Electric Sun: A Quantitative Calculation

[Physicist]

* In the resources part of this website Dave calls himself a comparative mythologist, but I think he's also got a degree in engineering. Anyway, I agree that the EU Theory seems to suggest that electrons entering the Sun stay there, although Dave probably understands physics much better than I do.

Well David definitely gets a gold star for displaying at least a hint of scientific sanity.

let's organize a debate on the topic of the electric Sun

Richard Dawkins had some insightful comments to make when he was similarly challenged by a creationist:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/119- ... eationists

". . . science keeps its playing field level by the rather admirable system of anonymous peer-review. If you have evidence that evolution is false, you are entirely at liberty to submit a paper to the Editor of Nature, or Science, or the Journal of Theoretical Biology, or the American Naturalist, or Biological Reviews, or the Quarterly Review of Biology, or any of hundreds of other reputable journals in which ordinary working scientists publish their research. Do not fear that Editors will reject it simply because it opposes evolution. On the contrary, the journal that published a paper which really did discover a fallacy in evolution, or convincing evidence against it, would have the scoop of the century, in scientific terms. Editors would kill to get their hands on it."

This challenge by me has ? of course ? gone unanswered. On my side the correspondence is terminated, although Priest/Mastropaolo went on bombarding me weekly with increasingly raucous accusations of cowardice. He reminds me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who continued, as a stump-waving, blood-spouting torso, to shout "Running away, eh? . . . Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off" at the indifferent back of the opponent who had successively deprived him of all four limbs.

I hope that my recollection of Stephen Gould's wise words will encourage others to refuse all debating invitations from pseudoscientists avid for publicity. Quite a good plan, which I follow myself from time to time, is to recommend that the case for evolution could easily be entrusted to a local undergraduate majoring in biology. Alternatively, I plead a prior engagement: an important forthcoming debate against the Flat Earth Society.

[seb]

Richard Dawkins had some insightful comments to make when he was similarly challenged by a creationist:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/119- ... eationists
[snip bits about peer review and debates]

May I ask why you quoted Dawkins, rather than some random nobody who might have tweeted the same sentiments?

[davesmith_au]

Physicist, you are simply making things up as you go along.

The next use of the word "pseudoscience" in a veiled reference to the EU will get you banned.

let's organize a debate on the topic of the electric Sun

Richard Dawkins had some insightful comments to make when he was similarly challenged by a creationist:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/119- ... eationists

"
[...]

I hope that my recollection of Stephen Gould's wise words will encourage others to refuse all debating invitations from pseudoscientists avid for publicity. Quite a good plan, which I follow myself from time to time, is to recommend that the case for evolution could easily be entrusted to a local undergraduate majoring in biology. Alternatively, I plead a prior engagement: an important forthcoming debate against the Flat Earth Society.

(my highlight)

Besides the total irrelevancy of your quote to EU (couldn't resist the creationism reference eh?), your thinly veiled (I take it yu added the bold?...) pseudoscience reference just got you banned. This is not negotiable.

Dave Smith.
Forum Administrator.

[PersianPaladin]

lol

I thought big-bang theorists were creationists?

[tayga]

". . . science keeps its playing field level by the rather admirable system of anonymous peer-review. If you have evidence that evolution is false, you are entirely at liberty to submit a paper to the Editor of Nature, or Science, or the Journal of Theoretical Biology, or the American Naturalist, or Biological Reviews, or the Quarterly Review of Biology, or any of hundreds of other reputable journals in which ordinary working scientists publish their research. Do not fear that Editors will reject it simply because it opposes evolution. On the contrary, the journal that published a paper which really did discover a fallacy in evolution, or convincing evidence against it, would have the scoop of the century, in scientific terms. Editors would kill to get their hands on it."

Dawkins would say that. He's a bully protected by and protecting his reputation and the orthodoxy it relies upon. Peer review would be a perfect system if it did not involve personalities and vested interest. I'm sure Dawkins' opinion of the interests of editors would be universally true if the reputation of an editor himself didn't depend on the orthodox view. The outright rejection in 1967 of Halton Arp's paper Companion Galaxies on the Ends of Spiral Arms by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, then editor of Astrophysical Journal, with the handwritten comment 'This exceeds my experience' illustrates that. Subsequent publication in an alternative journal following refereeing by Jan Oort demonstrates that Chandrasekhar's opposition was not scientific.

Anyway, now back to the discussion...

[David Talbott]

Okay Nereid, we'll do this. Though I'm traveling today, let's see if we can quickly clarify the purpose, format, and ground rules of a debate.

I've got a pretty good sense of what I'd like to see. Later today, I'll look over your own comments on the subject, but for starters here are a few of my own preferences:

We'll need to keep this to a one-on-one exchange, with both parties being free to pass the torch to a replacement. I'm saying this primarily for my own benefit. My time will be limited, and it's my plan to hand the torch to someone else rather early in the exchange, while reserving the right to carry it longer than I presently anticipate. I think it will be fine to run the exchange for five or six weeks. I'd like to end it officially six weeks after it begins, but will accept any preference on your part for ending it earlier. Of course, we should allow also for the debate to continue by mutual agreement.

Allowing time for personal research and consultation will also be important. Four to seven days between exchanges seems like a reasonable limit, given the more lasting and fundamental nature of the debate. Both of us should be free to take up to seven days in formulating a response. But there will be no limit on the speed of the exchange insofar as "faster" works for both parties. We'll also want to set limits on word count in order to maintain a reasonable balance.

We'll develop a list of questions we're called upon to answer, keeping the list as clearly focused as we can on clarifying the implications of two competing vantage points. I'd say that the questions should be framed in the most elementary terms, leaving no doubt as to the contrast between the standard perspective and the EU perspective of the Sun. Standard theory does not see any external electrical influence on the Sun. The EU does. Since this contrast is the most fundamental of all, is that a reasonable frame of reference for a debate?

The priority must be on establishing the factual underpinnings of the two views, while allowing for both specialized and interdisciplinary lines of reasoning. (Yes, I'm speaking a little loosely here, trusting we should be able to agree that experimental work and raw data returned by scientific instruments and space probes provide a good sense of the factual material to be considered.)

We'll take pains to keep the debate friendly and on course. We might even consider bringing in an agreed-upon arbitrator from outside the Thunderbolts circle, one who could at least make suggestions on applications of the ground rules.

The debate will be it's own thread, but a separate thread will be started in advance of the debate, to take comments and observations by others that might affect our vision for the debate. This thread will continue through the debate, and only the two debaters will be precluded from participation in the thread.

Both parties to the debate will be free to use the material, or references to it, in subsequent publication.

Personally, I'm making this commitment for three reasons. 1) I believe it will help our readers to understand the nature of the plasma universe and its particular applications in the Electric Universe hypothesis; 2) a debate will give us something more permanent and more helpful than a free-for-all (more content than most folks can follow, all virtually disappearing almost as fast as it is posted); and 3) having finished my work on the second DVD in the Alien Sky series, I could use a break.
________________________________

Incidentally, I see that Lloyd has suggested I might have some training in engineering. No. My interest in these things started with a study of cross-cultural evidence for extraordinary cosmic events in ancient times. Since the reconstructed events were entirely off the map of science, the study made crystal clear to me that an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together wide-ranging fields of investigation, is essential to an appreciation of planetary history.

Perhaps tomorrow morning I can speak with Dave Smith about moving ahead as briskly as time will allow.

[neilwilkes]

Here's a thought.
Is the ES DC or AC?
It makes an enormous difference - see http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html#electron
and in particular this section:

ELECTRIC ENERGY IS CARRIED BY INDIVIDUAL ELECTRONS? Wrong.
Some books teach that, in a simple battery/bulb circuit, each electron carries energy to the bulb, deposits its energy in the hot filament, and then returns to the battery where it's re-filled with energy. This is wrong. Some books give an analogy with a circular track full of freight cars waiting to be filled with coal. This picture is wrong too. The energy in electric circuits is not carried by individual electrons. Instead the electrons move very slowly while the electrical energy flows rapidly along the columns of electrons. In AC circuits the electrons don't flow forward at all, instead they vibrate slightly. The energy is carried by the circuit as a whole, not by the individual charged particles.

Electric currents are not always a flow of negative particles........
Any thoughts?

[tayga]

Here's a thought.
Is the ES DC or AC?
It makes an enormous difference - see http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html#electron
and in particular this section:

ELECTRIC ENERGY IS CARRIED BY INDIVIDUAL ELECTRONS? Wrong.
Some books teach that, in a simple battery/bulb circuit, each electron carries energy to the bulb, deposits its energy in the hot filament, and then returns to the battery where it's re-filled with energy. This is wrong. Some books give an analogy with a circular track full of freight cars waiting to be filled with coal. This picture is wrong too. The energy in electric circuits is not carried by individual electrons. Instead the electrons move very slowly while the electrical energy flows rapidly along the columns of electrons. In AC circuits the electrons don't flow forward at all, instead they vibrate slightly. The energy is carried by the circuit as a whole, not by the individual charged particles.

Electric currents are not always a flow of negative particles........
Any thoughts?

That's an interesting question and an informative link. I think that the comparison of a rarified plasma with a copper wire runs up against the reason that rarified plasmas are not superconductors. The large distance between charge carriers in the plasma means that the flow of energy is only infinitessimally faster than the speed at which the charge carriers move because until one charge carrier nears another (potential) charge carrier there's no way of passing on the energy.

[Nereid]

neilwilkes, tayga,

The Electric Sun hypothesis, per the Scott webpage I quoted from in the first post in this thread, posits that the it is DC.

Over 80 au - the distance assumed distance from the Sun to the heliopause/heliosheath/whatever - the light travel time is 40,000 seconds, a bit over 11 hours. I do not know how an AC current would work, over this distance, to power the Sun; do you?

Also, I think (but am not 100% sure) that being part of a giant interstellar - possibly inter-galactic - Birkeland current is central the Electric Sun hypothesis; AFAIK, the currents in such filaments is DC (except, possibly, over very long timeframes).

David Talbott,

I will respond later (much to consider).

[Siggy_G]

Electric currents are not always a flow of negative particles........
Any thoughts?

I'm not an electric engineer, but from what I remember, plasmas generally contain one-way currents, hence DC – or even jets. The principle of a z-pinch is also related to parallell one-way currents pinching due to their induced (azimutal) magnetic fields embracing and compressing these direct(ional) currents together. The background for AC though is not really based on any process in nature, but basically to a rotating conducting plate within an electric field; and hence changing flux and current direction (between 1 and -1). For denser mediums, electrons tend to reconfigure to form an "electron sea" around molecular structures, which currents tend to propagate through.

However, as I see it, even for a sparse medium like the interplanetary medium (IPM), where electrons aren't connected within continous molecular structures, as long as there's an electric field, electrons don't need to move much in order to be a part of a current. The IPM is sparse (5 ion particles per cm^3 at 1 AU, and I assume 5 electrons as well for it to be quasi-neutral) and somewhat denser around the Sun (about 100 particles per cm^3). The IPM is ionized, obviously - and even a few electrons per cm^3 should be within "range" / their mean free path; even indirectly connected through a tiny drift or directly connected through their own charge range. As I haven't searched much yet, does anyone have any sources describing how electrons/currents behave in sparse plasma mediums?

[webolife]

Neilwilkes, tayga, and Siggy,
These questions are exactly the dilemma I've posted numerous times, in my words:
Electric current in a wire and an astronomical scale plasma [Birkeland] current are two different uses of the word "current". One is a transfer of energy, virtually instantaneously, across a solid medium; the other is a flow of ions through space. But many posts and articles on TB speak as thought they are the same event. I'm still perplexed by this.

[tayga]

Neilwilkes, tayga, and Siggy,
These questions are exactly the dilemma I've posted numerous times, in my words:
Electric current in a wire and an astronomical scale plasma [Birkeland] current are two different uses of the word "current". One is a transfer of energy, virtually instantaneously, across a solid medium; the other is a flow of ions through space. But many posts and articles on TB speak as thought they are the same event. I'm still perplexed by this.

And it's a question very relevant to the quantitative treatment of Electric Sun theory. I'm an outsider to electrical theory and I had never before considered the observation Neilwilkes linked to (and that Siggy alludes to) that the flow of energy in a circuit is considerably quicker than the flow of charge.If as Siggy suggests,

as long as there's an electric field, electrons don't need to move much in order to be a part of a current.

and electrons in a rarified plasma can be considered in the same way a electrons in a copper wire, then treatments such as Nereid's (above) could seriously overestimate both the required drift velocity and the required energy per electron to achieve the observed power of the Sun.

[Nereid]

Neilwilkes, tayga, and Siggy,
These questions are exactly the dilemma I've posted numerous times, in my words:
Electric current in a wire and an astronomical scale plasma [Birkeland] current are two different uses of the word "current". One is a transfer of energy, virtually instantaneously, across a solid medium; the other is a flow of ions through space. But many posts and articles on TB speak as thought they are the same event. I'm still perplexed by this.

And it's a question very relevant to the quantitative treatment of Electric Sun theory.

That's certainly the case when you consider it as a whole.

I'm an outsider to electrical theory and I had never before considered the observation Neilwilkes linked to (and that Siggy alludes to) that the flow of energy in a circuit is considerably quicker than the flow of charge.If as Siggy suggests,

as long as there's an electric field, electrons don't need to move much in order to be a part of a current.

and electrons in a rarified plasma can be considered in the same way a electrons in a copper wire, then treatments such as Nereid's (above) could seriously overestimate both the required drift velocity and the required energy per electron to achieve the observed power of the Sun.

I don't think so (and would be interested to read more on this).

You see, both energy and charge are conserved (as are momentum, and a lot of other things); neither energy nor charge can be created (out of nothing) or destroyed*.

The calculation in my opening post assumes (or relies upon) nothing more than conservation of energy and charge (and details exactly as presented on the Electric Sun hypothesis webpage I provided a link to).

* at least in the theories of electromagnetism and of plasmas that are the bedrock of the Electric Sun hypothesis (or model; I don't think Scott ever calls it a theory)

[kiwi]

neither energy nor charge can be created (out of nothing) or destroyed*.

so no Big Bang?

[Siggy_G]

Neilwilkes, tayga, and Siggy,
These questions are exactly the dilemma I've posted numerous times, in my words:
Electric current in a wire and an astronomical scale plasma [Birkeland] current are two different uses of the word "current". One is a transfer of energy, virtually instantaneously, across a solid medium; the other is a flow of ions through space. But many posts and articles on TB speak as thought they are the same event. I'm still perplexed by this.

Indeed, a current through a dense medium wire behave differently from currents through a low density plasma. But they're still currents between two regions of different charge or energy potential drop. The question is whether the plasma currents consist of an ion flow, electron flow or both. The thing is, in an electric field, electrons are accelerated more than the much heavier ions, so it seems they would be the main charge carriers moving within a plasma. The next question is at which speed is the drift and what amount of synchrotron radiation would they be expected to emit? (Some critisism is directed to Birkeland currents having to emit synchrotron radiation like crazy, but it seems to me that the scenario described is intense electron spiraling or really fast drifts, which may not be the case).