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Plasma Cosmology, Part Two: The Universe Is a Sea of Electrically Charged Particles
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16843 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
3,455 Words |
| Author
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Anthony L. Peratt
Anthony L. Peratt conducts plasma research at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory. He was previously with the Maz Planck
Institute for Plasma Physics in West Germany. |
The presently dominant cosmology postulates gravitational forces and charge-neutral matter as the dominant components of the universe. Part I (August 1989) reviewed the origin, rise to ascendancy, and present observational challenges to this Big Bang model of the universe. Part II introduces the Plasma Universe model, which postulates electromagnetic forces and electrically charged matter as being the dominant factors in most of the universe.
* * *
The clear night sky with its myriad of observable stars, which may range up to thousands of light years distant, and its fuzzy "nebulae," such as the Andromeda galaxy some two million light years away, has inspired poets and scientists alike. Many are the scientists who have pursued the dream of comprehending the physics of the universe based on what they could observe in the clear night sky. Yet our experience in understanding the energetic events in our own Solar System suggests that the dream can never be realized.
Although we are now able to monitor deep space using the full electromagnetic spectrum from the very short wavelength gamma rays to the tens of meters long radiowaves, we are unable to send observing instruments out to cosmic distances. This constraint severely limits our ability to understand the universe. As previously outlined [see "Space Plasmas" March 1988, p. 166], only after satellites monitored our near-earth environment and spacecraft directly observed the environment of the nearest planets could we begin to get a true picture of the highly energetic processes occurring everywhere in the Solar System.
Our satellites and spacecraft have discovered that what we once thought of as empty space is rather a dynamic sea of low-density charged particles, called plasma. Completely invisible in the visual portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, this sea is traversed by electric and magnetic fields and is filled with complex flow patterns and electric currents transporting and depositing energy over large distances.
Moving through this plasma sea, the planets are surrounded by teardrop-shaped plasma sheaths, called magnetospheres. Yet viewed from the Earth's surface, the only clues to this rich space environment are the auroras found near the poles of the Earth and suggestions, carried by low-frequency radio waves, of charged-particle acceleration in magnetic fields around the
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