"The phenomena of electrical discharge are exceedingly important, and when they are better understood they will probably throw great light on the nature of electricity as well as on the nature of gases and of the medium pervading space." James Clerk Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.

While we now recognise that electricity and magnetism are inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon, this was not always understood. The relationship between them only became clear during the nineteenth century. When Michael Faraday (1791–1867) demonstrated that moving a magnet through a coil of wire could generate an electric current, many of his contemporaries dismissed the idea as implausible, and some even regarded him as a charlatan.

It was James Clerk Maxwell who later unified electricity and magnetism into a single mathematical framework, revealing them to be fundamentally intertwined. Electric fields cannot be separated from magnetic fields—or vice versa. Yet, despite this, conventional astronomy still tends to treat magnetism as a primary phenomenon, while largely overlooking the electrical currents from which cosmic magnetic fields arise.

Plasma is not merely an ionised gas. It carries electric currents, generates magnetic fields, forms double layers, and naturally organises itself into cellular, filamentary, and spiral structures. If the visible universe is overwhelmingly plasma, why does gravity continue to dominate almost every cosmological explanation?

The answer is not that astronomers deny plasma. Quite the opposite. Modern astrophysics routinely studies plasmas, magnetic fields, and charged particles. The real question is why electrodynamics so often plays a supporting role, while gravity remains the principal actor. The answer lies partly in history, partly in mathematics, and partly in the way scientific paradigms evolve.

A Historical Detour

Kepler and Newton could hardly have incorporated plasma physics into their models. They lived centuries before Faraday, Maxwell, J. J. Thomson, Kristian Birkeland, Irving Langmuir, and Hannes Alfvén transformed our understanding of electricity, charged particles, and plasma. Their achievements were extraordinary, but they were necessarily products of their time. The foundations they laid were gravitational because almost nothing was yet known about the electrical nature of matter.

During the nineteenth century, everything changed. Electricity and magnetism were no longer isolated curiosities. Michael Faraday showed that a changing magnetic environment could generate an electric current. James Clerk Maxwell then unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single mathematical framework. The discovery of the electron, the development of spectroscopy, and the rise of electrical engineering transformed the scientific landscape.

For a time, it seemed natural to ask whether electricity might also play a major role in space. Birkeland's terrella experiments, auroral research, and later plasma laboratory work all pointed in that direction. The scientific literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was filled with speculation that electromagnetism might prove central to understanding the universe.

Yet during the twentieth century, cosmology followed a different path. Einstein's theories revolutionised gravity, while quantum mechanics transformed atomic physics. Plasma physics flourished in laboratories, engineering, and space science, but cosmology increasingly developed along gravitational lines. Electricity never disappeared from astronomy; it simply ceased to occupy centre stage.

The Map and the Territory

A good equation is a map. It may be astonishingly accurate. It may guide spacecraft, predict eclipses, and describe patterns with extraordinary precision. But a map is not the territory. When a model repeatedly requires invisible substances, unobserved energies, or idealised assumptions to preserve itself, we should ask whether nature is becoming more complicated — or whether the model is being protected from revision.

Electrodynamics versus Fluid Dynamics

Another common habit is to describe electrodynamic phenomena in terms more appropriate to fluid dynamics. "Electron rains", "ion storms", "solar wind", and "magnetic ropes" are familiar examples. These phrases are convenient, but convenience can come at a cost. They may obscure the current systems and electromagnetic forces that organise plasma at every scale.

So-called magnetic ropes are more properly understood as current-carrying plasma structures — Birkeland currents. They are not merely shapes in a magnetic field. They are electrical structures sustained by moving charge.

Bad Astronomy versus Good Science

Phil Plait, the self-proclaimed Bad Astronomer, has long been a critic of the Electric Universe. In 2007, on his website badastronomy.com, he argued that astronomy does not ignore magnetic fields. But this misses the central point. The issue is not whether astronomy mentions magnetic fields. The issue is whether it properly acknowledges the electrical currents that generate and sustain them.

"Magnetism is a very important topic in astrophysics (despite some pseudo-scientists lying and saying this force is ignored), but it’s not well-understood. It’s fiendishly complex, so much so that it’s a joke in astronomy."
Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer

The admission is revealing. Magnetism is acknowledged, but not fully understood. The missing piece is often the electrical current. Magnetic fields do not arise in isolation. They are produced by moving charge.

"In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents."
Hannes Alfvén, Nobel Laureate

In other words, magnetism cannot be viewed on its own. To map only the magnetic field while neglecting the electric field and current system is to describe the shadow while ignoring the object casting it.

Plasma cosmology does not ask us to abandon gravity. It asks us to restore electricity to the role it has occupied since Maxwell unified electromagnetism. The universe appears not merely gravitational, but electrical. Recognising that possibility is not the abandonment of science. It is an invitation to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

"Newton was unaware of plasma. Today his disciples spend years in training learning when and how to shut their eyes to it." Mel Acheson

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice." Heinlein's Razor

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing ever happened." Winston Churchill

The following quotation from Australian physicist Wal Thornhill provides further insight into the challenges of studying plasma. Those challenges help explain why plasma physics has often played a secondary role in mainstream cosmology, despite plasma constituting more than 99 per cent of the visible universe.

"Plasma physics started along two parallel lines. One of them was the hundred-year-old investigation into what was called 'electric discharges in gases'. To a high degree, this approach was experimental and phenomenological, and only very slowly did it reach some degree of theoretical sophistication. Most theoretical physicists looked down on this field which was complicated and awkward. The plasma exhibited striations, double layers, and an assortment of oscillations and instabilities. The electron temperature was often found to be one or two orders of magnitude larger than the gas temperature, with the ion temperature intermediate.

"In short, it was a field which was not well suited for mathematically elegant theories. The other approach came from the highly developed kinetic theory of ordinary gases. It was thought that, with a limited amount of work, this field could be extended to include ionized gases. The theories were mathematically elegant and claimed to derive all of the properties of a plasma from first principles. In reality this was not true. Because of the complexity of the problem, a number of approximations were necessary which were not always appropriate. The theories had very little contact with experimental physics: all awkward and complicated phenomena observed in the laboratory were simply neglected... Theories about plasmas, at the time called ionized gases, were developed without any contact with laboratory plasma work. In spite of this — or perhaps because of this — belief in the theories was so strong that they were applied directly to space. One of the results was the Chapman-Ferraro theory (for a review see Akasofu and Chapman, 1972) which became accepted to such an extent that Birkeland's approach was almost completely forgotten. For thirty or forty years, Birkeland's results were often ignored in textbooks and surveys, and all attempts to revive and develop them were neglected.

"The crushing victory of the theoretical approach over the experimental approach lasted only until the theory was to make experimentally verifiable predictions. From the theory, it was concluded that in the laboratory, plasmas could easily be confined in magnetic fields and heated to such temperatures as to make thermonuclear release of energy possible. When attempts were made to construct thermonuclear reactors, a confrontation between the theories and reality was unavoidable — the results were catastrophic. Although the theories were generally accepted, the plasma itself refused to believe them. This is not to say that Juergens' theory that the sun is an anode is valid. His observation was that the sun appears to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics in that the heat transfer is the wrong way. My friend Leroy, if I recall correctly, once attempted to explain this by an analogy of a man with a cigarette lighter in his extended arm. Neither suggestion is correct as the sun is not a collection of ordinary gas. It is a collection of matter in the plasma form and, as such, the temperature of the electrons is orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the body (a normal condition for a plasma).

"The approach which Alfvén suggested must ignore the elegant and simplistic ordinary gases theory as the electromagnetic forces within a plasma dominate."

Herbert Dingle, a noted critic of General Relativity and a former president of the Royal Astronomical Society, argued that something essential was lost when the æther was discarded.

"...Lorentz, to justify his transformation equations, saw the necessity of postulating a physical effect of interaction between moving matter and æther, to give the mathematics meaning. Physics still had de jure authority over mathematics: it was Einstein, who had no qualms about abolishing the æther and still retaining light waves whose properties were expressed by formulae that were meaningless without it, who was the first to discard physics altogether and propose a wholly mathematical theory..."
Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads (1972).

The Michelson-Morley experiment is often cited as having conclusively falsified æther theory, and this has become scientific scripture despite other researchers arriving at very different conclusions.

In 1928, for example, Dayton Miller stated:

"The effect [of aether-drift] has persisted throughout. After considering all the possible sources of error, there always remained a positive effect."
Dayton C. Miller (1928), quoted in National Philosophy Alliance Proceedings (2000), p.399.

Einstein was aware of Miller’s work. In a letter to Edwin E. Slosson, he conceded that:

"...Should the positive result be confirmed, then the special theory of relativity and with it the general theory of relativity, in its current form, would be invalid. Experimentum summus judex. Only the equivalence of inertia and gravitation would remain, however, they would have to lead to a significantly different theory."
Albert Einstein, letter to Edwin E. Slosson, 8 July (Hebrew University Archive, Jerusalem).

Although Einstein cast the æther aside, Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism requires a medium of some kind. And if light is a particle (a quanta) moving through a vacuum, as Einstein proposed, then how can it also display wave-like properties? In other words, does the æther help explain the wave–particle duality “paradox”? (The æther can be thought of as a fine elastic medium or plenum that permeates everything.) In summary: how can nothing wave?

"Einstein in his special theory of relativity postulated there was no medium, called the ‘aether.’ But Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism requires it. And Sir Oliver Lodge saw the aether as crucial to our understanding. So Einstein, at a stroke, removed any possibility that he, or his followers, would find a link between electro-magnetism and gravity. It served the egos of his followers to consecrate Einstein’s ideas and treat dissent as blasphemy."
Wal Thornhill, Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe.

In 1998, physicist Tom Van Flandern authored a paper in Physics Letters A that is still regarded by many as one of the strongest critiques of Einsteinian relativity. Van Flandern argues that Lorentz’s version — which retains an æther through which matter moves — is superior on observational grounds. Lorentz and Einstein’s versions are similar, but differ in a significant respect: the speed of light is not a limiting factor in Lorentz’s framework. Van Flandern argues that the speed of gravity is faster than the speed of light, consistent with Newtonian expectations of near-instantaneous propagation.