Universe is comprised of 99% plasma

[RyanRose]

What is the source and reasoning for this assertion? I've never seen who it is attributed to, i.e., the source, and most importantly the reasoning behind it. I think a full EU presentation would help us all defend the assertion, unless I am the only one who has missed it!
Ryan

[nick c]

hi Ryan,
The vast majority of known matter in the observable universe is found in stars, molecular gas clouds, solar winds, interstellar and intergalactic mediums all of which are plasmas.
For example: The Sun contains about 99.8% of the mass in the solar system. The Sun is entirely in the plasma state.

see:
https://www.plasma-universe.com/99-999- ... r%20System.

[Cargo]

Let's see 2023
States Of Matter

Which links to 2010
old Time Life book, supports EU with Plasma[

And in case you don't get down all the threads, just feel this:
"the real nature of electricity is not yet understood. But we are fairly certain that electrical phenomena lie at the very core of life--that the atom itself is an electric entity."

[Brigit]

Inre: the visible universe is 99.999% plasma

• Ryan asks, "What is the source and reasoning for this assertion? I've never seen who it is attributed to, i.e., the source, and most importantly the reasoning behind it. I think a full EU presentation would help us all defend the assertion, unless I am the only one who has missed it!"
  Ryan

Plasma Cosmology is a branch of the space sciences which differs from the standard model, or in shorthand, the Big Bang model. Plasma Cosmology is recognized by the largest professional organization in the world, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Plasma Cosmology has a long history of key discoveries, especially beginning with the work and experiments of the Norwegian scientist, Kristian Birkeland. He studied the aurorae in the Arctic Circle and realized the northern lights were from electrically charged particles originating with the Sun. He subsequently developed his Terrella Experiment, which obtained many of the same polar formations seen near the Earth in the aurorae, using a charged sphere in a vacuum and an electric current.

But it is the Nobel Prize winning electrician and physicist Hannes Alfven who is considered the "Father of Plasma Cosmology." A March 20, 1989 Boston Globe newspaper front page article was entitled, "Alfven's Electric Universe It's a Big Aurora".

And important textbook on Plasma Cosmology was written by Dr. Anthony Peratt. It is called The Physics of the Plasma Universe. This is a main source of experimental and space age results that helps us as curious bystanders understand the large scale dynamics and filamentation of the Plasma Universe. He was a protege of Hannes Alfven.

The book is expensive. You will also find a divide exists between the Plasma Universe and the Electric Universe, and a clear attempt by the author to maintain a vast professional distance. They did work together for some years however and the result was one of Dr. Tony Peratt's finest papers.

Here are some plasma universe papers you can reference:

• PLASMA AND THE UNIVERSE: LARGE SCALE DYNAMICS~ FILAMENTATION~ AND RADIATION
  ANTHONY L. PERATT
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
  1995, 11 pages

• ELECTRIC SPACE:
  EVOLUTION OF THE PLASMA UNIVERSE
  ANTHONY L. PERATT
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Los Alamos, New Mexico
  Scientific Advisor,
  Office of Research and Development,
  United States Department of Energy, Washington D.C.
  1996, 15 pages
  
  Abstract. Contrary to popular and scientific opinion of just a few decades
  ago, space is not an 'empty' void. It is actually filled with high energy parti-
  cles, magnetic fields, and highly conducting plasma. The ability of plasmas
  to produce electric fields, either by instabilities brought about by plasma
  motion or the movement of magnetic fields, has popularized the term 'Elec-
  tric Space' in recognition of the electric fields systematically discovered and
  measured in the solar system. Today it is recognized that 99.999% of all
  observable matter in the universe is in the plasma state and the importance
  of electromagnetic forces on cosmic plasma cannot be overstated; even in
  neutral hydrogen regions (,-~ 10-4 parts ionized), the electromagnetic force
  to gravitational force ratio is 107.
  An early prediction about the morphology of the universe is that it
  be filamentary (Alfv@n, 1950). Plasmas in electric space are energetic (be-
  cause of electric fields) and they are generally inhomogeneous with con-
  stituent parts in motion. Plasmas in relative motion are coupled by the
  currents they drive in each other and nonequilibrium plasma often consists
  of current-conducting filaments. This paper explores the dynamical and ra-
  diative consequences of the evolution of galactic-dimensioned filaments in
  electric space.

And interviews with Wal Thornhill, Donald Scott, Dave Talbott, Rens van der Sluijs, Mel Acheson, et al
Thunderbolts of the Gods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AUA7XS0TvA

[RyanRose]

Although there is strong agreement within the Plasma & Electric Universe disciplines that the Universe is composed of 99+% plasma, conventional/orthodox cosmology proponents don't have to accept the general logic/reasoning that has produced that agreement, and of course they haven’t. They continue with their ad hoc dark matter/dark energy creations, without any proof.

However, now I and perhaps each of you have gotten the answer as to the source of the 99% plasma assertion that is so widely mentioned in EU and Plasma Cosmology. It is in David Drew's latest video presentation on the upcoming Sungrazing Comet.

The source turns out to be:-
NASA Heliophysics Science Division
Introduction to Plasma Physics (educational resource,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, accessed by David Drew, 2026,
and documented in his very recent video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMDol2j3IPw)

Although I think it would be good to have their estimates or calculations replicated, this source is good enough for my needs.
Thanks for responding to my earlier request about the source of the 99% plasma assertion.
Ryan Rose

[Cargo]

However, now I and perhaps each of you have gotten the answer as to

What backwards double speak is this? The answer has been know of 50 going on 100's years since we first touched "space".
Why didn't you lead with your source you wanted to share anyway I assume?
(and.. I'm at least a month beyond on my TPOD vidoes https://www.youtube.com/@ThunderboltsProject/videos , so that was a bit of spoiler, made me look. haha)

[Brigit]

As Cargo says, it has been known for over 60 years that the visible universe is 99.999% plasma. It was established once and for all by Mariner 2 in 1962 that space is not an empty vacuum but is occupied by charged particles streaming from stars. Mariner 2 also established that "interplanetary space is rarely empty or field-free."

What is crucial about the history of the idea of plasma filling space is the parallel history of laboratory experiments which revealed the behavior of plasmas and their characteristic filamentary and cellular forms, and the accompanying radiation plasma emits across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. That is, plasma gives of radiation from radio waves all the way to gamma frequencies. The structure of plasma filaments is detected and mapped using radio telescopes. Across the decades we have added telescopes in each part of the spectrum and they all reveal a very bright and active plasma universe.

But to illustrate the importance of the way plasma behaves in experiments, and the scalability of those experimental results to space plasmas, I feel I could not do any better than share this introductory paper by Ralph Juergens.

[Brigit]

In this paper, Ralph Juergens (1924-1979) draws attention to the nearly totally ignored role of space-charge sheaths, or Langmuir sheaths, in celestial dynamics. Here he takes a historical step in applying Langmuir's plasma experiments to the plasma environment of the Sun and planets. I hope you all have time to read this as it is: an amazing, historical turn of events, when laboratory plasmas were meeting space plasmas. He writes:

"Abstract: The interplanetary medium is capable of confining the electric fields of
charged celestial bodies within space-charge sheaths of limited dimensions.

This phenomenon explains the success of gravitational theory in describing
and predicting orbital motions in the present, relatively stable Solar
System. Disruption of space-charge sheaths during close encounters between
electrified planetary bodies may account for the catastrophic
electromagnetic effects observed and reported by the survivors of
near-collisions in ancient times."



Reconciling Celestial Mechanics
and Velikovskianism
by Ralph Juergens

"Physical scientists were outraged in 1950 when Immanuel Velikovsky
published historical evidence from around the world suggesting that the
order and even the number of planets in the solar system had changed within
the memory of man. Ideas in nearly every field of scholarship were
challenged, but most seriously challenged of all were certain dogmas in the
field of astronomy which had only in recent centuries succeeded in
convincing mankind that Spaceship Earth was a haven of safety.

The emotional outburst from the community of astronomers that so
blackened the name Velikovsky and so successfully--if only
temporarily--discredited Worlds in Collision has been laid to many causes,
from the psychological and the political to simple resentment against
invasion of the field by an outsider. Whatever the nature of such
intensifying factors, however, I believe it is only fair to acknowledge an
underlying and totally sincere scientific disbelief in the historical
record.

Perfectly valid dynamical theories--valid in the sense of having met
and passed every conceivable kind of test--simply could not be reconciled
with the story told by Velikovsky. In short, conventional celestial
mechanics, which had proved time and again its ability to describe and
predict planetary motions in today's solar system, could in no way
accommodate a disordering and rearrangement of the planets as recently as
3,000 or 4,000 years ago.

In terms of celestial mechanics, a system of bodies whose motions
are governed entirely by gravitational forces and the inertia of masses
could not conceivably restabilize itself within mere millennia--let alone
within the few decades or centuries allowed by the historical
record--following disruptions of the kind described in Worlds in Collision.

Even were each near-collision in such a series so providentially
contrived as to leave one or the other participant moving along a
near-circular orbit close to the ecliptic plane, the final encounter must
necessarily leave at least one participant traveling on a highly eccentric
orbit--one that must return the body again and again to at least one point
of possible collision with its late antagonist. Yet today's solar
system--with one possible exception involving Neptune and Pluto--seems
ordered in such a way that further planetary collisions are out of the
question.

Velikovsky was quite aware of the discord between his findings and
current ideas as to what constitutes propriety in celestial mechanics. He
insisted, however, that the fault must lie in dynamical theory, not in the
evidence of history. He suggested that the sun and the planets must be
electrically charged, and that electromagnetic and electrostatic
forces--which could quite easily be capable of cushioning collisions,
altering rotational motions, tilting axes, and perhaps even damping orbital
eccentricities over relatively short spans of time--must play unrecognized
roles in celestial affairs."

cont'd

[Brigit]

Ralph Juergens, cont'd

"As we shall note presently, there is compelling evidence to indicate
that the sun, the earth, and the moon, to name only a few major bodies in
the solar system, are electrically charged. Yet the very precision with
which gravitational theory accounts for the planetary motions seems to belie
this evidence. Perturbations due to repulsive electrical forces, for
example, are nowhere in evidence today --not even, I hasten to suggest, in
the strange behavior of comet tails, about which I shall have more to say
later.

This impasse between celestial mechanics and the notion of cosmic
electrical interactions was recognized long ago. A reconciliation seemed
so unlikely that physical scientists of half a dozen successive generations
felt compelled to devise all sorts of exotic theories to explain away the
most obvious evidence for electric charge on the earth.

An important clue to the vanity of all such ad hoc theorizing was
radioed back to earth in 1962 by Mariner 2.

Man's first successful Venus probe established once and for all that
the interplanetary medium is not a near-vacuum, as most astronomers had
always supposed, but is actually a plasma--a gas of dissociated positive
ions and electrons. This disclosure instantly invalidated the argument that
the planets, if electrically charged, would perturb one another in most
obvious ways.

According to the physics of electricity, a charged body isolated in
a vacuum, which is a dielectric medium, surrounds itself with an electric
field that reaches to infinity, with strength diminishing as the square of
the distance. Thus, in a vacuous interplanetary medium, or even in a
medium of neutral atomic or molecular gases, planetary charges must give
rise to electric fields detectable by their influences upon planetary
motions.

In an interplanetary medium consisting of ionized gas, however,
things are radically different.

One of the primary characteristics of a plasma has up to now
received little or no attention from astronomers. This is its ability to
shield itself from the electric field of any body in contact with it, or
contained within it, and charged to an electric potential different from
that of the plasma itself. The mechanism by which such shielding is
accomplished was named the space-charge sheath by those who first studied
the phenomenon.

In a space-charge sheath, positive and negative charges collect and
arrange themselves in such a way that the electric field of a body with
alien potential is contained within a limited region surrounding the body.
This does not mean that the total electric charge of the isolated body must
be compensated by equal and opposite charge in the sheath; rather, it means
only that enough charge must be assembled in the sheath to increase or
decrease the potential of the outer sheath boundary to match the potential
of the surrounding plasma.

As a laboratory phenomenon, the space-charge sheath was described,
studied, and given a measure of quantitative theoretical explanation half a
century ago. The most lucid accounts of this work are probably those to be
found in the papers of Irving Langmuir (2), the physicist who coined the
term "plasma" in reference to fully ionized gases.

Up to this point I have neglected to mention two most important
facts about space-charge sheaths and plasmas:

1. An isolated body whose alien potential is not continually
renewed by means of electric currents will quickly acquire the
potential of the surrounding plasma, and its sheath will
disappear; and

2. A plasma does not necessarily possess an intrinsic electric
potential.

Where plasmas form in electrical discharges, however--and this is
the connection in which Langmuir studied them--they do acquire non-zero
potentials. These are clearly matters of immense importance. I will return
to them later.

For now, we can say that in a solar system pervaded by plasma, each
charged planet with a potential unlike that of the local plasma must have
its electric field bound up in a space-charge sheath of limited volume.
When no orbital conflict exists, the system operates serenely under the
direction of forces accounted for in conventional celestial mechanics.

But let us imagine what might occur should two electrically charged
major bodies in this system find themselves on intersecting orbits.
Inevitably, as the two bodies pursued their separate paths on separate time
tables, the stage would be set eventually for a rendezvous at one or another
point of orbital contact. Since the spacecharge sheaths of the bodies would
occupy greater volumes than the bodies themselves, a collision between
sheaths would actually be more likely to take place than a direct, bodily
collision, and in any case it would occur first.

When the moment arrived for the inevitable encounter, sheaths would
make contact. Unleashed electric fields would clash. Almost instantly,
forces immeasurably greater than gravitation would be brought to bear on the
charged bodies. Cosmic thunderbolts would flash between the bodies in an
effort to equalize their electric potentials.

The list of unthinkably disastrous effects that would result could
go on and on. The point to be made, however, is that Worlds in
Collision--at least in my opinion--documents historical evidence to indicate
that phenomena associated with spacecharge-sheath destruction were actually
suffered and survived by peoples of antiquity."

1. I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (Doubleday, New York, 1950).
2. I. Langmuir, Collected Works (Pergammon Press, 1961), Vols. 3 & 4.

The late Ralph Juergens was a civil engineer living in Flagstaff, Arizona,
and was formerly associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication.
---------------------------------------------




bold added

[RyanRose]

Thank you, Brigit! A very useful, informative answer! I am glad to have Jurgens and Langmuir brought into this from the beginning of the issue.
Since you have posted 1,444 times, I wonder if you could interest yourself or someone like Eric Lerner or Michael Clarage to take on a modern calculation re-quantizing plasma today, with the latest data from conventional and plasma cosmological sources.
For example, this conventional source, "The models were right': Astronomers find 'missing' matter linking four galaxy cluster," shttps://phys.org/news/2025-06-astronomers-linking-galaxy-clusters.html#google_vignette (from European Space Agency).
Has anyone checked this one out to see if it is plasma?
Most importantly, it reduces "dark matter' %'s, which I assume unbalances the gravity-only theories that rely on it.

I read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" and "Earth in Upheaval" back in the mid-1960s and subscribed to Talbot's "Pensee" series until it ceased. Came back in to this issue around 2012 or so. I'm now 83.

Ryan Rose

[Brigit]

Okay, hi RyanRose!

What I was hoping to get across by archiving that Ralph Juergens paper here is that although it has been known since the Space Age began that the visible Universe is 99.99% plasma, there was a huge division from the earliest days between the experimentalists and the mathematicians. Ralph Juergens is one of the people who was an eyewitness of this growing divide, and I thought he really put his finger on the problem in a timely and wonderful way by emphasizing the importance of the way plasmas always from double layers in the laboratory. He saw the implications for Solar System dynamics if double layers, or space-sheaths as he called them, were in fact also astrophysical objects, not just things you get in a low-pressure discharge apparatus.

I kind of left off the thought, and I feel kind of bad about that. Sorry. No, Ralph Juergens the friendly local engineer was not the only one who was working in this direction, as you hinted or noted. The fact that plasma effects such as cells and filaments bounded by double layers are scalable all the way up to astrophysical plasma formations has an impeccable background with Hannes Alfven and other plasma physicists and experimentalists.

[Brigit]

What Ralph Juergens is basically saying is that while most scientists may have calculated that plasmas make up 99.99% of the visible universe (the light and radiation from the stars is all from plasmas and the interstellar medium is also ionized so it is plasma), they were completely ignoring some of its most basic behaviors: mainly, it forms double layers. Ralph Juergens is posing this startling question: what are the implications of these space-sheaths, which surround objects like stars and brown dwarfs, when they cross paths? It's still a question that is completely left out of modern astronomy.

Irving Langmuir's (1881-1957) early discoveries in the laboratory showed that plasma tends to form sheaths around objects of a slightly different charge than itself. It surrounds and encloses foreign objects in what are known as double layers, or Langmuir sheaths. Hannes Alfven later noticed these in his home country's electrical grid and he experimented further with all of the power released in an exploding double layer. He said that an exploding double layer ought to be considered a class of astronomical object! But the rest of astronomy moved on, ignoring lab plasmas and preferring a kind of statistical or mathematical treatment of plasmas.

So the fact that the behaviour of plasma in a laboratory applies to astronomical plasmas is nowhere to be found in conventional astronomy.

And that divide today has only widened and deepened, with Plasma Cosmology and the Electric Universe on one side and the standard model Big Bang LCDM model standing on the other side of the abyss.

Actually, what I really love about all of the sciences in the Electric Universe model (especially astronomy and geology) is that you almost never, never see any astronomical events or objects spoken of without some reference to lab plasmas, or experiments, to industrial processes, or even to events in our near neighborhood. As Wal Thornhill said, all of the same plasma phenomena

• "can be observed at the galactic scale, at the stellar scale, at the planetary scale, the cometary scale, and right on down to the laboratory scale. Such vast scalability of plasma phenomena is an overwhelming advantage of plasma cosmology over gravitational Big Bang cosmology. It has been shown to be highly explanatory and predictive."

[Brigit]

PS inre: "The models were right': Astronomers find 'missing' matter linking four galaxy cluster," shttps://phys.org/news/2025-06-astronomers-linking-galaxy-clusters.html#google_vignette (from European Space Agency)." "Has anyone checked this one out to see if it is plasma?"

Yes, there are several Picture of the Day articles by Stephen Smith and the Birkeland current structures that flow through stars, galaxies and even through galaxy clusters and superclusters have been the subject of several Space News.

In the Electric Universe model it's not expanding, the standards of length and time are restored, and the visible universe is only a few superclusters connected by vast plasma filaments.

Let me find a few of those so you can chase down the details and the evidence that these are plasma filaments.

[nick c]

and the visible universe is only a few superclusters connected by vast plasma filaments.

Just my 2 cents!
Considering the history (of the puny human understanding of the cosmos) brings about the realization that what we can observe has always turned out to be a part of a larger structure. I think that given that premise, I can assume that whatever is at our observing limit is probably not the end of anything (least of all the Universe) but will turn out to be part of an even larger (yet to be determined) structure.

Earth is the center of the universe...
Sun is the center....
Milky is the center...
The Local Group (galactic cluster)....
Numerous galactic clusters....
etc., etc.

[Brigit]

So true, nickc!

I have a couple of favorites that came to mind when RyanRose asked about whether the "strands" between galaxy clusters are really just "rivers of hydrogen" or whether they are plasma filaments which carry electric currents between stars and galaxies and superclusters.


Here is a smaller example of a Birkeland current flowing into a galaxy:

• Wal Thornhill: Hydrogen River Between Galaxies Breaks the Rules | Space News
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiw40Us5Pkg
  CH: The Thunderbolts Project
  dur. 8:15
  
  Feb 28, 2014 "Scientists using the Green Bank Telescope have observed what they describe as a river of neutral hydrogen streaming into the Galaxy NGC 6946. The researchers conclude that this tenuous filament of gas is providing the necessary fuel for the high rate of star formation in the spiral galaxy."