Thunderbolts of the Gods

[robinson]

Electromagnetism is way more powerful than gravity....at short range. Over the long haul, gravity reigns.

You cannot compare fundamental forces with each other because they have different sources.

Electromagnetism is not stronger than gravity.

That's what it means to compare them.

There is no direct way to compare them.

The electric, weak and strong forces are dominant on small scales while gravity is dominant on large scales.

There is no direct way to compare them.

Electromagnetism is not stronger than gravity.

... the gravitational force between the earth and the moon is vastly stronger than the electric force.

As I pointed out ealier[sic], trying to compare them is exactly the same as asking whether a piece of string of a plank of wood is longer.

For planetary orbits, it's the only force that matters.

You cannot compare fundamental forces with each other because they have different sources.

I think I'm going to go with the Physics teachers and Physicist on this one. They state that the EM force is 10³⁷ times stronger than gravity. They also have really cool ways to measure both, and compare them and stuff.

But by all means, keep digging that hole there. It is pretty funny, and we haven't even got to the important part of the discussion yet.

 

[Molinaro]

Again, the current understanding of the fundamental forces states that the EM force is 10³⁷ times stronger than gravity. If you want to argue that, take it up with worlds scientist. They said it, not me.

That's the difference in the forces between single particles. As was told to you by the person you are replying to.

As things get bigger gravity can only get bigger.

Overall EM can go up/down/up/down and either end up +ve, -ve, or neutral in the end.

That's why people keep saying, "..depends on what you're talking about.."

And reality actualy shows us that gravity gets to catch up and pass EM on large scales because EM tends to neutral.

 

[Davidlpf]

BAC, over 2 days for a reply does this mean you do not the answer.

 

[Dancing David]

No he has moved to another thread

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100935

 

[robinson]

As I said, I will respond to no questions on this thread until I get a ruling from the Admin (Darat) as to the permissability of my series of posts provided they are modified to eliminate hotlinks and with each quote reduced to but a small fraction of any given source. Doing that would comply with the rules of the forum. But I'm still waiting for that ruling.

I wouldn't hold my breath on this issue.

 

[Cuddles]

I think I'm going to go with the Physics teachers and Physicist on this one.

Well apparently not, since you're ignoring at least two physicists.

But by all means, keep digging that hole there. It is pretty funny, and we haven't even got to the important part of the discussion yet.

Yeah, I always find it funny when people try to argue about things they know nothing about, especially when they're arguing with the very professionals they claim to be defering to.

 

[Dancing David]

BAC seems to be wandering over here as well:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3239219&postcount=29

 

[iantresman]

One physicist. No astronomers.
How many groundbreaking theories of astrophysics do you expect?

Outsiders sometimes do quite well outside of their field of expertise science. For example,

• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was a tax collector.
• Michael Faraday was a book-binder apprentice
• Charles Darwin was a would-be clergyman

And specifically in astronomy

• Hannes Alfvén was an electrical engineer who successfully predicted magnetohydrodynamic waves (Afvén waves, contributing to his 1970 Nobel Prize), field-aligned Birkeland currents, the rings of Uranus, electrostatic double layers, and much more.
• Immanuel Velikovsky, who is noted in Science (December 21 , 1962, Vol. 138, pp. 1350-52) by V. Bargmann (Princeton) and Lloyd Motz (Columbia University) regarding the discoveries of radio waves from Jupiter and of the high surface temperature of Venus, they wrote "Although we disagree with Velikovsky's theories, we feel impelled to make this statement to establish Velikovsky's priority of prediction of these two point"

 

[Dancing David]

Outsiders sometimes do quite well outside of their field of expertise science. For example,

• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was a tax collector.
• Michael Faraday was a book-binder apprentice
• Charles Darwin was a would-be clergyman

Hiya! And welcome.

And that means what? (I am not being rude and it is a relevant position in this thread). BAC is sort of stuck in something that looks like persecutory megalomania, and is fairly stuck in a rut, which gets reinforced very regularly. He unfortunately meets most of the behavioral criteria for trolling.

Now as to the above statement, it is very common in the pursuit of science to have had a job prior to and while working on science. So the fact that most people in science came at it from some other place is no real surprise. Very few academics come to academia straight from college.

The point that Schneibster is making is that there appears to be a closed and limited set of information that BAC is drawing upon, we could generate a huge list of questions that BAC has left unanswered and in fact refuses to explain.

And specifically in astronomy

• Hannes Alfvén was an electrical engineer who successfully predicted magnetohydrodynamic waves (Afvén waves, contributing to his 1970 Nobel Prize), field-aligned Birkeland currents, the rings of Uranus, electrostatic double layers, and much more.
• Immanuel Velikovsky, who is noted in Science (December 21 , 1962, Vol. 138, pp. 1350-52) by V. Bargmann (Princeton) and Lloyd Motz (Columbia University) regarding the discoveries of radio waves from Jupiter and of the high surface temperature of Venus, they wrote "Although we disagree with Velikovsky's theories, we feel impelled to make this statement to establish Velikovsky's priority of prediction of these two point"

Yes, and so?

That is great, and there is an actual and figurative herd of people who do this all the time. The point is that BAC goes on these rants that are very much like a number of things: creationism, conspiracy theories and Karl Rove. He refuses to answer direct questions most of the time and just sort of makes a spectacle of himself. Some spectacles are meaningful and some are just showy.

 

[iantresman]

And that means what? (I am not being rude and it is a relevant position in this thread). BAC

I interpreted Schneibster implying that groundbreaking astrophysics theories were not generally made by people without physics and astronomy backgrounds (which I subjectively extrapolated to any field of study).

As a generalization, I provided a generalized reply, which is indeed open to generalized discussion. It is certainly not meant as a definitive answer.

 

[iantresman]

Electricity doesn't flow through a vacuum. It just ambiguously leaves the that fact out.

Space is indeed a much better vacuum than anything that can be produced in the laboratory. But interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic space are not perfect vacuums, but plasmas. By definition, they will all conduct electricity, and often much better than most metals. See for example:

• Carlqvist, Per, "Cosmic electric currents and the generalized Bennett relation", Astrophysics and Space Science (ISSN 0004-640X), vol. 144, no. 1-2, May 1988, p. 73-84 (Full text available)

One of the most well-known examples of an interplanetary cosmic current, is the heliospheric current sheet, which has been described as the largest coherent structure in the Solar System. See also the page "Electric currents in space plasmas" which is supported by peer-reviewed papers throughout.

 

[iantresman]

The later community has begun to hold their own IEEE sponsored conventions and publish papers in their own IEEE journals ...

There is no IEEE journal dedicated for this crap.

BeAChooser did not claim there is an IEEE journal dedicated to the Plasma Universe. However, there have been a number of special issues that have indeed been dedicated to the subject, including:

IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (latest issue, 2007))

• Vol 14 No 6 (Dec 1986), Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma
• Vol 17 No 2 (Apr 1989), Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma
• Vol 18 No 1 (Feb 1990), Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma
• Vol 20 No 6 (Dec 1992), Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma
• Vol 28 No 6 (Dec 2000), 5th Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma (Space Weather).
• Vol 31 No 6 (Dec 2004), 6th Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma
• Vol 35 No 4 Part 1 (Aug 2007), 7th Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma

There have also been dedicated issues in Astrophysics and Space Science:

• Vol. 55, No. 1/2/ May 1978,. "Hannes Alfvén - The First Seventy Years (Paper dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the occasion of his 70th birthday, 30 May 1978 (full text available)
• Vol. 144, No. 1/2/ May 1988, "Special issue dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the occasion of his 80th birthday, 30 May 1988(full text available)
• Vol. 227, No. 1/2/ May 1995, "Second IEEE International Workshop on Plasma Astrophysics and Cosmology, held from 10 to 12 May 1993 in Princeton, New Jersey (full text available)

And a special issue of Laser and Particle Beams:

• Aug 1988: Vol 6 Part 3, "Particle Beams and Basic Phenomena in the Plasma Universe. A Special Issue in Honor of the 80th Birthday of Hannes Alfvén"

These are all peer-reviewed and cover four decades.

 

[iantresman]

• NobbyNobbs wrote:
  Electromagnetism is way more powerful than gravity....at short range. Over the long haul, gravity reigns.
• Cuddles wrote:
  You cannot compare fundamental forces with each other because they have different sources.
• Cuddles wrote:
  Electromagnetism is not stronger than gravity.
• sol invictus wrote:
  That's what it means to compare them.
• shadron wrote:
  There is no direct way to compare them.
• Davidlpf wrote:
  The electric, weak and strong forces are dominant on small scales while gravity is dominant on large scales.
• shadron wrote:
  There is no direct way to compare them.
• Cuddles wrote:
  Electromagnetism is not stronger than gravity.
• sol invictus wrote:
  ... the gravitational force between the earth and the moon is vastly stronger than the electric force.
• Cuddles wrote:
  As I pointed out ealier[sic], trying to compare them is exactly the same as asking whether a piece of string of a plank of wood is longer.
• sol invictus wrote:
  For planetary orbits, it's the only force that matters.
• Cuddles wrote:
  You cannot compare fundamental forces with each other because they have different sources.

I think I'm going to go with the Physics teachers and Physicist on this one. They state that the EM force is 10³⁷ times stronger than gravity. They also have really cool ways to measure both, and compare them and stuff.

.
To be a bit more specific:

• Electromagnetic (EM) forces act on charged particles (electrons, ions), and are up to 10^39 times stronger than gravity at all scales, however...
  .
• However, the EM fields do not usual extend great distances, because they tend to be neutralized in places they occur, such a in plasmas. This is called quasi-neutrality. However, quasi-neutrality in plasmas may be violated (by double layers and particle beams).
  .
• For charged particles up to the size of grains, electromagnetic force dominate. For larger particle (and all neutral particles), gravity dominates. See "Dusty plasma: dynamics"

As an example, the electromagnetic forces acting on the electrons and ions in the Solar Wind, overcome the Sun's immense gravitation field (and escape velocity), producing the largest structure in the Solar System, the heliospheric current sheet, which extends across the Solar System out to the heliopause.

In other words, electromagnetic forces are dominant on most plasmas, gravity is dominant elsewhere... and over 99.999% of the visible universe is plasma.

 

[Olowkow]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...95?siteid=sci&ijkey=zi7e3tknPG32.&keytype=ref

PHYSICS:
Searching for Gravity's Hidden Strength
Jonathan L. Feng
Gravity is by far the weakest of the four known forces. The gravitational attraction between two protons is 35 orders of magnitude weaker than their electromagnetic repulsion. The weakness of gravity may not be an intrinsic property, however, but may result from the propagation of gravity in extra spatial dimensions. In his Perspective, Feng describes the search for strong gravity and extra dimensions that is now being pursued on many fronts--from tabletop probes of Newtonian gravity to searches for microscopic black holes in kilometer-scale cosmic ray detectors. Upcoming experiments will either exclude this explanation of the weakness of gravity or find evidence for a radically new view of spacetime.

The mass of 100,000 suns is about 2^35 kg, just to give an idea of what "35 orders of magnitude" means.

 

[robinson]

Welcome iantresman.

Interesting observations. After reading up on this stuff, because of this and other topics, I was amazed to discover how significant EM was in the Universe. I took my astronomy classes in the old school days, and EM wasn't even mentioned, except in regards to observation.

The sun was fusion, everything else was pretty much gravity. The recent discovery that the sun is connected directly to our magnetic field, much like Jupiter and it's moons, seems to validate those pesky rebels who keep pointing out facts that don't fit with the gravity only theories.

The comet stuff was also fascinating. I always wondered why "water and dust" would glow like that. And how such a small amount of water could make such a huge tail.

I also didn't know lightning creates x-rays, or that blue jets and red sprites are a form of plasma. Lots of interesting stuff on the thunderbolts slite, as well as the related woo woo web sites.

And yes, so any of our coolest things are found by those outside the mainstream. When you don't just believe what you are told, you can discover things that nobody else even looks for.

 

[Terry]

Velikovsky? umm... yeah, he certainly deserves to be up there with Darwin and Faraday

 

[robinson]

Velikovsky? umm... yeah, he certainly deserves to be up there with Darwin and Faraday

Funny you mentioned Darwin.


A couple of Velikovsky's crazy ideas.

Planet Earth has suffered natural catastrophes on a global scale, both before and during mankind's recorded history.

What a nut!

There is evidence for these catastrophes in the geological record (here Velikovsky was advocating Catastrophist ideas as opposed to the prevailing Uniformitarian notions) and archeological record. The extinction of many species had occurred catastrophically, not by gradual Darwinian means.

Oh the irony.

Remember Darwin was considered a real nutcase.

 

[Terry]

Sure, Venus did a fast pass past the earth in biblical times. That's totally well supported by the geological evidence. NOT!

 

[BeAChooser]

BAC is sort of stuck in something that looks like persecutory megalomania, and is fairly stuck in a rut, which gets reinforced very regularly. He unfortunately meets most of the behavioral criteria for trolling.

ROTFLOL! Have you come up with any peer reviewed articles that specifically dispute the peer reviewed assertions of Dr Peratt, David? NO?

The point is that BAC goes on these rants that are very much like a number of things: creationism, conspiracy theories and Karl Rove.

David, quite trying to defend the Big Bang by trying to connect me to creationism and Karl Rove. I've said NOTHING about creationism on this or any forum and very little about Rove in the many years I've been posting. Your repeated attempts to use those two to attack me actually just suggests a serious weakness in your defense of Big Bang against the many facts I've offered. Your time would be much better spent finding a peer reviewed article that directly disputes the work of Peratt. But then you can't do that, can you, because there are no peer reviewed articles disputing that work. For that matter, I don't think you can find any book or article written by a mainstream astrophysicist that directly mentions Peratt's work and says why it's wrong. That's pretty telling if you ask me.

He refuses to answer direct questions most of the time

David, that's an outright lie as anyone who reads the threads I've participated in on this (and other subjects) will see. I actually spent a lot of time responding directly to your questions and posts until I realized that nothing I was posting was getting through ... that you weren't really trying to understand plasma cosmology/electric universe theories ... that you were resorting to exactly the sort of tactics you just demonstrated in your post ... and that YOU were not answering the questions that I asked. So I simply quite interacting with you. I know that hurt your feelings. Sorry.

 

[BeAChooser]

However, there have been a number of special issues that have indeed been dedicated to the subject, including: ... snip ... These are all peer-reviewed and cover four decades.

Thanks, iantresman ... great reference summary. And welcome to this discussion.