This is a TPOD that is interesting and beautifully illustrated, and beyond that, contains several of the most central core subjects in electrical astrophysics; i.e., from plasma physics.
One of those is the discussion regarding the self-organizing capacity of a partially ionized gas to organize itself into filamentary Birkeland currents which conduct electrical power through space. Last century, excluding a few pioneering plasma scientists like Birkeland, Alfvén, Bruce and Peratt, scientists believed that space was a vacuum, so devoid of matter that it acted solely as an insulator and prevented transmission of electricity under any circumstances. Increasingly today, some (a minority, still) scientists are following the lead of those scientists as well as the EU paradigm and its writings on this web site and on its YouTube channel to discuss the electromagnetic characteristics of the Universe and its contents. Still, they have developed their own vocabulary that in some cases differs from that used here. There almost seems to be a stigma among "professional" scientists at using terms such as electric currents in cosmic research papers. So, other terms have been developed that sound like they don't involve electricity at all, despite what they are observing and reporting on.
Stephan Smith, in this TPOD, brought out the term, "flux ropes" used often in mainstream articles, with a decidedly magnetic slant to it. "Magnetic flux tubes" was the similar term used by Cassini reporters to describe the identical situation between Enceladus and Saturn as earlier observations found between Io and at least 3 other Jovian moons, and their primary, Jupiter. You often see "magnetic flux tube" just shortened to "flux tube", when you read about phenomena on the solar surface having to do with filaments, arcades, and mass ejections.
So, why the odd, almost archaic term "flux"? It specifically comes to English from the Latin fluere, "to flow". Think "fluid", "flood" as a related term, also from fluere but note that flux in this sense is not in the sense of condensed matter's liquid or gas states.
It is not magnetic field or magnetic intensity, or magnetic field lines that flow and is called flux; it is the net movement of a mass of charged particles, whose motion is modulated by the magnetic field that they all jointly create, in a complex and continuous feedback dance of motion and field strength interactions. These particles are typically mostly electrons, but also positively and negatively charged larger particles as well, in a plasma state, which can have a very tiny fraction of charged particles in its makeup to behave as a plasma. Magnetic (or "B") fields do not cause plasma; they influence it by influencing the trajectories of the charged particles in the plasma and exist by virtue of the simple fact that the particles are moving, and constitute electric currents, by definition. No relative motion, no B-field to be detected.
A net motion of a number of charged particles passing through a square meter of space per second (or some number of charges N through some defined number of area units, N/S) is widely defined throughout science as an electric current (in amperes, A).
-Except in astrophysics, where by far the largest electric currents ever observed and measured by humans occur all the time in cosmic and nearby space. There, if they manage to mention them at all, they are "flux tubes" "or flux ropes". Philipp Kronberg, astrophysicist, author of "Measurement of the Current in a Kiloparsec Jet", breaks the mold in this regard, and speaks frankly of what he knows is going on.
Learn the lingo, learn the science. Some translation necessary.
Jim
TPOD Daughters of Pleione, 28 Aug 2014
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Re: TPOD Daughters of Pleione, 28 Aug 2014
When I experiment with my little doggie magnets, their fields seem to flow; there is the force of a flow. Can't we conclude that flow can be inferred by the movement of a conductor though that field?It is not magnetic field or magnetic intensity, or magnetic field lines that flow and is called flux;
Magnetic field may be the aligned aether, moving through a dipole.
"It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
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