That is absolutely correct. Claiming that stars must behave just like interstellar gas because the particles in both are ionized makes as much sense as saying that chunks of lead and styrofoam will have the same behavior in the ocean since both are solids.
Who said that "stars must behave just like interstellar gas"? You implied that yoursef. Firstly, the word you are looking for is plasma, which is evident from the numerous observations of strong electric currents connecting bodies through the Interstellar medium (
ref)(
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ref) the high temparatures observed there (hotter than the photosphere of the sun in some places, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Interstellar_Cloud), and electric currents can only flow long distances through plasma, not gas.
And also (RealityCheck), I dont think you comprehend the magnitude of size difference we are talking about when we are modelling the galaxy in comparison to the stars in it. The milky way has an estimated 200 billion stars in it, and if it were scaled down to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the Solar System would be a mere 2 mm across. What you fail to note is that the galactic force moving all the stars is large enough to move them all together, with the ISM, in a very similar way that current gravity models do. So you point that stars are more dense and so this can not work is moot. (unless current gravitational models dont work either?)
If we're back to the claim that the rotation curves of galaxies are affected by electromagnetic forces, here's something to think about. We've known since the 1970's that stars orbit around the galactic center too fast given how much visible matter there is. Let's see what contribution EM forces could make to that.
What a good idea!
(as long as you use the right EM forces)
We know what the maximum charge on a star is - around 100C.
Correction. We dont know what the charge on the sun is, apart from a very rough value postulated from one science paper, whose material is entirely theoretical and not based on any observations whatsoever.
However, the paper you used Sol does make some interesting reading.
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?opti...=129&url=/articles/aa/pdf/2001/24/aah2649.pdf
The purpose of this paper is remind of the existence of the global electrostatic field of the Sun and other stars, since it has been ignored by the authors of textbooks and review papers during the last several decades. Consequently, it has probably not been taken into account in the concerning works.
Weird that, maybe plasma cosmologists are correct when they say that standard atronomers largely ignore the effects of charge and E-fields in the cosmos due to the way they are taught about magnetism in space, seldom with reference to the electrcal currents that produce them, and what the circuitry of these currents are.
That paper then goes on to say:
More recent books and review papers on the solar corona or the Sun have generally omitted the effect of electric field (e.g. Parker 1963; Newkirk 1967; Gibson 1973; Athay 1976; Zirin 1988; Bird & Edenhofer 1990; Foukal 1990; Stix 1991; Low 1996). Since we have not found any paper mentioning a reason why the field should not exist, it seems that it was simply forgotten.
Whoops! Astronomers just forgot that space is filled with charge and E-fields, so naturally that makes it OK to completely leave the effects of these fields out of their models.
And some of their assumptions are outlined:
Inspecting the conditions assumed in the derivation procedure of the eld (3) in more detail, it is clear that the result is valid for an ideally quiet, perfectly spherical, non-rotating star. Obviously real stars do not have physical properties completely identical to ideal stars and this causes the instantaneous global charge of a given star to differ from the value Q of an ideal star. Nevertheless, the star permanently tends to set up this charging and we can assume it as a rough approximation (rough but much better than exact neutrality)
So the very theoretical nature of this paper would lead me to question the accuracy of their final value. If it was an observational paper showing evidence of this E-field, then that would be much better evidnce, but it really is just pure theory at this point.
And one of the most interesting observations in the paper is the order of magnitude jump from what the previous maximum value of the charge was thought to be to the one proposed in this paper.
It is possible that the claim about the electrical neutrality of stars originates in a misunderstanding of net charge on a star. For example in the textbook by Glendenning (1997; p. 71), there is subsection entitled \Electrical Neutrality of Stars", in which the upper limit on the net charge is derived. The net positive charge has to be smaller than 10−36 qA Coulombs, where q is elementary electric charge (charge of proton) and A is number of baryons in the star. Hence, the author concludes that \the net charge per nucleon (and therefore the average charge per nucleon on any star) must be very small, essentially zero". Of course, we must agree that the charge per nucleon is negligible, even the charge of a small macroscopic volume of plasma is usually negligible.
So the value jumped from a value of charge way below 0, right up to ~100 with just one theoretical paper, lets say this trend continues as more research is done in this area, say to 10
5? and then maybe to 10
8? the fact is: we just dont know. It has never been measured, so any of these values are possible.
A further interesting section of this paper states that current models (that still do not take this E-field into account) are prone to "serious physical problems" if they do not include the effects of this E-field. And they then go on to say that the E-field effects protons very differently to electrons (mainly due to mass difference).
We can demonstrate that the existence of the global
charge is necessary to avoid some serious physical problems.[..]
If the charge were not taken into account (if we assumed its zero value), then we would obtain a partial electron pressure about three orders lower in comparison with the partial proton (ion) pressure. This would be in disagreement with the common assumption of equal electron and ion pressures in a stellar plasma.
Now, where have i heard this idea before of protons and electrons being effected independantly of one another? creating a
backstreaming electron effect in the solar wind? This effect of electrons separating from the other ions in the solar wind and travelling backward against the normal direction of the solar wind have also been linked directly to energetic solar events:
Backstreaming Electrons Associated With Solar Electron Bursts - 12/2007
But ayway, I digress.
We know that the orbital speeds of stars in a typical galaxy are 100s of km/s - let's say 250 km/s, using numbers for the Milky Way at 10,000 parsecs. The visible mass of our galaxy inside that radius is about 50 billion solar masses. So the acceleration due to gravity is G M/r^2 ~ 10^-4 m/s^2. As a check, this should be roughly v^2/r (that's the virial theorem, or just the equation for an orbit), and it's close at this level of accuracy (the actual discrepancy is part of the evidence for DM).
OK, so the acceleration is about 10^-4. Now, given an object with a mass of 10^30 kg and a charge of 100C, how big of an electric field would one need to create that acceleration? Well, the answer is E = F/q = ma/q=10^24 V/m
. How about a magnetic field? Well, then we have B = ma/qv = 10^19 T.
You are using simple electrostatics equations? You really have not grasped anything here have you. If you had read Peratts material then you would know that electrostatics has very little to do with it, it is using a the Biot savart law for charge carrying plasma filaments and their reaction with each other. It is also related to the inverse solution to Amperes force law, a particular area of interest recently for many plasma astrophysicists/cosmologists due to recent improvements in measuring of such fields, especially the work of
Andre Koch Assis on Ampere's force between current elements and electric fields created outside steady currents and their scaleability relationships (some can be seen
here)
Because of the EMF-induced current, Iz, a galactic filament can be expected to retain its columnar filamental form provided the Bennett-pinch condition is satisfied,
i.e, that,
[latex]I^{2}_{z}>\frac{8\pi{NkT}}{\mu_{0}}[/latex]
where N is the electron density per unit length.
In addition to confining plasma in filaments radially, the axial current flow produces another important effect; a long-range interactive force on other galactic filaments. The Biot-Savart electromagnetic force between filaments is:
[latex]F_{21}=\int{j_{2}}+B_{21}d^3r[/latex]
for all space, where j x B is the Lorentz force. If the current path greatly exceeds the filament widths, the attractive force between two similarly oriented filaments is approximately given by:
[latex]F_{21}(I_{z1},I_{z2})=-r\frac{\mu_{0}I_{z1}I_{z2}}{2\pi{R_{12}}}[/latex]
where the subscripts 1 and 2 denote columns 1 and 2, respectively, and R12 is their separation. Because of the axial magnetic field B„ the particles spiral as they drift or accelerate and thereby produce an azimuthal component in the generalized current [latex]I=zI_{z}+\theta{I_{\theta}}[/latex]. The magnetic moment associated with the azimuthal current is [latex]m=zB_{z}z\pi{r^2}I_{\theta}[/latex]. If the magnetic moments in adjacent filaments are aligned, a short-range repulsive force is generated between them:
[latex]F_{21}(I_{z\theta},I_{z\theta})=r\frac{m_{1}m_{2}}{R^{4}_{12}}[/latex]
Hence, the electromagnetic forces between filaments are ordered as [latex]R^{-1}_{12}[/latex] (long-range attractive) and [latex]R^{-4}_{12}[/latex] (shortrangerepulsive).
Some of the other relationships and values can be seen here:
"Evolution of the plasma universe. I - Double radio galaxies, quasars, and extragalactic jets" - IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (ISSN 0093-3813), vol. PS-14 (now the tenth time i have posted this paper without anyone directly commenting on it) or in his second paper:
Evolution of the plasma universe. II - The formation of systems of galaxies - IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (ISSN 0093-3813), vol. PS-14
This model is not definitive, there are other factors at work, including the force resulting from the galactic centres
unipolar inductor configuration, but these objects were not well known when Peratt wrote this paper. But the basic principles are all there, and it certainly does not need to invoke galaxies full of dark matter and energy to work sucessfully, and so could be called the better theory of the two.
Let me give you a sense of how utterly ridiculous these numbers are.
Well thats entriely expected, as the calculation you did was a ridiculous calculation, based on an entirely faulty premise that the only force at work is simple electrostatics.
Draw your own conclusions.
