You’d think the science on the Van Allen Radiation belts was long ago considered “settled science”. Nope. And yet, while we discover new things like this, some insist we fully understand all aspects of the workings of Earth’s climate.
Instruments detect never-before-seen phenomenon in Earth’s Magnetosphere
The belts are a pair of donut shaped zones of charged particles that surround Earth and occupy the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 1, 2013—U.S. researchers, including a trio from Los Alamos National Laboratory, have witnessed the mysterious appearance of a relatively long-lived zone of high-energy electrons stored between Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts.
The surprising findings, discovered by NASA’s Van Allen Probes (formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes), were outlined Thursday in Science Express and during a press conference at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The research was led by Dan Baker of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“Nature keeps on surprising us by producing long-lived harsh environments in space in regions not previously considered,” said Los Alamos plasma physicist Reiner Friedel of LANL’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “This finding may impact the planning of future space missions.”
The Van Allen radiation belts — named in honor James Van Allen, who discovered them nearly 50 years ago — are a pair of donut shaped zones of charged particles that surround Earth and occupy the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere. The outer belt contains extremely high-energy electrons, while the inner belt is comprised of energetic protons and electrons. The belts have been studied extensively since the dawn of the Space Age, because the high-energy particles in the outer ring can cripple or disrupt spacecraft. Long-term observation of the belts have hinted that the belts can act as efficient and powerful particle accelerators; the recent observations by the Van Allen Probes—a pair of spacecraft launched in August 2012—now seem to confirm this.
Shortly after launch, the spacecraft activated their Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescope (REPT) instruments to measure particles within the belts and their immediate environs. The instrument immediately detected on September 1, 2012, the presence of a stable zone of high-energy electrons residing between the belts. This donut-shaped third ring nestled between the belts existed for nearly a month before being obliterated by a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system.
Such a distinct, long-lasting ring of high-energy electrons had never before been seen by any prior instrument in space or on Earth. The findings suggest that the Van Allen Belts somehow capture and store energetic electrons in a circular path around our home planet, perhaps in much the same way as a cyclotron can capture and store charged particles here on Earth.
“One of the main reasons the Van Allen Probe instruments are seeing these new features are their unprecedented sensitivity and rejection of backgrounds,” Friedel said. “As the mission proceeds, we expect further surprises that will challenge our conventional wisdom on the transport, loss and energization processes in these highly energetic electron radiation regions.”
In addition to Friedel, Los Alamos research team members include Geoffrey D. Reeves and Michael G. Henderson. The research team is also represented by the Goddard Space Flight Center, University of New Hampshire, The Southwest Research Institute, Dartmouth College, the University of California—Los Angeles, University of Iowa, and The Aerospace Corporation.
The findings suggest that the Van Allen Belts somehow capture and store energetic electrons in a circular path around our home planet, perhaps in much the same way as a cyclotron can capture and store charged particles here on Earth.
And what is so new about this? The concept of a ‘ring-current’ has been with us for many decades.
More evidence of the Electric Universe?
Reblogged this on The Science Blog.
Peter C. says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:09 pm
More evidence of the Electric Universe?
Your comment is evidence of people willing to believe nonsense
[Reply: Yes, nonsense. Please, folks, no posts re: Electric Universe. — mod.]
“And what is so new about this?”
“Such a distinct, long-lasting ring of high-energy electrons had never before been seen by any prior instrument in space or on Earth.”
Is that statement at odds with some information you know of?
Peter C. says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:09 pm
“More evidence of the Electric Universe?”
Didn’t know there was any evidence at all in the first place. Could you give some.
[Reply: Please, let’s not encourage the Electric Universe silliness. Thanks. — mod.]
Maybe high altitude nuke tests have something to do with that?
lsvalgaard, “The concept of a ‘ring-current’ has been with us for many decades.”
You are not implying that LANL would sex up a press release are you? 🙂
Last week I had an email from my S. Hemisphere’s friend enquiring:
‘as a person who turns everything into ‘pseudoscience’ any ideas?’
My reply:
It lasted about a month. In September 2012 Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetospheres were in line with sun, so if there is permanent strong Sun-Jupiter electric current / magnetic field link and the Earth got caught in it, there should be another ‘appearance’ some 13 months later i.e. in October 2013. Let’s wait and see.
Forgot video link
I sing the Van Allen belt Electric…
although it`s obviously off-topic, I find the attempt to censor ideas in the comments section a step in the wrong direction.
Anthony, you write “The belts have been studied extensively since the dawn of the Space Age”
I think this statement is a little misleading. Orginally the Van Allen belts were called the Heavyside Layer (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats). The were studied extensively well before WWII. I suggest that the period over which studies,exist is around 100 years.
OK, where’d they come from and where’d they go? Why is it a surprise to have small rings inside bigger ones? There are all sorts of resonance phenomena in physics.
Leif:
Does the ring current get dissipated by “a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system” from time to time?
Wiki:
The ring current energy is mainly carried around by the ions, most of which are protons. However, one also sees alpha particles in the ring current, a type of ion that is plentiful in the solar wind. In addition, a certain percentage are O+ oxygen ions, similar to those in the ionosphere of Earth, though much more energetic. This mixture of ions suggests that ring current particles probably come from more than one source.
Don’t see any mention of electrons here. Maybe what NASA has observed is what they say they have observed: something not observed before.
Leif?
[Reply: Please, let’s not encourage the Electric Universe silliness. Thanks. — mod.]
As an engineer by training I see more sense in the electric universe than any other currently proposed hypothesis. As for measurements, predictions etc there are many, and have been for a long while.
Mathematics invents really stupid things that any logical thinking person can understand are not real, like black holes and neutron stars. I am profoundly shocked to find censorship and actual derision of any alternative non-mainstream hypothesis on here. Especially one that will have predicted such electrical phenomena, as it has predicted the recent so called “baffling” findings of Voyager.
WWUT how the mighty have fallen. I suggest a retraction of word such as slliness, and an open invitation for open discussion, which is not just limited to lsvalgaard deriding everyone who disagrees with him.
K
[Reply: OK, I retract “silliness”. But please, electric universe is on par with HAARP. – mod.]
Like Lief, I’m not shocked by this, interesting thou it is. But it appears that it’s become de riggeur that your research generates headlines. BTW mod, wot’s the problem with http://www.google.com.br/search?q=youtube+electric+avenue+song&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari&redir_esc=&ei=FRg1Uej7PIb88gS7sIHYDA
OK, being a little disingenuous there 🙂
“U.S. researchers, including a trio from Los Alamos National Laboratory, …”
Presumably the same three whose photo is entitled “Free Range and Out of Control” just below the thread? Sort of makes me wish I’d post-doc’d at LANL rather than NRL! 🙂
dallas says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:28 pm
lsvalgaard, “The concept of a ‘ring-current’ has been with us for many decades.”
You are not implying that LANL would sex up a press release are you? 🙂
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The way I read it, Dr Svalgaard isn’t implying anything. 🙂
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:06 pm
“And what is so new about this? The concept of a ‘ring-current’ has been with us for many decades.”
Apparently, this is an entirely new discovery for NASA. Maybe you should send them your email address, Dr. Svalgaard.
Roy Spencer came in at 0.18C for Feb so pretty much down again looks like AGW is dead by now LOL
Fascinating. So close to home, yet only now with the aid of very expensive hardware does it come to light. Nice one, NASA. We really don’t know the half of what’s in our own backyard.
Also fascinating: that this swirl of high energy plasma is reported by proper hard science, yet we may not mention the (“silliness”) theory – despite that theory being based on the universe being full of plasma …
davidxn says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:24 pm
>i>“Such a distinct, long-lasting ring of high-energy electrons had never before been seen by any prior instrument in space or on Earth.”
Is that statement at odds with some information you know of?
The regular Van Allen belts are such information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
Even though the _concept_ of the “ring-current” might have been with us for many decades, isn’t it interesting at least to have an observation/confirmation of it ?
O/T – or not?
According to quantum mechanics, until you actually look inside the box, both possibilities are true. The particle has both decayed and not decayed; the vial is both smashed and intact; and the cat is both alive and dead.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/04/canadian-researchers-take-a-sneak-peek-at-schrodingers-cat-and-a-step-toward-a-quantum-computer/
What force holds atoms together ?
Wiki:
The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low earth orbit were disabled. These man-made radiation belts eventually crippled one-third of all satellites in low earth orbit. Seven satellites failed over the months following the test as radiation damaged their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar.[12][13][14] Detectors on Telstar, TRAAC, Injun, and Ariel 1 were used to measure distribution of the radiation produced by the tests.[15]
In 1963, Brown et al. reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research that Starfish Prime had created a belt of MeV electrons,[16] and Wilmot Hess reported in 1968 that some Starfish electrons remained for five years
Perhaps not evidence of an Electric Universe but it does give me a tingle down my leg. 🙂
Where is Testla when you need him. 😉
Alfred
This donut-shaped third ring nestled between the belts existed for nearly a month before being obliterated by a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system.
That’s interesting. I thought everything outside of our rock was “constant”.
Nicola Tesla.
@Keith., who wrote: “Mathematics invents really stupid things that any logical thinking person can understand are not real, like black holes and neutron stars.”
Sorry, guy. I have worked many years on neutron stars. They have been photographed and their masses and rotation rates measured. Their sizes and surface gravitational redshifts accord with computations using the experimentally determined neutron equation of state. They are as real as your face. Black holes, on the other hand are the bastard offspring of the union of newtonian gravity and relativity. There is absolutely no doubt that massive astronomical objects compact enough to be black holes exist. But there are no observations that can distinguish them from other exotic model objects that would be compact enough to significantly warp spacetime. They are the CAGW of astrophysics. Honest science would drop the NASA hype and call them black hole candidates until they are shown to possess the characteristics of Schwarzschild or Kerr geometry.
vukcevic says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:36 pm
so if there is permanent strong Sun-Jupiter electric current / magnetic field link and the Earth got caught in it, there should be another ‘appearance’ some 13 months later i.e. in October 2013.
But since there is no such link, nothing will happen [and it should happen only then and not at times where there is no lineup]. But, as a prediction, you post is significant. But in keeping with the scientific method, if nothing happens, you must drop the idea. Conversely if shown correct.
Tom says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:45 pm
although it`s obviously off-topic, I find the attempt to censor ideas in the comments section a step in the wrong direction.
There is a difference between plausible ideas and simple nonsense.
Jim Cripwell says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:46 pm
Orginally the Van Allen belts were called the Heavyside Layer (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats). The were studied extensively well before WWII. I suggest that the period over which studies,exist is around 100 years.
No, you are confusing them with the layers in the ionosphere.
tallbloke says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:50 pm
Does the ring current get dissipated by “a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system” from time to time?
No, the belts decay by collisions with neutral atoms and various wave-related processes. I don’t know what difference there is between the Sun and the ‘center of the solar system’, but particles coming from the Sun actually helps to establish the belts, rather than to destroy them.
tallbloke says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Wiki: The ring current energy is mainly carried around by the ions, most of which are protons.
Note the little word ‘energy’. A moving proton has much more energy than an electron on account of its much greater mass.
Don’t see any mention of electrons here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt :
“There are three distinct belts, with energetic electrons forming the outer belt and a combination of protons and electrons forming the inner belt.” The word electron occurs 23 times…
keith says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Mathematics invents really stupid things that any logical thinking person can understand are not real, like black holes and neutron stars. I am profoundly shocked to find censorship and actual derision of any alternative non-mainstream hypothesis on here.
And I am profoundly shocked to see the low level of basic scientific literacy prompting your comment.
tallbloke says:
March 4, 2013 at 1:50 pm
Does the ring current get dissipated by “a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system” from time to time?
No, the belts decay by collisions with neutral atoms and various wave-related processes. I don’t know what difference there is between the Sun and the ‘center of the solar system’, but particles coming from the Sun actually helps to establish the belts, rather than to destroy them.
—–
I get confused by your question. Only saw now that that ‘center of the solar system’ was not your phrase, but from the press release. So my comment should be directed at that. They might mean that a CME re-filled the belts [as they often do] and dumped particles all over the place, thus smearing the various belts into each other. In any case, the phrase was a bit weird.
as goes the universe being full of plasma …
US Navy Labs creates Plasma in the upper Atmosphere
http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/2272013-us-navy-labs-create-plasma-rings-using-haarp-hf-radar-frequency/
Damn! That was my secret stash. Keep your hands of those electrons.
OFF those electrons.
Wiki:
The ring current energy is mainly carried around by the ions, most of which are protons. However, one also sees alpha particles in the ring current, a type of ion that is plentiful in the solar wind. In addition, a certain percentage are O+ oxygen ions
So add some of NASA’s electrons and a few lightning bolts and we have water….
keith says: March 4, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Mathematics invents really stupid things that any logical thinking person can understand are not real, like black holes and neutron stars.
Keith, I’m interested in your comments on this.
Don’t you think, whatever they may be called, there is very strong evidence that at the centre of our (and other) galaxy lies an invisible, star digesting, incredibly massive ‘object’ around which the entire galaxy orbits/circulates? To me, black hole seems at the very least, a fairly apt name.
bones says: March 4, 2013 at 3:15 pm
“… I have worked many years on neutron stars. They have been photographed and their masses and rotation rates measured. Their sizes and surface gravitational redshifts accord with computations using the experimentally determined neutron equation of state. They are as real as your face.
…… There is absolutely no doubt that massive astronomical objects compact enough to be black holes exist. But there are no observations that can distinguish them from other exotic model objects that would be compact enough to significantly warp spacetime. …”
Thanks bones … I appreciate the info on the neutron stars, that they have been observed ..
But looks like black holes are far more complex entities – can you please comment on this?:
Don’t you think, whatever they may be called, there is very strong evidence that at the centre of our (and other) galaxy lies an invisible, star digesting, incredibly massive ‘object’ around which the entire galaxy orbits/circulates? To me, black hole seems at the very least, a fairly apt name.
At present, there are about 2000 known neutron stars in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, the majority of which have been detected as radio pulsars.
(Wikipedia …. yeah, I know, but its quick and easy…and a nice read in this case!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
Well I’m having a whale of a time trying to decipher just what I am seeing in the above colorful (credit/blame) NASA illustration.
I see a single doughnut shape that intersects the earth at its inner surface. Then I see a completely disconnected doughnut shape that intersects neither the earth nor the other doughnut.
I also see the earth; or how else would I know of the connect/disconnect of those other two gizmos.
I see a couple of satelites that seem to move in an orbit that has an apogee n the middle of the red part of the first doughnut, and a perigee that magically lies in the middle of the red zone of the second doughnut. I see nothing else; neither electrons nor protons nor even alpha particles.
Does NASA ever label anything ??
So I can understand particle trapping, particularly by earth magnetic field. So who or what is supplying the energy that supposedly can accelerate these particles to high energies.
I do understand how particle accelerators work; even cyclotrons that wiki article mentions. Don’t see any “Dees” or equivalent in the NASA illustration. So where is the particle accelerating structure ??
Ack! The Van Allen belts are on fire! Send the SeaView & Admiral Nelson to blow it up.
Okay, at the risk of driving this thread further off topic, I really must ask – what is it about the electric universe theory that deserves such derision?
Personally I had never heard of it until just now. I did a quick google, and it seems to just be a school of thought in which electricity and electromagnetism are primary forces in the heavens instead of gravity. Okay… on what grounds does it warrant instant dismissal? Did I miss a post on WUWT or something?
HAARP, I don’t get that either. Again, never heard of it, but wiki says it’s a facility researching ways to improve/expand communications airwaves. What’s bogus about that? That some people believe we can control the weather, etc. by broadcasting a radio signal? Hell, if you believe that, I bet you also believe that we can control the whole earth’s temperature by regulating the amount of CO2 in the air…
Practically speaking, there’s only so much “bandwidth” to exploit in the electromagnetic spectrum, so I am glad to know there is work being done in this area…
Honestly, we didn’t vaporize the atmosphere with the atom bomb, we’re not going to boil away the oceans by burning hydrocarbons, and we are certainly not causing earthquakes or other disasters via long range air and particle wiggling. I am generally liable to completely dismiss out-of-hand claims of grandiose, end-of-world style destruction.
And in an attempt to bring my post back on topic, how do either of these have anything to do with the discovery above? It seems like we just witnessed some phenomena for only a fraction in time, and need more data before claiming it’s linked to anything at all. For now, I’ll just file this under, “Neat!”
If there were diametrical opposition between the belts could a discharge between the belts create
a third belt ? Something that equates equilibrium between the two belts ? The result is then toasted by a strong solar wind?
For reference:
When I first read the PR on NASA last week, the main thing that surprised me was that anyone would be surprised, then I got to the line “the Van Allen Probes showed scientists something that would require rewriting textbooks.” Sheesh.
Markx says “..Don’t you think, whatever they may be called, there is very strong evidence that at the centre of our (and other) galaxy lies an invisible, star digesting, incredibly massive ‘object’ around which the entire galaxy orbits/circulates? To me, black hole seems at the very least, a fairly apt name.”
No problem with acknowledging the existence of these and even that “black hole” might be a fairly apt description, but there are other possibilities that need to be excluded before we say that matter has the ability to cut off communication with the external universe except for gravity revealing its presence. This is believed to be the most stunning prediction of general relativity, but why close the case before it is made? It is pretty clear to me that one of quantum mechanics and general relativity, or both must be modified before they will be reconciled. Considering the many extremely accurate predictions of quantum mechanics, my bet is that general relativity will be found in need of having its conceptual foundations repaired.
Trenberth’s lost heat has been found!! Now how it got out there.
keith
March 4, 2013 at 1:58 pm
###
First of all, singularities are mathematically constructable, and a direct consequence of the laws of physics that have been established on top of real experimentation. You seem to be confusing them with some of the classes of non constructable objects that mathematicians sometimes encounter. Anyway, just because something is a mathematical abstraction that does not ~really~ exist does not make it useless. As for me, I will continue to use the axiom of choice.
Holy Smokes. Was it something I said? I discovered the main site promulgating and disseminating the EU theory, and a more curious and open minded bunch one could not find.
It has inspired me to read and try to understand the issues in classical physics and astronomy with a renewed interest. But I open this comment thread, and I find, here where one is supposed to find a island of open-minded debate, and I see that EU talk is way off-limit, and as one mod commented (albeit later retracted), defined as “silliness”.
OK. Then I guess we can then dismiss the beliefs of Hannes Alfven, Nobel Prize Physics 1970, and Birkeland (Birkeland Currents), and …(appeal to authority is long since abhorent to me) so just say quite a long list of very serious and sincere scientists as being “silliness”.
I am frankly stunned. And disappointed, but then again who am I? Just another comparative religion major, who learned the basics of what he knows about weather and climate from John Daly (RIP) via hundreds of hours of reading on his site, and was ‘converted’ from being a knee-jerk follower of ‘consensus science’ by that process.
Let’s see: –
– Major research funding, ‘astronomical’ funding, so-to-speak, for the ‘consensus model’ (CM)
– Celebrity scientists and politicians staking their futures on maintenance of the CM
– An educational system that promotes, to the exclusion of alterate views, the CM, from K-12 through post-secondary.
– Major political and economic capital already invested in the CM (Hadron Collider, anyone?)
Sound familiar? I think we here know it as CAGW, and there’s obviously quite a large and involved community here that fights daily to overcome this entrenched, prejudiced, worldview, all while working underfunded or self-funded, and while often suffering public abuse.
Yet.
Look. Think for a minute. These EU folks strike me (I don’t mean the many flighty types that one can find ‘out on the internets’), as credentialed individuals in their fields who are striving towards Convergence of their disparate expertise to account for the countless, poorly or not-at-all explained observational anomalies that are flooding us with data that DEMANDS explanation, as we extend our ability to measure, to explore, and ultimately, perceive the environment within which we live.
Yes, what they are bringing forward would be devastating to the commonly accepted paradigm within dozens of major scientific fields, should it be supported by repeated and robust experimentation. But to a man and woman, these individuals, who are certainly braving the opprobrium of their confrere, and arguably ‘risking their careers’, stand by and bring forward openly their hypotheses and data – which is WAY more than what we’ve seen from the CAGW crowd, as we well know.
So look, PLEASE. One thing I remember quite well from my studies, now some 40 years ago, was Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Do I have to elucidate?
This is a CLIMATE site, (mostly, per the banner), and I GET THAT. But to “ban” relevant data and postulates, when it’s clear that the Mainstream doesn’t understand the implications and really has no ‘explanatory models’, seems to me to be the very thing that WUWT is supposed to stand AGAINST! My opinion, for what it is worth, is that if data and scientific speculation is available that brings data ON TOPIC forward to address the unknown, it should be welcomed, and subjected to examination and criticism just like anything else.
When I saw the title of this post, I’d just come away from a short video posting at Thunderbolts, discussing (in part) precisely the issues implicit in the discovery (it’s not actually new, the third ring thing, though – maybe the degree it’s populated by electrons though), I thought YAY! I can bring something of value to the conversation! So I dutifully read the comment thread and came across the mod’s comment.
I’m going to post the link to this video (it’s professional enough and pretty, too – just 7 minutes) right after this comment, because I want what I say here to appear as is, as I believe it to be of critical importance.
I just have to wonder, have the critics here of the EU model actually taken some time to see to where the EU movement has progressed in the last 2-3 years? It’s not Sagans crystals and wicca anymore, I can assure you. Or perhaps ‘you’ are more comfortable just seeing comets as they once were, dirty snowballs conglomorating in “the Oort Cloud”. Don’t let me disturb.
Bones says
Neutron stars are supposed to have a diameter of apprx 20 km. We do not have measuring devices capable of measuring anything of that size from the distances these objects are away from us. Therefore their size is unknown. From x-ray photos they look like an elevtric dipole motor and I go with Keith.
Steve B says:
March 4, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Bones says
Neutron stars are supposed to have a diameter of apprx 20 km. We do not have measuring devices capable of measuring anything of that size from the distances these objects are away from us. Therefore their size is unknown. From x-ray photos they look like an elevtric dipole motor and I go with Keith.
———————————————————————————
Sorry, I did not say any of the above.
There are images of isolated neutron stars that have soft thermal x-ray spectra. Their sizes are revealed via the area dependence in the Stefan-Boltzmann law. You may be thinking of images of the Crab pulsar.
One small step forward for climate non consensus… one giant leap back for the universe. Who would have thought WUWT was a consensus science site. Im getting to the point that I need to find another sight for interesting lively discussions on these topics, because the atmosphere has turned ugly.. and you may just as well be calling us deniers if we don’t follow the teachings of the all knowing consensus. Lets see, call us stupid.. check! Belittle us… Check! Tell us we just can’t understand the science… Check! Delete or deny topics of discussion… CHECK!! Pretty damn sad! Ps.. I don’t have a pony in the EU debate, but I’m usually the one who gets to decide what I should believe and not believe.
Tiburon says:
March 4, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Holy Smokes. Was it something I said? I discovered the main site promulgating and disseminating the EU theory, and a more curious and open minded bunch one could not find.
The problem with EU is that they have cause and effect backwards. Now, everything interest in the Universe are caused by either gravity or by electric currents [and gravity is ultimately also responsible for those]. But to get an electric current you must separate opposite electric charges so that they can neutralize via an electric current. Nature’s way of doing that is by the means of magnetic fields. Magnetic fields deflects opposite charges in opposite directions thus creating the necessary charge separation. Plasmas are fundamentally electrically neutral as any deviation from neutrality is quickly shorted out due to the high conductivity of the plasma. You often hear that the Sun emits streams of ‘charged particles’. This is very true as you and I [and almost anything] also consist of charged particles, but that does not mean that only one charge is present. In fact, both are present in equal measure. Electric currents in a plasma can come about because the plasma moves in a magnetic field. When the opposite charges ‘find each other’ interesting stuff happens and things can blow up. So, electric currents are transient by-products of neutral plasma moving in magnetic fields. My old friend Hannes Alfven knew this, but Birkeland did not. The EU posits strong currents cursing through the Universe without anything driving them and THAT is the wrong part. EU even goes along with the wrong notion that such currents power the Sun and not nuclear fusion [whose by-product, neutrinos, we directly observe in precisely the predicted amount]. EU is junk ‘science’ or even anti-science. There is a whole substratum of people denouncing modern science: Big Bang, General Relativity, Black Holes, Neutron Stars, what have you. All the things that make the Universe interesting and understandable. This is very sad, indeed. Carl Sagan called this the ‘Demon-haunted World’, and it at times seems that the Demons are winning.
except “Plasmas are fundamentally electrically neutral as any deviation from neutrality is quickly shorted out due to the high conductivity of the plasma. ”
IS (as far as I am aware) NOT TRUE.
I believe that Hannes Alfen used his Nobel prize winning speech to retract his earlier statements to that effect, and he was the guy that said it in the first place.
So please go back to the drawing board Mr. Lief, and redo all your work, correcting for Hannes Alfen’s retraction.
See thats the problem, when assumptions thrown in from the past change, no one goes back to the drawing board as is required. i.e. when Huxley’s monkeys was shown to be a false analogue, everyone carried on as if nothing had happened.
I’m still get excited about new info and discoveries. I still get excited, in a different way, when somebody tries to lay a big trip on me. Got something to say, say it. Got something to prove and cockin’ off while you do it… liable to get a proverbial hair- lip laid on ya.
@Tiburon, BigD, et al…
EU Theory isn’t as far off the map and deep into Tripnuttia as “chemtrails”, for instance, but those aren’t allowed to be discussed here, either.
Leif, the only time the Demons win is when they can end the discussions. There is strong evidence in favor of the Big Bang. General Relativity predicted things that were previously unknown that were confirmed. Neutron stars let us understand pulsars. Black holes are good working models of gravitationally collapsed objects, etc., but it does not follow that “modern science” shouldn’t be questioned. What might seem like nonsense at the moment might lead to a deeper understanding later. The problem with much of “modern science” these days is that it is too much controlled by gatekeepers who view it as their right and duty to protect consensus views.
I have a completely open mind about what parts EM and plasmas play in the universe. But in the early stages of an email conversation with one gentleman, who I won’t name, he referenced this:
I thought the timing of this was ironic.
Shades of “settled science”! “The vast majority” – we here should be the last people on the planet taking THAT as a reason to accept a scientific POV.
We all know quotes from people who’ve said some version of, “It only takes one particular piece of evidence to refute what is thought to be true and isn’t.”
I try to keep a collection of new discoveries that make scientists say things like, “Oh, gosh! Our theories don’t include THAT at all!”
Science basks in its claims that it isn’t science unless it correctly predicts. When the “silly” side predicts something, and it turns out to be true, the “vast majority” Harumph! and Ahem! and blather on about how the Silly Party just got lucky. Shades of you know what Doctor whose last name started with V. He who shall not be named.
Harumphs and ahems are all that can be voiced when something completely out of the blue – and that has not even remotely been on the radar (pun intended) – comes along.
(A tip of the hat to Steve C) That it is in our own back yard, should it have us here drawing parallels to climate forecasts out 100 years, when climate guys don’t even know what is out there 10 years? Thus it begs the question of astronomers, too – should we take their long-range ideas with more than a grain of salt, too?
Seriously? This should put the “vast majority” back on their heels. They got nuttin’.
Steve Garcia
p.s. I wonder if the launches of such probes create office pools at LANL, as to what will be found. I’d like to be a fly on the wall reading the guesses.
“Nature keeps on surprising us by producing long-lived harsh environments in space in regions not previously considered,” said Los Alamos plasma physicist Reiner Friedel of LANL’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “This finding may impact the planning of future space missions.”
What about the Apollo missions?
@DesertYote says:
March 4, 2013 at 5:26 pm
When I first read the PR on NASA last week, the main thing that surprised me was that anyone would be surprised, then I got to the line “the Van Allen Probes showed scientists something that would require rewriting textbooks.” Sheesh.
+++++++++++++++
Yeah, this happens in one or more sciences every year, pretty much. I’ve come to expect them.
The funniest thing is you saying “then I got to the line” blah, blah, blah. YES – it is always DEEP into the article, where hopefully few will ever see it – that science books will have to now be re-written. Ouch!
I call those moments “Science Does It Again.” I LOVE it when they say, “Well, that blows our whole idea , and now we have to go back and re-think everything we thought we knew about this.”
For a brief moment in time, the “humble scientist” mantle is worn.
But in Act II they all act like, “Well, we knew that all along.”
Steve Garcia
Re: Alternate theories of the universe and its interactions with the earth….
The flux tube that connects the Earth and the sun carries energetic particles that cause sub storms which are modulated by flux transfer events better know as reconnections. These flows of particles(electrons, protons and ions) do work. They can be considered an electric current originating on the sun. The strength of this current can affect the weather on earth, maybe the climate.
Flux transfer event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_transfer_event
The only way you are going to get the movement of particles down the flux tube is by a potential difference(electric field across) from end to end of the flux tube.
The layers on the sun with the coolest at the bottom can best explained by an electric field that accelerates the particles as they leave the surface… No ballistic mechanism or magnetic waves are going to do it…
The sun is a converter, not a storage device….. Very important realization…
After studying the sun for, I dont know, 8 years I was forced to come up with an alternate theory as to how the sun operates because I could not find any mainstream theory that worked. They claim they do but they fall apart under scrutiny.
What I did was use known phenomena no matter what the branch of science to explain all the features on the sun. My model works its just highly unconventional… But thats how science is really done. By the little guys…..
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4592
Electric fields are all around you… Plasma only needs 1% ionization… We live in a plasma and most plasmas are caused by electric fields…
I dont expect you to post this but at least examine what you are saying when you say “nonsense” to alternate theories of the universe that have been worked on purely for observational sciences sake… It makes you sound like the science by consensus Liberal Warmers….
Brant
bones says:
March 4, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Leif, the only time the Demons win is when they can end the discussions.
Real science is full of discussions. That is what science is about. Modern science is questioned all the time, by scientists. It is nonsense to believe that modern science is ‘consensus’ science. Such notion comes from science illiterate people. The Demons win when the level of scientific knowledge of the public at large has sunk to the level of EU. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer. Paradoxically, the Internet, which one would think would be a fantastic medium for education of the public, is now the foremost dispenser of pseudo-science.
@lsvalgaard:
It is really even sadder when Sagan has to literally demonize those who dare to think differently from him. It is a strategy used during wars to make their enemies seem less than human.
Shame on Sagan for saying such a thing in public about anyone at all, and shame on ya for quoting it in an obvious coattail demonization of those here you don’t agree with. Just stick to the evidence, could you please? Name calling doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
Don’r forget, though, it was Sagan who played such a big part in using Venus (with its 96.5% CO2 atmosphere) and extrapolated the “greenhouse effect” there to Earth, with it’s ~0.032% (then) CO2 atmosphere. Of course, if he hadn’t, Anthony wouldn’t have this wonderful site.
Steve Garcia
Brant Ra says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:28 pm
The flux tube that connects the Earth and the sun carries energetic particles that cause sub storms which are modulated by flux transfer events better know as reconnections. These flows of particles(electrons, protons and ions) do work. They can be considered an electric current originating on the sun.
No, that is not how things work. The ‘reconnection’ is a magnetic phenomenon. The substorms are not caused by energetic particles from the sun, but by storage of magnetic field in the ‘tail’ of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Such stored magnetic field energy is unstable and when the equilibrium breaks down, the energy is release and accelerates particles in the tail towards the Earth. Changes in the magnetic field cause the electric fields and currents. There are no electric currents originating in the Sun. The solar wind plasma is electrically neutral. The rest of your comment is also wrong, but it quickly becomes tedious to debunk things that are so obviously off the mark.
Newton’s gravity was quite popular before the space age, when people thought the universe was empty (in between celestial objects). Now we are discovering vast plasma currents that interact with celestial objects in ways that suggest it is more than just a bit player, or a by-product.
I predict in two decades it will be the believers in Newtonian gravity as the only celestial-scale force who will be dismissed and laughed at, like electric universe believers are now.
Take these Fermi bubbles for example:
NASA Mystified By Enormous Energy Field
Or, another example, why do solar flares change earth’s length of day? How does Newton’s gravity account for that? Or take the epi-cycle-like patches like dark matter and dark energy. Dark, because they can’t see it! (Maybe ’cause it’s not there). For some, I guess the science of celestial mechanics is settled!
feet2thefire says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:44 pm
Shame on Sagan for saying such a thing in public about anyone at all, and shame on ya for quoting it in an obvious coattail demonization of those here you don’t agree with. Just stick to the evidence, could you please? Name calling doesn’t get anyone
You misunderstand Sagan [and me]: It is not people that are Demons, but wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc. It is the success of superficial thinking, easy explanations, ‘layman terms’, etc. Real science is HARD. Very hard. People want easy solutions, simple concepts that doesn’t require much effort, comfort thinking, etc.
Sorry Bones
I said that about the size of Neutron stars. I was on a smartphone and my big fingers got in the way and it came out all wrong. You replied though that mats was used to work out their size.
Who says the math is correct?
So let me see if I have this right. We have NASA’s new belt of highly charged electrons, and the long known about ring current, whose energy is mostly carried by protons and positively charged ions. They don’t short out double quick because they are within Earth’s plasmasphere, which consists of ‘double layers’ which maintain charge separation via ‘frozen in’ magnetic fields. But current flows from charge difference when there is a ‘disturbance in the force’ and the ring current is much stronger on the day side of Earth.
That would seem to indicate that buffeting of the magnetosphere by the solar wind produces downward propagating waves which disturb the double layers, causing the discharge of energy and flow of current. This leads to changes in the upper troposphere affecting ionisation levels and therefore cloud formation. Cloud albedo change has a much bigger effect on the surface energy budget than changes in chemical composition in the lower atmosphere because convection dominates the rate at which energy flows upwards back to space.
The more than averagely active Sun 1935-2003 obviously affected Earth’s climate in other ways than by the small increase in total wattage arriving at the top of the atmosphere. Mainstream climate science studiously ignores anything apart from this, despite the obvious fact that cloud albedo is linked to solar activity levels, as evidenced by the good match between paleo proxies of solar activity levels and reconstructed temperature.
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Real science is full of discussions. That is what science is about. Modern science is questioned all the time, by scientists. It is nonsense to believe that modern science is ‘consensus’ science. Such notion comes from science illiterate people….It is not people that are Demons, but wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc. It is the success of superficial thinking, easy explanations, ‘layman terms’, etc. Real science is HARD. Very hard. People want easy solutions, simple concepts that doesn’t require much effort, comfort thinking, etc.
Of course its consensus science. What do you think we’ve had rammed down our throats for the last 40 years since Stephen Schneider got help from computer programmers at Stanford to create the first co2 driven climate models? He made sure the consensus was maintained by ‘deciding on the right balance between truth and effectiveness’. Then he enlisted the help of able propagandist Al Gore to demonise sceptics as being in the pay of vested interests. The mainstream media was successfully duped by consensus scientist advocates who convinced them to shut down debate.
And the blogs have been infiltrated by ‘scientists’ who do the same thing by trying to convince the majority that those with alternative explanations are peddling “wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc.”
But Leif was a close colleague of Stephen Schneider’s and he knows all this anyway.
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 3:16 pm
But since there is no such link, nothing will happen [and it should happen only then and not at times where there is no lineup]. But, as a prediction, you post is significant. But in keeping with the scientific method, if nothing happens, you must drop the idea. Conversely if shown correct.
Hi doc
Nothing like a WUWT thread with Dr.S v.s.‘all comers’
Insurance policy against prediction failure is in the preceding sentence as a person who turns everything into ‘pseudoscience’ .
– However. since NASA also claims there is an electric and magnetic link to the Earth
NASA’s fleet of THEMIS spacecraft discovered a flux rope pumping a 650,000 Amp current into the Arctic. “The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,” says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms”. Even more impressive was the substorm’s power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/203795main_FluxPower_400.jpg
and the Jupiter’s magnetic field is some orders of magnitude stronger than Earth’s, albeit five times further, a similar physical process taking place could be postulated.
– If such connections indeed do exist, then the heliocentric arc of the connection is only part of the circle and Earth will sweep across it every 400 days.
– Ap index during August & September 2012 was about average, but there was a strongish burst in mid July.
– We have to wait and see and find out if the anomaly can be substantiating.
bones: wrote “Sorry, guy. I have worked many years on neutron stars.”
Then you need a little lecture on the difference between conjecture and science, and reality and the imagination.
First of all you have measured or even photographed, pulses of radiation, nothing more and nothing less.
Then imagine a mass the size of a star/large or small rotating at the speed of a dentist drill. And if you believe that then you are in cloud cuckoo land. Oh, you believe that neutron stars are some new denser type of matter that has NEVER been observed, just hypothesised and modelled. That is not science that is CONJECTURE.
Think how much time you have wasted in your life believing in the impossible, when other explanations exist. Oh, you haven’t considered those? In which case in what way can what you are doing be called science?
As an engineer if I told you that my bridge was only 98% there would you cross it? NO, so you cosmologists who cant even find the missing mass to fit your fudge factors are a little low on any “reality credibilty” coefficient. There is absolutely no doubt that massive astronomical objects compact enough to be black holes exist.
Again you have observed, pulses of radiation. For which we have terrestrially viable explanations.
K
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Changes in the magnetic field cause the electric fields and currents. There are no electric currents originating in the Sun.
Do you think that magnetic field is somehow independent of electricity?
I thought the only manifestation of magnetic field is the force between accelerated charged particles.
Magnetic field is rather a kind of abstraction layer, not a real phenomena.
There is no such thing as magnetic particle, no magnetic field storage, it’s all electric.
mods, please delete previous comment, the edit appears to be garbled.
frank says:
March 4, 2013 at 3:25 pm
as goes the universe being full of plasma …
US Navy Labs creates Plasma in the upper Atmosphere
http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/2272013-us-navy-labs-create-plasma-rings-using-haarp-hf-radar-frequency/
Thanks Frank saved me having to go and re find it:-)
so I wonder what effect that had on the area up there?
conveniently not mentioned by the ones doing it on taxpayers dollars:-)
if you stop calling them chemtrails and start calling it weather mod or geoengineering, does that make it any better?
thing is they admit to doing it- there are documented admissions
congress etc allowed it way back when and its ongoing
another Bgates project for fun n profit n fame.
and when it goes pearshaped causes more harm than good globally.who? will stand up and take the rap?
ya reckon either of those palyarounds may not be affecting atmospherics?
So we have a magnetosphere created capacitor surrounding Earth, subject to unknow charge-discharge mechanisms and releasing massive amounts of charged particles. Charged particles trigger nuclear decay, producing heat, elemental atoms and charged particles. What if some of these charged particles controlled Earth’s magnetosphere ?
It would be nice to discuss the mystery of the magnetopshere. The Wiki based Marvin Herndon “Nuclear Planet” hypothesis seems unlikely. Per http://news.illinios.edu/news/08/0310core.html we have at the Earth’s core a 900 mile cubic Iron crystal core which is a de facto permanent magnet. This core is known to rotate faster than the crust, making an extra rotation every approximate 400 days. A rotating magnet creates electric fields and electric fields create magnetism. The core axis most likely does not rotate consistantly with the Earth’s axis, explaining the magnetic pole wobble. If there is a differential spin rate, this would cause the varying field strength measurements and possibly, reverse rotation would cause the pole shifts.
One hypothesis on these mysteries is offered in “No Loophole for Your Soul” and expanded in “Unified Earth Science Theory”, both in archives at Canada Free Press. The big advantate to the Watts Web College is that multi-disciplinary science can offer insights, along with errors, that can promote a useable basis for the emerging Truth. The only consensus that matters is what is eventually emperically proven. But solving “mysteries” requires thinking out of the “known” box. Thanks all !
tallbloke says:
March 5, 2013 at 12:13 am
So let me see if I have this right. We have NASA’s new belt of highly charged electrons, and the long known about ring current, whose energy is mostly carried by protons and positively charged ions. They don’t short out double quick because they are within Earth’s plasmasphere, which consists of ‘double layers’ which maintain charge separation via ‘frozen in’ magnetic fields. But current flows from charge difference when there is a ‘disturbance in the force’ and the ring current is much stronger on the day side of Earth.
Almost every statement here is wrong. You could benefit from my description of how it works here: http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf Although 40 years old, my accessible explanation is very close to our modern understanding.
tallbloke says:
March 5, 2013 at 12:30 am
And the blogs have been infiltrated by ‘scientists’ who do the same thing by trying to convince the majority that those with alternative explanations are peddling “wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc.”
Perhaps it is just better to let the blog inmates run the asylum as they are beyond salvation anyway. ‘Alternative explanations’ put forward by science-challenged pseudo-scientists are indeed nonsense.
keith says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:08 am
IS (as far as I am aware) NOT TRUE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)
“Definition of a plasma: Plasma is loosely described as an electrically neutral medium of positive and negative particles (i.e. the overall charge of a plasma is roughly zero).”
I believe that Hannes Alfen used his Nobel prize winning speech to retract his earlier statements
He did not. What he did was to warn against misuse of concepts when used too literally, such as in EU. For example, almost everything of interest happens when the MagnetoHydroDynamic approximation [which was Alfven’s contribution to science] breaks down in small regions [the ‘thawing’ of ‘frozen-in’ magnetic fields].
vukcevic says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:31 am
“The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,” says Dave Sibeck
I showed back in 1968 that the Sun and the Earth was directly linked by magnetic fields. The proof is called the Svalgaard-Mansurov effect. And geomagnetic storms are not caused by energetic particles from the Sun, but instead by buildup and subsequent release of magnetic energy in the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 10^14) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
I did the first calculation of that energy back in 1973: http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf in the Appendix starting on page 31. And the energy is equivalent to a magnitude 6.6 earthquake [San Francisco 1906 earthquake].
As I said, everything interesting happens when the energy in a stressed magnetic field is released, creating electric currents [induced by rapid changes of the magnetic field]. But the magnetic effects cannot travel upstream in the solar wind, so there are no ‘back links’, from Jupiter to neither the Earth nor the Sun.
safeprayer says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:33 am
Oh, you believe that neutron stars are some new denser type of matter that has NEVER been observed, just hypothesised and modelled. That is not science that is CONJECTURE.
We have observed thousands of neutron stars and almost half of the mass of your body consists of neutrons so neutrons are not a new type of matter that has never been observed.
knik says:
March 5, 2013 at 3:39 am
Do you think that magnetic field is somehow independent of electricity?
Electric currents in nature results from changes in magnetic flux through a conductor. Think about how the electricity that powered your computer was generated [hint: dynamo].
The magnetic field in the solar wind was generated by the electric currents induced in the Sun by neutral, but conducting, plasma moving across the Sun’s own magnetic field. The samer way as electricity is generated in a power plant on Earth by rotating a copper loop in a magnetic field: “At the center of nearly all power stations is a generator, a rotating machine that converts mechanical power into electrical power by creating relative motion between a magnetic field and a conductor.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_station
Seven artificial radiation belts have been made by the explosion of high altitude nuclear bombs (Argus I, Argus II, Argus III, Starfish and 3 USSR Siberia tests from 1958.-1962. The artificial belts result from the release of energetic charged particles, mostly electrons, from the nuclear explosions.
More on Van Allen belts, charged particles nukes and other fascinating stuff of great concern for many youngsters in the 1960s. : http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Starfish.htm
Atmospheric nuclear weapon tests ban was greeted with great relief.
lsvalgaard says:
March 5, 2013 at 7:20 am
…….
NASA:“The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,” says Dave Sibeck
Dr. S: “I showed back in 1968 that the Sun and the Earth was directly linked by magnetic fields. The proof is called the Svalgaard-Mansurov effect.”
…….
For ones I concur 100%, and you do have my respect, despite our disagreements. Sibeck obviously is not ‘up to speed’ with developments in the late 1960s, but what to expect from a man who makes a soup out of his languages:
Other Professional Information: Languages: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian. http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/index.cfm?fuseAction=people.jumpBio&iphonebookid=11052
Serbian & Croatian are dialects of the same language, Bosnian is a ‘phantom’ language invented some 10-12 years ago.
And geomagnetic storms are not caused by energetic particles from the Sun, but instead by buildup and subsequent release of magnetic energy in the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
So nothing odd with the same effect powering portion of the Jupiter’s aurora.
http://www.windows2universe.org/jupiter/magnetosphere/jupiter_aurora.html
The Earth would be transversing such a link every 400 days.
lsvalgaard says:
March 5, 2013 at 7:20 am
And geomagnetic storms are not caused by energetic particles from the Sun, but instead by buildup and subsequent release of magnetic energy in the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
some more details here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Aurora.htm
See also NASA animation:
http://www.nasa.gov/mpg/262351main_reconnect.mpg
@lsvalgaard
IMO you are acting and talking in an arrogant and condscending manner.
My question to you is this; Did you get !00% on all your exams you ever took?
If not, then you could be wrong. No?
Also; Great post Tiburon. Thanks for that.
Tiburon says:
March 4, 2013 at 6:47 pm ……..
Kudos also to Big D in TX
lsvalgaard says:
March 5, 2013 at 7:20 am
Electric currents in nature results from changes in magnetic flux through a conductor. Think about how the electricity that powered your computer was generated [hint: dynamo].
No, I find it quite problematic. I think it would be much simpler if you astronomers used electric currents instead of magnetic fields.
There is electric field (static electricity) and EM field (dynamic electricity) but no pristine magnetic field or static magnetism.
Using magnetic field lines might be useful sometimes but you definitely overuse it.
The magnetic field in the solar wind was generated by the electric currents induced in the Sun by neutral, but conducting, plasma moving across the Sun’s own magnetic field.
Yes, that may be true as magnetic field is just electric current in action.
This donut-shaped third ring nestled between the belts existed for nearly a month before being obliterated by a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system.
OK, if the sun is not the center of the solar system, then what is and why is it attacking us?
We have missed this one, but meteorite didn’t. Coincidence?
Chelyabinsk meteorite ended in the Chebarkul lake 55N,60E at the edge of the Magnitnaya Mountain, almost pure iron with +2100nT crustal magnetic anomaly.
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S004019519900147X-gr3.jpg
@lsvalgaard
Magnetic fields come from somewhere. My number one answer is electric current flow. That has been proven in the lab by experiment time and time again. And the physics doesnt change when you leave earth…
Reconnection is a name for something that is driven by electric currents… If you want to have a reconnection discussion just remember that magnetic field lines are not real. A magnetic field is a continuum so there are no lines to reconnect….
Large Plasma Device In LA. Enjoy these papers and experiments… Once you read through this stuff you realize that electric currents are required!!!
http://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/pages/gallery.html
Do you know what an inductor is? Plasma filaments have the same properties… Nothing to debunk…
The solar wind is neutral to what degree? It only take an imbalance of 3000 electrons per cubic meter to provide enough energy to power the sun if your using that model..
Sub storms are powered by particle flows… These particle flow generate magnetic fields. There is this idea that the solar wind is generally homogenous…. Not true, it contains double layers, cell filaments and other structures that carry energy…
brant
Safeprayer,
“Oh, you believe that neutron stars are some new denser type of matter that has NEVER been observed, just hypothesised and modelled. That is not science that is CONJECTURE.”
I don’t know much about neutron starts, but I know that white dwarfs were predicted in the 1920s, by a young Indian post grad whilst on a boat from India to the UK. He studied mathematically the problem of a collapsing star and the known physics showed that gravity will overwhelm the electric forces – electric degeneracy pressure – that keeps electrons out of the nucleus of atoms. White dwarfs have been observed in many parts of our galaxy, and indeed, our sun will end it’s days as one.
Nobody can observe white dwarf matter on earth, however, because it would fly apart as soon as removed from the intense gravity of the collapsed star. And I would say, what goes for white dwarfs, will go for neutron stars as well. It’s not rocket science!
“… it quickly becomes tedious to debunk things that are so obviously off the mark.” Matters not the author of this comment. The tedium of correcting those of us not at the same level of enlightenment is the ONLY way to ensure ignorance is held in abeyance. Retreating from the responsibility of educating the ignorant is a sure formula for one’s brilliance to be overwhelmed with the darkness of ignorance. Instead of tired tedium may I recommend you consider the challenge as a golden opportunity.
Andy Wehrle
@lsvalgaard says: The problem with EU is that they have cause and effect backwards.
Ok, here is the point as I see it science works by making observations first, not assumptions. As far as I am aware the observations are the EFFECTS, so the effects come first, then you look for apparent causes, limiting assumptions as much as possible.
So the EU guys have it right. Everything must be based on observations, not models, not conjecture and not assumptions.
So for example, starting with the equations of relativity is doing things backwards, its a mathematical model, and a poor one at that. Working as an engineer I used to have ideas, and the response I got to many of my ideas was “thats a solution looking for a problem, you’re doing things backwards.”
If you only have one option for a cause in your list means you are not doing science. You are pursuing an exercise in creating a self defining circular argument. Which is destined to become a self-delusion, firstly because history tells us that orthodoxy is overturned every few decades, and secondly because those un-initiated into high priesthood of orthodoxy are not allowed to challenge the orthodoxy.
Compare with the big bangers… 98% of the universe is missing according to their models. Models are wrong? No not to them, the theory marches on. So considering they have less than 2% of real stuff to give these theories credibility. If I said I built a bridge that was only 2% there I wouldn’t have much credibility as an engineer. So on paper if you believe in this stuff, that is as much credibility as you have, and you don’t even know it! Hence the need for a bit of humility towards other ideas that actually do explain stuff.
I like science because it explains stuff. When was the last time you heard NASA say, we predicted this, and it happened like we expected it to? I can’t remember the last time. The electric universe hypothesis may not be perfect but it sure does explain a lot of stuff, and predictions are exciting to see being confirmed on an almost daily basis.
@Vince Causey,
lets say for a sake of argument that white dwarfs have not been found.
This makes the model a mere exercise in thought. Have we ever observed the behaviour of white dwarf matter on earth, you say not. So what we have is a pure guess based on an invented form of matter that no one has ever seen before.
Then along comes a point of light on the horizon, which a certain brightness, intensity and radiation signature, and of the many possible explanations for this point of light from what we do know. All of a sudden we have invented a new type of star a new type of matter and indeed an entire new realm of physics. Ever heard of Occam’s Razor?
Same goes for black holes. I could make an x-ray source in my garage, we know how to make x-rays, its not that hard. So when we observe x-ray source form space, why does that suddenly mean “black hole”, where the laws of physics and the limitations of reality are all but forgotten.
Even easier would be to make an oscillator which produces pulses, essentially two capacitors and a wire between them, one charged the other not. There I have a pulsar in my garage with no moving parts. No new matter invented, no stars spinning ridiculously fast.
Observations, MUST go first, otherwise you are setting yourself up for simply living in your equations and models to the bitter end, sound familiar, its what this blog is about debunking AGW!
Andy Wehrle says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:00 pm
“… it quickly becomes tedious to debunk things that are so obviously off the mark.” Matters not the author of this comment. The tedium of correcting those of us not at the same level of enlightenment is the ONLY way to ensure ignorance is held in abeyance. ”
The comment in question comes from Brant Ra. If you think that Leif or anyone else can “correct” you are mistaken. In order to attempt to produce a correction, there has to be something to correct in the first place – a set of inferences based upon some premises; a set of logical postulates.
You can’t correct something which is no more than opinion. If a poster writes that “the sun has a solid iron shell, because that’s the only thing that “fits observations”,” then what is there to correct? You are just running up against entrenched beliefs and babble dressed up as science. Waste of time!
Someone asked me what I thought was at the centre of the galaxy if not a black hole.
Lets start with a simple exercise in perspective. Imagine a boulder in London ~52cm in diameter, and another Cape Town, even twice the size. What would be the gravitational attraction between them? Is it even worth calculating or can we apply some common sense here, it’s not much is it!
This analogue represents our sun and its nearest neighbour approximately to scale. Put it another way, gravity is not very strong at all in the grand scheme of things. Actually applying common sense, it is probably irrelevant.
Allow me to digress, Carl Sagan talked of having baloney detectors, here is one of mine.
Imagine again, a spec of dust in London and another in Cape Town, and a third randomly placed anywhere else. What is the probability of those three being in a perfect straight line. It’s a very small probability. So you now know that whenever any astronomer tells you that he has found three or more objects lining up in space over immense astronomical distances, he has found the proverbial needle, not just in the haystack, but in all haystacks. But in the search for gravitational lensing, (and looking at quasars) these improbable coincidences are popping up all over the place. One I might believe, being a highly improbable event, two you might convince me over a few pints, but more than two, no way. My answer would be to sober up and go back to the drawing board, like really.
If you assume that gravity is all you have, then you are limited by your assumption, and are bound to invent an infinite/strong source of gravity to make stuff happen in the universe, indeed to make anything happen, you would need very strong gravity sources, which in our every day experience do not exist.
Hold up right there, a point about scientific method here. If you let your assumptions dictate the results you get then you are not doing science, you are not going to learn anything new. All results are a foregone conclusion, dictated by the assumptions, AND you have no way of knowing if the assumptions are wrong, because they are assumed to be right in the model.
So just from what I have said so far, I know that there is no such thing as a black hole at the centre of the galaxy, because I know that black holes were an invention dictated by assumptions to which I do not subscribe. If I change my assumptions, to say that gravity is not the only game in town, then the need to invent black holes goes away, and so there can not possibly be a black hole at the centre of the universe, because with my different assumptions, black holes would never have been conceived of.
It must also be noted that shapes produced by gravity in the universe must essentially be spherical. If you find things that look like lines or helical in shape (which we do, try explaining the red square nebula!), gravity has no way of forming them, without some extremely dubious mind gymnastics.
Electric/Magnetic fields are 10^39 (or greater) more powerful than gravity. Electrical current does not appear to take a straight line path through a plasma. Look at a Plasma globe, the light is arranged in a twisted pair, spiralling around each other, a Birkland current. Spirals are a natural shape in the world of plasma. Years ago some crude charged particle models have been shown to produce galaxy like spiral shapes just due to their own mutual attractions. So therefore I would not expect that it is essential to find anything in particular at the centre of the galaxy.
K.
bones says:
March 4, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Leif, the only time the Demons win is when they can end the discussions. There is strong evidence in favor of the Big Bang.
bones, I encountered the EU only since recently so I had no time to really make myself an evaluation of it. What struck me at the first place was the passion with which it is attacked. I found this attack not normal, somehow visceral, I would say almost pathologic.
What I found interesting was the discussion about dark matter.
There is need of dark matter to explain the movement of stars around the galaxy. And where is that dark matter? It sits around the galaxy in the form of a squashed beach ball, else the movement would not be right:
http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn18344/60594306001-milky-ways-dark-matter-turned-on-its-side.html
Well yes, one explanation may be that each galaxy is surrounded by a ball of dark matter – who placed it there and why does it stay there? why does it not come into the galaxy when it interacts only through gravity with normal matter? – or it may be that electromagnetic forces explain the movement of the stars.
The EU has the potential to explain away the dark matter and the big bang too. Maybe it is a totally wrong theory, but I would really give it the needed attention to double check it.
And speaking of magnetic fields and ignoring the currents is just the wrong way to make the analysis. I find the major issue with mainstream science at the “frozen in” magnetic fields. Plasma is no superconductor, but if it would be “frozen in” magnetic fields would require “frozen in” currents? Where are those frozen in currents?
On the other side the discussion is hot, not nice and I can understand that WUWT has enough with the climate discussion not to want to adventure themselves in a domain where there is no expertise, but I guess it may be a very interesting discussion field.
The analogy to the climate discussion is there, but in the end people may draw the wrong conclusions. So maybe a good solution is to ban or to redirect any such discussion to a different forum.
yahoo! I’m so pleased to see electric universe theory gradually taking WUWT comments by storm ( an electrical storm ). Its the best thing that could possibly come about by these 2 hubs of modern media and science.
I am a graduate of conventional astronomy, in which electric universe theory is totally ignored. When I finally gave EU theory a fair chance last year, I was immediately ashamed of myself for being so much like leif and dismissing it out of hand for so many years. EU proponents include hundreds of our best electrical engineers and plasma physicists, fully qualified professionals from universities, high tech companies and professional institutions from around the world.
As one commenter has already said, the basic postulate of EU theory is simple – that electrical and magnetic forces play a significant role in the cosmos. I don’t see how that is so self evidently absurd that the most celebrated open science blogs on the net can declare it a taboo subject.
The arguments and lectures EU proponents are 1st class science. Since starting on EU theory, I have been compelled to immerse myself in it, the science it reveals is as wonderful as can be.
The Earth sun and solar solar system are now known to have significant electrical activity and non-simple electric and magnetic features, the van allen belts being one such feature. Is this a taboo for conservatives like leif ? Could there be a couple of other electric or magnetic features left to be discovered in our solar system? Is it a taboo to be ridiculed if our electrical and plasma experts want to use their understanding to hypothesize these undiscovered features, or explain currently known features?
But to address one thing that the leifs amongst us gleefully point out – the EU community has picked up a small wing of mystic types that like to believe crazy stuff like the Earth was a moon Saturn up till about 6000BC, and who try to read EU theory into all ancient texts.
Don’t let that put you off EU theory. The mystic stuff is a optional non-vital module if you fancy some crazy mystical stuff besides the clean cut science.
The Electric universe science founded by Birkland and nobel prize winners Alfvén and Langmuir and other early pioneers of the 20th century has been a long time stalled, but the internet has given it a new leash of life in the 21st century. It is going to be one of the jewels of science of the 21st century.
WUWT should stop siding with Svalgaard’s knee jerk rejection of anything EU and give the theory a fair review.
http://www.youtube.com/thunderboltsproject
vukcevic says:
March 5, 2013 at 8:09 am
So nothing odd with the same effect powering portion of the Jupiter’s aurora.
http://www.windows2universe.org/jupiter/magnetosphere/jupiter_aurora.html
Nothing odd about the Jovian aurorae generated by processes in the magnetotail [same process as for the Earth]. The aurorae caused by the moon Io happen because Io is deep inside Jupiter’s magnetosphere sitting on Jovian magnetic field lines. Since the Jovian magnetosphere is not expanding supersonically [as the solar wind] Io can interfere with processes in the Jovian atmosphere, unlike Jupiter which cannot react back on the Sun or the Earth.
The Earth would be transversing such a link every 400 days.
Since there is no link, there would be no traverse.
Alberta Slim says:
March 5, 2013 at 8:48 am
Did you get 100% on all your exams you ever took?
Better: I have played a leading role in modern science’s understanding of the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field.
Great post Tiburon. Thanks for that.
Junk post.
Tiburon says:
March 4, 2013 at 6:47 pm ……..
No, I find it quite problematic. I think it would be much simpler if you astronomers used electric currents instead of magnetic fields.
There is electric field (static electricity) and EM field (dynamic electricity) but no pristine magnetic field or static magnetism.
Using magnetic field lines might be useful sometimes but you definitely overuse it.
An electric field [as Alfven was at pains to explain] depends on the observer. You can always find an observer where any electric field seen by another observer is zero. Magnetic fields, on the other hand, do not depend on the observer[‘s reference frame].
“The magnetic field in the solar wind was generated by the electric currents induced in the Sun by neutral, but conducting, plasma moving across the Sun’s own magnetic field.”
Yes, that may be true as magnetic field is just electric current in action.
That electric current is generated by moving the neutral plasma inside the sun across an already existing magnetic field.
captainfish says:
March 5, 2013 at 10:59 am
OK, if the sun is not the center of the solar system, then what is and why is it attacking us?
Just a poorly worded press release, dumbned down for consumption by the unwashed masses.
Brant Ra says:
March 5, 2013 at 12:00 pm
3000 electrons per cubic meter to provide enough energy to power the sun if your using that model..
There is so much wrong with your comment that it is impossible to discuss it rationally…
For starters, electrons do not generate energy. Perhaps the most obvious of EU’s failures is the idea that electric currents powers the Sun and not nuclear fusion. Currents from where?
Vince Causey says:
March 5, 2013 at 12:48 pm
may I recommend you consider the challenge as a golden opportunity.
I am trying, am I not? But experience shows that all effort is in eventually in vain. The believers are just too far gone, and lack elementary science knowledge, and more importantly: lack any interest in being educated.
keith says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Everything must be based on observations, not models, not conjecture and not assumptions.
Models are expressions of our knowledge as shown by observations. In a very real sense, our models are just ‘shorthand’ for a vast body of observations.
98% of the universe is missing according to their models.
No, according to observations of the Universe.
When was the last time you heard NASA say, we predicted this, and it happened like we expected it to? I can’t remember the last time.
You mean you don’t know about the last time. Take the current solar cycle 24. It is the lowest in a 100 years as I and colleagues predicted almost a decade ago.
keith says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Put it another way, gravity is not very strong at all in the grand scheme of things.
Since gravity gets stronger when the distances get smaller, gravity becomes infinitely strong when the distance goes to zero.
The rest of your post is just EU boiler plate, not worth discussing.
Lars P. says:
March 5, 2013 at 3:27 pm
On the other side the discussion is hot, not nice and I can understand that WUWT has enough with the climate discussion not to want to adventure themselves in a domain where there is no expertise, but I guess it may be a very interesting discussion field.
There are lots of other blogs where people can have their thirst for EU slaked.
meemoe_uk says:
March 5, 2013 at 3:43 pm
As one commenter has already said, the basic postulate of EU theory is simple – that electrical and magnetic forces play a significant role in the cosmos.
They do, and scientists do not dispute that. In fact use that to great effect. The whole issue is EU’s reversal of cause and effect. The electric currents that are the cause of everything interesting are transient and generated by changing magnetic fields.
“””You’d think the science on the Van Allen Radiation belts was long ago considered “settled science”. Nope. And yet, while we discover new things like this, some insist we fully understand all aspects of the workings of Earth’s climate.”””
Lots of new things Anthony, being discovered by our taxpayer satellites. I agree we don’t have all the variables for Earth’s climate system.
PBS NOVA recently aired a presentation using extensive satellite footage, depicting some of Earth’s regional systems in action. It was called “Earth from Space.” The footage of the Antarctic system was phenom..
My little copy and paste here is basically telling us what Dr. S., has been weaving all through this topic for us. Thx Dr. S.
The Electric Atmosphere: Plasma Is Next NASA Science Target
07.18.12
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/electric-atmosphere.html
Our day-to-day lives exist in what physicists would call an electrically neutral environment. Desks, books, chairs and bodies don’t generally carry electricity and they don’t stick to magnets. But life on Earth is substantially different from, well, almost everywhere else. Beyond Earth’s protective atmosphere and extending all the way through interplanetary space, electrified particles dominate the scene. Indeed, 99% of the universe is made of this electrified gas, known as plasma.
Two giant donuts of this plasma surround Earth, trapped within a region known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts. The belts lie close to Earth, sandwiched between satellites in geostationary orbit above and satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) are generally below the belts. A new NASA mission called the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), due to launch in August 2012, will improve our understanding of what makes plasma move in and out of these electrified belts wrapped around our planet. .
..The inner radiation belt stays largely stable, but the number of particles in the outer one can swell 100 times or more, easily encompassing a horde of communications satellites and research instruments orbiting Earth. Figuring out what drives these changes in the belts, requires understanding what drives the plasma.
Pasmas seethe with complex movement. They generally flow along a skeletal structure made of invisible magnetic field lines, while simultaneously creating more magnetic fields as they move. Teasing out the rules that govern such a foreign environment – one that can only be studied from afar – lies at the heart of understanding a range of events that make up space weather, from giant explosions on the sun to potentially damaging high energy particles in near-Earth environs.
To distinguish between a host of theories developed over the years on plasma movement in those near-Earth environs, RBSP scientists have designed a suite of instruments to answer three broad questions. Where do the extra energy and particles come from? Where do they disappear to, and what sends them on their way? How do these changes affect the rest of Earth’s magnetic environment, the magnetosphere? In addition to its broad range of instruments, the RBSP mission will make use of two spacecraft in order to better map out the full spatial dimensions of a particular event and how it changes over time.
Scientists want to understand not only the origins of electrified particles – possibly from the solar wind constantly streaming off the sun; possibly from an area of Earth’s own outer atmosphere, the ionosphere – but also what mechanisms gives the particles their extreme speed and energy.
“We know examples where a storm of incoming particles from the sun can cause the two belts to swell so much that they merge and appear to form a single belt,” says Shri Kanekal, RBSP’s deputy project scientist at Goddard. “Then there are other examples where a large storm from the sun didn’t affect the belts at all, and even cases where the belts shrank. Since the effects can be so different, there is a joke within the community that ‘If you’ve seen one storm . . . You’ve seen one storm.’ We need to figure out what causes the differences.”
There are two broad theories on how the particles get energy: from radial transport or in situ. In radial transport, particles move perpendicular to the magnetic fields within the belts from areas of low magnetic strength far from Earth to areas of high magnetic strength nearer Earth. The laws of physics dictate that particle energies correlate to the strength of the magnetic field, increasing as they move towards Earth. The in situ theory posits that electromagnetic waves buffet the particles — much like regular pushes on a swing — successively raising their speed (and energy). .
European Space Agency (ESA) has some satellites that may be of interest to the climate system.
CLUSTER
Cluster observes a ‘porous’ magnetopause
24 Oct 2012
A new study based on data from ESA’s Cluster mission shows that it is easier for the solar wind to penetrate Earth’s magnetosphere than had previously been thought.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=50977
Details of solar particles penetrating the Earth’s environment revealed
3October2006
During such events, magnetic channels created by the merging of the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic fields allow solar particles to break through the Earth’s magnetic shield and penetrate the Earth’s environment. Physicists call the occurrence of these magnetic channels Flux Transfer Events. Each magnetic channel appears like a curve shaped tube that can be anything from 5000 to 25000 kilometres in diameter. One end of the magnetic flux tube is connected to Earth while the other end is connected to the solar wind..
ESA’s Cluster sees ‘squashed’ magnetosphere
31 October 2003
ESA’s quartet of Cluster spacecraft joined in the flurry of interest in this week’s extreme solar activity, and saw Earth’s magnetosphere halved in size
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster/ESA_s_Cluster_sees_squashed_magnetosphere
Cluster finds magnetic reconnection within giant swirls of plasma
06 Dec 2006
On 20 October 2006, a team of European and American scientists revealed the presence of magnetic reconnection within giant swirls of plasma of ~40 000 km size on the flank of the magnetosphere. These giant swirls were identified to be the result of the Kelvin-Helmholtz or ‘wind over water’ instability and were shown to facilitate the transport of solar wind material into the magnetosphere. This result improves our knowledge on how, where and under which conditions the solar wind manages to penetrate the Earth’s magnetic shield, thanks to data collected by the four satellites composing the ESA/NASA Cluster mission..
..For the first time, the presence of magnetic reconnection was identified within such vortices. Numerical simulations in 2 dimensions (2-D), conducted by Nykyri and colleagues, were able to reproduce the Cluster observations in great detail and in particular, to show the presence of magnetic reconnection (Image 2 and Animation 2). Published 20 October 2006 in Annales Geophysicae, this study reinforces the importance of this mechanism to enable solar wind material to penetrate the Earth’s magnetopause..
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=40420
Vuks are you out there?
posit What would happen to phase if the Interstellar Magnetic field changes sign every 100 or so years? Would a solar cycle get out of phase? Go into decline like it was interupted? I think the Interstellar Magnetic Field still has some cards on the table of solar cycle variability questions.
And we see from the Van Allen Belts that lots of stuff gets trapped around these wee little earthly magnetic fields..if only we were able to see the larger scale..
1phobosgrunt says:
March 5, 2013 at 6:14 pm
What would happen to phase if the Interstellar Magnetic field changes sign every 100 or so years? Would a solar cycle get out of phase?
No, as magnetic changes cannot travel upstream in the solar wind to reach the Sun.
Yes, I know, have heard it somewhere before. lol
But doesn’t the rate of reconnection change, when the solar N. pole is negative, like the Earth’s negative N. pole.
If the local Interstellar Magnetic Field is coherent, there may be cyclic like energy coming down those spiral inner arms, from the mother ship at galaxy’s central. Elongated Parker spirals slowly rotating..they must be huge, surrounded by some turbulence.
Brant Ra says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:28 pm
After studying the sun for, I don’t know, 8 years I was forced to come up with an alternate theory as to how the sun operates because I could not find any mainstream theory that worked. They claim they do but they fall apart under scrutiny.
…But that’s how science is really done. By the little guys…..
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4592
Here are some of claims that ‘little guy’ makes:
#1- An aether powered iron sun is necessary to explain the activity that we see on the solar surface.
#82- The hollow iron shell accounts for solar density measurements, although it requires a slightly different model of gravity.
Brant says the Sun’s iron shell is probably 1/3 of its radius, which would be about 144,000 miles thick.
#117- To stabilize an iron shell, you would need a new theory of gravity, that takes into account experimental evidence, as well as accounting for the shell. Its not as radical as you would think; and gravity may be a surface effect!
#661- A sphere the size of the sun has the ability to focus a lot of energy in the center, if it were to act like an antenna.
A glass sphere focuses light in its center. Would the Sun focus energy in its center in the same way?
If it were a spherical antenna, it would receive “aether” (insert “some universal energy”) and act like a transformer and turn the aether into electrons, which then flow in the Sun’s iron shell to produce the current, driving the effects we see on the Sun.
#4306- So think of the sun as a geometric antenna receiving aether and the energy is coming out as electrons.
Its just like a regular antenna converts “photons” to electric current.
#4232- So if the sun was a hollow iron sphere acting like a spherical aether, (zero point energy, pick a name) antenna, there is enough energy [from the aether to produce the Sun’s radiation].
#659- Huge current runs through the Suns iron shell to power the flares and CME’s.
#4366- I believe that there are currents that flow in the shell around the Sun’s equator in a solenoidal configuration, that are driven by the [aether to] electricity conversion process.
#4100- The Sun has a solid surface with high temperature SPOTS on the surface, so average temperature reading at a distance is going to be a combination of the cold surface and the hot spots.
#199- It acts like a transformer in that it transforms the background energy [aether] of the universe into “electricity” that manifests at the surface as electrical discharges.
#450- [Near a solar coronal loop footprint] the surrounding surface is solid iron.
#23- The Sun’s solid iron surface has areas of positive and negative electrical charge (potential).
#23- Because of the potential difference between these areas a current arises, the strength depending on the activity beneath the surface (later post) which translates to electron flow.
#23- The functional mechanism for the Sun’s energy transfer is the flow of iron.
This is the madness EU traps you in.
Alberta Slim says: March 5, 2013 at 8:48 am
“Did you get 100% on all your exams you ever took?”
lsvalgaard says: March 5, 2013 at 5:22 pm
“Better: I have played a leading role in modern science’s understanding of the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field.”
Alberta Slim, perhaps you would like some salt and pepper to make the foot that is in your mouth taste a little better. Or better yet, you should simply read here: http://www.leif.org/research/
1phobosgrunt says:
March 5, 2013 at 8:09 pm
But doesn’t the rate of reconnection change, when the solar N. pole is negative, like the Earth’s negative N. pole.
It doesn’t matter as that change cannot be communicated back to the Sun. It is like trying to communicate back to base by throwing out bottles with messages inside from a boat going down a fast flowing river…
Here are some of claims that ‘little guy’ makes:
#1- An aether powered iron sun is necessary to explain the activity that we see on the solar surface.
To all here that’s an obvious, desperate and sad attempt at smearing EU theory. You are doing yourself no credit in front of your WUWT audience Leif. Your good friend Hannes showed you where the sun might get some of its energy from, and its not the aether. Astronomers observe AGNs to have similar magnitudes of power output as the rest of their galaxy, and are able influence physics several galactic radii from the AGN. Alfvén hypothesized a galactic circuit electrically connecting the AGN with the rest of the galaxy was possible. He drew a diagram to describe this which can be seen in the link. With this electrical connection, the stars in the galaxy can be powered externally by a galactic current where the AGN power source is recognised by all to be of sufficient power. Svalgaard and other conservatives were able to ignore Alfvén’s hypothesis for the last 50 years by assuming the electric current generated by an AGN is zero.
Does that sound like a reasonable assumption to anyone here? Or is it possible Svalgaard is trying to hide an embarrassing blunder?
http://electric-cosmos.org/galaxies.htm
Oh and btw, the engineering work of the Focus Fusion Society is based Alfvén’s galactic electric circuit theory. They are recreating the physics of Active Galactic Nuclei in the lab by modeling AGN’s as plasmoids. Since plasma physics are scalable, the same patterns observed at the galactic scale can be recreated in the lab on a smaller scale. They’ve demonstrated bipolar jets to have strong electric currents caused by intense electric fields as the plasmoids decay.
This lab physics is already a couple of decades old.
Learner calls his his device ‘ a quasar in a box ‘
The lectures on these results are fascinating, and I think explain some of the greatest results of science ever achieved.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 3:26 am
“#1- An aether powered iron sun is necessary to explain the activity that we see on the solar surface.” … To all here that’s an obvious, desperate and sad attempt at smearing EU theory.
Indeed, it is showing some of the absurd claims adherents of EU make. Do you also think that the Sun is a hollow iron shell?
Since plasma physics are scalable>
Most cosmic phenomena cannot be reproduced in the laboratory because the necessary magnetic field strength is way beyond what we can make in the lab.
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:45 pm
No, that is not how things work. The ‘reconnection’ is a magnetic phenomenon. The substorms are not caused by energetic particles from the sun, but by storage of magnetic field in the ‘tail’ of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Such stored magnetic field energy is unstable
http://iopscience.iop.org/0741-3335/27/12A/010
“The author studies the concept of plasma relaxation by magnetic reconnection which has been applied to many laboratory plasmas, but whose origin lies in observations on the Toroidal Pinch. This is one of the simplest of plasma confinement systems. In essence, it involves only a toroidal vessel in which a toroidal magnetic field B0 is first created by external coils then, after a suitable ionizing process, a toroidal current I is induced. It is this current which is responsible for plasma heating, compression, and confinement”
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/12/31/electric-disconnection/
Lars P. says:
March 6, 2013 at 5:39 am
“The author studies the concept of plasma relaxation by magnetic reconnection which has been applied to many laboratory plasmas, but whose origin lies in observations on the Toroidal Pinch.
That is still not the way the aurorae and the Sun work.
Leif,
The model you are gleefully pointing to is not the most used one amongst EU proponents. If you want to criticise EU theory please criticise Alfvén’s model instead of ‘using the back door’ by sticking on one of the more speculative theories.
Do you also think that the Sun is a hollow iron shell?
Hang on, what are you 1st suggesting I think? Are you trying to press onto the whole EU community that we are believe in stars powered by an aether? Where have I written that?
If you read my post to you, I mentioned Alfvén’s work because I base by understanding of cosmic electricity on his model.
And no, I’m not convinced by the hollow iron shell model for the Sun.
Most cosmic phenomena cannot be reproduced in the laboratory because the necessary magnetic field strength is way beyond what we can make in the lab.
Wrong. You haven’t kept up to date with the developments of Focus Fusion Science. They recreated the essential aspects of the highest energy cosmic events, by, amongst other things, reproducing the necessary high magnetic field strengths. This is something the tokamak scientists have failed to do so far, so if you are only following tokamak progress you will have missed it.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 8:03 am
If you want to criticise EU theory please criticise Alfvén’s model instead of ‘using the back door’ by sticking on one of the more speculative theories.
Show me a link to Alfven proposing that the Sun is powered by external currents rather than by internal fusion.
It is telling that when Brant produced his outrageous comment, you were quiet.
I mentioned Alfvén’s work because I base by understanding of cosmic electricity on his model.
EU refuses to accept models and only to rely on observations. Alfven’s work was theoretical.
Focus Fusion Science. They recreated the essential aspects of the highest energy cosmic events, by, amongst other things, reproducing the necessary high magnetic field strengths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_scaling : “The first thing to notice is that many cosmic phenomena cannot be reproduced in the laboratory because the necessary magnetic field strength is beyond the technological limits. Of the phenomena listed, only the ionosphere and the exosphere can be scaled to laboratory size. Another problem is the ionization fraction. When the size is varied over many orders of magnitude, the assumption of a partially ionized plasma may be violated in the simulation.”
Nobody has produced magnetic fields of gazilions of Gauss.
The problem with EU is that it is of the ‘not even wrong’ class. Basically trying to set science back a 100 years.
[i]>Show me a link to Alfven proposing that the Sun is powered by external currents rather than by internal fusion.[/i]
You seem to be obfuscating at every opportunity. I said Alfven hypothesized a galactic electric circuit. I’m not sure if he then went onto say that circuit powered the stars, that I think is further hypothesis under consideration at the moment.
EU refuses to accept models and only to rely on observations.
Not by me it doesn’t.
Who says? You? or some mistaken EU hobbiest you are cherry pick-quoting?
wiki is wrong on its claim that cosmic level magnetic field strength is beyond technological limits. the FFS have produced and used such magnetic fields for over a decade. If you won’t follow the links I provide I could write a letter on your behalf to the Focus Fusion Society and tell them Svalgaard refuses to believe their results and is refusing to follow links provided or do his own net-research on focus fusion, please confirm your results to him.
I just need to get my account approved by an administrator there.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 9:37 am
I said Alfven hypothesized a galactic electric circuit. I’m not sure if he then went onto say that circuit powered the stars, that I think is further hypothesis under consideration at the moment.
You are evading the issue. So Alfven did not claim that the sun is powered from the outside. Do you believe that it is?
EU refuses to accept models and only to rely on observations.
Who says? You? or some mistaken EU hobbiest you are cherry pick-quoting?
Just scan through the comments here. But are you saying that those people are mistaken EU hobbists? If so, I agree.
wiki is wrong on its claim that cosmic level magnetic field strength is beyond technological limits. If you won’t follow the links I provide I could write a letter on your behalf to the Focus Fusion Society a
You did not provide any links to the Focus Fusion Society. Just to some pseudo-scientific nonsense.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 9:37 am
If you won’t follow the links I provide I could write a letter on your behalf to the Focus Fusion Society
Luckily Google can find the FFS, here is what FFS has to say:
“Aneutronic fusion could provide that new source of energy, if it is successfully developed.
Aneutronic fusion is nuclear energy with no radioactive waste. It uses the same process that
gives light to the Sun and other stars—nuclear fusion—to derive huge amounts of energy from
tiny amounts of non-radioactive fuels such as hydrogen and boron
FFS just supports standard solar physics – the same process .. nuclear fusion – nothing about EU.
“The AFC’s electric current of four amperes generated a magnetic field that, despite being relatively weak, was still able to manipulate FF-1’s main electric current pulse of over a million amps.”
Nothing about gazillion Gauss magnetic fields. You have been had.
You are evading the issue. So Alfven did not claim that the sun is powered from the outside. Do you believe that it is?
Huh? since when is a single EU hobbyist personal beliefs the issue? What I believe is what I would like to evidence or counter evidence. Yes I do think the sun is powered externally to a significant degree. Alfven gave us a hypothesis that hasn’t been falsified. You’ve ignored it for 50 years. I’ve built on it.
If so, I agree.
Good, now please go back and address my reference to Alfven’s galactic electric circuit without decoying. What do you think to Alfven’s galactic circuit and its application to powering stars? If you think it couldn’t, why not?
You did not provide any links to the Focus Fusion Society. Just to some pseudo-scientific nonsense.
“pseudo scientific nonsense?” Lulz. You are referring to Prof D.E. Scott’s website and a focus fusion lecture given by Eric Lerner.
If I give a link to the FFS you will retract all your rejection of EU theory? Starting with your refusal to accept that they’ve got cosmic level intensity magnetic fields?
Well, here it is…
http://focusfusion.org/
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 11:50 am
Yes I do think the sun is powered externally to a significant degree. Alfven gave us a hypothesis that hasn’t been falsified. You’ve ignored it for 50 years. I’ve built on it.
Numerically what degree? 1%, 10%, 50%, 100%? Alfven never pushed the idea that the Sun was externally powered, so nothing to falsify.
What do you think to Alfven’s galactic circuit and its application to powering stars? If you think it couldn’t, why not?
Because it is not powering the Sun. Nuclear fusion is. Gravity compresses the Sun to the temperature needed to achieve fusion and also provides the confinement needed. To yank your chain a bit: gravity is ultimately the cause of everything. One more yank: for 379,000 years after the Big Bang the Universe was a plasma, opaque to radiation. What we see in the Cosmic Microwave Radiation is the essentially the radiation field at that time. Then, as Universe continued to cool, the temperature fell below the value needed to ionize Hydrogen and protons and electrons found each other and formed atomic Hydrogen which is transparent, as which point we could actually see across the Universe. For the next billion years there was essentially no plasma in the Universe. Only after enough stars had formed and their UV-radiation had re-ionized the Hydrogen was there again plasma in the Interstellar/intergalactic medium, so now plasma makes up about 5% of the Universe. /end-yank
“pseudo scientific nonsense?” Lulz. You are referring to Prof D.E. Scott’s website and a focus fusion lecture given by Eric Lerner.
Yep, precisely!
Starting with your refusal to accept that they’ve got cosmic level intensity magnetic fields?
FFS says they have achieved magnetic fields just a little bit stronger than that of an ordinary compass. Granted that that is a million times stronger than the interstellar magnetic field, it is also a trillion times weaker than that of the average neutron star.
As I said, you have been had in a big way.
Nope I don’t think so.
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/1078/
Lawerenceville plasma physics Inc recently announced they’d achieved their key goal of 1.8 billion degrees Celsius, hot enough to fuse boron11 and hydrogen. This was the goal of a plan that required creating giga-gauss magnetic fields. Shouldn’t be suprising they’d been reporting incrementally improving results like this for years.
Their results have been accepted in the ‘physics of plasma’ journal ( Published by the American Institute of Physics,) and are expected to be published in that journal in the next few weeks.
This is a goal stated in the abstract of a paper by LPP back in 2011 where they are outlining the work ahead of them….
” to achieve the high magnetic fields (>1 GG) needed for the quantum magnetic field effect”
…which they apparently now have achieved.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10894-011-9385-4
It would make it more of an event if you threw you big name into the ring by announcing pubically to people in the plasma community, at the physics of plasma jounal that you think Eric Lerner’s lectures are “pseudo scientific nonsense”. Instead of just me mentioning it to them.
Numerically what degree? 1%, 10%, 50%, 100%? Alfven never pushed the idea that the Sun was externally powered, so nothing to falsify.
I don’t know I haven’t quantified it yet. I would guess 10 to 50%. He pushed the idea of a galactic electric circuit. That’s something to falsify. What do you think to the galactic electric circuit he proposed ? ( for the 3rd time of asking -_- )
@leif You mean you don’t know about the last time. Take the current solar cycle 24. It is the lowest in a 100 years as I and colleagues predicted almost a decade ago.
Totally irrelevant, not even science. Because you havent told us WHY. Science is based on expanding actual explanatory power. Just doing stats on solar observations, doesn’t tell us anything useful at all, AND there is no means to know if your prediction is based upon a correct understanding or not, you may have made a lucky guess. Sorry if my engineers point of view expects too much of you poor scientists, but I like to know how things work.
I find the proposals for the electric circuit of the sun fascinating, the fact it can behaves like a transistor, and the solar wind can turn off. Incredible, and now I know why. The fact that some 17 features of the sun that are mysteries to the orthodoxy, have been explained by engineers, with actual detailed, technically interesting and are useful for predictions, now that is science!
@leif said this is the madness EU traps you in.
What absolute rubbish. I have been interested in the EU theory for a number of years and I have never even heard of any of those items you list (re. Brant). You have just picked a straw man, to deride, when most of us who are familiar with the EU, never even knew this particular strawman existed.
So there is no trap, actually we appear to have a forum in which some free thinking is actually taking place, and you came across some of it, big deal. It is actually a healthy thing to find someone thinking outside of the box for a change.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 2:16 pm
This is a goal stated in the abstract of a paper by LPP back in 2011 where they are outlining the work ahead of them…. ” to achieve the high magnetic fields (>1 GG) needed for the quantum magnetic field effect” …which they apparently now have achieved.
Yet, they claim that they only need a field a bit stronger than an ordinary compass. Perhaps you should read their published reports. E.g. http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/fofu_1_x_rays_show_effectiveness_of_axial_field_coil
“This first unambiguous demonstration of the Axial Field Coil (AFC) shows that small magnetic fields—just a few times greater than those that sway a compass needle—can magnify the x-ray and fusion energy output of FF-1, LPP’s fusion energy research device. The AFC’s electric current of four amperes generated a magnetic field that, despite being relatively weak, was still able to manipulate FF-1’s main electric current pulse of over a million amps.”
I don’t know I haven’t quantified it yet. I would guess 10 to 50%.
You base your scientific view on a guess of something you don’t know…?
What do you think to the galactic electric circuit he proposed ? ( for the 3rd time of asking -_- )
It isn’t here and you gloss over the follow-up: what effect it would have on powering the stars. As I have already explained: ‘none’.
keith says:
March 6, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Because you havent told us WHY.
Certainly have, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Choudhuri-forecast.pdf The theory goes back to Babcock and Leighton in the 1960s.
The fact that some 17 features of the sun that are mysteries to the orthodoxy, have been explained by engineers, with actual detailed, technically interesting and are useful for predictions, now that is science!
Good for you to have found something to believe in, right or wrong. Belief is everything. I’m a bit puzzled why only 17 features have been explained. Perhaps you could expand on your understanding of the 17 and outline a way forward for more entertaining stuff.
keith says:
March 6, 2013 at 2:28 pm
I have never even heard of any of those items you list (re. Brant).
Brant posted in this very thread, and you did not check on what he said, nor object to his absurd claims. Now, for another absurd claim: that currents from the Galaxy cross the solar system and power the Sun. Are you also a believer of this? If not, please list the claims that EU makes and you do not believe in.
Yet, they claim that they only need a field a bit stronger than an ordinary compass.
For the early conditions of the pulse, yes. For the end result, a giga-gauss magnetic field is required and has been achieved.
Perhaps you should watch the googletechtalk lecture I linked to.
You base your scientific view on a guess of something you don’t know…?
It’s a hypothesis. You are acting so nieve.
It isn’t here
Well done. You managed to answer. Not a well explained answer, but considering how coy you’ve been getting round to answering, I’d already guessed you didn’t have much to offer.
I don’t agree btw. I don’t think you’ve looked for Alfven’s galactic current, so you’re not in a position to say “it isn’t here”.
you gloss over the follow-up: what effect it would have on powering the stars. As I have already explained: ‘none’.
1 step at a time.
A galactic yotta amp current would have no effect on powering the stars as it passed thru the galaxy? How has that been evidenced if we assume that ‘it isn’t here’?
Sounds to me you are ad-lib cooking up unsupported assertions on the spot.
meemoe_uk says:
March 6, 2013 at 4:13 pm
For the end result, a giga-gauss magnetic field is required and has been achieved.
point me too a link that substantiates that.
“You base your scientific view on a guess of something you don’t know…?”
It’s a hypothesis. You are acting so nieve.
So, how does the hypothesis work? you say up to 50% is from external current. What is the remaining 50%?
I don’t think you’ve looked for Alfven’s galactic current, so you’re not in a position to say “it isn’t here”.
Better: I have discussed the matter with Alfven. There is no such current. There are no unicorns either. When did you last look for unicorns? Have you ever?
A galactic yotta amp current would have no effect on powering the stars as it passed thru the galaxy?
Is that what you claim? no effect? I can believe that.
How has that been evidenced if we assume that ‘it isn’t here’?
Easy, it hasn’t. Does it power the stars or not?
Sounds to me you are ad-lib cooking up unsupported assertions on the spot.
Well, if you can fall for the EU stuff, you can dream anything up. Of course, I answer on the spot, based on extensive knowledge.
Interesting interview with one of the scientists.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/playlist/#play/segment/9057
point me too a link that substantiates that.
http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63&Itemid=81
“Experiments have already demonstrated 0.4 giga gauss fields, and DPFs with smaller electrodes and stronger initial magnetic fields can reach as high as 20 giga-gauss, Lerner calculates. This should be achievable in the next round of LPP’s experiments.”
The 0.4 GG LPP has achieved is 14 times greater than the value wiki asserts as the strongest magnetic field ever achieved, and they’ve done it with a DPF instead of using explosives or destroying their lab.
I’m pretty sure ‘the next round of LPP experiments’ has now been completed, the results will be in physics of plasma journal soon, where the team will announce >1 GG.
That Lerner’s team has replicated and harnessed the magnetic field strength and the features of astro physical jets in the lab using electric universe theory is very strong evidence supporting EU. Lerner is of course a leading proponent of EU theory who thinks conventional gravity cosmology and the big bang is nonsense.
Despite my efforts to save you, looks like you are yet another victim of advancing science in the way planck described
“A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. “
You pecking my ideas and selecting out weaker EU theories to mock isn’t going to stop Lerner’s team from setting a revolutionary precedent of application of EU theory in the lab and in a few years on the energy market, heralding the capitulation of 20th century cosmology to electric universe theory in the 21st century. Your best bet for now on your crusade to preserve your dying religion a few extra years it to insist Lerner’s DPF has zero to do with EU theory or that it has zero physics in common with astro physical jets. But the voice of Lerner and his community will soon be too loud to ignore, and more physics students will be pulled towards EU theory and away from 20th century cosmology. The dam is busted. I watch with amusement as you try hopelessly to patch it up.
I now offer you the last comment in this exchange.
meemoe_uk says:
March 7, 2013 at 4:17 am
I’m pretty sure ‘the next round of LPP experiments’ has now been completed, the results will be in physics of plasma journal soon, where the team will announce >1 GG.
OK, so they have achieved a field 10,000,000 weaker than needed to scale to the interstellar medium.
Lerner’s DPF has zero to do with EU theory
Precisely.
Now, you are still evading the issue: what powers the Sun? Will you agree with the FFS that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion?
@DesertYote First of all, singularities are mathematically constructable.
What is, in reality a point? Does a point exist? Does a line exist in reality. Basically no.
So if you cant get a “real” point, a singularity is perhaps a point tooo far.
@lief, I am confused about something. When did the “missing neutrino problem” suddenly go away?
keith says:
March 7, 2013 at 8:17 am
@lief, I am confused about something. When did the “missing neutrino problem” suddenly go away?
Yes, it did. It turned out to be a spectacular confirmation of the standard solar model and our understanding of its nuclear fusion. We only measured a third of the expected flux using the original detector. There are three kinds of neutrinos [electron neutrinos, muon-neutrinos, and tau-neutrinos – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino ]. The sun only produces electron neutrinos and the old detector was only sensitive to electron neutrinos. Newer detectors are sensitive to all three kinds of neutrinos [and see all three coming from the Sun] and if we fire electron neutrinos [that we produce in known amounts in nuclear reactors] towards the newer detectors we observe a mixture of all three types. The explanation is that neutrinos turn out to have a tiny mass and that allows them [according to standard theory] to change their kind in flight, and so they do, explaining why only one third is observed as electron neutrinos. So, instead of being a problem, the neutrino ‘problem’ turns out to be a spectacular confirmation of our understanding.
keith says:
March 7, 2013 at 8:17 am
When did the “missing neutrino problem” suddenly go away?
As to ‘when’, 1998 will be a good time. Thus a pretty long time [like 15 years]. How come you missed it?
Keith says:
March 7, 2013 at 8:16 am
So if you cant get a “real” point, a singularity is perhaps a point tooo far.
The singularity in a black hole is not a point. The volume of a black hole is the surface area of its event horizon times the length of time the hole exists. [you multiply the time by the speed of light to get that length]. Since the hole lasts forever [practically] its volume is for all intents and purposes infinite. You can pour stuff into a black hole forever without filling it up.
lsvalgaard says:
March 7, 2013 at 9:03 am
Yes, it did. It turned out to be a spectacular confirmation of the standard solar model and our understanding of its nuclear fusion. We only measured a third of the expected flux using the original detector. There are three kinds of neutrinos [electron neutrinos, muon-neutrinos, and tau-neutrinos – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino ]. The sun only produces electron neutrinos and the old detector was only sensitive to electron neutrinos. Newer detectors are sensitive to all three kinds of neutrinos [and see all three coming from the Sun] and if we fire electron neutrinos [that we produce in known amounts in nuclear reactors] towards the newer detectors we observe a mixture of all three types. The explanation is that neutrinos turn out to have a tiny mass and that allows them [according to standard theory] to change their kind in flight, and so they do, explaining why only one third is observed as electron neutrinos. So, instead of being a problem, the neutrino ‘problem’ turns out to be a spectacular confirmation of our understanding.
Leif you are overselling a possible explanation as a proven truth.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/bahcall/
Possible Explanations:
“What about the third possible explanation, new physics? Already in 1969, Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov of the Soviet Union proposed the third explanation listed above, namely, that neutrinos behave differently than physicists had assumed. Very few physicists took the idea seriously at the time it was first proposed, but the evidence favoring this possibility increased with time.
Evidence Favors New Physics”
Summarizing: we receive from the sun different neutrinos which total our expecting numbers but in different flavors, as our model shows something else was produced, so it must be that they transform.
There is one step missing, to have the neutrinos conversion proven
Has this been proven? No, the results are inconclusive at the moment. Or maybe you have more information?
Lars P. says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:54 am
There is one step missing, to have the neutrinos conversion proven
Has this been proven? No, the results are inconclusive at the moment. Or maybe you have more information?
Neutrino oscillations have been directly observed http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/whatsnew/DOC-20110615/KEK110613english.pdf
And all three types have been directly observed coming from the Sun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Neutrino_Observatory
Nothing is missing.
Lars P. says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:54 am
There is one step missing, to have the neutrinos conversion proven
Has this been proven? No, the results are inconclusive at the moment.
This might be helpful: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0303116v1.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:00 am
Leif, thank you for the posts. I was traveling and had not yet the time to digest these, but it will be an interesting lecture!
There is still one point that I do not feel comfortable with. This does not invalidate EU or all EU hypothesis. There are many hypothesis linked to the reality of electricity in space. A lot of them may be wrong, a lot of them nonsense, however several will survive and be valuable amendments to the current theories.
As said where I am feeling uncomfortable is when people try to separate magnetism and conclude there are no currents existing in space only the frozen-in magnetic fields.
Those frozen-in magnetic fields postulate frozen-in currents. But the currents and the magnetic fields are not frozen-in, as plasma is no superconductor, but if it would be then you have the frozen-in currents…
Lars P. says:
March 11, 2013 at 3:13 pm
This does not invalidate EU or all EU hypothesis. There are many hypothesis linked to the reality of electricity in space. A lot of them may be wrong, a lot of them nonsense, however several will survive and be valuable amendments to the current theories.
None will survive as electric currents are already [and have been for decades] an integral part of mainstream science. Everything interesting happens because of electric currents [or gravity]. The difference with EU is that in real science, the currents are generated by rapid changes of the magnetic field on so small scales that the field is no longer frozen-in [the reconnection process]. All space scientists know this and use this paradigm every day. You see, something has to drive a current, it is called the emf [the electromotive force]. In the EU there is no emf, currents happen by miracle. The plasma is a superconductor on large length scales, but certainly not on the micro-scale. Nobody who knows anything about space physics are claiming it is. When you say that a lot of EU is nonsense, then you are akin with the people, who when it is demonstrated that spoon-bender Uri Geller has been caught cheating 50% of the time, say “so what? the other 50% is the real thing”.
lsvalgaard says:
March 11, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Everything interesting happens because of electric currents [or gravity].
correct.
The difference with EU is that in real science, the currents are generated by rapid changes of the magnetic field on so small scales that the field is no longer frozen-in [the reconnection process].
the frozen-in magnetic fields is where the “consensus” is wrong. Those fields must come from somewhere. There is no magnetic charge as such creating those fields. You are wrong about cause and effect.
Lets take something that was already observed:
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v5/92
“The key, says Ruth Bamford of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in England, is that an electric field is generated by the magnetic field’s interaction with the solar wind. Heavy positive ions from the solar wind crash through the magnetic field bubble, while lighter electrons are diverted around it. This separation of positive charges from negative ones generates an electric field directed outward from the magnetic anomaly”
To me this is part of the EU, as EU states there is more to electromagnetism then it was accepted until now in astronomy. And here you see electromagnetism affecting the surface of the moon.
The difference in mass between the ‘+’ and the ‘-‘ ensures they behave differently, not symmetrically which can create potentials and currents.
All space scientists know this and use this paradigm every day. You see, something has to drive a current, it is called the emf [the electromotive force]. In the EU there is no emf, currents happen by miracle.
currents do not happen by miracle, this is a straw man.
Most of EU papers what I found are published at IEEE by people who are electrical engineers or have at least the knowledge.
The “consensus” who do work in the area, avoid the terminology of talking about currents to be consensus conform. Magnetic reconnect is an aberration in itself, the magnetic lines do not exist in reality as such, there is only a magnetic field that exists like the electric field. Electric field lines do not “reconnect” even if we have here two different charges. There is no magnetic charge as such. Only electric charges.
Not studying the currents hinders the progress, making it difficult to understand the phenomenon. You need there currents and voltage to achieve “magnetic reconnect”
http://electric-cosmos.org/IEEE-TransPlasmaSci-Scott-Aug2007.pdf
The plasma is a superconductor on large length scales
no, very good conductibility but not zero resistance.
but certainly not on the micro-scale.
yes, not on the micro and not on the macro scale.
Nobody who knows anything about space physics are claiming it is.
they should not, but some claim it is on the macro scale.
When you say that a lot of EU is nonsense, then you are akin with the people, who when it is demonstrated that spoon-bender Uri Geller has been caught cheating 50% of the time, say “so what? the other 50% is the real thing”.
when you claim you are 100% right then even when you are 99.99% right, you are still wrong.
Just curious what would you do if in 10 to 20 years dark matter will not be needed to explain the movement of the stars in the galaxy and this will be possible to explain through the electromagnetic force?
http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/ukdmc/dark_matter/rotation_curves.html
Lars P. says:
March 12, 2013 at 12:38 pm
“The key, says Ruth Bamford of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in England, is that an electric field is generated by the magnetic field’s interaction with the solar wind.”
This, unfortunately is not EU, but mainstream science. Note that the electric field is generated by the plasma moving across an existing magnetic field. As Alfven was at pains to point out, electric fields depend on the observer [magnetic fields do not]. You can always find another observer for whom what is an electric field to you there is no electric field for him. It is the magnetic field that allows separation of charges which in turn allows an electric current to flow.
Try to find another example of where EU can amend real science.
You need the currents and voltage to achieve “magnetic reconnect”
The necessary current is generated by pressing the two parcels of plasma with opposite magnetic fields together just as Bamfield said in your quote above.
currents do not happen by miracle, this is a straw man.
Then how in EU are currents generated?
Lars P. says:
March 12, 2013 at 12:38 pm
here you see electromagnetism affecting the surface of the moon.
Electromagnetic waves [UV light] affects my skin every time I get sunburned…No electric shocks though…
Just curious what would you do if in 10 to 20 years dark matter will not be needed to explain the movement of the stars in the galaxy and this will be possible to explain through the electromagnetic force?
Although the rotation curves were the first signs of dark matter, the best and most direct is observations of gravitational lensing and I would indeed be surprised if that can be explained by electromagnetic forces, so please, surprise and educate me.
As for explanations, it is good to remember that for the first billion years of the existence of the Universe [excluding the fist 379,000 years], there was no plasma between the stars and galaxies.
lsvalgaard says:
March 12, 2013 at 1:20 pm
This, unfortunately is not EU, but mainstream science. Note that the electric field is generated by the plasma moving across an existing magnetic field.
This is part of EU already taken into the mainstream science. There is no such separation as: magnetic field generates current=mainstream, current generates magnetic field=EU.
As each person that understands electromagnetism knows there is bidirectional transformation.
As Alfven was at pains to point out, electric fields depend on the observer [magnetic fields do not]. You can always find another observer for whom what is an electric field to you there is no electric field for him. It is the magnetic field that allows separation of charges which in turn allows an electric current to flow.
Did anybody try to make “magnetic reconnect” without electrical charges? Why not? Well, because this will never work. Why? Are there not the magnetic lines there? Spin them up, break the magnets, put them against a stronger opposite magnet. No reconnect? Without electrical charges in movement there is no “reconnect”.
And what are electrical charges in movement?
Of course electrical currents generate magnetic fields and magnetic fields generate currents:
“Maxwell’s equations describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated and altered by each other and by charges and currents.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_law_for_magnetism
” magnetic monopoles do not exist”
Further:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday%27s_law_of_induction#Faraday.27s_law
“The Maxwell–Faraday equation is a generalisation of Faraday’s law that states that a time-varying magnetic field is always accompanied by a spatially-varying, non-conservative electric field, and vice-versa.”
The universe is full of movement of charged and non-charged particles. How do the charged particles move? Do they generate electric fields like in the case above? Yes. Does this generate electrical currents? Yes. Do these currents generate magnetic fields? Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Birkeland
“Birkeland proposed in 1908 in his book The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903[6] that polar electric currents, today referred to as auroral electrojets, were connected to a system of currents that flowed along geomagnetic field lines into and away from the polar region.”
No magnetic reconnection…
“Proof of Birkeland’s theory of the aurora only came in 1967 after a probe was sent into space. The crucial results were obtained from U.S. Navy satellite 1963-38C, launched in 1963 and carrying a magnetometer above the ionosphere.[10] Magnetic disturbances were observed on nearly every pass over the high-latitude regions of the Earth. These were originally interpreted as hydromagnetic waves, but on later analysis it was realized that they were due to field-aligned or Birkeland currents.”
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jupiter_magnetosphere.html
“An electric current of 5 million amperes was detected in the flux tube that flows between Jupiter and Io, five times stronger than predicted.”
Well, and yes, I agree that there must be a source for electrical currents, there must be a phenomenon that generates it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_magnetosphere
And magnetic fields by currents:
“Jupiter’s internal magnetic field is generated by electrical currents in the planet’s outer core, which is composed of liquid metallic hydrogen”
lsvalgaard says:
March 12, 2013 at 2:47 pm
so please, surprise and educate me.
I am far away to pretend I can do that. Was just asking ad absurdum what would be your reaction.
Lars P. says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:29 pm
This is part of EU already taken into the mainstream science.
This was mainstream long before the EU cult.
Did anybody try to make “magnetic reconnect” without electrical charges? Why not?
Twirl a toy magnet in the air and there is continuous reconnection. Reconnection is just another name for a change in topology [the configuration of the magnetic field]. Now, in a plasma you cannot change the magnetic field, unless you do serious mechanical work on it which generates the currents needed.
“Maxwell’s equations, etc …
All of this is regurgitating mainstream science…
“Birkeland proposed in 1908 in his book The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903[6] that polar electric currents, today referred to as auroral electrojets, were connected to a system of currents that flowed along geomagnetic field lines into and away from the polar region.”
I thought you said that magnetic field lines do not exist…
“Jupiter’s internal magnetic field is generated by electrical currents in the planet’s outer core, which is composed of liquid metallic hydrogen”
Jupiter’s, the Earth’s, the Sun’s, everything’s magnetic field is generated by electric current created by what is called a dynamo: moving a conductor across an existing magnetic field. No magnetic field, no currents.
But all this is mainstream science established long before EU. You have not mentioned a single thing that is unique to EU, such as powering the Sun, for example. Come on, show that you have done some homework.
Lars P. says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:47 pm
“so please, surprise and educate me.”
I am far away to pretend I can do that.
Then take the opportunity of these exchanges to actually learn some real science.
lsvalgaard says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:51 pm
But all this is mainstream science established long before EU. You have not mentioned a single thing that is unique to EU, such as powering the Sun, for example. Come on, show that you have done some homework.
sorry Leif, I understand electromagnetismus as mainstream science and this is the base of EU. It looks like we speak of two different EU, so no use to continue. You try to force all that is EU in your comfortable corner where you find the fringe theories.
If you believe magnetic fields exist there since somebody put them frozen-in in plasma and this is the only way how currents are generated in space you are free to believe that.
Lars P. says:
March 12, 2013 at 4:23 pm
this is the only way how currents are generated in space you are free to believe that.
This is what valid science believes today. If you know about any other way, it would be of interest to hear about, otherwise, I agree, it is no use to continue. [There is, in fact, a very interesting and valid question: if magnetism is necessary for the generation and maintenance of currents in plasmas, where did the very first magnetic field come from? It is thought that gravity combined with rotation is the ultimate cause, but that is another discussion: the Biermann Battery Effect: http://www.as.utexas.edu/~lindner/random/final.pdf ]
lsvalgaard says:
March 12, 2013 at 4:54 pm
This is what valid science believes today. If you know about any other way, it would be of interest to hear about, otherwise, I agree, it is no use to continue. [There is, in fact, a very interesting and valid question: if magnetism is necessary for the generation and maintenance of currents in plasmas, where did the very first magnetic field come from? It is thought that gravity combined with rotation is the ultimate cause, but that is another discussion: the Biermann Battery Effect: http://www.as.utexas.edu/~lindner/random/final.pdf ]
Leif, this is for me a very interesting logic: you are ok with frozen-in magnetic fields which cannot be explained, you do not know where these come from, but you feverishly combat any electrical currents which are the only way how we know magnetic fields can be created?
Jupiter’s, the Earth’s, the Sun’s, everything’s magnetic field is generated by electric current created by what is called a dynamo: moving a conductor across an existing magnetic field. No magnetic field, no currents.
What existing magnetic field is used to generate Jupiter’s magnetic field? Or the Sun’s?
Have you not understood yet the magnetic coil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_hand_grip_rule#Direction_associated_with_a_rotation
No magnetic field no currents? If protons move from A to B is this not generating a magnetic field according to who’s theory? If protons or charged particles move in a vortex this is not generating a magnetic field in mainstream science?
Can there be no reason or no cases when charges are separated?
Or is this a frozen-in magnetic field in a superconductor hidden in the middle of the planet and the sun? Is this the “mainstream” theory?
You try to explain the generation through gravity with rotation but negate there might be electrical currents? Wish you all the luck to explain that with uncharged particles. And if there is rotation of electrical charged particles, no, this is no current, no plasma, this must be ionised gas which is electrical neutral? Or what?
Hiding behind the finger, just not to say the thing by the name: electrical current. Incredible.
The link from your post above says it too: “It is essential that we comprehend the origin and evolution of these magnetic fields if we wish to understand early structure formation in the universe.”
But it is not for the early structure formation. It is an integral part of the universe:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2010-417&rn=news.xml&rst=2847
“We all know that changing rotation periods have been observed at pulsars, millions of light years from our solar system, and now we find that a similar phenomenon is observed right here at Saturn,” said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator of the magnetospheric imaging instrument, also based at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Academy of Athens, Greece. “With instruments right at the spot where it’s happening, we can tell that plasma flows and complex current systems can mask the real rotation period of the central body. That’s how observations in our solar system help us understand what is seen in distant astrophysical objects.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_magnetosphere
“Jupiter’s radio and particle emissions are strongly modulated by its rotation, which makes the planet somewhat similar to a pulsar.[55] This periodical modulation is probably related to asymmetries in the Jovian magnetosphere, which are caused by the tilt of the magnetic moment with respect to the rotational axis as well as by high-latitude magnetic anomalies. The physics governing Jupiter’s radio emissions is similar to that of radio pulsars. They differ only in the scale, and Jupiter can be considered a very small radio pulsar too.“
Lars P. says:
March 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm
you are ok with frozen-in magnetic fields which cannot be explained, you do not know where these come from
We know quite well where the frozen-in fields come from [even if you may not know that].
What existing magnetic field is used to generate Jupiter’s magnetic field? Or the Sun’s?
Movement of neutral plasma [all natural plasma is electrically neutral – having equal number of negative and positive charges] in Jupiter’s, the Earth’s, and the Sun’s magnetic fields generate electric currents that in turn maintain the magnetic field ready to generate more current, and so forth. This is called a ‘self-sustaining dynamo’.
Can there be no reason or no cases when charges are separated?
Magnetic fields separate charges and induces electric currents.
The link from your post above says it too: “It is essential that we comprehend the origin and evolution of these magnetic fields if we wish to understand early structure formation in the universe.”
But also shoiws how to generate that ‘seed’ field from gravity and vorticity alone.
That’s how observations in our solar system help us understand what is seen in distant astrophysical objects
All of that is standard astronomical mainstream science. EU brings nothing to the table.
The real issue is very simple: all interesting things are caused by electric currents [or gravity], so how are such currents generated? Real science says by conductors moving across magnetic fields. EU says by magic. So here is a specific questions: how are the electric currents in EU generated and maintained? Remember that an electric current is charges going from an excess of charge to a deficit. This eventually reduces the excess to zero and stops the current.
lsvalgaard says:
March 13, 2013 at 6:21 pm
We know quite well where the frozen-in fields come from [even if you may not know that].
Thanks, now I am convinced.
Movement of neutral plasma [all natural plasma is electrically neutral – having equal number of negative and positive charges] in Jupiter’s, the Earth’s, and the Sun’s magnetic fields generate electric currents that in turn maintain the magnetic field ready to generate more current, and so forth. This is called a ‘self-sustaining dynamo’.
You answered your own question from below how currents are generated.
Magnetic fields separate charges and induces electric currents.
Yes. But magnetic fields do not come out of nowhere, unless in Leif’s mainstream universe.
But also shoiws how to generate that ‘seed’ field from gravity and vorticity alone.
correct
All of that is standard astronomical mainstream science. EU brings nothing to the table.
Again, possibly you think EU is a patent of somebody. To my knowledge that is not the case. Your crusade against a person or a theory has nothing to do with the relevance of electrical currents in space. EU brings currents in space, the idea that electricity plays a larger role and that astronomy is not only ruled by gravity how it was initially thought. This is what EU stands for.
The real issue is very simple: all interesting things are caused by electric currents [or gravity], so how are such currents generated? Real science says by conductors moving across magnetic fields. EU says by magic. So here is a specific questions: how are the electric currents in EU generated and maintained? Remember that an electric current is charges going from an excess of charge to a deficit. This eventually reduces the excess to zero and stops the current.
You answered your question above. There is no magic in science only in a figurative way. There is more to electricity then was initially thought. How are pulsars explained before electricity?
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/p/pulsar
“Radio pulsars are generally accepted to be highly-magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars with a light-house beam of radiation that produces the pulsed emission. Although the majority of pulsars spin at a rate of about once per second, the fastest pulsars can rotate at up to ~650 times a second, and anything spinning faster than around 50 milliseconds is generally referred to as a millisecond pulsar.”
What do we find out in our own solar system? “plasma flows and complex current systems can mask the real rotation period of the central body.”
“The physics governing Jupiter’s radio emissions is similar to that of radio pulsars. They differ only in the scale, and Jupiter can be considered a very small radio pulsar too.”
Understanding the electric phenomenon is essential to understand how pulsars work, and what pulsars are.
All of that is standard astronomical mainstream science. EU brings nothing to the table.
Standard astronomy goes EU, step by step, recognizing electrical currents in space and starting to understand how these work. A bit too slow to my taste, but that’s a different story.
Lars P. says:
March 14, 2013 at 4:04 am
“We know quite well where the frozen-in fields come from [even if you may not know that].”
Thanks, now I am convinced.
Good. It has taken some time for you to turn around. Hannes Alfven got his Nobel Prize for explaining how, and also pointed out that when the fields thaws interesting things happen.
You answered your own question from below how currents are generated.
So you agree that currents are generated from magnetic fields. No field, no currents.
Yes. But magnetic fields do not come out of nowhere, unless in Leif’s mainstream universe.
Large-scale magnetic fields in the Universe were generated shortly after the Big Bang [gravity+vorticity] and have been with us ever since as the paper explains.
EU brings currents in space, the idea that electricity plays a larger role and that astronomy is not only ruled by gravity how it was initially thought. This is what EU stands for.
As I have said, everything interesting happens due to electric currents [or gravity] generated from magnetic fields. This is mainstream science. Nothing new there.
There is more to electricity then was initially thought.
Maxwell’s equations [from the 1860s] describe what we know about electricity. EU does not add anything to that.
How are pulsars explained before electricity?
“Radio pulsars are generally accepted to be highly-magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars
Pulsars were not discovered before electricity was. But that aside, in pulsars “The beam originates from the rotational energy of the neutron star, which generates an electrical field from the movement of the very strong magnetic field. No magnetic field, no electric field, no beam, no pulsar.
Standard astronomy goes EU, step by step, recognizing electrical currents in space and starting to understand how these work. A bit too slow to my taste, but that’s a different story.
Standard astronomy has recognized electric currents in space ever since it was discovered that there were magnetic fields out there. The difference with EU, is that standard theory explains where the currents come from [moving neutral plasma in magnetic fields], while EU does not. So, again: where do the currents come from in EU? You have consistently evaded, ignored, [not known] how to answer. Here is your chance. Carpe diem.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 14, 2013 at 8:32 am
Lars P. says:
March 14, 2013 at 4:04 am
“We know quite well where the frozen-in fields come from [even if you may not know that].”
Thanks, now I am convinced.
Good. It has taken some time for you to turn around. Hannes Alfven got his Nobel Prize for explaining how, and also pointed out that when the fields thaws interesting things happen.
Dear Leif, however I must conclude that you have not read his Nobel prize lecture. You can find it here:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1970/alfven-lecture.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1970/alfven-lecture.pdf
” I think it is evident now that in certain respects the first approach to the physics of cosmical plasmas has been a failure. It turns out that in several important cases this approach has not given even a first approximation to truth but led into dead-end streets from which we now have to turn back.
The reason for this is that several of the basic concepts on which the theories are founded, are not applicable to the condition prevailing in cosmos. They are « generally accepted » by most theoreticians, they are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not « understand », how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them. It is now obvious that we have to start a second approach
from widely different starting points.
The two different approaches can be summarized in Table 1.”
Look at the table 1:
– not homogene as you say but “Space plasmas have often a complicated inhomogeneous structure”
– not conductivity o = co Electric fieldE,, = o
but u depends on current and often suddenly becomes o, E,, often #o”
– magnetic fields: “Frozen-in picture often completely mis-leading.”
It is equally important to draw the current lines and discuss the electric circuit.
Electrostatic double layers are of decisive importance in low density plasmas.
Currents produce filaments or flow in thin sheets
Theories still not very well developed and partly phenomenological
Where are we now 40+ years later? Leif still tells plasma is homogene, with infinite conductivity and with frozen-in magnetic fields and so on, still blocked in the plasma cosmology of before 40 years ago.
You have consistently evaded, ignored, [not known] how to answer. Here is your chance. Carpe diem.
I have answered this to you several times.
You still are looking for the key under the lamp (you know the joke with the drunkman looking for the key under the lamp? after some search at the question: but did you lose it here? the answer comes:no, but here I have light to look for it) and not there where I showed it to you it is, so what can I say more?
Large-scale magnetic fields in the Universe were generated shortly after the Big Bang [gravity+vorticity] and have been with us ever since as the paper explains.
and how did gravity and vorticity created magnetic fields?
> Keith says:
> March 7, 2013 at 8:16 am
> So if you cant get a “real” point, a singularity is perhaps a point tooo far.
Leif replied:
> The singularity in a black hole is not a point. The volume of a black hole is the surface area of its
> event horizon times the length of time the hole exists. [you multiply the time by the speed of light
> to get that length]. Since the hole lasts forever [practically] its volume is for all intents and
> purposes infinite. You can pour stuff into a black hole forever without filling it up.
And you wrote that without a hint of skepticism? That is why I cannot believe a single thing you have said. You loose your credibility, because you accept such things without question. You did not even state it as a remote possibility, or any puzzlement as to how this could be possible in reality, you stated it as an unassailable fact. Which basically shows you up for what I said earlier, your view is now synonymous with a religious doctrine, and you have effectively set yourself up to be self-deluded. I conclude this by the way you present yourself.
In science, only one observation is all it takes to destroy a previously held paradigm. Therefore I expect to see a lot more humility from those who profess to be scientists, knowing that they are one observation away from being proven wrong.
Just because a mathematical equation says it, you expect me to believe that is real? Actually the model upon which all this is based, is based on modelling a single mass as if at a point. The universe is not made of single point masses, nor does mass really have any meaning unless there are two or more.
K.
keith says:
March 14, 2013 at 10:23 am
“The singularity in a black hole is not a point.”
And you wrote that without a hint of skepticism?
you stated it as an unassailable fact.
In science, only one observation is all it takes to destroy a previously held paradigm.
A paradigm is the summary of thousands, millions, gazilions of observations. General Relativity is such a paradigm [it is tested every time you use GPS – for example]. To date, there is not a single observation or experiment that contradicts GR on macroscopic scales. A large part of modern physics is concerned with proving Einstein wrong. so far without success. This is why we accept those conclusions as fact consistent with all we know. Of course, if you don’t know anything, then you don’t have to go along.
Earlier you said:
keith says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:23 pm
So the EU guys have it right.
you stated it as an unassailable fact without a hint of skepticism…
Lars P. says:
March 14, 2013 at 9:38 am
Dear Leif, however I must conclude that you have not read his Nobel prize lecture.
Better yet, Hannes was a friend of mine and we have often discussed these issues.
What he railed against was thre idea that currents could not be produced by neutral plasma moving in magnetic fields.
Where are we now 40+ years later? Leif still tells plasma is homogene, with infinite conductivity and with frozen-in magnetic fields and so on, still blocked in the plasma cosmology of before 40 years ago.
As I said, everything interesting is due to electric currents created by neutral plasma moving across existing magnetic fields. This is the point Alfven was trying to get across.
“You have consistently evaded, ignored, [not known] how to answer. Here is your chance. Carpe diem.”
I have answered this to you several times.
No, you have not. Try again.
so what can I say more?
You can tell how currents are generated and maintained in EU. I have explained that currents result from neutral plasma interacting with a magnetic field, what is your explanation?
“Large-scale magnetic fields in the Universe were generated shortly after the Big Bang [gravity+vorticity] and have been with us ever since as the paper explains.”
and how did gravity and vorticity create magnetic fields?
Read the paper, or if you prefer an experiment in the laboratory: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/galaxy-magnetism-lab-simulation/
lsvalgaard says:
March 14, 2013 at 10:56 am
Better yet, Hannes was a friend of mine and we have often discussed these issues.
That is great and good for you. And now the internet gives more people the opportunity to exchange ideas and discuss, which is one of the best things of these times, am really happy and grateful for that. Thinking I could have been born in the stone ages or just 300 years ago…
What he railed against was thre idea that currents could not be produced by neutral plasma moving in magnetic fields.
Good to know that, and I understand this point.
As I said, everything interesting is due to electric currents created by neutral plasma moving across existing magnetic fields. This is the point Alfven was trying to get across.
Here you sound very much EU. Everything interesting is due to electric currents.
“You have consistently evaded, ignored, [not known] how to answer. Here is your chance. Carpe diem.”…” Try again.”
Leif, I did not make a theory of how currents appear in space, so if you ask me personally to explain how currents can appear in space, I can tell you only through observations in the environment. How do currents appear in our environment? Are these only through existing magnetic field? If I take off my pullover I can see sometime small electric discharges. These do not happen due to any magnetic fields but due to friction where some electrons have been displaced. This can be (tongue in cheek) maybe the way how some lava in the depth of the earth is electrically charged.
Another way of producing currents may be chemical reactions. (Now of course if you jump on me and ask to say which one in the universe is the one that I can name to create the cosmic currents where I cannot answer if there can ever be one. Would think that this is a study for a bit more time)
Furthermore my knowledge is not enough to tell if fusion with the production of the positrons is creating any electrical imbalance. How long is the positrons’ life expectation in the sun? Can it be that the fusion reaction creates an electrical imbalance? My knowledge is much to limited to be able to quantify and answer the question. So I rely on people wiser then me who have studied this and can tell more.
The only point would be, if such is true and fusion creates a positive imbalance, the charge should be possible to measure and the particle flow should be discernable. Furthermore if the stars would be the source of (+) through the fusion process where is the source of (-)? The Hawkings black holes radiation?
So I perfectly understand your objections when discussions about currents are being done without analysing how the currents are being created.
You can tell how currents are generated and maintained in EU. I have explained that currents result from neutral plasma interacting with a magnetic field, what is your explanation?
I understand your objection to the EU sun discharge model as you are missing the electric source that would run the show. As explained above the Electrical Universe in principle only says that electricity plays a larger role in the cosmos that previously thought, what you also say. If the EU sun model has any value I do not know. It seems like they point to some aspects that one cannot yet explain with other theories like the temperature of the corona and the acceleration of the ion there, so possibly there are valuable insights in the theory.
“Large-scale magnetic fields in the Universe were generated shortly after the Big Bang [gravity+vorticity] and have been with us ever since as the paper explains.”
and how did gravity and vorticity create magnetic fields?
Read the paper, or if you prefer an experiment in the laboratory: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/galaxy-magnetism-lab-simulation/
“In galaxy formation models, a gravitational nucleus is formed out of cold dark matter. Ordinary matter in the form of gas collects around the nucleus and, as it collapses, it heats up. ”
Interesting, but if it formed innitially a nucleus, why on earth is now DM in the form of a squashed ball around the galaxis?
http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn18344/60594306001-milky-ways-dark-matter-turned-on-its-side.html
but I digress…
” The ionizing effect of the shocks strips atoms of their electrons; the accelerating charged particles then produce magnetic fields. This process is known as the Biermann battery.”
Well actually saying that a shockwave stripped the atoms of electrons and the movement of the atoms=charged particles as currents created the magnetic fields.
Therefore first was the current, then the magnetic field 🙂 .(reminds me of the egg and chicken question)
Well if this process worked for a galaxy why would it not work at the birth of a new star, creating new magnetic fields?
Lars P. says:
March 15, 2013 at 4:34 pm
“As I said, everything interesting is due to electric currents created by neutral plasma moving across existing magnetic fields. This is the point Alfven was trying to get across.”
Here you sound very much EU.
Only the first part. Where you [and EU people] go wrong is to believe that mainstream science thinks otherwise. We do not. What we insist on is that there be forces that drive the currents. And EU does not provide any, they take the currents as given, forgetting that a current has its own destruction built in: moving charges from an excess to a deficit, equalizing the charges in the process.
These do not happen due to any magnetic fields but due to friction where some electrons have been displaced.
But these are not currents in any real sense as they disappear quickly. A current has to be maintained or driven by an emf and that is where EU is wrong. They do not have an emf. Real science has: neutral plasma moves [e.g. by temperature differences or gravity] across existing magnetic fields generating electric fields and currents. Batteries [chemical] run down and must be recharged to work again, i.e. a current [generated elsewhere] must be applied.
How long is the positrons’ life expectation in the sun?
zero. There aren’t any.
As explained above the Electrical Universe in principle only says that electricity plays a larger role in the cosmos that previously thought
Again, no. EU says a lot more: that currents are made by magic. Apart from all the nonsense about powering the stars, etc.
Well if this process worked for a galaxy why would it not work at the birth of a new star, creating new magnetic fields?
Because those processes do not operate anymore and also because the field generated is trillions of times smaller than magnetic fields found today needed for generation of currents. Magnetic fields today are generated by amplification [by turbulence, shock waves, induction, etc] of existing older fields all the way back to those very first [extremely weak] fields.
lsvalgaard says:
March 15, 2013 at 6:55 pm
How long is the positrons’ life expectation in the sun?
zero. There aren’t any.
Thanks Leif for the answer.
Hm, I thought that a way how to display the conversion process is:
4p=>4He + 2e(+) + 2ey
where that would be 2 positrons and 2 electron neutrinos. The positrons would then combine with electrons when these become available, however this would create a deficit of electrons inside the sun, therefore the annihilation process must be happening at the surface – interesting consequences could such reaction have.
Are the positrons destroyed earlier, or is anything wrong in what I put above?
Lars P. says:
March 16, 2013 at 12:04 am
The positrons would then combine with electrons when these become available, however this would create a deficit of electrons inside the sun, therefore the annihilation process must be happening at the surface
The positrons cannot make it to the surface as they immediately combine with electrons. Perhaps the easiest way to think about the process is by noting that charge neutrality must be observed [this is where EU fails]. If you remove two positive charges you must also remove two negative ones. Imagine you start with 1000 protons and 1000 electrons. Four protons [four positive charges] combine to form one helium nucleus [two positive charges] plus two positrons [two positive charges], so you still have 1000 positive charges. The two positrons immediately annihilate two electrons removing two positive and two negative charges, so overall you have 996 protons [with 996 positive charges] and one helium [with two positive charges, which added to the 996 yields 998] and 998 electrons, so the charge accounting still balances.
Leif, you are right with the charges and I was wrong, however the fact that I was wrong in this point does not mean the “EU” is wrong. This is not a “EU theory”, was just a thought of mine which was not thought to the end
“EU does not provide any, they take the currents as given, forgetting that a current has its own destruction built in: moving charges from an excess to a deficit, equalizing the charges in the process.”
What to my understanding “the EU guys” are doing, is looking to space and trying to figure out which phenomenon is of electric origin. This may be cumbersome if one wants first a reason for the current and then accept it is of electric origin. But this does not mean they are always wrong. May be right in cases. There is still certainly need to prove the assumptions.