4096 4096 pixels on the solar photosphere by the Helioseismic and Magnetic
Imager (background image). We cross correlate wave field records of temporal length T at points on opposing quadrants (blue with blue or red with red).
From New York University: Researchers create ‘MRI’ of the sun’s interior motions
A team of scientists has created an “MRI” of the Sun’s interior plasma motions, shedding light on how it transfers heat from its deep interior to its surface. The result, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, upends our understanding of how heat is transported outwards by the Sun and challenges existing explanations of the formation of sunspots and magnetic field generation.
The Sun’s heat, generated by nuclear fusion in its core, is transported to the surface by convection in the outer third. However, our understanding of this process is largely theoretical—the Sun is opaque, so convection cannot be directly observed. As a result, theories largely rest on what we know about fluid flow and then applying them to the Sun, which is primarily composed of hydrogen, helium, and plasma.
Developing a more precise grasp of convection is vital to comprehending a range of phenomena, including the formation of sunspots, which have a lower temperature than the rest of the Sun’s surface, and the Sun’s magnetic field, which is created by its interior plasma motions.
In order to develop their “MRI” of the Sun’s plasma flows, the researchers examined high-resolution images of the Sun’s surface taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Using a 16-million pixel camera, HMI measures motions on the Sun’s surface caused by convection.
Once the scientists captured the precise movement waves on the Sun’s surface, they were able to calculate its unseen plasma motions. This procedure is not unlike measuring the strength and direction of an ocean’s current by monitoring the time it takes a swimmer to move across the water—currents moving against the swimmer will result in slower times while those going in the same direction will produce faster times, with stronger and weaker currents enhancing or diminishing the impact on the swimmer.
What they found significantly departed from existing theory–specifically, the speed of the Sun’s plasma motions were approximately 100 times slower than scientists had previously projected.
“Our current theoretical understanding of magnetic field generation in the Sun relies on these motions being of a certain magnitude,” explained Shravan Hanasoge, an associate research scholar in geosciences at Princeton University and a visiting scholar at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. “These convective motions are currently believed to prop up large-scale circulations in the outer third of the Sun that generate magnetic fields.”
“However, our results suggest that convective motions in the Sun are nearly 100 times smaller than these current theoretical expectations,” continued Hanasoge, also a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. “If these motions are indeed that slow in the Sun, then the most widely accepted theory concerning the generation of solar magnetic field is broken, leaving us with no compelling theory to explain its generation of magnetic fields and the need to overhaul our understanding of the physics of the Sun’s interior.”
The study’s other co-authors were Thomas Duvall, an astrophysicist at NASA, and Katepalli Sreenivasan, University Professor in NYU’s Department of Physics and Courant Institute. Sreenivasan is also Senior Vice Provost for Science and Technology for the Global Network University at NYU and Provost of Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
===========================================================
ANOMALOUSLY WEAK SOLAR CONVECTION
Shravan M. Hanasoge y and Thomas L. Duvall, Jr. z and Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
Convection in the solar interior is thought to comprise structures on a spectrum of scales. This conclusion emerges from phenomenological studies and numerical simulations, though neither covers the proper range of dynamical parameters of solar convection. Here, we analyze observations of the wavefield in the solar photosphere using techniques of time-distance helioseismology to image flows in the solar interior. We downsample and synthesize 900 billion wave-feld observations to produce 3 billion cross-correlations, which we average and fit, measuring 5 million wave travel times. Using these travel times, we deduce the underlying flow systems and study their statistics to bound convective velocity magnitudes in the solar interior, as a function of depth and spherical-harmonic degree l. Within the wavenumber band l < 60, Convective velocities are 20-100 times weaker than current theoretical estimates. This suggests the prevalence of a different paradigm of turbulence from that predicted by existing models, prompting the question: what mechanism transports the heat ux of a solar luminosity outwards? Advection is dominated by Coriolis forces for wavenumbers l< 60, with Rossby numbers smaller than ~10-2 at r/Rθ= 0.96, suggesting that the Sun may be a much faster rotator than previously thought, and that large-scale convection may be quasi-geostrophic. The fact that iso-rotation contours in the Sun are not co-aligned with the axis of rotation suggests the presence of a latitudinal entropy gradient.
paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.3173.pdf
Leif: You are confusing ionized gas and neutral gas. Ionized gases are neutral, otherwise the short them selves out very quickly. That they are ionized means simply that there are lot of easily moved electrons. These very quickly move to neutralize any charge separation, but study the link I gave you. now, I have no illusion that you’ll learn, but one can always hope.
Again you misrepresent. Ionized gasses, i.e. plasma seperates the positive and negative charges with Double Layers. There is no short beacuse charges are sperated. You only want to believe this means neutral so you do not have to deal with the fact that the charges are sperated, and driving currents between them, and generating the corresponding magnetic fields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_layer_(plasma)
“A double layer is a structure in a plasma and consists of two parallel layers with opposite electrical charge. The sheets of charge cause a strong electric field and a correspondingly sharp change in voltage (electrical potential) across the double layer. Ions and electrons which enter the double layer are accelerated, decelerated, or reflected by the electric field. In general, double layers (which may be curved rather than flat) separate regions of plasma with quite different characteristics. Double layers are found in a wide variety of plasmas, from discharge tubes to space plasmas to the Birkeland currents supplying the Earth’s aurora, and are especially common in current-carrying plasmas. Compared to the sizes of the plasmas which contain them, double layers are very thin (typically ten Debye lengths), with widths ranging from a few millimeters for laboratory plasmas to thousands of kilometres for astrophysical plasmas.”
So lets discuss Debye lengths that can extend to thousands of kilomoters, when you make it sound as if it must be small.
I hope this will finally end the idiotic notion of sunspot-recycling “conveyor belts”. Always got my gander up, that one.
I am sorry, but could someone please define “100 times slower”.
Does that mean 1/100th the speed? If so, say so.
I am old school and have just about had it with stupid terminology used to give the impression that things are”big” or important.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 9, 2012 at 11:51 am
………
There is no large scale universe without elementary particles. Perhaps you should read your own reference, it starts with electron movement, without understanding what electrons are about.
Steven says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:05 pm
There is no short beacuse charges are sperated. You only want to believe this means neutral so you do not have to deal with the fact that the charges are sperated, and driving currents between them,
A current is a transport of charges, so a current between two plasma regimes means that the excess charge in one moves into the other to make the two plasma have the same charge density, namely zero.
Gary Plyler says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:10 pm
I am sorry, but could someone please define “100 times slower”.
It means that the velocities of motions on large scales [greater than about 100,000 km or 1/7 of the solar radius] is much slower than often assumed. This does not affect the ordinary convection of much smaller size. In a sense it means that the motions are more random.
Steven says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:05 pm
So lets discuss Debye lengths that can extend to thousands of kilomoters, when you make it sound as if it must be small.
Why should we? there are none in our neck of the woods:
Gas discharge tube 0.0001 meter
Tokamak 0.0001 m
Ionosphere 0.001 m
Magnetosphere 100 m
Solar core 0.000,000,000,01 m
Solar wind 10 m
Interstellar medium 10 m
Intergalactic medium 10 km
vukcevic says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:16 pm
There is no large scale universe without elementary particles
Trivial, irrelevant comment.
it starts with electron movement, without understanding what electrons are about
But now, the great Vuk shall teach them.
Again, you have no idea what you are talking about, as usual.
Leif: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
Steven says:
July 9, 2012 at 11:07 am
One might surmise you are the gullible one. The very idea that an ionized gas (plasma) is nuetral defies the very meaning of the term
From http://www.plasma-universe.com/Quasi-neutrality#_note-3
“Since electrons are very mobile, plasmas are excellent conductors of electricity, and any charges that develop are readily neutralized, and in many cases, plasmas can be treated as being electrically neutral. ”
“The distance over which quasi-neutrality becomes apparent depends on factors such as the density and temperature of a plasma. For example, the higher the density of a plasma, the smaller the region of quasi-neutrality because it will contain nearly equal numbers of negative and positively charged particle.”
“plasmas are electrically neutral and breaking of this condition is rarely found in laboratories and space.”
Luther Bl’t says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Leif: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
If it looks like a duck, quacks as a duck, etc…
A few days ago I watched a 4th of July fireworks from several miles away. How do I know there was a fireworks: I observed the light emitted from it, heard the sound emitted from it, therefore concluded there was a fireworks. How do we know there is nuclear fusion: we observe the right amount of energy emitted from it, we observe the predicted flux of neutrinos emitted. Hardly misuse of propositional logic. Rather, observation is the method we use to ascertain the existence of everything.
Leif: It is very difficult to accept the observations of neutrinos (if they exist) as direct evidence. The observations of what is interpreted as a neutrino are so rare that there is not much of a flux to speak of; we do not know for sure where they come from (the direction of incidence is inferred), and we hear all sorts of dodgy theories proposing the change of “flavours” to account for failed detection. Not really convincing. Photons do come from the sun; so do neutrons and other material things; I could buy evidence of that as a direct observation, but presenting neutrinos as evidence seems desperate. It would be so much nicer if we always tried to explain things without magic first.
Poor Leif
The patience of Job I tell ya!
A very interesting finding. I wish that Dr. Horowitz was still around to see it.
Leif, what are the downsides of the shallow dynamo theory? Does that mean that the sun is older in terms of burned mass than we currently think?
And yet everything that exists is emitting charge. Spaceships become negatively charged, yet space is neutral according to you. The Sun is undergoing nuclear fussion, but it occurs on its surface, not deep within.
Photospheric Granulation
One puzzle of the Sun is the “rice grain” appearance of its photosphere which gave rise to the phrase “photospheric granulation.” Scientists now believe that each granule is the top of a “convection cell” because the opaque gases of the Sun, in the nuclear fusion model, need a mechanism for slowly transferring internal heat to the surface. The “granulation” must therefore be the “boiling gases” forced upward by million degree temperatures beneath the surface.
Immediately, problems arise with this interpretation. The gas density in the photosphere diminishes rapidly with height so that convection there should be completely turbulent. Instead, the granules seem to quietly appear, grow brighter for some minutes, then fade. As one proponent of standard theory concedes, “Convection remains the outstanding unsolved problem in photospheric physics.”
The statement confirms what Ralph Juergens wrote years earlier: “…Photospheric granulation is explainable in terms of convection only if we disregard what we know about convection. Surely the cellular structure is not to be expected.” Juergens proposed instead that “a [photospheric] granule may be viewed as a relatively dense, highly luminous, secondary plasma that springs into being in the embrace of a thinner, less luminous, primary plasma. …We are led directly to ask whether the granules might not be akin to certain highly luminous tufts of discharge plasma variously described in the literature as anode glows, anode tufts, and anode arcs.”
Anode tufts appear as bright spots above an anode surface and increase in number as the voltage and current are increased.
Sunspot Enigmas
Sunspots underscore the profound enigmas for the thermonuclear model. Their darkness, structure, and behavior have required great ingenuity in attempts to explain them. As seen in the Sunspot images, the margins of its dark regions reveal that the granules are the tops of rope-like structures rising to the photospheric surface. The thermonuclear model identifies these structures as the “convection currents” that the model requires.
Unexpectedly, the dark umbra of the sunspot itself, a window to subsurface conditions, is cooler, at around 4000 K, compared to the photosphere temperature around 5700 K. The absence of the temperatures claimed to lurk beneath the surface is said to be due to the strong magnetic field of the sunspot hiding the heat below. The explanation requires that magnetic fields do something that magnetic fields are not known to do. (Magnetic fields do not “conceal” extreme temperatures.) Even if magnetism could perform such a feat, it is surely quite remarkable that solar physicists have yet to find, by peering into a sunspot, even the slightest hint of the supposed extreme temperatures creeping into view.
Your thermonuclear fussion model fails on every level. the Sun is an electric anode in space. The fussion occurs on the surface due to electrical arcs, tufting. The main current enters the coronal region, which is why it is millions of degrees hotter than the surface itself.
Try some real physics supported by the laboratory, not theory based upon theory, based upon theory. The world was once flat, then round, then the center of the universe, then a planet in the milky way which was the only galaxy, then it too became one of billions. Cosmology changes as science advances. Every new theory is resisted until the data leaves one with no choice but acceptance, just as the EU viewpoint is resisted even though every new data set astrophysicists are “surprised” Why? because their theory is based upon the wrong premise, so the data never matches actual observation. EU theory conforms to all visible and testable aspects of the Sun and galactic environment. While you are constantly surprised we find nothing but what one would expect from an electrical anode. While you need unfalsifiable Black Holes, Dark Matter and Dark energy to prop up existing theory, the EU only needs what currently exists in the universe, plasma and EM interractions. It is funny how the amount of plasma in the universe exactly matches what is needed by Dark matter and Dark Energy to prop up a failing theory. observations are everything as you say, so let me know when you observe that Dark Matter, Dark Energy or that Black Hole will you? Also please keep me informed as to the temperature at the core of the Sun as our technology advances. Every advancement only shows the flaws in the current model, I eagerly await the next discovery and will not be surprised by the results, will you be surprised like the rest of current cosmology at every discovery? Go read the news, 8 out of 10 articles on astronomy use the words surprised, unexpected, etc on an almost daily basis now. Does your theory not predict anything correctly?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/08/23/preface/
I’m surprised that no one a suggested a dual solar core for the sun!
It appears to me that Steven is promoting the idea that the sun is a large ball of electricity and not matter compressed under it’s own gravity and mass radiating energy in the electromagnetic spectrum as a result of fusion. Forces on a Larger scale behave differently than how they behave on the quantum level, and now we know that on the Sun’s convection zone those forces have been observed to move 100 times slower than mathematical calculations have suggested.
Honestly, I can’t find where this is supposed to redefine the known laws of physics.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 9, 2012 at 12:54 pm
…………
Insults are written in sand, science is carved in stone.
“Oft have I digg’d up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors,
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”
Gene says:
July 9, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Leif: It is very difficult to accept the observations of neutrinos (if they exist) as direct evidence. The observations of what is interpreted as a neutrino are so rare that there is not much of a flux to speak of
No, the neutrino flux is easily measured today with several different types of detectors.
we do not know for sure where they come from (the direction of incidence is inferred)
No, we can directly see where they come from because their detection is directional.
and we hear all sorts of dodgy theories proposing the change of “flavours” to account for failed detection.
The change of flavors are directly observed by looking at neutrinos from nearby nuclear reactors. And by modern detectors being sensitive to all three flavors [which add up to what is detected].
I could buy evidence of that as a direct observation, but presenting neutrinos as evidence seems desperate
You are about ten years behind the science here. No desperation here. Instead, absolutely solid verification of solar fusion. This paper may set you straight: http://www.leif.org/EOS/0034-4885Neutrinos.pdf
vukcevic says:
July 9, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Insults are written in sand, science is carved in stone.
What you peddle is not science. Not this time, not last time, nor the time before last, etc.
So lets us observe the universe. Do i observe any Dark Matter? No. Do i observe any Dark Energy? No. Do I observe any Black Holes? No. Do i observe filimentary plasma stretching from galaxy to galaxy? Yes. Coincidence that all the DM and DE required to make your theory work is almost exactly equal to the estimated amount of plasma in the universe? Todays science discoveries the most common phrase is “we were surprised”, “unexpected results”, etc. Does your theory not predict anything correctly? Seems to be a poor theory when every prediction made has been refuted by the data in the last 10 years. You got the Sun wrong because the theory is based upon faulty premises and will never match up. All aspects of the sun have been confirmed by the EU model. I’ll be awaitng the next article where “they are surprised”. I eagerly await the next data set and won’t be surprised by the results, will you be?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/08/23/preface/
The mothers of all gas giants are stars.
denniswingo says:
July 9, 2012 at 1:47 pm
The patience of Job I tell ya!
The depth of willful ignorance on WUWT is indeed sad. Some counterweight to that is needed. You might help in this regard, BTW.
Leif, what are the downsides of the shallow dynamo theory? Does that mean that the sun is older in terms of burned mass than we currently think?
None as far I can see. The fusion takes place in the deep core and it not related to where the dynamo is.
Sparks says:
July 9, 2012 at 1:50 pm
It appears to me that Steven is promoting the idea that the sun is a large ball of electricity …
Honestly, I can’t find where this is supposed to redefine the known laws of physics.
Right there is the first violation
Steven says:
July 9, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Does your theory not predict anything correctly?
Certainly, in particular the neutrino flux resulting from nuclear fusion.
Yet you are also missing half those required, don’t bring things up you know are flawed. You measure the neutrinos at earth, and since you detect more of the wrong kind than needed, then you deduce that they must have changed flavor in route. Why did they change flavor in route? Because you could not detect the numbers needed by your theory.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9606180.pdf
“After a short survey of the physics of solar neutrinos, giving an overview of
hydrogen burning reactions, predictions of standard solar models and results
of solar neutrino experiments, we discuss the solar-model-independent indications
in favour of non-standard neutrino properties. The experimental results
look to be in contradiction with each other, even disregarding some experiment:
unless electron neutrinos disappear in their trip from the sun to the
earth, the fluxes of intermediate energy neutrinos (those from 7Be electron
capture and from the CNO cycle) result to be unphysically negative, or anyway
extremely reduced with respect to standard solar model predictions. Next
we review extensively non-standard solar models built as attempts to solve
the solar neutrino puzzle. The dependence of the central solar temperature
on chemical composition, opacity, age and on the values of the astrophysical
S-factors for hydrogen-burning reactions is carefully investigated. Also, possible
modifications of the branching among the various pp-chains in view of
nuclear physics uncertainties are examined. Assuming standard neutrinos,
all solar models examined fail in reconciling theory with experiments, even
when the physical and chemical inputs are radically changed with respect to
present knowledge and even if some of the experimental results are discarded.”
Why does your thermonuclear fussion theory not predict the corona, or the solar wind? Why are sunspots which allow us to see deeper into the sun cooler?
Leif: The link you posted is broken. There is no file name containing “neutrino” in http://www.leif.org/EOS/
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