But THEMIS has. And, if you don't just accept as fact the interpretations for astrophysical imagery that you've read countless times, then with a little bit of help, you'd plainly see the filaments and braids in space imagery. They range from ambiguous to absolutely undeniable in form.

And Verschuur has identified local filaments of hydrogen gas that correlate with the CMB.

Filaments are everywhere in space. And so is plasma. What makes plasma filamentary? It's electromagnetic rotation. You might be able to get the math to work in a fluids-based model for plasmas under some situations, but fluids do not create the braided ropelike structures we've seen with THEMIS connecting the Sun with the Earth. Many people will dismiss this, but the fact is that it calls into question our magnetohydrodynamics models. Can we really afford to just assume that the math we use to model space plasmas in correct when plasmas represent 99.999% of all visible matter in space? THEMIS should have caused astrophysicists to blink. But the inertia of pre-existing belief is strong.

Well, I would add to that that when it comes to the topic of physics, ridicule possesses the power of a psychological weapon. Studies demonstrate that when a spectator observes somebody else being ridiculed, the spectator will be inclined to avoid the same thing happening to him. In this manner, when it comes to the topic of physics, ridicule is perhaps one of the most effective tools available for keeping people from discussing or thinking about controversial subjects. People already fear making an ass of themselves. Public ridicule -- like here on Slashdot -- will tend to raise the cost of speaking up about one's opinions. This creates a society on Slashdot that is generally more close-minded on the topic of cosmology -- or at least arguably more receptive to opinions that tend to dismiss alternative physical paradigms.

When it comes to debunking the Electric Universe, for instance, many people like to throw around URL's by Tim Thompson, Tom Bridgman and Leroy Ellenberger. But behind the scenes in discussions with Tom and Leroy, we can plainly see that they lack the understanding of plasma glow discharges that Wal Thornhill possesses (Wal is the primary target of their criticisms). Leroy Ellenberger will in fact say anything so long as it causes David Thomson to look bad. Ellenberger hasn't paid any attention to any of the recent findings by any of our probes -- literally for decades. And yet, people on wikipedia treat him as though he's some sort of expert on the Electric Universe just because he turned coat on Velikovsky decades ago. We've come a long, long way from Velikovsky. The Electric Universe, unlike catastrophism, is based upon laboratory plasma physics principles -- in particular, the behavior of the plasma glow discharge. The Sun is, without much doubt, a glow discharge phenomenon. Getting the math all in order to reflect it will take some time, but much of the work has already been done by people like Hannes Alfven, Ralph Juergens and Wal Thornhill.

btw, I still hold out hope for Tim Thompson. His criticisms are far more targeted and intelligent. But, he oftentimes proposes possible explanations that might work in explaining enigmatic observations for the Standard Model as a rationale for not looking into competing paradigms. Many people already accept as fact that the Standard Model has poorly performed, and are already looking for a new paradigm to be created from scratch. We want something simpler than what we've been offered, and the Electric Universe appears to offer that.

Khallow, with all due respect, you appear to be refusing to learn about what a drift current is. We already see that charged particles, when subjected to the electric field of an electric discharge, can actually flow upstream of an outflow of positively charged particles being accelerated away. This is what happens when high-voltage DC trolley lines ionize the surrounding air. The transmission line is the anode and the surrounding atmosphere is the virtual cathode. The same thing also happens in a glow discharge. If you are having problems believing it, then you should get your hands on the Cobine book that I liberally referenced. Wal Thornhill has come to see that book as being the most useful book available for understanding glow discharges.

From Wal Thornhill's book "The Electric Universe" ...

As you can see, two can play that game.

Who says they are massively collapsing? Don't you realize the model is nothing more than a best guess, derived specifically for the purpose of agreeing with the Standard Model? Lifted from holoscience (http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=7hjpuqz9) ...

You claim ...

Well, again no offense, but now you're just demonstrating that you clearly don't understand what the Electric Star Hypothesis says. You appear to not realize -- and pay close attention here -- that the entire HR stellar diagram can be explained in terms of the operating modes of plasmas as observed within the laboratory. We can do away with ALL of the nonsense about stars aging. In fact, we should, because we've already seen stars become younger, get older and become younger once again. The stellar aging hypothesis has effectively become an untestable hypothesis, because when enigmas are noticed they are swept aside by claims that the star has gained fresh fuel.

Red dwarfs are indeed explained in rather great detail in the Electric Universe. And in fact, if you decide to read on, you'll come to find out that planets can actually orbit within the low-temperature, diffuse glowing plasma atmosphere of the red dwarfs. Since these atmospheres contain abundant amounts of water, it is our theory that planets which would orbit inside of those atmospheres would in fact have no seasons. They would receive equal light across their entire surfaces regardless of their orbits. The ramifications for the search for life should be abundantly clear.

But if you refuse to read what these guys are saying, and just dismiss everything in a knee-jerk fashion, then you'll never get to learn about any of that.

You should pick up a copy of Don Scott's "The Electric Sky".

Zerkshop, be careful with your open mind. It will get you into trouble in the physics discipline. As you get older, you will come to see that cosmology is unfortunately no place for people with open minds like yourself. The best tactic is to learn your studies as hard as you can, but keep your opinions of "fringe" scientific readings to yourself. I wouldn't even let your professors know that you're reading this stuff. It could very well affect your upward mobility within your field.

(As for psy trance, I would propose that psytrance has largely been killed off by dubstep. A lot of people who used to listen to psytrance have discovered that dubstep is a far more melodic and danceable drum&bass. I highly recommend it!)

What you've noticed with wikipedia is like watching the Hatfield-McCoy family feud through a pinhole in a fence. The theory of the Electric Universe has been barred from wikipedia by the likes of Leroy Ellenberger, scienceapologist and various other BAUT/talk.origins "authorities". These authorities are actually defenders of conventional wisdom. They do not believe in building new cosmological models because they try to tear them all down before any are ever built. Everybody seems to take their cue from the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today website, run by Phil Plait, where people who create new astrophysical paradigms are set before a panel of like 6 or 8 astrophysicists and burned at the stake on every single minute detail imaginable. What that effectively does is spur people to try to develop mathematics-based models. What we need to be doing, however, is questioning our mathematical models. We need to be taking a closer look at our physical fundamentals within the discipline of physics. The EU Theorists are doing this. We need to be asking tough questions about things like galactic rotation, observations of the photosphere, filamentary structures in space, stellar observations that are enigmatic to the Standard Model, etc.

The fact that people cannot go to wikipedia to understand what the theory says makes it pretty damn difficult for people to learn what the theory says and whether or not its wrong. We've been struggling for years now just to be allowed to explain to people what the theory says on wiki. Online vigilantes have worked tirelessly to prevent it, even though they frequently have to violate their own precious wikipedia rules in order to do so. We can in fact point to published literature, some of it by Nobel Physics laureates like Hannes Alfven, and some of it peer-reviewed to support our interpretations for astrophysical imagery. The Electric Universe debunkers spend much of their time trying to use high school electrostatics to disprove that the math can be made to work when modeling the Sun as a glow discharge. But, so long as the prominent features of the two match up, isn't it obvious that the math can be made to work? And why do they think that people are taught plasma physics in high school? Electrostatics can be used to disprove the behavior of a plasma glow discharge in the laboratory. Can we really count on it to help us in cosmology, or in the study of astrophysical plasmas -- which constitute 99.999% of all visible matter in space?

Unfortunately, and not by choice, the only places to understand EU Theory are at http://www.thunderbolts.info, http://www.holoscience.com and in their books "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott, and "The Electric Universe" by Wal Thornhill. I would in particular point to the writings of Wal Thornhill, who is largely self-taught on the subjects of astrophysics and plasma physics. Wal has proven himself to be very well read on the subject of glow discharges -- better than most professional astrophysicists -- and this has been the key in formulating a new plasma-based cosmology. The more you read of Wal Thornhill, the more you will likely come to respect him as I have. He's been playing the role of scientific heretic for a very long time now. He knows ALL of the criticisms dished at him by now, and he's already dealt with ALL of them. His model can in fact be made to work. Ideologues just don't WANT to believe it.

We have to make a distinction in astrophysics these days between the various types of models. In astrophysics, since gravity has been proposed to be the universe's dominant force, experimentation is quite limited and most astrophysicists are actually trying to convince their peers of the validity of their ideas. In the absence of experimentation (Aristotle's favored "empirical" approach), astrophysicists are oftentimes left to deduction (Plato's approach). So long as gravity is proposed as the dominant force, most of the theories will remain highly mathematical and highly deductive.

The plasma universe paradigm proposes instead that electromagnetism is fundamental, and that the way to understand the universe is to study the behavior of its primary constituent, plasma, within the laboratory. The Electric Universe is therefore an inherently testable paradigm because it proposes that plasmas scale over 16 orders of magnitude. We can actually create little earths, little comets, little suns, little galaxies and so on within vacuum chambers that will almost perfectly mimic the behavior of those we see in the sky. In fact, Kristian Birkeland already did quite a bit of this 100 years ago with his terrella ("little earth"). To give you a feel for how well it was received, Hannes Alfven would notoriously later attempt to reproduce Birkeland's terrella for Sydney Chapman. Sydney Chapman was convinced that the magnetosphere was a self-contained system, whereas Birkeland was trying to convince Britain's Royal Society that the aurora were in fact the result of the Sun sending "pencil-like" cathode rays of charged particles at the Earth (Birkeland's theory was finally completely validated recently with the THEMIS observation of Birkeland Currents). Well, when Alfven tried to show this terrella to Chapman, Chapman actually refused to look at the experiment. We have a very similar thing going on in astrophysics to this very day: a small group of plasmas physicists, some of them being highly credentialed, are trying to teach the astrophysicists about plasmas -- and the astrophysicists are acting all huffy and puffy like nobody has any authority to teach them anything. Lost in their whole attitude is the fact that they spend all of their time trying to convince their peers of their ideas. They're not performing laboratory experimentation, and they need to be listening to those who are. It's far too easy to convince yourself of whatever you want about plasmas by just assuming a simplistic magnetohydrodynamics model for plasmas.

The more you read about the Electric Universe, the more you will come to see all of the opportunities that were missed by astrophysicists to identify the role of electricity in space. You might be surprised to learn that the first magnetic fields were not observed in space until 1986! Up until that point, astrophysicists adamantly claimed that there was no evidence of electric or magnetic fields in space. Since the discovery, they've switched to denying the importance of the study of the behavior of laboratory plasmas for their magnetohydrodynamics models. It's actually impossible to talk about electricity in space as the cause for all of the magnetic fields in space in astrophysical research papers -- even though the link is acknowledged in every other discipline. The paper will be rejected. IEEE's Transactions on Plasma Physics has become one of the few safe havens where plasma cosmology papers can be published. But -- big surprise! -- astrophysicists tend not to read that journal.

People on Slashdot oftentimes take comfort in the idea that the EU is some sock puppet of a paradigm. But, one independent researcher who is taking the EU seriously enough to dedicate his free time to performing research on it, is Anthony Peratt, who is a former adviser to the Department of Energy and a plasma physicist who works on the z-machine, perhaps the world's most sophisticated plasma laboratory. Peratt has found that stickman drawings that appear on rocks all over the world correspond precisely to plasma morphologies that he's seen within the laboratory. These weren't mindless drawings. They appear to be notes left behind by eyewitnesses to intense auroral activity once observed in the sky. Peratt has been using a supercomputer to try to identify the 3-dimensional structure of the aurora, based upon the hundreds or thousands of stickman drawings he's cataloged across the planet. He's having GREAT success, and can now claim with some amount of confidence that at least one discharge occurred over the South Pole. This amazing research is actively being obstructed by Leroy Ellenberger, one of wikipedia's contributors and one of the people who refuse to admit the Electric Universe onto wikipedia. Leroy has actually been writing letters to those people who watch over Peratt's supercomputers, in an attempt to put an end to Peratt's simulations. He'd prefer that we not know the answers!

If you only knew of the things happening behind the scenes in the world of astrophysics, you'd probably get a bit angry. You might even feel that you'd been lied to.

"the scientists"? Are they programmable lemmings? Or are people permitted to formulate their own opinions on these sorts of things?

You know, when a new paradigm comes in, it will only be interesting to people if it simplifies our current understanding of our relationship with the universe. When you defer to authority, you ignore this simple fact. What we have here is a situation where the plasma glow discharge behaves strikingly like a miniature Sun. If you look at some of the most perplexing problems of the Sun's behavior, you see that these things are naturally explained by the plasma glow discharge. We really need to pursue this research vigorously to examine if a new paradigm can be quantified. I'm quite certain that it can be based upon what I've read. The only thing stopping it, in fact, are all of the people who simply like the dominant paradigm so much that they don't see the point in creating more models.

That's not science. That's personal preference. We won't know which model is the best until they both exist. That means that we have to create the competing models before we can evaluate them. And that means that we have to spur interest in quantitating them.

Okay, your posting is full of errors here. If you care to see why, please read on. Otherwise, I would advise not posting on the subject until you learn more about glow discharges ...

To your own credit, you have actually read more than most. The problem is that you're listening to the likes of Tom Bridgman and Leroy Ellenberger, who collectively know absolutely nothing about plasma physics.

A typical quote from Leroy Ellenberger goes something like this:

"The REAL point is that I do not have to pick one issue when the entire EU model is based on Juergens' uncorrected misunderstandings of science and physics, and the model is falsified by many observations, including the presence of convection in the photosphere and absence of x-rays in coronal holes."

Let's dissect in detail why this is wrong. First of all, Wal Thornhill's and Don Scott's "Electric Sun" hypothesis was originally inspired by Ralph Juergens, but later amended by Wal (as evident in the chapter on the Sun in the book, The Electric Universe). Don Scott added further scientific perspective, in his book, The Electric Sky.
Leroy's all too typical statement above, about "Juergens' uncorrected misunderstandings of science and physics," fails to touch the real issue at all. The question is: in what way did Wal amend Juergens' model?

Much of what follows is based on a page on Wal's Holoscience website:

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=uf4ty065

In a paper published in 1982, Juergens wrote:

Electric Discharge As The Source Of Solar Radiant Energy, KRONOS Vol 8 No. 1, Fall 1982.

In the second instalment (KRONOS Vol 8 No. 2.), Juergens amplified his supposition about the region of the anode function in an electric sun:

After giving these citations, Wal presents an illustration of his revision, based on the classical study of glow discharge published in J.D Cobine's book Gaseous Conductors.

Wal's own caption to the illustration reads:

And here is Wal's punchline:

In Wal's model, then, the planets orbit within the positive column of the Sun's discharge, which reaches to the Sun's outer boundary or plasmasphere, the double layer of the "heliosphere." The heliosphere is the virtual cathode. The vast plasma domain within the heliosphere will be quasi-neutral, which is the nature of the positive column of a glow discharge. It will have a "VERY LOW VOLTAGE GRADIENT" (Cobine's words). The plasma medium provided by the solar wind is not "neutralizing" the Sun through an electrostatic discharge, it is a conducting medium allowing for the completion of solar system circuitry.

Unlike electrostatic discharge, the glow discharge thus maintains a weak but constant radial electric field--i.e., it is not diminishing with distance squared (electrostatic behavior). Electrons drift toward the Sun under the influence of this radial field, which is also responsible for the acceleration of protons away from the Sun, with the most energetic events occurring extremely close to the Sun.

Since Leroy is still imagining the Juergens model, he understands none of this. If he did, he wouldn't be endlessly repeating his mantra about the "absence of x-rays in coronal holes," which one might look for if the Sun were subjected to a blizzard of electrons accelerated to relativistic velocities by a STRONG electric field within the heliosphere. As Wal puts it:

On the applicability of the glow discharge, you can find the details you need in Cobine, beginning on pages 214 and 215, with the diagram on page 213.

On page 233:

Page 248:

In Cobine, you'll also find pages of mathematical analysis and experimental results accompanying the few snippets noted here.

Analogies are always limited in their applicability, but in envisioning a drift current I've used the analogy of a house with a 650 cfm fan at one end of it in a room window. If all of the other windows are closed in the house except for one on the opposite side, do you think that you'll necessarily feel the flow of air rushing past you in the middle of the house? Or, more likely, will local turbulent flows make that difficult? It's the same situation with drift currents.

In space, at earth's distance from the Sun, perhaps the net electron drift comes to INCHES per hour. That's a long way from relativistic velocities.

In space, one would have to stretch a mighty long wire to measure a voltage differential. But of course, across the immense volume of space within the heliosphere, an immeasurably weak potential across short distances would translate into immense potential within the Sun's plasma domain, a potential sufficient to power the Sun. The volume of the heliosphere is unimaginably huge. Tom Van Flandern points out that you could fit all the 200 billion stars in the galaxy inside Pluto's orbit. The heliosphere is more than 8 times larger. That's a lot of room for storing electric potential! The fact that the potential may not be obvious cannot obscure the fact that all of the defining attributes of the Sun DO present the predictable features of a glow discharge.

The best means of identifying electric field strength is surely to observe the acceleration of charged particles, most of which occurs extremely close to the Sun, as the electric model would predict. The best measure of electric currents, in turn, will be the magnetic fields that necessarily result.

Understanding a drift current and glow discharge requires one to abandon electrostatic discharge concepts once and for all--an inescapable fact that eliminates virtually all of the "refutations" of the Electric Sun hypothesis ever cited by Leroy.

And lastly, let me repeat the admonition to mathematicians tempted to shoot first (with irrelevant electrostatic analyses) and ask questions later. By definition, these analyses overlook the proven behavior of electrified plasma, the obvious underlying condition assumed by the Electric Sun hypothesis.

Equations used to predict plasma behavior must successfully predict: plasma filamentation, Birkeland Currents and associated magnetic fields, cellular structures (Langmuir sheaths) around charged bodies in plasma, relatively strong electric fields across the boundaries or "double layers" of the sheaths, weak or quasi neutral fields between an outer sheath and a sheath close to the surface of the charged object, a very strong electric field across the latter sheath, and the inherently "chaotic" nature of plasma instabilities--all documented in plasma laboratory experiments and more recently in 3-dimensional supercomputer simulations. When plasma cosmologists and Electric Universe theorists tear their hair over gross calculations of electrostatic forces, they are simply responding in frustration to a misunderstanding all too common amongst astrophysicists and astronomers.

In an electrostatic analysis, the charged object would simply be neutralized. That's because the analysis will ignore the contribution of electric circuits. It will not take into account the currents snaking along the galactic arms (as Alfvén himself observed), or the plasma z-pinch associated with the currents from which, in the electric model, the stars themselves are born. Nor will it take into account the so-called "open" magnetic field lines converging on the Sun. In the electric model these are not "OPEN" [an impossibility] but simply the pathways of the field-aligned galactic currents that the model REQUIRES.

You go on ...

The glow discharge model explains all of the most important features of the Sun. This is very important when building a model.

Actually, mass is better defined within the Electric Universe than in the standard paradigm. You guys haven't even locked onto a useful meaning for the word "mass" yet.

Fusion occurs where it is noticed to occur -- at the top of the photosphere. We see the neutrino flux correlate with sunspot activity. This doesn't make any sense with regards to the Standard Model, which posits a 150,000 year gap between the generation of neutrinos and activities we observe on the Sun's surface.

Fusion is postulated to occur just the same in the Electric Sun hypothesis. It just doesn't occur in the Sun's interior.

Counting neutrinos has traditionally been a nasty problem for the Standard Model. It's not something that you guys should brag about.

Jupiter is not the anode in the heliosphere's glow discharge.

If you say so!

Yes, you are right. The Electric Universe paradigm extends plasma cosmology. On the core fundamentals, however, they are both in agreement.

Cosmology is the search for answers in the universe. We aren't going to find those answers without ever questioning our magnetohydrodynamics models. That's what's happening here. *YOUR* paradigm was evolved before it was even discovered that space was filled with charged particles. That you guys didn't imagine that this should have any serious impact upon the paradigm was a major mistake. As you know, the plasma state of matter is very different from gas.

Quasi-neutrality is oftentimes misunderstood by people like yourself to mean that electricity in space doesn't do anything. But, quasi-neutrality is the state of the positive column between the anode and cathode of a plasma glow discharge. Despite the quasi-neutrality of the column, positive charged particles are accelerated away from the anode and electrons drift in towards the anode. The Electric Universe merely proposes the same behavior for the Sun.

The glow discharge model can accommodate some of the Sun's most perplexing characteristics -- features that the thermonuclear model for the Sun never predicted, and struggles to explain to this day. For instance, the Standard Model fails to naturally explain the inverse temperature of the corona. How is the Sun's atmosphere heated to 100x the surface temperature without raising the surface temperature? To explain this, magnetic reconnection has been proposed as one possible mechanism. But, this is pretty much standard practice in astrophysics for dismissing an enigma: when in doubt, blame either magnetic fields, black holes or dark matter. In this particular case, they look to the activity of magnetic field lines -- as if magnetic fields can store and release energy. This confers a metaphysical status to magnetic fields that I don't necessarily disagree with, but which is very reminiscent of an aether. In other disciplines of science, magnetic fields are acknowledged to be the side-effect of an electric current. Astrophysicists have also taken the unusual stance that field lines can actually "connect". To plasma physicists and electrical engineers, these notions about magnetic fields are rather silly. And if explained exactly what is being claimed, they will unanimously agree that the astrophysicists are really forging their own deductive pathway.

The Standard Model has also had a very hard time explaining the fact that the solar wind fails to appreciably decelerate even as it passes the orbits of the planets. It's as if little rocket ships are propelling them forward against the force of gravity -- as if, (gasp!) gravity is not controlling the charged particles. Well, it wouldn't be the first time! For God's sake.

What exotic mechanism will be postulated for this acceleration, which mostly happens near the Sun, but in fact slightly continues throughout the entire heliosphere? Needless to say, we see the exact same behavior in the laboratory with glow discharges. There exists a weak electric field within the positive column of the glow discharge that accounts for this continued acceleration.

Look at the supposed convection cells on the Sun's photosphere ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Granules2.jpg

Explain to me this: Why are the cells denser and hotter at the edges than in the middle? Is there any other convection that you can point to that has ever been observed by man to be like that? Those cells are better described as tornadic because they are densest at their edges (not the centers). Their rotation is most likely electrodynamic in nature.

People like yourself claim with so much certainty that our magnetohydrodynamic models for space plasmas are accurately modeling the plasmas as magnetized fluids. And they do this in spite of the direct observation of Birkeland Currents connecting the Sun to the Earth by THEMIS!

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11dec_themis.htm

Braided ropelike structures of plasmas can ONLY be modeled as electrodynamic behavior. They have NOTHING to do with fluids. You guys are not paying attention to modern observations of space plasmas. You should be listening to the critics, but so long as you ignore and dismiss them, you fail to see that they are making very good points.

Advocates for conventional theories on Slashdot tend to be far more gung-ho about their dominant paradigm than the actual people who do the research. Many of the actual researchers will freely admit the problems with their discipline. For instance, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724221049.htm ...

To an engineer, it doesn't make any sense that astrophysicists would be so against the idea of electric currents in space while simultaneously admitting that magnetic fields are a great, unresolved mystery. In every other discipline, the two are inextricably bound. How in the world would we see electric currents in space? We'd look for the magnetic fields they would presumably generate.

This sort of thing happens across the board in the discipline of astrophysics. You have advocates for the Standard Model on the Slashdot forums sending out condescending remarks to advocates for alternative paradigms, and yet the scientists themselves who are creating the theories will freely admit that the current models really should only be thought of as best guesses. For instance, on the subject of supernova ...

(lifted from Wal Thornhill's site, http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=7hjpuqz9)

When it comes to the constancy of G, we see something similar. People everywhere talk as though the gravitational constant is a constant. But not even astrophysicists treat it that way ...

From http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2814 ...

What really concerns me about you Slashdot vigilantes is that you are inspiring people to not think. You are actually causing people to turn their brains off and treat science as though it is devoid of controversy. Well, I say keep the controversy in science. You want to program the masses so that everybody agrees with another, even when your own paradigm can't account for massive portions of the universe? What's the point? I thought we were on a search for truth, and what I got here on Slashdot was somebody's idealogy shoved down my throat.

Slashdot should collectively shun people like yourself. You mean well, but you actually cause great harm. Hopefully, you'll live long enough to realize it one day. But unfortunately, you'll never get to take it back.

The Electric Universe is lumped in with the fringe sciences purely because it is not the conventional paradigm. The model itself is workable because there's a high correlation between observations of the Sun and heliosphere, and the action of an anode within a plasma glow discharge. No mathematical debunking can argue against these key correlations since they are based upon laboratory observations. If the key features match up, then the mathematics can be made to work for a model.

What you might not realize is that even though our gravity-based theories date back to the early 1900's, we've only relatively recently discovered that space is not the vacuum we once thought it was. It's in fact filled with charged particles (99.999% of all visible matter in space is matter in the plasma state), so there exists a burden to make sure that we're properly modeling the plasma in space. The question is: does it behave as a fluid, in accordance with gravity? Or, does it behave more like electrified plasma in the laboratory? The only way to answer that question is to maintain an open mind on the subject long enough to find correlations between plasmas in space and plasmas in the laboratory. The truth is that plasmas in space are frequently filamentary just like those in the laboratory. These filaments in the laboratory possess both long-range attraction and short-range repulsion amongst one another. And this attractive force is in fact the strongest force in the universe -- something like 36 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. The end result is that plasmas naturally form braided ropelike structures, and these structures can transmit charged particles -- electricity.

Advocates for the mainstream will throw up lots of flack. For instance, it's frequently cited that space (like the heliosphere) is quasi-neutral. But, what those people don't realize is that so is the positive column between an anode and a cathode in a plasma glow discharge! And yet, there still exists an electron drift into the anode from the cathode simultaneous with a release of positive charged particles from the anode to the cathode. Electricity is observed to flow in both directions in a glow discharge exactly as is proposed by the EU Theorists in their Electric Sun model. Any model for the Sun based upon laboratory plasma physics deserves more than just a dismissal.

Prior to the observation of magnetic fields in space in 1986, it was claimed that there was no observational evidence for magnetic and electric fields in space. We see the same sort of thing now when it comes to the topic of powering the Sun with electrons. Skeptics claim that we have not yet observed any flows of electrons into the Sun. The mechanism being argued is that of a drift current. The heliosphere is incredibly large. In the glow discharge model, an electric field inches these electrons towards the anode (the Sun) at an incredibly slow rate. But, since the heliosphere is so unimaginably huge, there is a very great amount of power available to the Sun. The problem is that you're not going to accidentally see these electrons moving in towards the Sun. Local turbulence will make it nearly impossible, in the same way that a fan drawing air on one end of your house will not be noticed on the opposite end unless it is extremely powerful. In this case, the electric field is incredibly weak -- and yet persistently there from the anode (the Sun) to the cathode (the heliospheric boundary).

Slashdot enthusiasts appear to not realize that astrophysicists blame either magnetic fields, dark matter or black holes every time that their model fails to predict their observations. If you guys pay more attention, you'll notice the trend. The Standard Model is not resolving its enigmatic observations so much as it is categorizing or binning the mysteries into these three categories, for future resolution.

In a strict sense, this is pretty pseudo-scientific -- especially when it comes to the manufactured mystery of magnetic fields. In every discipline OTHER than astrophysics, magnetic fields are acknowledged to be the side effect of electric currents. But, within astrophysics, magnetic fields and their line-drawn representations are treated as prime movers and shakers -- real, physical entities that can accumulate and release energy when the field lines connect (magnetic connection). The electrical engineers and plasma physicists that are actually listening to the astrophysicists will shake their heads every time that an astrophysicist talks about the merging of magnetic field lines. If a magnetic field is a real, physical entity that can store energy, then doesn't that qualify it as a metaphysical entity? Is it real or not? Is there an aether or not? Astrophysicists appear to reject the theory of the aether, and yet rely upon aether-based concepts in order to support their gravity-based cosmology.

Dismissals of competing paradigms as pseudo-science ignore all of this hand-waving that conventional astrophysicists are currently doing.

This is no joke.

For instance, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724221049.htm ...

Now, does it make a whole lot of sense for a scientist to claim great certainty that there are no electric currents over plasmas in space, while simultaneously expressing frustration with the widespread observation of magnetic fields in space? In every other discipline, the two are inextricably bound.

Go figure.

Additionally, many textbooks agree that 99.999% of the visible matter in space is matter within the plasma state. In a behavioral sense as far as interpreting astrophysical imagery goes, the state of the matter is arguably just as important as the actual element.

References available at http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/99.999%25_plasma

Ah, the memories ...

Spun, the people of Slashdot do actually need to be reminded when an alternative cosmology is supported by an observation. The Slashdot debunkers like yourself tend to keep the masses here ignorant of what the competing paradigm actually says, so I do add value when I remind people.

Debunkers crack me up. I've been spending a lot of time lately with Tim Thompson, Tom Bridgman and Leroy Ellenberger. You guys try so hard to disprove that the math can be made to work. But, you shoot yourselves in the foot because you effectively keep yourself ignorant of what the model is saying. We've had to explain to Tom Bridgman and Leroy Ellenberger recently what a glow discharge is. Tom's insistent that he can analyze the glow discharge with high school electrostatics. Tell that to a plasma physicist and see what he says.

The Sun and heliosphere in fact share a great number of critical similarities with a plasma glow discharge -- including the Sun's most enigmatic feature, the inverse-temperature enigma at the corona. But also the acceleration of charged particles off of the anode is a great model for the enigma with the solar wind in the Standard Model. They are very similar phenomenon. And you might not realize this, but the quasi-neutrality of the space inside of the heliosphere is matched by the positive column of the glow discharge in the laboratory. In a transmission line discharging to a virtual cathode (like a train power line ionizing the air), we see both a drift of charged particles into the line (the anode) and an acceleration of charged particles away from the line. With the Sun, the positive column is instead a radial geometry -- meaning that as electrons drift in towards it, they are confined to a smaller and smaller space. Eventually, charge density reaches a point sufficient to change the plasma's operating modes from dark glow to glow, and then to arc.

On all three of these critical characteristics, we see a 1:1 correspondence between the laboratory and the Sun-heliosphere.

If you look closely at the supposed convection cells on the photosphere, you will notice that they are dark on the sides, not in the centers. This means that they are rotating and tornadic, and not convection cells at all. What math can you point to to fix THAT?!

The glow discharge solar model (Don Scott's Electric Sun hypothesis) deserves more than just a dismissal. There's nothing wrong with talking about it and I am not some evil troll out to wreck Slashdot. You are the one arguing that people should be ignorant to the conversation.

The Electric Universe debate is a debate between plasma physicists and astrophysicists. It dates back to Kristian Birkeland, Irving Langmuir, Ralph Juergens and Hannes Alfven. People who think that there exists no peer review in support of it do not realize who the proponents are. Anthony Peratt, for instance -- who investigates evidence that supports the Electric Universe -- is a former adviser to the Department of Energy, a peer-reviewer for IEEE's Transactions on Plasma Sciences and a researcher who works on the z-machine.

People who don't think that the Electric Universe is supported by peer review aren't paying attention to the debate and are confused on what's actually happening. The EU Theorists have decided to circumvent the astrophysicists by appealing directly to the public. That means that the materials have to be understandable by laypeople. That does NOT mean that there is no peer review.

Rather than trying to tear down every model that comes our way, maybe the best way to figure out the most complex mysteries in space is to try to build competing models (?). Any model for the Sun that's based upon laboratory plasma physics should be sufficient for consideration. The Sun and heliosphere in fact share a great number of very critical attributes with the plasma glow discharge. To just dismiss it out of hand is a sign of extreme bias.

Who needs help? Plasma physicists?!

The Electric Universe is based upon the simple premise that the Sun can be modeled as a plasma glow discharge based upon our observations of the glow discharge in the plasma laboratory. It really shouldn't even be controversial, to be honest. And you shouldn't dismiss it until you can at least rattle off all of the key characteristics of both a glow discharge and the heliosphere.

They both have quasi-neutral positive columns. They both exhibit an inverse temperature just above the surface of the "anode". Both have charged particles accelerating off of them (in the heliosphere's case, gravity fails to appreciably slow those particles down). If you look at the granules in the photosphere, you will see that they are dark at the centers. If they were convection cells, they would be light in the centers. Those are tornadic cells and rotation comes directly from electromagnetism.

Use your head, people. Don't just accept things because they are popular. Science is inherently controversial, and we should keep it that way.

It has been a wonderful joy watching the people here on Slashdot completely misunderstand the Electric Universe debate. It will be even more fun 20 years from now when you guys are claiming that you never actually argued against electricity over plasmas in space, but that the Electric Universe is still wrong!