Plasma Cosmology - Galaxies and Quasars

Galaxies and Quasars

Winston H. Bostick carried out laboratory experiments in the 1950s by vaporising titanium wires with a 10,000 A current, turning them into a plasma, and: "was the first to record the formation of spiral structures in the laboratory from interacting plasmoids and to note the striking similarity to their galactic analogs". Bostick claimed that plasma scaling applied to these laboratory experiments showed galaxies had initially formed from plasma under the influence of a magnetic field.

Computer simulations of colliding plasma clouds by Anthony Peratt in in the 1980s also mimicked the shape of galaxies. The simulation in the figure shows the cross-section of two plasma filaments joining in a z-pinch, the filaments starting 300,000 light years apart and carrying Birkeland currents of 1018 Amps. The simulations also showed emerging jets of material from the central buffer region, which resembled that observed from quasars and active galactic nuclei, without the need for supermassive black holes required in simulations based on gravity alone. Extending the simulation run time showed: "the transition of double radio galaxies to radioquasars to radioquiet QSO's to peculiar and Seyfert galaxies, finally ending in spiral galaxies". The simulation accounted for flat galaxy rotation curves without dark matter (the discrepancy between observed galaxy rotation curves and those simulated based on gravity alone has to be accounted for by introducing dark matter). A flat rotation curve emerges quite naturally in a galaxy governed by electromagnetic fields, the spiral arms of galaxies are like rolling springs that have the same rotational velocity along their length.

Complementing and in agreement with these simulation studies by Peratt was an analytical model of a plasma quasar mechanism by Eric Lerner. This contradicts the standard model of quasars as being powered by supermassive black holes. A dense plasma focus (DPF) device to concentrate power using the same principle as this proposed plasma quasar mechanism is a possible way of achieving controlled nuclear fusion on Earth.