Gulliver's Travels - Things I learned about the mainstream.

[Michael Mozina]

Over the past 7 or so years of debating EU ideas on the internet, I've learned some things about the mainstream, particularly those in the mainstream that spend their internet time bashing and irrationally attacking EU oriented ideas. There are probably only about a dozen or so such individuals, but they all share a common set of false beliefs, all of which demonstrate that not one of them knows anything about actual PHYSICS.

For instance:

It's a common meme/fallacy among PC/EU bashers that:

1) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in conductors" - Complete BS. Even a freshman student in electrical engineering knows better.
2) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in plasmas, because plasmas are "conductors"" - One ridiculous error follows the other.
3) "Magnetic reconnection" is a "plasma optional" process". - They believe this nonsense even though none of them can even define a rate of reconnection in the absence of plasma acceleration, and WIKI explicitly explains it as a PROCESS that involves the TRANSFER of field energy into particle kinetic energy!
4) Magnetic B lines "begin" and "end" somewhere in a magic NULL point of a quadrapolar magnetic field because some guy with some UNPUBLISHED websites says so."- Note that the guy that wrote that website on "magnetic reconnection" didn't even understand the term "reconnection rate" until AFTER he claimed that he personally demonstrated "reconnection' in a vacuum without plasma acceleration! When asked to provide a reconnection rate formula, I got no rational answer to that request. - All I can say is "WOW"!
5)"The B orientation of plasma physics is superior to the E orientation". Of course that isn't true.
6)"Moving plasmas of equal numbers of protons and electrons are "neutral"" - False. The fact the charged particles are moving at a millions miles an hour from the sun means they will immediately form into "current" the moment they hit a relatively stable magnetic field.
7) "Dungey's use of the term "electrical discharge" in relationship to flare and reconnection events has no scientific relevancy today." - More of the same denial based behaviors.

These are just a "few" of the *MANY* false beliefs that are common among mainstream 'haters', and false beliefs that I've run into during my internet travels. There's probably no more than a dozen or so hard core elements out there that spend their time bashing EU/PC ideas. What has become painfully apparent is that not one of them even understands BASIC EM theory. B field lines have no source or sink and therefore they cannot "begin" anywhere! Magnetic field are CREATED BY current. Hater beliefs are SO backwards in terms of actual physics, it's downright pathetic IMO.

The worst part in my experience is that they all share one more common set of traits. They don't focus on the PHYSICS of the debate itself, they focus on attacking the INDIVIDUAL. Since they don't actually have a clue about the PHYSICS aspects of the debate (most of them don't even own a book on the topic of plasma physics), they spend their time attacking PEOPLE. It's really a sad little hater cult, with a REALLY pitiful understanding of actual PHYSICS.

[Reality Check]

It's a common meme/fallacy among PC/EU bashers that:

It is common knowledge among people who know about science that:
1) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in conductors" - Complete fact. Even a freshman student in electrical engineering knows this. An electrical discharge (lightning) requires the breakdown of a dielectric medium.

2) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in plasmas, because plasmas are "conductors"" - One obvious fact follows the other.

3) "Magnetic reconnection" is a "plasma optional" process" as stated in textbooks and mentioned in passing in sceintific papers because the important process is MR in plasma).
See Cosmic plasma physics By Boris V. Somov
(http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=KfIr ... um&f=false)
His chapter on "Reconneciton in vacuum" is followed by "Reconnection in plasma"
N.B. MR in vacuum is that it happens in a region where there is no matter (a vacuum). The current producing the magnetic fields can be in a wire or even a glass tube containing plasma.

4) Magnetic field lines "begin" and "end" at a standard NULL point of a any magnetic field because that is the definition of a magnetic field line. No B field = no filed line.
W.D. Clinger has a web site where he shows that MR happens in a quadrapolar magnetic field as a undergraduate application of Maxwell's laws.
(http://www.cesura17.net/~will/Ephemera/Nerdliness/MR/)

5)"The B orientation of plasma physics is superior to the E orientation". Of course that is mostly true as already explained to MM on the JREF forum. Basically the addition of Newton's laws to Maxwell's laws breaks the symetry between the ease of use of the B orientation and E orientation in favour of the B orientation.

6)"Moving plasmas of equal numbers of protons and electrons are "neutral"" - Obviously true since each proton has a corersponding electron. However the correct term is quasi-neutral since on small enough scales the volumes do not contain equal numbers!

7) Dungey's use of the term "electrical discharge" in relationship to reconnection events as a cause of flareshas no scientific relevancy today for the simple reason that every one calls large current densities ... large current densities! In fact there are only a handful of papers where this term is used.

[Michael Mozina]

It's a common meme/fallacy among PC/EU bashers that:

It is common knowledge among people who know about science that:
1) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in conductors" - Complete fact.

Complete fiction:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1958IAUS....6..135D
http://www.catastrophism.com/texts/bruce/era.htm

From Anthony Peratt's book "Physics of the Plasma Universe":

1 .5 Electrίcal Discharges in Cosmic Plasma
An electrical discharge is a sudden release of electric or magnetic stored energy. This generally occurs when the electromagnetic stress exceeds some threshold for breakdown that is usually determined by small scale properties of the energy transmission medium. As such, discharges are local phenomena and are usually accompanied by violent prαesses such as rapid heating, ionization, the creation of pinched and filamentary conduction channels, particle acceleration, and the generation of prodigious amounts of electromagnetic radiation. As an example, multi-terawatt pulsed-power generators on earth rely on strong electrical discharges to produce intense particle beams, Χrays, and microωανes . Megajoules of energy are electrically stored in capacitor banks, whose volume may encompass 250 m^3 . This energy is then transferred to a discharge regίοn, located many meters from the source, viα a transmission line.
The discharge region, or load, encompαsses at most a few cubic centimeters of space, and is the site of high-variability, intense, electromagnetic radiatιοη (Figure 1 .2) .On earth, lightning is another example of the discharge mechanism at work where electr-o-static energy is stored in clouds whose volume may be of the order of 3,000 km3. This energy is released in a few cubic meters of the discharge channel.
The aurora is a discharge caused by the bombardment of atoms in the upper atmosphere by 1–20 keV electrons and 200 keV ions spirιlling down the earth's magnetic field lines at high latitudes . Here, the electric field accelerating the charged particles derιves from plasma moving across the earth's dipole magnetic field lines many earth radii into the magnetosphere.

An electrical discharge (lightning) requires the breakdown of a dielectric medium.

In planetary GASSES a discharge occurs. That's optional in plasma. Dungey doesn't say a word about an dielectric breakdown RC. You're in denial of scientific fact.

2) "Electrical discharges cannot occur in plasmas, because plasmas are "conductors"" - One obvious fact follows the other.

False again.



That lightening rod conducted the discharge current just like the plasma in the atmosphere and it experienced the same pinch as well.

3) "Magnetic reconnection" is a "plasma optional" process" as stated in textbooks and mentioned in passing in sceintific papers because the important process is MR in plasma).
See Cosmic plasma physics By Boris V. Somov
(http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=KfIr ... um&f=false)
His chapter on "Reconneciton in vacuum" is followed by "Reconnection in plasma"
N.B. MR in vacuum is that it happens in a region where there is no matter (a vacuum). The current producing the magnetic fields can be in a wire or even a glass tube containing plasma.

That is a false statement. Somov's example *INCLUDES* moving charged particles. It describes the ACCELERATION of charged particles that are present in that "vacuum". His example is *INCLUSIVE* of charged particles and charged particle acceleration.

4) Magnetic field lines "begin" and "end" at a standard NULL point of a any magnetic field because that is the definition of a magnetic field line. No B field = no filed line.

Er, no. Nothing means nothing. No lines begin there. No lines end there. No lines exist there at ALL!

W.D. Clinger has a web site where he shows that MR happens in a quadrapolar magnetic field as a undergraduate application of Maxwell's laws.

Your math guru forgot to include a reconnection rate in part four of his nonsense, he didn't even know what the term "reconnection rate" meant until MONTHS after putting up that website. Worse yet, he has no way to express a rate of reconnection, and never made any attempt to do so. Worse still, is that you're citing UNPUBLISHED NONSENSE on some bogus website in support of your claims! It's unpublished and unpublishable content that has no basis in physics or physical fact. B lines have no source, no sink, no beginning and no end.

Your math guru BLATANTLY misrepresents (to this day) my actual position on the topic of "reconnection'. I have never denied that it is a "real process" in plasma in which magnetic field energy induces particle kinetic energy. The reconnection rate is based upon the acceleration of charged plasma particles. I deny it occurs without charge particle ACCELERATION!

(http://www.cesura17.net/~will/Ephemera/Nerdliness/MR/)

Unpublished nonsense.

5)"The B orientation of plasma physics is superior to the E orientation". Of course that is mostly true as already explained to MM on the JREF forum. Basically the addition of Newton's laws to Maxwell's laws breaks the symetry between the ease of use of the B orientation and E orientation in favour of the B orientation.

I'll just rest my case on this point.

6)"Moving plasmas of equal numbers of protons and electrons are "neutral"" - Obviously true since each proton has a corersponding electron. However the correct term is quasi-neutral since on small enough scales the volumes do not contain equal numbers!

False. Even their movement through spacetime as SEPARATE particles will create SEPARATE magnetic fields around each particle as they travel INDIVIDUALLY. Once they both reach a stable magnetic field, say Earth's magnetosphere, they immediately separate into CURRENTS moving in DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS! Their individual movements make them individual currents going on potentially different paths.

7) Dungey's use of the term "electrical discharge" in relationship to reconnection events as a cause of flareshas no scientific relevancy today for the simple reason that every one calls large current densities ... large current densities! In fact there are only a handful of papers where this term is used.

I suppose I'll just rest my case on that point too. You're doing a great job demonstrating Gulliver's discoveries about EU haters RC. Keep going.