Higgsy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 1:40 am
Michael Mozina wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 10:59 pm
Higgsy wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 5:51 pm
How is the plasma discharge round the SAFIRE electrode not like the Sun's corona
1. It's a thousand times cooler ( a few thousand K versus a million K plus)
LOL! That's nothing but a 'scaling' issue
What? Say again? The difference between 1,000K and 1,000,000K is a "scaling " issue? You can't scale temperature, simply because different physics happens at different temperatures (and temperatures that are that different arise from different physics). Temperature is absolutely not, in any way, shape or form, a "scaling issue". How do you "scale" the physics from 1,000K to 1,000,000K
Well, for starters we "measure" the spectral output of something like a coronal loop, and determine the temperature required to produce ions with those specific ionization states. How do you figure they determine the temperatures of the plasma in various SDO satellite images?
Really? So you claim that a laboratory model for a plasma at one density is a great model to understand what happens in another several orders of less dense? It's a good thing you're not designing physics experiments for a living.
You know, I have no idea why you keep hurling personal insults into the discussion, but it's not helpful. Birkeland was able to achieve *many* of the same kinds of events in his models based on *circuit theory*, which we find in aurora and corona around objects in a "near vacuum".
Now of course in *current carrying* plasma, the filamentary processes generate regions of plasma which are 'relatively dense" and regions which are not.
Exactly, which makes it a poor model for the Sun
This is *exactly* why I think your entire industry is stuck in the 'dark ages' of metaphysical physics. It's an *excellent* laboratory simulation of the atmospheric processes of the sun and of the Earth. In fact, that's what "laboratory physics" is all about! You guys have *completely lost touch* with physical reality because you're *afraid* of it.
So you say (in passing, perhaps you could point me to a model of the Sun that "interacts with the rest of the circuity of the universe" in a way that prevents us from measuring the currents in that circuit commensurate with the Sun's power of 10^26W).
First we're going to have to decide how much "current" you expect to see in the first place. Is the sun generating *most*, some, or none of it's own power in your opinion?
But the real sun is not plugged into a mains socket delivering 10^26W, is it?
Where do you think it's "mains" are located? Birkeland imagined them to be *mostly* internal, though he would certainly have included cosmic rays as an "external" source of energy.
Or maybe you have a quantified model for how the "surrounding plasma environment" generates 10^26W over billions of years. Don't forget, when preparing your model, that we've been there and measured the currents in the solar environement.
Alfven "assumed" that fusion was the primary power source of a sun, and Birkeland also assumed an internal "transmutation of elements" was responsible for most of the sun's energy. Even an anode model would/could generate at least *some* of it's own power "locally", as is within the sun's atmosphere.
How did you decide how much current we would expect to observe, and which particle flow patterns we should be looking for? I'm going by Birkeland's original work, including his particle movement calculations.
You don't actually know what the net flow of current around the sun might be.
Not around the Sun. Into and out of the Sun.
You don't know that either.
Birkeland never worked much on the Sun, other than predicting the electrons and ions in the aurora were generated by the Sun, and speculating that the Sun is powered by some sort of radioactivity.
His discussion of his experiments with respect to solar physics begins on 661, and goes on for quite some time. Have you read his work for yourself, yes or no?
His terrella was designed for and limited to exploring the Earth's aurora.
It doesn't sound like you actually read his work for yourself. How do you explain all the dialog from page 661 through 721? How would you characterize the content of those specific pages? What does that math describe?
If you know different produce the reference.
https://archive.org/download/norwegiana ... ririch.pdf
But that is the extent of his claims in his magnum opus.
Apparently, like most astronomers, you seem to know very *little* about Birkeland's actual work. Have you even read it for yourself? Did you notice all those particle trajectory calculation in chapter 6 starting on page 661?
All your claims above for the accuracy of SAFIRE's modelling of, in your words, "the correct particle flow patterns of space, including a constant inbound bombardment by a positively charged "cosmic ray" field traveling at close to the speed of light, and electron beams and various particles streaming off the sun." Or have you forgotten we are discussing how unlike the Sun's corona the SAFIRE experiment is?
You're not listening to my statements. I didn't claim that SAFIRE produced "the correct particle flow patterns of space", I said *Birkeland* did that. I also acknowledged that SAFIRE's *anode* model (different from Birkeland's cathode) model would also produce a specific particle flow pattern around the sphere, which we would could use to *test* their model.
Flow patterns are not correct in either the Terrella (which was never a solar model in the first place)
That's a false statement Higgsy. Either intentionally or unintentionally you have disregarded over a full *century* of mathematics related to this topic and the particle trajectory calculations related to "solar wind" from EU solar models.
Where does he claim the terrella is a model for the Sun?
Page 661 and on, and he's also been quoted by the New York times describing his "cathode sun" model of a solar system.
But we're not talking about "the predictions of all the EU/PC models". We're talking about how good the physical laboratory models (Birkeland's actual physical terrella and the SAFIRE experiment) are at modelling your actual Sun (not at all really). You seem to be moving the goalposts as we go down this post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m58-CfVrsN4
It's not only a "good" model, it's a *fantastic* model which immediately produces *two* highly important atmospheric observations, solar corona, and planetary aurora. A full *century* later you *still* cannot produce either of those observations based on "magnetic reconnection" models! What the hell is the problem with your physical model Higgsy?
Birkeland even found by introducing an electromagnetic field inside the core of the cathode that he could produce two distinct 'bands' of concentrated areas of electrical discharges in the solar atmosphere, just as we see in SDO images today during the sun's solar cycle.
or in SAFIRE (there is no neutral solar wind in either model),
Um, well certainly in Birkeland's *theoretical model*, and probably there are also some ions being pushed away from the cathode in some areas too. In fact Birkeland writes about the "soot" that builds up on the walls of his experiments as a result of the breakdown of the cathode.
Not in the plasma chambers of the terrella or the SAFIRE experiment, there isn't.
Both the electron beams from the sun and the positively charged cosmic rays are in fact observed in space. Birkeland's whole simulation and his laboratory simulation and model was based on the existence of "strahl" electrons inside the solar system, and inside of his experiments. He produced the "strahl" electrons, and ions too.
Really?...
Really. I've never really seen something like the math related to chapter six of Birkeland's book applied to an anode model. Have you? I suppose I could try it myself, but I'm not that interested frankly.
We are talking here about the physical laboratory models of the Sun not about theoretical models, but you seem to have forgotten that halfway through your reply.
You falsely said that Birkeland never worked much on the sun, so apparently you know very little about his lab work or his theoretical model.
As for the understanding of plasma physics, claiming that physicists don't understand it (and by implication you do, hah!) is almost but not quite as utterly inane as saying physicists don't understand electromagnetism (but you do).
The fact of the matter is that your entire industry continues to promote a physical/mathematical concept that Hannes Alfven called "pseudoscience' till the day he died, and *he* understood the physics of plasma and MHD theory. Worse yet, your collective laboratory efforts on "magnetic reconnection" have failed to be useful to simulate something as simple and as *rudimentary* as a sustained planetary aurora, or a sustained solar corona a full *century* after such things were shown to be related to "circuit theory", not "magnetic reconnection".
How do you explain your *collective* dismal laboratory track record Higgsy?