I’ve spent most of my electronics career dealing with mille, micro, pico, and even some femto amps (i.e. one thousandth, one millionth, one billionth, and even one trillionth of an amp). These are current levels which your computer is pretty comfortable with, and which you probably can’t feel.
Two billion light years from here (definitively a long, long way from here!) there is a measurable electrical current at the other end of the spectrum… The picture below is a view of the strongest electrical current even spotted…it is probably in the realm of 1 x 1018 amps. A billion-billion amps! Of course this is not just a little spot of huge current density in that this plume is over 150,000 light years long…
This has about the same interest value to me as considering that Mount Everest is tallest, or that the dead sea is the saltiest… If you have ever worked on electronics …and gotten bitten by electricity…this should serve to remind you that it could be a lot worse…
The Strongest Electrical Current in the Universe Spotted, 2 Billion Light Years from Here
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/strongest-current-universe-detected-some-2-billion-light-years-away
Galaxy 3C303, Keeping Current Generated from a Very Large Array image, this image shows the huge jet of current stretching for 150,000 light years across galaxy 3C303. Philipp P. Kronberg, Richard V.E. Lovelace, Giovanni Lapenta, Stirling A. Colgate via arXiv
Looking for a source of renewable electricity? Researchers at the University of Toronto have found some serious current emanating from a huge cosmic jet 2 billion light years from Earth. At 1018 amps, the current is the strongest current ever seen, equaling something like a trillion bolts of lightning.
The awesome current was found around the galaxy 3C303, whose core is the origin of a massive matter jet. While measuring the alignment of radio waves around 3C303, the researchers noticed a swift and sudden shift in the alignment of those radio waves, the telltale sign of an electrical current.
Why exactly this is happening is unclear, but the researchers speculate that the black hole at the galaxy’s heart plays a role, its magnetic fields generating this current that is so strong that it lights up the matter jet and helps to drive it outward. Way outward. The jet reaches out some 150,000 light years into interstellar space–farther than the estimated diameter of the Milky Way.
