Re: Could universe be electrically charged?

On 2008-05-28, Crown-Horned Snorkack <chornedsnorkack@xxxxxxx> wrote:
What kind of observable effects would be expected, should the
universe have a small overall electric charge?

Depending upon what you mean by "small", somewhere between nothing at
all, and a complete failure of gravity to overcome electrostatic
repulsion leading to no galaxies, stars, or planets. The latter case
would only take a microscopic imbalance in charges since gravity is so
much weaker than electromagnetism.

To a first approximation, I'd expect the excess charge to distribute
itself uniformly throughout the universe. No point would have an
excess potential over any other. However, the charge effects would
have been much more intense earlier in the universe's history, and I'm
pretty sure that nucleosynthesis and expansion would have been
strongly affected.

Even if that were not the case, and the universe could acquire a small
net charge more "recently", consider the effect of neutral matter
moving through the background of excess charged particles. They would
be swept up, leading to the neutral matter becoming charged. The area
behind it would be deficient in charge, and hence act as a negative
"void", which would attract the now charged matter back.

I would expect that to produce quite significant drag forces over
large scales.


- Tim
.

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