From the prior post: "There is 'charge', and 'charge' moves, a 'current'. This 'current' is affected by and creates an electromagnetic field.
Well known.
I guess the question is 'so what'."

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Fair question... The so what is the most interesting part, to me. And I don't think it's one to be dismissed lightly.

It may be "known," but this knowledge never seems to be APPLIED. Very few people talk about these features in "electrical" terms. That's the "so-what."

We need to recognize that these are electrical events (gravity-only definitions generally don't seem to work all that well, since gravity pulls inward, it doesn't generally push outward) and then ask more appropriate questions from that vantage point. "What powers these events?" "Where does that power come from?" "Where does the charge go once ejected?" "What effect does the current and attendant magnetic fields have on neighboring structures?" "Do they interact electrically?" Etc. Etc.

If we don't understand these events as being electrical in nature how can we ever hope to understand their causes? IE, we're looking in the wrong direction. And explanations are currently (no pun intended) given in generally gravity-centric terms.

My point is, what happens if we introduce electricity into the equation and STOP divorcing the magnetic fields from the electrical interactions that produce them? How different will our universe look if it's filled with flowing current and electrical structures? Personally, I think that things will begin to become much clearer, and some of our preconceived notions will fall away in the light of new understanding. For one things we'll see that many stellar objects all share the nearly EXACT same structure. They're not so different as we've lead ourselves to believe...

As to the question of dark matter, I think that's simply a construct of a failing model (big bang) that's groping for more and more exotic explanations to features it can't explain rationally. Specifically by introducing additional entities that we can't currently see or measure except by the very things we're mystified by and have no rational explanation for. The argument is circular: we see structures that can't be explained by the amount of matter and gravitation we can see, so it must be proof of "dark matter". The very things we're observing somehow prove the existence of the thing that we postulated to explain the weird behavior of the thing we observed but couldn't explain? That seems like a self-referential circular no-no. However, many of those self same features are explained more easily once we have a fuller understanding of the physical mechanisms at play (by adding electricity).

Dark matter is simply a construct of not being able to find enough mass in the universe to support a gravity-only model, so we've invented something invisible, and strangely enough (or not) we can't find it except circularly. If we don't, what then?

I'm simply suggesting an alternate method of constructing the same features we see in the universe, in case the whole "dark matter" / "dark energy" thing doesn't pan out.

Electricity in plasma has already been shown to exhibit many of the "cosmic" features on our scale in the lab in the presence of electrical current. And we know that plasma physics, electricity and magnetism are scaleable over many if not all orders of magnitude.

It's funny how on a giant piece of poster paper I just sketched out today, in about an hour, a diagram of a toroidal magnetic field around a rotating charged object or a spinning ring magnet. And it bears striking resemblance to the structure of black holes, pulsars, quasars, etc.

Looked surprisingly like this:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040908.htm

And this:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031128.html

And even this (albeit I drew it from a strictly side view using concentric circles to illustrate the toroidal magnetic fields):
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060528.html

Seeing as the larger the field lines get the more constricted the path around the axis gets at a distance. It's also funny how well that matches up with the toroidal ring/disk around the middle plane of black holes, pulsars, AGN's, etc. (even the planets floating around the sun are floating in roughly a disk around/in the sun's IMF), and the long filamented jets flowing along field lines at the pole(s).

Anyway, if we don't recognize what's going on and speak in correct terms, how can we ever hope to talk about, let alone understand, what is going on in the universe?

My suggestion is a change in speech and a change in thought. We should recognize currents as "currents" and electricity as "electricity." If one cannot say what one means, one can never mean what one says. And if we keep talking about things with bilious names ("kinked jets," "hot gas") without any scientific specificity (currents of charged particles [plasma] spiralling in a self-constricting magnetic field), how can we ever hope to adequately describe them or understand what they really are? I think there are some terminal terminology issues (or a lack of standard terminology that's sufficiently descriptive of what's ACTUALLY going on).

A flow of charged particles is a "current." A "current" is electrical. And where conductive electrical channels meet, we get "circuits." And sometimes we get "short circuits." What does that mean in cosmic terms, though?

Food for thought...

If we have currents flowing in space, and they do connect. Ponder for a moment. What might a short circuit look like? What might an anode glow look like, on a stellar scale? What would a ruptured double-layer look like? A solar flare perhaps? CME? A star going supernova and puffing off a layer of plasma? What would the universe look like, if it's actually a series of connected electrical circuits?

(This perhaps?)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020820.html

(Or this?)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030126.html

All related. All interconnected. Interesting, no?

Open the mind, and live a little. =o] What can it hurt?