Of course we have, as you should already know (i.e.,
comments on Magnetic Reconnection). But you have the peculiar habit of demanding "controlled laboratory experiments", and then summarily rejecting any experiment that does not agree with your own pre-conceived ideas, just as you have already rejected all of the controlled laboratory observations of magnetic reconnection. Not for any good reason, but just because you don't like them.
That's not actually 'true'. Even before posting to this particular board, I have seen mathematical descriptions of "magnetic reconnection" that were "ok" by me, but pseudonyms for "particle reconnection" or "circuit reconnection" as described by Birn, et all. As long as you are willing to admit these are interchangeable terms, I personally have no problem with the idea of 'magnetic reconnection'. If however you are claiming that there is a 'unique' form of energy exchange between these two "circuits' or these 'particle flows", then I will expect you demonstrate it somehow. I'm struggling personally to find any "difference" between what you are describing as "magnetic reconnection' and simple circuit reconnection in plasma.
Birkeland's experiments are irrelevant.
Boloney. How can the be "irrelevant" when parts of them (at least the aurora parts) have already been "accepted" by the mainstream? You could argue *some* of his experiments are irrelevant, but certainly not all of them.
They have nothing at all to do with the central issue, and they certainly have nothing at all to do with the sun.
I know that you believe this is true, but this is where you happen to be wrong, and on the wrong side of history. The 'central' issue is what emits those "particles" that show up in the aurora, and clearly that is the sun, just as Birkeland "predicted" in his models. You can't ignore history here Tim.
FYI, I've spoken with you long enough to know that on most topics your opinions are 'reasonable'. For whatever reasons, you and Don Scott seemed to have locked swords on the idea of "electricity" as it relates to solar activity. You *may* (I haven't followed it all) be correct about some of your criticisms of Scott's work, but I assure you that you are dead wrong on the overall application of Birkeland's work to solar physics. I suggest you personally spend more time on Birkeland's presentation and less on anyone else's presentations of this material. It's far more "professional" at every level IMO.
They don't reproduce any of the physical characteristics of the sun,
Except whole sphere solar wind, jets, loops, etc?
and the pictures you post don't even look like the sun, despite your strange claims that they do (in violation of the evidence of our own eyes).
I suppose this only demonstrates that we "see" only which we wish to see, and we do not see what we do not wish to see. I see loops in the solar atmosphere in almost every high energy solar image. I see loops in the atmosphere of Birkeland's sphere, and he wrote about them too, so obviously he *saw* them too. You don't see those loops?
You have in fact not one single "controlled laboratory experiment" of any kind, ever performed by anyone, anywhere, to objectively support anything you have ever said about the sun. We all know it. You are the only one so blind you can't see that even your own "experiments" are useless.
This is just pure denial on your part IMO. Birkeland produced real "experiments" with real "physical things" that had a real "physical effect" on his experiments. With these 'physical things" he produced aurora around spheres in a vacuum. He produced "jets" and "loops" and high speed solar wind emissions too, including pieces of the cathode itself and other charged particles. Your denial routine on this issue is simply absurd IMO. I think somewhere along the line you got your ego tied up in "debunking" an "electric sun" concept, but not just *one* concept, evidently *all* theories related to "electric suns". I think that a dangerous place to be from the perspective of history, particularly in light of more recent satellite data.
All you can do is subjectively and arbitrarily assume (for no good physical reason at all) that all of these experiments somehow magically apply to the sun. That's it.
It's not a form of "magic" Tim, it's a form of "physical experimentation". You can't honestly sit there and deny that Birkeland did get his sphere to emit "particles" of "every kind". You're simply "assuming" something *other than* the one force we KNOW for a fact can "cause" this effect did it. You can't adequate explain it, nor can your even differentiate "magnetic reconnection" from "circuit" or "particle" reconnection at the level of actual physics. What is "physically unique" about magnetic reconnection that is somehow different from the "circuit reconnection" that Birkeland used?
Absolutely not. It's the magnetic field that reconnects,
What "physically" (at the point of physical "reconnection") is reconnecting? Which of Maxwell's equations treat magnetic fields as individual 'lines' that can "reconnect" in some physical way?
and that forces any current flows to change, or "reconnect" if you wish.
How do you *know for a fact* that you don't have the cart before the horse? In other words, how do you know it's not just like an ordinary plasma filament in an ordinary plasma ball that simply "changes direction' and thereby changes the magnetic topology? How do you know it's not "electricity" doing the work?
The field changes first, and then the currents follow.
How do you know it works in *that* order when we know for a fact that the "current flow" in our atmosphere generates those strong "magnetic lines" we observe in lightning storms?
It would be the other way around if it was really "circuit reconnection".
What causes "lightning" on Earth Tim?
But since you summarily and arbitrarily reject all of the controlled laboratory experiments which prove magnetic reconnection beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's no surprise that you must
have "circuit reconnection" instead.
Like I said before, I'm struggling to see what distinguished it from ordinary "circuit reconnection" like an ordinary plasma ball. That first abstract from that first paper makes it entirely clear that the *electrons* are flowing between the two "circuits".
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