There are no lines. I think that is where the communication between you and justcurious went awry.CharlesChandler wrote:The problem is that you don't know what a Birkeland current is.justcurious wrote:There seems to be some communication breakdown somewhere.
That isn't my model. It's a schematic representation of the data, done by the Southwest Research Institute. As concerns what is wrong with that picture, we should consider how this whole "discussion" got started.justcurious wrote:The model you show of the magnetic field with the lines going to nowhere, that is exactly what is wrong, and that is what I have been questioning from the very beginning.
justcurious wrote:And while on the topic of the Sun's magnetic field, dose anyone know what it looks like? Because from what I read so far the North and South magnetic poles are separated by the HCS which extends all the way out to the Heliosphere. So where would the field lines meet? If they don't, then we have a Sun composed of two monopoles, something considered impossible by all scientists and engineers.Ummm... I "think" that we started out agreeing that open field lines shouldn't be possible. But because you don't understand Birkeland currents, you didn't understand my answer to the question, and you concluded that I didn't answer your question, and then you blamed me. I'm only calling your attention to this because I'd rather not have to go through this again.CharlesChandler wrote:Indeed, "open field lines" shouldn't be possible, and on that topic, the mainstream just starts issuing MHD astrobabble to mask their confusion. IMO, this is easy to understand. The quiet Sun's rotation generates a solenoidal magnetic field, though it has alternating layers of charge, and whichever layer is rotating faster generates the dominant field. Due to a phenomenon known as torsional oscillation, layers inside the Sun speed up and slow down with respect to each other as part of the solar cycle. If those are charged layers, it also explains the inversion of the solenoidal field through the cycle. The active Sun is, of course, considerably more complex. Anyway, as mentioned above, in addition to the solenoidal field, there is also an electron drift that gets consolidated into distinct charge streams at the tips of the helmet streamers. The magnetic field lines follow the outside of the streamers, to the tip, and then continue on out into space. To me, this just means that solenoidal lines of force got redirected into axial lines of force inside Birkeland currents, which never "close" the way solenoidal lines do. So whenever the literature refers to "open magnetic flux tubes", I hear "Birkeland currents with axial magnetic fields".
Why don't you go ahead and model it, and show us what you come up with. Imagine a coil of wire with a current flowing through it. Apply the right hand rule to get your initial take on the magnetic fields that will be generated. According to you, the B-field around a current is always circular. But magnetic field lines cannot intersect. So what happens when the little circular fields from each wrap in the coil overlap each other? They superimpose into a solenoidal field, with a dense axial field, and with the lines splaying outward at the start and stop of the coil. Now imagine that the coil is 1,000 km wide and 100 AU long, and generating a B-field that averages 6 nT (according to the Southwest Research Institute). Theoretically, if the coil stops at the heliopause (i.e., 100 AU), the axial lines of force should wrap around the outside, to close at the beginning of the coil (i.e., back where the HCS first got started). But if you're going to say that the permeability of the interplanetary medium is going to sustain a closing (i.e., unassisted) 6 nT field through 100 AU, I'll ask you to show me the math. Effectively speaking, those lines don't close.justcurious wrote:The b-field around a current is always circular. Now if you give a helical shape to that current, the b-field may have an axial component along the axis of the helix (although I never bothered to model it).
But as I mentioned in my last post, those lines wouldn't loop all of the way back to the beginning anyway -- not if there is an opposite-polarity field nearby. So imagine two coils, 1,000 km wide, 100 AU long, and wound in opposite directions, such that the magnetic polarities are opposite. Out at the far end (i.e., 100 AU from the beginning), what do you think is going to happen to the closing lines? Will they ignore each other, and loop all of the way back to the beginning of the coils? Or will they close on each other? I'm betting that they'll close on each other out at the heliopause. So in that image, where it says (in red text) "open solar magnetic field lines", notice that they're in pairs, and they're opposite in polarity. Just take those, and close them on each other, wherever the current stops.
Then you just have to figure out why the mainstream identifies magnetic flux tubes leading off to nowhere, without any electric currents in them, and in-between the flux tubes, there is this current sheet with no identifiable magnetic field associated with it. IMO, if you have a magnetic field coming from an unidentified electric current, and you have an electric current but no known magnetic field from it, you can answer both riddles by saying that the charge streams in the HCS are generating the observed magnetic fields. Hence the flux tubes and the HCS are the same thing.
Where did I say that?justcurious wrote:But in your case, I believe you are thinking about "magnetic re-connection".
Actually, "magnetic reconnection" (as used by the mainstream) is a non-physical construct supposedly responsible for solar flares and similar releases of stored energy. As used by the mainstream, there aren't any electric currents in it -- it's just (imaginary) energy stored in magnetic flux tubes that explode every once in a while. But that's a non-physical construct. If you're going to try to explain it in physical terms, you're misusing the term.justcurious wrote:So-called "magnetic re-connection" is when a current takes the path of least resistance (as currents like to do), which in some cases will be on a path parallel to the b-field and hence "force-free", and the currents will appear to be following a "magnetic line".
Regards,
Daniel