NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched the Sun’s magnetic forces twist and turn enormous plumes of superheated plasma in a tornado that is larger than the Earth. The particles observed by SDO – mostly partly iron – were measured at a blazing 5 million degrees. (2.8 million degrees C.)
A small, but complex mass of plasma gyrated and spun about over the course of 40 hours above the surface of the Sun (Sept. 1-3, 2015). It was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerful magnetic forces but not ripped apart in this sequence. The temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C. (or 5 million degrees F.) Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.
If we ever needed a reminder that we are little more than a flyspeck on an elephant’s butt, and nature can muster forces beyond our comprehension and squish us like a bug at a moments notice, this video is it. (h/t to Dennis Wingo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZw-baRd8L4
This is not a new finding, these were first noted from SDO imagery back in 2012:
Here is a 3D computer visualization
This supercomputer visualization sheds light on data gathered through new telescopes from hard-to-observe areas of the Sun.
Scientists using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have recently observed two sizes of solar “tornado”—rapidly rotating, funnel-shaped structures. Both the small and the large type are driven by magnetic energy, as opposed to the temperature and moisture contrasts that fuel actual tornadoes on Earth.
The smaller, more-frequent type shown here is the result of a 2012 discovery by a team of researchers in Norway, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
In this animation of the data, a virtual camera travels around, above, and into the funnel of a solar magnetic tornado. As lines swirl around the funnel, the colors denote how quickly the plasma is rotating (from slower yellow to faster green and turquoise). Outside the funnel, the red lines represent the magnetic field. The colored patch below the funnel is the magnetic footprint at the Sun’s surface.
At any moment, about 11,000 of these tornadoes, some of them as wide as the United States, may be spinning across the Sun’s surface. Each one can pack winds of more than 10,000 miles per hour. The tornadoes were discovered using the Swedish one-meter solar telescope, together with SDO data. Researchers think that heated plasma (electrically charged gas) rises through the tornadoes into the Sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere. This could help explain a longtime mystery: how the corona reaches temperatures of up to 5 million degrees Fahrenheit.
The larger type of solar tornado (not shown here), which can sometimes be wider than a hundred Earths, is related to bursts of magnetic flux called coronal mass ejections.
—–Magnetic Tornadoes as Energy Channels into the Solar Corona—–
Science: Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm (University of Oslo, Norway), Eamon Scullion (University of Oslo), Oskar Steiner (Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics, Germany), Luc Rouppe van der Voort (University of Oslo), Jaime de la Cruz Rodriguez (Uppsala University, Sweden), Viktor Fedun (University of Sheffield, U.K.), Robert Erdélyi (University of Sheffield, U.K.)
Visualization: Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm, University of Oslo, Norway, using CO5BOLD http://folk.uio.no/svenwe/research.ht… and VAPOR (Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers) http://www.vapor.ucar.edu
More information: http://www.solartornado.info
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Any minute now the Eco-terrorists will claim these are caused by ” Man Made Glo.Bull Warming ” !!!!!
The particles observed by SDO – mostly iron
The particles are mostly hydrogen. The iron is but a small part [less than 1%] of the material. We observe in a spectral line of iron, but that does not mean that the matter is mostly iron.
Thanks! I was deeply confused about the iron until I read your explanation.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the sun and iron, Scarface, you’re not alone.
correction made, thanks
Still a bit misleading. Should rather say “mostly hydrogen, but observed in a spectral line of ionized iron making up a tiny part of the material”
Should it no have read “partly iron but mostly carbon dioxide” ? or is it Trenberth’s missing heat?
But given the size of the “tornado”, still a lot of iron, every atom of which was created by nuclear reaction.
For every lonely iron atom there are 35,000 hydrogen atoms…
The iron was not created in the Sun, but is supernovae billions of years ago.
Naturally begging the question, where did the iron come from in the supernova…?
Hydrogen fuses to Helium, Helium fuses to Carbon, then to Oxygen, Neon, …, up to Iron:
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/images/massive_star_struct.jpg
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec18.html
Each step takes shorter and shorter time. The final fusion to Iron takes less than one day.
It must have taken quite a while to drill into the Sun, but I’m glad they did it. Otherwise, how could we know the cross section so accurately?
Iron is supposed to cause the death of stars. How much iron can stars accumulate before they die?
The supernova [which is a rare event] happens when fusion in its core stops and that happens when iron [and nickel] is created as further fusion to heavier elements takes energy rather than produces energy.
If their last name is Clooney, quite a bit.
For the others, they need to take some extra Geritol, or risk flaming out early.
I still can’t understand why the pressure is so great at the center of the star/planet when the gravity there should be zero ??
g
consider two large bodies on either side of the center, e.g. two hemispheres. The gravitational attraction between them is very large so the center is in a tremendous vise.
Said in another way: http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr221/StarPhys/estcent.html
Homer science!
SDO team members wrote in a description of the video. “The temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C (or 5 million degrees F).”
http://www.space.com/30498-solar-tornado-nasa-sdo-video.html
iron is the stable end product of both fusion and fission (no net energy to be gained). thus it should be dirt common. given its density it should be found in quantity towards the center of any gravity well, such as a star, planet or moon.
An interesting question is whether the sun is producing iron today, or if the iron seen in the plasma is primordial, accumulated at the sun’s core similar to earth’s core during its formation. If the sun is not producing iron, was the sun ejecting more iron in the past than today? Will the sun run out of iron? Is it sustainable?
The iron deal has gotten out of hand. Iron makes up a tiny, tiny part of the material of the sun [0.003% by number] and was produced billions of years ago by supernovae exploding before the sun was born. The sun is not making iron today and will, of course, never ‘run out of iron’.
The sun is not making iron today and will, of course, never ‘run out of iron’.
=================
yet iron is found in the solar wind, thus if the sun is not producing iron then the iron in the solar wind is by definition not sustainable. the iron is not being replaced and we are all doomed.
NASA should implement an immediate iron recycling program for the sun to replace the iron being lost. think of the children and the risk of future iron deficiencies.
The solar wind is so tenuous that the mass loss is negligible. Again: the Sun will not run out of iron, or helium, or hydrogen, or anything for billions of years.
The irony force is strong in you ferdberple.
Ferdberple, I think the EPA, not NASA, should initiate the iron recycling program.
Cosmic Recycling: We Are Made of Stars
Sun’s iron content (tiny as Leif points out) is said to have accumulated from ~1000 supernovae events. SkyMapper in Australia is being used to find stars that have markedly lower iron content. Interesting stuff for UK readers and those who know a convenient proxy to BBC iPlayer:
Cosmic Dawn: The Real Moment of Creation. Not on YouTube yet AFAIK.
Question is, where did that putative primordial Hydrogen come from in the first place? Does the universe eventually through expansion, diffuse and decay back to a Cosmic Dark Ages state with nothing but primordial hydrogen? Or at least to some point where the whole thing starts over leading eventually to collapse and another big bang; Universe Recycling? Seems more likely that both are going on simultaneously with Black holes being pockets of extreme collapse in the bigger picture that will eventually come together again, who needs primordial hydrogen?
Put enough energy into a box and protons and anti-protons are generated in almost equal numbers: for each billion anti-protons there will be one billion and one protons. The protons and anti-protons annihilate each other and are turned into energetic photons [which we today see as the Cosmic Microwave Background]. The one surviving proton is the main visible constituent of the Universe today. Helium is also generated in those first few minutes, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Helium.pdf
That the generated amount matches what we actually see today is a strong argument for the Big Bang.
Indeed, same deal for Lithium.
Why is NASA; a presumably scientific organization, using Fahrenheit scale for Temperature ??
Given that the high numerical value (compared to my back yard temperature) is related to the physics involved; I can see no purpose in reporting anything other than the absolute Temperature in SI units, namely K (kelvin).
Perhaps we should have a new NASA temperature scale in degrees N, where the freezing point of water is 320 degrees N, and this new solar tornado is at 50 million degrees N.
Now that is a really impressive temperature.
g
Because it was a press release to the American public, though they have been known to mix and match to the detriment of certain Mars projects.
Thanks. I was thinking, “For the love of God, man, don’t give the Iron Sun fanatics an excuse, or we’ll never hear the end of it…” You beat me to it.
rgb
Yes. Quite. Otherwise I’d be wondering what caused the Sun to suddenly turn into a rather unique Wolf-Rayet.
I am pretty sure it’s the growth of solar panels on earth that caused the solar tornado. Especially the solar towers in Spain.
Just having fun trying to out do the ridiculous correlations alarmists make between human activity and nature.
With that kind of size, powers and temperatures, one could easily start to wonder whether there might be a sun-climate connection beyond our current knowledge, Well, I do wonder.
How many Hiroshima atomic bombs would that be?
Lots and lots
And how big a thermometer do they use? An Al Gore sized one? But seriously, how DO they measure this 5 million degree temp?
You mean the one that Democrat President Harry Truman dropped on the helpless Japanese civilian? And them followed at Nagasaki? (I believe that Harry made the right decision and saved perhaps a million American lives and perhaps ten million Japanese. However, when you say it my way, liberal heads explode. And that is fun to watch! History, a study of what REALLY happened, can be so inconvenient!)
Harry was one of the truly great presidents; and a spectacular one for a Democrat.
I’m no sure that JFK really was a Democrat.
g
Tip O’Neill would agree with you. JFK didn’t need the Democrat Party machine to get elected. His dad had the Mafia.
I’d have to give Truman a B. He made the right decision to A-bomb Japan in 1945, threatened Stalin to leave Iran, fought the Communists in Greece, and the Marshall Plan was probably a good thing. But he dropped the ball on prosecuting the Communist spies left over from FDR’s Red-riddled administration (even though he knew they were guilty, because he didn’t want to give the GOP ammo), disarmed too precipitously, lost China and botched Korea, although the big booboo there was committed by his secretary of state, Dean Acheson.
But of course the Sun has little to do with the Earth’s Climate……ask any totalitarian green monster.
They know the real truth. It’s that pesky .04% of CO2 thats to blame. Oh btw, only a fraction of which humans produce…….
To be fair to the climate science establishment , not all parts of it deny the influence of solar activity .
As an example I suggest this article by a BBC journalist :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/entries/d99e9ee4-2a79-3500-a1d4-07028ecb58d1
published earlier this year about speculation that a strong el nino would bring a cold winter in a few months time to the UK.
The correspondent . paul hudson states:
“During the last El Nino of 2009/2010, the winter across northern Europe, including the UK was exceptionally cold.
But there are many other variables which affect Europe’s climate and there was a deep, protracted solar minimum at the same time, which is known to increase the likelihood of colder winters.”
His credentials are very respectable in the met field:
“I worked as a forecaster with the Met Office for nearly 15 years locally and at the international unit, after graduating with first class honours in Geophysics and Planetary physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1992. I then joined the BBC in October 2007, where I divide my time between forecasting and reporting on stories about climate change and its implications for people’s everyday lives.”
So i believe that his comments reveal a more open minded attitude to natural and solar effects on climate than we are sometimes led to believe (not least by the BBC itself ironically).
As soon as all the SUVs, coal fired plants and fossil fuel use on the sun shuts down, as per EPA EDICTS, then these solar tornados will be a thing of the past .
5 million degree plasma
==============
yet the surface of the sun is only 5 thousand degrees.
this must be one of those 1000x feedback loops climate science is famous for, that allows radiation from a colder object to heat up a hotter object. Since the surface is 1000 times bigger than the plasma, the energy balances out in the solar energy budget.
or could there be a much simpler explanation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_cooking
“For nearly all models of induction cooktops, a cooking vessel must be made of, or contain, a ferromagnetic metal such as cast iron or some stainless steels.”
Induction cooktops work by making use of the hysteresis loss in ferromagnetic materials. In order for that to work, the metal needs to be below the Curie temperature of the ferromagnetic material in question. Also helps that the metal be in solid form (i.e. the iron is not responsible for heating of the corona).
Other forms of induction eating make use of the eddy currents in the material being heated, requiring that the material be conductive. On a large scale, plasmas are quite conductive and thus sensitive to eddy current heating.
I must admit, I usually do eat by inducting materials.
So, Iron is the Sun’s CO2.
Tiny amount… check
Linked to heat events … check
Linked to tornadoes… check.
.
.
j/k
+10
Wow!
Better get to the storm cellar Martha! Where’s the kids? …and don’t forget Toto.
…It is so huge a storm, it is unfathomable. I just love it.
Apparently all this solar activity does not contribute to the variability in earth’s climate!
Here is a plot of night temp vs day temp. ..
http://rjh.org/~rjh/darwin/darwin-weather-ll.html
Like turning the sun, off-on-off-on-off-on-off. A 10 degree change in 12 hours! I wonder why?
🙂
Leif, you say .003% iron. My goodness the sun has a much worse greenhouse problem than we do. Up to 5 million degrees. Wow. I am just glad we are dealing with CO2, just think if we had iron in our atmosphere the planet would boil.
Iron in the sun is nothing new, usually promoted by an ex-NASA scientist (Dr. O.M) earning him a ‘restricted’ access to the number of blogs. Alternative ideas can be found here , but are most likely just speculation.
Dr O.M does tend to spam everywhere with his idea, I can understand him getting restraining order. However, I did download the paper he at Judith’s site and it looked interesting and credible. Don’t recall it being much about an ‘iron sun’ though. The concept is new to me.
However, one thing that did not ring true for me was the comment above that the iron in the sun comes from 1000 supernovae. Rare events, even rarer in the proximity of our system. This just smacks of improbable speculative hypothesis made up to avoid saying they have no idea.
File that in the same box as “dark matter”. Something we cannot see, that does not interact with other matter but we know it’s there because otherwise our theory would be wrong.
Mike,
First generation stars burned hot and fast (last only about 2 million years). Supernovae would have been far more common during the first generation. Our star is a second generation star (it may actually be 3rd, 4th, etc., but all subsequent generation stars are called second generation.) I don’t believe any first generation stars have been noted within the Milky Way. (though they think they have found some in a distant galaxy see http://earthsky.org/space/brightest-galaxy-and-first-generation-stars) They would be identified by only Hydrogen spectral lines. They would be chock full of heavier nuclei by now, but those would be in the core and we do not see the emissions from the core, because they are all absorbed in the core and the envelop. We see the envelop which in a first generation star is all hydrogen (maybe some escaped helium ejected from the core and some tunneling p-p freaks in the envelop.)
Hi Mike
Perhaps a large iron rich planet ‘dived’ into sun, and in its fly-by caused some puzzling solar system anomalies.
Let’s assume that 0.003% (re: svalgaard) is measured by volume, this would mean that the iron content by was slightly less than volume of Uranus or about 40 times volume of the Earth. (volume of the sun =1.409 x 10^18, earth 1.08 x 10^12)
However, one thing that did not ring true for me was the comment above that the iron in the sun comes from 1000 supernovae. Rare events, even rarer in the proximity of our system.
There have been hundred million supernovae in the Galaxy, but since the interstellar gas is not well mixed only a small fraction of those [perhaps something like a 1000] are actual direct sources of the iron in the Sun. Although those stars that went supernovae themselves also contained some iron from still earlier supernovae, so some of the iron might well be ancient.
If the supernova contained 10 solar masses of iron we can estimate the number of supernovae contributing to the iron in the sun [0.14% by mass] as 10/(0.14/100) = 7000. Since not all of the supernova was iron, the number of supernovae needed is less than the 7000, so an estimate of 1000 seems very reasonable.
Thanks for all the comments, and to Vuk’ for the iron sun discussion. It looks like an objective assessment of the question, I’m still working through it.
This reads like a back engineered justification. Start with a totally random, unjustified IF and end up with the required result. QED.
And ‘if’ the supernova did NOT contained 10 solar masses of iron it does not support the initial figure of 1000 SN contributing iron to the sun. So where does 10 come from and why should we take it as the basis of the big if and the rest of the argument ?
http://www.space.com/6638-supernova.html
” For a star to explode as a Type II supernova, it must be at several times more massive than the sun (estimates run from eight to 15 solar masses).”
10 is a nice round number in the correct range.
Thanks for the reply. That explains what appears to be an arbitrary starting figure.
However, that relies on the orthodox ( speculative ) explanation for the development of a type II supernova. The link that Vuk’ provided points out that the only close look we have had at supernova event was 1987A and that this was in no way conformed to the sort of star nor type of implosion event envisaged by the orthodox explanation.
That was about 30 years ago, yet the NASA link you provided does not account for observations not matching hypothesis.
That’s about as long as climatologists have been banging on about ‘global warming’. I can start to see why other fields of science stayed embarrassingly quiet when Climategate hit the fan.
but the supernova is not pure iron.
.
Err, no, that would mean you need more supernovae, not less. Now since SN1987A was a blue supergiant with a mass about 1/20 of a red , that means your back of envelop figures are off by at least two orders of magnitude.
None of this adds up. Not surprisingly, if observations are ignored and one conjecture gets tweaked to fit another.
Now since SN1987A was a blue supergiant with a mass about 1/20 of a red , that means your back of envelop figures are off by at least two orders of magnitude.but the supernova is not pure iron.
You have that a bit backwards, SN1987A had a mass of 20 times that of the Sun
http://www.space.com/8435-supernova-explosion-recreated-3.html
Red supergiants develop from main sequence stars with masses between about 10 M☉ and 30 M☉.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_supergiant
Thus no different than SN1987A
Ah Ha!
Here IS a job for Al Gore.
http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z65/ministrymember99/al-gore-breathing-fire.jpg
“Take that you nasty solar tornado, Global Human Warming is stronger that YOUUUUU.
Ha ha
I thought Algore said the earth’s center was at 5 million degrees.
He was right, only he confused the earth with the sun. After all, he went to government schools.
Here’s a tornado song to listen to during the read:
Sorry, screwed up:
https://youtu.be/jdVkxylY0g8?list=PL6B378F07050F860F&t=183
I give up, It wants to post the whole collection. The song is called Tornado Ripe. Sorry!
it is ok max
When dealing with astrophysical temperatures, could you please use meaningful units, e.g., keV, rather than degrees C?
I agree, as photon energies of almost always given in eV not degrees K (though photographers use degrees K for color). Same thing goes for fusion reactors, cross section data for the reactions is given in keV or MeV, not degrees K.
No, please don’t, unless you include a unit of temperature meaningful to normal people (i.e. those without qualifications in astrophysics) as well.
No disrespect to astrophysicists but most of us don’t use your native tongue.
I find the statement that the tornado is ‘channeling energy into the Corona’ and that it in any way explains why the corona is so much hotter than the surface below a bit if a stretch. Occasionally one hears of some new explanation for why the corona is so hot. I think there was another novel explanation last year, right?
How could a tornado be running from a cold zone into a much hotter zone unless there was a strong electrical field pulling it up? Tornadoes, even magnetic ones, work on ‘draft’ involving the relaxation of a potential. I am surprised to see CME’s described as a larger version of this tornado. The models of the CME evolution look nothing like this. What’s going on? All said and done, are they running away from the dreaded topics of EU and iron in the sun?
It is magnetic based, so anything is possible.
When intense magnetic fields exhibit tight curl a vortex can easily be created. When such a strong magnetic field loses its distant pole, it whips about and can rip matter out of the corona as the field tries to locate another opposite pole. The CME is the mass that continues on as the field re-establishes back to the surface. (Or at least that is my simplistic take on a very complex matter that I haven’t put in the years of study to have mastered)
You guys are funny today…
You probably need more iron in your diet…
I don’t. I suffer from haemochromatosis, too much iron in my blood. Most people with normal levels have enough iron to make one nail. I have enough to make a bag full lol.
You guys are funny….
Probably need more iron in your diet….
If I understand what is currently happening to the sun, how the sun is different than the standard model, and how past abrupt changes to the solar cycle caused cyclic abrupt climate change, we are approaching the time when there will be a set of very special climate changes and solar observational changes that will send multiple fields into crisis. We are going to see the type of theory change that occurred in geology with the discovery of tectonic plate movement.
While we wait for the in your face type of observational paradoxes that cannot be ignored and will most certainly stimulate discussion, the following is some background of how the sun has changed.
As solar cycle 24 progressed, the long lasting large sunspots have gradually been replaced by tiny short lived pores. The sun will start to have spotless days by sometime in this quarter and will have multiple spotless days next year.
The solar Northern large scale magnetic field strength (blue line this graph) is now oscillating around zero. The solar southern hemisphere is roughly a year behind the solar northern hemisphere. The observational fact that the solar large scale northern magnetic field strength is oscillating around zero is not a surprise. The solar large scale magnetic field is created by the residue magnetic field strength of the cycle’s sunspots.
Solar cycle 24 is anomalous. Solar cycle 24 is not a slowdown in the solar cycle. Solar cycle 24 is an interruption to the basic mechanism that causes the solar cycle.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
The following is an example of an observational paradox to support the assertion that there is something fundamental incorrect with the standard solar model. (P.S. There are more than a hundred astrophysics observational anomalies and paradoxes related to the explanation of what happens when large bodies collapse.)
As many are aware the solar convection zone surface rotational speed changes based an latitude. The rotational speed of the surface plasma at the poles of the sun is roughly 40% slower the rotational speed at the equator of the sun. This makes sense as the convection zone is a plasma (type of gas).
Sunspots which float on the surface of the sun have the same rotational speed as the plasma on which they float.
The rotational speed of Coronal holes on the other hand does not change with latitude. Coronal holes’ rotational speed matches that of the tachocline. The observational fact that coronal holes’ rotational speed matches that of tachocline means the source of coronal holes is not in the convection zone but rather something deep within the sun.
The coronal hole rotational paradox is of course ignored as its solution requires a new solar model.
The peculiar solar cycle 24 – where do we stand?
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
Perhaps this is a job for Dark Matter and/or other occult objects and forces – just as in the case of the observed rotational velocities of stars in galactic disks.
how the sun is different than the standard model
Except that it is not. The standard model has been found to be very accurate.
The rest of your comment is misunderstood nonsense [as usual].
“That the generated amount matches what we actually see today is a strong argument for the Big Bang.”
Certainly for the particle physics involved, but not so much for the singulaity theorized to have spawned the big bang. Particle physics corrections to general relativity and acoustic oscilations argue for an infinite universe that is infinitely old. http://www.livescience.com/49958-theory-no-big-bang.html
Your link states:
“Either way, the universe was once very, very small and hot.
The fact that there’s a hot fireball at very early times: that is confirmed, Brandenberg told Live Science.”
The Big Bang is thus a fact and we take it from there onwards. What happened before [if there were a ‘before’] is not relevant for the discussion.
Small and hot could very well be the signature of a more recent and more local event within an infinite and infinitely old universe than theorized by the big bang proponents. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/01/08/boss-one-percent/. And I realize that “before” has no meaning when we speak of before the universe and time itself. But there may have been a “before” the theoretical big bang in an infinite universe. We need to separate “fact” from commonly held beliefs which are theoretical in nature.
infinite and infinitely old universe than theorized by the big bang proponents
The Big Bang is concerned with what happened 13.8 billion years ago when a very hot and infinite universe started to expand. BB cosmology is an observational, high-precision science, thus a fact as we normally understand that word.
“thus a fact as we normally understand that word.” Depends upon who “we” encompasses and how convenient it is to quote theory as fact. We have way too much settled science. The big bang is a theory, not a fact and I accept it as a good theory, but not a fact. Not enough “observation” to be given that designation, yet.
The BB fulfills all the requirements that are needed to accept it as a fact. BB cosmology is high-precision, observational science
http://www.universetoday.com/118017/like-a-boss-how-astronomers-are-getting-precise-measurements-of-the-universes-expansion-rate/
Is the Theory of Relativity a fact or ‘just’ a theory?
Relativity, BB, Evolution express facts. In science the word ‘theory’ has a very specific meaning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
Jim G1
“We need to separate “fact” from commonly held beliefs which are theoretical in nature.”
There are endless possibilities when evidence is thin. Let’s start separating, define ‘fact’ and we can start filling up that basket.
If there is no observational evidence to the contrary and the theory has not been proven false through lab or observation, we are getting close to what I would call a fact. If it simply makes the numbers work, as in big bang or dark matter, then not so much. Bring me a spoonful of dark matter. The particle physics example that I mentioned below and much of GR are as close to real facts as advanced science gets. And as I said below, even these may change. There is no science without skepticism. Consensus is the enemy of discovery.
If there is no observational evidence to the contrary and the theory has not been proven false through lab or observation, we are getting close to what I would call a fact.
BB is not a theory, but the collective name for a large amount of high-precision observations.
The biggest problem with the term “fact” is the implication of finality and that it should not be questioned. Science is nothing if not constantly questioning what is currently believed.
No that is not the problem. Every scientist knows that facts are what we currently consider to be established and that that assessment is not fixed, but can be amended by further discoveries.
In science, a “fact” is a repeatable careful observation or measurement (by experimentation or other means), also called empirical evidence. In this sense BB is a fact as it is based on observations.
The problem is with people like you who does not not realize the above.
“The problem is with people like you who does not not realize the above.” ( SIC)
Very impressive intellectual argument, Leif.
Yeah, I thought so.
Why is it so hard to understand that our sun contains iron – and it is not producing it? Earth contains an iron core (both liquid and solid), yet I am fairly certain that the Earth is not creating it. Where did it come from? Well, along with every other naturally occuring element in the Periodic Table except maybe H, it was created in the cores of stars and dispersed throughout the galaxy/universe when those stars exploded.
Iron was part of the molecular cloud from which our solar system was created and through gravity, angular momentum, and probably a few dozen other actions/reactions/interactions the cloud collapsed into a star, 8 planets, a crap load of moons, and a bazillion more asteroids and comets. We know we have iron. We are fairly certain that Mars has iron (rust red, and all). We know most asteroids have iron (ferrous meteorites).
So why is finding iron in the plasma of the sun – the single largest attractive object in our neighborhood – surprising? Think of all the iron that it collected BEFORE the density was sufficient to start fusing H into HE.
Unless you think WE got it all, that is.
Thanks Isvalgaard for your insight.
To iterate the point: it is not a surprise that there is a [tiny] amount of iron in the Sun. We understand where it came from. But is is wrong to state that the sun is ‘mostly iron’ and misleading to say that it is ‘partly iron’.
Yup. And wouldn’t you know it, I am “partly gold” as well.
See, I am worth something afterall.
Small and hot could very well be the signature of a more recent and more local event within an infinite and infinitely old universe than theorized by the big bang proponents. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/01/08/boss-one-percent/. And I realize that “before” has no meaning when we speak of before the universe and time itself. But there may have been a “before” the theoretical big bang in an infinite universe. We need to separate “fact” from commonly held beliefs which are theoretical in nature.
So, which is Fact and which is Theory?
That is the question. Much of particle physics has been proven in the laboratory, strange as much of it is. Those are facts to me. Though even they may change with better technology.
OH, so they have “precise measurements” of the amount of dark matter now. I wonder how they did that !!?
In truth black matter is a huge fiddle factor of ‘invisible’ matter to account for the mass of known universe being off by about a factor of 20!! from what is expected assuming that redshift indicates distance from an assumed Big Bang.
If that is what we are supposed to regard as hard “fact” in a hard science we’d better stop giving climatologists such a hard time. They have the same ingrained orthodoxy but are only off by a factor of two.
Here is [one of the many] ways we know that:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/CosmicSoundWaves.pdf
Dr. S,
Thanks for that link.
It didn’t occur to me that dark matter must be immune to electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force, leaving just gravity and the weak nuclear force.
Like I said we can’t see, it does not react with anything ( except graviationally ) and we only know it’s there because we need a fiddle factor for the effect of gravity on the rate of expansion.
Nothing but ‘facts’ I tell you and ‘particularly strong evidence’.
As I said, the expansion and the amount of dark matter are observed facts. Nothing to do with fiddling to fit a theory.
What would the smallest particle of one of those 2.800,000C flares, molecule, atom, electron, something, look like? Supposing of course that our children’s children’s measuring devices can actually look at them.
All tornadoes involve plasma:
http://www.solvingtornadoes.com
According to eminent, Nobel Laureate scientist Prince Albert, five million degrees is the temperature at the center of the earth. Too hot by three orders of magnitude, but close enough for government work.
Jim G1 September 10, 2015 at 1:26 pm
“But there may have been a “before” the theoretical big bang in an infinite universe.”
Universe ‘is’ just state of the energy-mass balance within a nonlinear close system, while the time ‘is’ represented by the ratio of two.
Perfect energy-mass balance is only an instant known as the ‘big-bang’ but it may not be a singularity. Even the smallest of variations in such system of bi-directional mass-energy conversion can rapidly form distinct periods of the energy vs. mass excess (we perceive time as positive), or vice versa where there is excess of mass vs. energy (time from our perspective would be perceived as negative).
Thus there is no time before or after, time just reverses its direction.