Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

[Ziggurat]

Which all works out very well outside of the bodies that are generating the mass. But proves nothing internally. And will prove nothing until verified in experiments.

And why wouldn't it work inside? What's different about inside compared to outside? There shouldn't BE any difference. Unless, as I said, you either introduce nonlinearities or divergences from 1/r². That is the only possible way to get any difference. But why on earth would those differences show up only inside a body? "Inside" and "outside" are ultimately artificial distinctions: why should the laws of physics make the same distinctions we artificially do? It makes no sense. I'm sorry, but that is an extraordinary claim, and the burden is therefore on anyone who wants to advance that idea, not on the people who don't accept it.

Why absurd?

Because "inside" and "outside" are artificial distinctions.

Q: What stops you from falling due to gravity into the the Earth? A: The EM forces that retain the Earths solid structure and rigidity. Proposing that EM forces could also in some way effect the way that gravity functions internally in areas of high mass density is a possibility that should not be overlooked.

Oh, but that's not actually proposing that gravity works any differently, rather it's proposing that electromagnetism works differently. And it is equally absurd, because it would require violations of Maxwell's equations.

All areas that have been studied in detail are low density (atmosphere, upper oceans, space, etc)

Guess what: in terms of gravity, the entire earth is low density. And the density is irrelevant to the shell theorem unless you introduce nonlinearities. And we already know the main nonlinearities in gravity (GR), which we actually CAN detect in low-density space. Any additional nonlinearities should be completely negligible within our solar system (or else we should have already detected them in tests of GR), and the nonlinearities from GR don't help you violate the shell theorem.

We know that huge currents flow through the Earth.

That's nice. They don't change earth's gravitational field. And anyways, you can't stabilize a conducting shell against gravitational collapse with electromagnetic interactions either: any electromagnetic equilibrium you try to establish will be likewise unstable.

No, I dont actually have an alternative model to propose, but I can do some more hand waving if you want.

Why would I want that?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Why would I want that?

Dunno. Comedy Value?
Everyone needs to diet occasionally, maybe you could do with some word salad every now and again.

Anyways, this should be continued on the other thread I just started about this whole internal gravity/density/EM/seismology stuff, its not really plasma cosmology: Are the solutions to seismic data unique?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Guess what: in terms of gravity, the entire earth is low density.

Your just being overtly fascesious here. Is the density of the atmosphere considerably different from the density of the solid Earth? Yes.

And the density is irrelevant to the shell theorem unless you introduce nonlinearities.

Granted.

Any additional nonlinearities should be completely negligible within our solar system (or else we should have already detected them in tests of GR)

Should be being the key word here. Thing is, we dont know.

 

[Ziggurat]

Your just being overtly fascesious here. Is the density of the atmosphere considerably different from the density of the solid Earth? Yes.

Density only matters in regards to the validity of the shell theorem if there are nonlinearities present. Whether or not the density of earth is low or high compared to air is irrelevant, the question is whether it's low or high density compared to what's required to make any nonlinearities significant. And it's low density compared to the nonlinear effects from general relativity. Since it is safe to assume any additional nonlinearities must be smaller than those of GR, we can conclude that we are in a low-density regime for gravity. That isn't me being facetious, that's quite literally true.

Thing is, we dont know.

And we don't know that invisible gnomes aren't stealing our laundry either. But we have no reason to take such possibilities seriously. We can detect the nonlinearities from general relativity. Why would additional nonlinearities produce larger effects than those from GR, but still escape detection? Yes, there is a sense in which it's not impossible, but neither are underpants gnomes.

 

[Zeuzzz]

And we don't know that invisible gnomes aren't stealing our laundry either. But we have no reason to take such possibilities seriously.

Well my invisible garden knomes serving time in prison for stealing my laundry would beg to differ.

I think this converstaion has worn itself out. I have no model, I'm just trying to point out that there are many things that people assume we know definitively that are still yet to be rigorously experimentally verified, like the internal structure of high mass bodies and gravities funtions at depth. Sure, we have no real reason to think that gravity should not work how we model it for surface gravity and beyond in space, but to this date we have no experiments to verify its presumed internal function. Only experiments that have verified the gradient of g down to ~0.1% of the Earths radius, and have extrapolated from this point onwards.

 

[Ziggurat]

I'm just trying to point out that there are many things that people assume we know definitively that are still yet to be rigorously experimentally verified

In a sense that's true of all of physics: we only ever can test the various laws and theories under a small subset of conditions. But the entire power of physics as a predictive science comes from the fact that we apparently don't need to: we can predict very general behavior from measurements on very limited subsets of conditions, and we can do so with great success.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Good heavens! That's trivially ruled out by neutrino observations.

Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.

The Sun emits neutrinos (like fusion)

But it only predicted electron neutrinos. So far, (at least as far as I know), it's thought that they oscillate, although to my knowledge while many "missing neutrino" scenarios have been observed, an actual change of leptons from say electron neutrinos to tau neutrinos has not been observed. There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos. Hell, you guys sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years!

and not antineutrinos (like fission).

Well, we don't observe high energy ones here in any significant quantity, but if neutrinos oscillate, I'm sure their anti-counterpart most do so as well. We can't even measure lower energy neutrinos with any great precision.

We explicitly see the neutrinos; we explicitly look for antineutrinos and do not see them. The Sun is not powered by fission.

(And: don't get this confused with the "solar neutrino problem", the 1960-1990 situation where *neutrinos* (not antineutrinos) were indeed seen, but with surprisingly low numbers. This problem went away when (a) the SNO detector was built to see all three neutrino (not antineutrino) flavors, and (b) the flavor-oscillation explanation was tested on Earth by SuperK, Kamland, Borexino, Chooz, SNO, SAGE, Gallex, Homestake, Nomad, MINOS, K2K, etc., which even you'd have a hard time arguing are not "controlled experiments".)

To the best of my knowledge while they have observed ample examples of "missing" neutrinos, they have not actually observed lepton changes. If my information is old on this topic, please feel free to point me to the right "experiment". I have great confidence in neutrino physics. It is real empirical physics, with actual hardware and everything.

 

[Michael Mozina]

How, exactly, nobody knows. However, the problem is not that there are no explanations available, but rather how to choose between the likely candidates.

All of them involve "current flow" don't they? Which specific natural process is known to emit gamma rays in the Earth's atmosphere? Shouldn't we start there?

Cranmer, 2008 gives a nice review of the general choice between wave dissipation and magnetic loop reconnection,

What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?

and has a lot of useful references in it. We know that there is a clear correlation between small scale magnetic structure and coronal structure at much higher altitudes

I'm sure there is such a connection between "sprites" and magnetic structures and lightening discharges and magnetic structures too.

(see, for instance, chapter 9 in Solar Astrophysics by Peter V. Foukal; Wiley-VCH, 2004). Schrijver, et al., 1997 was a big deal when it came out (and has 185 citations so far, a respectable number). They were able to make models based on the high resolution images of the sun's "magnetic carpet" (Title & Schrijver, 1998) and show that the loss of energy from the shearing magnetic structures can drive coronal heating, at least in principle. One also sees the keyword "nanoflares" associated with this idea (i.e., Hudson, 1991; Kopp & Poletto, 1993 & citations thereto & etc.).

I'll have to read through these tonight. Your links are always insightful and I will go through them all, one by one. The problem here Tim is that there is already one known process that can "cause" gamma rays in an atmosphere. That same process can pinch free neutrons from plasma too. You need that process in your "explanation", as much as I do, so before we can get much further, we will have to agree on which process we're talking about, and it certainly isn't "magnetic reconnection' because that is physically impossible.

There is no fundamental problem having a multi-million degree corona sitting on a 6000 degree photosphere, although it may look that way if your approach is too naive.

It's not a matter of being naive, it's a matter of pure physics. In theory it should grow cooler as we move way from the photosphere. In reality it does not. It gets a lot hotter and it's layered too. Why?

Discharges in the Earth's atmosphere can certainly generate high temperatures in an atmosphere.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not stop refrigerators from working, because they pump heat "uphill" by doing work. likewise, magnetic processes can pump energy "uphill" and heat the corona.

Er, how do you know it's a "magnetic process" rather than an electrical one?

The only real problem to watch out for is to make sure the photospheric energy reservoir is up to the task. Since we know that it is, then there is no problem.

It's a problem. That photosphere is not only OOM's cooler than the corona, it's thin and the atmosphere is even layered. By all rights it should cool off as we move away from the photosphere. Instead it jumps to 20K in the chromosphere and sometimes to 10's of millions of degrees in the corona during intense coronal loop activity as we observe in that Rhessi image.

Why should neutron capture signals be unusual? After all, it's not as if neutrons are unusual, and that's really about all you need; a few neutrons, a few nuclei and - voila, neutron capture.

Where do the neutrons come from?

In Earth's atmosphere, and I suppose any planetary atmosphere (why not?) neutron capture gamma rays are observed in the polar regions, maybe connected with auroral displays, when energetic solar wind protons impact the upper atmosphere.

That's a know *ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE PROCESS* Tim. You just cited another reason why we both require *electricity* in our explanations.

We really can't go much further until we agree that both explanations require there to be *massive* electrical discharges to be occurring in the solar atmosphere. The neutron capture process you discuss is just as dependent upon this as the idea I'm supporting. You could argue your idea requires fewer specific conditions than mine, but your idea is also discharge dependent, particularly to achieve a sustained emission of these photons.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Thanks again!

Empirically there is no observable difference from either model.

So , huh?

You can't tell a difference in the models, right?

Sure I can. One process is "driven" by current flow like an ordinary plasma ball filament, the other is presumably (not really) driven by magnetism. Like the plasma filament, the magnetic field acts to constrict the current flow into tightly twisted moving filaments of flowing current. It is however the charge separation between the inner and outer sphere that drives the process.

So there is no point, it is a semantic hangup. The only utility in concept is in discernable observations?

I'm not convinced that they are different "looking" if we are simply talking about pure observation. In other words, their "flux tube" seems to look like an ordinary plasma filament, so how would we tell them apart just by looking at them? We need a real "experiment" to find out, and that was already done by Birkeland over 100 years ago. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. We already know that current flow works to explain such behaviors in the atmospheres of spheres in a low pressure plasma vacuum.

I am however personally convinced that circuit reconnection and magnetic reconnection and particle reconnection are all interchangeable terms and the only beef I have with MR theory isn't in the math, but the title they chose. As long as we can agree it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, I'm willing to ignore the labels. The math seems to be fine and the physics even looks fine. It's only the name I have trouble with, but only because magnetic lines cannot disconnect or reconnect. Circuits and particles reconnect all the time.

I'll have to come back to the rest of your post as I get time. I've got some "honey-do" projects to take care of at the moment.

 

[Reality Check]

Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.

Er, wrong. The gas model solar theory cannot be trivially ruled out.

But it only predicted electron neutrinos. So far, (at least as far as I know), it's thought that they oscillate, although to my knowledge while many "missing neutrino" scenarios have been observed, an actual change of leptons from say electron neutrinos to tau neutrinos has not been observed. There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos. Hell, you guys sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years!

Firstly no one "sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years". What people did was spend 30 years researching the problem and eventually discovering neutrino oscillation.
The fusion model of the sun only predicts electron neutrinos. It does not state anything about what happens to the electron neutrinos as they travel from the Sun to the Earth.
Actual changes of leptons have been observed in various faculities, e.g.

• Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (Wikipedia)
• Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Wikipedia)
• Super-Kamiokande (Wikipedia)

I hope that you do not want an experiment where neutrinos are tracked through a detector and a scientists "says at this point the neutrino changed from an electron neutrino to a tau neutrino in the detector"!

The muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillation has not been observed yet (the reverse oscillation has been observed) but the TK2 experiment due to run this year hopes to do so.

 

[ben m]

Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.

The standard solar theory is explicitly confirmed by SNO no matter what the neutrino oscillations are doing. SNO's neutral-current measurement channel doesn't care what the flavor is, it just counts total neutrinos.

Independently, SNO measures the electron-flavor component, via a different nuclear reaction (like SAGE/Gallex/Homestake), and a particular mixture of all three flavors (roughly 5*e + mu + tau) using yet another reaction (like SuperKamiokande and Borexino). These fluxes all agree on the behavior of the oscillations, but if you don't believe that you can cross-check with MINOS, Kamland, K2K, etc., which all---guess what---agree. Incidentally, these measurements not only give you the solar *flux* they also give you the *energy spectrum*. All of this, including the energy spectrum, agrees explicitly with the standard solar model, in quite a lot of detail and with very high precision.

You are welcome to work out an *alternative model* which also fits the data. "If the Sun is made of iron, and neutrinos have property X, and the Hubble constant is 40 km/s/Mpc then my iron-sun model also agrees with these data." You are *not* welcome to say, "Eh, that sounds complicated! I haven't looked into it but I bet it disagrees with your model and agrees with mine!"

There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos.

Not that many, really. I can name maybe ten. None of them are going to affect your iron-sun model.

Well, we don't observe high energy ones here in any significant quantity, but if neutrinos oscillate, I'm sure their anti-counterpart most do so as well. We can't even measure lower energy neutrinos with any great precision.

Fission antineutrinos are very easy to measure, thank you---much easier, in fact, than regular solar neutrinos, most of which are below 0.5 MeV. No, fission antineutrinos peak in the few-MeV range (easy!) and they have a very clean signature. They oscillate in a well-known (and well-measured) fashion, such that the fraction of electron antineutrinos seen at Earth should be about 60% of the flux emitted at the Sun. It's very nearly the same spectrum no matter what is fissioning --- U, Pu, Th, etc.

 

[Zeuzzz]

What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?

[bolding added]

So, anyone gonna have a crack at this question then?

....this should be a laugh.....

 

[Dancing David]

Thanks again!




1. If the sun has one charge and the heliosphere another , waht is the source of charge for both?



2. So where can you show that the sun or helio sphere has that kind of charge 9positive0, what maintains the charge in the heliosphere?

3. I know, you however haven't really provided a source for your charge in the sun or the heliosphere.

Really? Negative ions are dragging positive ions?
4. Isn't the mass a little small for the electrons in comparison to the nucleus? they must have a huge velocity and therefore a huge charge speration must exist.
5. Don't they merge with the heliosphere?
6. What keeps them moving past it?



okay so we have thermal energy in an iron sphere,
6. How does that create a charge seperation between the sun and the heliosphere?

the electrons are drawn to a positively charged heliosphere?
7. Would that not repel the positive ion?

And more likely to be repeled by the heliosphere?

Thanks, we are already in the process.

8. Heat equals free electrons?

Just to clean up the typos, you are busy MM, no rush.

 

[tusenfem]

What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?

Wow, I hav been gone for 2 weeks or so, and look where we arrive, at the fragging starting point of about 10 pages ago, talking about a waste of time.

 

[brantc]

Count me in the disagree column. We already know that the gamma rays actually observed correspond precisely with electron-positron annihilation and neutron capture. We already know that a temperature as high as 1,000,000 Kelvins will host a good many electrons & positrons to annihilate each other, and there is certainly nothing mysterious about free neutrons in the universe. So what is it that we see which requires only electric discharges, and literally cannot be explained in any other way?

So how do you get those temperatures????? The only way is with electricity. That is only 90.9090909eV. No flame is that hot. UV photons are that "hot".

Or inside a sun. Or in the corona.. That temperature makes more sense as an energy, ie 100eV.

But a good double layer can do 90eV with ease. So can a filamental pinch(reconnection). Magnetic field are less efficient at accelerating particles for the same amount of energy.

 

[Reality Check]

So how do you get those temperatures????? The only way is with electricity. That is only 90.9090909eV. No flame is that hot. UV photons are that "hot".

Or inside a sun. Or in the corona.. That temperature makes more sense as an energy, ie 100eV.

But a good double layer can do 90eV with ease. So can a filamental pinch(reconnection). Magnetic field are less efficient at accelerating particles for the same amount of energy.

I think the point is that we observe the high temperatures. Thus there are lots of electrons and positrons that can annihilate, the gamma rays actually observed correspond precisely with electron-positron annihilation and the logical conclusion is thta it is electron-positron annihilation.

The mechanism behind the high temperatures is another matter and off topic. Perhaps you should start a new thread.
P.S. You are right - no "flame" has the observed high temperature. But many plasmas do both in space and in labs.

 

[ben m]

What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?

This has been explained to you several times. You haven't gotten it. Let me try again, using your preferred language.

Take two line currents---one at position X = +10m and flowing in the +Y direction, another at position X = -10m and flowing in the +Y direction. They generate magnetic fields. You are sitting at position X=0; you're holding a magnetometer which you can wave around within a meter or so of your position. All good? Have we violated any real physics yet?

We now let line currents move towards you, going from +/- 100m down to (say) +/- 1m. Anything horribly wrong? Is your high-sensitivity BS detector going off yet? Fairy alarm ringing?

Well, you've just experienced magnetic reconnection. Honest. The magnetic fields in your neighborhood changed in the way we've been talking about. It's as simple as that. Don't believe me? You measured the field yourself---draw the field lines awwww shoot just release some low-energy ions, let them move around adiabatically, and watch the shapes of their paths. Before the source currents moved, a low-energy ion released at x=1,z=1 will move in a path which circumnavigates the rightward current line. After the motion, you will find an ion released in the same position will circumnavigate both lines. That's a discrete change in topology.

We refer to this discrete change as "reconnection", like it or not, and those very-real adiabatic ion paths are approximately following our mathematical "field lines". Don't let anyone confuse you with more "scientific explanation". You have said repeatedly that "reconnection" is a totally impossible and ridiculous fairy process. What's ridiculous about two lines of current which move around?

 

[Dancing David]

Thanks again!




1. If the sun has one charge and the heliosphere another , waht is the source of charge for both?



2. So where can you show that the sun or helio sphere has that kind of charge 9positive0, what maintains the charge in the heliosphere?

3. I know, you however haven't really provided a source for your charge in the sun or the heliosphere.

Really? Negative ions are dragging positive ions?
4. Isn't the mass a little small for the electrons in comparison to the nucleus? they must have a huge velocity and therefore a huge charge speration must exist.
5. Don't they merge with the heliosphere?
6. What keeps them moving past it?



okay so we have thermal energy in an iron sphere,
6. How does that create a charge seperation between the sun and the heliosphere?

the electrons are drawn to a positively charged heliosphere?
7. Would that not repel the positive ion?

And more likely to be repeled by the heliosphere?



8. Heat equals free electrons?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Er, wrong. The gas model solar theory cannot be trivially ruled out.

I was obviously being facetious and flippant just like the original post. I don't know what the oscillation process might be like yet assuming it can even be verified completely in the first place.

Firstly no one "sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years". What people did was spend 30 years researching the problem and eventually discovering neutrino oscillation.

Well, it sat there for 30 years with no explanation. I'm not in your league yet of waiting for an answer.

The muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillation has not been observed yet (the reverse oscillation has been observed) but the TK2 experiment due to run this year hopes to do so.

Could you please cite which specific experiment observed an electron to muon oscillation? It's been awhile since I've looked at this data, and perhaps there has been progress I am unware of. The last time I checked there were "missing' neutrinos observed which *might* be interpreted as oscillation, but if they have actually observed it now in controlled experimentation, I would like to read about it. I haven't been following the recent progress on oscillation observations.

 

[Michael Mozina]

The mechanism behind the high temperatures is another matter and off topic.

I'm afraid I disagree. Even Tim's theory is tied to high energy electrical discharges. The process and the mechanisms are critically important to explaining how we reach 10's of millions of degrees in the solar atmosphere, and how we get *any* of these high energy photons. There's only one force of nature here that fits either explanation.