Electric Sun and Coronal Heating III
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106164621.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6013/55
Oh how cute. LMSAL has *finally* figured out that the excess heat in the coronal comes from under the photosphere. I love how fast moving, million degree discharges are referred to as "hot gasses". That's so cute
Where does either article say that?
Neither article says any such thing, Mozina just made it up to fuel a pointless journey into sarcasm. Look at the
abstract for the Science paper:
The Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is heated to millions of degrees, considerably hotter than its surface or photosphere. Explanations for this enigma typically invoke the deposition in the corona of nonthermal energy generated by magnetoconvection. However, the coronal heating mechanism remains unknown. We used observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Hinode solar physics mission to reveal a ubiquitous coronal mass supply in which chromospheric plasma in fountainlike jets or spicules is accelerated upward into the corona, with much of the plasma heated to temperatures between ~0.02 and 0.1 million kelvin (MK) and a small but sufficient fraction to temperatures above 1 MK. These observations provide constraints on the coronal heating mechanism(s) and highlight the importance of the interface region between photosphere and corona.
The paper is not freely available online, as is often the case for papers published in
Science. However, this research was presented at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and that abstract (similar to the previous abstract in content)
is also online:
We use coordinated observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), Hinode and the Swedish Solar Telescope (SST) to show how plasma is heated to coronal temperatures from its source in the chromosphere. Our observations reveal a ubiquitous mass supply for the solar corona in which chromospheric plasma is accelerated upward into the corona with much of the plasma heated to transition region temperatures, and a small, but significant fraction heated to temperatures in excess of 1 million K. Our observations show, for the first time, how chromospheric spicules, fountain-like jets that have long been considered potential candidates for coronal heating, are directly associated with heating of plasma to coronal temperatures. These results provide strong physical constraints on the mechanism(s) responsible for coronal heating and do not seem compatible with current models. The association with chromospheric spicules highlights the importance of the interface region between the photosphere and corona to gain a full understanding of the coronal heating problem.
It is quite obvious that the papers designate the chromosphere specifically as the source for the energy input they have identified. At no time do they ever refer to anything below the photosphere, and the photosphere itself is designated only as that which lies below the chromosphere. But of course, the standard model of the sun ultimately powered by nuclear fusion in the solar core clearly requires all of the energy deposited in the corona to start its journey deep inside the Sun and migrate up through the photosphere one way or another. When the authors say "
the coronal heating mechanism remains unknown" they are telling us that the exact nature of this migration of energy is not known, but they are certainly not suggesting that nobody understands, at a more fundamental level, how the corona could possibly be hotter than the photosphere. That level of incredulity is reserved for those who choose to rely on dubious alternative explanations, while ignoring such mundane & useless things as
physics, for instance.
I love how fast moving, million degree discharges are referred to as "hot gasses".
As we have seen in the last several pages, and especially the very informative
post 1441 from
tusenfem, what the words "electric discharge" actually means seem to be user dependent. It would appear that Mozina wishes to limit the meaning to the phrase "
An electrical discharge is a sudden release of electric or magnetic stored energy" ignoring everything else. I have always argued that electrical discharges were impossible in a plasma, but then I always simply assumed that the words meant what everybody would naturally expect them to mean in a colloquial sense, the catastrophic reunion of separated charges across a breakdown potential (
lightning, for instance). Only now, after so many years, has Mozina actually defined those words and only now do I (we) realize that the colloquial meaning is not what he had in mind (or at least not what he has in mind now).
It seems to me that whether or not one wishes to call the hot plasma an "electrical discharge" is not really the point. It is certainly a poor choice of words, designed to generate confusion in the absence of a constantly repeated definition. But the real issue is the physics that underlies the words. What
physically is really happening is the point. This is where Mozina runs into the brick wall of physics and catastrophically fails the test. He rejects magnetic reconnection in favor of exploding double layers, even though physics rejects the latter in favor of the former. He rejects the frozen flux approximation for magnetic fields in a plasma even though physics requires it. These two points are the most fundamental and critical points in this entire discussion. Everything in the physics of coronal heating, coronal loops, flares & CME's stems from these two critical concepts (with some thermodynamics & radiative transfer thrown in, but they don't yet seem to be points of contention).
As long as Mozina rejects these two critical concepts of physics, magnetic reconnection and the frozen flux approximation, then this discussion and all other similar discussions everywhere are doomed at once to become infinite loops of the same thing over & over & over & over again,
ad infinitum, as has become the case for this discussion. Quite simply it's Mozina vs. physics, and I choose physics over Mozina every time.
