Moderated Iron sun with Aether batteries...

[sol invictus]

If I had access to all the all the hi-res movies, it would be a lot easier to demonstrate, believe me.

All TRACE 171A (all iron ion) images of the limb show coronal loop and mass flow movement in the atmosphere something like this:

http://trace.lmsal.com/Public/Gallery/Images/movies/T171_991127.mov

If we can see that same movement of near the opaque limbs in SDO, and they consistently appear under the chromosphere/photosphere boundary, would that convince you that the transition region is under the photosphere?

No, I don't think so - but I'm still not positive I know what you're asking.

Ya, and do you understand what you're saying? How much difference would you expect to see between the wavelengths involved in those two images? Do you really think you're going to squeeze that lame argument hard enough to get 4800KM of difference?

Actually sol...

You'll need 6000km of distance to be consistent with LMSAL claim about the solar moss starting 1200KM *above* the photosphere.

Distance between what and what? Please remember - this is a 2D image of a 3D object. You can't convert lateral distance on the 2D image into distance in 3D without taking into account the trigonometry, as well as the optical depth.

 

[Reality Check]

So according to you folks, I should not be able to see the movement of darkened plasma along that horizon like I see in 171A trace images of the horizon, and I should not see them occurring *UNDER* the photosphere along any edge, correct?

Wrong.
According to us folks, if you look at any images of the sun then you will "see" movement of plasma. That is what plasma does - it moves. Note the plural. If you look an any single image then you will never see any movement. In addition assuming that changes in brightness = movement of plasma would be a big mistake. To detect actual movement of plasma you need measurements of movement of plasma, e.g. doppler images!

You will only see the movement of plasma occuring in the first ~400 km of the photosphere because the photosphere is defined as where the Sun becomes opaque. The optical depth of the photosphere means that no light will be detected from physically possible emissions below ~500 km.

You can detect the deeper movements of plasma by heliosiesmology, e.g. the many convection currents that go right through your impossible iron crust fantasy* as shown by the heliosiesmology data from Kosovichev.

Of course if you want you can have your impossible iron crust fantasy at a depth of

After careful analysis of the image I rescind the 7200km number and I return to my 4800km to 6000km figure that I started with based on the heliosiesmology data from Kosovichev.

emitting more light that we see from the entire Sun. In that case we will see much less then 1 photon every 4 years from it (a calculation done for 3000 km).

*A fantasy because it violates thermodynamics, e.g see Micheal Mozina's iron crust has been debunked!
The fact that it fails many other observations (an iron crust at a temperature of > 9400 K ) and predicts absolutely nothing just makes it a joke. See the over 50 questions that Michael Mozina is incapable of answering.

 

[ben m]

Why did we bother to put up SDO in the first place if you intended to simply ignore the images and what they tell you?

"Why did we send Apollo to the Moon if they intend to ignore the ancient civilization in their photographs?" (see here)

"Why does the Church bother worshiping Jesus if they intend to ignore his obvious appearance in my grilled cheese sandwich?"

Why indeed? Because asking what features your visual intuition can pick out in visual data---especially features that you're psychologically invested in wanting to see---is one of the most-error-prone and unreliable tasks that you could possibly embark on. It'd rank it right behind "listening to random noise and asking yourself whether there might be a very quiet voice hidden in it" and "listening to raindrops and trying to tell whether there's a periodic component". There's a damn good reason nobody else does science the way you try to, Michael. Because it doesn't work.

 

[Michael Mozina]

No, I don't think so - but I'm still not positive I know what you're asking.

Hmmm.

The Birkeland model would "predict" that we should be able to point SDO and TRACE directly at any point on the limb and consistently observe mass movements long the opaque later that are also visible to TRACE in 171A. They should consistently appear along the opaque limb lines of the iron ion images, and appear consistently to be located *UNDER* the chromosphere/photosphere boundary, along every part of the limb. SDO should consistently show that ion line mass movement to be located *INSIDE* of that chromosphere/photosphere boundary.

If there are mass flows to be observed all along the opaque limb in iron ion wavelenths, along all sides of the limb, and they consistently start inside the borders of the chromosphere/photosphere boundary, would that convince you that the "transition region" is located under the surface of the photosphere?

 

[sol invictus]

If there are mass flows to be observed all along the opaque limb in iron ion wavelenths, along all sides of the limb, and they consistently start inside the borders of the chromosphere/photosphere boundary, would that convince you that the "transition region" is located under the surface of the photosphere?

By "opaque limb" do you mean the bright ring visible in e.g. the 171A images? If so, of course not!

As ben just explained, that ring can easily be at smaller radius (in the image) than the edge of the photosphere*. As for "mass flows", I would expect lots of motion in a time lapse 171A movie in the vicinity of that ring, because variations in density of the chromosphere/corona are going to create them as the sun rotates.


*I'm not saying it must be, or by how much - that would require a calculation I haven't done. But it's fairly obvious that its radius is going to be close to that of the edge of the photosphere.

 

[ben m]

*UNDER* the chromosphere/photosphere boundary

Under? What's this "under"? It's a 2-D photo. Either you're seeing it closer to the center of the photo, or closer to the edge. Please stick to that terminology---"under" is your intuitive interpretation which you haven't been able to justify at all---in part because your descriptions are maddeningly unclear, mixing bits of observable ("green") with bits of your guesswork ("under", "through") in a totally hashwork way.


Fix it. Here's an ASCII art cartoon of a SIDE VIEW of a simple opaque Sun with a green blob hovering in front of it. I've labeled (with letters) a bunch of lines-of-sight for an observer looking down at and past the limb. You can follow any given line of sight and figure out what the observer sees in that pixel. This is possible both for opaque features and transparent ones---I put in an example "g" to show. Then I gave you an ASCII "stem plot" where you can list what's in line-of-sight a, what's in line-of-sight b, what's in line-of-sight j, etc.

Please edit it to represent what YOU think the 3D structure is, and show how you think that 3D structure projects along the lines-of-sight. Replace the opaque 0s with "f" or "n" to represent iron or neon, for example.

observer is up here

lines of sight,
looking down.
||||||||||
abcdefghij 
                This is a cartoon of a simple opaque sphere.
                The 0s are "opaque photospheric material".
		The "g" for example is a blob of transparent corona. 
0       g        What do we see along the lines of sight a-h?
000    g         a: 0
0000  g          b: 0
00000            c: 0 
000000           d: 0
000000           e: 0      <- when you look at an opaque sphere you  
0000000          f: 0         see the same thing right out to the edge.
0000000          g: 0+g    <- when you're looking through the green blob
0000000          h: 0+g       you see green + whatever's behind it.
00000000         i: b+g     
00000000         j: b      <- past the edge all you see is the background 
00000000                        which is "b" for black.   
00000000
00000000
00000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
000000
000000
00000
0000
000
0

bbbbbbbbbbbb background is black
bbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbb

 

[GeeMack]

If we just had the 193A passband in the image then we would see a mottled green disk that was slightly brighter along the rim because the light is being detected from thicker section of plasma. IOW: Looking directly down on the corona there is a thickness X of plasma emitting the 193A light. As we look toward the rim X increases (see the simple geometry in the previous posts) and there is a bit more light detected.

The construction of the false colur image by including the other 2 passbands then hides most of the 193A passband leaving a partial ring and the brightest areas from the middle of the image.

If you want the layers separated into three single color images, I can do that. Anyone who claims to have any expertise in image processing and analysis would already have done that. Takes about 2 minutes.

 

[GeeMack]

Hmmm.

The Birkeland model would "predict" that we should be able to point SDO and TRACE directly at any point on the limb and consistently observe mass movements long the opaque later that are also visible to TRACE in 171A.

You are misrepresenting your own crackpot conjecture as Birkeland's model again. And now, just like every time you do it, it's dishonest.

 

[ben m]

As ben just explained, that ring can easily be at smaller radius (in the image) than the edge of the photosphere*.

*I'm not saying it must be, or by how much - that would require a calculation I haven't done. But it's fairly obvious that its radius is going to be close to that of the edge of the photosphere.

Yep. Moreover, you can (and do) get multiple layers of corona material, at different heights and different temperatures. I've already given examples of coronae where emission is brighter past the limb (optically thin), or where it gets bright and stays bright right to the limb (self-absorbing emitter). If you have a hot emitter just above the surface AND a cooler absorber just slightly above that, then the brightest region is actually centerwards of the limb, darkening towards and past the real limb; the functional form is e^-(a/sin(theta))/sin(theta), where theta=0 at the limb. (The exponential absorption "wins" over the increasing column densities.)

So yes, different corona conditions with different details can give bright bands in different areas of your image. Like we've been saying. What particular bright band, Michael, do you think is absolutely obviously unrelated to the corona? I look forward to an explanatory 3-D picture of what you think is going on.

And I repeat my caveat: drawing ANY inferences whatsoever from the press release image, other than "the telescope works", is a fool's errand. Especially if you're talking about sort of few-pixel details right at an edge, or in any way that depends on the JPG color map which has been distorted to "whatever looks good to the Photoshop guy".

 

[sol invictus]

I think you should answer this question, Michael. Ben plainly went to a lot of trouble to make this diagram, and it's straight to the point. Could you fill it in?

I'd like those Moplazma™ 2.0 numbers at some point too.

Under? What's this "under"? It's a 2-D photo. Either you're seeing it closer to the center of the photo, or closer to the edge. Please stick to that terminology---"under" is your intuitive interpretation which you haven't been able to justify at all---in part because your descriptions are maddeningly unclear, mixing bits of observable ("green") with bits of your guesswork ("under", "through") in a totally hashwork way.


Fix it. Here's an ASCII art cartoon of a SIDE VIEW of a simple opaque Sun with a green blob hovering in front of it. I've labeled (with letters) a bunch of lines-of-sight for an observer looking down at and past the limb. You can follow any given line of sight and figure out what the observer sees in that pixel. This is possible both for opaque features and transparent ones---I put in an example "g" to show. Then I gave you an ASCII "stem plot" where you can list what's in line-of-sight a, what's in line-of-sight b, what's in line-of-sight j, etc.

Please edit it to represent what YOU think the 3D structure is, and show how you think that 3D structure projects along the lines-of-sight. Replace the opaque 0s with "f" or "n" to represent iron or neon, for example.

observer is up here

lines of sight,
looking down.
||||||||||
abcdefghij 
                This is a cartoon of a simple opaque sphere.
                The 0s are "opaque photospheric material".
		The "g" for example is a blob of transparent corona. 
0       g        What do we see along the lines of sight a-h?
000    g         a: 0
0000  g          b: 0
00000            c: 0 
000000           d: 0
000000           e: 0      <- when you look at an opaque sphere you  
0000000          f: 0         see the same thing right out to the edge.
0000000          g: 0+g    <- when you're looking through the green blob
0000000          h: 0+g       you see green + whatever's behind it.
00000000         i: b+g     
00000000         j: b      <- past the edge all you see is the background 
00000000                        which is "b" for black.   
00000000
00000000
00000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
000000
000000
00000
0000
000
0

bbbbbbbbbbbb background is black
bbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbb

 

[GeeMack]

I think you should answer this question, Michael. Ben plainly went to a lot of trouble to make this diagram, and it's straight to the point. Could you fill it in?

I'd like those Moplazma™ 2.0 numbers at some point too.

If you look at this posting at SFN from August 24, 2006, you'll see this image...

... which I made up from one of Michael's favorite bunny pictures. In that discussion, which was in the neighborhood of 3000 posts and going on for about 8 months by then, we tried very hard to get him to narrow down his claims about seeing mountains and valleys in the image. Read a few postings following my post in the link and see how Michael won't address the image, but wants people to do more and more work for him.

This shows a clear example of the foundation of Michael's arguments. There is no substance other than his unqualified declaration that what he sees, is. And I predict that the results of Sol and Ben's work here will be the same. There will be a continued demand for more work, misdirection and distractions to avoid actually addressing the pertinent questions, and eventually, if we keep pushing Michael to focus and take a definitive, quantitative position, he'll abandon the forum.

His arguments simply can't stand up to even the most superficial scrutiny.

ETA: Humor Break: Notice about three posts after the one I linked where Michael says, "And when STEREO starts returning data to support me, and other scientists confirm what I've found, I expect that a Birkeland solar model will be accepted by mainstream science too." Haven't I heard something like that recently?

​

 

[brantc]

Before MM finishes getting bored and going away, I have one thing that may interest him. I want to emphasize exactly how dumb his the-photosphere-is-superheated-and-transparent idea is. I'd say it's even dumber than claims like "magnetic reconnection doesn't occur", "magnetic forces move the galaxies around", and "large DC currents flow in the Sun" (I'd say it's about on par with "the sun is a sphere of solid metallic iron")

What you have termed "reconnection" does occur and is powered by electric currents in the flux tubes. [1]
I call it a filamental pinch because it is the result of a merging(touching) of a flux tube pair.[1]

All of the coronal and surface activity-magnetism, loops and arcades, blinkers, nano flares, plage(solar moss) etc. are the result of electric current.

All magnetic fields in a plasma are the result of electric current. [1]

1. Identification of a Quasiseperatrix Layer in a Reconnecting Laboratory Magnetoplasma.
http://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/papers//Lawrence_PhysRevLett_QSL.pdf

 

[tsig]

I'm sure because you folks are already running so scared, you can only attack the individual and everything in your statement is a lie.

You don't think that the statement "everything in your statement is a lie" is an attack?

 

[Reality Check]

And I repeat my caveat: drawing ANY inferences whatsoever from the press release image, other than "the telescope works", is a fool's errand. Especially if you're talking about sort of few-pixel details right at an edge, or in any way that depends on the JPG color map which has been distorted to "whatever looks good to the Photoshop guy".

It is even worse than that:
The PR images were constructed from first light data. So all we know is that "the telescope takes pretty pictures".
As the SDO Data page states:

The SDO spacecraft is still in the commissioning and testing phase. In mid-May we start full-time science operations, and we'll be bringing you up-to-date movies of your Sun. Until then, we will update this page with movies and images regularly.

 

[Humanzee]

...and very pretty pictures they are. The latests SDO videos are amazing.

I'm just a lurker. Should this thread be dying - and that seems the direction its headed - I'd like to thank everyone for some very informative posts. Thanks Gee M, RC, Ben, Sol I, et al. Your posts got me thinking about image processing and the mechanisms of solar opacity. For all its Sound and Fury this was a good read.

 

[Tubbythin]

observer is up here

lines of sight,
looking down.
||||||||||
abcdefghij 
                This is a cartoon of a simple opaque sphere.
                The 0s are "opaque photospheric material".
		The "g" for example is a blob of transparent corona. 
0       g        What do we see along the lines of sight a-h?
000    g         a: 0
0000  g          b: 0
00000            c: 0 
000000           d: 0
000000           e: 0      <- when you look at an opaque sphere you  
0000000          f: 0         see the same thing right out to the edge.
0000000          g: 0+g    <- when you're looking through the green blob
0000000          h: 0+g       you see green + whatever's behind it.
00000000         i: b+g     
00000000         j: b      <- past the edge all you see is the background 
00000000                        which is "b" for black.   
00000000
00000000
00000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
000000
000000
00000
0000
000
0

bbbbbbbbbbbb background is black
bbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbb

Nice. The world should have more ASCII art.

 

[Tubbythin]

You don't think that the statement "everything in your statement is a lie" is an attack?

I offered to provide evidence to back up what I said but apparently he's not interested. Odd seeing as, if I he genuinely believed I was lying, I'd be left in a right mess. Maybe there's some kind of logical conclusion to draw from that?

 

[Skwinty]

This should assist MM with making some more ground breaking observations

ETA: Ooooh look, the photosphere is transparent!!!

 

[tusenfem]

OK, I'll be expecting them.

Meanwhile I broke my own rule and had a look at some images of the sun. If you look here, choose 2010/04/11 for date and one of the SOHO EIT bands (say the 171A one), you see an image that's roughly similar to the one you posted. Now try changing the band. In all the bands except 304 there's a rim around at least part of the disk of the type you're so excited about, but in 304 there isn't.

One of the things you claim is that the mainstream solar model cannot explain these rims. It might be fun to see whether that's really the case. I think we may now have the tools at hand - standard physics, the geometry GeeMack and W.D. Clinger have explained, and some opacity estimates - to explain why the rim is there for 171 and 195, and why it's not there at 304.

I don't think any "mainstream" explanation we come up with here is going to be at all definitive, but I think it might well rise to the level of highly plausible. If we do that, would it have any effect on your views, Michael? Would you retract your claim that these images are the death-knell of the standard theory?

Mainstream CAN describe that rim. At that point you are looking "tangential" to the Sun's "surface." What you get there is that you have a "line of sight" effect and you are looking through a large layer (in radial direction) through the light emitting gas. This means that in your line-of-sight there is more emitting gas and thus you see a brighter rim.

I once wrote about that with respect to the Io plasma torus. It actually is quite simple, probably explained in the Rutten radiative transfer "book" and applied in many situations.

ETA: Just noticed that Ben wrote about this too, and I forgot to write that this (naturally) only happens for an optically thin plasma.

 

[dafydd]

...and very pretty pictures they are. The latests SDO videos are amazing.

I'm just a lurker. Should this thread be dying - and that seems the direction its headed - I'd like to thank everyone for some very informative posts. Thanks Gee M, RC, Ben, Sol I, et al. Your posts got me thinking about image processing and the mechanisms of solar opacity. For all its Sound and Fury this was a good read.

I've learned a lot too,unlike Michael,poor bugger.