Electric Universe: has there ever been a scientific research program?

[tusenfem]

ow ow ow
the stupid in the scott paper, starting at the introduction (nasa calls it birkeland currents, no flux ropes!) and culmination in the section 2 title "force-free plasmas are field aligned" which physically makes no sense at all. And really, after 65 years Scott was the one to explain bessel funnctions to the world? section 2 is just bonkers, how can something like that get through review? (i guess it was not reviewed)

well it is bad, especially calculating the charge density from dividing current density by velocity, not taking into account that electrons and ions move n opposite directions. charge density should probably be quasi nuetral, but an electric engineer only thinks of moving electrons in a wire ...

enough for today

 

[Mikemcc]

Who the hell would waste money on researching drivel? It's bad enough the time that I've taken to type this!

 

[jonesdave116]

well it is bad, especially calculating the charge density from dividing current density by velocity, not taking into account that ***electrons and ions move n opposite directions***. charge density should probably be quasi nuetral, but an electric engineer only thinks of moving electrons in a wire ...

enough for today

This got me thinking of something else - Scott has an article on his website, entitled "A Note on the Acceleration of the Solar Wind." (http://electric-cosmos.org/SolarWind.pdf)

Plasma stuff really isn't my thing; I learn as much of it as I need to to understand, at a basic level, some of the papers I read. However, perusing the above paper brought me to the conclusion that Scott was suggesting that an electric field was responsible for the solar wind acceleration. In my limited understanding, wouldn't that accelerate ions and electrons in opposite directions? If so, how can it be a possible mechanism?
Maybe I'm missing something that others can edumacate me on.

 

[SelfSim]

... culmination in the section 2 title "force-free plasmas are field aligned" which physically makes no sense at all.
...
And really, after 65 years Scott was the one to explain bessel funnctions to the world? section 2 is just bonkers, how can something like that get through review? (i guess it was not reviewed)

I think his Section 2 is a restatement of his nonsensical arguments in his original 'Birkeland Currents: A Force-Free Field-Aligned Model' paper. I guess seeing as none of his so-called peer-reviewers at the crank 'Progress in Physics' journal, corrected his theoretical misconceptions made in that paper, he continues compounding and propagating them in this one.

His whole counter-rotating cross sectional structure based on the original Lundquist solution, (ie: the Bessel function effects), would surely have to be completely unstable in space without an enormous external magnetic confinement field(?) In fact, I think this was even stated before Scott got his paws on Lundquist's solution (and proceeded to completely screw it up).

Using the apparent counter-rotation derived from Lundquist's model, to explain RC's previous question about why stars and gases might rotate in different directions, (which would at least be a consistent explanation in Scott's deluded paradigm), fails to explain why the gases and the stars wouldn't just fly apart. Scott's online (YT) presentations, following the first paper, even show him stating that 'the net field between different rotating layers, either promotes or inhibits charge flow between the concentric cylinders .. and also cause dissimilar (ionised) element separation across the cross-section' (as RC also compares with the evidence to the contrary).

.. well it is bad, especially calculating the charge density from dividing current density by velocity, not taking into account that electrons and ions move n opposite directions. charge density should probably be quasi nuetral, but an electric engineer only thinks of moving electrons in a wire ...

Thanks for that .. (it had me going for while) .. and the issue you mention above, goes straight to the heart of the theoretical flaw in this present paper.

These kinds of flaws really do need to be addressed, otherwise readers will simply defer to what the author says and assume it was correct and forever-after argue from that viewpoint. (Just highlighting here my point about how flawed, uncorrected theoretical points live forever on the web).

 

[JeanTate]

Answering my own questions ...

<snip>

Addressing all this fringe/crackpot stuff would take far more time than one person has, so prioritization is essential. That’s one reason why I like to focus on tests ... so in this case, did Scott propose some concrete, feasible tests of his musings?

Apparently yes (see below)

Has he posted to a relevant, moderated forum?

Apparently not.

If not, why does he deserve any of us taking time away from our own research?

He doesn't ... why are you guys even bothering with this?

The deep ignorance (or denial) is of basic astronomy. Galaxy rotation curves are measured using visible stars and gas. Stars are not plasma clouds in Birkeland currents !

Scott hides this astronomy by a broken link to a figure supposedly within the paper: Ionized gas and stellar kinematics of seventeen nearby spiral galaxies

Ionized gas and stellar kinematics have been measured along the major axes of seventeen nearby spiral galaxies of intermediate to late morphological type. We discuss the properties of each sample galaxy, distinguishing between those characterized by regular or peculiar kinematics. In most of the observed galaxies, ionized gas rotates more rapidly than stars and has a lower velocity dispersion, as is to be expected if the gas is confined in the disc and supported by rotation while the stars are mostly supported by dynamical pressure. In a few objects, gas and stars show almost the same rotational velocity and low velocity dispersion, suggesting that their motion is dominated by rotation.

So, Scott himself has proposed a concrete, feasible test of his musings, the difference in the rotation curves of disk-dominated galaxies, as measured by the "ionized gas" (what? has Scott fallen out with the EU crowd? Doesn't he mean "plasma"?) and by stars.

The charge/mass ratio of ions - H⁺, O²⁺, etc - compared with that of stars is ginormous; my envelope doesn't have a back big enough to contain all the zeros (but it's at least 20 orders of magnitude; could someone please independently verify this?), so the effects of any electric/magnetic fields on each class of object will be equally ginormously different.

Yet rotation curves of disk-dominated galaxies - whether as early as S0⁰ or as late as Sd - are, in general, the same for the ionized gas (of which there is very little in early-type systems), the neutral gas (as determined by radio astronomers, mostly neutral H, but also CO, etc), and for the stars.

So, into the pile of "failed" papers Scott's goes.

Incidentally, this ~lack of difference between rotation curves derived from ionized gas, neutral gas, and stars is one reason why Peratt's 1986 papers (and the relevant chapter in his book) fail. I guess a distinction is that Peratt didn't really try to hide this problem (merely didn't highlight it), whereas Scott ...

 

[jonesdave116]

Hi JT,
As chance would have it, I was looking back through some old posts on this sort of thing. I did a search on "Peratt" to see if Tim Thompson had addressed his galaxy model, as this is obviously relevant to Scott's MKII version. And indeed he had:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4562982&highlight=peratt#post4562982

Just a snippet from the post, and relevant to yours:

But the method fails to deal with the motion of stars, and that is significant. See, for instance, Tsiklauri, 2008, whose method is similar to that of Snell & Peratt. He too handles only the gas, and concludes in his abstract that "The model is applicable to gas and plasma dynamics, while flat rotational curves for stars would need some other explanation, as stars would be more affected by gravity than electromagnetic forces such as the Ampere force."

And, as noted, as there can be no significant charge on a star, one wonders how Scott intends to get round it? I doubt that he's thought it through that far.

 

[Reality Check]

Scoot is totally wasting everyone's time with a "Peratt Mark II" model because the original version is obviously flawed. See the thread Anthony Peratt's Plasma Model of Galaxy Formation.
The main errors are what any astronomy student knows.

• Spiral galaxies are not spirals with nothing in between the arms (his results).
  We see spirals because the arms are bright star-forming regions. The in between region are 10-20% less dense than the arms.
• Double-lobed radio galaxies are actually large elliptical galaxies with jets interacting with plasma producing the radio lobes.
  Possibly not known in 1986.

There is the use of simulation code for massless particles when real plasma has mass. The software is designed for very short term simulations where gravity can be neglected, e.g. microsecond in labs here on Earth. Peratt applies it to the billions of years of the lifetime of galaxies. A later Meierovich and Peratt paper derived an energy balance equation that showed gravity has 7 orders of magnitude more impact than electromagnetism for plasma.
Peratt's galactic plasma filaments should be easily detected.
Peratt's galactic plasma filaments should not be stable (implying galaxies "switching off" at random intervals).

A minor point: No one, including Peratt, has run his computer simulation again on more powerful computers or using better plasma simulation software in over 30 years. That includes using simulation software that includes both gravity and plasma interactions.

 

[SelfSim]

If not, why does he deserve any of us taking time away from our own research?

He doesn't ... why are you guys even bothering with this?

Personally speaking .. because whenever any of science's operational definitions are compromised by masses of 'professional-looking', published papers, containing badly flawed Physics, ('Birkeland Current' in this instance), I chose to speak out loudly about it.

Look, (for eg), at the controversy that happens when 'Planet' and/or (now), 'Dwarf Planet' enters the public arena!

 

[SelfSim]

RE: Scott's 'Section 2: Force-free plasmas are field-aligned' in the Birkeland Currents and Dark Matter and Sections 3 & 4 in the paper:

... His whole counter-rotating cross sectional structure based on the original Lundquist solution, (ie: the Bessel function effects), would surely have to be completely unstable in space without an enormous external magnetic confinement field(?) In fact, I think this was even stated before Scott got his paws on Lundquist's solution (and proceeded to completely screw it up).

It gets even worse where Scott presents all this in a widely available YouTube/presentation (made at some recent annual EU love-in).

He (more or less) says that his enveloping 'Birkeland Current' enveloping magnetic field spirals in one direction, and then comes back in the opposite direction. He likens this field topology to how ancient soldiers used to wrap their legs up with strapping by winding it down the leg and then back up again (see fasces).

If this analogy is the case, then each successive wrapping magnetic "layer" will exert a repulsive magnetic force on each adjacent layer, as the direction of the magnetic field changes for each layer. It's like running a current through two parallel straight wires. If the currents run in the same direction, then the magnetic field in each wire is in the same direction and the force between the fields is an attractive force, otherwise with the fields being in different directions, (as he argues), the force is in fact, repulsive. All this comes about because of the Bessel function at the heart of his model.

Scott's scenario turns out as being the distinct opposite of magnetic containment, and is unstable as the plasma, gas, (or whatever) associated with the alternating magnetic fields, described by the Bessel function, would be pulled apart.

The deeper one goes into the Scott's Birkeland Current model, the more nonsensical it becomes.
Its just badly errored Physics and should be known as being nothing more than that.

 

[jonesdave116]

In a rather vomit inducing effort to crawl up Scott's nether regions, over at woo central, somebody posted this:

JonesDave seems to erroneously assume that stars have no relative charge with respect to their environment, which is directly at odds with Scott's anode solar model and Birkeland's cathode solar model as well.

Here's some news; there is ZERO evidence for Scott's or Birkeland's model. And a tonne against. So, we need failed models to explain a crap paper, for which there is also no evidence, and makes some basic mistakes, from an EE whose knowledge of plasma physics, particularly as it pertains to astrophysics, is limited at best. Somebody at the aforementioned woo central needs to work out how these non-existent Birkeland currents (invisible in COBE, WMAP & Planck), manage to make stars and gas and dust all travel about the galactic centre at pretty much the same speed? What is the charge on a star? What would that imply for the solar wind? The solar wind, for the hard of remembering, is that collection of ions and electrons which flee the Sun in the SAME direction at the SAME speed. So, is the Sun positively charged? What does this imply for the electrons in the solar wind? If it's accelerated by an electric field, as per Scott, then in which direction do the ions go? In comparison, which way do the electrons go?
Pure idiocy. I'm afraid that nobody associated with that mythology cult has the faintest idea about some pretty basic science. Which is why, after decades of spouting this rubbish, they have achieved the square root of sod all.

 

[Ziggurat]

What is the charge on a star?

One of the ironies of this whole thing is that standard astrophysics has in fact directly addressed this question. See for example:
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2001/24/aah2649.pdf

The sun has a positive charge of about 77 Coulombs. That's not nothing, but it's not near enough to drive what the EU folks need it to.

And to further hilight the irony, this very paper has been mentioned multiple times in this very forum, for example in this post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6673481&postcount=947

 

[jonesdave116]

One of the ironies of this whole thing is that standard astrophysics has in fact directly addressed this question. See for example:
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2001/24/aah2649.pdf

The sun has a positive charge of about 77 Coulombs. That's not nothing, but it's not near enough to drive what the EU folks need it to.

And to further hilight the irony, this very paper has been mentioned multiple times in this very forum, for example in this post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6673481&postcount=947

Ahhhh, nice find. So, gravity between two stars is 10³⁶ times greater than electrostatic forces! Must remember that number.

And an excellent post by Tim, as usual. Filed that away with various others.

 

[JeanTate]

Ahhhh, nice find. So, gravity between two stars is 10³⁶ times greater than electrostatic forces! Must remember that number.

[puts EU acolyte hat on]
No, no, no!!!

You gravity-worshipping mainstreamers have it all wrong!!!!!!!!!

The electromagnetic force is 39 times stronger than the gravitational one!

And as scripture Alfven tells us, Chapman's pithball model of stars is impossibly wrong! The force between two stars is something you can determine only by applying non-linear plasma equations!

And they are misleading anyway; look at images of the Sun taken by Thornhill&Talbott ... they clearly show a Birkeland current connecting it to the Earth (NASA misunderstands this as "flux ropes") and to the ten nearest stars!

Once again, you are being misled by mathemagic nonsense; LOOK AT THE PICTURES!!!!

Oh, and magnetic reconnection cannot explain anything, because it doesn't exist!!!

[takes EU acolyte hat off]

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

• Double-lobed radio galaxies are actually large elliptical galaxies with jets interacting with plasma producing the radio lobes.
  Possibly not known in 1986.

<snip>

(highlite added)

I think you'll find that, in relevant university courses, Matthews+ (1964) is usually cited as the landmark paper in this regard.

The first spiral galaxy definitively shown to be the host of a double radio lobe is reported in Ledlow+ (1998).

It would be quite a challenge to definitively state in which paper the first lenticular was shown to be a radio double lobe host, if only because a robust demarcation between an S0^-, say, and an E⁺ galaxy is close to impossible without a high resolution set of images or IFU spectra (not to mention the fact that the Hubble type of S0 galaxies varies with the wavelength/filter they are observed in!); the "double radio lobe" part is easy; the nature of the host is not (in these cases).

 

[SelfSim]

[puts EU acolyte hat on]
No, no, no!!!
...
Once again, you are being misled by mathemagic nonsense; LOOK AT THE PICTURES!!!!
...
[takes EU acolyte hat off]

Another classic comes from the stand-up comedian himself, MM. He constantly demands to know where Scott's math is wrong in the Birkeland/Dark Matter paper .. Never mind if it isn't Scott's math in the first place .. its Lundquist's .. so why would that be wrong?

Also, when its pointed out that Scott's infinite integral limit for calculating the total Lumens received from a static infinite universe is incorrect, (and should be finite), suddenly the response becomes 'Who cares {if Scott's math is wrong ...}?'

Then of course there is his own blunder of mistaking 0.5 as being equivalent in value to 1!

 

[jonesdave116]

And another beauty from the court jester of dunderbolts!

If his math is right then there's no mathematical need for dark matter to explain galaxy rotation patterns. It's damn clear that his math *is* right,...

Never mind that there is zero evidence for these Birkeland currents that Peratt said we should see (and don't), but absolutely no mechanism for how these non-existent currents would make stars rotate faster than if DM wasn't accounted for! And Scott totally fails to offer one.
It's the same nonsense as the Thornhill/ Scott neutrinos - their models are rubbish, and don't work, and the neutrino energy spectra just doesn't match, among numerous other problems. Who cares what they predicted? It was unevidenced, impossible rubbish, that has never been written up. A complete irrelevance that is rightly ignored.
I don't think these people realise quite what an irrelevance to real science they actually are!

And another one:

You don't even have a valid explanation as to why those filaments form to start with, whereas Scott does. Current naturally generates filamentary features in plasma.

Dear me. Apart from the fact that there is zero evidence for any current, these filaments are modelled in LCDM simulations! Scott referenced one of them in his travesty of a paper [33], and I referenced it upthread. There is another paper I've read from 1996 doing a similar thing:

How Filaments Are Woven Into The Cosmic Web
Bond, J. R. et al
https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9512141.pdf

So they know very well how these filaments form. More to the point, the DM filaments are detected through gravitational lensing, as per:

The weak-lensing masses of filaments between luminous red galaxies
Epps, S. D. & Hudson, M. J.
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/468/3/2605/3059154

and;

A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies
Dietrich, J. P. et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.0809.pdf

So, not only are these filaments seen in DM simulations, but the DM forming them is observed through gravitational lensing. Which is a hell of a lot more impressive than Scott saying - "Look, filament. Must be a current!" And then proceeding to use this evidence-free nonsense to explain galaxy rotation curves. Which is impossible.

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

Somebody at the aforementioned woo central needs to work out how these non-existent Birkeland currents (invisible in COBE, WMAP & Planck), manage to [...]

<snip>

(my highlite)

And GLIMPSE and IRAS and AKARI and GB6 and FIRST and NVSS and HI4PI and SUMMS and WENS and TGSS and VLSSr and GLEAM and ...

Why bother to give stuff that's so obviously crackpot nonsense (now, and has been for quite some time) any airtime here? If an EU acolyte wishes to join ISF and start (or continue) a thread on this sort of topic, by all means let them do so; otherwise ...

 

[jonesdave116]

And right on cue........more dark matter! The stuff gets everywhere!

A large sample of shear selected clusters from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program S16A wide field mass maps
Miyazaki, S. et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.10290v1.pdf

Still no currents, though.

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

The charge/mass ratio of ions - H⁺, O²⁺, etc - compared with that of stars is ginormous; my envelope doesn't have a back big enough to contain all the zeros (but it's at least 20 orders of magnitude; could someone please independently verify this?), so the effects of any electric/magnetic fields on each class of object will be equally ginormously different.

<snip>

The sun has a positive charge of about 77 Coulombs.

According to NIST, the electron charge to mass quotient is -1.758 820 024 x 10¹¹ C kg^-1; let's call it -20000000000 as an approximation (-2x10¹¹ to people other than EU acolytes).

A singly ionized lead (Pb) atom has about the lowest charge-to-mass ratio of any non-molecule; the back of my envelope gives me ~+500000 (5x10⁵) C kg^-1.

Taking the mass of the Sun as 200000000000000000000000000000 (2x10³⁰) kg, I get its charge-to-mass ratio as ~+0.00000000000000000000000000004 (4x10^-29) C kg^-1.

Looks like I was waaaay off ... it's nowhere near 20 OOM, rather more like >34. Or as an EU acolyte might write it 1034, or perhaps 34 ...

 

[SelfSim]

A mathematical critique on Scott's continuing blunders in his 'Birkeland Currents and Dark Matter' paper, is made here.

Basically amounts to a mathematically errored derivation of his equations (3) and (4) from Lundquist's solution, by his using Maxwell’s 4th equation with a constant electric field,
∂E/∂t=0^*. This then contradicts j=0 as being a physical solution in a magnetic force free field.

^* (Maxwell’s 4th equation with a constant electric field is: ∇X B = μj, where μ is the magnetic permeability).