Merged Electric Sun Theory (Split from: CME's, active regions and high energy flares)

[Arthur Mann]

Can you please explain what you think Peratt means by that sentence?

Peratt was talking about the initiation of a discharge, not stating that discharge only and ever takes places at the initiation of dielectric breakdown (which isn't always present in a discharge). Where is the dielectric breakdown in the birkeland currents powering the aurorae? These have been experimentally modeled by Birkeland, and subsequently discovered to exist. That's why they're named after him. Where is the dielectric (continuously) breaking down as you suggest should be there?

 

[Michael Mozina]

I note, as has been pointed out to you, that the word "breakdown" occurs in the very next sentence.

Can you please explain what you think Peratt means by that sentence?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6629697&postcount=390

I already bolded the relevant parts. The plasma can reach a critical point for a variety of reasons. Alfven tells that story about the exploding switch a lot by the way. It's one of the key experiences in his life that got him into plasma physics in the first place. At critical current flows and pressures "breakdowns" occur. That's all he means.

 

[Tubbythin]

Tell that to Sandia, they routinely express electric discharges through conductors (wires, in fact) in their "Z machine" to study the z pinch effect.

Yes, the discharges are used to vaporise tungsten to create a plasma. The discharge does not occur from the breakdown of the plasma since it is already conducting.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

If you really believed this you'd abandon the stellar fusion model. Post facto "explanations" aren't predictions. When you pick the sun's total power output as the basis for your claim that the sun is powered internally by fusion, then develop a model based on that, you can't then say the model "predicts" the correct power output of the sun, then claim the model is therefor valid. That's a circular argument.

Please show, then, in detail, how the Sun produces a steady ~3.9x10^26 W, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, over time periods of at least 1,000 years, according to the Electric Sun model.

 

[Reality Check]

Oh boloney. Tell that to the coil in your car as you drive next time. Every single discharge "spark" firing in every spark plug is a direct result of "induction".

Oh boloney.You cannot tell the difference between a solar flare that is 100,000 km in scale and a spark plug ?
It is that 100,000 km scale that means that it would take a time scale of 1 million years for a flare to produce its observed energy via induction.

And yes: indicution happens in coils in cars.
Just because something happens in some situations does not mean that they are the same. For example solar flares produce x-rays. Two of the causes of x-rays are

• Electrical discharges produce x-rays.
• Accelerated electrons produce x-rays.

So are the x-rays in solar flares produced from

• Electrical discharges?
• Accelerated electrons?

Just selecting the option that suits a personal prejudice is obviously wrong. A rational person would ask: Is there a distinguishing feature of the x-rays that allows us to distinguish between the options. So they would observe that

• Electrical discharges produce x-rays in narrow bands.
• Accelerated electrons produce x-rays in wide bands.
• Solar flares produce x-rays in wide bands.

Thus electrical discharges are ruled out as a cause of solar flare x-rays.
Thus solar flare x-rays are created by some other mechanism, e.g electrons accelerated by magnetic reconnection or double layers (or something else).

 

[Arthur Mann]

Then please show, in detail, how the Sun produces a steady ~3.9x10^26 W, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, over time periods of at least 100 years, according to the Electric Sun model.

I have no idea what you're getting at here. This "100 years" figure was put forth by somebody else, as a consequence of their model, not the electric star model.

Electromagnetic radiation is produced by the sun in the same fashion it is here on Earth. We typically use electricity. Granted, there are ways to produce heat and light by burning things and so on, but typically, if we want light, we flip a switch and let electricity produce it for us. Nature is nothing if not efficient, and electricity is the most efficient means of producing light that we know of.

Let's take another, more obvious example: x-rays

Do we generate x-rays using gravity or do we use electric and magnetic fields? We use electric and magnetic fields, yet the "standard model" suggests x-rays from stars are caused by "shock waves" and so on, all initiated by "gravity", utterly divorced from reality and with no experimental support.

 

[Arthur Mann]

You cannot tell the difference between a solar flare that is 100,000 km in scale and a spark plug?

One thing you always need to keep in mind is that plasma effects are scalable across about fourteen orders of magnitude, at least. This means we can study small plasmas and from that determine the properties of large plasmas. All real physical phenomena share this, they are the same on every scale.

 

[D'rok]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6629697&postcount=390

I already bolded the relevant parts. The plasma can reach a critical point for a variety of reasons. Alfven tells that story about the exploding switch a lot by the way. It's one of the key experiences in his life that got him into plasma physics in the first place. At critical current flows and pressures "breakdowns" occur. That's all he means.

Why are you citing Alfven to respond to a question about Peratt?

 

[Arthur Mann]

Please show, in detail, how the Sun produces a steady ~3.9x10^26 W, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, over time periods of at least 100,000 years, according to the Electric Sun model.

It's really very simple, the sun's energy output is determined by the electric currents powering it. There is no inherent problem with suggesting an electric discharge powering the sun throughout its entire life. No observation of the sun suggests this is impossible and no fundamental principle of electromagnetics forbids it, either. There's nothing to explain here, this "problem" only exists inside your head.

 

[D'rok]

It's really very simple, the sun's energy output is determined by the electric currents powering it. There is no inherent problem with suggesting an electric discharge powering the sun throughout its entire life. No observation of the sun suggests this is impossible and no fundamental principle of electromagnetics forbids it, either. There's nothing to explain here, this "problem" only exists inside your head.

Shouldn't it be trivially obvious to actually observe these electrical currents that power the sun?

Where are they?

 

[dasmiller]

I certainly can, though it should have been obvious.

As we've already established, you and I have different views of "obvious."

You may falsify plasma cosmology by proving that, somewhere in space, there is no plasma,

Really, that would falsify plasma cosmology? How big a volume would we need? 1 cm^3, 1 km^3, 1 LY^3? And how would that falsify it?

or that the plasma behaves differently there than it does here on Earth, or that electromagnetic forces are imaginary, or that gravity can in fact dominate electromagnetic forces in plasmas.

So, you believe that
A) the upper layers of the sun are plasma with a very large net charge,
B) the sun is not flying apart
and C) gravity cannot dominate EM forces.

So, what's holding the sun together?

But leaving aside that issue - that's it? The laboratory measurements of plasma behavior and the existence of at least one ion in every x km^3 of space are sufficient to prove that the sun is powered by galactic current flows?

 

[Tubbythin]

Do we generate x-rays using gravity or do we use electric and magnetic fields? .

Erm. You do no what a photon is right?

 

[Ziggurat]

I have no idea what you're getting at here. This "100 years" figure was put forth by somebody else, as a consequence of their model, not the electric star model.

The 100 year figure is a lower bound. We know the sun has been shining about as bright as it is now for more than 100 years, because people have been observing it for more than 100 years. If your model can't come up with an energy budget that will last at least this long, it's clearly wrong. But of course, we know it should last much, MUCH longer than that.

 

[Tubbythin]

It's really very simple, the sun's energy output is determined by the electric currents powering it. There is no inherent problem with suggesting an electric discharge powering the sun throughout its entire life. No observation of the sun suggests this is impossible and no fundamental principle of electromagnetics forbids it, either. There's nothing to explain here, this "problem" only exists inside your head.

Except that there nobody has provided any quantitative evidence to support the idea that billions and billions of Joules per second of energy can be produced this way.

 

[Ziggurat]

It's really very simple, the sun's energy output is determined by the electric currents powering it. There is no inherent problem with suggesting an electric discharge powering the sun throughout its entire life. No observation of the sun suggests this is impossible and no fundamental principle of electromagnetics forbids it, either. There's nothing to explain here, this "problem" only exists inside your head.

There very much is something to explain. What's the voltage? What's the current? Do those values conform to observations?

It isn't enough to just say that electricity can produce power. That's hand-waving. An actual model needs to be able to quantify these fundamental parameters.

 

[Arthur Mann]

Shouldn't it be trivially obvious to actually observe these electrical currents that power the sun?

Where are they?

We do of course encounter problems measuring the electric current inside a plasma. One of the primary difficulties is the formation of "plasma double layers" around the instruments, which interferes with their operation. However, we do have direct observations of the "solar wind", which accelerates as it leaves the sun. Accelerating charged particles in one direction is direct evidence of an electric field applied in the other direction. Particle physics 101 there.

We also observe this electricity leaving the sun, as all electricity in a circuit must COMPLETE that circuit. These discharges are known colloquially as "polar jets". They are not "jets", however, as the term is commonly understood. They are birkeland currents, a spontaneous effect of electric discharge in plasma that is readily reproduced in the lab and conforms precisely to larger currents observed around (the Earth, the moon, virtually every planet and most of the moons of the larger planets, and) the sun.

 

[Tubbythin]

People who understand the rules of logic and that have a firm grasp on reality (people like myself) would disagree with you.

You think your bread is toasted by electic discharges, that the Sun is powered by external currents you can provide 0 evidence for, that the mass of the Sun is wrong and that only electromagnetism can accelerate things. And you think you have a grip on reality?

 

[Ziggurat]

We do of course encounter problems measuring the electric current inside a plasma. One of the primary difficulties is the formation of "plasma double layers" around the instruments, which interferes with their operation. However, we do have direct observations of the "solar wind", which accelerates as it leaves the sun. Accelerating charged particles in one direction is direct evidence of an electric field applied in the other direction. Particle physics 101 there.

So given that both positive and negative charges move in the same direction in the solar wind, which direction is this electric field?

D'oh!

Still waiting on those currents and voltages.

 

[D'rok]

Peratt was talking about the initiation of a discharge, not stating that discharge only and ever takes places at the initiation of dielectric breakdown (which isn't always present in a discharge). Where is the dielectric breakdown in the birkeland currents powering the aurorae? These have been experimentally modeled by Birkeland, and subsequently discovered to exist. That's why they're named after him. Where is the dielectric (continuously) breaking down as you suggest should be there?

Umm...perhaps it's because Birkeland Currents aren't electric discharges?

 

[dasmiller]

We do of course encounter problems measuring the electric current inside a plasma. One of the primary difficulties is the formation of "plasma double layers" around the instruments, which interferes with their operation. However, we do have direct observations of the "solar wind", which accelerates as it leaves the sun. Accelerating charged particles in one direction is direct evidence of an electric field applied in the other direction. Particle physics 101 there.

So if the solar wind was electrically neutral, that would falsify the Electric Sun theory?