as astronomers gauge distance, and is no more than a smudge of light to the naked eye. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is considered to be an irregular galaxy. However, it possesses features similar to spiral galaxies, such as a “bar” and a single spiral arm. Both galaxies were first seen by the European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during his global circumnavigation in 1519, although the Australian people knew about their existence for thousands of years.

Recently, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory and the University of Cambridge Institute for Astronomy announced the discovery of a source for the Magellanic Stream: it was “… stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some two billion years ago.”

Both Clouds are thought to result from tidal interactions between them, as well as “ram-pressure forces exerted by the Galactic corona.” However, the filamentary structure of the Magellanic Stream leaves room for an Electric Universe interpretation.

The Magellanic Stream is composed mainly of hydrogen gas, with low metallic ions, but with organic molecules called “tholins” mixed in. As discussed in previous Pictures of the Day, gaseous filaments are a sign of electric charge flowing through dusty plasma. The current creates vortex structures that evolve into distorted wisps and curlicues of glowing matter. Such distorted filaments are observed in laboratory experiments, as well as in Earth’s aurorae.

Tholins are large organic molecules created when ultraviolet light interacts with smaller molecules. They cannot exist naturally on Earth, because the atmospheric oxygen would quickly destroy them. They can be synthesized in laboratory isolation by sending electric arcs through various combinations of methane and ammonia. Tholins are a rusty-red color, which might explain the reddish-orange hue of Titan’s atmosphere, where there is almost no oxygen, and where temperatures are cold enough to prevent tholins from dissociating. The reddish-brown “soot” that covers several of Saturn’s moons also contains tholins.

It is no coincidence that electric arcs create tholins in the laboratory. The Huygens probe found high concentrations of charged particles in the lower atmosphere of Titan, so intense electrical activity could be responsible for the formation of organic tholins there, as well. This leads to the conclusion that the Stream is composed of plasma and not cold dust and gas.

Stars, galaxies, and planets are all moving through plasma in space and are affected by the movement of electric charge. Streams of intergalactic plasma, electric arcs in the laboratory, or lightning discharges point to electricity as the active agent.

Stephen Smith

Hat tip to William Thompson

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