Merged Electric Sun Theory (Split from: CME's, active regions and high energy flares)

[Arthur Mann]

You claim your model can explain some of the smaller phenomena associated with the thing being modeled. but ignoring the fact that it fails completely fails to describe the gross properties.

Please explain which "gross properties" of the sun are inexplicable by electrical explanations.

 

[Michael Mozina]

I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers, just defend science from the barbarians at the gate.

Believe me when I say that I appreciate the help. I've just seen other EU proponents "flame out" pretty fast in these forums. Most the cast around here is open to direct conversation. Lay low and stay cool and most of them come around over time. A few will NEVER come around no matter what. Oh well....

 

[Ziggurat]

Read again what I typed, if you read it enough times eventually it will become clear.

OK, let's read it together.

Actually yeah, that's particle physics 101, the only known way to accelerate charged particles is to apply an electric field.

This is obviously wrong (gravity and nuclear strong forces also accelerate charges, for example), but no matter, we'll take it as true for the moment. Electric fields are the only thing that accelerates charged particles, so any charge acceleration is the result of an electric field. Next sentence:

To put it another way, electric discharge is the only known method.

Only known method to do what? Since this sentence itself doesn't specify, the logical parsing is to assume it refers to whatever immediately precedes it. Which could be either the only known method to "apply an electric field", or the only known method to "accelerate charged particles". The latter made more sense to me given the discussion so far, but perhaps you meant the former. Of course, that's a... nonstandard definition of discharge as well.

But perhaps you didn't mean either of those things. If so, well, rereading your post won't help, because no other meanings easily present themselves.

 

[Arthur Mann]

Well, I know for certain that YOUR model deviates significantly.

Please describe the conditions under which the electric star model deviates from observed reality.

 

[Tubbythin]

The "standard model" in solar physics struggles to explain all of that, and can't do so without ad hoc trickery.

No, it explains it all pretty well.

I think you're confused, you have this reversed. It's plasma cosmology that's supported by a century of experiments and observation.

Sigh. Yet another PC?ES proponent that doesn't know the difference between astronomy and cosmology.

Where are the experiments reproducing the sustained nuclear fusion imagined inside stars?

If we could produce sustained nuclear fusion in the lab using the pp chain then the pp chain would be far too huge and therefore we wouldnt be here to perform those experiments. However, we can, for example, predict the number of neutrinos produced. When neutrino oscillations are taken into account (which is the exact opposite of ad hoc trickery being supported by asmospheric measurements, reactor measurements and beam produced neutrino measurements). I have never seen an indication that an ES model can explain even 1% of these neutrinos.

Then you should support ideas firmly rooted in scientific rigor, like plasma cosmology.

Ha-ha. Scientific rigour. Like a complete lack of self-consistency, hand-wavy explanations by pointing to pretty pictures, false claims about other models and a desire to publish in obscure journals that nobody else reads?

The so-called "standard model" is a dismal failure, it can't reasonably account for any observations of even our own sun without resorting to imaginary process that they claim can never be verified or falsified. The concept of falsifiability is key to the progress of science.

Completely and utterly false. Take the observations of solar neutrinos as an example.

You have the cause and effect wrong here. The observations led erroneously to the stellar fusion model, which was never verified by any experiment, and subsequently supplanted by the scientific approach offered by plasma cosmology.

Actually it has been extremely well verified by experiments (eg those pesky neutrinos again). How can can the collection of inconsistent ideas with little quantitative predictive power be considered a scientific approach. And what on Earth gave you the idea it has supplanted the SSM?

I don't know where you get this idea that electricity doesn't adequately explain what we see on the sun. Many times the experiments simulating them with electric discharge in the lab has been presented in this thread. Nobody can force you to believe it, though.

Sigh. See my analogy about the human.
Oh yes, and I'm still waiting for this quantitative evidence of the scaling between lab and reality.

There's nothing magic about electricity.

I know. That is exactly what I said.

That's not what's been happening in this case. In this case you and others have been presented many times the experimental verification for these ideas. No such verification exists for the "standard" model, the believers in that myth simply announce "the energies are too high", "the planets are not in line", "the entrails are not favorable", "we don't do tests".

Its very very simple. You make the claim that certain lab phenomena are the same as certain solar phenomena bar a scaling factor. Now you either do the science bit. That is:
1) List the relevant lab quantities;
2) List the corresponding solar quantities;
3) Derive the scaling factors to get from one to the other.
IF you can do that then you have experimental evidence. IF you cannot do that then you have no experimental evidence. Science is quantitative. If you cannot support your ideas quantitatively then it isn't science. Can you do steps 1) 2) and 3)? If yes then why haven't you done it? If no, then how can you possibly claim to have verification when you don't have a shred of quantitative data?
By the way, do you know what quantitative means? From an earlier post it didn't look like you did.

There's much merit to simple observation, but without experiment, investigations are doomed to wander off into imaginary territories.

Controlled observations are experiments.

I don't know who first put forth this notion that electrical discharges can only occur across a dielectric. It's not hard to imagine hundreds of examples of electric discharge every day that don't involve such a "breakdown". Does the idea that electricity is discharging through your computer right now upset you as much? What about the electricity discharging through your refrigerator? What about the ambient electric current of 300 volts per meter at sea level that is continually discharging? Where is the "break down" there? It's a steady, continual discharge. Not all electric discharges are transient like the spark from your finger to a doorknob.

Electricity isn't discharging through my fridge etc. At least I hope it doesn't discharge. I don't want to get a shock when I go down there and get out some bacon for my tea.
By the way, do you know the difference between charge and current? I'm becoming increasingly sceptical about that possibility too.

 

[Ziggurat]

If you really believed this you'd abandon the stellar fusion model. Post facto "explanations" aren't predictions. When you pick the sun's total power output as the basis for your claim that the sun is powered internally by fusion, then develop a model based on that, you can't then say the model "predicts" the correct power output of the sun, then claim the model is therefor valid. That's a circular argument.

Call it "descriptions" then. Alternatives still can't produce them. And you still aren't trying to. If you think a model which can't do predictions is of little use, then what are we to think of a model which can't even do post facto descriptions?

 

[Arthur Mann]

This is obviously wrong (gravity and nuclear strong forces also accelerate charges, for example), but no matter, we'll take it as true for the moment.

I'm talking about real forces that we can generate in a lab, manipulate by either amplifying it or impeding it. We can't do that with "gravity" or "nuclear strong forces", so we can not set up a controlled experiment to measure the hypothesized effects.

We can and have done so with electric discharges, though. Electric discharges are the only known way to accelerate charged particles. This is elementary particle physics here. They don't use "nuclear strong force" at CERN or the Large Hadron Collider, they use electric and magnetic fields.

 

[Tubbythin]

Actually yeah, that's particle physics 101, the only known way to accelerate charged particles is to apply an electric field. To put it another way, electric discharge is the only known method.

Funny that. Could have sworn the LHC bent protons round in a circle using really big magnets.

 

[Michael Mozina]

What is a "solar model" Michael?

What solar model did Alfven, Dungey and Bruce work with?

 

[Tubbythin]

Consensus of Google hits is not science. Do I really need to say any more about this?

I know. I never siad it was. You claimed it was cherry-picking. Clearly this was not the case given that it was the first result I got on google. Please pay attention to your own words. OR do you not understand what cherry-picking is?

That's your choice, apparently. If you were driven by reason you'd have no choice but to believe what's reasonable. If you know of some method to generate a magnetic field without applying an electric field, please describe it here, unless you're afraid it will ruin your chances of winning the Nobel prize in physics.

Ever seen a bar magnet?

 

[Ziggurat]

Please describe the conditions under which the electric star model deviates from observed reality.

Well, most electric sun "models" are so vague that they can't even be evaluated quantitatively (a problem I note you are doing nothing to remedy). But I'll refer you to one problem from a model which did present hard numbers: the voltage on the sun. I can't remember the original source, quite possibly the Thunderbolts folks, but it was claimed that the voltage on the sun was 10¹⁰ V. That model fails. Catastrophically.

 

[dasmiller]

This is a straw man. Nobody suggested you could have electric discharges without a source of electricity. The real clown is the one who suggests all this electrical discharge energy is generated inside the sun, not the one who (quite reasonably) suggests the sun is powered externally.

It's not a straw man. I was trying to establish whether the whole electric-flare thing required a current source external to the sun. Evidently you believe that it does.

Yes, there are. Do a bit more research and you'll discover this is the case.

If you could point me to such a quantitative model, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

Plasma phenomena offer a reasonable explanation for nearly everything we see in space, without ad hoc insertions of novel physics and new imaginary beasts like "black hole" or "dark energy".

"reasonable" is a subjective evaluation. Do you believe that the observational support for black holes is weaker than the observational support for galactic current flows that power the stars?

And since the black hole concept flows pretty easily from general relativity, do you also believe that general relativity is seriously flawed?

 

[Arthur Mann]

Call it "descriptions" then.

You can call it whatever you want, a turd is a turd and it stinks just as bad if you call it a supermodel.

Alternatives still can't produce them.

Willful denial on your part. Oh well, at least you've stopped denying that the stellar fusion model is at its heart based on (and only on) the total output of the sun, which a hundred years ago was deemed unimaginably huge and generated inside, like a camp fire or a compost heap. That the sun is powered by external forces is the only reasonable response to this nonsense. The sun, though very large, is dwarfed by the galaxy and further dwarfed by galaxy clusters and so on. To think that the sun is somehow isolated and unaffected by all that other matter is delusion. To think that the sun powers itself is like suggesting plants power their own photosynthesis. There are no closed systems in the universe.

 

[Tubbythin]

Your belief that the sun is powered internally (by fusion or any other means) is demonstrably false. Just look at the temperature minimum in the sun's corona, as has been mentioned already. That's clear evidence that the internally-powered model is wrong. There would be no temperature minimum in the corona if all the heat of the sun was coming from inside, instead you'd have a steady decline in temperature that varied with distance.

A) I never said this.
B) This is a claim that has repeatedly been shown to false.

 

[Tubbythin]

Please describe the conditions under which the electric star model deviates from observed reality.

I have seen no electric solar model that produces the observed energy output, lifetime or neutrino flux of stars.

 

[GeeMack]

If you haven't seen a model it's because you're willfully ignoring it. Your claim that these ideas don't offer a cogent explanation for (at the very least) CME's and solar flares seems to be based solely on your own imagination in the absence of facts. Your repeated insistence that electricity in space behaves in some way that violates the known laws of physics is ridiculous.

And yet none of the electric Sun cranks have been able to point to that alleged model. Imagine that.

 

[Arthur Mann]

Evidently you believe that it does.

It should be obvious that the sun is powered by external forces. To suggest otherwise is lunacy.

If you could point me to such a quantitative model, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

Oh, you haven't seen the quantitative models? Then why are you trying to bash them? Arguing against an idea from a point of ignorance like this is a weak move. How can you "refute" something you don't even have knowledge of? Perhaps there are other subjects you'd be better at. I can suggest some privately for you if you get stuck.

Do you believe that the observational support for black holes is weaker than the observational support for galactic current flows that power the stars?

This is a no-brainer. Black hole is said to be utterly unobservable, so there can never be any observational support for this idea. Further, since the energies are said to be impossible to reproduce, we have no burden to falsify this notion. As you can see from a tautological examination, "black hole" is not science.

Since we have abundant observations of electricity and magnetic fields in space, we may safely conclude that they exist and don't rely on unproven speculations or concepts that are impervious to either verification or falsification. We can actually reproduce the electrical effects in the lab, also, and observe them at our leisure.

 

[Michael Mozina]

113 .3. `MAGNETIC MERGING' THEORIES

What we have found means that we can describe plasma phenomena inside a finite volume only if no electric current crosses the surface. In the terminology of the magnetic field description, this means that we can describe plasma phenomena inside a finite volume only if the perpendicular component of the curl is zero at every point of the surface.
All theories of `magnetic merging' (or `field line reconnection') which do not satisfy this criterion are misleading or erroneous, and deserve no attention . This does not mean that all papers in which `magnetic merging' is used are of no interest, because there exist some good papers (e .g., Hill, 1975) in which the term is merely a synonym for "current sheet acceleration ."

This quote from Alfven is from Cosmic Plasma by the way. How do you think that the highlighted parts in particular might apply to Dungey's paper, and his use of the term "reconnection"? Note that he did not say 'magnetic reconnection', and he's clear about the "current flow".

 

[Arthur Mann]

And yet none of the electric Sun cranks have been able to point to that alleged model.

You haven't seen the electric star model, either? This is astonishing. Why are all these people trying to refute an idea they don't even understand and haven't ever investigated?

 

[Ziggurat]

I'm talking about real forces that we can generate in a lab, manipulate by either amplifying it or impeding it. We can't do that with "gravity" or "nuclear strong forces", so we can not set up a controlled experiment to measure the hypothesized effects.

Leaving aside the fact that you made no mention of such conditions, nor have you explained why that criteria is relevant, you're STILL wrong. We CAN manipulate gravitational forces. You do it the same way you manipulate electric forces: you move sources of such forces around. Manipulation of such forces is the standard method for measuring G.

And we can manipulate strong nuclear forces too. Particle accelerator experiments do so regularly. Now, we don't have as much control over the nuclear force as we do with electric forces, but that's irrelevant. They still accelerate charges, and we can still do experiments to test its effects.

And lastly, of course, magnetic fields can accelerate charges too.

We can and have done so with electric discharges, though. Electric discharges are the only known way to accelerate charged particles. This is elementary particle physics here. They don't use "nuclear strong force" at CERN or the Large Hadron Collider, they use electric and magnetic fields.

I note that you've moved your goalpost. But you're still wrong. Electromagnetic fields are the most convenient and efficient means for us humans to create large accelerations of highly charged particles. But nothing about that statement means or even implies that these are the only possible ways to accelerate charged particles.