Experiment with Scientific Method etc on Your Forum? Charles, I think the most science can be accomplished with a combination of organized and disorganized efforts. Organized efforts follow clear goals and disorganized ones follow unclear goals. The purpose of science is to gain understanding and control of nature for the benefit of all of humanity. I think some of the most valuable science that we could do is to help acquire enough knowledge to accurately predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, dangerous solar events and dangerous extra-solar events etc. Also, I think it's worth obtaining knowledge that helps people to explore and colonize other planetoids. I'd also like to learn how humans can live in peace, freedom and prosperity anywhere. - Is your website ready for forum work there where we could experiment with accumulating knowledge more efficiently and improving scientific method by using processes similar to sociocracy etc? I think something that would improve a forum is to allow members to insert a second message immediately before their original posts, which they could edit at any time, whereas the original posts would not be editable, except by staff. And you said you were working on making it easy to cross-reference topics, so that may be another improvement. By the way, I think Brian Robertson started a small software company in PA which uses something like sociocracy.
Electrostatic Shockwaves Wow! That's quite a theory, Charles. Now that you explained it, it sounds like a foregone conclusion or a sure thing, not just theory. In fact, it seems odd if no one else has thought of it. You'd better copyright it. Boats make little bow shockwaves on water. I wonder if that could be electrostatic as well. Even a stick sticking up out of a stream makes a little bow shock on the upstream side. Here's a bullet in water shockwave: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/07/mediu~. And then there are many shockwaves that conventional astronomers credit for causing all kinds of events in space. It would be ironic if those are electrostatic too, since they apparently use the term shockwave in order to divert attention away from possible EM forces. I think you've probably made another important finding here. Your discussion of the Irkutsk meteor sounds right on too. We discussed it a few years ago at this thread: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4~. - I'm spreading the word a little. At this thread, http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4~, I said: Charles Chandler Explains Crater Formation - See: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpB ... 120#p76424. - He said regarding the Mars video that he found "the instances of scalloping, and the crater chains, to be intriguing" evidence for EDM. He thinks craters can also form by bolide impacts that produce thermonuclear explosions, because both of the requirements for such explosions seem to be present, namely large momentum to smash atoms apart and high pressure to confine them and allow fusion. And he thinks bolides can also explode in the air as airbursts, due to the ionosphere stripping off electrons, which form the shockwaves in front of meteors. As the electrons are pulled out of the meteor, the bolide becomes positively charged and the molecules increasingly repel each other, which will cause an explosion in air, if the bolide is small enough. - So did I say that right? Do the electrons stay up in front of the bolide in the shockwave? Oh, it looks like you're saying that the shockwaves are positive charge, which does seem to make more sense. Do sonic booms make more sense by your theory too than by conventional theory? - I also quoted your explanation of how bolide impact craters can retain central peaks. But I just remembered another peculiarity of some craters. Namely, some have bullseye craters within the craters, either in place of the central peaks, or on top of the central peaks. Would those also be explained by your bolide thermonuclear explosion theory?
Cook's Theory on the North American Catastrophe Your theory would certainly seem to explain meteor airbursts etc. If high velocity motion through an atmosphere pulls electrons out of bolides, leaving them with repulsive charges, it's easy to see that they'd tend to explode quickly. That explains how meteors etc could be turned to sand and dust. Cook theorized that an object much larger than a meteor or asteroid must have caused the devastation of North America nearly 10,000 years ago. He didn't suggest that the entire biosphere was wiped out, just that of North America, which continent must have been facing the planet whose plasmasphere upon contact with Earth's apparently caused the shockwave that caused the devastation.
Upside-down Shattercones
You said:
Lloyd wrote: Shatter Cones: Impact crater shatter cones should point upwards to point of impact. Vredefort Dome, South Africa, shatter cones point downwards and to different points of origin, evidence of traveling underground blast, like from rotating Birkeland current.
This might also be evidence of an impact where later crustal deformation due to tectonic forces rearranged everything after the fact.
Do you mean you consider a traveling underground electric current blast to be unlikely? It seems to me that a huge lightning strike might become an underground blast. Do you think not? A powerful bolide impact should be able to produce lightning. Right? Especially, if there is an ion trail behind it shorting out the ionosphere. If the strata were overturned or something, I don't imagine the crater would have been found or recognized.
CharlesChandler
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Lloyd wrote: I think some of the most valuable science that we could do is to help acquire enough knowledge to accurately predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, dangerous solar events and dangerous extra-solar events etc.
I totally agree, and I believe that these are achievable goals. I also believe that EM is the missing ingredient in all of these things.
Lloyd wrote: I'd also like to learn how humans can live in peace, freedom and prosperity anywhere.
Agreed. That's a different topic, but it all comes down to knowledge. The more we know, the easier it all becomes.
Lloyd wrote: Is your website ready for forum work there where we could experiment with accumulating knowledge more efficiently and improving scientific method by using processes similar to sociocracy etc?
Yes. The hierarchical structure of my site (i.e., the way it supports documents and sub-documents) is perfect for a sociocratic endeavor. There will be experts on individual topics. Then there will be people who manage higher-level aggregates of topics. For example, the following categorization might emerge:
EU / Geophysics / Tectonics / Earthquakes / Subduction Zones
Some people might be involved just in the study of subduction zones, in which case they'll be in that group. Others might know about earthquakes in general, so they'll be in the higher-level group. Others still might know a lot about tectonics in general. So each level can have its own focus group. Everybody can add comments wherever they have something to contribute, but the groups will be responsible for keeping the material organized.
Lloyd wrote: I think something that would improve a forum is to allow members to insert a second message immediately before their original posts, which they could edit at any time, whereas the original posts would not be editable, except by staff.
Actually, right now all posts are editable after-the-fact. That way, people can go back and clean out garbage. For example, earlier in this thread I posted the idea that I had about "rolling meteor plasmoids". Well, that idea didn't survive further scrutiny. But I don't have a way of editing or deleting that post, so it will stay there forever, which means that anyone going through this thread has to wade through all of that, which sucks. On my site, I'd be able to remove that, assuming that there weren't any useful comments based on it (which in that case there weren't). So on my site, everybody manages their own stuff, and is responsible to keeping it clean. It's just a matter of etiquette not to disrupt the logical flow of a discussion with housecleaning. But I want to try it that way first, and see how it works. If discussions are getting disrupted by too much editing after-the-fact, I can give the topic owner the ability to set a time-out, after which edits cannot be made. But you will always be able to tack a new comment onto an existing post. So on my site, if I posted another "rolling meteor plasmoid" idea that didn't pan out, I'd at least be able to insert a comment at the end of that post saying that things didn't end well for this idea, and to point the reader to the follow-up discussion.
Lloyd wrote: And you said you were working on making it easy to cross-reference topics, so that may be another improvement.
You can build whatever structure you want, just like creating folders and putting shortcuts into them, to make a collection of things. So I might have a folder for earthquakes, in which I would have links to all of the threads that I've found on earthquakes. Insofar as some of the principles of earthquakes (e.g., compressive ionization?) might show up elsewhere, the same item might also appear in other folders. So the interconnected nature of knowledge is well-supported.
Lloyd wrote: Brian Robertson started a small software company in PA which uses something like sociocracy.
That's Holocracy, which looks really cool, but it's commercial software. My site is free to use for everybody.
Lloyd wrote: Electrostatic Shockwaves: Wow! That's quite a theory, Charles. Now that you explained it, it sounds like a foregone conclusion or a sure thing, not just theory. In fact, it seems odd if no one else has thought of it.
Actually, it looks like it's already well-founded. (See the references in the final write-up that I did: Meteoric Airbursts.) It appears that the only piece that I have added concerns the effects of the charge separation on the meteor itself. In other words, I found support for the idea that supersonic objects create detached bow shocks due to ionization in the boundary layer, and for the idea that the charge separation generates EM waves. But I take it the next step in saying that the ionization helps blow the meteor apart, as webolife was saying earlier, just with a different charging mechanism.
Lloyd wrote: Boats make little bow shockwaves on water. I wonder if that could be electrostatic as well.
That might be purely Newtonian, where the inertia causes the water to rise up, but gravity then causes it to splay outward.
Lloyd wrote: And then there are many shockwaves that conventional astronomers credit for causing all kinds of events in space. It would be ironic if those are electrostatic too, since they apparently use the term shockwave in order to divert attention away from possible EM forces.
Yes.
May, H. D., 2008: A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 36 (5): 2876-2879
Lloyd wrote: Do sonic booms make more sense by your theory too than by conventional theory?
My initial take is that the first boom makes sense just with regular fluid dynamics, as a pressure wave created by a supersonic object. The secondary boom is what has me confused. Stern wakes ain't 'posed to be as powerful as bow wakes, yet I grew up near a naval air base where they regularly did supersonic test flights, and yup, the secondary sonic boom is as powerful as the first (when they're far enough apart that you can tell that there were two of them). I "think" that this is too complicated for me to work out, so I might not pursue it. My "idea" is that if the bow shock gets an assist from ionization, then the stern shock might be getting an assist from charge recombination. But from what little I know about it, the stern wake is several orders of magnitude more complicated than the bow wake, so I might leave it at that.
Lloyd wrote: Some [impact craters] have bullseye craters within the craters, either in place of the central peaks, or on top of the central peaks. Would those also be explained by your bolide thermonuclear explosion theory?
I think so. I'm proposing two different material removal mechanisms: vaporization and entrainment. Vaporization occurs by direct contact with the nuclear ejecta, where temperatures above the boiling point convert the solids or liquids to gases or plasmas. Entrainment (in this context) is the excavation of loose material by high-velocity winds. In the center of the bullseye, you'll get vaporization (perhaps in a concave form), but not much entrainment where the nuclear ejecta hit the surface normal to it, and didn't have anywhere to go from there. The entrainment occurs where the ejecta hit the surface at an angle and then went further afield, gouging out stuff in the process. For example, in the Tunguska event, trees directly under the blast were left standing, though the branches were stripped off, while trees away from the perpendicular point were knocked down. So it's that sideways motion, away from the perpendicular point, that can do the excavating.
Lloyd wrote: Cook theorized that an object much larger than a meteor or asteroid must have caused the devastation of North America nearly 10,000 years ago. He didn't suggest that the entire biosphere was wiped out, just that of North America, which continent must have been facing the planet whose plasmasphere upon contact with Earth's apparently caused the shockwave that caused the devastation.
I think that the evidence is piling up for a comet impact (i.e., much larger than a meteor or asteroid) on the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Iridium levels are well above normal, but less than the K/T impact, and other markers are clearly indicative of an impact, through different in one way or another from "typical" impacts. It's possible that the uniqueness of the event came from a comet bouncing off of the ice sheet, leaving some extraterrestrial markers, yet not as much as one would expect from something that had such dramatic effects, and without leaving a crater anywhere. While I respect Cook's in-depth scholarship as well as his open-mindedness, I think that the data will eventually decide this one.
Lloyd wrote: Upside-down Shattercones: Do you mean you consider a traveling underground electric current blast to be unlikely?
I don't know. If there was an earthquake or a bolide impact, yes, but how would a huge lightning strike become an underground blast?
Lloyd
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Upside-down Shattercones LK: Do you mean you consider a traveling underground electric current blast to be unlikely [as the cause of such shattercones]? CC: I don't know. If there was an earthquake or a bolide impact, yes, but how would a huge lightning strike become an underground blast? LK: How about if the bolide impact produces a large underground lightning bolt that makes underground blasts that form the upside-down shattercones?
Collaboration on Your Website Hopefully, we can try some discussion on your website soon. I'll go through our recent discussion here to sort out relevant ideas and then try to post something on that at your site. I guess it'll take only a couple of hours at most.
Compare with Comet Tempel 1 - Have you seen the Deep Impact video of the impact of an artificial projectile on comet Tempel 1? Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4. The impact is first shown at about the 3' 30" mark. Thornhill says the bright flash is from electrical discharge. You say thermonuclear explosion. At near the 8' mark, an image is shown with the statement that new jets formed 15 hours after impact far from the location of the impact. Can your theory account for that? It seems like Thornhill's theory may account for it better offhand. I guess you might suppose that some meteors may have followed the spacecraft and hit the comet, but isn't that improbable? - This website http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/disczone/challenge_v~ says the projectile was moving at 10.2 km/s relative to the comet. I suppose that's a somewhat normal velocity for a meteor before impact. Have you estimated what would be the minimum velocity necessary for thermonuclear explosion of a meteor?
Comet Electrical Features? - At just after the 10' mark on the Deep Impact video, scalloped edges are said to be visible on the comet. You had said I think that you didn't think there is scalloping on the Moon, but I think there probably is, especially in many of the rilles. Since the comet is much smaller than the Moon, it seems that such electrical features may be common on most solar system bodies. What do you think about this? - After the 12' mark possible electric arcing is shown on Tempel 1 and other bodies. Then at the 15' mark a mesa cliff is shown to have eroded quite a bit over a matter of months I think, apparently from electrical erosion. What about that? - Have you ever looked at lunar rilles and did you see Juergens' article on them? If not, see http://saturniancosmology.org/juergensa.htm. Especially see that table a little over halfway down the page, which shows why rilles are more likely electrical features than anything else. The table kind of summarizes the article.
CharlesChandler
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Lloyd wrote: How about if the bolide impact produces a large underground lightning bolt that makes underground blasts that form the upside-down shattercones?
Actually, a bolide could create electric currents in the ground, by altering the degree of compressive ionization. Those currents could cause an explosive expansion, and then you'd get upside-down shattercomes, and they'd be pointing in "different" directions, where the difference came from them pointing at an underground source, or perhaps toward multiple in-ground discharges. Hmmm...
Lloyd wrote: JC posted a link to this Youtube video of a crater that apparently formed recently on the Moon immediately after a bright flash of light. Do you have a comment on it?
This looks like a fake. Look at the way craters near the "impact site" are brightened, supposedly by the light reflected off of the dust cloud (?), but craters just a bit further away are not affected at all. And check some of the other fake videos from the same YouTube poster (i.e., Chris Brobs), such as the ones with highly detailed UFOs flying past the camera.
Lloyd wrote: Have you seen the Deep Impact video of the impact of an artificial projectile on comet Tempel 1?
I think that there was an electrostatic discharge just prior to the impact. Thornhill correctly notes that the impactor's camera picked up some EM interference just before the impact. But that doesn't prove that the main flash was electrical. I sorta think that it wasn't, for reasons stated earlier — net charges congregate on the outside of an object, due to electrostatic repulsion within the object, and a flash between two objects really only affects the outsides of each of them, begging the question of what provided the internal pressure necessary for an explosion. I don't know if a 370 kg object colliding at 10.3 km/s is sufficient for a thermonuclear explosion, but that's where I'd start.
Then, the most curious thing about Tempel 1 was that the dust plume persisted, and was still there when the last image was taken, 12 hours after the impact. It also had noticeable striations in it, like the helmet streamers in the Sun's corona. So I think that there was a sustained discharge. And what would cause that?
I got to thinking about another strange thing about Tempel 1, and it gave me an interesting idea. Scientists noted that the comet is covered in a layer of fine dust. That's really weird, because you'd think that getting sandblasted by 450 m/s solar winds would keep the thing swept clean. So how could dust still be laying there, after so many laps around the Sun? Well, what if the comet has a positive atmospheric sheath, for the same reason that meteoroids have positive sheaths — particles impinging on the boundary layer get stripped of electrons in the particle collisions, and the positive ions penetrate deeper because of their greater inertia? The self-sustaining positive sheath then protects the surface from direct exposure to the solar wind. The source of the dust would be ionization, which breaks up crystal lattices. The ionization would be from the positive sheath, and photo-ionization from the Sun's UV rays. Then it makes sense that comets & asteroids have impact craters that should have been worn away long ago. If the coma from a comet was actually particles getting worn away by friction in the solar wind, those craters wouldn't be there. But if the comet is actually protected from the solar wind by a positive double-layer, and is just being eroded by ionization, topographical features could last a long time.
The positive sheath also explains the electrostatic discharge experienced by the impactor. I would tend to think that both the comet and the interceptor were out in space long enough to get electrically comfortable with the surrounding interplanetary plasma, and I'm skeptical of Thornhill's assertion that the comet and the impactor should have had a potential difference between them. But if the comet had a positive sheath, then all of a sudden, the impactor would have crossed the boundary into that sheath, and there could have been a large potential. NASA scientists noted that the impactor hit something before hitting the surface. They're calling it particles in the coma, but I didn't see any coma thick enough to knock a 370 kg impactor out of alignment.
NASA wrote: Engineers have established the impactor took two not unexpected coma particle hits prior to impact. The impacts slewed the spacecraft's camera for a few moments before the attitude control system could get it back on track.
So I'm thinking that these two "particle hits" were at the boundary of the positive sheath.
If all of that is true, then the explosion (by whatever means) would have ejected positively charged matter from the comet, since that's what's at the surface. Such an ejection would then leave the comet with a net negative charge, and with a sustained discharge in the direction of the ejected particles, limited only by the internal resistance of the comet. In other words, it was like a CME on the surface of the Sun ejecting positive plasma, and motivating a sustained discharge due to the charge imbalance.
Lloyd wrote: At near the 8' mark, an image is shown with the statement that new jets formed 15 hours after impact far from the location of the impact. Can your theory account for that?
I agree with Thornhill that alterations in jets could only be evidence of an alteration in the net charge of the comet. But I disagree that the net charge of the impactor could have directly affected the net charge of an object 11 orders of magnitude more massive than itself (i.e., 370 kg versus 7.9×1013 kg for the comet), as this just isn't physically possible. So I'm going with a charge imbalance that was created by the ejection of lots of ions from the surface of the comet by a thermonuclear explosion.
Lloyd wrote: At just after the 10' mark on the Deep Impact video, scalloped edges are said to be visible on the comet.
I'm currently brewing an idea on what actually causes the erosion on such bodies. As mentioned above, photo-ionization will certainly cause erosion (over an extremely long period of time). This might help explain some of the extremely flat surfaces, such as the Martian northern plains, and the lunar mares. Thornhill says that these were excavated by EDM, but it actually takes extremely tightly controlled conditions (including immersion in a dielectric) to get smooth surfaces with EDM, and nature doesn't provide such tight controls. But if photo-ionization is doing the excavating, this is easier to understand. Any feature protruding above a plain will get more sunlight, and hence more ionization, which will convert the solids to plasmas that become part of the atmosphere. Over a long period of time, you wind up with a perfectly flat surface.
But I don't see how this would produce scalloping.
upriver
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
CharlesChandler wrote:
Lloyd wrote: At near the 8' mark, an image is shown with the statement that new jets formed 15 hours after impact far from the location of the impact. Can your theory account for that?
I agree with Thornhill that alterations in jets could only be evidence of an alteration in the net charge of the comet. But I disagree that the net charge of the impactor could have directly affected the net charge of an object 11 orders of magnitude more massive than itself (i.e., 370 kg versus 7.9×1013 kg for the comet), as this just isn't physically possible. So I'm going with a charge imbalance that was created by the ejection of lots of ions from the surface of the comet by a thermonuclear explosion.
Lloyd wrote: At just after the 10' mark on the Deep Impact video, scalloped edges are said to be visible on the comet.
I'm currently brewing an idea on what actually causes the erosion on such bodies. As mentioned above, photo-ionization will certainly cause erosion (over an extremely long period of time). This might help explain some of the extremely flat surfaces, such as the Martian northern plains, and the lunar mares. Thornhill says that these were excavated by EDM, but it actually takes extremely tightly controlled conditions (including immersion in a dielectric) to get smooth surfaces with EDM, and nature doesn't provide such tight controls. But if photo-ionization is doing the excavating, this is easier to understand. Any feature protruding above a plain will get more sunlight, and hence more ionization, which will convert the solids to plasmas that become part of the atmosphere. Over a long period of time, you wind up with a perfectly flat surface.
But I don't see how this would produce scalloping.
I am almost at the point of saying electrical erosion is happening right now as we speak. But its happening at such a slow rate that we have made up other mechanisms...
"This figure illustrates the unexpected and bizarre pattern of daytime temperatures found on Saturn's small inner moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles, in diameter). The data were obtained by the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft during the spacecraft's closest-ever look at Mimas on Feb. 13, 2010. " http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... 12867.html
Lloyd
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Brant, in this image from your link, http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/435598main_pia12867-516.~, the warmest parts of Mimas appear to be toward the left horizon, nearly a crescent shape, though the warmest part was expected to be toward the center, since the Sun was overhead. Do you know if Saturn was to the left at that time?
Regarding the Tempel 1 video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4 I said above: "After the 12' mark possible electric arcing is shown on Tempel 1 and other bodies. Then at the 15' mark a mesa cliff is shown to have eroded quite a bit over a matter of months I think, apparently from electrical erosion." Isn't this better evidence of electrical erosion?
I like the info you gave on the other thread on why imploding nebulae don't rebound. That's impressive info. Now that that's settled, what seems most important to explain is why electrostatics is more common (in your view) than is electrodynamics.
Do you regard the apparent EDM evidence on Mars etc as electrodynamics? Do you think a close approach of another planet would produce such EDM effects? If so, would it be very similar to lightning effects on Earth, or EDM in the lab or in industry? If space is less resistant to electricity than is matter, has this been proven in vacuum chambers, such as by holding a high voltage potential electrode near two other electrodes, one connected by matter and unconnected, with just space in between? Wouldn't that be a good test?
Do you have any comments about this recent exchange on the EU board?
Morphix wrote: But what about the influence of magnetic fields falling off much more quicly than gravity with distance?
Siggy wrote: I believe it's the other way around. Gravity attenuates with a spherical 1/r^2 whilst magnetic fields attenuates with 1/r in scenarios where there are axial electric currents or "magnetic flux tubes": two names for the same entity. Anthony Peratt has elaborated on this (I don't have the sources at hand ATM). So for large scale formations in dusty plasmas, the influence of electric currents and magnetic fields overrules gravity. They initiate bulk movements that sets the velocity and rotational foundation for the later gravitational collapses of heavier formations. How external magnetic fields and electric currents influence objects that already are massive is more diffiucult to answer IMO i.e. numerous scenarios and possible mechanisms.
CharlesChandler
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Lloyd wrote: What seems most important to explain is why electrostatics is more common (in your view) than is electrodynamics.
I don't think that there is a "reason" for this per se — it's just an observation. I got onto this track not by looking explicitly for electrostatics, but in the interest of understanding the electrodynamic assertions. After all, to get a current, you first need a charge separation, so you have to figure out how the necessary force was applied. Once you get the potentials, then you can evaluate the release thereof, in electric currents. So I'm saying that in the Sun, compressive ionization stores the potentials, and these are released as arc discharges, which produce the light that we see. So it's both -statics and -dynamics. By contrast, most EU theory has the -dynamics, but the charge separation mechanism wasn't identified, so they ain't got their -statics on yet.
Lloyd wrote: Do you regard the apparent EDM evidence on Mars etc as electrodynamics?
The scalloped trenches can't be explained any other way. But that doesn't mean that I understand what could have set up EDM on this kind of scale.
Lloyd wrote: Do you think a close approach of another planet would produce such EDM effects?
I actually had a relevant idea years ago, in half-agreement with Velikovsky. That was back when I accepted all of the anomalies as evidence of EDM. But I still couldn't see Saturn in a different orbit, and then getting knocked out to its present orbit, as we have discussed elsewhere. So I considered the possibility that there could have been huge plasma discharges, but not from our planets. What if it was one or more stray planets zipping through space? The chances of a collision are remote, but there could have been huge charge imbalances, resulting in major discharges. Then you'd have all of this EDM, but without any major disruptions to the planetary orbits. But then you lose the tie-in to ancient Saturn mythology, so nobody wanted to hear about it.
Lloyd wrote: If so, would it be very similar to lightning effects on Earth, or EDM in the lab or in industry?
Discharges can take many forms, depending on the exact conditions. Look at the differences among lightning, blue jets, and red sprites. So this is a "maybe...".
Lloyd wrote: If space is less resistant to electricity than is matter, has this been proven in vacuum chambers, such as by holding a high voltage potential electrode near two other electrodes, one connected by matter and unconnected, with just space in between? Wouldn't that be a good test?
It would be a ridiculously easy thing to test. Just set up a vacuum chamber, apply a voltage across it, measure the current density (through the wires leading in and/or out), and then start vacuuming out the gas to see what it does to the current density, which would be a direct function of resistance (assuming you didn't change the volts). This was probably first done in the 1800s. If I ever run across the results, I'll post them. But here are the data from the Earth's atmosphere, from Chapter 2 in Wåhlin, L., 1986: Atmospheric Electrostatics. Research Studies Press LTD., Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England. ("mho" is the same as the "siemens", which is the SI unit for conductivity, and which is the inverse of the ohm, the unit of resistance.)
Note that above 15 km, the results get a little flaky. That's because you're getting into the ionized layers in the stratosphere. Below 12 km, you're still in the troposphere, and the conductivity/altitude relationship is much more direct. The fact that the conductivity increases by a factor of 3 from the ground up to 12 km comes from the fact that the air at the ground level is 3 times denser than the air at 12 km.
Lloyd wrote: Do you have any comments about this recent exchange on the EU board?
Siggy is correct — gravity obeys the inverse square law, while Amperian magnetic fields (i.e., z-pinches) vary just with the inverse of the distance. I partially agree with the next statement — in a dusty plasma, the electric force is definitely much more powerful than gravity (5~20 times more powerful, if it is the true force incorrectly attributed to cold dark matter), but I'm still not convinced that the magnetic force is a player in the collapse. I don't see how magnetism would create a body force on the dusty plasma, and I definitely don't see evidence of the currents that it would take to generate magnetic fields that would be powerful enough. But I do agree that external magnetic fields set up the rotation in the dusty plasma, from which we get revolving stars and planets, among other things. IMO, this is evidence of a Lorentz force due to the motion of charged particles through the galactic magnetic field. Otherwise, the angular momenta that are so ubiquitous in astronomy have no explanation.
Cathode vs Anode Sun Charles, have you written up anything on why the sun must be a cathode, rather than an anode? I remember you mentioning the helmet streamers as evidence against an anode. And you guys discussed how CMEs, flares etc can occur via the cathode model. If I get time, I'll try to find all of the evidence you guys mentioned in the Electric Sun Discussions. But, if there were a good writeup on all of the evidence against the anode model, I think it would help the TB team to make better progress. You said you never found in the EU literature an explanation for charge separation on a cosmic scale and that's another reason against the cathode model, which would have the negative charge coming into the sun from the outside and powering the sun. I believe Thornhill and others have acknowledged that they don't know what would cause large-scale charge separation, but they seem to reason that it's not necessary to know that in order to make progress in EU science.
Talbott wrote an article, Electric Sun Answers Longstanding Puzzles, 2 years ago at http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/12/11/electric-sun-ans~. The link is to part 3, which has two sections that mention evidence that the sun is an anode. In the section, called The Sun's PNP Transistor, he shows Don's diagram with the photosphere as the negative part. I just noticed that Don's PNP model seems nearly the same as yours with the negative photosphere, so maybe your models are more alike than it seems. Anyway, in the section, Photospheric "Lightning" Revisited, Dave mentioned Juergens etc, then he said the following. (And at some other point on the page the comparison of the granules to anode tufts is mentioned.)
- Is it possible to confirm the electrical interpretation of solar prominences and flares, including coronal mass ejections, as first proposed by Charles Bruce in the early 1940s? The electrical interpretation of solar flares and CMEs requires a powerful release of charge in the atmosphere above the surface. And this consideration brings us to a more recent investigation by NASA's Peter Schuck who sought to determine "whether the eruptions are driven by energy surging through the Sun's surface, or by the sudden release of energy that has slowly accumulated in the atmosphere." - "In some sense, the idea that energy from below triggers the eruption is the easiest explanation – like a geyser," says Schuck, a physicist who studies space weather at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But if the idea doesn't agree with what's observed, then it's wrong. End of story." - Schuck's research led him to conclude that the trigger does indeed occur in the atmosphere above the photosphere. He found that the required velocities of the photospheric plasma to blast the flares upward would be a thousand kilometers per second, speeds that would be easily detected. What he saw instead "was a sudden explosion triggered from above, more like lightning."
Had you read that before? I don't think you guys discussed these data that suggest that flares start in the solar atmosphere and go down to the sun like lightning. I don't have a clear understanding of this NASA report. Do you? Flares aren't that common on the sun, so the mechanism for the granules seems more important. I suppose you've read Thornhill's material on the anode sun, but, just in case, this article by him has a few of his reasons for saying it's an anode: http://www.holoscience.com/wp/eu-view/, though maybe you've seen that too. Anyway, if you have a good refutation of their model, it would be nice to see it. And I hope to get time soon to look up what you guys said in your discussions.
CharlesChandler
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
Lloyd wrote: I don't have a clear understanding of this NASA report. Do you?
I sure don't. I've never seen any evidence of a flash in the atmosphere before a CME. There are coronal loops after the CME that can be pretty energetic, but no flashes in the atmosphere before. I think that "a sudden explosion triggered from above, more like lightning" is just an expectation of the magnetic reconnection model, not actually an observation (unless a trained scientific eye can actually see model expectations, even when the instruments don't detect anything there).
One of the most dramatic forms of evidence in support of the cathode model is the behavior of plasma after a balloon CME (e.g., this one on 2010-03-30). The inside of the "balloon" is transparent, while the outside is opaque. The balloon breaks, and the transparent stuff in the interior accelerates on out into space, while the opaque stuff is pulled back into the Sun, sometimes at relativistic speeds. We all agree that stuff being accelerated away from the Sun can only be evidence of EM, since a ballistic trajectory in a strong gravitational field would have matter decelerating away from a gravitational source. And the relativistic velocities achieved by the plasma that is pulled back in further confirm that a force far more powerful than gravity is present, and which can only be EM. We know that in an electric field, opposite charges go in opposite directions. So the transparent matter being accelerated away from the Sun, and the opaque matter being pulled forcefully back into it, are oppositely charged. But which is which? This we can determine unambiguously from the opacity of the plasma pulled back in. That can only be positive ions, because free electrons are transparent. (We even know which ions they are — the "coronal rain" shows up best in 284 Å emissions, produced by Fe XV, which is highly ionized iron.) So if the positive ions are pulled back down, then the stuff getting accelerated away from the Sun is all free electrons, and the electric field is between a negative Sun and a positive heliosphere.
Note that in my model, the surface of the Sun is positively charged, but that doesn't mean that the Sun is an anode. Rather, the surface is a positive double-layer clinging tightly to a cathode, where the net flow of electrons is outward, not inward. There are other lines of reasoning that prove that the photosphere is positively charged (such as the surface dynamics), but that doesn't establish whether it's the primary charge, or a lesser double-layer. You really have to look at the directional data to determine the polarity of the flow of charged particles.
Also note that the visible flow in the streamers is certainly outward, and from this, most have concluded that those are plasma atoms. In the standard model there is an equal complement of free electrons, but in the EU model only ions are flowing out, while electrons are flowing in. Yet imagery of coronal streamers is showing photons, not matter. This could be either ions moving out, or electrons moving through stationary or descending ions, and does not constitute unambiguous evidence in support of the anode model.
nick c
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
CC wrote: but in the EU model only ions are flowing out, while electrons are flowing in.
It is my understanding that the EU model is not as simple as that, but rather is dealing with net flows. That is, there is a net inward movement of negative charge and a net outward movement of positive charge. Within that, there could be positive or negative streams flowing either way.
CharlesChandler
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
OK, I'll concede that CMEs "might be" a special case. (I don't think they are, but anyway... ) To incontrovertibly identify the polarity, and not get hung up on special cases, we have to look at gross characteristics that are not subject to local rules. And at least for me, one of the most distinctive overall features of the Sun is its incredibly well-defined surface. The ideal gas laws would have the density gradually tapering off to nothing, leaving a fuzzy boundary. Yet at the surface, the density drops off quite sharply. I think that all of us agree that this can only be due to EM, since Newtonian physics simply doesn't allow it. But what does this tell us about the polarity of charges?
Clearly, the limb of the Sun indicates the extents of atoms. Both my model and the EU model have the surface being positively charged. But if the net charge was positive, would the surface be distinct? It goes without saying that if the surface is positive, there has to be an underlying negative charge holding it down, otherwise the electrostatic repulsion within the positive plasma would disperse it. (Gravity is no match for the electric force.) We could expect the charges in these positive and negative layers to be evenly matched. But in evenly matched double-layers, the charge density tapers off with distance from the charge separator. In other words, positive and negative charges with a high-permittivity dielectric between them will be attracted to the opposite charges on the other side of the dielectric. The field density, and thus the charge density, will be greatest near the boundary. Away from the boundary, charges are shielded from the opposite charges by the like charges in their own layer. So the outer reaches of a double-layer are only bound loosely, and hydrostatic pressure causes the dispersal of the particles. This should produce the same sort of density gradient predicted by the ideal gas laws, with the density tapering off gradually to nothing.
Then, if the net charge on the surface of the Sun is actually positive, producing a net outflow of positive ions, the tapering should be even more dramatic. Yet it isn't there at all.
The only EM configuration that produces a positive layer with a distinct edge on the outside is a cathode with a positive double-layer, and where the net charge is negative — otherwise the force to compress the outer edge just wouldn't be there.
Lloyd
Re: Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model
CC said: Then, if the net charge on the surface of the Sun is actually positive, producing a net outflow of positive ions, the tapering should be even more dramatic. Yet it isn't there at all. - The only EM configuration that produces a positive layer with a distinct edge on the outside is a cathode with a positive double-layer, and where the net charge is negative — otherwise the force to compress the outer edge just wouldn't be there.
Would it be easy enough to make a diagram to show what you mean, maybe with some indication of the amount and directions of forces affecting the ions at various levels?
If there was an earthquake or a bolide impact, yes, but how would a huge lightning strike become an underground blast?
