Earth - atmosphere

[CharlesChandler]

Sun dogs change almost instantaneously when there is a flash inside the cloud, because the electric field changes.

[Metryq]

Sun dogs change almost instantaneously when there is a flash inside the cloud, because the electric field changes.

Could you expand on this? I've seen many sun dogs, photographed a few, but never seen them change at all, let alone instantaneously. At most, they fade away as the Sun or clouds move, just like haloes, rainbows and "similar" optical effects. I've always read that sun dogs were a refraction effect from ice or water vapor high in the atmosphere. Is there more to the story?

[CharlesChandler]

Sun dogs change almost instantaneously when there is a flash inside the cloud, because the electric field changes.

Could you expand on this? I've seen many sun dogs, photographed a few, but never seen them change at all, let alone instantaneously. At most, they fade away as the Sun or clouds move, just like haloes, rainbows and "similar" optical effects. I've always read that sun dogs were a refraction effect from ice or water vapor high in the atmosphere. Is there more to the story?

Here we'll need more accurate terminology. If you're talking about haloes, you're talking about sun dogs in the original sense, which are refractions. There's a picture on Wikipedia of the sun bracketed by two sun dogs. These are unwavering, since the alignment of the water aerosols doesn't matter -- they're going to refract light the same way, no matter what. But in the last 10 years or so, with the advent of camera phones, people have been capturing videos of a rare phenomenon at the tops of clouds where reflections of light shift around rapidly. I think that it was Bill Beaty who called these "sun dogs", though he prefers the term "crown flashes". (See http://amasci.com/amateur/sundog.html for his description, as well as a great collection of videos.) The idea is that the electric field can align ice crystals to get them to all reflect light. When the E-field changes, the alignment changes. Since a flash inside the cloud can occur in less than 1/1000 of a second, and since E-fields propagate at the speed of light, the alignment of ice crystals can appear to change instantaneously. This gets the point of reflection to move around, which doesn't happen in a rainbow.

[Metryq]

Thanks, Charles. That's awesome—but not what I would have called a "sun dog" (those compass point arrowheads). "Crown flash" is appropriate; it needs a distinct name.

Nothing like ubiquitous cameras to expose all the "black swans" of the world. (Or all those Russian meteors.)

[CharlesChandler]

Nothing like ubiquitous cameras to expose all the "black swans" of the world. (Or all those Russian meteors.)

That's an excellent point -- it has really only been in the last 10 years or so that cameras have been so ubiquitous, and all of the major scientific paradigms that we're fighting were already firmly entrenched before this happened. Consider, for example, the study of tornadoes. Meteorologists didn't have one single usable video of a tornado until 1974, when somebody decided to go on vacation with his brand-new betacam, and happened to drive right past a tornado. In the next 20 years, another dozen videos became available -- all from amateurs. Scientists don't like using amateur photography, and their theory was already in place, so they just stuck with it. Now, we get at least a dozen videos from every single tornado that touches down in a populated area, and despite the wide variety of forms that tornadoes can take, the general principles become quite obvious when you have that many different videos to watch. Still the scientists refuse to acknowledge that their theory doesn't even come close to explaining the general form of tornadoes. How can they blatantly ignore so many examples to the contrary? These are all new data, which simply weren't available when they were locking down on their official story.

The same goes for the Sun. We now have photography capable of resolving granules on the solar surface. This was information that Einstein and Eddington simply didn't have. And of course the "fusion furnace" model doesn't predict granules -- it doesn't even predict a distinct surface, much less one that has hydrodynamic behaviors. So scientists not wanting to get cut off from the funding stream have to stick with the official story, and to explain stuff like granules, they have no choice but to do it as non-physical modeling. This is why I keep saying that we shouldn't underestimate what a pack of amateurs can do, if we look straight at the data, and start over from the beginning with physics-based models. We are literally better positioned to make the next scientific advance than the scientists, because we have information that they didn't have when they were formulating their models. If scientists were free to follow the data, they'd beat us to the discoveries. But they stepped in concrete and stood still too long, and now they can't move. So we make the discoveries.

[Native]

@Charles,

We are literally better positioned to make the next scientific advance than the scientists, because we have information that they didn't have when they were formulating their models. If scientists were free to follow the data, they'd beat us to the discoveries. But they stepped in concrete and stood still too long, and now they can't move. So we make the discoveries.

Absolutely. And:

Being confident with mathematics, "constants" and calculation methods combined with old cosmological "laws", assumptions and believes, doesn´t necessarily mean understanding. Often it just means quite the opposite

Just think of Newton and his "universal laws of celestial motions" which was directly contradicted by the "galactic rotation anomaly". And still scientists have confidence on this "law" instead of the electromagnetic law which works with the very same qualities as the wakest cosmological link of them all: "Gravity".

[jtb]

Is the atmosphere electrically locked to Earth? I don't believe gravity is the means.

Can anyone reference a scientific experiment showing evidence that the atmosphere can be electrically locked to a rotating, orbiting, spherical object?

Earth is a sphere within a sphere (atmosphere, atmo sphere). The atmosphere is a sphere separating Earth from the vacuum of space. There should be a way of testing how Earth is connected to the atmosphere.

Earth rotates ~1,000 mph west to east at the equator with easterly prevailing winds of ~11 mph. Therefore, the total velocity of the atmosphere at the equator is ~989 mph west to east; ~11 mph slower than Earth's rotation.

If Earth is stationary (not rotating or orbiting), the atmosphere is rotating about Earth's equator at ~11 mph east to west.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

[nick c]

Earth rotates ~1,000 mph west to east at the equator with easterly prevailing winds of ~11 mph.

Prevailing winds vary with latitude and hemisphere. This is conventionally attributed to the coriolis effect.
Prevaiing Winds:
Northern Hemisphere
the equator to 30 degrees.... from the NE (Trade Winds)
30 - 60 degrees..... from the W (Westerlies)
60 - 90 degrees.....from the E (Polar Easterlies)

Southern Hemisphere
Equator to 30 degrees......from the SE (Trade Winds)
30 - 60 degrees......from the W (Westerlies)
60 - 90 degrees......from the E (Polar Easterlies)

If Earth is stationary (not rotating or orbiting), the atmosphere is rotating about Earth's equator at ~11 mph east to west.

No need to consider that!

[jtb]

Can anyone reference a scientific experiment showing evidence that the atmosphere can be electrically locked to a rotating, orbiting, spherical object?

Hi Nick,
We assume that the atmosphere is locked to the earth because we don't feel any wind resistance. Have any scientific experiments been conducted to provide evidence that the atmosphere is locked to Earth?

When I stick my hand outside the window of a stationary car, I feel no resistance; in a speeding car, I do. The conclusion is that the atmosphere is not locked to the vehicle. Why is Earth special?

I am questioning basic assumptions because if incorrect, they lead to the many absurdities in science pointed out on this forum. Perhaps Earth is not traveling >2 million mph through space.

[nick c]

jtb,
Of course there has to be a large electrical element to the atmosphere! In the EU model the Earth is a rotating charged body immersed in a plasma electrically centered at the Sun.
See:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/ ... clouds.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00sub ... tmospheres

also:
Scientists Discover Surprise in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere

[kell1990]

jtb,


also:
Scientists Discover Surprise in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere

From this article: "The sun, in addition to emitting radiation, emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects the Earth and other planets in the solar system. The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun's magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth."...

This is becoming one of my pet peeves, the refusal of science writers and scientists to call PLASMA what it is. Instead, it's referred to as "solar wind", "charged particles" "ionized particles", etc. Everything but PLASMA.

Much confusion could be avoided by calling things by their correct name.

/rant

[jtb]

The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun's magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth."...

This is becoming one of my pet peeves, the refusal of science writers and scientists to call PLASMA what it is. Instead, it's referred to as "solar wind", "charged particles" "ionized particles", etc. Everything but PLASMA.

Am I correct in stating that the magnetosphere, or plasma surrounding Earth, is the container that separates Earth's high pressure atmosphere from the low pressure vacuum of space?

Is it plasma that causes the atmosphere to rotate at approximately the same velocity as Earth?

[Aardwolf]

Is the atmosphere electrically locked to Earth? I don't believe gravity is the means.

Can anyone reference a scientific experiment showing evidence that the atmosphere can be electrically locked to a rotating, orbiting, spherical object?

Earth is a sphere within a sphere (atmosphere, atmo sphere). The atmosphere is a sphere separating Earth from the vacuum of space. There should be a way of testing how Earth is connected to the atmosphere.

Earth rotates ~1,000 mph west to east at the equator with easterly prevailing winds of ~11 mph. Therefore, the total velocity of the atmosphere at the equator is ~989 mph west to east; ~11 mph slower than Earth's rotation.

If Earth is stationary (not rotating or orbiting), the atmosphere is rotating about Earth's equator at ~11 mph east to west.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

No experiment as far as I am aware but we do observe Mars rotating at ~540 mph with average wind speeds of 10-15 mph so it appears that something rotates the atmosphere at roughly the same speed as the planet. I suspect it's electrostatic rather than gravitational as gravity should seperate the atmosphere into layers according to atomic weight.

Alternatively Mars is stationary (not rotating or orbiting) and it's atmosphere rotates ~10-15 mph about its equator.

[scowie]

Is it plasma that causes the atmosphere to rotate at approximately the same velocity as Earth?

Friction, surely

[Dotini]

"Thunderstorms act as batteries to keep the earth negatively charged and the atmosphere positively charged."
- All About Lightning, Martin A. Uman, Fig 18.1, p152