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 beautiful bipolar planetary nebulae as electrical phenomena. (M2-9 is pictured in the header, above, to the left of the lightning flash.)

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

His new book, The Electric Sky, contains sensible science that can be understood by both amateurs and experts alike. Published late 2006, it is the first substantial public exposition of the latest developments that further challenge the current 'gravity only' system of thinking. Order here.

The plasma gun, pictured below, is a simple plasma focus device, consisting of two metal tubes, one inside the other. They have been successful in concentrating plasma discharges during at least three decades of research.

The energy stored in a large bank of capacitors is concentrated into a tiny filamentary knot, shaped like a donut, and known as a plasmoid. When plasmoid vortexes collapse, two intense plasma filaments are fired along the axis.

Pictured above right is the view down the barrel of a plasma gun.

The same process can be seen at the core of spiral galaxies and in powerful stellar outbursts. Pictured right is Nebula NGC 6751. Plasma phenomena, of course, are scalable over many orders of magnitude. The compact energetic activity at the core of galaxies is thus explained in simple electrical terms. In Plasma Cosmology there is no need for mathematical abstraction. Who needs Black Holes?

Devices based on the plasma gun are being developed to generate neutron beams, x-rays, and nuclear fusion devices. The future of space travel probably rests on these.

The existence of Black Holes is no longer questioned in conventional astronomy, despite the fact that they are based entirely on theoretical assumptions.

However, astronomers using NASAs Hubble Space Telescope have identified the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a 'super-massive black hole' in our neighboring Galaxy, Andromeda M31. It originates from a disk of hot, young stars that whip around the 'black hole' in much the same way that planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun. Astronomers are perplexed about how this disk of stars could form so close to a giant black hole. They should, of course, be sucked into oblivion, but this isn't happening.

Similar stars close to the core of our Milky Way galaxy have also been observed.

None of this perplexes astronomers who are familiar with plasma. They can generate similar effects in a plasma lab with the plasma focus device (above): It is the plasmoid that forms and stores energy at the focus of the discharge. When the plasmoid reaches a critical energy level, it discharges its energy in a collimated jet along its axis in the form of electromagnetic radiation and neutrons. Being unstable outside a nucleus, the neutrons soon decay into protons and electrons. The electrons are held back by the electromagnetic field, and the high-speed protons are beamed away.

On a galactic scale this is probably the mechanism that produces the collimated jets streaming away from the cores of active galaxies. The masses of ejected protons may make up the quasars that are associated with these galaxies and could be the basis for their intrinsic redshift.

Stephen Hawking has put forward a new thoery about black holes, suggesting that they do not destroy everything that strays into their path. The implications are profound for g. theory, and do not surprise those who favour the plasma focus model.

The power source in a plasma gun is understood and can be shown to actually work (using electric currents). An infinitely strong gravitational field has never been shown to exist, plus there needs to be a mechanism that converts the (gravitational) potential energy into plasma effects, which are clearly the end product.

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 World Science 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.”