NASA is trying to figure out why when magnetic field lines containing charged particles cross on the sun, things go “boom”. In earth’s magnetic field, we get “magnetic portals” to the sun. Sounds like a movie.
From NASA Science News
August 31, 2009: Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe’s favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space–which is to say almost everywhere. On the sun magnetic reconnection causes solar flares as powerful as a billion atomic bombs. In Earth’s atmosphere, it fuels magnetic storms and auroras. In laboratories, it can cause big problems in fusion reactors. It’s ubiquitous.
The problem is, researchers can’t explain it.
The basics are clear enough. Magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, reconnect and—Bang! Magnetic energy is unleashed in the form of heat and charged-particle kinetic energy.
Right: A cartoon model of magnetic reconnection on the sun. [more]
But how? How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic field lines trigger such a ferocious explosion?
“Something very interesting and fundamental is going on that we don’t really understand — not from laboratory experiments or from simulations,” says Melvyn Goldstein, chief of the Geospace Physics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
NASA is going to launch a mission to get to the bottom of the mystery. It’s called MMS, short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, and it consists of four spacecraft which will fly through Earth’s magnetosphere to study reconnection in action. The mission passed its preliminary design review in May 2009 and was approved for implementation in June 2009. Engineers can now start building the spacecraft.
“Earth’s magnetosphere is a wonderful natural laboratory for studying reconnection,” says mission scientist Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute. “It is big, roomy, and reconnection is taking place there almost non-stop.”
In the outer layers of the magnetosphere, where Earth’s magnetic field meets the solar wind, reconnection events create temporary magnetic “portals” connecting Earth to the sun. Inside the magnetosphere, in a long drawn-out structure called “the magnetotail,” reconnection propels high-energy plasma clouds toward Earth, triggering Northern Lights when they hit. There are many other examples, and MMS will explore them all.
The four spacecraft will be built at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Each observatory is shaped like a giant hockey puck, about 12 feet in diameter and 4 feet in height,” says Karen Halterman, MMS Project Manager at Goddard.
Above: An artist’s concept of the four MMS spacecraft flying in formation through the space around Earth. [more]
The mission’s sensors for monitoring electromagnetic fields and charged particles are being built at a number of universities and laboratories around the country, led by the Southwest Research Institute. When the instruments are done, they will be integrated into the spacecraft frames at Goddard. Launch is scheduled for 2014 onboard an Atlas V rocket.
Any new physics MMS learns could ultimately help alleviate the energy crisis on Earth.
“For many years, researchers have looked to fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for our planet,” says Burch. “One approach, magnetic confinement fusion, has yielded very promising results with devices such as tokamaks. But there have been problems keeping the plasma (hot ionized gas) contained in the chamber.”
“One of the main problems is magnetic reconnection,” he continues. “A spectacular and even dangerous result of reconnection is known as the sawtooth crash. As the heat in the tokamak builds up, the electron temperature reaches a peak and then ‘crashes’ to a lower value, and some of the hot plasma escapes. This is caused by reconnection of the containment field.”
Right: Inside a tokamak. Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley Labs [more]
In light of this, you might suppose that tokamaks would be a good place to study reconnection. But no, says Burch. Reconnection in a tokamak happens in such a tiny volume, only a few millimeters wide, that it is very difficult to study. It is practically impossible to build sensors small enough to probe the reconnection zone.
Earth’s magnetosphere is much better. In the expansive magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet, the process plays out over volumes as large as tens of kilometers across. “We can fly spacecraft in and around it and get a good look at what’s going on,” he says.
That is what MMS will do: fly directly into the reconnection zone. The spacecraft are sturdy enough to withstand the energetics of reconnection events known to occur in Earth’s magnetosphere, so there is nothing standing in the way of a full two year mission of discovery.
Learn more about the mission at the MMS Home Page.
When NASA finishes their research, perhaps they would be good enough to explain, in a way we laymen can understand it, why / how induction range elements work. Seems like the neatest thing since microwave ovens to me.
Any connection [however remote] between magnetic lines and isobars?
Always wondered….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Induction range,
A magnetic field (predominately) is generated by a coil (and some other stuff) that changes faster than the atoms and the molecules in the pot that is immersed in the field can change. This causes friction which heats the metal pot.
This is the layman’s explanation. No need to go into hysteresis loops, coil Q, IGBT drive voltages, Class E operation, etc.
Good luck to NASA. I have a picture held to the fridge with something called a magnet. Explain that.
Let us see if I can properly describe lines of force; when an EMF (electro – motive – force ) event takes place the chaos of the aether is aligned and set in motion as if it were magnets connected end to end and set into circulation as current in a wire. Each sets up a counter field along side that creates the appearance of individual strands as in a large rope. The more voltage the more powerful the circulation, the more amperage the larger the apparent rope size. This energy has inertia that has to go some where. In a transformer it goes from coil to coil, in a tesla coil it rebounds back into the coil that made it. In a rather spectacular fashion.
The sun creates lines of force of tremendous energy levels that sometimes align and supercharge lines of force of the earth, when these collapse they set in motion electrical, EMF, events here on earth.
NASA is going to launch a mission to get to the bottom of the mystery.
NASA sending out an SOS? I’ll send them some lightning in a bottle.
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2007/9/AMAZING-LIGHTNING-IN-A-BOTTLE-374529.html
This is as you would gather, methodically flawed.
Tenuc (15:23:39) “Seems odd that magnetic fields could produce that amount of energy.”
It is old dogma which has influenced conceptions that is “odd”. Soon the old dogma will be in the grave.
It is important to note the word “fundamental” in Anthony’s quote of Melvyn Goldstein. Considering this, anyone who projects authority regarding these phenomena without blunt & clear qualification is more than suspect on a political level.
Myron Mesecke (16:59:19)
““Each observatory is shaped like a giant hockey puck,”
What’s with all the hockey stuff? First a graph and now a set of observatories. Someone needs to shape something like a football. Go Longhorns! Go Cowboys!”
Here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CCaa1mo&11aT1mo.PNG
Can you see a football in the middle of that? Note how mean temperature is nothing more than a seam.
So-called “magnetic reconnection” doesn’t happen.
What does happen is current disruption. As in electric current which is charged particles in ordered motion.
When magnetic fields reconfigure their morphology and direction, it is because the electric currents that generate the magnetic fields have changed morphology and direction.
Any attempt to understand releases of energy that are associated with charged particles, plasma, without understanding the dynamics of the charged particles will be futile.
Studying magnetic fields in isolation from the charged particles is missing half the picture.
UGH! Reconnection does indeed happen and magnetic fields in space plasmas don’t require electrical currents to generate them. Comparing plasma with earth based electrical circuitry doesn’t work well, if at all. Any attempt to understand these plasmas and reconnection, without understanding plasma first, is futile.
For a fundamental understanding of space plasmas, please read this book recommended previously in this blog by Dr. Svalgaard (I think): Conversations on Electric and Magnetic Fields in the Cosmos by Parker, E., published by Princeton University Press.
Study the spheromak toroidal plasmas…
As an ex-astrophysicist it always warms my heart to see real scientists saying what real scientists should, i.e. “we don’t actually understand or know everything”.
Or, to put it another way, “the science isn’t settled”.
We don’t really understand the fundamental forces / structures at work in nature (sure we can ‘model’ them but it doesn’t necessarily follow that model = reality).
We’re not really sure how magnetism works, how matter has mass, how big the universe is, how fast the universe is expanding, where all the matter actually _is_, how consciousness occurs, how an embryo develops, how life started and so on… but we can rest assured that we (as a race) fully understand that we’re on a path to doom and misery because we understand how our complex climate system works…pull the other one, it’s got Al Gore on it (a true ding-a-ling).
Cheers
Mark
Ray (14:22:50) :
“I just recently had my kids watching those vintage movies…”
Ray (14:22:50) :
“I just recently had my kids watching those vintage movies…”
That makes me feel old. I still kind of consider it a recent movie !
Now if only they could combine this with a flux capacitor . . . .
I see that the electric people are out in force. My comments:
1) Magnetic reconnection does happen and is a major [universal] process for releasing energy stored in magnetic fields, and is observed in solar flares, nanoflares heating the corona, aurorae, and observed directly in the laboratory
2) Magnetic reconnection happens when oppositely directed magnetic fields are pressed together in a plasma by movements of the plasma
3) In an ideal MHD plasma, there is no reconnection, but no plasma is ideal
4) In the boundary between plasma regions with opposite field lines a current is generated. This current does no work as the magnetic and electric fields are perpendicular, and thus does not ‘explode’
5) The current layer is instable and when the layer breaks down, reconnection [and explosions] happen. In a sense ‘resistivity’ occurs which allows the reconnection to proceed much faster [‘explosion’]
6) The ‘mystery’ is the detailed process by which this ‘anomalous resistivity’ arises, not that reconnection occurs.
7) The more we know [and we know a lot] the more questions we can ask about the details. This gives the false impression that we don’t know anything, because we ask all those questions.
Leif Svalgaard (07:56:38) :
7) The more we know [and we know a lot] the more questions we can ask about the details. This gives the false impression that we don’t know anything, because we ask all those questions.
We certainly do (as a species) know a lot. I also agree that the more you know, the more questions arise. However, the history of science has many examples where uncovering some small, anomalous, detail results in the realisation that in fact we didn’t know very much about something in the first place :o)
The above is not meant as an invective and is not aimed at any individual – I just think every generation feels it’s close to understanding the ‘big picture’ and therefore it becomes a matter of refinement, only for something unexpected to come along and turn everything on its head again.
Cheers
Mark
PlasMan (18:15:25) : Very interesting. From the link you gave:
Alfvén ridiculed this explanation by saying, «“A magnetic field line is by definition a line which is everywhere parallel to the magnetic field. If the current system changes, the shape of the magnetic field line changes but it is meaningless to speak about a translational movement of magnetic field lines.”» – Alfvén, op cit, p.12.(Emphasis in original) Despite his warnings about this, astrophysicists persist in the notion that moving and interacting magnetic field lines – independent of any electrical current causality – produce the release of energy and plasma during solar flares. They have named this process ‘ reconnection’.
I notice that the funny diagram is labelled as a “cartoon”
There’s that singularity point where allegedly the magnetic “filed lines” meet.
I don’t see any “crossing” occurring in that cartoon; but there is the inference that a field line undergoes a dicontinuous change in curvature; and I can’t tell whether that results in the obtuse angle “side swipe” between two lines, or whether it is an acute angle “reflection” that happens at that point.
So does anyone (expert) care to say what Earnshaw’s theorem has to say about such an occurrence. Seems like an impossibility to me.
George
PS which is not to say that magnetic reconnection; whatever that is, isn’t real. I’ll take Leif’s word, that he has some of those corralled in his lab.
Something from IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 35, NO. 4, AUGUST 2007
Author: Donald E. Scott
http://members.cox.net/dascott3/IEEE-TransPlasmaSci-Scott-Aug2007.pdf
VII. CONCLUSION
Maxwell showed that magnetic fields are the inseparable handmaidens of electric currents and vice versa. This is as true in the cosmos as it is here on Earth. Those investigators who, for whatever reason, have not been exposed to the now well-known properties of real plasmas and electromagnetic field theory must refrain from inventing “new” mechanisms in efforts to support current-free cosmic models. “New science” should not be invoked until all of what is now known about electromagnetic fields and electric currents in space plasma has been considered. Pronouncements that are in contradiction
to Maxwell’s equations ought to be openly challenged by responsible scientists and engineers.
Nogw (09:08:44) :
Maxwell showed that electric currents are the inseparable handmaidens of magnetic fields and vice versa.
The notion of ‘open field lines’ is often used to ridicule modern astrophysics. That notion is just a convenient way of describing some phenomena, just like the notion of ‘electron orbits’ in an atom. Neither notion is correct, but are for some purposes useful, and no scientists are confused by this or drive the ‘analogy’ to far.
Here is a nice description of magnetic reconnection in the laboratory.
This is not the place to enter into a useless discussion about this universal process, just as this is not the place to list all the reasons we don’t believe the Earth is flat, or all the reasons evolution is true, or why the Earth is of great age [rather than 6000 years], or why “Worlds are not in Collision”, etc.
Leif Svalgaard (09:44:28) :
Here is a nice description of magnetic reconnection in the laboratory.
Forgot the link: http://mrx.pppl.gov/
John F. Hultquist (21:16:11) :
I have a picture held to the fridge with something called a magnet. Explain that.
That is mainly MAGNETITE. Synthetic magnetite is made (one of several methods) by mixing Ferrous oxide (Fe+2)-really using ferrous hydroxide- with Ferric Oxide (Fe2O3) in the correct proportion (according to its molecular weights):
%
FeO 71.85 31.03%
Fe2O3 159.70 68.97%
Fe3O4 231.55
Both compounds when separated (FeO it is unstable, it oxidizes) are not magnetic. Then, what does make them magnetic, when united?
Electricity
An electrical current is established between FeO (where Fe is +2) and Fe2O3 (Fe+3), because of difference in valence=a difference in potential, which results in a generated magnetic field. The black Fe3O4 compound (iron black) has been formed.
Got it?
No electricity=No Magnetism
No links needed.
Dr. Leif Svalgaard (07:56:38), makes the usual claim by astronomers that so-called “magnetic reconnection” does happen, but as the article from NASA clearly states, “The problem is, researchers can’t explain it.”
Perhaps, they can’t explain it because they aren’t considering all the physical “players” participating in the process (charged particles and their attendent electric fields).
The experiments that Dr. Svalgaard refers to depend on electric currents to generate the magnetic fields: Turn off the current and the lights go off on the experiment.
Scientists commit error when they ignore observations & measurements.
Dr. Svaalgard regularly brings out the 0.1 variance in irradiation between solar maximum and solar minimum to throw a wet blanket on the idea that the solar variance cycle (sunspot cycle) has anything at all to do with temperature variance that has been reported in conjunction with variance in sunspot activity.
But the problem is that’s not the whole story: X-ray and ultra violet rays also increase during solar maximum (as do all segments on the electromagnetic wavelength spectrum):
“Extreme ultraviolet photons from the Sun are at least 10 times more energetic than UV-A and UV-B and they vary 100 times more [between solar minimum and solar maximum].”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast05sep_1.htm
And this:
“At wavelengths shorter than about 300 nm, there is a relatively large variation in the Sun’s extreme UV and x-ray output (greater than 1%), but the Earth’s atmosphere is nearly opaque at those wavelengths.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/images/sunbathing/sunspectrum.htm
As the, above, quote points out much of this is absorbed by the upper atmosphere, but is that absorption inconsequential in the larger scheme of climate?
My point is that you rarely hear about anything other than the 0.1 figure (it is misleading).
Beware of scientists that fail to provide the whole picture because isn’t that what we see Man-made global warming proponents do everyday?
…and last but noy least, we live because of Iron in hemoglobine…
this might be of interest…
http://ve4xm.caltech.edu/Bellan_plasma_page/laborato.htm