Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

Zeuzzz said:
Which all works out very well outside of the bodies that are generating the mass. But proves nothing internally. And will prove nothing until verified in experiments.
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And why wouldn't it work inside? What's different about inside compared to outside? There shouldn't BE any difference. Unless, as I said, you either introduce nonlinearities or divergences from 1/r2. That is the only possible way to get any difference. But why on earth would those differences show up only inside a body? "Inside" and "outside" are ultimately artificial distinctions: why should the laws of physics make the same distinctions we artificially do? It makes no sense. I'm sorry, but that is an extraordinary claim, and the burden is therefore on anyone who wants to advance that idea, not on the people who don't accept it.

Why absurd?
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Because "inside" and "outside" are artificial distinctions.

Q: What stops you from falling due to gravity into the the Earth? A: The EM forces that retain the Earths solid structure and rigidity. Proposing that EM forces could also in some way effect the way that gravity functions internally in areas of high mass density is a possibility that should not be overlooked.
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Oh, but that's not actually proposing that gravity works any differently, rather it's proposing that electromagnetism works differently. And it is equally absurd, because it would require violations of Maxwell's equations.

All areas that have been studied in detail are low density (atmosphere, upper oceans, space, etc)
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Guess what: in terms of gravity, the entire earth is low density. And the density is irrelevant to the shell theorem unless you introduce nonlinearities. And we already know the main nonlinearities in gravity (GR), which we actually CAN detect in low-density space. Any additional nonlinearities should be completely negligible within our solar system (or else we should have already detected them in tests of GR), and the nonlinearities from GR don't help you violate the shell theorem.

We know that huge currents flow through the Earth.
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That's nice. They don't change earth's gravitational field. And anyways, you can't stabilize a conducting shell against gravitational collapse with electromagnetic interactions either: any electromagnetic equilibrium you try to establish will be likewise unstable.

No, I dont actually have an alternative model to propose, but I can do some more hand waving if you want.
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Why would I want that?
 
Ziggurat said:
Guess what: in terms of gravity, the entire earth is low density.
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Your just being overtly fascesious here. Is the density of the atmosphere considerably different from the density of the solid Earth? Yes.

And the density is irrelevant to the shell theorem unless you introduce nonlinearities.
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Granted.

Any additional nonlinearities should be completely negligible within our solar system (or else we should have already detected them in tests of GR)
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Should be being the key word here. Thing is, we dont know.
 
Zeuzzz said:
Your just being overtly fascesious here. Is the density of the atmosphere considerably different from the density of the solid Earth? Yes.
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Density only matters in regards to the validity of the shell theorem if there are nonlinearities present. Whether or not the density of earth is low or high compared to air is irrelevant, the question is whether it's low or high density compared to what's required to make any nonlinearities significant. And it's low density compared to the nonlinear effects from general relativity. Since it is safe to assume any additional nonlinearities must be smaller than those of GR, we can conclude that we are in a low-density regime for gravity. That isn't me being facetious, that's quite literally true.

Thing is, we dont know.
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And we don't know that invisible gnomes aren't stealing our laundry either. But we have no reason to take such possibilities seriously. We can detect the nonlinearities from general relativity. Why would additional nonlinearities produce larger effects than those from GR, but still escape detection? Yes, there is a sense in which it's not impossible, but neither are underpants gnomes.
 
Ziggurat said:
And we don't know that invisible gnomes aren't stealing our laundry either. But we have no reason to take such possibilities seriously.
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Well my invisible garden knomes serving time in prison for stealing my laundry would beg to differ.

I think this converstaion has worn itself out. I have no model, I'm just trying to point out that there are many things that people assume we know definitively that are still yet to be rigorously experimentally verified, like the internal structure of high mass bodies and gravities funtions at depth. Sure, we have no real reason to think that gravity should not work how we model it for surface gravity and beyond in space, but to this date we have no experiments to verify its presumed internal function. Only experiments that have verified the gradient of g down to ~0.1% of the Earths radius, and have extrapolated from this point onwards.
 
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Zeuzzz said:
I'm just trying to point out that there are many things that people assume we know definitively that are still yet to be rigorously experimentally verified
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In a sense that's true of all of physics: we only ever can test the various laws and theories under a small subset of conditions. But the entire power of physics as a predictive science comes from the fact that we apparently don't need to: we can predict very general behavior from measurements on very limited subsets of conditions, and we can do so with great success.
 
ben m said:
Good heavens! That's trivially ruled out by neutrino observations.
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Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.

The Sun emits neutrinos (like fusion)
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But it only predicted electron neutrinos. So far, (at least as far as I know), it's thought that they oscillate, although to my knowledge while many "missing neutrino" scenarios have been observed, an actual change of leptons from say electron neutrinos to tau neutrinos has not been observed. There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos. Hell, you guys sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years!

and not antineutrinos (like fission).
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Well, we don't observe high energy ones here in any significant quantity, but if neutrinos oscillate, I'm sure their anti-counterpart most do so as well. We can't even measure lower energy neutrinos with any great precision.

We explicitly see the neutrinos; we explicitly look for antineutrinos and do not see them. The Sun is not powered by fission.

(And: don't get this confused with the "solar neutrino problem", the 1960-1990 situation where *neutrinos* (not antineutrinos) were indeed seen, but with surprisingly low numbers. This problem went away when (a) the SNO detector was built to see all three neutrino (not antineutrino) flavors, and (b) the flavor-oscillation explanation was tested on Earth by SuperK, Kamland, Borexino, Chooz, SNO, SAGE, Gallex, Homestake, Nomad, MINOS, K2K, etc., which even you'd have a hard time arguing are not "controlled experiments".)
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To the best of my knowledge while they have observed ample examples of "missing" neutrinos, they have not actually observed lepton changes. If my information is old on this topic, please feel free to point me to the right "experiment". I have great confidence in neutrino physics. It is real empirical physics, with actual hardware and everything.
 
Tim Thompson said:
How, exactly, nobody knows. However, the problem is not that there are no explanations available, but rather how to choose between the likely candidates.
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All of them involve "current flow" don't they? Which specific natural process is known to emit gamma rays in the Earth's atmosphere? Shouldn't we start there?

Cranmer, 2008 gives a nice review of the general choice between wave dissipation and magnetic loop reconnection,
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What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?

and has a lot of useful references in it. We know that there is a clear correlation between small scale magnetic structure and coronal structure at much higher altitudes
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I'm sure there is such a connection between "sprites" and magnetic structures and lightening discharges and magnetic structures too.

(see, for instance, chapter 9 in Solar Astrophysics by Peter V. Foukal; Wiley-VCH, 2004). Schrijver, et al., 1997 was a big deal when it came out (and has 185 citations so far, a respectable number). They were able to make models based on the high resolution images of the sun's "magnetic carpet" (Title & Schrijver, 1998) and show that the loss of energy from the shearing magnetic structures can drive coronal heating, at least in principle. One also sees the keyword "nanoflares" associated with this idea (i.e., Hudson, 1991; Kopp & Poletto, 1993 & citations thereto & etc.).
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I'll have to read through these tonight. Your links are always insightful and I will go through them all, one by one. The problem here Tim is that there is already one known process that can "cause" gamma rays in an atmosphere. That same process can pinch free neutrons from plasma too. You need that process in your "explanation", as much as I do, so before we can get much further, we will have to agree on which process we're talking about, and it certainly isn't "magnetic reconnection' because that is physically impossible.

There is no fundamental problem having a multi-million degree corona sitting on a 6000 degree photosphere, although it may look that way if your approach is too naive.
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It's not a matter of being naive, it's a matter of pure physics. In theory it should grow cooler as we move way from the photosphere. In reality it does not. It gets a lot hotter and it's layered too. Why?

Discharges in the Earth's atmosphere can certainly generate high temperatures in an atmosphere.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not stop refrigerators from working, because they pump heat "uphill" by doing work. likewise, magnetic processes can pump energy "uphill" and heat the corona.
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Er, how do you know it's a "magnetic process" rather than an electrical one?

The only real problem to watch out for is to make sure the photospheric energy reservoir is up to the task. Since we know that it is, then there is no problem.
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It's a problem. That photosphere is not only OOM's cooler than the corona, it's thin and the atmosphere is even layered. By all rights it should cool off as we move away from the photosphere. Instead it jumps to 20K in the chromosphere and sometimes to 10's of millions of degrees in the corona during intense coronal loop activity as we observe in that Rhessi image.

Why should neutron capture signals be unusual? After all, it's not as if neutrons are unusual, and that's really about all you need; a few neutrons, a few nuclei and - voila, neutron capture.
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Where do the neutrons come from?

In Earth's atmosphere, and I suppose any planetary atmosphere (why not?) neutron capture gamma rays are observed in the polar regions, maybe connected with auroral displays, when energetic solar wind protons impact the upper atmosphere.
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That's a know *ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE PROCESS* Tim. You just cited another reason why we both require *electricity* in our explanations.

We really can't go much further until we agree that both explanations require there to be *massive* electrical discharges to be occurring in the solar atmosphere. The neutron capture process you discuss is just as dependent upon this as the idea I'm supporting. You could argue your idea requires fewer specific conditions than mine, but your idea is also discharge dependent, particularly to achieve a sustained emission of these photons.
 
Dancing David said:
Thanks again!

Empirically there is no observable difference from either model.

So , huh?

You can't tell a difference in the models, right?
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Sure I can. One process is "driven" by current flow like an ordinary plasma ball filament, the other is presumably (not really) driven by magnetism. Like the plasma filament, the magnetic field acts to constrict the current flow into tightly twisted moving filaments of flowing current. It is however the charge separation between the inner and outer sphere that drives the process.

So there is no point, it is a semantic hangup. The only utility in concept is in discernable observations?
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I'm not convinced that they are different "looking" if we are simply talking about pure observation. In other words, their "flux tube" seems to look like an ordinary plasma filament, so how would we tell them apart just by looking at them? We need a real "experiment" to find out, and that was already done by Birkeland over 100 years ago. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. We already know that current flow works to explain such behaviors in the atmospheres of spheres in a low pressure plasma vacuum.

I am however personally convinced that circuit reconnection and magnetic reconnection and particle reconnection are all interchangeable terms and the only beef I have with MR theory isn't in the math, but the title they chose. As long as we can agree it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, I'm willing to ignore the labels. The math seems to be fine and the physics even looks fine. It's only the name I have trouble with, but only because magnetic lines cannot disconnect or reconnect. Circuits and particles reconnect all the time.

I'll have to come back to the rest of your post as I get time. I've got some "honey-do" projects to take care of at the moment.
 
Michael Mozina said:
Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.
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Er, wrong. The gas model solar theory cannot be trivially ruled out.

Michael Mozina said:
But it only predicted electron neutrinos. So far, (at least as far as I know), it's thought that they oscillate, although to my knowledge while many "missing neutrino" scenarios have been observed, an actual change of leptons from say electron neutrinos to tau neutrinos has not been observed. There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos. Hell, you guys sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years!
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Firstly no one "sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years". What people did was spend 30 years researching the problem and eventually discovering neutrino oscillation.
The fusion model of the sun only predicts electron neutrinos. It does not state anything about what happens to the electron neutrinos as they travel from the Sun to the Earth.
Actual changes of leptons have been observed in various faculities, e.g.
I hope that you do not want an experiment where neutrinos are tracked through a detector and a scientists "says at this point the neutrino changed from an electron neutrino to a tau neutrino in the detector"!

The muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillation has not been observed yet (the reverse oscillation has been observed) but the TK2 experiment due to run this year hopes to do so.
 
Michael Mozina said:
Er, right. Then gas model solar theory can be trivially ruled out too.
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The standard solar theory is explicitly confirmed by SNO no matter what the neutrino oscillations are doing. SNO's neutral-current measurement channel doesn't care what the flavor is, it just counts total neutrinos.

Independently, SNO measures the electron-flavor component, via a different nuclear reaction (like SAGE/Gallex/Homestake), and a particular mixture of all three flavors (roughly 5*e + mu + tau) using yet another reaction (like SuperKamiokande and Borexino). These fluxes all agree on the behavior of the oscillations, but if you don't believe that you can cross-check with MINOS, Kamland, K2K, etc., which all---guess what---agree. Incidentally, these measurements not only give you the solar *flux* they also give you the *energy spectrum*. All of this, including the energy spectrum, agrees explicitly with the standard solar model, in quite a lot of detail and with very high precision.

You are welcome to work out an *alternative model* which also fits the data. "If the Sun is made of iron, and neutrinos have property X, and the Hubble constant is 40 km/s/Mpc then my iron-sun model also agrees with these data." You are *not* welcome to say, "Eh, that sounds complicated! I haven't looked into it but I bet it disagrees with your model and agrees with mine!"

There are still *lots* of unknowns as it relates to neutrinos.
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Not that many, really. I can name maybe ten. None of them are going to affect your iron-sun model.

Well, we don't observe high energy ones here in any significant quantity, but if neutrinos oscillate, I'm sure their anti-counterpart most do so as well. We can't even measure lower energy neutrinos with any great precision.
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Fission antineutrinos are very easy to measure, thank you---much easier, in fact, than regular solar neutrinos, most of which are below 0.5 MeV. No, fission antineutrinos peak in the few-MeV range (easy!) and they have a very clean signature. They oscillate in a well-known (and well-measured) fashion, such that the fraction of electron antineutrinos seen at Earth should be about 60% of the flux emitted at the Sun. It's very nearly the same spectrum no matter what is fissioning --- U, Pu, Th, etc.
 
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Dancing David said:
Thanks again!




1. If the sun has one charge and the heliosphere another , waht is the source of charge for both?



2. So where can you show that the sun or helio sphere has that kind of charge 9positive0, what maintains the charge in the heliosphere?

3. I know, you however haven't really provided a source for your charge in the sun or the heliosphere.

Really? Negative ions are dragging positive ions?
4. Isn't the mass a little small for the electrons in comparison to the nucleus? they must have a huge velocity and therefore a huge charge speration must exist.
5. Don't they merge with the heliosphere?
6. What keeps them moving past it?



okay so we have thermal energy in an iron sphere,
6. How does that create a charge seperation between the sun and the heliosphere?

the electrons are drawn to a positively charged heliosphere?
7. Would that not repel the positive ion?

And more likely to be repeled by the heliosphere?

Thanks, we are already in the process.

8. Heat equals free electrons?
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Just to clean up the typos, you are busy MM, no rush.
 
Tim Thompson said:
Count me in the disagree column. We already know that the gamma rays actually observed correspond precisely with electron-positron annihilation and neutron capture. We already know that a temperature as high as 1,000,000 Kelvins will host a good many electrons & positrons to annihilate each other, and there is certainly nothing mysterious about free neutrons in the universe. So what is it that we see which requires only electric discharges, and literally cannot be explained in any other way?
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So how do you get those temperatures????? The only way is with electricity. That is only 90.9090909eV. No flame is that hot. UV photons are that "hot".

Or inside a sun. Or in the corona.. That temperature makes more sense as an energy, ie 100eV.

But a good double layer can do 90eV with ease. So can a filamental pinch(reconnection). Magnetic field are less efficient at accelerating particles for the same amount of energy.
 
brantc said:
So how do you get those temperatures????? The only way is with electricity. That is only 90.9090909eV. No flame is that hot. UV photons are that "hot".

Or inside a sun. Or in the corona.. That temperature makes more sense as an energy, ie 100eV.

But a good double layer can do 90eV with ease. So can a filamental pinch(reconnection). Magnetic field are less efficient at accelerating particles for the same amount of energy.
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I think the point is that we observe the high temperatures. Thus there are lots of electrons and positrons that can annihilate, the gamma rays actually observed correspond precisely with electron-positron annihilation and the logical conclusion is thta it is electron-positron annihilation.

The mechanism behind the high temperatures is another matter and off topic. Perhaps you should start a new thread.
P.S. You are right - no "flame" has the observed high temperature. But many plasmas do both in space and in labs.
 
Michael Mozina said:
What exactly (physically) is a "magnetic loop reconnection"?
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This has been explained to you several times. You haven't gotten it. Let me try again, using your preferred language.

Take two line currents---one at position X = +10m and flowing in the +Y direction, another at position X = -10m and flowing in the +Y direction. They generate magnetic fields. You are sitting at position X=0; you're holding a magnetometer which you can wave around within a meter or so of your position. All good? Have we violated any real physics yet?

We now let line currents move towards you, going from +/- 100m down to (say) +/- 1m. Anything horribly wrong? Is your high-sensitivity BS detector going off yet? Fairy alarm ringing?

Well, you've just experienced magnetic reconnection. Honest. The magnetic fields in your neighborhood changed in the way we've been talking about. It's as simple as that. Don't believe me? You measured the field yourself---draw the field lines awwww shoot just release some low-energy ions, let them move around adiabatically, and watch the shapes of their paths. Before the source currents moved, a low-energy ion released at x=1,z=1 will move in a path which circumnavigates the rightward current line. After the motion, you will find an ion released in the same position will circumnavigate both lines. That's a discrete change in topology.

We refer to this discrete change as "reconnection", like it or not, and those very-real adiabatic ion paths are approximately following our mathematical "field lines". Don't let anyone confuse you with more "scientific explanation". You have said repeatedly that "reconnection" is a totally impossible and ridiculous fairy process. What's ridiculous about two lines of current which move around?
 
Thanks again!




1. If the sun has one charge and the heliosphere another , waht is the source of charge for both?



2. So where can you show that the sun or helio sphere has that kind of charge 9positive0, what maintains the charge in the heliosphere?

3. I know, you however haven't really provided a source for your charge in the sun or the heliosphere.

Really? Negative ions are dragging positive ions?
4. Isn't the mass a little small for the electrons in comparison to the nucleus? they must have a huge velocity and therefore a huge charge speration must exist.
5. Don't they merge with the heliosphere?
6. What keeps them moving past it?



okay so we have thermal energy in an iron sphere,
6. How does that create a charge seperation between the sun and the heliosphere?

the electrons are drawn to a positively charged heliosphere?
7. Would that not repel the positive ion?

And more likely to be repeled by the heliosphere?



8. Heat equals free electrons?
 
Reality Check said:
Er, wrong. The gas model solar theory cannot be trivially ruled out.
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I was obviously being facetious and flippant just like the original post. I don't know what the oscillation process might be like yet assuming it can even be verified completely in the first place.

Firstly no one "sat on your neutrino problem for 30 years". What people did was spend 30 years researching the problem and eventually discovering neutrino oscillation.
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Well, it sat there for 30 years with no explanation. I'm not in your league yet of waiting for an answer. :)

The muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillation has not been observed yet (the reverse oscillation has been observed) but the TK2 experiment due to run this year hopes to do so.
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Could you please cite which specific experiment observed an electron to muon oscillation? It's been awhile since I've looked at this data, and perhaps there has been progress I am unware of. The last time I checked there were "missing' neutrinos observed which *might* be interpreted as oscillation, but if they have actually observed it now in controlled experimentation, I would like to read about it. I haven't been following the recent progress on oscillation observations.
 
Reality Check said:
The mechanism behind the high temperatures is another matter and off topic.
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I'm afraid I disagree. Even Tim's theory is tied to high energy electrical discharges. The process and the mechanisms are critically important to explaining how we reach 10's of millions of degrees in the solar atmosphere, and how we get *any* of these high energy photons. There's only one force of nature here that fits either explanation.
 
ben m said:
This has been explained to you several times. You haven't gotten it. Let me try again, using your preferred language.

Take two line currents---one at position X = +10m and flowing in the +Y direction, another at position X = -10m and flowing in the +Y direction. They generate magnetic fields. You are sitting at position X=0; you're holding a magnetometer which you can wave around within a meter or so of your position. All good? Have we violated any real physics yet?
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None thus far. I've forgotten now where you stand on the "circuit reconnection = magnetic reconnection = particle reconnection" issue. Do you agree? Disagree?

We now let line currents move towards you, going from +/- 100m down to (say) +/- 1m. Anything horribly wrong? Is your high-sensitivity BS detector going off yet? Fairy alarm ringing?
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Nope. So far you're doing fine.

Well, you've just experienced magnetic reconnection. Honest. The magnetic fields in your neighborhood changed in the way we've been talking about. It's as simple as that. Don't believe me?
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Well, actually, "sort of". I guess that is what the mainstream is calling "magnetic reconnection" from what I've read as well, but the label itself is misleading. The circuits and particles can and do disconnect and reconnect inside the plasma. The magnetic field topology changes as a result. That is not however "magnetic reconnection" because magnetic lines form as a full and complete continuum, without beginning and without end. Unlike circuits and physical particles, the magnetic fields are physically incapable of disconnecting or reconnecting to any other field line.

I don't really have a problem with your physical explanation until you labeled it "magnetic" reconnection after describing it as two intersecting circuits. Wouldn't the term "circuit reconnection" be a better choice of terms, if only to keep in consistent with electrical engineering and because it conveys the importance of the total energy of the entire circuit, not just the point of reconnection?
 
Dancing David said:
1. If the sun has one charge and the heliosphere another , waht is the source of charge for both?
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The interstellar wind would be the source of the charge at the heliosphere, and the sun itself would be responsible for the charge at the surface.

2. So where can you show that the sun or helio sphere has that kind of charge 9positive0, what maintains the charge in the heliosphere?
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FYI, I missed what you're responding to in your post, and most of the rest of the questions look redundant. The heliosphere is buffeted by interstellar winds. These particle flows influence our sun just as the interplanetary winds influence and interact with our planet through the magnetosphere.
 
Michael Mozina said:
The circuits and particles can and do disconnect and reconnect inside the plasma. The magnetic field topology changes as a result. That is not however "magnetic reconnection" because magnetic lines form as a full and complete continuum, without beginning and without end. Unlike circuits and physical particles, the magnetic fields are physically incapable of disconnecting or reconnecting to any other field line.
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1) Go back to my example. Go to {X=1,Z=1}, where you placed the test particle, and measure the magnetic field direction.
2) Take an infinitesimal step in that direction, measure again. Repeat.
3) Record your entire path.

This path is BOTH (a) the path a low-energy (adiabatic) charged particle will follow, and also (b) THE COMPLETE AND EXACT DEFINITION OF A MAGNETIC FIELD LINE.

You are incorrect to say that magnetic field lines can't "reconnect". They can and do. The do so by going through the same topology changes as the paths of adiabatic ions, because they're the same thing. As we've said repeatedly: you have been relying on some mistaken ideas about "field lines". This is a good illustration.
 
ben m said:
1) Go back to my example. Go to {X=1,Z=1}, where you placed the test particle, and measure the magnetic field direction.
2) Take an infinitesimal step in that direction, measure again. Repeat.
3) Record your entire path.

This path is BOTH (a) the path a low-energy (adiabatic) charged particle will follow, and also (b) THE COMPLETE AND EXACT DEFINITION OF A MAGNETIC FIELD LINE.
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The magnetic field line is not 'reconnecting' to another field line. The particle is simply "reconnecting" to another circuit at worst case. The magnetic lines are simply caused by the current flow of those particles. The *particles* are physical and they contain kinetic energy that can and does get transferred to other charged particles, but the magnetic lines are not "reconnecting", just the circuits and particles that make up those lines of flowing current are "reconnecting".

You are incorrect to say that magnetic field lines can't "reconnect". They can and do.
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No they don't. Alfven used a very similar particle example example in his book Cosmic Plasma and explained it this way:

1I .3 .2 . PARTICLE MOTION IN THE MAGNETOSPHERE
So far our model does not contain any movable charged particles (outside the wires). In this vacuum model, we inject one charged test particle, either in interplanetary space or in the ionosphere . Its motion is completely determined by the electric and magnetic fields . As the magnetic field is static, the energy W of the particle is given by where Wo is the initial energy, ds the line element, E the (static) electric field from the fixed charges, and e the charge of the particle.

Next, we inject a large number of solar wind particles (and particles from the ionosphere), but still only a negligible fraction, e, of what corresponds to the real case . Assuming that the mutual collisions (as well as the collisions with the model structure) are negligible, they will behave as a number of test particles . If our model is designed correctly, they will increase the space charge given by the fixed charges of the model by the fraction, e, and their flow close to the coil wires will increase the magnetic field by the same fraction . If we reduce all coil currents and all fixed charges by e, we will return to the same electric and magnetic field as before the injection . Hence, in this simple way, the electromagnetic fields in a stationary magnetosphere are described exclusively by electric currents and electric charges. A model based on this principle is worked out in HI .6. We now slowly increase e to unity . At the same time we reduce the coil currents and the fixed charges so that eventually they become zero . It is easily seen that this can be done in a way that allows the electric and magnetic fields to remain constant . We can now remove the model structure, and every particle will still move and change its energy as if it were a single test particle in the vacuum model . Our model now depicts how plasma in our surroundings flows and changes its energy .

11 .33. CONCLUSIONS ABOUT `FIELD LINE RECONNECTION' AND `MERGING' IN THE STATIONARY MAGNETOSPHERE
Our Gedanken experiment shows that neither the injection of one test particle, a small number of test particles, or all of the solar wind particles call for a change in the Maxwellian concept of magnetic field lines . There is no need for `frozen-in' field lines moving with the plasma, still less for `field-line reconnection' or `magnetic merging' . The magnetic field always remains static and not a single field line is `disconnected' or `reconnected'. The energy of a charged particle is given by Equation (6) . There is no 'field-line reconnection' that can transfer energy to the particles or release energy in any other way. Other arguments against reconnection models are forewarded by Heikkila (1978).
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The do so by going through the same topology changes as the paths of adiabatic ions, because they're the same thing. As we've said repeatedly: you have been relying on some mistaken ideas about "field lines". This is a good illustration.[/QUOTE]
 
Michael Mozina said:
Could you please cite which specific experiment observed an electron to muon oscillation? It's been awhile since I've looked at this data, and perhaps there has been progress I am unware of. The last time I checked there were "missing' neutrinos observed which *might* be interpreted as oscillation, but if they have actually observed it now in controlled experimentation, I would like to read about it. I haven't been following the recent progress on oscillation observations.
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The links that I posted are to the actual specific experiments. The oscillation has been seen in controlled experiments - the KamLAND experiment uses neutrinos from nuclear reactors.

But my guess is that you want the bit in bold. All we have to do then is build a neutrino trap using a few tame black holes, trap a neutrino and watch it oscillate.

Reality Check said:
Actual changes of leptons have been observed in various faculties, e.g.
I hope that you do not want an experiment where neutrinos are tracked through a detector and a scientists "says at this point the neutrino changed from an electron neutrino to a tau neutrino in the detector"!
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Michael Mozina said:
The interstellar wind would be the source of the charge at the heliosphere, and the sun itself would be responsible for the charge at the surface.



FYI, I missed what you're responding to in your post, and most of the rest of the questions look redundant. The heliosphere is buffeted by interstellar winds. These particle flows influence our sun just as the interplanetary winds influence and interact with our planet through the magnetosphere.
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Excuse me?

lets us see, you said that:

a.The electrons move from the solar surface to the heliosphere, right?

and then you said that:

b.The electrons drag the positive ions along with them on the trip to the heliosphere, right?

So then I asked how this makes the solar wind?

Because the same force that attracts the electrons to the heliosphere is going to repel the positive ions, right?

That is not redundant and as predicted you will not address the obvious contradiction in your model of how the soalr wind works.

So back to your model:
1. thermal energy provides a negative charge for the surface of the sun.
2. interstellar wind would be the source of the positive charge on the sun.

What data do you have that suggests that the interstellar wind provides a positive charge to the heliosphere?
 
Michael Mozina said:
The magnetic field line is not 'reconnecting' to another field line.
Click to expand...

Really? Because in the solutions we're discussing, the lines reconnect in the most literal possible sense. At t<0 a line in the upper left is connected to one in the lower left; at t>0 that same line has disconnected from that one and now connects to a line in the upper right.

You were shown the solutions, simulations, and experiments. You ignored them all, because they go against your religion.
 
I think MM has two things mixed up.

1) I established two line currents---which I'm happy to call a "circuit"---and these currents created magnetic fields. The fields allow you to draw field lines, like any vector field does. Those field lines are "there" (i.e. draw-able) whether or not there's any additional charge or current in the area.

2) MM is happy to do the exact equivalent of drawing field lines as long as he does it by following a test particle rather than by vector tracing. However, once he's put a test-particle in there he starts thinking that this particle's current somehow causes the magnetic field---which is wrong, this field comes from the large line currents we defined earlier, and the test particle is infinitesimal. And he insists on calling this particle's path a "circuit" rather than a "field line" because Alfven told him never to mention field lines---but they're really exactly the same thing.

3) He's also somehow come back to discussing the kinetic energy of the particles. Don't get confused, MM, we're discussing a system with a large magnetostatic potential energy and an unspecified (but generally extremely small) kinetic energy. Please also note that there's no plasma in this problem yet---just two wires and a guy waving a magnetometer---so the relevant physics comes from Maxwell et. al. and long, long predates Mr. Alfven.
 
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Reality Check said:
The links that I posted are to the actual specific experiments. The oscillation has been seen in controlled experiments - the KamLAND experiment uses neutrinos from nuclear reactors.
Click to expand...

Be careful here. Oscillation has been seen in several experiments mostly in the patterns of how neutrinos disappear. This pattern is very specific---Kamland has the best data, seeing two full cycles of electron antineutrinos being visible, then invisible, then visible, the invisible again, as a function of the proper time in the neutrino rest frame. They do not, however, see what the neutrinos are turning into during the "invisible" step---but since they see them coming back it's pretty clear they did not decay, or do something else odd.

Appearance of the "missing" neutrinos has been seen cleanly in one and only one experiment, SNO, but it can also be tested by looking at the cross-mode agreement in elastic scattering vs. charged current data.

(It's possible that LSND or MiniBoone also see flavor appearance, but this is a difficult bit of data which is still being hashed out.)
 
ben m said:
Be careful here. Oscillation has been seen in several experiments mostly in the patterns of how neutrinos disappear. This pattern is very specific---Kamland has the best data, seeing two full cycles of electron antineutrinos being visible, then invisible, then visible, the invisible again, as a function of the proper time in the neutrino rest frame. They do not, however, see what the neutrinos are turning into during the "invisible" step---but since they see them coming back it's pretty clear they did not decay, or do something else odd.

Appearance of the "missing" neutrinos has been seen cleanly in one and only one experiment, SNO, but it can also be tested by looking at the cross-mode agreement in elastic scattering vs. charged current data.

(It's possible that LSND or MiniBoone also see flavor appearance, but this is a difficult bit of data which is still being hashed out.)
Click to expand...

That clarifies what I thought the experiments showed.

My comment about KamLAND being a controlled experiment was to cater for MM's obsession with controlled vs uncontrolled experiments. I suspect that any oscillations detected in solar neutrinos fits his criteria for uncontrolled (and so can be ignored) experiments. :)
 
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So, MM

You say that the heliosphere is positively charged by the interstellar wind, what evidence do you have?

And then there is this conflict you presented
1. Electrons are drawn from the negative solar surface to the positive heliosphere.
2. Electrons drag the positive ions with them and they then pass through the heliosphere to help create a solar wind with both positive and negative ions.

So what propels the electrons past the heliosphere?
What keeps the positive ions moving as they appraoch the heliosphere?

Now you likely have an explanation so, i will wait.
 
Dancing David said:
Excuse me?

lets us see, you said that:

a.The electrons move from the solar surface to the heliosphere, right?

and then you said that:

b.The electrons drag the positive ions along with them on the trip to the heliosphere, right?

So then I asked how this makes the solar wind?

Because the same force that attracts the electrons to the heliosphere is going to repel the positive ions, right?

That is not redundant and as predicted you will not address the obvious contradiction in your model of how the soalr wind works.

So back to your model:
1. thermal energy provides a negative charge for the surface of the sun.
2. interstellar wind would be the source of the positive charge on the sun.

What data do you have that suggests that the interstellar wind provides a positive charge to the heliosphere?
Click to expand...



"Anomalous cathode reaction forces varying in proportion to the square of the input current were first identified separately by Tanberg and Kobel, in 1930, during studies of cathode vaporization in "vacuum"-arc discharges (VADs) and stationary cathode spots (1,2). In his original paper, Tanberg made a case for the presence of longitudinal forces on electrodynamic interactions, which he attributed to the counterflow of vaporized cathode particles (1), but K. Compton demonstrated that the vapor jet only accounted for <2% of the reaction force's magnitude (3)
<snip>
Mounting evidence for longitudinal electrodynamic forces was then emerging from the study of relativistic electron beams (27-28), high-frequency plasma spikes (29-32), anomalous plasma heat transfer (28, 33-34) and anomalous discharge structures (35). Three possible plasma instability mechanisms have been discussed in the literature for the explanation of the observed anomalous energy transfers, invoking magnetosonic waves (35-36), ion-acoustic plasma instability modes (37-38) or the vacuum-field effect caused by the Zero-point energy (ZPE) (39-45). More recently, others have suggested that these nonlinear interactions, such as the ion-acoustic plasma instabilities, high density abrupt electrical discharges, and microprotuberance field emission indicate the presence of resonant coherences with the ZPE (46-47).
<snip>
Admission of longitudinal interactions has always been problematic for the relativistic law of Lorentz (11), as well as for the Bio-Savart treatments of Ampere's Law (12). Quantum treatments of (high) field-emission, such as the Fowler-Nordheim law (strong fields pull out electrons with low energies, ie Fermi electrons) (13), also did not take these interactions into account.
<snip>
By the 1960's, it had become apparent that the presence of tremendous electrodynamic forces acting longitudinally in the direction of the discharge could not be accounted for by the Lorentz/Bio-Savart Law. Moreover, as Plyutto et al remarked, the Tanberg vaporization hypothesis also could not explain the observed dependence of cathode reaction forces on gas pressure, nor the high velocity plasma streams emerging from the cathode (18). Plyutto's model of an ambipolar mechanism, where the electrons sweep the ions forward as a function of the anomalous rise of potential in front of the cathode spot, while the spot moves backwards, may well explain the dynamic relation of these forces, but not their initiation mechanism."

http://web.globalserve.net/~lambdac/PwrfromAEemissions.html
 
I see you are back, but quoting something is not answering the question Brantc, I ask it simply so respond to the questions:

1. MM stated that the electrons were moving towards the positively charged heliosphere.
2. MM also stated that the electrons were 'dragging' the positive ions towards the heliosphere.

Which is fine both these statements seem to be okay.

The question which is you could answer simply (and then we can expand is this):

If there positive ions are positively charged (which I assume is why they are called positive ions) are they not going to be repelled by the positive charge of the heliosphere, proportionate to the inverse of their distance from the heliosphere?

I assume you are smart enough to answer the question, it was not how can the electrons drag along the positive ions, it was 'what keeps the positive ions moving towards and past the positively charged heliosphere'?

MM's theory seems to be violating Coulomb’s law, and it does not involve QM effects.

That paper looks interesting but maybe you could explain how it is related to the question I asked.


Unless you are here to play the standard PC game which is to mention irrelevant points and not answer direct questions.
 
Corona Redux

Tim Thompson said:
How, exactly, nobody knows. However, the problem is not that there are no explanations available, but rather how to choose between the likely candidates.
Click to expand...
Michael Mozina said:
All of them involve "current flow" don't they?
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That depends on my knowing why you chose to put "current flow" in quotation marks. You usually insist on classical electrical currents, like electrons flowing in a wire. If that's what you mean, then I answer no, none of the mechanisms involve that kind of current flow. If, on the other hand, you mean to include flow in an otherwise charge neutral plasma (i.e., the positive & negative charge carriers are not bound into neutral units, but are equal in number, such that the net charge in a representative volume is zero), then I answer yes, they do involve that. But not necessarily directly. For instance, Alfven waves are certainly not a current of any kind, but owe their existence to the flow of a charge neutral plasma (as described above). If Alfven waves are directly responsible for heating the corona and accelerating the solar wind, as may well be the case, then the "current flow" is only indirectly involved.

Tim Thompson said:
Which specific natural process is known to emit gamma rays in the Earth's atmosphere? Shouldn't we start there?
Click to expand...
Broad band gamma emission in Earth's atmosphere comes from discharge mechanisms (i.e., lightning, sprites & etc), while narrow line emission comes from positron annihilation, neutron absorption and nuclear relaxation. So if we do in fact "start there", we get exactly what I said before. The narrow line emission as seen by RHESSI is most easily explained in terms of the usual suspects (which do not and indeed cannot include electrical discharge).

One might appeal to electrical discharge to explain broad band gamma emission from the sun, but that would be naive. Electrical discharge is not a mechanism that is actually directly responsible for an gamma ray emission. Rather, it is the electrical discharge that accelerates electrons to high energy, and that is what is directly responsible for the gamma ray emission. So anything that accelerates electrons to high energy will do the job. Electrical discharge is not physically reasonable in the case of the sun because there is no known physics to generate the required continuous charge separation. However, there is lots of known physics to generate Alfven waves, and Alfven waves will certainly accelerate electrons to high energy. So naturally, we start with the known physics, and appeal to the unknown physics only after the known physics is known to fail.

That will have to do for now, more meetings tonight.
 
Tim Thompson said:
That depends on my knowing why you chose to put "current flow" in quotation marks. You usually insist on classical electrical currents, like electrons flowing in a wire. If that's what you mean, then I answer no, none of the mechanisms involve that kind of current flow. If, on the other hand, you mean to include flow in an otherwise charge neutral plasma (i.e., the positive & negative charge carriers are not bound into neutral units, but are equal in number, such that the net charge in a representative volume is zero), then I answer yes, they do involve that.
Click to expand...

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1701

I'd like you to read through this paper Tim and consider the following:

Electrical discharges occur in the Earth's atmosphere and release gamma rays in the process. Why would you not consider the single most obvious explanation for these high energy photons? The plasma is "current carrying" inside coronal loops, just as an ordinary plasma filament is 'current carrying'.

I don't want throw too much at you at once since I know you're busy and I would like you to read that paper and answer my primary question before we go any further. I'm hoping that paper changes your mind a bit.

IMO you and I *both* require a discharge to fully explain these events. These neutron capture signatures in particular are most easily explained in discharge activity.
 
Dancing David said:
I see you are back, but quoting something is not answering the question Brantc, I ask it simply so respond to the questions:

1. MM stated that the electrons were moving towards the positively charged heliosphere.
2. MM also stated that the electrons were 'dragging' the positive ions towards the heliosphere.

Which is fine both these statements seem to be okay.
Click to expand...

If you read through Birkeland's terella (metal sphere) experiments, you'll find that when he charged the outside of the sphere as a cathode, the sphere discharged itself toward the chamber and carried particles along the way. He even describes having to clean the soot off the glass. He also noticed "loop like" structures formed at the "bumps" of his terella, and he could control their positioning based upon current flow and the magnetic field strength inside the sphere. I have one of his images side by side with a yohkoh x-ray image of the solar atmosphere during an active phase. These are not "coincidences". The continuous flow of particles from the sun, the high energy discharges, the tornado like effects, all of these things are related to current flow and magnetic fields. Bruce by the way documented the relationship between propagation speeds in the solar atmosphere and discharges on Earth. Bruce wrote extensively about discharge theory and his work and Birkeland's work and Alfven's work are all "first rate". Their work is also loaded with that "math stuff" everyone seems to like too. I'm more of a "show me" sort of guy, but the math is useful as well. :)

If there positive ions are positively charged (which I assume is why they are called positive ions) are they not going to be repelled by the positive charge of the heliosphere, proportionate to the inverse of their distance from the heliosphere?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming it's more like a "flow pattern", and by the time the protons reach a certain distance, many of them have picked up a spare electron from somewhere and cooled off a bit and are not necessarily charged at that point. I assume the heliosphere works a bit like the Earth's magnetosphere and that it is a moving and flowing process, not a stagnant wall of particles. I'm looking forward to the IBEX data and I'm looking forward to the IMAX movie coming here to the West Coast. That will be very enlightening on this topic specifically IMO.

I assume you are smart enough to answer the question, it was not how can the electrons drag along the positive ions, it was 'what keeps the positive ions moving towards and past the positively charged heliosphere'?
Click to expand...

I think you're assuming they *stay* positively charged forever which I do not, and that the heliosphere is semi-rigid in some way, which I do not.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/12/03/swift-detects-x-ray-emissions-from-comets/

By the way, you can see the effect of the electron "pick-up" process in comet activity:

Comets suddenly become significant X-ray generators as they get blasted by solar wind ions. The total power output from the coma can top a billion Watts.
Click to expand...

A billion watts is only possible because we live inside an electric universe and there is "current flow" from the surface to the heliosphere.
 
Reality Check said:
That clarifies what I thought the experiments showed.

My comment about KamLAND being a controlled experiment was to cater for MM's obsession with controlled vs uncontrolled experiments. I suspect that any oscillations detected in solar neutrinos fits his criteria for uncontrolled (and so can be ignored) experiments. :)
Click to expand...

The oscillation idea in general is theoretically "testable" via controlled experimentation. I'm not sure that it has been fully established that they oscillate from one to another as of this particular date. A lot of "missing" neutrino observations have been observed in controlled experiments but I"m not sure about the progress on establishing an actual oscillation observation from controlled experiments with a known and measured source. I haven't kept up however so feel free to set me straight.

Simply *assuming* that all the neutrino flavors we observe from the sun began as electron neutrinos remains to be seen IMO. I rather doubt that is the case in fact.
 
sol invictus said:
Really?
Click to expand...

Really.

Because in the solutions we're discussing, the lines reconnect in the most literal possible sense.
Click to expand...

What "literally" (physically) reconnects? Carrier particles as in induction, or ions and electrons as in "current flow"? Neither type of "reconnection" would be a form of "magnetic reconnection". Induction already has a proper name and it generates 'current flow'.

Let me ask you a simple question, can "magnetic reconnection" occur and release energy in a pure vacuum, devoid of all ions and electrons?
 
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