Something new under the sun

[DeiRenDopa]

(some parts omitted)

So far (off the top of my head) we've had electric sun, galactic rotation curves, magnetic reconnection, and Pioneer anomaly. What you guys said about every single one of those was exposed as totally absurd.

As I recall, there is also CIV, Verschuur's ApJ paper on the CMB, SgrA* as a plasmoid (not a super-massive black hole), and filaments in space due to plasma physics.

Zeuzzz gave a long list of "plasma cosmology papers published in mainstream astronmy journals". His list covers a very wide range of topics, and I wonder how many of these are, truly, plasma cosmology papers.

 

[iantresman]

You tell me. Watch this movie http://www.glue.umd.edu/~drake/movies/reconn_hall.avi . What words would you use to describe that? Would you say the lines are opening and/or breaking?

Sure looks like it to me, but nevertheless this is a solution to Maxwell's equations which does not violate Gauss' law for magnetism. The trap you guys fell into is using words rather than equations. Words are ambiguous.

.
I have no problem with the illustration being consistent with Maxwell's equation. But as for what is happening at the moment the field lines appear to re-orientate, I have no idea. I also have no problem with this process being called "reconnection".

However, are open field lines consistent with Gauss's Law?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080324-mm-hot-corona.html "New Kink in Sun's Strange Corona By Clara Moskowitz, 24 March 2008, Here's a strange scenario: You move farther away from a fire, getting cooler and cooler, until suddenly you are burning up. That's essentially what happens in the sun: Its outer layer, the corona, is inexplicably hot. A new study may complicate things further by poking holes in a leading theory that aims to account for the puzzling phenomenon. Last year, astrophysicist Steve Tomczyk of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and his colleagues asserted that corkscrew-shaped Alfven waves were converting the motion energy of the sun's roiling material into heat. But the authors of the new study argue that the waves Tomczyk's team saw were not Alfven waves but kink waves. "Kink waves look like kinks in hair or rope," said University of Warwick astrophysicist Tom Van Doorsselaere, one of the researchers behind the new study. "Kink waves can't explain why the corona is so hot. They carry less energy with them."

It's good to see that you are still active here, BeAChooser.

Would you mind if I ask you to answer the questions I asked you, in the last few days in this thread?

 

[iantresman]

Zeuzzz gave a long list of "plasma cosmology papers published in mainstream astronmy journals". His list covers a very wide range of topics, and I wonder how many of these are, truly, plasma cosmology papers.

.
It depends on what is meant by:

• Plasma Cosmology
• Plasma Universe
• Alfvén-Klein Cosmology

 

[sol invictus]

As I recall, there is also CIV, Verschuur's ApJ paper on the CMB, SgrA* as a plasmoid (not a super-massive black hole), and filaments in space due to plasma physics.

Well, I tried to get Zuezzz (or either of the others) to give me one such example, on condition that if I debunked it (s)he would stop posting on this topic. I never got one. Furthermore, given that neither Zeuzzz (nor probably BAC) will admit that magnetic reconnection happens, even when faced with utterly overwhelming evidence, I'm not sure there's much point.

Of that list above, the CMB is trivial to debunk, filaments too, I'm not sure what CIV is, and SgrA should be easy too. But I'm not going to waste my time with people that will not acknowledge facts, even when the evidence is as clear as in the mag. reconnection case.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Magnetic reconnection has a clear and unambiguous meaning, and is explained in countless papers and websites.

Go on then, i've asked before, explain the whole magnetic reconnection process, from the topologies of the lines describing the field all the way up to the release of the energy.

There seems to have been a severe misunderstanding by what people mean by "magnetic reconnection", and the merging (cancelling) of field lines in standard magnetic field configurations.

Maybe then we can sort this out once I understand what you think is releasing this energy.

You and your fellows either didn't understand what it meant and attacked something you didn't comprehend, or did understand and falsely attacked it. There is no other option.

This is the issue, there is another option, the Plasma Cosmology option. If you had read the paper I kept quoting, maybe you would understand my position. Or (i'm not holding my breath) you could come up with a reason why it is wrong. This is not an 'obviously wrong' position to take, no matter what you are claimg Sol. For example, the paper in the journal of plasma physics that disputes magnetic reconnection, and favors Alfvens double layer approach, was peer reviewed by top experts in plasmas, electronics and magnetics. I find it very hard to accept that all of the peers involved at an establishment as well respected as the IEEE would publish a paper which was based on faulty science. For example one of the editors of that very journal was Timothy E. Eastman, Head of Raytheon's space physics and astrophysics groups and world expert on magnetospheric boundary layers (one of the very places where "reconnection" is thought to occur).

He was with EG&G, Inc., Los Alamos, NM (1972–1979); the University of Iowa, Iowa (1979–1985); NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1985–1988); NASA Headquarters (HQ) as Branch Chief for Magnetospheric Physics (1985–1988); the University of Maryland, College Park (1988–1997); and National Science Foundation (NSF) as Program Director for Magnetospheric Physics (1991–1994). He has been with Plasmas International since 1997 and is currently a Perot Associate with the QSS Group Inc./Perot Systems Corp. NASA GSFC Space Physics Data Facility. He has published 100 research papers, primarily in space plasma physics but also in data systems and philosophy.

See what i mean?

These are not marginal people, and they really do have this opinion about magnetic reconnection, or the paper would not have published in the journal. http://members.cox.net/dascott3/IEEE-TransPlasmaSci-Scott-Aug2007.pdf

Every single concrete idea we've managed to extract from you guys has turned out to be obviously false, and the rest is either too vague to address or coincides with standard cosmology.

Like what? I'd be happy to elaborate on anything you thought was vague.

In sum, no one here has a clue what "plasma cosmology" is.

You straight up admit that you dont even understand what plasma cosmology is, yet you still try to argue against it.

I should point out that much of what is being discussed in this thread is not really plasma cosmology material, so if you are taking this to be the basis of what PC is, no wonder you dont get it.


Try the publications here for a start; http://plasmascience.net/tpu/papers-cosmology.html

And this gives a brief overview; http://www.infoplease.com/cig/theories-universe/plasma-cosmology.html

The advocates of plasma cosmology believe that the evolution of the universe in the past must be explained in terms of the processes occurring in the universe today. In other words, events that occur in the depths of space can be explained in terms of phenomena studied in the laboratories on earth. This approach rules out the concepts of a universe that began out of nothing, somewhere in time, like the big bang. We can't recreate the initial conditions of the big bang in laboratories. The closest we can get is in the particles created in accelerators. Plasma cosmology supports the idea that because we see an evolving universe that is constantly changing, this universe has always existed and has always evolved, and will continue to exist and evolve for eternity.

Another aspect of this new theory is that, while the big bang sees the universe in terms of gravity alone, the plasma universe is formed and controlled by electricity and magnetism, not just gravitation. With the introduction of electromagnetism the “clumpiness” of the universe and the fluctuations in microwave background radiation can be easily accounted for. Even the expansion of the universe can be explained by the electromagnetic interaction of matter and antimatter.
Cosmonotes

Since all that is being provided for you is a simple summary and basic explanation of plasma cosmology I would recommend that you check out the list of recommended reading in this area in the Appendix B, “Suggested Reading List.” There is a lot more to this theory than I can elaborate on in the space of a few pages, so if you're interested in finding out more about these new ideas, I suggest you look into some of the books I've recommended. There is still very little support for this theory because the big bang is the one that many believe is the correct interpretation of the origin of the universe, and to question the validity of this theory is not on the minds of many of today's cosmologists.

And while electromagnetism forms the basis for plasma cosmology, it is also the basis for our technological society that surrounds us today. Plasma technology has stimulated research for better computer screens, how radio and radar transmission can be increased, and may be the answer to developing the long-sought-after genie in the bottle: fusion energy. So in the long run it holds the possibility of not only providing a better description of the origin and structure of the universe, but it can also lead to a whole new area of advanced technology.[....]

 

[sol invictus]

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But as for what is happening at the moment the field lines appear to re-orientate, I have no idea. I also have no problem with this process being called "reconnection".

OK, great - then you agree that reconnection happens in plasmas. One down.

As for what's happening at that moment, it's a slightly more complex version of the field configuration we've been discussing for the last few pages.

However, are open field lines consistent with Gauss's Law?

You really must be careful with words. The divergence of a magnetic field must be zero at every point. That statement is unambiguously correct, and it has implications for tthe behavior of magnetic field lines. However it is difficult to state precisely using words what they are.

People often say it implies that magnetic field lines must close or must not break, and that's kind of true, but it's just not precise enough to be absolutely correct. It all depends on whether you consider what is happening in that movie to be an example of a case where the lines break (and that's really up to you, because "break" is not a very precisely defined term). If you do, then that statement (that field lines must not break) is false. If you do not, it might be OK.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Well, I tried to get Zuezzz (or either of the others) to give me one such example, on condition that if I debunked it (s)he would stop posting on this topic. I never got one.

Not entirely true, I chose plasma scaleablility as the topic, posted a huge post about some of the experiments that have replicated cosmic sized plasma structures, showed Birkelands original experiments which managed to accurately simulate many completely separate aspects of the sun, and you soon after put me on ignore, without ever addressing the material I posted. We could talk about that maybe?

Go on then, choose any paper out of the list I showed before, and we can discuss it when i've got more time. Or even the paper published on magnetic reconnection, that would make an interesting discussion.

And please stop saying that when I dont answer a question for a day or so that I have 'run off', I have a life past JREF forum, It would take me days to respond to every single comment.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

It's good to see that you are still active here, Zeuzzz.

Would you mind if I ask you to answer the questions I asked you, in the day or so in this thread?

 

[Reality Check]

DD is probably referring to the 3 machines in the previous links, i.e. the Versatile Toroidal Facility, the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment and the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment .

N.B. each site has a list of publications that you may want to look at. They should have "the data of this splicing reaction between two lines that seems to have illuded everyone else".

P.S. This is a random paper from the sites: Study of driven magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma

Hi Zeuzzz, Have you had a chance to look further at the paper above (or any of the other publications by the 3 groups)?

 

[sol invictus]

Go on then, i've asked before, explain the whole magnetic reconnection process, from the topologies of the lines describing the field all the way up to the release of the energy.

I already have, at least three times. It's when two points which were not connected by a field line suddenly become connected by one (or the other way around).

There seems to have been a severe misunderstanding by what people mean by "magnetic reconnection" and the merging of field lines.

On your part, perhaps.

This is the issue, there is another option, the Plasma Cosmology option. If you had read the paper I kept quoting, maybe you would understand my position. Or (i'm not holding my breath) you could come up with a reason why it is wrong.

This is at least the second time you have completely ignored the basic and fundamental mistakes in that paper which have been posted here several times by several different posters. There is obviously no point in responding to you yet again.

This is not an 'obviously wrong' position to take, no matter what you are claimg Sol.

After the discussion here, it is more obviously wrong than just about anything else I could think of.

<False argument from authority ignored>

You straight up admit that you dont even understand what plasma cosmology is, yet you still try to argue against it.

What irony...

 

[Tubbythin]

This is the issue, there is another option, the Plasma Cosmology option. If you had read the paper I kept quoting

Well there's a strawman in the abstract for starters.

You straight up admit that you dont even understand what plasma cosmology is, yet you still try to argue against it.

Well this has being going for 28 pages and I'm certainly confused. It seems to be a mix of plasma physics (fine, but nothing new) and nonsense (e.g. fusion in the Sun may occur at the surface not in the core).

 

[sol invictus]

Go on then, choose any paper out of the list I showed before, and we can discuss it. Or even the paper published on magnetic reconnection.

No, Zeuzzz, that wasn't the deal. And no, I'm not going to repeat myself yet again.

Anyway, it's moot - as I keep saying, if you will not admit you are wrong about mag. recon., there is absolutely no point in further discussion. There will never be a clearer or more transparent case.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Way back when the underlying cause(s) of electricity and magnetism were not known. Fast forward a century or two and today we know about electrons, ions, electron spins, orbitals, etc, etc, etc.

Not only that, but we know way more about the nucleus of atoms now than only 50 years ago.

If you look at plasma processes in terms of what the electrons and ions (and neutral atoms/molecules too) are doing, how does a magnetic field arise (excluding externally imposed fields)? Given that moving charges create such fields, does the existence of such magnetic fields - in the solar wind say, or the Sun - automatically mean that there are currents (in terms of contemporary physics)?

Even more fundamentally, in addition to moving charges creating magnetic fields, a time-varying electric field can also induce a magnetic field. This is outlined in the following of Maxwell's equations...



The first term on the right side is what is usually taught as "Ampere's Law" in terms of a static situation. J represents the current (as you are describing it) and dE/dt represents the varying electric field. So it is possible to get a situation where you have in induced magnetic field with no current whatsoever. In fact, this is partly the manner in which electromagnetic waves propagate through a vacuum.

Is there a quantum mechanics version of Maxwell's equations?

Yes, as others have noted it is called Quantum Electrodynamics.

I'm quite interested in all folk who've been actively participating in this thread recently to reply to the these questions; I'm particularly interested to hear from iantresman, Zeuzzz, and BeAChooser on the extent to which you think Alfvén, Birkeland, Peratt, Scott, Thornhill, et al. modified/extended plasma physics (a branch of classical physics) to incorporate the reality of the actual charge carriers (electrons and ions).

Good luck with that.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

.
It depends on what is meant by:

• Plasma Cosmology
• Plasma Universe
• Alfvén-Klein Cosmology

I think it would help the discussion in this thread, in a constructive sense, if you could take the trouble to look over the long list Zeuzzz posted, and give your best guess (or even any old guess) as to which fall into what bucket (and remembering that some may not fall into just one bucket, and some may be all but impossible to classify).

For example, as I said earlier, in my reply to Dancing David, I personally am puzzled as to why papers by Arp could be considered as belonging to any of these, not least because Peratt has not found any intrinsic redshift in his Los Alamos plasma lab (nor, as far as I know, did Alfvén provide a plasma physics mechanism for anything like this, and so on).

Another example, which goes to a point ben m made: that there's a bazillion amp current connecting Io to Jupiter is 'out of the textbook' standard space physics, as far as I know, so what are materials on this doing in Zeuzzz' list?

To give you credit: I think one cause of the great length of many discussions on this topic is indeed due to lack of clarity, or precision, on what "plasma cosmology" actually is.

 

[sol invictus]

For example, the paper in the journal of plasma physics that disputes magnetic reconnection, and favors Alfvens double layer approach, was peer reviewed by top experts in plasmas, electronics and magnetics. I find it very hard to accept that all of the peers involved at an establishment as well respected as the IEEE would publish a paper which was based on faulty science.

Let me just comment on this. I review maybe ten physics papers each year, for most of the more prestigious journals in my field. Of the papers I receive, I reject or send back for revisions a pretty high fraction (because many of them are wrong or have serious mistakes in them).

Guess what? Whenever I've bothered to check, the papers I reject have been published a little while later in another journal. The entire process is stacked in favor of persistent authors - if you keep submitting a crap paper, eventually you'll get lucky with a referee who doesn't want to deal with it and just accepts it.

 

[Dancing David]

.

Zeuss does. BeAChooser does. I do. And it's described in a number of peer-reviewed papers:

Now Ian here is where I may have a disagreement with you, a scientific theory should have some 'theory' to it, it should explain some aspect of the behavior of reality. The two people who you reference are not as reasonable as you and they lack the one thing that would mean an actual 'theory' that they had to work with:

A prediction of the behavior of reality that can not be accounted ror by the mainstream model.

But every time that such a theory has been requested, it is not forthcoming.

What i have seen from Zeuzzz is more reasobable that what i have seen from BAC, but seriously to attack the mainstream model is not a theory, you have to have your own theories and data. That has not been presented to date. There has been a huge amount of speculation but no reduction to the data and examination of confounding factors.

I have seen argument by spam, which is deplorable, I have seen pissing contests over authority and I have yet to see something that is a datum that is exlained by PC that is not already part of the standard model.

So if you have got it please share it with us, i was very intrigued by BACs statements when i first encountered them, but they leave a lack of data and theory.

I am sorry but Perrat's small plasma are not scalable to galaxies , and they show a real lack of understanding when some people do say that they explain galactic shapes.

Gravity is real, so is plasma, but when the numbers start to get crunched then sometimes a lot of the claims that PC people make just are not true.

I have asked repeatedly for a field or force that will cause the stars to move in a flat rotation curve in a galaxy, I have asked for the object, the mass of the object, the charge of the object and the acceleration that is not accounted for by gravity minus dark matter. I got nothing in return.

I have asked BAC repeatedly what force will keep a Lerner plasmoid from undergoing gravitational collapse, especially one that is 40,000 solar masses in an area of 43 AU in diameter. I have got nothing, except a weak theory and a denial of that theory. It is not sufficient to just cherry pick data and poke holes in the standard model,

To be science you then need to put your theory on the line and explain why it works better as a predictor.

Sorry, that was a lot of words Ian, lack of sleep and decongestants will do that.

I really appreciate the way that you have stepped up and explained yourself, something two others don't seem to want to do.

 

[Dancing David]

Not entirely true, I chose plasma scaleablility as the topic, posted a huge post about some of the experiments that have replicated cosmic sized plasma structures

Hi Zuezz, when asked for the scale it was not forth coming, when asked for the force and scale it was not forthcomming. So what phenomena that you pointed to is scalable, what scale do you use and how does it translate into the observed behavior of cosmic objects.

So you choose the events that you say is a model for a cosmic scale event, tell us the forces in the smaller model, then give us the conversion to the cosmic event.

Such as Perrat and the plasma galaxy thing, what size if Perrat's plasma, what strength is the field, how do you scale that up to a galaxy?

Or whatever phenomena you feel is scalable, and before you do, it might help to choose something that is not already incorporated into standard cosmology.

You chose the model you have shown us, you provide the translation scale and then the cosmic phenomena that it is scalable to.

Please, I have asked before.
,

 

[Belz...]

They are in my post #1074:

No clue. I read about science. I don't actually do any.

 

[Belz...]

The debate here is in many ways reminiscent of a creationism versus evolution debate (see for example the gargantuan "annoying creationists" thread on this forum), or the 9/11 wacko debates.

Several of us here are experts and/or professional physicists. I am, and (based on their posts) I'm almost positive ben_m and Zig are as well. I find it extremely aggravating when someone that manifestly doesn't understand what they are talking about starts spreading misinformation about a subject I know and love. If it's a question of a well-intentioned but misinformed statement or two, that's fine, but this is on another level entirely. These posters make false statements confidently, use all sorts of polemical techniques (avoidance, shifting goal posts, vagueness on details) to avoid being pinned down, and in general sow as much doubt and confusion as they possibly can. They are attacking (in a broad sense) and misrepresenting the work I and my colleagues do for a living, and it's annoying, and it might confuse non-experts.

It reminds me very much of the creationist debate, because in both cases you have people who have an irrational faith in something who defend it by trying to attack mainstream science (evolution, in that case). These people never (in my experience) actually understand evolution very well, so rather than engaging it on something which might actually be a weak point (and therefore interesting to discuss) they go after aspects which seem strange or improbable to them. They harp endlessly on specific words and phrases, generally ones which are used differently in scientific discourse than they are colloquially. They point out individual scientists who go against the mainstream, as if the opinion of one person had equal weight compared to the opinions of thousands of others on the other side, and try to make it seem as though there is an actual debate among experts where there is not. And they usually don't have the intelligence, background, or will to understand the arguments on the other side, so they tend to simply ignore them. All of these aspects are on display in this thread.

I see both of these as part of the same general trend of anti-scientific nonsense, the kind of "we can't be sure of anything and therefore we know nothing and there's no point in trying to find anything out" idiocy that you see in popular culture, and that Randi and his foundation are supposed to be combating.