Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

[Reality Check]

You say tomato I say tomato

Meta Galactic

Atomic to the galactic, as above so below

Atomic to the galactic and nowhere near cosmological.
Meta Galactic:

met⋅a⋅gal⋅ax⋅y  /ˌmɛtəˈgæləksi/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [met-uh-gal-uhk-see] Show IPA
–noun, plural -ax⋅ies. Astronomy. the complete system of galaxies; the Milky Way and all the surrounding galaxies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Origin:
1925–30; meta- + galaxy
Related forms:
met⋅a⋅ga⋅lac⋅tic  /ˌmɛtəgəˈlæktɪk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [met-uh-guh-lak-tik] Show IPA , adjective

Actual astronomers call the set of all galaxies in the universe either the universe or the cosmos.
So "meta galaxy" = an unspecified set of galaxies (in Perrat's abstract) or just the galaxies local to the the Milky Way or bad terminololgy.

However if he does mean the universe or cosmos or even cosmological scales then he is wrong. Any astronomer (of undergraduate physics student) knows that EM effects in plasma balance out over small scales.


One more time for the especially dumb:

1. The maximum known Debye length occurs in the IGM (intergalactic or intracluster medium).
2. This is 10,000 metres or 10 kilometres.
3. A "few tens of Debye lengths" is thus a few hundred kilometres.

But let us be generous to any weird EU/PC proponent who is currently ignoring basic physics: multiply this by a factor of a million. What scale would this fictitious EM effect extend over? A few hundred million kilometers rounded up is 1000 million kilometers. This is 0.0001 light years or 6.7 AU and fits comfortably within the Solar System.

Only truly ignorant people would think that this scale is cosmological.

 

[Reality Check]

Tusenfem wrote

bugger how did I not see that what do you think they are implying then with the statement? I mean if it's in equilibrium, then against what?

And the the 'ol shock waves to heat the GAS to PLASMA emitting X-ray energies! wHoOh boy!!!

Tusenfem?

From the article:

The X-ray images of the cluster helped astronomers measure the temperature and density of the gas. These provide clues about the gas pressure and cluster’s total mass. The hottest, densest gas lies near the cluster’s center, while gas temperature and density steadily decline away from the center.

My guess it is the pressure within the gas that is in equilibrium with the gravitational force as is normal with all gases. Note that the temperature of the gas declines as the distance for the cluster increases (cold gas is entering the cluster).

Good old shock waves do heat gas to plasma and plasmas do emit X-rays. That is basic physics.

 

[Reality Check]

Another little factoid that I have come across:
Sol88 previously wanted to explain the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way (and other galaxies) as a plasmoid.
It turns out that the virial theorem causes a problem with that idea:

A plasmoid is a finite configuration of magnetic fields and plasma. With the virial theorem it is easy to see that any such configuration will expand if not contained by external forces. In a finite configuration without pressure-bearing walls or magnetic coils, the surface integral will vanish. Since all the other terms on the right hand side are positive, the acceleration of the moment of inertia will also be positive. It is also easy to estimate the expansion time τ. If a total mass M is confined within a radius R, then the moment of inertia is roughly MR2, and the left hand side of the virial theorem is MR2/τ2. The terms on the right hand side add up to about pR3, where p is the larger of the plasma pressure or the magnetic pressure. Equating these two terms and solving for τ, we find

where cs is the speed of the ion acoustic wave (or the Alfven wave, if the magnetic pressure is higher than the plasma pressure). Thus the lifetime of a plasmoid is expected to be on the order of the acoustic (or Alfven) transit time

ETA: Perhaps someone with more knowledge might tell us what the typical (or minimum and maximum) values of c_s are and then we can plug in the 44 million kilometer size of the "plasmoid" and figure out how long it lasts.

 

[tusenfem]

bugger how did I not see that what do you think they are implying then with the statement? I mean if it's in equilibrium, then against what?

Equilibrium between gravitational force and gas pressure

 

[Sol88]

Equilibrium between gravitational force and gas pressure

But it's not gas is it Tusenfem it's plasma!

 

[Dancing David]

But it's not gas is it Tusenfem it's plasma!

Blather, rinse , repeat.

 

[Reality Check]

But it's not gas is it Tusenfem it's plasma!

You forgot the (either that or you are being even more ignorant than you are usually).

 

[tusenfem]

But it's not gas is it Tusenfem it's plasma!

Dear Solly, from Peratt's book Physics of the Plasma Universe, on page 28, equation (1.8), Perry talks about the Bennett pinch (with which you are probably slightly familiar), he writes:

In the steady-state, the balance of forces is:

[latex]$$\nabla p = \nabla(p_e + p_i) = {\bf j} \times {\bf B}$$[/latex]

By employing Eq. (12), [latex]$$\nabla \times {\bf B} = \mu_o {\bf j}$$[/latex], and the perfect GAS law p = N k T, we arrive at the Bennett relation

[latex]$$ 2 N k (T_e + T_i) = \frac{\mu_o}{4\pi} I^2$$[/latex]

where N is the number of electrons per unit length along the beam, Te and Ti are the electron and ion temperatures, I is the total beam current and k is Boltzmann's constant.

So, you were saying about gas pressure and plasma pressure ............

I hope we can put this stupidity to rest now about whether or not a plasma behaves as a gas, when even your own GOD Peratt uses a perfect gas law to describe a plasma.

 

[Dancing David]

This has no relevance to plasma or cosmology so I thought I would link it here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090602.html

 

[Zeuzzz]

Witout wanting to sink my teetch back into this thread too much yet to the detriment of other things on my plate at the moment;

http://www.physorg.com/print160726282.html

Study plunges standard Theory of Cosmology into Crisis
May 5th, 2009 in Physics / General Physics

As modern cosmologists rely more and more on the ominous “dark matter” to explain otherwise inexplicable observations, much effort has gone into the detection of this mysterious substance in the last two decades, yet no direct proof could be found that it actually exists. Even if it does exist, dark matter would be unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between actual measurements and predictions based on theoretical models. Hence the number of physicists questioning the existence of dark matter has been increasing for some time now.

Competing theories of gravitation have already been developed which are independent of this construction. Their only problem is that they conflict with Newton’s theory of gravitation.

“Maybe Newton was indeed wrong”, declares Professor Dr. Pavel Kroupa of Bonn University's Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (AIfA). “Although his theory does, in fact, describe the everyday effects of gravity on Earth, things we can see and measure, it is conceivable that we have completely failed to comprehend the actual physics underlying the force of gravity”.

This is a problematical hypothesis that has nevertheless gained increasing ground in recent years, especially in Europe.

Two new studies could well lend further support to it. In these studies, Professor Kroupa and his former colleague Dr. Manuel Metz, working in collaboration with Professor Dr. Gerhard Hensler and Dr. Christian Theis from the University of Vienna, and Dr. Helmut Jerjen from the Australian National University, Canberra, have examined so-called “satellite galaxies”. This term is used for dwarf galaxy companions of the Milky Way, some of which contain only a few thousand stars.

According to the best cosmological models, they exist presumably in hundreds around most of the major galaxies. Up to now, however, only 30 such satellites have been observed around the Milky Way, a discrepancy in numbers which is commonly attributed to the fact that the light emitted from the majority of satellite galaxies is so faint they remain invisible.

A detailed study of these stellar agglomerates has revealed some astonishing phenomena: “First of all, there is something unusual about their distribution”, Professor Kroupa explains, “the satellites should be uniformly arranged around their mother galaxy, but this is not what we found“. More precisely, all classical satellites of the Milky Way - the eleven brightest dwarf galaxies - lie more or less in the same plane, they are forming some sort of a disc in the sky. The research team has also been able to show that most of these satellite galaxies rotate in the same direction around the Milky Way - like the planets revolve around the Sun. [.....]

Which again points to Lerners observation of a large scale magnetic field, such as would be constant with the fields used in Peratts model.

http://bigbangneverhappened.org/2007yearendreport.htm

Conventional cosmology hypothesizes that the universe, on a large scale, is isotropic. Yet this year, evidence has shown large-scale anisotropies in measurements other than that of the CBR. Michael J. Longo showed that spiral galaxies tend to spiral more in one direction than another, possibly implying a large scale magnetic field in region some 350 Mpc across. The alignment of the spins seems to point in direction close to that defined by anisotropies in the CBR.

And some more dubious but interesting material (some not plasma cosmology, but some is based on cosmologically relevent hypothesis):

Cosmology in Crisis—Again!
The Black Hole at the Heart of Astronomy
Newton’s Electric Clockwork Solar System

I recommend reading the references to the science journals Thornhill references, rather than the main material in his articles, which is far from perfect but not without valid points scattered throughout.

 

[Reality Check]

Witout wanting to sink my teetch back into this thread too much yet to the detriment of other things on my plate at the moment;

http://www.physorg.com/print160726282.html

Which again points to Lerners observation of a large scale magnetic field, such as would be constant with the fields used in Peratts model.

http://bigbangneverhappened.org/2007yearendreport.htm

You seem to have forgotton the logical fallacy that has pointed out to you many times before: Evidence against theory A is not evidence for theory B.
So we can ignore all of Lerner's stuff. BTW absolutely no plasma cosmology on that web page !

How about a paper from Lerner that shows the match of plasma cosmology to the CMB power spectrum?

As for Peratt's model - you must think that astronomers do not know their basics. Peratt certainly did not in his papers.
The mass in spiral galaxies is not distributed in arms as predicted in Peratt's model and thus his model is wrong.
How many times does this simple point have to be presented to you before you understand it?

Perhaps another time in other words will make it clearer to you:
Peratt's computer simulation of plasma only interactions produces maps of particle positions where there are spiral structures with no particles in between the arms. His model thus predicts there will be no matter in between the arms of spiral galaxies.
This is wrong. The density of metter in between the arms of spiral galaxies is measured as ~20% less than that of the arms. Therefore his model is wrong.

To make it even simpler for the learning challenged :
Take a photograph of a spiral galaxy. The image will have a certain contrast between bright areas and darker areas. If the bright areas are bright enough then the darker areas will look empty - even if there are actual stars there. A similar situation is the fact the sunspots are actually brighter than electric arcs but look dark against the brighter surface of the Sun.
Why do arms appear in the photographs of spiral galaxies? It is because there are arm-sharped volumes of high star formation containing lots of bright young stars.
What is the actual mass distribution in a spiral galaxy?

• A flat, rotating disc of (mostly newly created) stars and interstellar matter
• A central stellar bulge of mainly older stars, which resembles an elliptical galaxy
• A near-spherical halo of stars, including many in globular clusters
• A supermassive black hole at the very center of the central bulge

Question: Would an astronomer compare an optical photograph of a spiral galaxy with a proposed map of the positions of plasma particles and expect a match?
Answer: No competent astronomer (or anyone else with any sense) would.

And some more dubious but interesting material (some not plasma cosmology, but some is based on cosmologically relevent hypothesis):

Cosmology in Crisis—Again!
The Black Hole at the Heart of Astronomy
Newton’s Electric Clockwork Solar System

I recommend reading the references to the science journals Thornhill references, rather than the main material in his articles, which is far from perfect but not without valid points scattered throughout.

As for anything from the EU crank Thornhill (specially his regurgitation of the electric gravity woo) - you really make me laugh !

 

[The Man]

Blather, rinse , repeat.

Nominated. If I had more space I’d put it in my sigs (getting time I should revise them anyway)

 

[Sol88]

Dear Solly, from Peratt's book Physics of the Plasma Universe, on page 28, equation (1.8), Perry talks about the Bennett pinch (with which you are probably slightly familiar), he writes:



So, you were saying about gas pressure and plasma pressure ............

I hope we can put this stupidity to rest now about whether or not a plasma behaves as a gas, when even your own GOD Peratt uses a perfect gas law to describe a plasma.

Dude, GAS is NOT PLASMA, otherwise why not make things real easy and do away with the fundamental state of a matter and just use the three we have been used to solids, liquids and GAS!

to parse from thunderpants

This is one example where understanding the difference between hot gas (which does not contain charged particles) and plasma (which does contain charged particles and can be electrically active) could provide some illumination: sunspots are not the result of gas convection modified by magnetism, sunspots are electrical structures.

LINK

Lets through a curve ball to you, Tusenfem, I have this plasma flow that I'm modeling using gas laws and a DOUBLE LAYERS pops up or indeed an instiblity say a diocotron instability, what happens to the ideal gas laws then, dude?

 

[edd]

Witout wanting to sink my teetch back into this thread too much yet to the detriment of other things on my plate at the moment;

http://www.physorg.com/print160726282.html

Exaggerations in journalism plunge JREF thread into crisis. Or not.

There's a number of interesting and challenging problems in galaxy formation right now that are the subject of much active research. These may be solved by better understanding the laws of physics we know or by adjusting the ones we have but describing the standard model of cosmology as something in 'crisis' is a big exaggeration and you're certainly not going to be replacing the more general idea of a big bang with some model that correctly predicts even less.

Noone's denying there are any challenges and mysteries in cosmology or there would be no active research, but the simple fact is that the big bang is on stronger footing today than it has ever been.

 

[tusenfem]

As for anything from the EU crank Thornhill (specially his regurgitation of the electric gravity woo) - you really make me laugh!

How interesting that on Thundercrap of the Gods or whatever webshite I just visited there are absolutely no equations, math or calculations on e.g. the E-MOND idea. I clicked on several links, and finally got to an "explanation" on this page, well (turning on Ricky Ricardo voice) Lucyyyyyyyyyyy, you got some 'splainin' to do!.

If that is what goes on for science in the PC/PU/EU/ES/EC community, then so be it, no wonder they are the laughing stock of mainstream science.

Then there is the part on the "electric gravity" (somewhere near the end of the page) that Sol88 already talked about, which was also easily debunked many pages ago.

Come up with something new, guyz! Show us something, apart from regurgitating the same old unfounded crap.

 

[sol invictus]

Witout wanting to sink my teetch back into this thread too much yet to the detriment of other things on my plate at the moment;

http://www.physorg.com/print160726282.html

A detailed study of these stellar agglomerates has revealed some astonishing phenomena: “First of all, there is something unusual about their distribution”, Professor Kroupa explains, “the satellites should be uniformly arranged around their mother galaxy, but this is not what we found“. More precisely, all classical satellites of the Milky Way - the eleven brightest dwarf galaxies - lie more or less in the same plane, they are forming some sort of a disc in the sky. The research team has also been able to show that most of these satellite galaxies rotate in the same direction around the Milky Way - like the planets revolve around the Sun. [.....]

Which again points to Lerners observation of a large scale magnetic field, such as would be constant with the fields used in Peratts model.

Nonsense.

First off, I have no idea why he says dwarf galaxies should be isotropic. The Milky Way itself is obviously not - it's a flat disk - and the shape of the dark matter halo, while probably more or less spherical, is not very well constrained. And even if it's perfectly spherical, the visible satellites may not be, depending on how they formed.

Many gravitationally bound structures are flat disks or annuli - the solar system, most galaxies, the rings of Saturn. The mechanism for that is well understood and has nothing whatsoever to do with magnetic fields.

 

[tusenfem]

Dude, GAS is NOT PLASMA, otherwise why not make things real easy and do away with the fundamental state of a matter and just use the three we have been used to solids, liquids and GAS!

Oh dear, now you are saying that Peratt is wrong, explaining the Bennett pinch in his book? I guess that means that a Bennett pinch can also not create a star, a black hole and all those other stuff that the PU/PC/EU/ES/EC are so high on, using a plasma pinch. Ouch, Peratt, you are an idiot, you don't even know your plasma physics, you use a frakking gas law to describe a plasma pinch. Sheesh, I guess I will throw away your book now, just like Sol is going to do now after such stupidity.

Lets through a curve ball to you, Tusenfem, I have this plasma flow that I'm modeling using gas laws and a DOUBLE LAYERS pops up or indeed an instiblity say a diocotron instability, what happens to the ideal gas laws then, dude?

Let's lose the thundercrap, okay?

You have a plasma flow, sure why not, happens all the time. I hope you can describe the plasma flow whilst not using gas dynamics.

A double layer pops up, wow! And why exactly does a double layer pop up, you only have a flowing plasma, no reason at all to have a DL pop up whatsoever.
No, wait, a diacotron instability pop up, even better!!!!!!! What the frak for? Why is it popping up? Is there something you did not tell me about your plasma flow?

In Alfvén's laboratory there was, naturally, a plasma flow in the double plasma machine, a slow flow, but still a flow. And you know what? Nothing happened to it, it just glowed there and remained there, unless I turned off the gas supply. The flow is initialized by the fact that you need to do experiments in a vacuum chamber, and thus there is a vacuum pump connected to the double plasma machine.

Now, what I did then was put a voltage over the plasma column, and a cathode sheet would develop, which could be pulled into the plasma column, where it turned into a double layer.

So: either you got a plasma flow and nothing happens, nothing "pops up" or you have a plasma flow with a voltage drop and then you can have a double layer (but notice the extra thing you need, a voltage drop). Now, I will not even go into the diacotron instability, which is dependent on energetic electron beams, which most definitely do not just "pop up" in a plasma flow.

Are you going to get any more crazy, Sol88, are you going to throw me more curve balls, that clearly show you have not even any idea whether you have a ball in your hand that you can throw.

 

[Sol88]

Oh dear, now you are saying that Peratt is wrong, explaining the Bennett pinch in his book? I guess that means that a Bennett pinch can also not create a star, a black hole and all those other stuff that the PU/PC/EU/ES/EC are so high on, using a plasma pinch. Ouch, Peratt, you are an idiot, you don't even know your plasma physics, you use a frakking gas law to describe a plasma pinch. Sheesh, I guess I will throw away your book now, just like Sol is going to do now after such stupidity.



Let's lose the thundercrap, okay?

You have a plasma flow, sure why not, happens all the time. I hope you can describe the plasma flow whilst not using gas dynamics.

A double layer pops up, wow! And why exactly does a double layer pop up, you only have a flowing plasma, no reason at all to have a DL pop up whatsoever.
No, wait, a diacotron instability pop up, even better!!!!!!! What the frak for? Why is it popping up? Is there something you did not tell me about your plasma flow?

In Alfvén's laboratory there was, naturally, a plasma flow in the double plasma machine, a slow flow, but still a flow. And you know what? Nothing happened to it, it just glowed there and remained there, unless I turned off the gas supply. The flow is initialized by the fact that you need to do experiments in a vacuum chamber, and thus there is a vacuum pump connected to the double plasma machine.

Now, what I did then was put a voltage over the plasma column, and a cathode sheet would develop, which could be pulled into the plasma column, where it turned into a double layer.

So: either you got a plasma flow and nothing happens, nothing "pops up" or you have a plasma flow with a voltage drop and then you can have a double layer (but notice the extra thing you need, a voltage drop). Now, I will not even go into the diacotron instability, which is dependent on energetic electron beams, which most definitely do not just "pop up" in a plasma flow.

Are you going to get any more crazy, Sol88, are you going to throw me more curve balls, that clearly show you have not even any idea whether you have a ball in your hand that you can throw.

yeah now I'm gunna get real crazy, are you stating you need electricity to form a double layer?

'Cos the god of PC once said

Summary:As the rate of energy release in a double layer with voltage ¿V is P ¿ I¿V, a double layer must be treated as a part of a circuit which delivers the current I. 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. Double layers in space should be classified as a new type of celestial object (one example is the double radio sources). It is tentatively suggested that X-ray and ¿-ray bursts may be due to exploding double layers (although annihilation is an alternative energy source). A study of how a number of the most used textbooks in astrophysics treat important concepts such as double layers, critical velocity, pinch effects, and circuits is made. It is found that students using these textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of these concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been well known for half a century (e.g., double layers, Langmuir, 1929; pinch effect, Bennet, 1934).

What kind of voltage drop do you calculate for a double radio source?

or are they not double layers, Tusenfem?

perhaps you could fill the lurkers here , Tusenfem, on what happens when my flow of plasma "runs" into another plasma of a different temperature? after all "space plasmas" are all of different temperatures and densities!

 

[Sol88]

Sorrry Tusenfem, more thunderpants for the dogs crap!

Hot Gas vs. Electric Currents

In previous Picture of the Day articles, we complained that charged particles streaming from stars like the Sun are called a "wind" instead of an electric current. Ions accelerated by a magnetic field are referred to as "jets" instead of the collimated transmission of electrical energy through space, while changes in the density and speed of charged particles are almost always deemed to be "shock waves" and not the mark of double layers that can store and dissipate electricity, or even explode.

snip

Perhaps the lack of knowledge regarding electricity in space can account for the opinion that gases colliding produce x-ray and other energetic emissions. After all, perception comes through training and education, so without exposure to the theories of Kristian Birkeland and Hannes Alfvén regarding the behavior of electricity flowing through plasma no perception of its behavior can exist in the mind's eye.

Alfvén said: "The cosmical plasma physics of today . . .is to some extent the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulas which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong . . . several of the basic concepts on which theories of cosmical plasmas are founded are not applicable to the condition prevailing in the cosmos. They are 'generally accepted' by most theoreticians, they are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods; and it is only the plasma itself which does not 'understand' how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them. . ."

As cells of cosmic plasma move relative to each other, they generate currents and magnetic fields that cause them to produce jets that pinch and bead.

Do we fully understand astrophysical double layers?

 

[Dancing David]

Nominated. If I had more space I’d put it in my sigs (getting time I should revise them anyway)

I am not sure it is original to me, but thanks!