Bruce, Discharge, gamma rays, solar electric & magnetic fields
Let's start here.
How do you know Bruce was wrong about his theories about these high energy events?
Reference:
http://www.catastrophism.com/texts/bruce/era.htm
To start with, I simply note that Bruce does not mention gamma rays at all. So I have no idea what he thought they should look like, or even if he thought about it at all. Now, right at the top of the page Bruce says (emphasis mine) ... "
The object is to show that all cosmic atmospheric phenomena can be explained as deriving from electrical discharges, resulting from the breakdown of electric fields generated by the asymmetrical impacts between dust particles, such as are effective in terrestrial electrical sand and dust storms and in thunderstorms." What, exactly is the bolded phrase supposed to mean? Does it mean literally everything that happens in the atmosphere? or does it mean only electromagnetic things that happen in the atmosphere? Or perhaps "cosmic" is supposed to refer to connections between processes in the atmosphere and processes in space? I find Bruce's very first sentence rather cryptic.
But clearly he thinks that the same dust mechanism is at the root of the sun's electrical activity, because he says so: (emphasis mine again) ... "
It is thus fortunate that we are able to see the details of the sun's atmospheric structure in sunspots, and verify that it conforms to the picture which the discharge theory had led us to expect; that is, a general background atmospheric temperature of around 4,000°K in which electric fields can be built up by asymmetrical impacts between solid particles, just as occurs in terrestrial sand and dust storms and in the ejectamenta above volcanoes."
In answer to your question, I know that Bruce is wrong because his proposed mechanism for generating electric charge is not physically possible. The maximum temperature that dust grains ("solid particles") can survive is about 2000 Kelvins, half of Bruce's optimistically low 4000 Kelvin background temperature. At photospheric temperatures solid particles would be smashed apart by the high speed collisions, or broken apart by the high ultraviolet photon flux. So I will say that Bruce's hypothesis is simply impossible.
Now let us go on.
Nobody is arguing that electric currents cannot generate gamma rays. Nobody is arguing that electric currents are not responsible for some of the observed gamma rays.
Why aren't you acknowledging that it is one known and verified way to generate gamma rays around bodies in space, and therefore the most likely way the sun generates them in it's atmosphere as well?
I do acknowledge that it is
one known and verified way to generate gamma rays. But there are other known and verified ways to generate gamma rays too, so why not acknowledge them as well? It is not reasonable to simply assume that all or most of the gamma rays are generated by one and only one mechanism, that's the process of trying to force nature to bow to our pre-conceptions. Rather, the reasonable thing to do is look at the gamma rays and let them tell you, by their physical characteristics (line width & line shape, band center & band width, spectral energy distribution, relative line strengths & etc.) how they were generated. Let nature lead the investigation, not prejudice.
When we do that we find that the sun generates gamma rays from all manner of sources. There is of course the ubiquitous e
-/e
+ annihilation line at 511 keV, the neutron capture line at 2.223 MeV, nuclear de-excitation line emission from C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe, as well as bremsstrahlung from accelerated electrons. The bremsstrahlung is the component that you would assign to "electric discharge", since the narrow line emission obviously is not.
Electric discharge, as I understand the words, is not physically reasonable. In order to have "electric discharge", you have to mechanically separate charges to build up a strong electric field (that's what Bruce tries to do). Then you get breakdown and discharge arcs. Then you have to do it all over again. It's pretty hard to tell the difference between that scenario and a perpetual motion machine. If the energy we see is all supposed to come from the discharges, then where does the energy come from, and what is the mechanism, that produces charge separation in the first place? And since you are separating charges in an electrically conductive environment, how do you prevent quick discharge, and manage to build up strong electric fields?
It makes far better physical sense to realize that magnetic reconnection will transfer a great deal of kinetic energy directly to the plasma, and that Faraday's Law will also generate strong (but temporary) electric fields as a result of the ubiquitous and unavoidable dynamo magnetic fields in the photosphere. This completely avoids all of the physical difficulties related to discharge mechanisms, is all completely consistent with known basic physics, and is all completely consistent with the wide variety of observed properties of the sun.
In short, the mainstream models work well and make physical sense, whereas the electrical discharge mechanism does not work and does not make physical sense. Hence, unless you can come up with far stronger arguments than you have managed to muster thus far, I will stick to the mainstream.
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