Death Star Galaxy

[BeAChooser]

I don't see the point in talking to you further - you manifestly have no idea what you're talking about. Bye!

What? All of a sudden you don't want to talk about solar neutrinos?

ROTFLOL!

Let me repeat:

If the neutrinos are created in the core of the sun and pass through it at the speed of light (i.e., 100,000 years faster than the rate at which the energy in the sun percolates to the surface of the sun) ... like the mainstream claims, why is it observed that the neutrino flux from the Sun varies inversely with sunspot number?

 

[Ziggurat]

Who says a dipole field is inconsistent with large electric currents?

It's not the size of the current, it's the configuration. A dipole field requires current going around in a loop, but you're positing that current is coming into the sun from an external source. That kind of current will produce a different configuration of the magnetic field. Look up the magnetic field from a current-carrying wire, and tell me if you can understand the difference between such a field and a dipole field. And your source isn't talking about current coming from outside the sun, but merely internal currents. But we already know that there are internal currents.

And I'm sorry, but observation of the sun's magnetic field shows that it's overall shape is not that of a classic dipole. It has no polar cusps and the field is essentially radial.

No, actually, it isn't "essentially radial". In fact, that would require the sun to have a magnetic monopole moment. Monopole moments cannot be produced by electric currents. They can ONLY be produced by elementary particles which carry a magnetic monopole moment. There are at the moment no known particles with such properties (though people are looking), but were anyone to find hard evidence of such particles (and the sun having a monopole magnetic moment would be proof), it would be a guaranteed Nobel prize.

The next farthest out charges will be twice as far. Hence they produce only a 1/4 the repulsion.

But there's more of them. You can't do the calculation by ignoring further out charges. It doesn't work. If you don't believe me, try your method using the mass of the earth and calculate the gravity it should produce.

But in any case, there's something called a Debye length (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debye_length ) which is very small at the density of the plasma at the surface of the sun. I suspect what you'll get are double layers between the charges.

Debye length has got nothing to do with this problem. Screening doesn't happen magically, it happens by the movement of charges in the plasma which cancel the field you're applying. In the case of a net charge on the sun, screening of the electric field inside the sun happens by the excess charge moving to the surface of the sun. Those charges at the surface are not screened anymore. And given the magnitude of the charge required for the proposed theories, we've already calculated what should happen to that excess charge. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say "we" since you keep messing up.

But a 1 meter increase in distance will double the distance from the nearest electric charges but hardly increase the distance all from the primary source of the gravity on the charges. So the electrical repulsion will decrease much faster than the gravity attraction.

No, it will not. I already pointed out, the majority of the repulsion IS NOT DUE to charges in the immediate vicinity. Look up Gauss's law. It applies to both gravity and electricity. Take the integral of the electric field over any closed surface, and it's proportional to the charge contained within that surface. Take that surface to be the surface of the sun, and you get some answer. Expand that surface by 1 meter in all directions, and how much has that surface area increased? Hardly at all, proportionately. Which means the field has hardly decreased at all. Works the same way for gravity. Both gravity and the electric field will fall off just as fast, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's taken freshman physics since they're both 1/r² forces. Google and Wikipedia are evidently not a substitute for an education, because you keep getting these basic issues wrong.

 

[BeAChooser]

It's not the size of the current, it's the configuration.

No, it's both. First of all, mainstream astrophysicists basically ignore the current regardless of it's size. That's what the article I quoted was warning against doing. That's what Alfven was warning against when he wrote "As neither double layer nor circuit can be derived from magnetofluid models of a plasma, such models are useless for treating energy transfer by means of double layers. They must be replaced by particle models and circuit theory. A simple circuit is suggested which is applied to the energizing of auroral particles, to solar flares, and to intergalactic double radio sources. Application to the heliospheric current systems leads to the prediction of two double layers on the Sun's axis which may give radiations detectable from Earth."

A dipole field requires current going around in a loop, but you're positing that current is coming into the sun from an external source. That kind of current will produce a different configuration of the magnetic field.

Would a spherically distributed source of current affect the dipole shape of the sun's homopolar motor at all? I rather doubt it.

Keep in mind that Birkeland put a strong electromagnet inside a metal sphere and put the whole sphere inside a vacuum chamber.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/1600/Birk.gif

He then used cathode rays to bombard the experiment with electrons. When he charged the surface of the sphere negatively, he was also able to create auroral effects over the poles of the sphere. When he changed the polarity of the sphere and charged it positively, he was able to reproduce many of the same atmospheric heating phenomenon we see in solar images. And the electrons followed the magnetic field shape set up by the magnet. You might find this interesting:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/inde...ectric_Phenomena_in_Solar_Systems_and_Nebulae

And your source isn't talking about current coming from outside the sun, but merely internal currents. But we already know that there are internal currents.

Then isn't it amazing how many of the models used by mainstream astrophysicists to explain the sun don't model those currents because they assume the magnetic fields are frozen in?

No, actually, it isn't "essentially radial".

Really?

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/1284 "Data from Ulysses and other observations have yielded an interesting phenomenon. While the sun's magnetic fields are usually curved, as expected, sometimes they're not, actually changing from long arcs to straight radial lines once or twice a month, on average, and at intervals lasting two or three days."

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14782/page/4;jsessionid=baa9...#19259 "For the small-scale filaments to transport the Sun's imprint in the solar wind, they must extend radially from the Sun, and they should appear at all solar latitudes. And this is indeed what we find. In fact, the Doppler technique reveals that nearly radial open-field lines originate from the vicinity of active regions—quite a surprise, since active regions are usually thought of as being closed-field regions. Ulysses even detected the imprint of active regions in the solar wind more than one astronomical unit from the Sun (Figure 10). The presence of radial filamentary structures at all solar latitudes is consistent with research on the corona's magnetic field. Although there are no direct measures of the corona's magnetic field, more than 20 years ago the American astronomer Jack Eddy inferred its structure by measuring polarized light in the corona. His results reveal that the corona's magnetic field is predominantly radial, but because they could not be explained by the magnetic field models, they have been largely forgotten. ... snip ... This research suggests that there are two components to the coronal magnetic field—one radial and the other nonradial. The nonradial component is the traditional dipole-like fiel that is influenced and shaped by closed magnetic field lines, and is associated with the bright coronal streamers and polar plumes. The streamers taper to streamer stalks, and, unlike the Sun's imprint, only occupy a small volume of space. The streamer stalks appear to be the source of the slow solar wind. In contrast, the radial component is associated with the ubiquitous open field lines that originate from all regions of the Sun and carry its imprint in the solar wind."

http://www.oulu.fi/~spaceweb/textbook/solarwind.html "Although the solar wind moves out almost radially from the Sun, the rotation of the Sun gives the magnetic field a spiral form (garden hose effect)."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n21_v146/ai_15951718 "Flying through the solar wind, the stream of charged particles blowing out from the sun, the craft found that the intensity of the radial component of the magnetic field remains the same regardless of latitude. At the craft's distance from the solar surface, "the solar wind no longer retains memory of the magnetic field rooted at the surface of the sun," says Richard G. Marsden, Ulysses project scientist for the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. He suggests that the corona, or hot outer atmosphere of the sun, somehow redistributes the magnetic field."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w0805857438m8263/ "The magnetic field emanating from the sun is basically radial (in a gross sense) at distances greater than about 2 solar radii from the center"

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?ApJ40734PS "THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 533: 1084-1089, 2000 April 20 ... Since the solar wind and magnetic field (disregarding the spiral) are basically radial without any significant north-south components, the current sheet must also be radial."

Quote:
The next farthest out charges will be twice as far. Hence they produce only a 1/4 the repulsion.

But there's more of them.

Yeah, but how many more? The next ring out has about twice as many charges as the inner ring. So the total repulsion only grows by 1/2.

Debye length has got nothing to do with this problem. Screening doesn't happen magically, it happens by the movement of charges in the plasma which cancel the field you're applying.

And you don't think the charges on the surface of the sun are moving? If nothing else, wouldn't they be trying to move away from each other due to these repulsive forces you are concerned about? And wouldn't they also be moving with the motions of the plasma on the surface of the sun? And radially outward?

Quote:
But a 1 meter increase in distance will double the distance from the nearest electric charges but hardly increase the distance all from the primary source of the gravity on the charges. So the electrical repulsion will decrease much faster than the gravity attraction.

No, it will not. I already pointed out, the majority of the repulsion IS NOT DUE to charges in the immediate vicinity.

You are wrong. Charges will be shielded from each other at some point because the charges ARE in fact moving. (Ironic that I had a debate with another critic of the Electric Universe who insisted that the Debye length precluded all the interactions you insist must happen.) And the issue was whether gravity can overwhelm the repulsion of charges. If the charges move away from one another, the repulsion will drop far faster than the attraction due to gravity because gravity has no Debye length and as the baseline r to the bulk of the attractive/repulsive mass/charge is lower in the charge case than in the gravity case.

Google and Wikipedia are evidently not a substitute for an education, because you keep getting these basic issues wrong.

Being such a smart guy, perhaps you'd like to take a stab at explaining the discrepancies between NASA's explanation of comets and the data?

 

[Dancing David]

Hiya BAC,

At the risk of getting a torrent I'll ask the simple following question:

Many of the electric comet websites about the Deep Impact mission stated that the comet should have been a hard rocky body like an asteroid. I don't think that this proved to be the case.

As far as trashing the 'dirty snowball', the study did show that the comet had a surface that was different than the interior and that ethane (which probably made part of the snow) was in the interior.

Does the electric comet model alow for this and why don't asteroids have comas?

 

[The Man]

Too bad the other side isn't as open in considering the possibility that electromagnetic effects play a fundamental role in the formation and behavior of stars and galaxies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_plasma

All known astrophysical plasmas are influenced by magnetic fields. Since plasmas contain equal numbers of electrons and ions, they are electrically neutral overall and thus electric fields play a lesser dynamical role. Because plasmas are highly conductive, any charge imbalances are readily neutralised.

So, magnetic influences are considered but not electrical influences because on a large scale plasmas tend to be electrically neutral containing the same number of positive and negative charges.

Magnetic fields influence similarly moving Electrons (negative charge) and the positive charged ions of a plasma in opposite directions and would separate charges in a plasma and not coalesce the entire plasma into a large scale structure.

Gravity acts on all bodies regardless of the charge (positive or negative) or the lack of charge (neutral) in the same direction and can coalesce entire plasmas into large scale structures

But a 1 meter increase in distance will double the distance from the nearest electric charges but hardly increase the distance all from the primary source of the gravity on the charges. So the electrical repulsion will decrease much faster than the gravity attraction.

Based on your own (incorrect) assertions gravity would significantly dominate large scale structure not “electrical” repulsion or attraction.

So once again please decide what it is that you are trying to assert before ascribing similar results to only the assertions of an “other side”

If you believe that, then find a mainstream source that mentions Birkeland currents and double layers in regards to solar phenomena and galactic rotation curves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_physics#Shocks_or_double_layers

Electric fields and circuits
Quasineutrality of a plasma requires that plasma currents close on themselves in electric circuits. Such circuits follow Kirchhoff's circuit laws, and possess a resistance and inductance. These circuits must generally be treated as a strongly coupled system, with the behaviour in each plasma region dependent on the entire circuit. It is this strong coupling between system elements, together with nonlinearity, which may lead to complex behaviour. Electrical circuits in plasmas store inductive (magnetic) energy, and should the circuit be disrupted, for example, by a plasma instability, the inductive energy will be released as plasma heating and acceleration. This is a common explanation for the heating which takes place in the solar corona. Electric currents, and in particular, magnetic-field-aligned electric currents (which are sometimes generically referred to as Birkeland currents), are also observed in the Earth's aurora, and in plasma filaments.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1982Ap&SS..87...21C

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1994ApJS...90..837H

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...T&data_type=HTML&format=&high=42ca922c9c28323

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...T&data_type=HTML&format=&high=42ca922c9c26692



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_current

A Birkeland current generally refers to any electric current in a space plasma, but more specifically when charged particles in the current follow magnetic field lines (hence, Birkeland currents are also known as field-aligned currents). They are caused by the movement of a plasma perpendicular to a magnetic field. Birkeland currents often show filamentary, or twisted "rope-like" magnetic structure.

Originally Birkeland currents referred to electric currents that contribute to the aurora, caused by the interaction of the plasma in the Solar Wind with the Earth's magnetosphere.

Also in this reference the Sun’s prominences (spicules, coronal streamers) are specifically given as examples of “Cosmic Birkeland currents”


What was the point of your staements other then to demonstrate that anyone can easily exceed your apparent ability to research a topic?

 

[Ziggurat]

Would a spherically distributed source of current affect the dipole shape of the sun's homopolar motor at all? I rather doubt it.

I asked you how the sun could retain a large positive charge when it should be expelling protons at a ferocious rate due to the large net charge it had. You said that maybe there was an incoming current. But the spherically symmetric incomming current is supposed to be from electrons, not protons. So any source of protons to keep the sun positively charged shouldn't be spherically symmetric, and the magnetic feld such a current produces should not be a dipole field. That's your model, not mine.

Really?

Really. Once again, Google is failing you because you don't understand the basics, can't figure out what's actually being said, and merely latch on to key words.

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/1284 "Data from Ulysses and other observations have yielded an interesting phenomenon. While the sun's magnetic fields are usually curved, as expected, sometimes they're not, actually changing from long arcs to straight radial lines once or twice a month, on average, and at intervals lasting two or three days."

Left unsaid is that not only are the field lines only sometimes radial, they're also only radial in some places. That is not "essentially radial" in any global sense, which is how you used the term.

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14782/page/4;jsessionid=baa9...#19259 "For the small-scale filaments to transport the Sun's imprint in the solar wind, they must extend radially from the Sun, and they should appear at all solar latitudes.

But they only need to be radial in some places, not everywhere. They cannot be radial everywhere, as any freshman physics student should know, because the sun isn't a magnetic monopole. Here are some diagrams of the magnetic field of the sun:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1969SoPh....9..131A/0000143.000.html
There are indeed regions where it's pretty radial. But under no stretch of the imagination are any of these configurations "essentially radial".

http://www.oulu.fi/~spaceweb/textbook/solarwind.html "Although the solar wind moves out almost radially from the Sun, the rotation of the Sun gives the magnetic field a spiral form (garden hose effect)."

The solar wind is not the same thing as the magnetic field.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?ApJ40734PS "THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 533: 1084-1089, 2000 April 20 ... Since the solar wind and magnetic field (disregarding the spiral) are basically radial without any significant north-south components, the current sheet must also be radial."

I particularly like this one. Look at figure 6, which this quote refers to. It shows the configuration of the field that they're proposing. The quote does NOT refer to the field as a whole (which, from their own drawing, is clearly not "basically radial" everywhere), but to the field around what they call the heliospheric current sheet (HCS). Once again, google finds the words you're looking for, but you fail to make sense of them.

Yeah, but how many more? The next ring out has about twice as many charges as the inner ring. So the total repulsion only grows by 1/2.

And the next out ring? What about that? What you're saying is essentially 1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5+.... = 1, approximately. Well, it doesn't. You can't through out the other terms, and you can't ignore the other charges.

Look, I made an approximation in my calculation. I assumed the charges were distributed in a spherically symmetric manner (it actually doesn't matter for my calculation whether they're all at the surface or at a point in the center of the sun, the answer for the field and the resulting force on a proton is the same). Given that assumption, my calculation was EXACT (save some rounding, but I can do it without rounding if you really care). What did you do? Well, you took my approximation, made a further deeply unphysical approximation of clustering the charges into point charges in a grid (something which makes the calculation harder, not easier), and then proceeded to calculate the resulting fields/forces incorrectly even given that configuration. You are, in short, screwing up majorly.

And you don't think the charges on the surface of the sun are moving?

Why would that matter? Moving or not, protons at the surface are still going to feel a force orders of magnitude stronger than gravity repelling them from the sun, if the model you're advocating is correct.

If nothing else, wouldn't they be trying to move away from each other due to these repulsive forces you are concerned about?

That's rather the point: that force will eject them from the sun, rather rapidly. Most of that excess charge would get ejected from the sun, in very short order. In other words, the surface of the sun would explode, the excess charge would dissipate, and you couldn't continue to power the sun with electricity.

And the issue was whether gravity can overwhelm the repulsion of charges. If the charges move away from one another, the repulsion will drop far faster than the attraction due to gravity because gravity has no Debye length and as the baseline r to the bulk of the attractive/repulsive mass/charge is lower in the charge case than in the gravity case.

Debye length cannot screen the repulsive force of a net charge on the sun. That's not how it works. Shielding works inside the plasma only by moving the net charge to the surface, but at the surface there is no shielding. This is freshman physics here. And you keep screwing it up, time and time again.

Being such a smart guy, perhaps you'd like to take a stab at explaining the discrepancies between NASA's explanation of comets and the data?

Well, no. I'd rather focus on the much more basic issues, the stuff that can be easily calculated with minimal effort by any physics major, the suff that indicates whether you're even in the right ballpark. If the electric model can't get that stuff straight, why would it matter if it can explain more essoteric phenomena? A good model should be MOST accurate on the simple stuff, but that's where the electric model is failing. Spectacularly.

 

[BeAChooser]

Many of the electric comet websites about the Deep Impact mission stated that the comet should have been a hard rocky body like an asteroid. I don't think that this proved to be the case.

So you want to ignore the dozen predictions they did get right (and that NASA got wrong) and focus only on this one? I see.

Here's what the link on predictions that I supplied earlier said about rock/norock:

Crater Size
?+
The impact/electrical discharge will be into rock, not loosely consolidated ice and dust. The impact crater will be smaller than expected. see 2005 July 04

The occlusion of the impact site by the unexpected dust cloud leaves this question of crater size unanswered. (Some NASA investigators have suggested that the impact did not reach a deep level, but so far the pronouncements on the subject are quite contradictory because they're trying to explain things they did not expect). see 2005 July 19

In other words, David, in this case the verdict is still out because they don't know the crater size or depth.

As far as trashing the 'dirty snowball',

Let's be clear, David. The lastest reports from NASA (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1199 ) describes Tempel 1 as "a loosely assembled icy dirtball with the consistency of talcum powder." But look at this image of Tempel 1.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA02127_modest.jpg

Does that really look like a "loosely assembled icy dirtball with the consistency of talcum powder"? Would there be well defined craters in a dirtball having the consistency of talcum powder, David? But there they are.

NASA's website states http://discovery.nasa.gov/deepimpact.html "The science team was surprised to find evidence of what appear to be impact craters on the surface of the comet." When they first started getting images of the comet, Mike A'Hearn of the Deep Impact team said "There are things on this comet that look a lot like impact craters to many of us. It looks very different from Wild-2 or Borrelly. We don't understand what this means. This comet has had an orbital history that looks pretty much similar to Borrelly and yet it looks totally different."

But electric comet theorists weren't surprised to see craters. They predicted them.

To demonstrate how ad-hoc NASA's conclusion now is, note this article: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050906_tempel1_update.html "Analysis: Deep Impact Comet All Fluff ... snip ... Comet Tempel 1, hit in early July by an 820-pound probe, appears to be coated with fine powder rather than solid ice and rock. The powder is even finer than sand, scientists had reported shortly after the impact. A thorough analysis confirms that and other preliminary conclusions about the 7-mile-long icy world, which appears to be rather fluffy. ... snip ... The outer tens of meters (yards) of the comet is less strong than a snow bank, said Deep Impact's Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland. Still, the object's gravity holds it all together. ... snip ... "The comet is mostly empty," A'Hearn said, adding that it is probably more than 75 percent porous with perhaps no solid core. Instead, it's likely made of ice grains loosely packed through and through."

Don't you think it's amazing how much detail they claim to know about the comet when they got so many predictions wrong and can't even tell you now with any confidence the crater size or crater depth?

And contrast the above claims with early statements by independent scientists at Penn State's SWIFT team who said (http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Swift-Deep-Impact.htm ): "NASA Swift Satellite Offers a Different View of the Great Comet Collision ... snip ... So far, after a set of eight observations each lasting about 50 minutes, Swift scientists have seen a quick and dramatic rise in ultraviolet light, evidence that the Deep Impact probe struck a hard surface, as opposed to a softer, snowy surface." That doesn't fit NASA's new model for Tempel 1. So would you care to explain where the SWIFT team went wrong, David? Care to tell us exactly why NASA now claims the body is 75 percent porous and made of icy grains the consistency of talcum powder? Based on what evidence? I think if you'll look at this "skeptically" you'll conclude NASA's explanation is after the fact hand waving and that they have no better idea about the comet now then they did before the impact.

If the Thunderbolts group got this one prediction wrong (and the verdict is still out), so did NASA. Afterall, they predicted a 100 meter crater. For example,

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/1875.pdf "IMPACT CRATER SIZE AND EVOLUTION: EXPECTATIONS FOR DEEP IMPACT"... snip ... Geological Sciences, Brown University... snip ... NASA Ames Research Center ... snip ... Mission imaging sequences for DI require planning for the maximum crater size; consequently, initial estimates focused on direct extrapolations of gravity-controlled scaling relations. Such extrapolations predict a rim-rim crater diameter of about 90 m and depth of nearly 20 m". A second extrapolation with slightly modified parameters predicted "maximum diameter of 115 m and depth of 23 m."

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/faq3.cfm "The crater that will be formed will be about 91m wide (the size of a football stadium) and about 30m (100feet) deep."

The post impact estimates are all over the place. http://discovery.nasa.gov/deepimpact.html "Due to the massive amounts of dust, science team members can only estimate the size crater's size to be about 325 to 825 feet in diameter." http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/media/deepimpact-070805.html "Scientists are still analyzing the data to determine the exact size of the crater. Scientists say the crater was at the large end of original expectations, which was from 50 to 250 meters (165 to 820 feet) wide." http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/results/excavating.cfm "The article mentions that the shadow of the ejecta cone on the surface of Tempel 1 was greater than 300 meters across at its base even at early stages of excavation. That is much wider than expected. But a final size for the crater was not given as the team is still analyzing the data." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007Icar..187...56B "The impact generated a large and bright ejecta cloud that hampers the clear view of the post-impact nucleus surface. We used image restoration techniques to enhance spatial resolution and contrast on a subset of selected post-impact high resolution images. No unambiguous evidence for the crater can be found; however, indirect evidence is consistent with a crater size in the 150 - 200 m range." http://planetary.org/explore/topics/comet_crater/ "However, one learns to expect the unexpected with space exploration; six months after the impactor kicked up an opaque cloud of comet debris, team scientists have learned a lot about comet Tempel 1 but can still only estimate the crater's size as being somewhere between 100 and 250 meters in diameter."

And NASA got every other prediction wrong, David ... as I explained in my previous posts on this subject. I seem to recall detractors of the EU theory asking what has it predicted and suggesting that we should stick with the theory that offers the best predictions. Apparently, that belief doesn't apply to this case. Wonder why?

Does the electric comet model alow for this and why don't asteroids have comas?

Which just goes to show that you haven't bothered to read anything posted to you on this or about this subject. I'm really wasting my time with you David. But out of curiousity, David, tell us what caused comet Holmes to explode?

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Too bad the other side isn't as open in considering the possibility that electromagnetic effects play a fundamental role in the formation and behavior of stars and galaxies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_plasma

You only prove my point. That sites states "Since plasmas contain equal numbers of electrons and ions, they are electrically neutral overall and thus electric fields play a lesser dynamical role. Because plasmas are highly conductive, any charge imbalances are readily neutralised." It argues that electromagnetic effects do NOT play a fundamental role.

Experts in plasma such as Birkeland, Alfven and Peratt would disagree and point to objects we can see in the heavens that are immense ... thousands of light years in size ... and argue they are the result of electromagnetic forces applied to plasmas. They would point to models they have made which captured those physics and showed their potentially large effect on the formation and behavior of large objects ...even the size of galaxies.

And it's disingenuous for that website to state "During the 1940s and 50s, Alfvén developed magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) which enables plasmas to be modelled as waves in a fluid, for which Alfvén won the 1970 Nobel Prize for physics. MHD is a standard astronomical tool." That's because Alfven specifically stated that MHD was not the right tool to model galaxies and stars where phenomena like double layers and Birkeland currents occur.

The source is also dishonest in stating that "current models indicate that plasma processes have little role to play in forming the very largest structures, such as voids, galaxy clusters and superclusters." Dishonest because current models do not include electromagnetic effects such as those Alfven and others say play a role in the formation of those structures. And the website fails to even mention the MANY problems mainstream astrophysicists are having with their models and their explanation of those large structures. I've posted several times articles discussing a number of those problems. Your side in this debate has consistently ignored what I posted. Just like the Big Bang community has done. Because they aren't open to any explanation but gravity. Q.E.D.

So, magnetic influences are considered but not electrical influences because on a large scale plasmas tend to be electrically neutral containing the same number of positive and negative charges.

This statement shows a profound lack of understanding of the physics involved. Plasmas are not electrically neutral. They are QUASI-neutral and in fact can create very large structures.

Let me give you one of the many examples I can provide of what I mean by the mainstream being close-minded and unfamiliar with important plasma phenomena.

"The Galactic Center Magnetosphere" by Mark Morris, Department of Physics & Astronomy, UCLA, 2006 mentions the recently discovered Double Helix Nebula. Here are several images of the nebula.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7082/images/nature04554-f1.2.jpg

http://www.broad.mit.edu/news-images/TRC-032306.jpg

Morris states "At a distance of ~100 pc toward positive Galactic latitude from the Galactic center, a nebula having the form of an intertwined double helix extends over at least 50 pc, with its long axis oriented approximately perpendicular to the Galactic plane (Figure 2). This feature was interpreted as a torsional Alfven wave propagating away from the Galactic center along the magnetic field, and driven by the rotation of the circumnuclear gas disk (CND). ... snip ... The presence of two strands has been attributed to an apparent ”dumbbell” asymmetry of the driving disk (see [65]); the magnetic field threading the disk is concentrated into two diametrically opposed density maxima. A potential weakness of the torsional wave hypothesis is that the wave cannot yet be followed all the way down to its hypothetical source, the CND. However, this also raises the question of why the double helix is visible in the first place; its mid-infrared emission is most likely thermal emission from dust, so the visibility of the nebula at its present location presumably requires that the wave has levitated charged dust grains. ... snip ... There is so far no explanation for how a long bundle of linear, nonthermal filaments could culminate in helically wound, thermal structures."

What a shame that Morris is unfamiliar with force-free Birkeland filaments (http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Filamentation) as they easily explain the shape and other features of the nebula. Instead, he believes in the black hole and "anchored" magnetic field gnomes. As is noted in http://www.physicalsciences.ucla.edu/research/doublehelix.asp , "Morris has argued for many years that the magnetic field at the galactic center is extremely strong; the research published in Nature strongly supports that view. The magnetic field at the galactic center, though 1,000 times weaker than the magnetic field on the sun, occupies such a large volume that it has vastly more energy than the magnetic field on the sun. It has the energy equivalent of 1,000 supernovae. What launches the wave, twisting the magnetic field lines near the center of the Milky Way? Morris thinks the answer is not the monstrous black hole at the galactic center, at least not directly. Orbiting the black hole like the rings of Saturn, several light years away, is a massive disk of gas called the circumnuclear disk; Morris hypothesizes that the magnetic field lines are anchored in this disk." He'd rather believe in gnomes than consider the possibility that these are Birkeland currents.

Everywhere we look we see evidence of Birkeland currents. The sprites, elves, and blue jets associated with electrical storms in Earth's atmosphere are examples. They contribute to Earth's auroras. They are found on other planets (such as this evidence for them on Saturn: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=a0fu5dte and http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984agu..conf..340H ). They are seen on the surface of the sun in solar flares.

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/solarflare.jpg

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/Twists.jpg

We find them in the interstellar medium ...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0004/cygloop_blair.jpg

The Cygnus Loop above has all the characteristics of an interstellar Birkeland current: (1) A plasma medium (2) Filamentation (3) Braiding, twisted "rope-like" structure.

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/CIV.html "IMMENSE FLOWS OF CHARGED PARTICLES DISCOVERED BETWEEN THE STARS ... snip ... A plasma scientist and a radio astronomer announced the discovery of charged particle flows in interstellar space at the 1999 International Conference on Plasma Science in Monterey, California. ... snip ... The discovery was called "Exciting," by S. T. Lai, a researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Hanscom, MA. Lai, an authority on a phenomena called "critical ionization velocity," who noted that the data fell precisely where predicted by the late physics Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995), who in his theory about the origin of planets in 1942, calculated that if a neutral cloud in space fell through a magnetized plasma, the neutral gas would itself become ionized at discrete velocities. Alfvén predicted that the signature of his plasma theory in space would be the observation of filaments and his discrete velocities."

... and in the heart of our own galaxy ...

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/images/040723galactic-filaments.jpg

... and also in other galaxies. For example, NGC 3079 has a very Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), as one can see in the image below:

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2001/28/images/a/formats/compass_large_web.jpg

A close up of the core reveals four columns of gaseous filaments that rise above the galaxy's disk.

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2001/28/images/c/formats/full_jpg.jpg

The filaments reach the amazing height of 2,000 light-years with each about 75 light-years wide. Big Bang astronomers "suspect" that these filaments are particles blown by "winds" released during a burst of star formation. But experts in plasma and electromagnitism say those are spiraling Birkeland currents that are part of the galaxy's homopolar magnetic field (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/041026paradigm-galaxy.htm).

And we find evidence of Birkeland currents between the galaxies.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v341/n6244/abs/341720a0.html "Discovery of intergalactic radio emission in the Coma–A1367 supercluster ... snip ... Here we describe the detection of faint, supercluster-scale radio emission at 326 MHz that extends between the Coma cluster of galaxies (Abell 1656) and the Abell 1367 cluster and which is apparently not associated with any individual galaxy system in the complex. The radiation's synchrotron origin implies the existence of a large-scale intercluster magnetic field with an estimated strength of 0.3–0.6 G, which is remarkably strong."

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/AtHomeMag.html "One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the existence of supercluster-sized currents comes from the discovery of faint supercluster-scale radio emissions at 326 megahertz between the Coma galaxy cluster and the Abell 1367 cluster. Given that radiation of that frequency must be produced by free electrons moving at certain very high speeds, we can infer magnetic-field strengths of 0.03–0.06 nanotesla stretching for some 490 million light-years. This corresponds to a galactic current of nearly 1019 amperes."

Everywhere we look there is evidence of Birkeland currents ... yet mainstream astronomers just can't seem to see it. Because to do so threatens their precious gnomes ... and the biggest, most precious gnome of all, the Big Bang.

And don't get me started on "double layers" and z-pinches, two other phenomena that mainstream astrophysicists and your source seem to try their best to simply ignore.

Based on your own (incorrect) assertions gravity would significantly dominate large scale structure not “electrical” repulsion or attraction.

No, you, like so many it's-only-gravity proponents simply fail to understand the difference between the little problem Ziggurat has posed and the physics of force-free Birkeland currents.

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
If you believe that, then find a mainstream source that mentions Birkeland currents and double layers in regards to solar phenomena and galactic rotation curves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_..._double_layers

Must I point out that's not a mainstream source? And it doesn't even mention double layers as a possible explanation for various solar phenomena. No, I'm talking about a recent peer reviewed article in a mainstream journal on the behavior of the sun or galaxies that even mentions Birkeland currents and double layers ... if even just to discount them as a cause of the observed phenomena. Let's see if you can find any of those.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1982Ap&SS..87...21C

And you think by linking a paper done in 1982 by a proponent of plasma cosmology and associate of Alfven you show that the mainstream has considered it? Who do you think you are kidding?

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1994ApJS...90..837H

Again, you only prove my point. This is an article written in 1993 which notes double layers might be responsible for the emissions from pulsars. It was obviously ignored by the rest of mainstream physics community. Also, note that the source spends a lot of time on the bogus gnome of magnetic reconnection and assumes we know what neutron stars are (we don't really). It's hard to not laugh at a source that back in 1993 was treating magnetic reconnection as if it were proven physics when in 2007 they still haven't proven it or tend to describe phenomena that sound like exploding double layers in their "proofs".

But to those authors credit, at least they mention double layers as the other possible cause of the emissions. They note that double layers are "effective particle accelerators." The authors find they could produce the 10^^15 volt discharges that are observed. This is something that seems to have been completely forgotten in most mainstream work since that time.

And are you aware that in a 1995 analysis, "Radiation Properties of Pulsar Magnetospheres: Observation, Theory, and Experiment" by Kevin Healy and Anthony Peratt (http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/HealyPeratt1995.pdf ), Healy and Peratt concluded, “Our results support the ‘planetary magnetosphere’ view, where the extent of the magnetosphere, not emission points on a rotating surface, determines the pulsar emission. In other words, we do not require a hypothetical super-condensed object to form a pulsar. A normal stellar remnant undergoing periodic discharges will suffice. Plasma cosmology has the virtue of not requiring neutron stars or black holes (BAC - or quark stars) to explain compact sources of radiation."

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...T&data_type=HTML&format=&high=42ca922c9c28323

Again, you cite an article from 1978 ("The Alfven-Carlquist double-layer theory of solar flares") which says "the applicability of this theory to solar flares is discussed, and it is shown that conditions in solar flares may be such that double layers can exist for which the free particles have a power-law energy distribution. These particles will be accelerated in a double layer and may in this way account for the production of high-energy particles during the impulsive phase of solar flares." Their paper concluded "altogether, we feel that the double-layer model of solar flares probably deserves further study." Yet this conclusion was ignored by the mainstream and is still being ignored by astrophysicists who instead rely on the unproven reconnection gnome to explain solar flares and who never mention double layers in their articles. In fact, their MHD models can't even reproduce the physics of double layers. You are proving my point for me.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...T&data_type=HTML&format=&high=42ca922c9c26692

Next you offer an article from 1977 regarding double layers in Earth's vicinity. At least mainstream astrophysicists can't claim they never heard of double layers or that researchers back in the 70's and 80's weren't saying they could explain phenomena observed in space with them. But current mainstream astrophysicists have ignored those conclusions and instead bet all their marbles on various gnomes (like magnetic reconnection, black holes, dark matter, dark energy). They've done this because they aren't even open to the notion that proven electromagnetic effects on plasmas (like Birkeland currents, double layers and z-pinches) can explain stellar phenomena like jets, pulsars, solar flares, and galactic rotation curves. Again, you simply prove my point.

What was the point of your staements other then to demonstrate that anyone can easily exceed your apparent ability to research a topic?

I think we just demonstrated whose statements exceed their grasp of the subject. I suggest you wipe egg off face.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Would a spherically distributed source of current affect the dipole shape of the sun's homopolar motor at all? I rather doubt it.

I asked you how the sun could retain a large positive charge when it should be expelling protons at a ferocious rate due to the large net charge it had.

You claimed that an incoming source of current would affect the dipole shape. But the model is that space in the region where the sun lurks has a spherically distributed negative charge. And the model is that positive charges diffuse to the surface of the sun in a spherically distributed manner. If the negative charges move to the sun from a spherical distribution to another spherical distribution, it is difficult to see how this alters the dipole. Alternately, the charges may just move along the field lines as Birkeland observed, again without substantially altering the dipoles shape.

Left unsaid is that not only are the field lines only sometimes radial, they're also only radial in some places.

First of all that "sometimes" is several days a month. Second, I wonder if you can rationally explain why this occurs at all. That same article noted that ""These observations depart dramatically from the standard model," said Gosling, of Los Alamos' Non-Proliferation and International Security Division. "The fields are nearly radial, or straight, for extended periods of time, almost always when the speed of solar wind plasma observed in space is in decline, and about half the time this occurs during a CME. There still is no definitive explanation for why this is happening." Now the Electric Sun model has no problem with variations of this sort. The offered mainstream explanation is that "open and closed field lines get pinched together causing a 'charge reconnection' that opens a closed field line and results in a drop in speed." Ah yes ... the reconnection gnome rears it's ugly head again (anytime they can't otherwise explain something. ). Of course, they've yet to actually demonstrate that the phenomena they are labeling reconnection in their experiments is what they think it is, rather than already proven to exist electromagnetic effects on plasma which they've chosen to simply ignore all these years. And in the meantime, they also ignore observations like the fact that the speed of the solar wind varies inversely with coronal temperature ... a fact that the Electric Sun theory has no trouble explaining but which has mainstream astrophysicists still scratching their heads.

Quote:
http://www.americanscientist.org/tem...=baa9...#19259 "For the small-scale filaments to transport the Sun's imprint in the solar wind, they must extend radially from the Sun, and they should appear at all solar latitudes.

But they only need to be radial in some places, not everywhere.

So you want to claim those field lines aren't essentially radial everywhere they come out of the sun? Maybe you should examine an closeup image of a coronal loop.

Here are some diagrams of the magnetic field of the sun:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//...00143.000.html
There are indeed regions where it's pretty radial. But under no stretch of the imagination are any of these configurations "essentially radial".

Surely you are aware that the many places you see where the field loops back on itself in those diagrams are probably associated with local surface phenomena (like sunspots) and not the overall dipole field.

I particularly like this one.

Why'd you not comment on these two?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n21_v146/ai_15951718 "Flying through the solar wind, the stream of charged particles blowing out from the sun, the craft found that the intensity of the radial component of the magnetic field remains the same regardless of latitude. At the craft's distance from the solar surface, "the solar wind no longer retains memory of the magnetic field rooted at the surface of the sun," says Richard G. Marsden, Ulysses project scientist for the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. He suggests that the corona, or hot outer atmosphere of the sun, somehow redistributes the magnetic field."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w0805857438m8263/ "The magnetic field emanating from the sun is basically radial (in a gross sense) at distances greater than about 2 solar radii from the center"

And shall I google some more?

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/322308 "On the Predominance of the Radial Component of the Magnetic Field in the Solar Corona"

What you're saying is essentially 1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5+.... = 1, approximately.

No, I said nothing of the sort. Strawman.

you can't ignore the other charges.

Yes, I can, for all the reasons I noted.

Quote:
And you don't think the charges on the surface of the sun are moving?

Why would that matter? Moving or not, protons at the surface are still going to feel a force orders of magnitude stronger than gravity repelling them from the sun, if the model you're advocating is correct.

Wait. You are the one that claimed Debye length only applied if the charges are moving. Now that we've apparently agreed they are, you still want to claim that Debye length doesn't figure into this? Make up your mind.

Quote:
If nothing else, wouldn't they be trying to move away from each other due to these repulsive forces you are concerned about?
That's rather the point: that force will eject them from the sun, rather rapidly.

No, because if they are shielded from charges at a distance (which I suspect they would be), then the repulsion from low r charges will drop off much faster than the gravity attraction from large r sources. In fact, as noted earlier, this might cause the surface of the sun to appear to "boil" ... like it does. Or maybe this explains the granular appearance of the surface? Perhaps they are double layers (or Langmuir sheaths) shielding charges from one another. And when they build up too much, a flare results.

Debye length cannot screen the repulsive force of a net charge on the sun.

Unless the charges are moving (at least that's what you once said). But now that we've agreed they are moving you still want to claim this. That seems a little unfair. ;(

That's not how it works. Shielding works inside the plasma only by moving the net charge to the surface, but at the surface there is no shielding.

But the whole surface of the sun is plasma.

Look this is getting ridiculous. I don't know the distribution of charge on the sun. Nor do you. Nor does anyone. Nor do you know what the "micro" conditions on the sun are that might lead or not lead to shielding of charges should they exist. Not on the surface and certainly not deep in the sun. The calculated Debye length given the parameters in the photosphere is not very large.

Furthermore, there are various electric sun models. I'm probably confusing matters by mixing some of them. My bad. And I'm not defending any one in particular ... just trying to raise awareness that there are other possible explanations. Given the amount of material resources devoted to them compared to the mainstream, it's no wonder that many details are still vague. Heck, details are still vague in the mainstream's models (hence the need for gnomes) despite the billions that have been spent building those models.

Here's an Electric Sun model that says the surface is negatively charged and every 11 years the positive buildup escapes. http://www.electric-sun.info/main.html . Maybe that's true. I don't know. Some of what it suggests is certainly quite interesting and seems to fit the data better than the standard model.

But in any case, we do know there are some very major problems with the current model in terms of explaining coronal temperatures, sunspots, filamentary features, the solar wind, CME's, x-rays, neutrinos, etc, etc, etc. And it seems to me that you are simply ignoring all these problems and trusting that *someday* the mainstream will understand them ... without ever incorporating physics that 30 years ago researchers where showing could explain phenomena that mainstream proponents insist on attributing to magnetic reconnection (gnome), core fusion (gnome), black holes (gnome), dark matter (gnome), dark energy (gnome), etc. etc. etc.

Quote:
perhaps you'd like to take a stab at explaining the discrepancies between NASA's explanation of comets and the data?

Well, no. I'd rather focus on the much more basic issues,

Comets aren't basic? So you are telling us you will ignore observations that might tell you a lot about the nature of the electrical environment surrounding the sun ... and perhaps even the nature of the sun? How *scientific*.

If the electric model can't get that stuff straight, why would it matter if it can explain more essoteric phenomena?

Essoteric? At least we can send space probes to comets and actually measure/test things. We can't do that with the sun. How convenient for you and your models ... as long as we all ignore comets.

By the way ... care to explain how a dirty snowball caused this according to the mainstream model?

http://www.jmccanneyscience.com/comet solar flare movie 01072004.mpeg

Maybe here's the real answer ...

http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/cometary/smcomet.html

 

[Dancing David]

So you want to ignore the dozen predictions they did get right (and that NASA got wrong) and focus only on this one? I see.

Here's what the link on predictions that I supplied earlier said about rock/norock:



In other words, David, in this case the verdict is still out because they don't know the crater size or depth.



Let's be clear, David. The lastest reports from NASA (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1199 ) describes Tempel 1 as "a loosely assembled icy dirtball with the consistency of talcum powder." But look at this image of Tempel 1.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA02127_modest.jpg

Does that really look like a "loosely assembled icy dirtball with the consistency of talcum powder"? Would there be well defined craters in a dirtball having the consistency of talcum powder, David? But there they are.

NASA's website states http://discovery.nasa.gov/deepimpact.html "The science team was surprised to find evidence of what appear to be impact craters on the surface of the comet." When they first started getting images of the comet, Mike A'Hearn of the Deep Impact team said "There are things on this comet that look a lot like impact craters to many of us. It looks very different from Wild-2 or Borrelly. We don't understand what this means. This comet has had an orbital history that looks pretty much similar to Borrelly and yet it looks totally different."

But electric comet theorists weren't surprised to see craters. They predicted them.

To demonstrate how ad-hoc NASA's conclusion now is, note this article: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050906_tempel1_update.html "Analysis: Deep Impact Comet All Fluff ... snip ... Comet Tempel 1, hit in early July by an 820-pound probe, appears to be coated with fine powder rather than solid ice and rock. The powder is even finer than sand, scientists had reported shortly after the impact. A thorough analysis confirms that and other preliminary conclusions about the 7-mile-long icy world, which appears to be rather fluffy. ... snip ... The outer tens of meters (yards) of the comet is less strong than a snow bank, said Deep Impact's Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland. Still, the object's gravity holds it all together. ... snip ... "The comet is mostly empty," A'Hearn said, adding that it is probably more than 75 percent porous with perhaps no solid core. Instead, it's likely made of ice grains loosely packed through and through."

Don't you think it's amazing how much detail they claim to know about the comet when they got so many predictions wrong and can't even tell you now with any confidence the crater size or crater depth?

And contrast the above claims with early statements by independent scientists at Penn State's SWIFT team who said (http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Swift-Deep-Impact.htm ): "NASA Swift Satellite Offers a Different View of the Great Comet Collision ... snip ... So far, after a set of eight observations each lasting about 50 minutes, Swift scientists have seen a quick and dramatic rise in ultraviolet light, evidence that the Deep Impact probe struck a hard surface, as opposed to a softer, snowy surface." That doesn't fit NASA's new model for Tempel 1. So would you care to explain where the SWIFT team went wrong, David? Care to tell us exactly why NASA now claims the body is 75 percent porous and made of icy grains the consistency of talcum powder? Based on what evidence? I think if you'll look at this "skeptically" you'll conclude NASA's explanation is after the fact hand waving and that they have no better idea about the comet now then they did before the impact.

If the Thunderbolts group got this one prediction wrong (and the verdict is still out), so did NASA. Afterall, they predicted a 100 meter crater. For example,

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/1875.pdf "IMPACT CRATER SIZE AND EVOLUTION: EXPECTATIONS FOR DEEP IMPACT"... snip ... Geological Sciences, Brown University... snip ... NASA Ames Research Center ... snip ... Mission imaging sequences for DI require planning for the maximum crater size; consequently, initial estimates focused on direct extrapolations of gravity-controlled scaling relations. Such extrapolations predict a rim-rim crater diameter of about 90 m and depth of nearly 20 m". A second extrapolation with slightly modified parameters predicted "maximum diameter of 115 m and depth of 23 m."

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/faq3.cfm "The crater that will be formed will be about 91m wide (the size of a football stadium) and about 30m (100feet) deep."

The post impact estimates are all over the place. http://discovery.nasa.gov/deepimpact.html "Due to the massive amounts of dust, science team members can only estimate the size crater's size to be about 325 to 825 feet in diameter." http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/media/deepimpact-070805.html "Scientists are still analyzing the data to determine the exact size of the crater. Scientists say the crater was at the large end of original expectations, which was from 50 to 250 meters (165 to 820 feet) wide." http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/results/excavating.cfm "The article mentions that the shadow of the ejecta cone on the surface of Tempel 1 was greater than 300 meters across at its base even at early stages of excavation. That is much wider than expected. But a final size for the crater was not given as the team is still analyzing the data." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007Icar..187...56B "The impact generated a large and bright ejecta cloud that hampers the clear view of the post-impact nucleus surface. We used image restoration techniques to enhance spatial resolution and contrast on a subset of selected post-impact high resolution images. No unambiguous evidence for the crater can be found; however, indirect evidence is consistent with a crater size in the 150 - 200 m range." http://planetary.org/explore/topics/comet_crater/ "However, one learns to expect the unexpected with space exploration; six months after the impactor kicked up an opaque cloud of comet debris, team scientists have learned a lot about comet Tempel 1 but can still only estimate the crater's size as being somewhere between 100 and 250 meters in diameter."

And NASA got every other prediction wrong, David ... as I explained in my previous posts on this subject. I seem to recall detractors of the EU theory asking what has it predicted and suggesting that we should stick with the theory that offers the best predictions. Apparently, that belief doesn't apply to this case. Wonder why?



Which just goes to show that you haven't bothered to read anything posted to you on this or about this subject. I'm really wasting my time with you David. But out of curiousity, David, tell us what caused comet Holmes to explode?

Well I am suprised that your attitude hasn't improved. I did not say i read extensively on the electric comet model, I reaf about an hours worth yesterday and the asked what I thought was imporatant.

I guess that you only percieve question in an US vs THEM mentality because I really wanted to know.

Oh well, if you can't answer a simple question then that is your choice.

When you answer my question, which was a simple one, why don't asteroids show comas, then I suppose I can try and discuss this with you. I am here to discuss and learn, you are here to win some sort of pissing contest.

Being bodies that are formed in various parts of the solar area I would assume that comets are not uniform or all alike. I would expect the Chiron bodies to be similar but different.

But the fact that a bunch of people cab only speculate on the nature of comets prior to actual observation of contact events is no suprise to me. the fact that you can point to all sorts of flaws is great, that is the way science works.

However the fact that you won't answer direct question and just start the drama queen behavior is disappointing. I am trying to understand the model you reference and have asked questions that I felt relevant.

I haven't even asked the more pointed ones about the nucleosynthesis of elements past iron, because I am still trying to understand the model you are presenting.

So my questions about the 'current' that powers the sun and the coma of asteroids are asked to understand the model.

The fact that you engage in minor histrionics amazes me.

I could learn more if you answered the questions.

The fact that we don't have an accurate model of comets is no suprise to me, some may have huge dust layers, some may be fluff covered in dust and some may be solid rock in an icy sheath.

The fact that you won't answer direct questions is rather telling.

 

[Ziggurat]

You claimed that an incoming source of current would affect the dipole shape. But the model is that space in the region where the sun lurks has a spherically distributed negative charge. And the model is that positive charges diffuse to the surface of the sun in a spherically distributed manner.

You don't get it. Given the details of the model, the sun should discharge VERY rapidly. The question was, what keeps it positively charged? Positive charge diffusing from the center isn't an answer, because positive charge can't be created out of nowhere. Charge is conserved. In order to keep the sun positively charged, there would NEED to be an external source pumping positive charge into it. But there isn't.

And positive charge WOULD NOT "diffuse" outwards. It would move outwards VERY rapidly. Let's go through the numbers once again. We're dealing with a radius of 7x10⁸ meters, so a surface area of about 6x10¹⁸ m². We have a net charge of around 8x10⁸ Coulombs, which means about 1.3x10^-10 C/m² if the charge is all at the surface. If the positive charge starts out in the center, does it have to diffuse to the surface? No. All it has to do is attract negative charge inwards and/or repel positive charges around it outwards. This can happen MUCH quicker than the charges themselves move, for the same reason that electrical signals in a circuit move far faster than the drift velocity of individual electrons. Let's say we move positive charge outwards. How far do they need to move so that the charge is completely on the surface? We'll let's confine our attention to the photosphere, the outer layer. That has a density of around 0.1 g/m³, almost entirely hydrogen. Since this is a plasma, let's just look at the protons, which make up almost all the weight here. Protons have a molar weight of about 1 gram/mol, so that's about 0.1 mols/m³, or 6x10²² protons/m³. Each proton has 1.6x10^-19 Coulombs, so we have 9.6x10³ Coulombs/m³ of protons in the photosphere. Assuming the electrons stay still, how far out do the protons have to move to put that much charge at the surface? Distance = surface charge density/volume charge density = (1.3x10^-10 C/m²)/
(9.6x10³ C/m³) = 1.35x10^-14 meters. That's how far the protons will have to move at the photosphere, on average, in order for the net charge to be completely on the surface. Given the force that these protons will be expriencing (and they WILL feel a force - you obviously don't understand how screening works if you think a net charge in the middle of the sun won't be felt at the surface. Plasmas can't violate Gauss's law, nothing can), how fast do you think that will take? Oh, actually, we can calculate that too. Assuming they start at rest (on average), then at an acceleration of 10⁹ m/s² (from before), we have t=sqrt(2x/a) = 5.2x10^-12 seconds. As I said, this will happen FAST. And then all that surface charge will explode off the sun, and the sun will be left with little net charge.

The numbers don't work out. They never will, because the electric model is wildly wrong, which is why it's not taken seriously.

So you want to claim those field lines aren't essentially radial everywhere they come out of the sun? Maybe you should examine an closeup image of a coronal loop.

A loop is a rather explicit example of the fact that the field lines CANNOT be all radial. The field line MUST be tangential in places, or you don't HAVE a loop.

Wait. You are the one that claimed Debye length only applied if the charges are moving.

You don't get it. Shielding only happens if charges can move in response to a field. And once they move, they're not in the same place anymore. I never said they need to keep moving. But to shield the inside of the sun from an electric field, charges would need to be on the surface. And charges at the surface are not shielded. Jeeze. This is Freshman physics here. Any net charge in the center of the sun means the interior of the sun is not shielded. Plasmas cannot violate Gauss's law. Nothing can.

No, because if they are shielded from charges at a distance (which I suspect they would be), then the repulsion from low r charges will drop off much faster than the gravity attraction from large r sources.

Again, NO. Shielding isn't magical, and it cannot violate Gauss's law. It happens in a plasma the same way it does in a conductor: by a redistribution of charges to the surface. Charges at the surface are not shielded. They will feel the full force of any applied field. And if the charges are not located at the surface but in the interior, then the interior is not shielded.

Look this is getting ridiculous. I don't know the distribution of charge on the sun. Nor do you. Nor does anyone.

I don't need to know exactly what it is. A spherically symmetric charge distribution creates the LEAST amount of force on those charges. It's a LOWER bound for ANY electric model. And it shows the model simply doesn't work. Either the charge is far too large to be stable, or far too low to provide the necessary energy to power the sun.

Nor do you know what the "micro" conditions on the sun are that might lead or not lead to shielding of charges should they exist.

Once again: shielding happens by moving screening charges to the surface. Those surface charges are not shielded. It doesn't matter what micro conditions there are, shielding isn't magical, it cannot violate Gauss's law, and there's absolutely no possible way that a net charge on the sun can avoid feeling repulsion from itself.

Furthermore, there are various electric sun models. I'm probably confusing matters by mixing some of them.

Doesn't matter. None of them will work. Pick whatever one you like, and when you run throught the calculations, you'll find it doesn't work.

And I'm not defending any one in particular ... just trying to raise awareness that there are other possible explanations.

Possible explanations for the power source of the sun other than fusion? Nope, sorry. There aren't any.

Given the amount of material resources devoted to them compared to the mainstream, it's no wonder that many details are still vague.

Many details are vague because it's being cooked up by crackpots who either can't do the basic calculations I did to discover the absurdity of the idea, or who refuse to do them because it would poke holes in their pet ideas. The calculations I did are not hard. And yet, nobody advocating an electric model is doing them. Why? Because they demonstrate the absurdity of the idea.

Heck, details are still vague in the mainstream's models (hence the need for gnomes) despite the billions that have been spent building those models.

The discrepencies which you point to are largely a result of the fact that the models are NOT that vague, and so discrepencies between predictions and observations can be located. You're only able to claim that the electric model can "explain" so much because most of what it is is just hand-waving arguments without any calculations to back them up.

Here's an Electric Sun model that says the surface is negatively charged and every 11 years the positive buildup escapes. http://www.electric-sun.info/main.html .

The page is full of grammatical mistakes. That alone should be a tipoff not to take it seriously. But it also makes the same mistake you repeatedly make, claiming that plasmas can magically "shield" electrical forces. Sorry, doesn't work that way. There are NO violations of Gauss's law. Even black holes don't violate Gauss's law. And models which depend upon Gauss's law being violated can (and should) be dismissed out of hand immediately.

 

[Ziggurat]

Double post.

 

[BeAChooser]

When you answer my question, which was a simple one, why don't asteroids show comas,

They don't?

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-00j.html "Chiron -- the big "asteroid" discovered between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus in 1977 -- was the first of these; just a few years after its discovery, as it moved closer to the Sun, it suddenly developed an unmistakable coma, and thus received double designation as a comet."

http://metaresearch.org/solar system/asteroids/trans-NeptunianAsteroids.asp "The distinction between comets and asteroids has become rather blurred over the past decade because no single characteristic uniquely identifies a body as either with certainty. For example, debate still rages over whether the Jupiter impactor, Shoemaker-Levy 9, was a comet or an asteroid. Despite having very different origins in conventional models, comets and asteroids have continued to display similar reflectance spectra, albedos, size ranges, etc. Comas and tails are the best guides we have to indicate that an object is a comet. But many comets display no tails; indeed, virtually all of them beyond Jupiter do not. And some comets have lost their comas, becoming completely asteroidal in appearance, while some asteroids have suddenly begun to exhibit comet-like activity, including the surprise appearance of a tail in one case."

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/asteroids.html "Among the most recently discovered comets are the Centaurids, such as Chiron and Pholus. These were first called asteroids, but Chiron has been observed to occasionally develop a coma at its closest approach to the Sun. As will be explained below, Chiron's eccentric orbit cannot be original and the coma confirms that it has not existed for long"

There's a clue to the answer to your question in the above, David.

Now I have a question for you. Why did comet Holmes recently and suddenly brighten? Why, in fact, did it suddenly develop a coma and tail at all, given it's distance from the sun at the time? The eccentricity of its orbit is minimal and it is always outside the orbit of Mars and inside the orbit of Jupiter. What changed to make the comet suddenly turn from a VERY dim object into a naked eye wonder and then explode, becoming an object that's currently much bigger than the sun? Vaporization and outgassing of volatiles due to extreme temperatures surely can't be the cause. And Holmes was actually moving away from the sun at the time this happened. Wouldn't the environment be getting cooler according to the mainstream theory? Not to mention that comet after comet shows little or no water anyway (contrary to the mainstream model). I've seen no indication this comet was any different. And once having developed an extensive tail, why would it suddenly lose it? Did a chill suddenly come over that region of space, David?

And here's some more reading (for those who are interested) with a few notable excerpts quoted: http://www.mikamar.biz/articles/deep_impact_anniversary.htm "In September 09, 2005, NewScientist.com news service published a revealing article by Stuart Clark, “Comet Tails of the Unexpected”. ... snip ... The New Scientist article continues, “We have now had four close encounters with comets, and every one of them has thrown astronomers onto their back foot.* The hard times for electrically neutral cometology began with Comet Halley. Snowball theory expected more or less uniform sublimation of the surface as the nucleus rotated in the sun, much as you would expect of a scoop of ice cream on a rotisserie. But Halley had jets. Less than 15% of the surface was sublimating, and the ejecta were shooting away in thin beams. The New Scientist article notes that this observation “has shown astronomers that they are in the dark about even the basics”, and quotes Giotto project scientist Gerhard Schwehm of the European Space Agency, "We still do not know what drives comet activity." ... snip ... NASA’s Stardust mission found 22 jets as it flew past comet Wild 2. Two of them were on the night side! This, along with the field alignment and collimation of the jets, should be enough to put the “heat explanation” to rest for good. The New Scientist article quotes Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, “It’s a mystery to me how comets work at all.” ... snip ... The “black as coal” exteriors of these comets are what you would expect on electrically burned surfaces. The surface of comet Wild 2 was measured to be 18° C, If this is correct, it was likely due to electrical heating, not from solar radiation. The amount of heat energy received from the sun at these distances is easily radiated away from these “black” bodies. ... snip ... In accepted theory a comet is believed to be a dirty snowball slowly wasting away in the heat of the Sun, and there is nothing that would lead an astronomer to expect a comet to emit x-rays.* But the ROSAT image from March 27, 1996 reveals Comet Hyakutake radiating x-rays as intense as those from the x- ray stars that are ROSAT's usual target. Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the solar plasma is taken up in a “double layer” of charge that is the surface of a plasma sheath surrounding the comet. When the electrical stress is great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical comet coma and tail. Electrical discharges occur within the sheath and at the nucleus, radiating a variety of frequencies, including x-rays."

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
You claimed that an incoming source of current would affect the dipole shape. ... snip ...

You don't get it. Given the details of the model, the sun should discharge VERY rapidly.

You seem to be avoiding your own claim. Would a spherical discharge significantly alter a dipole field or not? I think you know the answer.

I think it's you who doesn't "get it". For example, in all your comments, you've not ONCE mentioned double layers. http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050701moreelectricity.htm If double layers form on the surface of the sun as a result of a local unequal charge distribution and currents, wouldn't that have some affect on what happens to those charges? Of course it would. As the above link indicates "With the ebb and flow of the many conditions in a filament (density, velocity, composition, temperature, etc.), double layers can form and dissipate. And the amplitudes of variations in these conditions can become large. A double layer can accelerate particles to cosmic-ray energies. It is “radio noisy”, radiating across a wide band of frequencies. It accelerates particles in beams. It can exert pressure on the plasma and expand across the magnetic field. It may explode and draw inductive energy from the filamentary circuit, releasing vastly more energy than was present in the double layer itself."

Infact, as that source rightly concludes, "the phenomenon of double layers became a ghost that haunts conventional astrophysics. Astrophysicists can detect and recognize the existence of magnetic fields in space. They use the conceptual tools of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD—the physics of fluids that are affected by magnetic forces) to explain magnetic influences on gases. But because double layers are purely electrical and can only be detected by sending a probe through them, conventional astrophysicists are unable to recognize their existence. Because the electric field in Birkeland filaments is aligned with the magnetic field (field-aligned currents), the electric field in double layers is also aligned with the magnetic field and MHD doesn’t apply. Astrophysicists’ concepts have created a blind spot in their percepts. Astrophysicists see only the double layers’ effects, and so they are at a loss to explain them. Energetic events occur without commensurate causes, as if a poltergeist were loose in the universe." And the poltergeists they dream up are gnomes like open field lines and magnetic reconnection.

The question was, what keeps it positively charged? Positive charge diffusing from the center isn't an answer, because positive charge can't be created out of nowhere.

One possibility from Physicist Wal Thornhill: "The nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than the electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the centre of the atom. The result is that each atom becomes a small electric dipole. These dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than simple gravitational sorting allows. That leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive force of gravity without the need for a central heat source in the star."

Supporting that possibility:

http://turton.co.za/pubs/electrongas4.html "Electrostatic Effects in Planetary, Stellar, and Interstellar Atmospheres, ... snip ... Trevor Turton, 2007, ... snip ... The Sun radiates huge quantities of energy from its surface, and this radiation is fairly evenly distributed across its surface. The Sun's surface temperature is about 5,785K, while the temperature within its chromosphere is about 5*10^^6K. At these temperatures, all molecules are dissociated into individual atoms, and all atoms are ionized. Using equation {1} ({1} v = (kT/m)^^0.5 where k is Boltzmann's constant) we find that free electrons near the Sun's surface would have a mean velocity of about 296km/s due to their temperature, if they could move freely, while those in the chromosphere would have a mean velocity of about 8,700km/s, which is way in excess of the escape velocity of the Sun's gravitational field, some 618km/s."

Note that v is inversely proportional to the square root of the mass. The ratio of proton mass to electron mass is about 1836. Therefore, if the temperature in the chromosphere results in a velocity for electrons of 8700 km/s, that temperature should result in a proton velocity of about 8700/42 = 207 km/s ... way under the excape velocity of the sun.

The source goes on to note that "if gravitational forces were the only ones that needed to be considered then we could predict that large quantities of free electrons in the chromosphere would escape from the Sun's gravitational field into the surrounding vacuum of space. But the loss of electrons in this way would cause the Sun to acquire a net positive charge that would, over time, grow to the point where it prevented the further escape of electrons, or at least ensured that the inflow of cooler free electrons from space balanced the outflow of high temperature electrons."

It goes on to suggest that "there should therefore be a steady migration of electrons above all parts of the Sun's surface to its magnetic poles. This would have to be compensated for by a return flow of electrons from the magnetic poles to all parts of the Sun's surface, and/or a contra-flow of positive ions to the poles. But the very high temperature and violent thermal agitation of the Sun's substance would impede the flow of charge.* Over time, very large potential differences could build up across the Sun's surface in a north-south direction. These may be relieved periodically by massive flows of positively charged material from one place on the Sun's surface to another, generally flowing from regions nearer the equator to those further from it. Initially such flows would be constrained to follow the Sun's magnetic field, and hence flow close to the Sun's surface. The flow of charge would create its own local magnetic field, coiled around the flow, redefining the magnetic field in the vicinity of the flow. Flows of charge through the Sun's atmosphere would cause local heating, and the heated gases would tend to rise. If the flow of charge persists for some time, it would arch above the Sun's surface, forming the familiar solar flare."

And then observes that "if there is a large reservoir of charge associated with a solar flare, its flow will continue even when its path rises very high above the Sun's surface. If the flare rises high enough, it will surmount most of the Sun's atmosphere, and the regions where its magnetic field is strongest.* At this point, the flare may act as a "puncture", sheathed by its own magnetic field, allowing material with a net positive charge to flow largely unhindered from both ends of the flare into space. This mechanism may explain the massive coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that explode from the Sun periodically. These would have a net positive charge, but would contain a mix of the Sun's surface substance, primarily ionised hydrogen and helium with a small admixture of heavier elements."

Or here's another possibility courtesy of http://saturniancosmology.org/files/sun/electrons.txt . Powerful galactic Birkelian currents in the form of highly energetic electrons, contact the heliopause (or cathode) of our sun. As in a discharge tube, the main "activity" occurs directly at the cathode and anode. The space in between (like the positive column of a discharge tube) maintains a steady state of ionisation with equal number of positive and negative charges. Electrons "drift" toward the Sun (following initial acceleration at the heliopause), while positive ions accelerate out from the Sun (Solar Wind) because of the much more highly charged interstellar medium. "Both the Sun and the interstellar medium are thus negatively charged, but the Sun itself (within its "cavity"), is much less charged. Hence a current will flow between the two charges with the Sun taking on a more positive role and as a result, due to the difference in electrical potential (roughly10 billion volts), the anode (Sun) will glow, which is what we observe at the Corona". "Below this area, near to the "surface" (photosphere) of the Sun, an intense discharge occurs in the form of an electric arc."

Charge is conserved. In order to keep the sun positively charged, there would NEED to be an external source pumping positive charge into it.

No, all the sun would need to do is lose negative charges. Or the second of the two models above could be true with both the sun and the interstellar medium being negatively charged ... just one more negatively charged than the other.

And positive charge WOULD NOT "diffuse" outwards. It would move outwards VERY rapidly.

Well photons supposedly take a 100,000 years to reach the surface from the core. You think protons would just pass through unimpeded? You make them sound more like neutrinos unaffected by anything else going on inside the sun.

Let's go through the numbers once again.

Let's not since in reality we don't really know the net charge at this point. It's at best a wag. As is your belief that you know what is going on inside and on the surface of the sun with respect to the behavior of charges, be they negative or positive. You don't even seem to want to consider double layers, z-pinches and Birkeland currents in any explanation ... yet those are phenomena that naturally will occur in plasmas and whenever there are spatial differences in charge in plasmas. So discussing numbers with you is a non-starter.

You clearly have your mind closed to anything but gravity and that's likely where it will remain. But I hope that our readers find something of interest in what I've been posting and don't dismiss it out of hand. I hope they look further and ask themselves why astrophysicists and proponents of their theories ... who think they know exactly what is going on in the sun and in objects at the edge of the universe ... are so uncomfortable dealing with the observed behavior of objects in our own backyard ... like comets ... that they can actually visit with spacecraft. I hope they wonder why the mainstream has so much trouble explaining the voyager spacecraft motions, the solar wind and temperatures of the corona .... why the mainstream must invent gnomes like magnetic reconnection, open field lines and dark matter.

You want to focus on numbers as a diversion ... to keep readers from seeing the bigger picture. That Big Bang and the mainstream theory is a bust at really explaining anything.

I'm still waiting to hear one of you tell us why is it that some stars have been observed completely changing locations on the HR diagram within a matter of decades when that is completely contrary to the mainstream model which requires it take thousands and even millions of years. Do you have any explanation? The EU theorists have one.

I'm still waiting to hear one of you tell us how some stars can sustain fusion when we know their temperatures are FAR below the minimum required in the mainstream theory? Do you have any explanation? Because EU theorists have a self consistent explanation for the energy output of ALL stars.

I'm still waiting to hear one of you explain how stars can be made of "neutronium", a form of matter that is impossible to produce in any lab and for which no serious scientific discussion can be cited.

I've pointed out dozens and dozens of contradictory observations during the last several months and defenders of the mainstream simply ignore them ... ALL. So why should I discuss a number that is based on at best a guess at this point in time anyway?

Quote:
So you want to claim those field lines aren't essentially radial everywhere they come out of the sun? Maybe you should examine an closeup image of a coronal loop.

A loop is a rather explicit example of the fact that the field lines CANNOT be all radial. The field line MUST be tangential in places, or you don't HAVE a loop.

But they come out of the sun radially. In any case, I never claimed all field lines are radial. Your attempt to paint me as having done that is yet another distraction from the bigger picture. If you insist on distorting what I have said, then I will make no further attempt to discuss this with you. I'll simply continue to note all the contradictions of observations with the theory you apparently hold dear and point out that an electrical explanation may resolve most of those contradictions. The reality is that all I and folks like these http://www.cosmologystatement.org/ are trying to do is get *some* funding directed at exploring the role of electrical phenomena rather than having them be completely ignored and dismissed out of hand. But apparently, your side is unwilling to do even that.

By the way, this claim of yours

The discrepencies which you point to are largely a result of the fact that the models are NOT that vague, and so discrepencies between predictions and observations can be located.

is false, as the many examples I've provided over the last several months demonstrate. The reality is that mainstream literature is filled with phrases such as "complete mystery", "still unclear", "have no idea how", "completely unexpected", "not yet explained", etc ... not with regards to minor discrepancies in numbers or predictions but with regard to the existence of large scale phenomena and the GNOME-LIKE ASSUMPTIONS made to try and fit the standard model to the data.

 

[Dancing David]

They don't?

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-00j.html "Chiron -- the big "asteroid" discovered between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus in 1977 -- was the first of these; just a few years after its discovery, as it moved closer to the Sun, it suddenly developed an unmistakable coma, and thus received double designation as a comet."

http://metaresearch.org/solar system/asteroids/trans-NeptunianAsteroids.asp "The distinction between comets and asteroids has become rather blurred over the past decade because no single characteristic uniquely identifies a body as either with certainty. For example, debate still rages over whether the Jupiter impactor, Shoemaker-Levy 9, was a comet or an asteroid. Despite having very different origins in conventional models, comets and asteroids have continued to display similar reflectance spectra, albedos, size ranges, etc. Comas and tails are the best guides we have to indicate that an object is a comet. But many comets display no tails; indeed, virtually all of them beyond Jupiter do not. And some comets have lost their comas, becoming completely asteroidal in appearance, while some asteroids have suddenly begun to exhibit comet-like activity, including the surprise appearance of a tail in one case."

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/asteroids.html "Among the most recently discovered comets are the Centaurids, such as Chiron and Pholus. These were first called asteroids, but Chiron has been observed to occasionally develop a coma at its closest approach to the Sun. As will be explained below, Chiron's eccentric orbit cannot be original and the coma confirms that it has not existed for long"

There's a clue to the answer to your question in the above, David.

Now I have a question for you. Why did comet Holmes recently and suddenly brighten? Why, in fact, did it suddenly develop a coma and tail at all, given it's distance from the sun at the time? The eccentricity of its orbit is minimal and it is always outside the orbit of Mars and inside the orbit of Jupiter. What changed to make the comet suddenly turn from a VERY dim object into a naked eye wonder and then explode, becoming an object that's currently much bigger than the sun? Vaporization and outgassing of volatiles due to extreme temperatures surely can't be the cause. And Holmes was actually moving away from the sun at the time this happened. Wouldn't the environment be getting cooler according to the mainstream theory? Not to mention that comet after comet shows little or no water anyway (contrary to the mainstream model). I've seen no indication this comet was any different. And once having developed an extensive tail, why would it suddenly lose it? Did a chill suddenly come over that region of space, David?

And here's some more reading (for those who are interested) with a few notable excerpts quoted: http://www.mikamar.biz/articles/deep_impact_anniversary.htm "In September 09, 2005, NewScientist.com news service published a revealing article by Stuart Clark, “Comet Tails of the Unexpected”. ... snip ... The New Scientist article continues, “We have now had four close encounters with comets, and every one of them has thrown astronomers onto their back foot.* The hard times for electrically neutral cometology began with Comet Halley. Snowball theory expected more or less uniform sublimation of the surface as the nucleus rotated in the sun, much as you would expect of a scoop of ice cream on a rotisserie. But Halley had jets. Less than 15% of the surface was sublimating, and the ejecta were shooting away in thin beams. The New Scientist article notes that this observation “has shown astronomers that they are in the dark about even the basics”, and quotes Giotto project scientist Gerhard Schwehm of the European Space Agency, "We still do not know what drives comet activity." ... snip ... NASA’s Stardust mission found 22 jets as it flew past comet Wild 2. Two of them were on the night side! This, along with the field alignment and collimation of the jets, should be enough to put the “heat explanation” to rest for good. The New Scientist article quotes Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, “It’s a mystery to me how comets work at all.” ... snip ... The “black as coal” exteriors of these comets are what you would expect on electrically burned surfaces. The surface of comet Wild 2 was measured to be 18° C, If this is correct, it was likely due to electrical heating, not from solar radiation. The amount of heat energy received from the sun at these distances is easily radiated away from these “black” bodies. ... snip ... In accepted theory a comet is believed to be a dirty snowball slowly wasting away in the heat of the Sun, and there is nothing that would lead an astronomer to expect a comet to emit x-rays.* But the ROSAT image from March 27, 1996 reveals Comet Hyakutake radiating x-rays as intense as those from the x- ray stars that are ROSAT's usual target. Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the solar plasma is taken up in a “double layer” of charge that is the surface of a plasma sheath surrounding the comet. When the electrical stress is great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical comet coma and tail. Electrical discharges occur within the sheath and at the nucleus, radiating a variety of frequencies, including x-rays."

more stuff to read, I will be more able once I am back at work, I have dial up at home.

Stuff to look at and ponder.

I already said Chiron, nyah nyah, beat you to it.

Um don't most comets 'out gas' volitales more after they go past the sun?

As I said i would expect there to be classic asteroids (sorta rocky bodies), classic comets 9sorta icey bodies) and those that are in between.

I am a pluralist after all, I don't expect the up/down, right/left, back/forth, us/them sort of models to be significant.

I believe that reality is more of a buffet, some dishes are more palatable, some are more valid than others.

 

[Dancing David]

Well photons supposedly take a 100,000 years to reach the surface from the core. You think protons would just pass through unimpeded? You make them sound more like neutrinos unaffected by anything else going on inside the sun.



.

Oh whoops, there goes the baby on it's head again. Sorry, peanut gallery will retrire now.

Sorry BAC you have consistanly shown a true lack of ability to understand the other model in the least and why Ziggurat is very patienlt demonstrating certain, um , facts that you can't answer and don't understand.

I hope you do better at you day job, raising money for the republicans or whatever it is!

BTW hows the alpha-lyman forest coming?

Sorry i could resist. That and nucleo synthesis of trans iron elements are just rather telling.

I do think Edd had a good idea.

Present the relative merits of plasma cosmology (I think you should dump the electric sun.) Which by the way does not mean presenting a bunch of random holes in what might be the current theory ( that is a god of the gaps style of argumentation).

It means presenting what is the best of plasma cosmology and what data it explains, not what models it explains, but what data it explains.

Like what is a data point (that excludes assuming QSOs are at abberant redshidts) that refutes the current model. Not what is a data point that points to a hole in the current model but what is a data point that refutes the current model?

I will go back to my more quiet role.

You do know that the assumption that we are in a closed universe that has a pseudo steady state is a model that is unsupported by observations here on earth don't you? So the Halton/Alven Gnome is lurking around as well.

 

[robinson]

That comet/asteroid stuff is fascinating.

 

[Ziggurat]

You seem to be avoiding your own claim. Would a spherical discharge significantly alter a dipole field or not? I think you know the answer.

I never said the discharge would affect the dipole moment. If it's spherically symmetric, it won't produce a magnetic field at all. What I said would affect the magnetic field is the charging which you suggested would take place to maintain the sun's net charge, and which (by your own model) is not spherically symmetric.

I think it's you who doesn't "get it". For example, in all your comments, you've not ONCE mentioned double layers.

Because they cannot solve the problem of the gigantic repulsion a net charge of that magnitude would create. You keep waving this term around like it solves some problem, and yet you can't crunch any numbers to demonstrate that it can do anything you're proposing it can do. Gauss's law cannot be violated. If there's a large net positive charge on the sun, the outer protons WILL feel a gigantic repulsion, and NO configuration of double layers can prevent it.

One possibility from Physicist Wal Thornhill: "The nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than the electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the centre of the atom.

And here I was, thinking we were talking about plasmas in the sun, not atoms.

The result is that each atom becomes a small electric dipole. These dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than simple gravitational sorting allows. That leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive force of gravity without the need for a central heat source in the star."

But this polarization doesn't create a net charge on the sun. It creates a positive center and a negative outer shell, and the charges balance. That's all well and good for keeping the sun from collapsing, but it does nothing to attract electrons from outside the sun to power it.

The source goes on to note that "if gravitational forces were the only ones that needed to be considered then we could predict that large quantities of free electrons in the chromosphere would escape from the Sun's gravitational field into the surrounding vacuum of space. But the loss of electrons in this way would cause the Sun to acquire a net positive charge that would, over time, grow to the point where it prevented the further escape of electrons, or at least ensured that the inflow of cooler free electrons from space balanced the outflow of high temperature electrons."

Oh, the irony. I thought the sun was positively charged to begin with, and that was its power source. This suggests that the net positive charge is a side-effect. Which is it?

It goes on to suggest that "there should therefore be a steady migration of electrons above all parts of the Sun's surface to its magnetic poles. This would have to be compensated for by a return flow of electrons from the magnetic poles to all parts of the Sun's surface, and/or a contra-flow of positive ions to the poles. But the very high temperature and violent thermal agitation of the Sun's substance would impede the flow of charge.* Over time, very large potential differences could build up across the Sun's surface in a north-south direction.

That's nice. Doesn't address the problem of the net charge ejecting protons. Notably lacking, of course, are any numbers on these charges, the potential differences, and the currents. Hmmm... why might that be?

No, all the sun would need to do is lose negative charges.

But your model is predicated on the sun gaining negative charges. How can it lose electric charges? I calculated the force on a proton at the surface of the sun from the massive net positive charge you said existed, a force several orders of magnitude larger than gravity. Well, that's going to be the same attractive force on electrons. How can they escape? The quote from your link suggested a thermally driven process, but that only works if we only consider gravity, but given the net charge, gravity is a mere minor purterbation at the surface, so the calculation wouldn't work and electrons would NOT be escaping.

Or the second of the two models above could be true with both the sun and the interstellar medium being negatively charged ... just one more negatively charged than the other.

If everything is negatively charged, we can renormalize that part away. Won't change anything.

Well photons supposedly take a 100,000 years to reach the surface from the core. You think protons would just pass through unimpeded?

Wow, did you miss that. Protons don't need to make it from the core to the surface. They just need to move a bit, and bump the next proton to move a bit, and the next one a bit, and so on. Did you not pick up on my mention of the distinction between signal and drift velocities in a wire? OK, perhaps a more hands-on analogy is needed. Suppose you've got a garden hose filled with water, but the faucet it's connected to is off. You turn on the faucet, and water starts coming out. Do you need to wait for the water that came out of the faucet to reach the end of the hose before water starts coming out? Nope. Same thing here: we don't need the specific protons at the center of the sun to reach the surface in order for the net charge to be redistributed to the surface.

Let's not since in reality we don't really know the net charge at this point. It's at best a wag.

Then all your various electric models, which you seem to want to pick and choose among depending on the question being asked (quite convienient) and which rather depend upon what the net charge is, are at best a wag. This is basic stuff. The equivalent would be advocating a fusion model without having even an order of magnitude idea of the energy given off by the combination of hydrogen into helium. The charge on the sun is the very foundation of an electric model. You cannot brush it under the rug and expect to be taken seriously.

As is your belief that you know what is going on inside and on the surface of the sun with respect to the behavior of charges, be they negative or positive. You don't even seem to want to consider double layers, z-pinches and Birkeland currents in any explanation ... yet those are phenomena that naturally will occur in plasmas and whenever there are spatial differences in charge in plasmas. So discussing numbers with you is a non-starter.

In other words, you want me to crunch numbers for you, because you can't do the calculations yourself. You think those things are important? Then do the calculations. Demonstrate how they can overcome the coulomb repulsion your model would create. But you can't do that. Hell, none of your links has even bothered to calculate the coulomb repulsion.

You want to focus on numbers as a diversion ... to keep readers from seeing the bigger picture. That Big Bang and the mainstream theory is a bust at really explaining anything.

No, I want to focus on numbers because physics is a quantitative science, not a qualitative one. If the numbers don't work, the theory doesn't work. You want to avoid numbers like the plague, since you can't get them to work.

I'm still waiting to hear one of you tell us why is it that some stars have been observed completely changing locations on the HR diagram within a matter of decades when that is completely contrary to the mainstream model which requires it take thousands and even millions of years. Do you have any explanation? The EU theorists have one.

Does it include numbers? Or are they as number-shy as you seem to be?

I'm still waiting to hear one of you explain how stars can be made of "neutronium", a form of matter that is impossible to produce in any lab and for which no serious scientific discussion can be cited.

Do you have any idea why neutronium can't be produced in a lab? And people don't cite "serious scientific discussion", they cite peer-reviewed journal articles. Of which there is not an absence.

I've pointed out dozens and dozens of contradictory observations during the last several months and defenders of the mainstream simply ignore them ... ALL. So why should I discuss a number that is based on at best a guess at this point in time anyway?

Sorry, but if a number which is absolutely fundamental to the theory is just a guess, then the theory itself is just a guess.

But they come out of the sun radially.

Yes, they do. And then they curve around tangential to the sun.

The reality is that all I and folks like these http://www.cosmologystatement.org/ are trying to do is get *some* funding directed at exploring the role of electrical phenomena rather than having them be completely ignored and dismissed out of hand. But apparently, your side is unwilling to do even that.

If you want funding, you need to do better than vague guesses. You need to demonstrate that calculations can be made to support the model. And you and your sources have failed at that. Spectacularly. I dismiss your ideas out of hand because they're unphysical and absurd, such as the idea that plasma shielding can violate Gauss's law. Stop making mistakes that any undergrad physics major can spot and maybe you'll get more consideration.

 

[The Man]

Too bad the other side isn't as open in considering the possibility that electromagnetic effects play a fundamental role in the formation and behavior of stars and galaxies.

You only prove my point. That sites states "Since plasmas contain equal numbers of electrons and ions, they are electrically neutral overall and thus electric fields play a lesser dynamical role. Because plasmas are highly conductive, any charge imbalances are readily neutralised." It argues that electromagnetic effects do NOT play a fundamental role.

Considering the possibility that electric fields play a fundamental role and determining that they only play a lesser dynamical role for specific fundamental reasons is still considering the possibility that electric fields play a fundamental role. Is it just that you think, since they are not considered to play as significant of a role as you would like, it sounds better to say that the possibility has not been considered?

No it does not argue that “electromagnetic effects do NOT play a fundamental role” it specifically says “thus electric fields play a lesser dynamical role”. Please try not to directly follow a quote with a deliberate misstatement of that quote.

I see you completely ignored my statements about magnetic influences.

And it's disingenuous for that website to state "During the 1940s and 50s, Alfvén developed magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) which enables plasmas to be modelled as waves in a fluid, for which Alfvén won the 1970 Nobel Prize for physics. MHD is a standard astronomical tool." That's because Alfven specifically stated that MHD was not the right tool to model galaxies and stars where phenomena like double layers and Birkeland currents occur.

The source is also dishonest in stating that "current models indicate that plasma processes have little role to play in forming the very largest structures, such as voids, galaxy clusters and superclusters." Dishonest because current models do not include electromagnetic effects such as those Alfven and others say play a role in the formation of those structures. And the website fails to even mention the MANY problems mainstream astrophysicists are having with their models and their explanation of those large structures. I've posted several times articles discussing a number of those problems. Your side in this debate has consistently ignored what I posted. Just like the Big Bang community has done. Because they aren't open to any explanation but gravity. Q.E.D.

Disingenuous, form your point of view no doubt, dishonest, not in the least. Once again you seem to think that if people do not accept your assertions they are ignoring them and now go further as to call them dishonest because they consider some factors to be less significant then you (even though they explain why they consider those factors to be less significant).

This statement shows a profound lack of understanding of the physics involved. Plasmas are not electrically neutral. They are QUASI-neutral and in fact can create very large structures.

So QUASI-neutral meaning “seemingly” neutral, thanks for agreeing with the reference quoted by demonstrating a profound lack of language skills. If you want to make a statement in opposition to another statement, then try using terms that at least seemingly or QUASI oppose the meaning of the other statement.

No, you, like so many it's-only-gravity proponents simply fail to understand the difference between the little problem Ziggurat has posed and the physics of force-free Birkeland currents.

Well include yourself among the “it's-only-gravity proponents” (in truth it would be the “it's-mostly-gravity proponents” if you would like to stop being disingenuous and dishonest) since you agree plasmas are seemingly neutral did not seem to have a problem with the results of magnetic influences I stated and make statements yourself like the following.

the issue was whether gravity can overwhelm the repulsion of charges. If the charges move away from one another, the repulsion will drop far faster than the attraction due to gravity because gravity has no Debye length and as the baseline r to the bulk of the attractive/repulsive mass/charge is lower in the charge case than in the gravity case.

So gravity overwhelms or is more significant then the effects of the charges due to the shielding of those charges. So it is gravity that keeps the sun together, welcome to the “it’s-mostly-gravity-proponent” club.

No, I'm talking about a recent peer reviewed article in a mainstream journal on the behavior of the sun or galaxies that even mentions Birkeland currents and double layers ... if even just to discount them as a cause of the observed phenomena. Let's see if you can find any of those.

Well this is what you said.

If you believe that, then find a mainstream source that mentions Birkeland currents and double layers in regards to solar phenomena and galactic rotation curves.

Why don’t you just list what you would consider a “mainstream source” or mainstream journal, the time frame you would consider “recent” and any other hoops you would like to see someone jump through, then wait to see who volunteers.

And you think by linking a paper done in 1982 by a proponent of plasma cosmology and associate of Alfven you show that the mainstream has considered it? Who do you think you are kidding?

Stop kidding yourself. This is a peer reviewed paper in a mainstream journal. Both the editors and peer review must have considered it worthy of consideration and publication. It is made currently and easily available through a website hosted by The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A mainstream astrophysical organization that obviously considers it worthy of current consideration along with the other archived documents. This is all made possible by a grant from NASA, a mainstream organization that considers the archived documents to be worthy of continued consideration. So the mainstream has considered, do consider and continue to consider papers like this as important reference material, which is why they are made readily available from a mainstream source at the tax payers’ expense. Your assertions that these concepts have not been considered and are not made available for consideration by mainstream sources is completely without merit. Once again you seem to feel that if your assertions are not generally accepted that means they are not generally considered. This seems to be your basic retort of the other documents I linked from this site.

Again, you only prove my point. This is an article written in 1993 which notes double layers might be responsible for the emissions from pulsars. It was obviously ignored by the rest of mainstream physics community. Also, note that the source spends a lot of time on the bogus gnome of magnetic reconnection and assumes we know what neutron stars are (we don't really). It's hard to not laugh at a source that back in 1993 was treating magnetic reconnection as if it were proven physics when in 2007 they still haven't proven it or tend to describe phenomena that sound like exploding double layers in their "proofs".

But to those authors credit, at least they mention double layers as the other possible cause of the emissions. They note that double layers are "effective particle accelerators." The authors find they could produce the 10^^15 volt discharges that are observed. This is something that seems to have been completely forgotten in most mainstream work since that time.

So once again your point is if your assertions were not generally accepted by this paper or after its publication then both were ignored.


http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1994ApJS...90..837H

My particular preference for this paper is the following quote, which you seemed to ignore or at least not address in your response.

If this particle density is moderately low, field-aligned currents are likely to trigger micro-instabilities and possible double layer formation before reconnection occurs. If instead the lowest particle density is higher, reconnection is likely to occur before the threshold for micro-instability is reached. In some circumstances, the current may continue to grow even after double layers have formed, eventually triggering a reconnection event.

So it would seem that one of this paper’s assertions is that under certain conditions some of your favorite missing mainstream plasma physics orphans (Brikeland currents and Double Layers) could be the parents of one of your favorite mainstream plasma physics gnomes (Magnetic Reconnection). So whenever you see a mainstream references to magnetic reconnection in plasma remember your orphans could be the triggering mechanism.

I think we just demonstrated whose statements exceed their grasp of the subject. I suggest you wipe egg off face.

Your statements only continue to demonstrate that your grasp on mainstream references is as feeble as your grasp of fundamental physics. Please read, think and learn. You will find that the egg you think you see on the faces of others only results from looking through the egg on your own.

By the way you attributed an entire posts worth of quotes to me instead of their originator.

 

[BeAChooser]

Um don't most comets 'out gas' volitales more after they go past the sun?

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15407/1066/ "Astronomers are not certain why the comet expanded after it got to its closest point to the Sun. Normally, comets will outgas (expel) particles as they approach the Sun and reach its closest point on its orbit about the Sun. However, Comet Holmes expanded six months after this event."

http://starryskies.net/articles/2007/10/comet-holmes.php "Comets usually brighten when they near the Sun, and outgassing begins, creating the comet's tail. But that's not what happened with Holmes. On October 23, the comet had a major outburst and in only a day increased in brightness almost a million times!"

And here's another peculiarity: "Comet Holmes has never formed a tail, or so astronomers thought. Then they studied the comet using infrared imaging. A faint tail-like structure was detected, but it was not pointing away from the Sun as astronomers would have expected." Now note that EC theorists have no problem with this observation.

But clearly NASA does. From the Rosetta website: http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/dsp_sci...SelL2=CometPrimer&buttonSelL3=AnatomyOfAComet " When a comet is in the deep freeze of space, very far from the Sun, it is completely frozen. But when it approaches to within about 140 to 280 million miles (about 225 million to 450 million km) of the sun, its ices begin to sublime . They boil off of the surface or burst out of the interior as jets of gas, carrying dust with them. This spewing gas and dust create a huge "coma" around the nucleus. ... snip ... As the solar wind and magnetic field lines wrap around the coma, they push ionized gas and dust away from, and around, the head of the comet, to form tails that always stream directly away from the sun."

And there's more ...

And finally there is this: http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cach...ature+surface+holmes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us "A novel mechanism for outbursts of Comet 17P/Holmes and other short-period comets, 2007, ... snip ... Given the current models for comet outbursts, it is difficult if not impossible to explain the magnitude
of the observed phenomena involving 17P." So they come up with a complex chemical reaction gnome to explain it rather than even consider a potentially far simpler explanation. But then that would require the mainstream community accept the possibility that space is filled with electrical currents ... and they just aren't going to do that because that would threaten so many of their other beloved gnomes.

And David ... do you know that Holmes is still a naked eye object? It has an estimated magnitude of 3.5 and has a size about ten times the size of a full moon. At the distance it is at, that makes it the largest object in the solar system. Far larger than the sun.

This image was taken December 25th:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/Holmes/images/17P_Holmes_2007_12_25.jpg

And here's a blow up of that image.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/Holmes/images/17P_Holmes_2007_12_25_detail.jpg

Notice the radial spikes around the nucleus. The source says they may be artifacts or possibly jets.

And this is a great picture showing the growth of this interesting object:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/Holmes/images/17P_Holmes_2007_newcomposite13.jpg