[Brant's Reply on Tuesday, June 4, 2013 7:04 PM]

Well I read the paper... He is refuting the mainstream view point is what it seems like to me.

There is no doubt that there is potential difference between any 2 astronomical bodies...

What causes any astronomical body to stay at a constant negative potential is unknown.. Personally I believe most of them are hollow and are aether converters...

So a 2 trillion volt difference in the potential between the 2 bodies is expected, not necessarily that it will be 2 trillion volts.

The idea that the density of the ions is solely responsible for energy transfer is to ignore the reason for Flux tubes...

In any plasma, if the potential difference between 2 electrodes is great enough such that the plasma density is not high enough to carry the current, a flux tube or Birkeland current will form, thus the Io flux tube.  Lab scale a flux tube will form in something like the Large Plasma Device and last for milliseconds. Long enough for the capacitors to be discharged.

See my musings on Flux transfer events as well as plasmoids in earths magneto tail...

"In situ measurements of the plasma bulk velocity near the Io flux tube"

We study the flow around the Io flux tube by analyzing the eleven spectra taken by the Voyager 1 Plasma Science (PLS) experiment in its vicinity. We determine the bulk plasma parameters using a procedure that uses the full response function of the instrument and the data in all four PLS sensors. The mass density of the plasma in the vicinity of Io is found to be 22,500±2500 amu/cm³, and its electron density is found to be 1500±200 cm⁻³. We determine the Alfvén speed using three independent methods; the values obtained are consistent and, taken together, yield V_A = 300±50 km/s, corresponding to an Alfvén Mach number of 0.19±0.02. For the flow pattern we find good agreement with the model of Neubauer (1980) and conclude that the plasma flows around the flux tube with a pattern similar to the flow of an incompressible fluid around a long cylindrical obstacle of radius 1.26±0.1 R_Io."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JA091iA03p03011/~

Or an arc between 2 electrodes...

Dynamics of an Erupting Arched Magnetic Flux Rope

in a Laboratory Plasma Experiment

http://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/papers/Tripathi_Gekelman_SP2~