"Maybe a solid metallic surface would align better with low observed surface wave transfer compared to a soupy plasma." Perhaps it would.

Given how much energy the Sun radiates, per second, per square metre of its surface, an interesting follow-on question might be: How could such a surface remain metallic?

"Only a small fraction of the energy carried by the galactic electric current is dissipated in the Corona"

And what is that current, in amps, if I may be so bold as to ask, grantspassalan?

And how much of it is dissipated in the corona?

Also, where does this current enter the Sun (or its corona)? Where does it leave?

Or, perhaps, is the Sun merely a Hotel California-like sink (current enters, but never leaves)?

And I think you're missing mine.

You seemed pretty clear, when you claimed "They're overall arguing that electrodynamics can better explain many astronomical observations than gravitation + dark matter, dark energy and modifications to cosmological constants", where "they" refers to what's found on a particular website (actually, PDF), that you linked to. My point: there's no substance to any such claims (other than those which merely repeat what you can easily find from any mainstream source).

At least, none which has any quantitative, internally consistent legs to stand on.

"Agreed, this is better termed Plasma Cosmology, not Electric Universe [...] I was reading more of the folks they cited than the .info website."

Then why not say so? Why give airtime to folk who, not to put too fine a point on it, are deliberately lying? Who might, therefore, be reasonably called crackpots?

"That seems reasonable; correct or not is a matter to be determined."

Yes, it (the PC stuff) may indeed seem reasonable. However, it has long since been determined that it cannot possibly be correct. Or, more precisely, every single one of the principals involved in those efforts is either dead or has stopped doing research into showing that the reasonable-sounding ideas actually match the relevant, cold, hard, objective, quantitative astronomical data. For example, Peratt has published nothing new, on this topic, since the late 1980s (yes, he's published stuff, but none of it involves new research), and Lerner's last work on this seems to be sometime in the 1990s. In the meantime, the quantity and quality of the directly relevant astronomical data has grown enormously, from the WMAP results to the thousands of hours of Hubble observations to the SDSS to data from Spitzer, Herschel, Chandra, Fermi, WISE, ...

Don't you find it odd that, given the tens of thousands of hours EU and PC proponents have spent promoting their ideas on websites across the internet, and given the hundreds (thousands?) of ardent fans, not a single one has done anything to develop these ideas, on a scientifically-sound basis?

"That the shapes and spins of galaxies can be shown in simulation by collapsing parallel electric filaments ("pinch" effect), "

No, your source is lying.

In 1986, Peratt published two Plasma Cosmology (NOT Electric Universe) papers, reporting the results of some simulations (similar to, but not quite the same as, what you wrote). However, these were not simulations of real galaxies. Why not? Because real galaxies contain stars (duh!), whose motions ("spins", to use your term) cannot possibly be represented in Peratt's simulations (stars have charge-to-mass ratios vastly different from the ions Peratt assumed, in his simulations).

Worse, real galaxies do not have double nuclei with the same shape as those in Peratt's simulations. And so on.

"They're overall arguing that electrodynamics can better explain many astronomical observations than gravitation + dark matter, dark energy and modifications to cosmological constants."

LOL. We must be reading different websites; I found nothing at all to suggest that anyone has developed any models which show " that electrodynamics can explain any astronomical observations"!

At least none that aren't already well-established parts of mainstream astrophysics. Care to share, freality?

Thunderbolts has theories? Really?

"Theories" as in "speculative guesses", sure, they have lots of those.

"Theories" as in "scientific theories", well, I have yet to find any on that site; which are the ones you found, uigrad_2000?

"An electric universe explains none of the physics of the universe ..."

FTFY

For much the same reason the Pioneer Anomaly, decades ago, did not suddenly make geocentrism a cool idea worth (re-)investigating.

OK, thinking about this a bit more ...

From about 4000 years ago (between ~5000 and 3000 anyway) on, there are surviving written records, relatively large in number and reasonably well understood/translated, from at least two well-separated regions.

Astronomers, among others, have gone over these records very carefully, and have found various events such as eclipses (esp solar), supernovae, and comets.

Analysis - mathematical, by necessity - of these records leads to various conclusions, of considerable robustness; among them:

* the relative sizes (in the sky) of the Sun and Moon have not changed, over this period

* the motions of the Sun and Moon, through the sky, are completely consistent with Ptolemaic models of (what we today call) the solar system, Kepler's models, and today's ones (which incorporate General Relativity)

* ditto, but to a lesser degree of accuracy, the naked eye planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)

* ditto, also to a somewhat lesser degree of accuracy, and only relative to rather more modern estimates of orbits, a number of comets, esp Halley's.

So, at least in the sense that written records can be read, and information about the dates and times and appearances of some solar system phenomena (as we call them today) compiled, "the stories of ancient humans" very much "act[ed] as a test for our astrophysical theories"!

Of course, various groups of humans, who left no written records, and without contact with others, no doubt have (had) many stories (myths, etc). The fact that "first contact" with some of these groups occurred well after ~500 BCE (say) should provide a very good test of the quality of the astronomical events and phenomena in their stories. For example, do they record the solar eclipses, supernovae, and comets which are found in Chinese records (say)?