In this invisible world, tiny particles of gold melt at temperatures several hundred degrees lower than a large nugget, and copper, which is normally agoodconductor of electricity, can become resistant in thin layers in the presence of a magnetic field.
Don Melrose, also at Sydney, points out that the gas in the middle of the galaxy might already be so strongly ionised, and thus such agood electrical conductor, that current would leak away rather than build up into a concentration like the Snake.