Scientists witness the process by which galaxies are formed

sort of.


The structure above is a cut of the plasma universe showing the filamentary currents produced by plasma in flux. Plasma tend to separate into regions according to temperature, density, magnetic field strength, chemical constituency, and other physical properties. Wherever these regions are in relative motion, they are coupled by electrical currents that they drive in each other. Like all electrical currents, the circuit paths are closed, sometimes over very great distances. Thus plasmas in relative motion in one part of the universe can produce prodigious amounts of electrical energy. This energy may be transferred over many billions of light years to burst suddenly from a very small and localized region representing the circuit load.

Electrical currents produce two other very important physical effects. Electrical currents produce magnetic fields and microwave radiation. If the electrons in the current flow have relativistic velocities and are in the presence of the magnetic fields, synchrotron radiation is produced. Concomittant with the generation of magnetic fields are electric fields.


The simplest geometry for galaxy formation, two adjacent Birkeland currents of width 35 kiloparsecs separated 80 kiloparsecs across. By scaling the current flows in astronomical objects by size, it is determined that the average flow in a galactic Birkeland current is approximately 1019 amperes; IA, the Alfvén galactic current.

In contrast to the experiment above, where the plasma currents are 30 millimeters in length, the galactic currents may extend 400 megaparsecs or more.

Economy in simulation, gained from observing laboratory experiments, suggests that the active region, where large electric fields build up, is about 10 kiloparsecs in length. That is, the salient phenomena can be modeled with two stubby pinches. The pinches are driven, of course, by the energy carried in the long length currents.


Major Observations
1. As the pinches interact in attraction, they take on a distorted (jellybean) profile that then elongate into peculiar shapes, untimately, with the parameters above, arriving at a barred spiral.

2. Very early in time, the pinches produce a burst of synchrotron radiation. This phenomena is observed both in experiments and simulations. For the parameters of this simulation, we may identify three principle stages in the evolution of a barred spiral galaxy: