Dr Charles Bruce was an expert in high voltage electrical engineering and a Fellow of The Royal Astronomical Society. In the 1940s he made a remarkable proposal that is still ignored by mainstream astronomy to this day. His proposal supports the electrodynamic paradigm.

Bruce identified cosmic jets, solar flares, magnetic fields and high temperatures in space as electrical discharge phenomena.

"And even if one regards the electric fields as merely another postulate, it has the great advantage that it is the one postulate which, in my view, renders all the others unnecessary."
C. E. R Bruce, Electric Fields in Space, Penguin Science, 1968

Bruce also identified the beautiful bipolar planetary nebula pictured in the heading image above as an electrical phenomena.

Don Scott is a retired professor of Electrical Engineering, with a long term interest in astronomy and cosmology.

His book The Electric Sky contains sensible science that can be understood by both amateurs and experts alike. Published late 2006, it represents another substantial public exposition of the latest developments that further challenge the current 'gravity only' system of thinking. Update 2022: His latest book The Interconnected Cosmos is available here.

One of the most accessible laboratory analogues for compact energetic behaviour in space is the plasma focus device (often referred to as a “plasma gun”). In such a device, a bank of capacitors drives a discharge between coaxial electrodes, forming a self-organised plasma structure called a plasmoid. Under the right conditions, these plasmoids collapse and emit tightly collimated plasma flows along the axis.

This behaviour — filaments, pinches, plasmoids and jets — is a natural outcome of electromagnetic structure in plasmas, and is observed across scales from laboratory devices to astrophysical jets.

"Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) release vast amounts of energy, whose ultimate source is a supermassive black hole in the galactic nucleus. In so-called radio-loud AGNs, two relativistic jets of plasma emanate from the nucleus, presumably along the rotational axis of the black hole."
Denise C. Gabuzda, Matt Nagle, Naomi Roche — The Jets of AGN as Giant Co-axial Cables

Even within mainstream astrophysics, plasma jets are recognised as fundamental structures. What differs is the interpretation of their source.

For a fuller discussion of how plasma focus behaviour, plasmoids, and electromagnetic structure relate to the conventional concept of black holes — and why this matters for interpreting compact energetic objects in the sky — see:

Black Holes — Plasma Focus and the Problem of Interpretation

Understanding plasma mechanisms is a key part of interpreting the true nature of compact energetic structures in the universe.

A new technique has revealed faint structures amidst the galaxies of the Virgo Cluster. Plasma cosmologists immediately recognise the 'cocoons, plumes, and streamers' as Birkeland currents and plasma sheaths. This is direct confirmation of the intergalactic circuits predicted by the plasma model.

The 'pinch effect' organises plasmas into filaments that act as 'power cables'. These can attract and repel, and when close can spiral around each other. At points of sufficiently strong interaction, the matter in these cables will be stretched into arcs and/or bulges that can generate the familiar forms of a spiral galaxy.

The NASA spacecraft, IBEX, has recently discovered another shock for the mainstream, if you'll pardon the pun, yet again. Researchers describe it as a “ribbon” of highly energetic particles at the boundary of our solar system, and it has them puzzled.

From the article at Physics World Oct 2009:

"The instruments measure and count particles known as energetic neutral atoms. These arise from an area called the interstellar boundary. This zone, undetectable by normal telescopes, is where electrically charged particles flowing from the sun, called the solar wind, pass far beyond the planets and plow into the gas and dust of the larger galaxy ... We expected to see small, gradual spatial variations at the interstellar boundary,” McComas told physicsworld.com, a website of the London based Institute of Physics. Scientists think the finding doesn’t fit with the accepted model of the heliosphere, thought to be shaped like a com­et by the collision of the outgoing solar wind and a greater galactic wind."

Though I tire of saying it, these mysterious ribbons are expected and predicted by the plasma model. In this particular case, these filaments clearly connect our solar system with the electrical supply of the wider galaxy.

The discovery of Herbig Haro objects, or 'jetted stars', leaves astronomers scratching their heads. The Astronomy Picture of the Day, February 3, 2006, had this to say: “Though such energetic outflows are well known to be associated with the formation of young stars, the exact cause of the spiralling structures apparent in this case is still mysterious.”

In reality, these structures highlight THE fundamental misunderstanding of space! The only force known to prevent a stream of gas from rapidly dispersing in the near vacuum of space is magnetism, and only electric currents can generate magnetic fields. The trouble is, early in the twentieth century, the astronomical community decided that gravity rules the heavens, and having settled on this secure and mathematically elegant vision of the cosmos, they are reluctant to entertain ideas about more exotic forces playing any significant role. Most of these objects are many light years in length, and display the classic signatures of Plasma/EM behaviour — 'beading', spiralling, and 'kink' or 'sawtooth' instabilities.

As Alfvén pointed out, time after time, the underlying assumptions of cosmologists today “are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not ‘understand’ how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them.”

Most geology is still framed as a purely thermal machine: convection, heat flow, slow churn, and an Earth whose deep engine is essentially a gigantic stove. This paper takes aim at that assumption.

It surveys the limitations of a strictly heat-driven model and develops an alternative picture: a solid–plastic Earth that may be electrically stressed, possibly expanding, and influenced by electromagnetic forcing in ways mainstream models rarely discuss. It’s technical, but unusually readable — and it connects directly to the big questions: plate motion, crustal deformation, and seismic energy budgets.

Read the paper. Journal home: scientificexploration.org