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

[Reality Check]

Peratt gave *AN* example of ONE TYPE of an ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE. Yes, that particular one requires a a breakdown. So what? It's one SUBSET of MANY TYPES of "electrical discharges" RC. Quit ignoring that FACT!

Peratt gave *MANY* examples of ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES and NEVER gave an example OF electrical DISCHARGES in PLASMA.
MM. Quit ignoring that FACT!
Quit ignoring the fcat that you cannot answer:

• Where are Peratt's many pages of the physics and mathematics of electrical discharges within plasma?
  First asked 7 December 2010
• Do you know the difference between a title and a definition
  First asked 11 January 2011
• Why does Peratt's page talk about aurora and lightning which happen in air not plasma?
  First asked 3rd February 2011
• MM: Why does the title of Anthony Peratt's book appear in the section 1.5 title?
  Shouldn't the title be "Electrical discharges in Plasma"?
  Or what is the magical property of "cosmic" plasmas that allows lightning in them when lightning is impossible in normal plasmas?
  First asked 11th May 2011

because Peratt completely ignores actual electrical discharges in plasma.

BS! Read the TITLE again RC.

BS!
Do you know the difference between a title and a definition
First asked 11 January 2011

I don't deny that CURRENTS reconnect, I deny that "magnetic lines" reconnect.

Two problems there: Magnetic lines actually reconnect . Magnetic reconnection experiments measure this happening all of the time.
No one denies that current can change. In fact this is a large part of magnetic reconnection theory. Of course any one with a knowledge of basic physics knows that the chnaging currents cannot account for the energy released in magnetic reconnection or even the time scales over which that energy is released.

From another thread a post that is a bit relevant:
Michael Mozina: Why do MR experiments show reconnection and then current disruption?

I handed you one on a SILVER PLATTER RC. You simply ignored it.

You are lying. You have never cited a textbook that discusses actual electric discharges in plasma. Peratt completely ignores this topic. All you have is the fantasy that the title is the definition!

Why should I bother going through a bunch more books on this topic for you when I've already handed you a PERFECTLY GOOD ONE already?

BEACUSE YOU HAVE NOT.
You have produced a few paragraphs (1 page!) in a 30 year old book that is taking about standard electrical discharges like lightning and aurora.

Peratt never gives any examples of actual electrical discharges in plasma.
Peratt never gives the mathematics of actual electrical discharges in plasma.
Peratt never discusses the physics behind actual electrical discharges in plasma.
Or you could answer:
Where are Peratt's many pages of the physics and mathematics of electrical discharges within plasma?
First asked 7 December 2010

So you think that there are actual electrical discharges in plasma. A pity Peratt has only about a page in his 'Electrical Discharges in Cosmic Plasma' section, never gives an example of them, never discusses their theory and never describes the physics behind them.
But this is

1. only one book
2. a 30 year ool book

So there must be dozens of older and newer texbook thats describe such an fundamental topic. Thus:
Where is the discussion of 'electrical discharges in plasma' in any textbook?
If you want to continue with your fantasy that Peratt gives examples of electrical discharges in plasma or has any math or physics about them then answer this as:
Where is the discussion of 'electrical discharges in plasma' in any other textbook?
For example - you have at least one book by Alfven. He probably discusses such a fundamental topic. So cite him.

If not, have a think about why Alfvin ignores this Moziphysics of yours .

 

[sol invictus]

I strongly urge you to read the first few chapters (the free ones) of Cosmic Plasma sol. Alfven clearly explains how current carrying plasmas form themselves into pinched threads which generate magnetic fields and evacuate the areas directly around those threads to insulate them from the surrounding plasmas. He explains the math and everything.

Fine - then it's just a question of semantics. I agree that if some process reduces the plasma density to the point that it's not longer a good conductor (in which case it probably shouldn't be called a plasma at all), a discharge could happen.

FYI sol, on the the following page from the quote I listed, Birkeland directly discusses how sunspots are related to those discharge processes. It's a lengthy set of text, but you can read it for yourself.

Thanks.

The quote you gave is very vague - he just says the two look similar, not that he thinks they are related physically. But I'll have a look at the text if I can find it.

 

[Reality Check]

What idea is that? The areas directly around the current carrying threads have been evacuated of plasma. That evacuated area acts as an "insulator" unless or until two or more of them come into contact, or one part of the circuit fails as described by Mann and Onel. At that point all hell breaks loose and an "electrical discharge" occurs in the plasma.

That is gibberish and nothing to do with the actual post.
The fact is that Peratt states that 'Electrίcal Discharges in Cosmic Plasma' involve a dleectric medium.
The fact is that Peratt explicitly gives the example of lightning as a 'Electrίcal Discharges in Cosmic Plasma'.
You are implying that Peratt is extremely ignorant since the 'Electrίcal Discharges in Cosmic Plasma' section is (in your head only) all about plasmas and lightning happens in air (which is not a plasma !).

 

[Reality Check]

Oh, but I do. I understand the physical difference between a flow of current and a "magnetic line", something you folks seem to be completely incapable of discerning.

That is a total delusion, Michael Mozina.
MOst of the poisters here seem to have at least high school level physics (actually there are at least 2 post-graduates). They know the physical difference between a flow of current and a magnetic line.

They also know the physical difference between a current and a magnetic field means that it is impossible for magnetic reconnection to be powered by currents, especially when experiments show that the currents change after the magnetic fiedls change.
Michael Mozina: Why do MR experiments show reconnection and then current disruption?
First asked 16 May 2011

 

[sol invictus]

There is indeed some speculation in Birkeland's book regarding sunspots and their electrical analogs. But I notice that he always seems to refer to his experiments as "analogies" - for instance on p.670 at the beginning of section 129. So it's not clear to me how seriously he took it.

Further discussion of this should probably be moved to tusenfem's thread on Birkeland's theories.

 

[GeeMack]

What? Based on the Birkeland solar model described on my website I would "explain" it by saying that the shockwave hit a literal (and solid) mountain range and was deflected by those physical objects.

As somewhat of an expert in video processing and with a thorough understanding of how these types of videos are obtained and processed, I have analyzed the video in the composite form, slowed it down, and separated the color channels to view it in what seems to be its original components before it was made into a public relations pretty picture composite.

​

I have come to the following conclusion: Absolutely nothing in the video could possibly hit or be deflected by a mountain range, a ridge, or a valley, for two very good reasons...

First, the existence of a mountain range or other solid or rigid physical feature on the Sun is impossible as has been demonstrated objectively and quantitatively with real math and real physics countless times in another thread here (as well as in discussions at other science forums like the BAUT). But that is, of course, off topic for this thread.

The other reason, and directly to the point, everything we see in the video is likely a composite of thermal graphics obtained with 171Å, 193Å, and 211Å filters. These would be showing regions of changing thermal conditions between 1 and 2 million Kelvin. Those thermal conditions exist in the Sun's corona, thousands of kilometers above the photosphere. Thousands of kilometers above the photosphere. Even if there were solid features on the Sun (which there aren't, of course, due to limitations imposed by simple laws of physics), those features would have to extend thousands of kilometers above the photosphere in order to deflect the wave. If there was something solid sticking up thousands of kilometers into the corona, it would be common knowledge. It doesn't exist. It can't. The entire line of reasoning, the claim that this video shows something electrical and/or the results of a shock wave deflected by solid or rigid structures, is nonsense and may be dismissed as such.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

They also know the physical difference between a current and a magnetic field means that it is impossible for magnetic reconnection to be powered by currents, especially when experiments show that the currents change after the magnetic fiedls change.

That's news to me. According to Maxwell's equations (specifically Ampère's Law), changing currents are accompanied by changing magnetic fields. It isn't hard to describe a situation in which changing currents result in magnetic reconnection.

 

[Reality Check]

What? Based on the Birkeland solar model described on my website I would "explain" it by saying that the shockwave hit a literal (and solid) mountain range and was deflected by those physical objects.

Then you have a couple of major problems:
Lying about this imaginary solar model of yours being Birkelands.
Continuing with your delusion that there are solid structures on the surface of the Sun.

What was your explanation for the fact the shockwave is split in two at area 1 and is blocked from further expansion in the regions beyond the line marked 3?

The change in density caused by the change in magnetic field strength.

Er, no. I'm saying a literal mountain range deflected the shockwave. What did you say deflected that shockwave?

Er, no, You are saying that you have a delusion about a literal mountain range on the Sun.
The change in density caused by the change in magnetic field strength.

So what? Got any evidence there was either a density or field change capable of deflecting and separating that shock wave at 1 or along 3? Aren't you claiming all those iron lines ONLY appear in the 'corona', a wispy light layer of the sun?

So what? Got any evidence there is a "literal mountain range" on the Sun. We know from other threads that you have 'bunny in the clouds' fantasies about solar images. But it would be interesting to see your list of scientific papers observing solid mountains on the Sun (at what temperature, how high are they and what are they made of, MM?).

What scientists know is that highly ionized iron (say Fe IX and above) is only detectable in the corona. This so really simple stuff that has been explained to you before. It starts with the definition of the photosphere which means that we cannot see below it. Then we have the measured temperature of the photosphere (~5700 K). To get Fe IX you need a temperature of at least 160,000 K, Fe XII needs at least 600,000 K and Fe XV needs at least 1,250,000 K.
Guess where those temperatures happen, MM.

So 'all those iron lines' (Fe IX and above) happen in the wispy light corona.
You may see some Fe II enission from the photosphere since all it needs is 4000 K (the 1600 A band).

You still do not get it. The change in the shock waves is the evidence.
You have shock waves traveling through plasma.
The only thing that can deflect them is changes in the density of plasma.
Magnetohydrodynamics (read Alfven's book!) shows that changes in magnetic fields cause changes in plasma density.
Thus as Alfven would agree, the shock wave deflections are evidence of changes in magnetic fields.

 

[Reality Check]

That's news to me. According to Maxwell's equations (specifically Ampère's Law), changing currents are accompanied by changing magnetic fields. It isn't hard to describe a situation in which changing currents result in magnetic reconnection.

The actual paper is
Lessons from Labatory Experiments on Reconnection, R.L. Stenzel, W. Gekelman and J. M. Urrutia 1986
which clearly shows (read the abstract, see Fig 9) that current disruption (and thus DLs) happens afer the magnetic reconnection.

I would say that Maxwell's equations say it goes both ways. It is the physical situation in magnetic reconnection that causes the fields to change first and then the currents to change ('disrupt').

 

[W.D.Clinger]

The actual paper is
Lessons from Labatory Experiments on Reconnection, R.L. Stenzel, W. Gekelman and J. M. Urrutia 1986
which clearly shows (read the abstract, see Fig 9) that current disruption (and thus DLs) happens afer the magnetic reconnection.

I would say that Maxwell's equations say it goes both ways. It is the physical situation in magnetic reconnection that causes the fields to change first and then the currents to change ('disrupt').

I'm fine with your summary of the situation described in that paper.

My disagreement was with your generalization from that situation (and others) to the highlighted statement below, which appears to be factually incorrect:

They also know the physical difference between a current and a magnetic field means that it is impossible for magnetic reconnection to be powered by currents, especially when experiments show that the currents change after the magnetic fiedls change.

 

[Reality Check]

That's incorrect:

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/images/birkelandyohkohmini.jpg

And one more time: It is very ignorant to compare a visible light image to an X-ray image and expect them to look alike.

It is even more ignorant to claim that 2 images that are obviously different look alike

• The X-ray image is missing the filaments from the North pole.
• The visible light image is missing the second ring in the X-ray image (below the equator).
• The visible image has a ring of bright spots that is not in the other images.
• The X-ray image has bulges above the equatorial rings that are not in the visible image.
• The X-ray image has a difuse background that is not in the visible image.

And the most important point:

The visible light image is of the electrical discharges from a metallic ball.
The X-ray images is of light emitted from highly heated plasma above the surface of a ball of plasma.
The physical mechanisms creating the light that formed these images is different. Thus the slight resemblance is coincidental.
​

In fact it amazes me that you selected an X-ray image that is so different. Surely in the millions of images of the Sun there is one that looks more like Birkeland's image?

 

[Reality Check]

I'm fine with your summary of the situation described in that paper.

My disagreement was with your generalization from that situation (and others) to the highlighted statement below, which appears to be factually incorrect:

You are right. I should have said that it is impossible for the observed energy that is released from magnetic reconnection to be powered by currents.

 

[tusenfem]

If your so called "magnetic line" turns out to be nothing more than a "Birkeland current", you sure can. That's exactly what your experiments PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt in fact. You used two CURRENTS, specifically FIELD ALIGNED CURRENTS.

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Magnetic_rope.png/300px-Magnetic_rope.png[/qimg]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_current

I have nothing against field aligned currents, which generate the helical magnetic field as in the pic. However, in magnetic reconnection two of these are next to eachother, and where the helical fields touch and are oppositely directed, they reconnect, i.e. they create a connection between the field of the one "birkeland current" and the other.

The fact that two currents are used is to obtain this oppositely directed magnetic field, and has absolutely nothing to do with your so called current reconnection, but you are welcome to sketch how the currents are reconnecting, and create the perpendicular Hall currents etc.

That isn't true. You can subdivide the loops like Mann and Onel did.

Sure you can "subdivide" them if you like, but get it in your head that that still does not give you the process that is actually releasing the energy. Because that is something that circuit theory is incapable of describing, just like e.g. MDH is incapable of describing processes smaller than the ion Larmor radius.

Actually I do rather enjoy looking at the pictures and EXPLAINING them. Since you fancy yourself as this thread foremost leading expert on plasma physics, and "magnetic reconnection' theory, how about you use all this great knowledge to explain the travel path of that shock wave in the SDO movie of that X-class flare for us?

Others have already addressed this.

How odd indeed. Did you ever actually talk to Alfven about it by the way?

No, because when I met Alfvén the only thing that interested him was his weird theory about resonances and the rings of Saturn.

You've really never seen one occur?

Some of the materials blow off the thread during the pinch but some current continues down a smaller thread.

Sure I have seen short circuits in an electrical circuit with wires etcetera, I want to know from YOU how this short circuit occurs in a plasma.

What thread? There is a whole part of the loop that gets squeezed off (see e.g. the Kuperus-Van Tend model, an oldie but a goodie), which creates a

WTF is a "magnetic bubble"?

magnetic bubble, or a magnetic cloud or a plasmoid or whatever you want to call it, or a CME. A selfcontained magnetic structure that flys through interplanetary space.

That shock wave from the flare didn't actually fly "away from" the sun. It flew toward the 10:00 position, got split into two like it hit a solid mountain range and proceeded to then blow over every coronal loop in it's path. Care to explain that shock wave?

That is NOT a shock wave that I am talking about I am talking about the magnetic bubble/cloud/plasmoid that is expelled by the Sun and e.g. hits the Earth. I am totally not interested in your idiotic iron surface of the Sun.

Please excuse my lack of interest in your magnespheric nonsense which Alfven also explained with CIRCUITS. I'm interested in solar physics, and the physics of that last x-class flare. Shows us your stuff...... Not that I'm actually holding my breath.....

Once more, you should actually try to understand what circuit theory is and what it can and cannot do. You don't know that, I hope you do understand that MDH is an approximation of full fledged plasma physics, and circuit theory is again an approximation but now for very long wavelengths.

And yes, some of the things in the Earth's magnetosphere can be modeled easily by circuits (apart from e.g. the development double layers), no problem there. However, if you actually go to Runov et al. (2003) where with the Cluster spacecraft one can actually calculate the currents that are flowing from the measured magnetic fields and one can actually measure the plasma (ions, electrons), etc. etc. and we thus have almost infinitely more detailed observations (DATA) than pretty Sun pictures, your rejection of the study of the Earth's magnetotail (on of the best and accessable plasma physics laboratories) with respect to e.g. magnetic reconnection just makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Fine - then it's just a question of semantics.

After these conversations, I'm convinced it's more than just a question of semantics, it's a question of conceptual (scientific) understanding. If one understands that current carrying plasmas tend to create field aligned currents and circuits, it's easy to conceptually understand how two current streams can eventually come into contact and explode. It's easy to conceptually understand that a single circuit can be "pinched' to the point of failure and a discharge will be the result. If you don't understand what's going on at a conceptual level, it's pretty much meaningless to talk about maths. Even when Mann and Onel laid out the maths for them, it went flying over most of their heads, with perhaps t and Tim being the two exceptions.

I agree that if some process reduces the plasma density to the point that it's not longer a good conductor (in which case it probably shouldn't be called a plasma at all), a discharge could happen.

And it does happen. The magnetic fields around the current tend to "pinch" the ions together to form a current carrying thread and act to evacuate the areas directly around that current carrying thread, thereby insulating them from the surrounding plasmas. If two of these currents come into contact however (for whatever reason), they will either A) 'merge' if they happen to be flowing the same general direction, or B) short circuit in a giant explosion, or C) "reconnect" or realign themselves as current seeks a path of lesser resistance and we get a circuit topology change and maybe a little "discharge" too.

 

[Michael Mozina]

There is indeed some speculation in Birkeland's book regarding sunspots and their electrical analogs. But I notice that he always seems to refer to his experiments as "analogies" - for instance on p.670 at the beginning of section 129. So it's not clear to me how seriously he took it.

It seems to me he took it pretty seriously since he poured a significant portion of his personal wealth into building various apparatuses to test his ideas about an electrified universe. He probably had one of THE most modern laboratories of it's time in fact. I think a lot of his use of verbiage relates to his "scientific" background. I think he just didn't want to seem arrogant.

Further discussion of this should probably be moved to tusenfem's thread on Birkeland's theories.

Nah. If anything the contents of that thread should be merged to this one and we might as well continue here, particularly in light of the events on the 24th. There's some great stuff in those SDO images.

 

[Michael Mozina]

As somewhat of an expert in video processing and with a thorough understanding of how these types of videos are obtained and processed, I have analyzed the video in the composite form, slowed it down, and separated the color channels to view it in what seems to be its original components before it was made into a public relations pretty picture composite.

After watching a few of your videos, I have no doubt that your video skills are excellent, but after listening to your statements over the years, it's clear you have no expertise at all as it relates to what the picture might contain.

For instance, you might be able to explain the pixel resolutions, etc of a picture of brick wall but that doesn't mean you could personally build one from scratch, or that you would really understand the mortar used or anything of the sort.

Your video expertise doesn't necessarily relate to solar physics, and in fact your "Electrical discharges in plasma? What electrical discharges?" pretty much tells the whole tale about your understanding of solar physics.

I have come to the following conclusion: Absolutely nothing in the video could possibly hit or be deflected by a mountain range, a ridge, or a valley, for two very good reasons...

FYI, I didn't ask you to critique my explanation, I asked you folks to provide one of your own. So far RC is the only one to offer anything, but I'm about to blow his argument out of the water, so we can forget the idea that the magnetic fields did anything to that shockwave.

First, the existence of a mountain range or other solid or rigid physical feature on the Sun is impossible as has been demonstrated objectively and quantitatively with real math and real physics countless times in another thread here (as well as in discussions at other science forums like the BAUT). But that is, of course, off topic for this thread.

No, that has all been "alleged" based on YOUR theories about how a sun works, not mine, starting with you "ASSUMPTION" the the photosphere blocks all light. (I don't give a whoot about the definition of the term, you know darn well what I mean).

The other reason, and directly to the point, everything we see in the video is likely a composite of thermal graphics obtained with 171Å, 193Å, and 211Å filters. These would be showing regions of changing thermal conditions between 1 and 2 million Kelvin. Those thermal conditions exist in the Sun's corona, thousands of kilometers above the photosphere.

The also exist far below the surface of the photosphere too.

Thousands of kilometers above the photosphere. Even if there were solid features on the Sun (which there aren't, of course, due to limitations imposed by simple laws of physics), those features would have to extend thousands of kilometers above the photosphere in order to deflect the wave.

No. You ASSUME that the bases of the loop begin ABOVE the photosphere. They do not. The start UNDER the photosphere and the circuit connects UNDER the photosphere as Alfven explained in his paper that you simply handwaved at.

If there was something solid sticking up thousands of kilometers into the corona, it would be common knowledge. It doesn't exist.

Fortunately nobody here made such a claim either.

 

[GeeMack]

Nah. If anything the contents of that thread should be merged to this one and we might as well continue here, particularly in light of the events on the 24th. There's some great stuff in those SDO images.

It has already been determined by objective analysis that those SDO images are irrelevant to any claims about the validity of an electric Sun conjecture. The claim that they show something electrical and/or the results of interaction with a solid surface has only been asserted as an unqualified opinion, appears to be scientifically unsupportable, and in the absence of any further quantitative objective support, remains demonstrably false.

 

[Michael Mozina]

The change in density caused by the change in magnetic field strength.

If you believe that is the case, then it's up to you to show me two images, one in 193A ,and one HMI image that show the magnetic field patterns, and how that location I marked #1 contains something "unique" in terms of the magnetic field alignments.

I'll save you some trouble if you like. I checked it out days ago and there isn't any correlation between the item I marked number 1 in the marked up iron line image and the magnetic field lines in that region. If you doubt me, I suggest that you create an composite overlay image on helioviewer.org and you'll see what I mean.

There is a second problem with your claim because no coronal loops or any magnetic field patterns block or distort the path of the shockwave as it moves south. If the shockwave was in any way affected by the magnetic field arrangements, there would be a lot more reflective processes that should be visible in the image. Instead what we see are the coronal loops in the south blowing around like tall grass blowing in the wind.

The change in density caused by the change in magnetic field strength.

Here is no change in the magnetic field strength in the area marked 1 in any HMI image of the magnetic field alignments for that timeline RC. Your theory doesn't hold up to any scrutiny whatsoever. Care to try again?

 

[Michael Mozina]

It has already been determined by objective analysis.....

What objective analysis?

 

[Michael Mozina]

You are right. I should have said that it is impossible for the observed energy that is released from magnetic reconnection to be powered by currents.

If you believe that to be true, then let's see you folks provide us with an example of a real experiment with actual control mechanisms where NO CURRENTS were involved in the "reconnection" process. Why do you need "currents" at all?