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For more than 4 years, NASA scientists have puzzled over mysterious structures
in the Milky Way galaxy, called the Fermi bubbles.
The so called bubbles reach for tens of thousands of light-years
above and below the Galaxy.
Both the structures' enormous size and their energetic emissions
are presenting huge theoretical puzzles for astrophysicists.
A report on the website Phys.org reads;
"the outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow
in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces,
like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy".
"Their size is another puzzle.
The farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles boast some of the highest energy gamma rays,
but there's no discernible cause for them that far from the Galaxy".
What can plasma cosmology and the Electric Universe
tell us about this astronomical mystery?
These are large scale structures that have been observed
using the Fermi large area telescope,
which is a low-Earth-orbit observatory for gamma-ray events.
It's a low-Earth-orbit because the atmosphere tends
to screen out all but the highest energy gamma rays.
What has been observed is something that's about 50,000 light-years across.
So actually, it's more than half of the visible sky,
so it's quite a large structure.
It's two, what appear to be bubbles,
although that terminology gets you thinking a certain way,
but let's just use the bubble term for now,
that extend from the north and south poles of our Galaxy.
And what we've observed is, the same bubbles or lobes
can be seen in both radio and microwaves as well.
So, it's a bit of a surprise they are there.
In 2010, when the Fermi bubbles were observed,
Finkbeiner, the principal investigator, said that they had hypothesized that
there should be some gamma-ray emissions in this part of the sky
but certainly they did not expect these kinds of giant structures.
So a few things that have been observed; well, first of all,
gamma rays from these structures are much more energetic
than elsewhere in our galaxy, that’s a bit of a surprise.
Very well-defined edges,
and now that similar structures have been observed in radio emissions,
there's been observations of fine structure as well
in these lobes or bubbles.
So, there are two mechanisms really at the disposal of the investigators.
One is that there's some sort of a past eruption
of a super-massive black hole, although I'm not sure how black holes erupt,
or it's the result of an intense star formation event in the past
that blasted gases out of the galactic core,
and this is providing the energy that's being observed here in these Fermi bubbles.
The Electric Universe has a potential alternative explanation for how these high-energy
structures are being driven, and this is actually an alternative explanation
that was put forward by Hannes Alfvén, a few decades ago.
The idea is that galaxies are powered by immense Birkeland currents.
And galaxies are formed through a Z-pinch in these immense Birkeland Currents,
and in fact, particle-in-cell simulations and actual plasma experiments in the lab
demonstrate that typical galactic morphologies
arise from these Birkeland Current Z-pinches.
The Z-pinches also result in electric currents flowing up through our galactic arms.
So, Birkeland current filaments are characterized by electric currents
and associated magnetic fields organized around the electric currents
and we'll get back to the importance of the magnetic fields soon.
Scientists are wondering why some of the Fermi bubbles' most intense Gamma rays
are found at the bubbles' farthest reaches.
Does this discovery fulfill the theoretical predictions of plasma cosmology?
There are actually a couple of key surprising observations about these structures.
One is the highest energy Gamma rays that are actually observed
at the furthest reaches of the bubbles
and when observed in radio energies, there are distinct ridges
that twist into our galactic center.
But let's sort of talk about that first observation,
about the highest energy gamma rays at the furthest reaches of the bubbles.
For number one, the high-energy gamma rays are probably generated by double layers
at the furthest reaches of the observed bubbles.
In fact, Alfvén had predicted this and even hypothesized that these double layers,
away from the center of the galaxy, are a key source of cosmic rays and the gamma rays.
Since plasma events can be scaled, we can actually look at this in the picture of a
planetary nebula, and these high-energy gamma rays, that are being observed
at the further reaches of the Fermi bubbles,
are likely the result of those double layers
in the large Birkeland currents driving the Galaxy.
And those double layers are very strong electric fields that can accelerate
high-energy emissions like the gamma rays being observed.
The other observation of both the ridges that were observed in radio
are a very good example of what we'd expect in terms of filaments.
So, these ridges are evidence of the Birkeland Current filaments
twisting around each other and resulting in a Z-pinch at the galactic center.
The Electric Universe would predict more of this kind of filamentary morphology
as more observations are made and in fact, the same authors in 2012
have discerned fine collimated gamma ray structures within the bubbles.
So that's exactly what we would have expected.
I don't think actually, a blast event would necessarily predict this kind of filamentary structure.
We're not really looking at bubbles and once you begin to use terms like that,
it evokes different kinds of explanatory models.
So I'm kind of avoiding terminology like bubbles
because it can get you on the wrong track.
I prefer to refer them as structures.
Now, if these are Birkeland Currents creating these high energy structures,
then one of the things that we would expect to see there
is very strong and ordered magnetic fields.
And in fact, radio observations have revealed radio lobes
that coincide with the Fermi structures.
And these are actually permeated by very strong magnetic fields of up to 15 microGauss.
Now, within the radio structures there are fine ridges
which wind around the flow of energy,
and in fact the magnetic fields direction follows those ridges very closely,
which is exactly what we would expect if those ridges are
observations of Birkeland current filaments.
The width of the ridge is consistent at about 300 parsecs over their entire length,
and this is something else that we would expect to see with a Birkeland filament,
their width along the length tends to be very consistent, very collimated.
Now, the ridges appear to be continuous windings of individual collimated structures
around a biconical outflow of the galactic center.
Those are the actual words of the investigators in that paper.
So, some key terms there, they're continuous collimated structures in a biconical outflow.
These are all very indicative of what we'd expect to see with Birkeland filaments.
Although the bubbles have been described as
"incandescent bulbs", why do scientists attempt to explain these electromagnetic phenomena
with theoretical models that exclude the contributions of electric currents?
This is actually a very large mystery in itself.
The fact that galaxies overall have very strong, very ordered
magnetic fields and they tend to align themselves around the galactic arms.
How those ordered structures arise and are driven is actually a complete mystery.
And I believe that the mysteries around the Galactic magnetic fields,
the complicated structure, are linked to the mystery of these Fermi structures
and the kinds of magnetic fields that we observe within those structures.
The electrical currents, the Birkeland current filaments,
with the associated magnetic fields, drive galaxies
and influence the galactic motion and morphology
and drive star formation within the galaxies.
So, basically we live in an extensive interconnected electrical universe.
The complex magnetic field structures that we observe,
the high-energy structures that we see in the form of these Fermi structures,
are all direct observations of these electrical Birkeland current transmission lines.
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