Anthony Peratt (born 1940 Belleview, KS) is an electrical engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He was a graduate student of Hannes Alfvén, a former Scientific Advisor to the United States Department of Energy, and a member of the Associate Laboratory Directorate of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Peratt developed a computer simulation of galaxy formation, based on research concerning Birkeland currents using (at the time) the fastest supercomputer available. Peratt was investigating laboratory scale Birkeland currents and used experimentally justified scaling laws to see what would happen at galactic scales. The book "The Big Bang Never Happened" (1991) by Eric Lerner gives an account of this. Peratt discovered the dynamic effects that occur in intense Birkeland currents, named Peratt Instabilities. These arc discharge occur in plasma torches, z-pinched plasma filaments, and high energy density electrical discharges. Peratt claims that evidence exists that the instability can also be found on astrophysical scales.

Current research

Peratt described a Peratt Instability sequence at an interdisciplinary conference on plasma in the solar system in September of 2000<ref> </ref>. David Talbott, another presenter at the conference, remarked on the similarity of the line form to images seen in ancient rock art. Peratt's subsequent investigation of rock art led him and a team of 30 volunteers to collect over 50,000 digital photographs<ref> </ref> of petroglyphs and pictographs. Peratt concentrated his field work in the American Southwest and Northwest, but he also gathered data internationally. For his on-site study he used GPS longitude and latitude positions, always noting the orientation and field of view. He has classified them into 84 categories that correspond with the quasi-stable forms of the laboratory plasma discharges.

See also

Plasma cosmology

Publications

Peratt, A., J. Green, and D. Nielsen, "Evolution of Colliding Plasmas". Physical Review Letters, 44, pp. 1767–1770, 1980.

Peratt, A., "Physics of the Plasma Universe", 1992, Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-97575-6

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References

External links

Peratt, Anthony, " The Plasma Universe".

" Electrical Plasma". ( Electric-Cosmos.org)