The big bang theory of cosmology - the idea that the universe originated in a single cataclysmic explosion between ten and twenty billion years ago - has become the foundation stone not only of modern astronomy, but also of all current theories of matter and energy. The author synthesizes the work of leading plasma physicists to propose a different evolutionary theory: that our cosmos is too large to have been created from a single explosion a mere 20 billion years ago. It is, according to the author, a plasma universe, growing slowly in giant strands twisting across space, in a skein of threads connecting the smallest particle of matter to an infinity of different cosmic systems.