The Electric Universe is a variant of Plasma Cosmology, and it is necessary to differentiate between the two. While they share more similarities than differences, it should be noted that EU ideas tend to go a step further than the generally more conservative approach of Plasma Cosmology.

While both viewpoints permit many ideas previously excluded by Big Bang Cosmology, The Electric Universe looks at the bigger picture, and promotes more radical ideas about the role of electricity in the universe, from ancient mythology to the mind-body connection.

Both PC and EU proponents acknowledge the fact that space is NOT electrically neutral, a fact largely denied in conventional astronomy.

The following is quoted from www.thunderbolts.info

"The cosmic theatre has outgrown the Newtonian stage, and we need a larger setting to understand the broader cosmic drama. Instead of a vision of isolated bodies turning gear-like in a vacuum, we need a vision of electrical circuits embedded in a conducting medium whose components drive each other and may be in resonance. We have left the familiar world of solids, liquids and gasses. We have entered a world of plasma, where the rules are different and more complex. We now live in an Electric Universe."

"However, astronomers have little to celebrate in 2009. They have usurped the role of the church and cast out a modern-day Galileo!"

Wal Thornhill refers to Halton Arp as the modern-day Gallileo in an attack on the supposed year of astronomy, 2009.

Are stars powered from within, or does the power come from elsewhere? This was the question asked by Sir Arthur Eddington in the 1920s. He settled for the former, and this laid the foundation for current mainstream models. Ralph Juergens asked the question again in the 1970s, and opted for the latter. According to Juergens, stars shine because they are connected to electric circuitry within galaxies. An electric star's brightness thus depends on the power of the electric current feeding it, not on the amount of nuclear fuel available to burn.

Stars thus behave as anodes in a galactic glow discharge. The many surface phenomena that can be seen on the Sun -- hot corona, sunspots, prominences, flares, et al -- can all be explained by an electric Sun, but are more difficult to understand from a nuclear point of view. Nuclear reactions take place on the surface, not in the core, perhaps explaining why neutrino numbers vary with sunspot cycles, and these reactions are almost certainly produced in the same way that we produce them in the lab -- by accelerating particles in an electric field.

Stars, galaxies, nebulae, and planets are all affected by electric currents in the plasma through which they move. If the appearance of a star is determined largely by its electrical environment, it follows that it can change relatively quickly!

"The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the sun's energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the solar interior is contradicted by nearly every observable aspect of the sun." Ralph E. Juergens (1980)

Don Scott, a retired professor of electrical engineering, demolishes the arguments of self-styled debunker and anti EU-activist, Tim Thompson, here.

This paper from Professor Scott (in .pdf format) provides some more technical and mathematical background on the Electric Sun Model.

Sirius, the nearest and brightest star, has a partner, Sirius B, a tiny white-dwarf. The trouble is, when we look at Sirius B through Chandra, an X-ray telescope, it appears much brighter. How could this be?

Astronomers try to explain this in terms of gravity, claiming that particles fall into Sirius B so fast that the collisions emit X-rays. But charged particles don't care about gravity, so the real answer is probably more simple. Nature abhors inefficiency, so she uses electric currents to produce X-rays, just as the medical profession does.

The paradigm is shifting, slowly but surely. Check out this paper

From the paper: "We propose a model for stellar binary systems consisting of a magnetic and a non-magnetic white-dwarf pair which is powered principally by electrical energy..."

(Alfven's seminal book, Cosmical Electrodynamics, is credited.)

A NASA headline article concluded, 'How they were accelerated, however, remains a mystery'. From a plasma perspective, of course, this phenomenon is less mysterious.

Retired professor of electrical engineering, Donald Scott, was not impressed, and didn't mince his words:"Any student of physics who has heard of electric charge and electric fields knows that the easiest way to get electrically charged particles to accelerate is to apply an electric field to them."

"We had speculated that the south pole hot spot was connected to the southern, sunlit conditions. Since the north pole has been deprived of sunlight since the arrival of winter in 1995, we didn't expect to find a similar feature there.

“The hot spots are the result of air moving polewards and being compressed as it descends over the poles into the depths of Saturn. The driving forces behind the motion, and indeed the global motion of Saturn's atmosphere, still need to be understood."

In an Electric Universe, of course, there is a simple explanation

Comets are little more than dirty snowballs according to conventional astronomy. Recent findings, however, challenge this assumption.

In 2000, as comet Linear (named after the telescope that discovered it) approached perihelion, strange things began to happen. It brightened by more than 50% in less than fours hours, and threw off large quantities of 'dust', much more than was expected from ice and other volatiles. Then, to cap it all, the Chandra telescope discovered that the 'dirty snowball' was emitting X-rays!

NASA cited a befuddled process called 'charge exchange reaction', which it claimed was first proposed in 1997. As a matter of fact, however, the electric comet theory has been around for more than a century, and it received clarity from Ralph Juergens in the early 1970s. He proposed the Electric Sun model, with the corollary that cometary comas and tails are produced by an electrical exchange between the sun and a comet.

Mysterious lights in the sky have long been considered precursors of earthquakes, although this idea is not taken seriously by mainstream science.

Recently, there were several reports of celestial sightings above Lincolnshire in the days before the earthquake, which had its epicentre near Market Rasen when it struck on February 27, 2008. It raises the question: Did people see 'earthquake lights'?

These are almost certainly electro-magnetic discharges, and come as little surprise to EU advocates.

EM disturbances probably also explain the numerous reports of animals behaving strangely before earthquakes. Such behaviour is too well documented to be dismissed out of hand, but EM forces are also largely ignored in geology, which like most sciences takes its lead from cosmology.

The ancients believed stones falling from the sky originated from beyond our planet. This was regarded as superstitious nonsense by the scientific community up until the 1800s, and martian meteorites were not officially confirmed until the late 20th century. The expression 'Modern Science catches up with Ancient Knowledge' is much reviled by the scientific community, but it seems appropriate here.

Such stones are sometimes called thunderstones as they have been associated with thunder and lightning. This is of particular interest to EU theorists, who note that electrical phenomena frequently accompany stone or meteor falls. See the witness diagram from 1751, right.

The light shows pose unanswered questions. Many witnesses describe electrical crackling and brightness equivalent to a full moon! Comas are also visible in the picture of the famous Peekskill meteor, right, from October, 1992. One witness stated: "When I saw it, it was still in one piece. It was an electric lime green with tendril-like extensions. It did not look like it was burning up so much as undergoing an electrical interaction."

These features are consistent with Electric Universe ideas. First we might expect to see a glow discharge which, as it approachs 'arc-mode' intensity, begins to ablate material in addition to velocity-driven air friction.

An interesting paper: Electrophonic sounds from large meteor fireballs

From the paper: "Anomalous sounds from large meteor fireballs, anomalous because they are audible simultaneously with the sighting, have been a matter for debate for over two centuries..."