Something new under the sun

DeiRenDopa said:
sol invictus and and ben m: do you think Alfvén, in the bit iantresman quoted, is right about the equivalence of treatment (B vs i), and the possible loss of some important aspects by using B instead of i?
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This is where I keep tearing my hair out: space plasma physicists aren't ignoring anything. My colleagues who work on the WIND spacecraft have lots of data on the "lunar wake": there's an electric field behind the Moon due to the fact that moon casts a "shadow" in the Solar Wind, and this shadow is filled in more rapidly by electrons than by protons. They deal with non-equilibrium plasmas where the protons and electrons have different temperatures. They talk to tokamak experts for whom the currents are the most important parameters. The "plasma waves" they talk about are not disembodied magnetic fields: they're a coupled system of currents, fields, and densities/pressures. If these wave modes are the appropriate degrees of freedom, then it's fine to only talk about one marker of the waves---it's like talking about a pendulum's motion by describing its "amplitude". ("Amplitude? You forgot about momentum-space", says the pedant. No I didn't---if we're talking about a pendulum with an oscillation period, the momentum is in there.) Are these waves "appropriate" degrees of freedom? Generally, half of the history of physics has been describing complex systems as the sum of a bunch of wave modes---we're quite good at identifying the benefits and pitfalls of this approach, and plasma people talk a lot about which degrees of freedom to use where.

Nonetheless, the PC persecution-fantasy requires them to think that we're leaving something out. So they make stuff up. You're leaving out electric fields! (Not where they exist, we're not.) You're leaving out the particle properties! (Nope.) You're leaving out the currents! (Where do you think we got the fields from?) You're leaving out the charge on the Sun! (Because it isn't there.) You only think it isnt there because you ignore electric fields! (Lather, rinse, repeat.)

The PC argument you mention---"You should use my technique, your technique is ignoring several effects"---hasn't actually been advanced at all on this board, since BAC and Zeuzzz are busy convincing us that magnetic field lines don't really exist. The hypothetical argument would be more impressive if the arguers could actually show examples where (a) their effect is actually ignored, causing (b) the results to disagree with observations. I haven't seen anything to convince me.
 
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DeiRenDopa said:
sol invictus and and ben m: do you think Alfvén, in the bit iantresman quoted, is right about the equivalence of treatment (B vs i), and the possible loss of some important aspects by using B instead of i?
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He's correct that if you know B fully, then you know i fully as well, and vice versa (though if you only know one in a small patch, you don't necessarily have a clue about the other). It's also true that there's additional information not being captured (namely, the distinction between motion of positive and negative charge carriers), but it's not being captured by either B or i. The distinction between the two different charge carriers is conceptually easier to relate to i for most people, but that's not terribly significant.
 
Belz... said:
What do you want an answer to from me ?
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They are in my post #1074:
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.

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)?

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

I'm quite interested in all folk who've been actively participating in this thread recently to reply to the these questions [...]
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Thanks Dancing David and Ziggurat (and ben m and Ziggurat for the follow on answers).

Reality Check, Zeuzzz - are you still with us? I'd really like to hear from you Zeuzzz (and BeAChooser too, if he/she is still with us) ...
 
Ziggurat said:
He's correct that if you know B fully, then you know i fully as well, and vice versa (though if you only know one in a small patch, you don't necessarily have a clue about the other). It's also true that there's additional information not being captured (namely, the distinction between motion of positive and negative charge carriers), but it's not being captured by either B or i. The distinction between the two different charge carriers is conceptually easier to relate to i for most people, but that's not terribly significant.
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Thanks; and thanks too to ben m.

It would seem that the example ben m gave (the "lunar wake": there's an electric field behind the Moon due to the fact that moon casts a "shadow" in the Solar Wind, and this shadow is filled in more rapidly by electrons than by protons) is one of those circumstances where the distinction between the different charge carriers is significant, in that models with electrons and protons can explain the data from WIND, and (I guess) much better than models in which the charge carriers are the same mass.

Here's something else that's important, I guess, for astronomers: the mechanisms by which light (and x-rays and radio waves, etc) is given off by either electrons or ions, in a plasma somewhere out there in the universe. From what's been said so far (though I'd really, really like to hear from Zeuzzz), classical plasma physics is silent about how plasmas shine brightly (or are dark because they block light). Am I right?

ETA: BeAChooser, iantresman, and Zeuzzz: to what extent do Alfvén, Birkeland, Bruce, Carlqvist, Fälthammar, Juergens, Langmuir, Peratt, Scott, Talbott, Thornhill and all the others you have mentioned include how light gets given off by plasmas, in their works? Specifically, for BeAChooser and Zeuzzz: in the Peratt papers on galaxy rotations being due to cosmic Birkeland currents, what did he say about how these currents would light up the plasmas?
 
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Zeuzzz said:
I'll have a look at the rest tomorrow.
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Well, Zuezzz?

By writing down an explicit solution we've demonstrated conclusively (contrary to your assertions) that reconnection can happen in a way consistent with Maxwell's equations, and that that process changes the energy density near the reconnection point. (And when this happens in a plasma, I gave a simple argument showing that the energy released will be large due to the high conductivity.)

We've linked to several sophisticated and modern numerical simulations in which Maxwell's equations in plasma were solved, and when the solution is plotted you see that reconnection occurs and lots of energy is released.

We've linked to many papers in which experimenters have measured the magnetic fields in real plasmas, and then plotted the results of their measurements, and again one sees that reconnection occurs in the same way and lots of energy is released.

So - are you going to admit you and BAC were totally wrong, yet again? Or are you going to run away and hide?
 
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Zeuzzz said:
Thankyou, i will have a look at this when i have the time. I'll be honest, I wasn't even aware of this relatively new area of Gerrits work until earlier today, but it seems interesting and I'll have a look at it over the next few days.




Seems like the issue is far from resolved. We'll just have to wait and see :)
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Zeuzzz, I know you've been very busy posting here these last few days, but I am interested in your take on this, especially as it seems such a clear case of Verschuur goofing up, and in a pretty extreme way ...
 
Zeuzzz said:
Hi DeiRenDopa. I did wonder where you had gone, and so while your here, may i ask what are the puroposes of this study? why are you conducting it? just curious.
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Sorry, I read this, but forgot to answer ...

The purposes are purely personal - I'm curious to understand where the apparent disconnect is, between you, BeAChooser, and (to some extent) iantresman (robinson very kindly and very candidly laid out his perspective) and just about everyone else who's participated in the recent JREF forum threads on things Plasma Cosmology/Plasma Universe/Electric Sun/Electric Universe - is there some context in which it all makes sense?

Thanks partly to you, I've found that the discussion here closely resembles similar discussions in many forums - people who write like you or BeAChooser (iantresman has his own style, and keeps his own handle, everywhere, it seems) can be found all over; almost always there are people like sol invictus who question, dispute, challenge, rebut, ... and before too long scream, yell, shout, and generally get very annoyed (with, it must be said, much screaming, yelling and shouting by PC/PU/EU/ES people too) ... and often this goes on for page after page after page.

Why?

And is there a way to identify the central issues that lead to the endless pages?

And if there is, is there a way to focus on those, and so reach at least a principled "agree to disagree" interim conclusion?
 
DeiRenDopa said:
ETA: BeAChooser, iantresman, and Zeuzzz: to what extent do Alfvén, Birkeland, Bruce, Carlqvist, Fälthammar, Juergens, Langmuir, Peratt, Scott, Talbott, Thornhill and all the others you have mentioned include how light gets given off by plasmas, in their works? Specifically, for BeAChooser and Zeuzzz: in the Peratt papers on galaxy rotations being due to cosmic Birkeland currents, what did he say about how these currents would light up the plasmas?
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Anthony Peratt covers this in his book, Physics of the Plasma Universe, where he notes that "Plasmas are prodigious producers of electromagnetic radiation", and describes how plasmas produce gamma rays and x-rays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, submillimeter and microwave, and radio waves. He then devotes entire chapters to synchrotron radiation because it is very characteristic of pasmas, and the transport of cosmic radiation.

Peratt also covers "Radiation Characteristics of the Plasma State", and, "Synchrotron Radiation" in his paper "Advances in Numerical Modeling of Astrophysical and Space Plasmas", Astrophysics and Space Science, 242, 1997, (Abstract and Full text, PDF), which makes for a good general overview.
 
iantresman said:
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Anthony Peratt covers this in his book, Physics of the Plasma Universe, where he notes that "Plasmas are prodigious producers of electromagnetic radiation", and describes how plasmas produce gamma rays and x-rays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, submillimeter and microwave, and radio waves. He then devotes entire chapters to synchrotron radiation because it is very characteristic of pasmas, and the transport of cosmic radiation.

Peratt also covers "Radiation Characteristics of the Plasma State", and, "Synchrotron Radiation" in his paper "Advances in Numerical Modeling of Astrophysical and Space Plasmas", Astrophysics and Space Science, 242, 1997, (Abstract and Full text, PDF), which makes for a good general overview.
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Thanks iantresman.

What about the others (Alfvén, Birkeland, Bruce, Carlqvist, Fälthammar, Juergens, Langmuir, Scott, Talbott, Thornhill, for example)?

What other mechanisms does Peratt cover, in plasmas, leading to them giving off light (other than synchrotron)?

And what about mechanisms that make plasmas dark (absorption)?

And to the topic of several hundred posts, what does Peratt have to say about magnetic reconnection in plasmas as a way they can give off light or other electromagnetic radiation?
 
DeiRenDopa said:
Thanks partly to you, I've found that the discussion here closely resembles similar discussions in many forums - people who write like you or BeAChooser (iantresman has his own style, and keeps his own handle, everywhere, it seems) can be found all over; almost always there are people like sol invictus who question, dispute, challenge, rebut, ... and before too long scream, yell, shout, and generally get very annoyed (with, it must be said, much screaming, yelling and shouting by PC/PU/EU/ES people too) ... and often this goes on for page after page after page.

Why?

And is there a way to identify the central issues that lead to the endless pages?
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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.
 
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DeiRenDopa said:
Thanks partly to you, I've found that the discussion here closely resembles similar discussions in many forums - people who write like you or BeAChooser (iantresman has his own style, and keeps his own handle, everywhere, it seems) can be found all over; almost always there are people like sol invictus who question, dispute, challenge, rebut, ... and before too long scream, yell, shout, and generally get very annoyed (with, it must be said, much screaming, yelling and shouting by PC/PU/EU/ES people too) ... and often this goes on for page after page after page.
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Now that's a good question. Here's my two cents worth. I believe (ithis is personal opinion), that the differences are due to:

  • Misunderstandings due to many factors:
    eg. different use of terminology, eg. "ionized gas" ~ "plasma", "reconnection" really meaning "re-orientation" rather than breaking and reconnecting field lines", over-generalization which I am guilty of, but which one tends to do under some circumstances
    .
  • Different levels of knowledge/understanding:
    I suspect that many here know Standard Cosmology far better than myself (and others). But I think this works both ways. I think ben m mentioned his frustration at that some plasma proponents claiming that some astrophysicists don't know their stuff. I think there is no doubt that he knows people who do... but then I know people who don't, so it doesn't help when we overgeneralize that all/none understand certain things.
    .
  • Bias:
    Despite the agnosticism of science, and the impartiality of the scientific method, us human beings are very good a taking a limited set of facts, and pre-judging new ideas (literally, prejudice). Of course we both assess ideas within the framework we are most familiar, and often forget which ideas we know are factually, theoretic, or just for which there is an abundance of evidence. This brings us to paradigm shifts; By definition, Plasma Cosmology is untenable in Standard Cosmology: they contradict each other and are mutually exclusive.
    .
  • Reaction to new ideas:
    Some people are better at looking at new idea than others. Some consider new ideas to be an "attack" on current ideas, and must be defended against. Others are more open, as they tend to question, rather than react. While I understand that I am not an expert, and can be quite naive in my discussions, there are many non-experts here who deserve the change to enquire. But a pseudoskeptical response is not constructive.
    .
  • Language:
    I think that some contributors' use of language on the forum is non-constructive, and evident from numerous personal remarks. There is no doubt that I have made comments that have been perceived to be misleading. This does not mean that I am trying to be misleading. Differentiating the comments from the contributor shouldn't be difficult, especially for scientists.
 
DeiRenDopa said:
Sorry, I read this, but forgot to answer ...

The purposes are purely personal - I'm curious to understand where the apparent disconnect is, between you, BeAChooser, and (to some extent) iantresman (robinson very kindly and very candidly laid out his perspective) and just about everyone else who's participated in the recent JREF forum threads on things Plasma Cosmology/Plasma Universe/Electric Sun/Electric Universe - is there some context in which it all makes sense?

Thanks partly to you, I've found that the discussion here closely resembles similar discussions in many forums - people who write like you or BeAChooser (iantresman has his own style, and keeps his own handle, everywhere, it seems) can be found all over; almost always there are people like sol invictus who question, dispute, challenge, rebut, ... and before too long scream, yell, shout, and generally get very annoyed (with, it must be said, much screaming, yelling and shouting by PC/PU/EU/ES people too) ... and often this goes on for page after page after page.

Why?

And is there a way to identify the central issues that lead to the endless pages?

And if there is, is there a way to focus on those, and so reach at least a principled "agree to disagree" interim conclusion?
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So far from what i have read here
http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/26365-more-arp-et-al-24.html

it seems that some discussions can be very reasonable and well thought out, I have only read about five pages however.

I think that there are many different issues that lead to a lack of discussion on both sides. If you wish to discuss that, it would make a good thread, this is a very common issue on this forum, in many areas.
 
DeiRenDopa said:
What other mechanisms does Peratt cover, in plasmas, leading to them giving off light (other than synchrotron)?

And what about mechanisms that make plasmas dark (absorption)?
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Also good questions. But as sol invictus has pointed out, while some people here are "professional physicists", people like myself are not.

But I have a couple of degrees, and can read a paper, and will respectfully refer you to Peratt's peer-reviewed paper, who can explain plasmas far more accurately than I can. See: "Advances in Numerical Modeling of Astrophysical and Space Plasmas", Astrophysics and Space Science, 242, 1997, (Abstract and Full text, PDF).

Peratt, Alfvén, Langmuir, and other pioneers of the Plasma Universe, were professional physicists, and have a far better understanding of the Plasma Universe than I ever will.
 
iantresman said:
Misunderstandings due to many factors:
"reconnection" really meaning "re-orientation" rather than breaking and reconnecting field lines"
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Magnetic reconnection has a clear and unambiguous meaning, and is explained in countless papers and websites. You can't hide behind a difference in definition, because there isn't one. And by the way, it does involve breaking and reconnecting field lines (in a certain specific sense).

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.

Different levels of knowledge/understanding:
I suspect that many here know Standard Cosmology far better than myself (and others). But I think this works both ways.
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You run a website on plasma cosmology, which had a whole section on galaxy formation and attacked the mainstream vuew, and yet you didn't know the meaning of "flat rotation curve". That's a basic, fundamental concept. As for working both ways, every astrophysicist knows at least the basics of plasma physics, and many are experts in it.


Bias:
By definition, Plasma Cosmology is untenable in Standard Cosmology: they contradict each other and are mutually exclusive.
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That's is very unclear. 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.

In sum, no one here has a clue what "plasma cosmology" is. It's not even wrong.

Reaction to new ideas:
Some people are better at looking at new idea than others. Some consider new ideas to be an "attack" on current ideas, and must be defended against. Others are more open, as they tend to question, rather than react.
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Every single day in the career of a physicist, some new idea comes along (sometimes your own, sometimes someone else's) and gets shot down, because it's wrong and doesn't work. Very, very rarely a new idea comes along and it's right. That's simply science at work.

Language:
I think that some contributors' use of language on the forum is non-constructive, and evident from numerous personal remarks. There is no doubt that I have made comments that have been perceived to be misleading. This does not mean that I am trying to be misleading. Differentiating the comments from the contributor shouldn't be difficult, especially for scientists.
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Fair enough. You in particular have been reasonably civil, and have abstained from some of the more egregious and irritating polemics of the others.

However you are spreading misinformation and falsehoods on an educational forum and on the web, and as such you should expect to be attacked.
 
Dancing David said:
So far from what i have read here
http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/26365-more-arp-et-al-24.html

it seems that some discussions can be very reasonable and well thought out, I have only read about five pages however.

I think that there are many different issues that lead to a lack of discussion on both sides. If you wish to discuss that, it would make a good thread, this is a very common issue on this forum, in many areas.
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Dancing David, BAUT has several threads on PC/PU/ES/EU topics; the one you link to is about Arp et al.

I know - from reading threads on other sites - that the people (like Zeuzzz) who are vocal in their support of PC (etc) are also (generally) strong supporters of Halton Arp; however, I'm not sure the reverse is true, and (from what little I understand so far), there's no physics that connects PC (etc) with what Arp has written about. It's another thing I'm curious about, but it would take this thread in an entirely different direction ...

Why not link to the BAUT thread The Electric Sun, for example?
 
sol invictus said:
Magnetic reconnection has a clear and unambiguous meaning, and is explained in countless papers and websites. You can't hide behind a difference in definition, because there isn't one. And by the way, it does involve breaking and reconnecting field lines (in a certain specific sense).
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Yes, "Magnetic reconnection" has a specific meaning. (1) Is an open field line a "broken" field line? (2) Are open field lines consistent with Guass's Law?

sol invictus said:
That's is very unclear. 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.
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Every idea is false. Over-generalization?

sol invictus said:
In sum, no one here has a clue what "plasma cosmology" is.
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Zeuss does. BeAChooser does. I do. And it's described in a number of peer-reviewed papers:
sol invictus said:
However you are spreading misinformation and falsehoods on an educational forum and on the web, and as such you should expect to be attacked.
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I thought attacks went out with the Inquisition. When I receive constructive criticisms, I'll assess them, and act if necessary (as I have done before).
 
iantresman said:
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Yes, "Magnetic reconnection" has a specific meaning. (1) Is an open field line a "broken" field line? (2) Are open field lines consistent with Guass's Law?
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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.

Every idea is false. Over-generalization?
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Yes, that's a false over-generalization. It's also not what I said.

Zeuss does. BeAChooser does. I do.
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Really? So why can't any of you come up with one single concrete phenomenon which is explained differently by PC than by standard astro? One which isn't obviously false?

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.
 
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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."
 
sol invictus said:
(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.
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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.
 
sol invictus said:
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.
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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?
 
BeAChooser said:
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."
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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?
 
DeiRenDopa said:
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.
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It depends on what is meant by:
  • Plasma Cosmology
  • Plasma Universe
  • Alfvén-Klein Cosmology
 
DeiRenDopa said:
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.
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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.
 
sol invictus said:
Magnetic reconnection has a clear and unambiguous meaning, and is explained in countless papers and websites.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You straight up admit that you dont even understand what plasma cosmology is, yet you still try to argue against it. :confused:

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.[....]
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iantresman said:
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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".
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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?
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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.
 
sol invictus said:
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.
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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.
 
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It's good to see that you are still active here, Zeuzzz. :D

Would you mind if I ask you to answer the questions I asked you, in the day or so in this thread? :)
 
Reality Check said:
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
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Hi Zeuzzz, Have you had a chance to look further at the paper above (or any of the other publications by the 3 groups)?
 
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Zeuzzz said:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :confused:
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What irony...
 
Zeuzzz said:
This is the issue, there is another option, the Plasma Cosmology option. If you had read the paper I kept quoting
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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. :confused:
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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).
 
Zeuzzz said:
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.
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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.
 
DeiRenDopa said:
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.
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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)?
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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?
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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).
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Good luck with that. ;)
 
iantresman said:
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It depends on what is meant by:
  • Plasma Cosmology
  • Plasma Universe
  • Alfvén-Klein Cosmology
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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.
 
Zeuzzz said:
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.
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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.
 
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iantresman said:
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Zeuss does. BeAChooser does. I do. And it's described in a number of peer-reviewed papers:
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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.
 
Zeuzzz said:
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
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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.
,
 
sol invictus said:
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.
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:clap:
 
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