I found a very interesting example of how they go about calculating the electrical characteristics of a quasar plasma jet, starting from images taken from VLA radio and Chandra X-Ray images. (Too big to attach to this post .. the link is:
http://www.pppl.gov/conferences/2010...s_Kronberg.pdf. WARNING: its 8MBytes).
The way they've presented it, is very clear to the point that I can almost understand it !
3C303 is a Seyfert galaxy with a quasar-like appearance located in the constellation Bootes. The jets are absolutely huge in length.
Their conclusions about it are:
- The 3C303 jet behaves as a galaxy-scale, current-carrying “wire”.
- The jet calculations result in a jet which is consistent with a magnetically confined, 'Poynting flux' driven jet. (ie: Magnetic field constrained).
- The plasma contains very little 'thermal plasma' (ie: the electrons are at a much higher temperature than the neutrals and the ions).
- Current deduced : I = 7.5 x 10∧17 ampères.
- The SMBH system, at the core, "sees’’ an impedance looking into the jet, which is pretty close to the impedance of free space! (About 300 ohms).
- The current is directed AWAY from the galaxy AGN nucleus in the 3C303 knot.
- Intrinsic knot polarization is consistent with a low-field potential, (phi), helical field. (Which is also the field shape which constrains the jets).
The final slide (#22) shows a comparison of typical observable objects. The graph axes are field strengths vs the object size, which helps to visualise the various field strengths by object sizes.
Very interesting. Plasma "wires' do exist in space ! According to mainstream theory, it takes a Supermassive Black Hole to generate the power to make it all happen, though.
Cheers