© Lloyd

[1] Star Formation by Compressive Ionization
[2] Exotic Star Formation by Natural Tokamak
[3] Galaxy and Quasar Natural Tokamaks

[1] Star Formation by Compressive Ionization
--- CONTENTS of this page
--- Summary of CC's Solar Model
--- Solar Model Summary
--- Accretion Theory Flaws --- Electrical Accretion Summary
--- Accretion
--- Stellar Formation Theory Methodology
--- Math Support
--- Stellar Fusion
--- Heavy Elements Formation --- Star to Planet Evolution --- Stellar Collisions
--- Stellar Collisions
--- External Fields, Tensile Strength
--- EM Fields
--- Stellar Magnetic Flux Tubes
--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
--- Solar Energy Sources
--- CME Prediction
--- Stars vs Planets
--- Supercritical Fluids
--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids
--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids and Compressive Ionization
--- Compressive Ionization and Thornhill
--- INDEX

--- Summary of CC's Solar Model
Postby CharlesChandler» Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:15 am
- A collaboration among some independent investigators (listed below) has yielded a new model of the Sun.
- And [here are CC's findings]
- The Sun is definitely electric! Only 1/3 of the solar power is from nuclear fusion, while the other 2/3 is from arc discharges.
- And the nuclear fusion is not caused by gravitational pressure in the core.
- Rather, it's caused by high-energy particle collisions... in arc discharges!
- So the prime mover is electric currents, without which the Sun would be a dark star, and we wouldn't be here to study it. :D
- If you're working on a totally different model, let me know, and I'll include it in the "Alternatives" section (assuming that you have done a reasonable job of explaining and illustrating your contentions).
- Here's the link to the new model: The Sun
- the basic idea is that gravity creates compressive ionization, which converts gravitational potential into electrostatic potential.
- Once the charges have been separated, energy can be released by charge recombination within the Sun.
- It also enables a solar-heliospheric current that is responsible for 1/2 of the power output.
- From a distance, it looks very similar to the Juergens model, but it fills in a lot of details, and covers the full gamut of solar science, from heavy elements in the core to high temperatures in the corona, and everything in-between.

--- Solar Model Summary
Postby CharlesChandler» Mon Nov 05, 2012 3:18 pm
- I thought it might be useful to outline a number of the salient features of the model in question.
- The basic idea is that compression, initially due to the implosion of a dusty plasma, and subsequently due to gravity, ionizes the matter, creating charged double-layers.
- Here are some of the lines of evidence in support of this.
- Dusty Plasma Energy Budget The Sun condensed from a dusty plasma with a volume of something like 7.48?×?1037 km3, and a temperature of something like 10 K.
- The Sun's present volume is 1.41?×?1018 km3, meaning a compression ratio of 5.31?×?1019.
- By the ideal gas laws, we can estimate the thermal energy of the Sun by multiplying the initial temperature by the compression ratio.
- The result is 5.31?×?1020 K.
- The difference between that and the actual temperature of the Sun (averaging something like 105 K) can only be evidence of a conversion of most of that kinetic energy into some form of potential that is not repulsive, otherwise, hydrostatic pressure would have precluded the condensation.
- Of the few choices at the macroscopic level other than gravity, only the electric and magnetic forces can be attractive.
- More specifically, powerful electric fields are capable of removing heat, and thereby reducing the hydrostatic pressure.
- The only reasonable conclusion is that the kinetic energy was converted to electrostatic potential.
- Missing Neutrinos By the neutrino count, nuclear fusion is only responsible for 1/3 of the Sun's power output, meaning that the other 2/3 has to come from some other energy conversion.
- The vast store of electrostatic potential can be reconverted to heat and light if the charges recombine.
- This will happen if mass loss due to solar winds relaxes the pressure that is maintaining the compressive ionization.
- Distinct Solar Surface If the density gradient in the Sun was only a function of gravity pulling in, and hydrostatic pressure pushing out, the Sun would not have a "surface."
- Rather, the density would just gradually thin out to nothing.
- If there was an internal light source, it would produce an effect that would look like headlights in the fog.
- By all means of observation, the Sun has a very distinct surface, where there is a sharp increase in density at the outer edge, and the surface has the dynamics of a liquid (or supercritical fluid), not a thin gas.
- The non-Newtonian density gradient can only be proof of non-Newtonian forces, pulling matter into the Sun with far more force than can be attributed to gravity.
- The Sun's average magnetic field (~1 gauss) is too weak to do this.
- Electrostatic attraction between charged double-layers would very definitely do this.
- Missing Oblateness The rotation of the Sun should produce an equatorial bulge, but it does not.
- Trying to solve the problem by varying the estimated mass won't work, because heavier/lighter substances will have more/less centripetal force, but also more/less centrifugal force, at the same ratio, producing the same bulge.
- Hence the discrepancy can only be evidence of a centripetal force that does not vary with mass (i.e., a non-Newtonian force).
- Electrostatic attraction between charged double-layers is a non-Newtonian force.
- Black-body Radiation The power from the Sun is in the form of 5525 K black-body radiation.
- Gamma rays propagating outward from a nuclear fusion reactor are distinct spectral lines, not a smooth continuum of frequencies.
- Ohmic heating from an electric current in a supercritical fluid produces black-body radiation.
- Electrostatic attraction between charged double-layers produces the force necessary to create supercritical fluids close enough to the surface that the black-body radiation will escape without being scattered.
- Solar Power - The Sun continually emits 4.7?×?1025 watts of power in black-body radiation.
- 1/3 of that power comes from nuclear fusion.
- The other 2/3 can only come from the release of electrostatic potential in arc discharges.
- Coronal mass ejections expel positive ions, leaving the Sun negatively charged, and emitting electrons.
- Ohmic heating from this current flowing through the supercritical fluid near the surface accounts for 1/3 of the total power output.
- The other 1/3 can be attributed to a similar electric current due to mass loss from spicules, and the solar wind during the quiet phase.
- Surface Dynamics Granules on the surface of the Sun have 2 km/s updrafts and 7 km/s downdrafts.
- These are supersonic speeds.
- Granules are typically explained as simple convective cells, but in no sense do the principles of convection explain supersonic speeds.
- An electric current flowing through a supercritical fluid generates "electron drag" that accelerates the fluid in the direction of the current, and can easily accelerate fluids to supersonic speeds.
- When the updrafts get to the surface, the electrons continue on out into space, while the plasma sheds off to the sides and is pulled back down by the electric force.
- Such dynamics are commonly called cathode tufts.
- Coronal Temperatures The temperature in the coronal exceeds 1 MK.
- The standard model predicts that heat radiating outward from the "fusion furnace" should dissipate by the inverse square law, not increase by 3 orders of magnitude.
- Electrons emitted from the Sun, and accelerating toward the heliosphere, will generate higher temperatures as they move away from the Sun, as their velocities increase due to the reduction in atmospheric density.
- There are many, many more details, far too numerous to mention here.
- So there's plenty to discuss, even if we constrain ourselves just to discussion of solar models. ;)

--- Accretion Theory Flaws --- Electrical Accretion Summary
Postby CharlesChandler» Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:29 am
- I agree that a complete solar theory must also include details on the entire stellar life cycle.
- This aspect of the theory is less mature, but I'll at least air my opinions.
- In order to understand how a star might eventually die, we must first understand how it was born.
- But before we begin, some misconceptions in the standard stellar model need to be eliminated.
- Gravity is given credit for causing the collapse of dusty plasmas into stars, and thereafter keeping the stars organized.
- Aside from the fact that gravity is too weak to cause the collapse in the first place, thinking that it will latch onto the matter and compress it into a star is ignorant of Newtonian physics.
- Any force that could cause the implosion of a dusty plasma would give it the momentum to overshoot the hydrostatic equilibrium.
- Thus an imploding dust cloud should bounce off of itself, and expand back out to the dimensions of the original cloud.
- If it doesn't, it is merely because the matter accreted over a period of time, and earlier explosions were muffled by the continuing implosion of more matter, leaving everything stationary, at or close to the hydrostatic equilibrium.
- But the thermalization of all of the momentum in an imploding dust cloud would produce temperatures (and thus hydrostatic pressures) way out of range for condensed matter.
- Somehow, all of that hydrostatic pressure has to be converted into another form of potential that is not repulsive, or no star will form.
- That "other potential" can only be electrostatic, which can be repulsive or attractive.
- So somehow, the kinetic energy of the imploding dust cloud gets converted into electrostatic potential, and in a configuration that is not wholly repulsive.
- How can this happen?
- We know from the ideal gas laws that compressing a gas increases the temperature, and thus the hydrostatic pressure, as a direct function of the decrease in volume.
- We also know that if we compress the gas all of the way down to the density of a liquid, the matter is incompressible past that point.
- This is because in liquids, the electron shells of neighboring atoms overlap, and further compression will cause the failure of the shells.
- Since electrons can only exist as free particles or in specific shells, if the atoms are forced too close together, the electrons are expelled.
- Then we are left with only positive ions, which are repelled by their like charges.
- Hence it is the electric force that gives liquids their incompressibility.
- As we continue the compression, and start to squeeze out electrons, the electric force pushes back.
- Interestingly, if the pressure continues to increase, the liquid starts getting ionized, and the "temperature" actually starts going down.
- The enormous electric forces (i.e., repulsion of like charges and attraction of opposite charges) remove all of the degrees of freedom.
- So you might actually be able to reduce the temperature to absolute zero if you could squeeze out all of the electrons.
- Where did all of that heat go?
- It got converted to electrostatic potential.
- How do you get it back?
- If you relax the pressure, you enable enough room between the atoms for electron shells.
- Then the electrons flow back in, and charge recombination regenerates all of the heat that was taken out by the charge separation process.
- Now, back to dust clouds.
- All other factors being the same, an imploding dust cloud that overshoots the hydrostatic equilibrium, and gets compressed all of the way down to a liquid, should just bounce off of itself even more dramatically, because it hit the wall of incompressibility.
- But on a stellar scale, we also have to figure the effects of gravity.
- It is the weakest of the forces present, but it has an important property.
- Hydrostatic pressure is purely repulsive.
- The electric force can be either repulsive or attractive.
- But gravity is purely attractive.
- This means that if the imploding dust cloud overshoots the hydrostatic equilibrium, before it bounces off of itself, the dense matter will generate a dense gravitational field, with the greatest pressure in the core.
- So that's where compressive ionization starts.
- Then things get interesting.
- Electrons expelled from the core will congregate outside of it, attracted to it by the electric force, but unable to recombine with it, because the pressure won't allow it.
- So you get a positive core surrounded by a negative double-layer.
- The negative double-layer can then induce a positive charge in the plasma outside of it, and thus a series of charged double-layers are instantiated, all because of the primary charge separation in the core.
- Interestingly, these double-layers will be bound tightly together by the electric force.
- The significance is that this increases the density of the matter, which increases the concentration of the gravitational field, which further compresses the matter, creating even more compressive ionization, which creates even more electrostatic potential.
- So this constitutes a force feedback loop.
- So if the dust cloud overshoots the hydrostatic equilibrium, and creates too great of an excess of hydrostatic pressure, compressive ionization takes hold.
- Then, the matter clanks together into a star.
- All of the resting thermal energy of the dust cloud, plus the thermalization of its imploding momentum, get converted into electrostatic potential, and the electric force keeps it all together.
- So what is the nature of the heat getting released by a star?
- The ancients thought that God had just built Himself so many little campfires.
- In the 1800s, scientists gained the ability to do spectroscopy, and detected hydrogen in stellar spectra, concluding that the hydrogen was getting burned.
- But they couldn't find enough oxygen to keep the flame from going out, and they didn't understand how hydrogen could keep burning for at least millions of years, if not longer.
- In the 1950s, scientists discovered nuclear fusion, and they thought they had it all figured out.
- The hydrogen wasn't burning — it was getting fused into helium.
- Ah, but the fusion furnace model still wasn't correct.
- Then Juergens extended the work of Bruce and Birkeland, in saying that an electric current is providing the heat.
- He was right, but he didn't establish a charge separation mechanism that could produce a sustained arc discharge.
- In the present model, stars have a lot more potential energy than just burnable hydrogen, and more than just fusable hydrogen.
- Stars actually have all of the thermal energy of a dust cloud that collapsed, which makes the standard model's 15 MK look frigid by comparison.
- Of course, all of that thermal energy, if it was still thermal, would be impossible in condensed matter.
- But it isn't thermal — it has mostly been converted to electrostatic potential.
- The core of a star might actually be at absolute zero, though with enough potential to heat a stellar system for billions of years.
- So how does this energy get released?
- The solar model has a far more detailed answer to this, but in the general stellar model, it's just mass loss due to stellar winds that relaxes the pressure.
- This allows charge recombination, converting electrostatic potential back into heat.
- The heat then helps drive the stellar winds, which perpetuate the mass loss.
- In rough terms, stars are "boiling away", where the mass loss in the "steam" enables more of the liquid to boil.
- So yes, such stars will eventually die.
- I'm thinking that stars are born as blue giants, and then eventually wither down the main sequence into red dwarfs, and then finally into planets, once there is no longer the pressure for compressive ionization near enough to the surface to drive a stellar wind.
- I have over-simplified all of this, for the sake of readability.
- And it is only representative of the Sun in the roughest of terms.
- But this is what I'm currently using as a general stellar model.

--- Accretion
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Nov 07, 2012 4:48 am
- Lloyd wrote: How far off-topic is this then?
- Do all of these events involve electrical double layers and, if so, do they show how sticky such double layers are?
- But I guess in these cases, if there were double layers, they don't remain when the process is completed, so covalent bonding or something must replace them. Huh?
- Sorry if this is irrelevant. I just enjoyed the slight novelty of thinking of the photosphere as a kind of skin stuck to the Sun.
- I "think" that concretion and accretion are slightly different, though the electric force is certainly the prime mover in both cases.
- My understanding of concretion is that certain combinations of molecules have electric dipoles that naturally line themselves up, facilitating polymerization.
- Magnetic dipoles do the same thing, so condensation and solidification are enhanced if the molecules are magnetized and there is an external field.
- Gerald Pollack's work on "liquid crystal water" is a great example of how ubiquitous this phenomenon might actually be, and how many mysteries can be solved if we acknowledge the full diversity of the effects of electromagnetism.
- Accretion is definitely a double-layer phenomenon.
- Out in space, dust particles pick up a negative charge because of the high mobility of free electrons.
- These are absorbed into the electron cloud of the particles, which can host a net negative charge of something like 0.1 ppm before the electrostatic repulsion exceeds the force of the covalent bonds.
- As a dust particle picks up a negative charge, the surrounding gas that lost the electrons is now ionized, and is therefore attracted to the particle.
- Ions attracted to the dust particle will eventually collide with it, and then there are two possible outcomes.
- First, a fast-moving ion might regain its lost electron on collision, and then bounce off of the dust particle.
- The outflow of neutrally charged molecules then offers a little bit of resistance to inflowing positive ions, and this is part of what maintains the charge separation.
- Second, a slow-moving ion that regains its lost electron might get snared by the covalent bonding, and just stay there, accreting itself onto the dust particle.
- As a consequence, the dust particle grows a lot faster than it would just by random molecular motions.
- Then, the "like-likes-like" force between dust particles pulls them together into even larger aggregates.
- This is similar to covalent bonding, just at the macroscopic level.
- The negatively charged dust particles repel each other, but they're both attracted to their positively charged Debye sheaths.
- The shared positive charge between the negative particles is closer to them, so the net force is attractive.
- If there are just two particles there, they will be drawn together.
- Then again, if all of the particles in the dust cloud are ionized, the net effect is a body force on the entire thing, causing the collapse of the dusty plasma into a star.
- As the body force builds up inward momentum in the dust particles, they retain their 0.1 ppm negative charge, and the initial proto-star is negatively charged, surrounded by positive ions that were squeezed out during the collapse.
- The electric force between the negative proto-star and the surrounding double-layer pulls everything together, increasing the pressure.
- When the pressure becomes sufficient for compressive ionization, the core becomes positively charged, surrounded by a negative double-layer, which has a positive double-layer around it.
- The increasing electric forces further compact the matter, increasing the compressive ionization, which increases the force binding all of it together.
- And the electric force removes degrees of freedom from the atoms, which reduces the hydrostatic pressure, further enabling compaction.
- Hence it's a force feedback loop.
- And thus the whole thing is electric — start to finish.

--- Stellar Formation Theory Methodology
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Oct 24, 2012 9:18 pm
- What if we subject our own models to the same critical scrutiny that we apply to everybody else's?
- "You might be wrong, therefore I might be right" will give you a little bit of wiggle room, but don't dig your heels in and call that a position, because it isn't.
- For example, if you say that the flow is inward in a planetary nebula, what is the force that pulls matter in like that?
- Are you saying that it's an electric current?
- Do a diagram of the electric fields that would cause such a current, and then explain what would sustain the fields long enough to produce such structures.
- If you're saying that it's an electric current flowing through the system, then the field is everywhere.
- Free space has a higher permittivity than the aggregation of plasma and dust in the nebula.
- So why is the current flowing through the nebula?
- And what got the current density to be so much greater at the pinch point, such that the magnetic fields would be that much stronger, just right there?
- If such questions are not answered, then sooner or later, people are going to begin to suspect that it's because they cannot be answered.
- The better approach is not to lock down on a position, but rather, to make progress the constant factor.
- As more information keeps coming in, keep sifting through it, trying to make sense of it, and figuring out what that does to existing notions.
- That will keep you on the forefront of the advances in knowledge and understanding.

--- Math Support
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Oct 24, 2012 3:13 am
- Lloyd wrote: Maybe you need to put the final touches on your model first, assuming no one spots a major error anywhere, by working out the math for the model.
- I'm thinking about adding an appendix, so I can post more of the maths and code, without overloading the text.
- The finite element analysis engine that I developed currently can calculate pressures, densities, and temperatures, just given the force of gravity in a star.
- I'm currently reading up on the physics of supercritical fluids, so that I can add in the appropriate Coulomb forces.
- I'm doing it with FEA because it's a totally explicit approach that everybody can understand.
- To do these calcs algebraically would take a fourth order tensor that nobody would understand! :) Lloyd wrote: Glad to hear EGM's and others' questions about the source of the Sun's energy etc.
- That will need some math to back it up too, eventually.
- I was thinking about that.
- Perhaps I can locate some stats on the average size of a dust cloud, the likes of which is going to condense into a star.
- Assume that the temperature is 2.7 K (i.e., the cosmic background radiation).
- Then apply the ideal gas laws, to get the temperature of the condensate.
- A dust cloud that is a couple of light years across, when compressed into a star a couple million meters across, is going to produce some pretty outrageous temperatures.
- And that wouldn't even include the thermalization of the imploding momentum.
- I guess if I knew the rate at which dust clouds collapse, I could throw that in too.
- Just the ideal gas laws will prove the point, but it would be nice to be able to show exactly how much temperature there was to start, as this is the amount of heat that ultimately will be released by the star in its lifetime.
- This number can also be used to double-check my estimates of the electrostatic potentials inside a star, as I'm saying that most of the thermal potential has been converted into electrostatic potential, and that's why the temperature of a star is several thousand kelvins, instead of several gazillions.
- If I can show that the same electrostatic potentials that answer so many questions about the star itself also account for all of the missing thermal energy from the original accretion, it will paint a much bigger picture.

--- Stellar Fusion
Postby CharlesChandler» Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:04 pm
- justcurious wrote: Why do you think only very massive stars would produce matter due to gravitational pressure[?]
- are you not convinced that electric forces are way stronger. [...]
- there seem to be many recorded cases of deuterium and tritium being produced from electricity and water.
- They call it cold fusion...
- Cold fusion (a.k.a., transmutation) definitely happens, but you're right — it's tough to reproduce.
- IMO, the huge quantities of heavy elements that we see, in the Earth for example, could not have come entirely from rare, random transmutation events.
- So I focus on other mechanisms.
- "Hot fusion" is much more reliable, though it takes extreme temperatures to get the necessary collisional energies, and extreme pressures to keep the sub-atomic pieces together so they'll combine into a larger atom.
- Reliable fusion caused by electricity only happens at a large scale.
- Free neutrons and deuterium are produced by lightning here on Earth.
- The likeliest place for this to happen is where relativistic free electrons slam into STP air at the beginnings of the stepped leaders.
- The same thing happens in the Sun during solar flares, but on a much larger scale, and there we're seeing the production of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (and possibly even heavier elements).
- But it's not because of electricity directly.
- Rather, the electric force accelerates electrons to relativistic velocities, and then the collisions between the electron stream and stationary nucleons produces the instantaneous temperatures and pressures for fusion.
- justcurious wrote: The fact that the massive sun spins yet remains a perfect sphere suggests to me the forces at work are mostly pointing from the outside in.
- Indeed.
- I believe that the extra centripetal force comes from charged double-layers in the Sun that have a powerful electric force binding them together.
- Lloyd wrote: The idea that impacts could produce thermonuclear explosions seems novel.
- Did you think that up? Or did you hear it from someone else first?
- Maybe it's a new idea. I don't recall hearing it elsewhere.
- But it seems pretty inescapable, if we just step through the whole process, and identify all of the factors present.

--- Heavy Elements Formation --- Star to Planet Evolution --- Stellar Collisions
Postby CharlesChandler» Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:25 am
- Where I used the term "planet" I could have also just said "dark star," for all of what I actually meant.
- In other words, I'm not explicitly stating that all planets used to be stars.
- Some of them might still be in the accretion process, yet to become a star if they can ever get together enough mass.
- So I'll answer the question as if I had said "dark star" and you were asking about the core constitution. :)
- In the proposed model, hydrogen & helium make up 66% of the Sun's volume, with heavier elements (i.e., iron, nickel, platinum, & osmium) making up the other 34%.
- That's a lot of heavier elements, considering that the Milky Way is estimated to be 98% hydrogen & helium, and only 2% heavier elements.
- There are two possibilities here: 1) the Sun condensed from stuff that just happened to have a lot of heavier elements, and 2) the Sun manufactured the heavier elements, by nuclear fusion.
- Let's start with #2.
- The Sun is no longer massive enough for nuclear fusion in its core, even just to be fusing hydrogen into helium.
- The fusion that does continue to occur is all inside arc discharges, where relativistic electrons slam into high-pressure plasma.
- I find it hard to believe that this variety of nuclear fusion produced all of the helium, and all of the heavier elements, in the Sun.
- I find it easier to believe that the Sun used to be a much heavier star, like a blue giant, capable of fusing all of the heavier elements in its core.
- It may have started with mostly hydrogen.
- Over a period of time, heavier elements were manufactured, which remained in or near the core, because their weight got them to settle to the bottom.
- While the fusion was still active, there would have been a lot of mixing in the core, but the heavier elements never would have risen to the surface.
- Meanwhile, mass loss to solar winds reduced the force of gravity.
- With all of the plasma under a lot less pressure, the black-body radiation is now a lot cooler, and the Sun is a yellow dwarf, but it has a big inventory of heavier elements, left over from its younger days.
- If this progression is correct, eventually the Sun will be a brown dwarf, with even more heavier elements, less hydrogen, and producing even less light.
- When it finally goes out, it will be mostly heavy elements.
- Note that this does leave a few tidbits on the table, as concerns the constitution of planets, moons, asteroids, etc.
- These all have a lot of heavier elements as well.
- If the Sun used to be all hydrogen, and it manufactured all of its own heavier elements, and if the planets, moons, & asteroids condensed out of the same stuff, they should be mainly hydrogen (which means that they wouldn't have condensed).
- So maybe the planets etc. came out of the Sun as a consequence of a collision that occurred after it had manufactured a lot of heavier elements.
- Maybe there was another collision, like between two dark stars, and the debris just happened to get trapped by the Sun's gravitational field.
- Or maybe the Sun is a 2nd generation star, born of the debris of an earlier star that manufactured the heavier elements, and the planets etc. condensed out of the same debris.
--- Stellar Collisions
Postby CharlesChandler» Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:26 pm
- 3. I "think" that if two stars were going to collide, the inertial forces would dominate the event.
- If they were of like charge, the repulsion would probably blow some charged material off of each of them, but the main bodies of the stars would continue in for the collision.

--- External Fields, Tensile Strength
Postby CharlesChandler» Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:26 pm
- I'm not ruling out the influence of external fields (electric or magnetic), and there are lots of them (solar, heliospheric, spiral arm, galaxy, cluster...).
- One effect of external magnetic fields is that they tend to orient things that rotate (such as planets around stars, or the accretion disc of a planetary nebula).
- I personally believe that there is an electric field running through the arms of spiral galaxies, where the planets & stars are negatively charged, and the interstellar plasma is positively charged.
- I believe that this field gives the arm tensile strength, without which the outer reaches would fly off into the intergalactic medium.
- But I don't know of any evidence of currents per se.
- It doesn't mean that they aren't there.
- It just means that they haven't been detected yet, at least on a scale that could do something dramatic, like light up a star.
- But it would certainly be possible for an old star to run into a new debris field, and to start accreting a whole bunch of new stuff, lighting up and getting brighter as a result.

--- EM Fields
Postby CharlesChandler» Sat Oct 27, 2012 2:23 pm
- Field "lines" just indicate the direction of the force.
- In the case of electric fields, it is the path that a charged particle will follow in that field.
- For magnetic fields, if magnetized particles are present, their dipoles will get aligned to those lines, and they "might" be accelerated along the lines, if the lines are converging.
- So it's a useful conceptual device, so long as you know that it's just a way of designating the direction of the force.
- When both electric and magnetic fields are present, it gets more complex, because a moving charged particle generates its own magnetic field, and then there's that other magnetic field, and the clash between the two (i.e., the Lorentz force) will send the charged particle into a spin.
- The axis of that spin will be the magnetic line of force at that point.
- And once so organized, these "B-field aligned" currents (i.e., Birkeland currents) tend to get pinched down into discrete filaments, as in coronal loops.
- So you might have started out with evenly distributed magnetic and electric fields, but then you get these discrete channels of electric current, looking likes lines on a drawing.
- At that point, the magnetic field is no longer evenly dispersed.
- Rather, it has been perturbed by the magnetic fields generated by the electric current.
- So that's a complex environment.
- "Flux" is a confusing term.
- It has a number of different definitions, and in all but the most specific statements, it can usually be taken in a variety of ways.
- Sometimes it means "field density", and sometimes it means the rate at which the field density is varying.
- To be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea what a "magnetic flux tube" is.
- I've never heard the term used in such a specific way that the meaning was clear. :?

--- Stellar Magnetic Flux Tubes
Postby CharlesChandler» Sun Oct 28, 2012 11:54 pm
- Lloyd wrote: Is this explanation of solar magnetic flux tubes detailed enough for you?
- UCAR wrote: Magnetic Flux Tubes (MFT), also called "pores", are magnetic field concentrations near the surface of the sun.
- They are caused by surrounding convective motion which brings together small components of magnetic field.
- Naaaa, that's not an explanation.
- :) I want to see vectors showing the direction of the moving charged particles that generate the B-field, and vectors showing the direction of the field so generated.
- Nowhere in the MHD literature have I found the magnetomotive force discussed, much less the electrostatic potentials that drive the electric currents that generate the magnetic fields.
- So this is the type of working that I'm doing — actually tracing the measurements back to the physical forces responsible for them.
- And every time I find a force, I want to know what caused that force.
- Once the prime movers have been identified, I want to know how the energy gets converted, and in a way that corresponds directly to the observables.
- And what I'm finding is that we have plenty of data to build a realistic model of the Sun.
- But we have to learn to think like engineers who need to know how all of the parts are actually going to fit together into a working engine.

--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
Postby CharlesChandler» Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:16 am
- In a previous post I threatened to calculate the total amount of thermal energy that should be in a star the size of the Sun, given the initial temperature of the dusty plasma, and the compression ratio.
- I found the information I needed on Wikipedia:
- In the dense nebulae where stars are produced, much of the hydrogen is in the molecular (H2) form, so these nebulae are called molecular clouds.
- The largest such formations, called giant molecular clouds, have typical densities of 100 particles per cm3, diameters of 100 light-years (9.5×1014 km), masses of up to 6 million solar masses, and an average interior temperature of 10 K.
- So here's the drill.
- * Find the volume of a spherical gas cloud 9.5×1014 km across.
- * Divide that by 6 million, to get the volume of a gas cloud that would condense into something the size of the Sun.
- * Divide that by the actual volume of the Sun, to get the compression ratio.
- * Multiply the compression ratio by 10 K, to get the resultant temperature after compression.
- The result came out to 5.31 x 1020. :shock:
- The actual temperature of the Sun, according to the standard model, is only 1.5 x 107 in the core, and 6 x 103 at the surface, for an average of roughly 105 K.
- So there is a discrepancy of 15 orders of magnitude.
- And that isn't even taking into account the fact that the standard model assumes that the 15 MK is being generated internally by nuclear fusion.
- Without the fusion furnace, what would the temperature be?
- Whatever it would be, it would be a lot less, and the thermal discrepancy would be even larger.
- Note also that these calcs don't even take into account the thermalization of high-velocity particle collisions when the gas cloud collapses.
- I'm just compressing all of the resting thermal energy into a smaller space, not figuring that I'd have to accelerate particles from light years away to get them compressed.
- So again, the actual discrepancy is a lot more than 15 orders of magnitude.
- So where did all of that heat go?
- Part of it got used up expelling the plasma in the heliosphere.
- Next I'll see if I can find the numbers for that.
- But that's not going to make up the missing 15 orders of magnitude.
- Where else could that energy go?
- There IS one other place: it could have gotten converted to electrostatic potential inside the Sun, due to compressive ionization.
- Note that powerful electric fields remove degrees of freedom from the plasma, and thereby suck all of the heat out of them.
- How do you get all of that heat back?
- You relax the pressure.
- Then the electrons flow back in, and the charge recombination regenerates all of the heat.
- So the conservation of energy is maintained all of the way through.
- But with the electrostatic attraction of charged double-layers, plus a little bit of gravity, you get enough force to hold the whole thing together, without the hydrostatic pressure that should have blown it apart.
- And you have a whole lot of potential energy in there that will keep the thing glowing white-hot for a long, long time, because you still have all of the energy of an imploding gas cloud that was all converted to electrostatic potential.
- Oh and by the way, the nature of the energy release will act like an electric current, and will never make sense to anybody who expects it to act like a fusion furnace.

--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
Postby CharlesChandler» Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:58 am
- OK, I found the numbers on the heliosphere.
- The radius is roughly 100 AU, which works out to 1.5?×?1010 km, with a volume of 1.4?×?1031 km3.
- The average temperature seems to be something like 105 K.
- If we compress that much volume down to the point that it has the same 5.31 x 1020 K as the original collapsed dust cloud, it's 0.00187 of the volume of the present Sun (or roughly 2/10 of a percent).
- This means that 99.8% of the thermal energy of the collapsed dust cloud is still bottled up (somehow) inside the Sun, and only 0.2% of the energy has already escaped in the solar wind.
- So where did all of that heat go?
- I "think" that conversion to electrostatic potential is the only possible answer to that question.

--- Solar Energy Sources
Postby CharlesChandler» Mon Oct 29, 2012 1:59 pm
- Weak convection in the "convective" zone is obviously a huge problem for the standard model.
- It has an internal energy source that is (supposedly) putting out photons that (somehow) need to be thermalized before they reach the surface, so that the Sun will emit black-body radiation, instead of the gamma rays that we'd normally expect from nuclear fusion.
- Why the thin plasma is the standard model wouldn't convect with an internal heat source is a question that has no answer.
- The model I'm using has an energy source (i.e., arc discharges) at a depth of 125,000 km, which is given credit for 1/6 of the heat released by the Sun.
- The number was derived from the facts that 1/2 of the total heat is attributable to ohmic heating near the surface, and 1/3 is attributable to nuclear fusion, based on the neutrino count.
- That leaves 1/6.
- Some of that heat is responsible for the buoyancy of supergranules.
- I haven't found any estimates on the amount of heat that drives the supergranules, but I think that it's a lot less than 1/6 of the total solar output.
- Whatever heat is not carried by convection to the surface will propagate via conduction.
- In the standard model, the topmost 125,000 km is very thin, but in the model I'm using, that's a supercritical fluid, which conducts heat very nicely.
- The other models with which I'm familiar have all of the heat being released at, near, and/or above the surface, so they don't suffer at all from this new finding (though those models cannot account for the convection in the supergranules).

--- CME Prediction
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Oct 31, 2012 12:09 am
- GaryN wrote: I can't seem to find anyone willing to speculate on a possible maximum magnitude of a CME, or it's effects on the magnetosphere, ionosphere, or potential surface effects.
- I briefly discuss the implications of another Carrington Event in the new Motivation section on my site.
- In 1859, people could get by without telegrams for a few weeks, until the wires that got burned out could be repaired.
- But in 2012, what if a geomagnetic storm of the same proportions knocks out power across most of North America?
- And what if the factories that manufacture replacement wire, switches, etc., are without power?
- The good news is that we could avoid a lot of the damage by shutting down the power grid before the storm.
- The bad news is the existing science cannot predict such events with the degree of confidence necessary to order the power-down.
- When everything comes as a surprise to scientists, nobody listens when they issue predictions.
- So we need a more accurate model, founded on real physics, if we are to predict the next Carrington Event in advance, with the necessary degree of reliability.
- In other words, if the predictions of a better model start coming true on a regular basis, then people will listen.
- BTW, I put up on my site a design for a laboratory experiment that might be able to reproduce some of the characteristics of the solar discharge.
- See this for more info.

--- Stars vs Planets
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Oct 31, 2012 12:09 am
- tayga wrote: How would your model account for the Sun being a star and the gas giants not?
- First, we know that the gas giants produce more heat than they absorb, so there is definitely something going on inside them.
- I think that this "something" is arc discharges across charge-separated matter.
- The charge separation mechanism is compressive ionization due to gravity.
- Once separated, disruptions in the electrostatic layering result in arc discharges.
- So the root question is, "How much gravity is there, to produce how much compressive ionization, that will enable how many arc discharges?" In other words, the more massive the object, the more ionized it is, and the more electromagnetically active it will be.
- Hence the different between a planet and a star might not be a difference of kind, but rather, just of degree.
- When a dusty plasma is first starting to condense, something that we would call a planet starts to form.
- If the accretion continues, the mass increases, and thus the ionization.
- When the temperature increases to the point that the "planet-proto-star" starts producing visible light, we'd call it a star.
- When the star has ejected so much stellar wind that the mass is no longer capable of compressive ionization, the light goes out, and what's left is what we would once again call a planet.

--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Oct 31, 2012 1:13 pm
- [NB: Please excuse the verbosity of this post.
- If you're not interested in the properties of supercritical fluids, you can skip this one. :)]
- Maol wrote: When in the supercritical state, fluids are compressible as if they were gaseous.
- Indeed, if liquids were actually incompressible, in the sense that they absolutely could not be compressed any further, then nuclear fusion would not be possible.
- And yet we know that it is possible to push atoms beyond the Coulomb barrier and to fuse them into heavier atoms.
- So yes, liquids are compressible.
- The point is that it takes a lot more force, and this has to be taken into account.
- Things get a lot more interesting at high pressures and high temperatures.
- If the atoms are already ionized due to high temperatures, there isn't a distinct step in the Coulomb barrier when compression causes the failure of electron shells, because the electrons have already been expelled.
- So the Coulomb force is already there, prematurely if you will, as the simple repulsion of like charges between the atoms, and without being offset by any attraction to shared electrons.
- So you can compress those atoms right past the "incompressibility" of the liquid, as if it wasn't there, when really, you're already up against the Coulomb force, in addition to the hydrostatic pressure.
- For hydrogen, having only one proton and one electron, either it's ionized, in which case the electrons are already unbound, and there's no k-shell failure, or the atoms are still neutral, in which case they'll act like an incompressible fluid.
- For heavier elements, it isn't that simple, as ionization isn't an all-or-nothing issue.
- For each successive degree of ionization, it takes even more heat.
- This is because the outer electrons in a heavy element are loosely bound to the atom, while the inner electrons are tightly bound.
- So the first degree of ionization is easy, while the last is tough.
- So if you pack atoms closer together than their outer shells would allow, but if the atoms already lost those electrons to thermal ionization, there won't be a distinct step in the Coulomb force at that distance.
- But the atoms might still have bound electrons in inner shells, and there you'll get the typical behavior, with a new degree of force when the electrons are expelled by pressure.
- Nevertheless, to think of a supercritical fluid as compressible, as if it was a gas, it technically true, though it lends itself to a conception that the Coulomb force is not there, which is not correct.
- Rather, you have to put the fluid under such an enormous amount of force, to get to that density while at an extreme temperature, that you might not notice that there is a new form of repulsion in there (i.e., the Coulomb force).
- But if you try to predict the density-pressure-temperature relationship with the ideal gas laws, you'll be way off.
- If you actually want to know how a supercritical fluid is going to act, you don't use the ideal gas laws, nor the predictions of quantum mechanics.
- Rather, you see if you can find a paper where somebody actually tested the properties of that element or mixture, and wrote up the results.
- The reason why people would even bother doing this is because the theoretical predictions are somewhere between inaccurate and "what were they thinking?" Here we have to remember that quantum mechanics was already taking shape before all of the scientists working on it had bought into the Bohr model of the atom.
- The abstract and heuristic nature of QM is evidence of the number of uncertainties confronting early 20th century scientists.
- Unfortunately, no one has ever gone back and worked out a theory that accurately matches lab results for supercritical fluids.
- Then, when you start talking about what's going on inside a star, things get even more interesting.
- First, we have no direct knowledge of the temperatures inside a star.
- Second, the laboratory evidence is extremely sparse, as the conditions have few practical applications here on Earth, and hence there is little incentive for lab work.
- And then, whenever astronomers find something that they can't understand, they just modify QM to predict those results under those circumstances, and say that they figured it out.
- For example, white dwarfs would seem to have such a dense gravitational field that they should collapse under their own weight.
- So scientists invented the concept of "electron degeneracy pressure" to prevent the collapse.
- This only applies to white dwarfs.
- In pulsars, scientists couldn't figure out how such a massive object could pulse so rapidly.
- So they calculated what they thought to be the maximum size for an object that would pulse as an integral unit, and then, to pack all of that mass into such a small space required that they give it the density of the nucleus of an atom.
- If they were real atoms, the Coulomb force would be much more powerful than gravity.
- So pulsars can only be made of neutrally charged particles — neutrons.
- Note that electron degeneracy pressure didn't prevent this collapse, because that only applies to white dwarfs.
- And neutrons that do not undergo beta decay in the absence of the weak nuclear force only applies to neutron stars.
- And none of this agrees with nuclear fusion research, which maintains that the Coulomb barrier is real, even at extreme temperatures and pressures (otherwise we'd already have working fusion reactors)
- and no, it isn't electron degeneracy pressure, because there aren't any electrons in there
- and no, neutrons always decay within 15 minutes outside of the nucleus of an atom.
- This leaves a lot of very fundamental issues open to debate.
- As we will never have direct knowledge of what is going on inside stars, IMO the only way to proceed is to test hypotheses to see how consistently they can be applied, to how many different data-sets, and without violating any known principles of physics.
- I acknowledge that the way I handle physical states is a vast oversimplification.
- But it's the clearest way I've found to present the material, without spending the first 20 pages on philosophical debates in the particle physics community.
- To make a long story short, there isn't good reason to believe that nuclear fusion is occurring in the core of the Sun.
- (Rather, it occurs in the stepped leaders of arc discharges near the surface.) Without a source of heat in the center, the internal temperatures are far lower.
- I actually base my calculations on 6000 K throughout.
- I have reason to believe that at 125 Mm below the surface it is higher than that, but I don't know how much higher, and it certainly isn't anything like the 15 MK in the standard model.
- At 6000 K, the hydrogen will be ionized, but the heavier elements (e.g., iron & nickel) will only be partially ionized.
- So distinct steps in the Coulomb force will still be there.
- Gravity will act more forcefully on ions than on electrons, due to the difference in mass.
- This is especially true for heavier elements.
- This means that gravity will separate charges, even if none of the electrons are bound.
- Once the charges are partially separated, the electric force will remove degrees of freedom, thus effectively reducing the temperature, and allowing the matter to be more densely packed.
- This increases the gravitational field, which increases the gravitational charge separation.
- So it's still a force feedback loop, and gravity is still responsible to concentrating the force in the core.
- To my knowledge, the only part of the model that really becomes questionable when the fine-grain details of supercritical fluids are taken into account is whether or not there are s-waves at the "liquid line" 125 Mm below the surface.
- This would actually be a theoretical issue even outside of the context of supercriticality, as a steady increase in pressure, that compacts a gas eventually into a fluid, doesn't produce a distinct increase in density when the incompressibility of the liquid is hit.
- Rather, the density simply never gets much greater past that point.
- And without a sharp charge in density, there aren't going to be s-waves.
- Nevertheless, I think that there's a boundary there, for a variety of reasons.
- Hydrogen below that level is definitely ionized, while above that level, it doesn't have to be, just taking pressure into account.
- So charge recombination in hydrogen is possible above 125 Mm, but not below.
- This means that p-waves at that depth, in the decompression cycle, will cool the plasma, and enable electron uptake.
- The compression cycle will re-ionize the plasma.
- So there could be a constant source of arc discharges at this level.
- The extra heat will create a layer of thin plasma above the "liquid line", and this is what enables s-waves at a distinct difference in density.

--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids
Postby CharlesChandler» Thu Nov 01, 2012 4:07 am
- I think we're talking at slightly different levels of description, and it might be useful to identify the difference.
- Maol wrote: I think you're over-thinking this phenomenon of the supercritical state of matter.
- It has nothing to do with ionization.
- Like thawing and boiling, the point at which any given matter enters the supercritical state is merely a function of temperature and therefore pressure.
- I understand that the phase diagrams for elements, compounds, and mixtures can be drawn strictly on the basis of temperature and pressure.
- Below the critical point, you get solids, liquids, and gases.
- Above the critical point, you get this new state.
- Like a solid, the atoms are in a closest-packed arrangement, and wave transmission speeds and thermal conduction are similar to solids.
- But there is no crystal lattice, so the matter is fluid.
- But unlike a liquid, it is compressible, like a gas.
- So all of the rules have changed, and supercritical fluids are rightfully considered to be a distinct physical state.
- And you need not measure ionization to make these determinations.
- Those are all observations.
- But I want to know why matter has different physical states.
- In ancient times, people understood that there was a difference between physical states, and this was built into their conception that everything was just different combinations of earth, water, wind, & fire (i.e., solids, liquids, gases, & plasmas).
- But those aren't essences — they're physical states, and we now have a much more accurate definition of these states.
- And it all has to do with electrons.
- In solids, covalent bonding creates a rigid crystal lattice.
- In liquids, there is too much atomic motion for the lattice, but you still have surface tension from the shared electrons.
- In gases you have only the molecular bonds left.
- And in plasmas, there is no bonding at all.
- So observing the differences between physical states doesn't require atomic theory, but explaining them without acknowledging the significance of charges particles is impossible.
- To say that physical states have nothing to do with ionization means that you're talking at the level of observation, not explanation.
- So here's where things get interesting.
- What is the explanation of the behaviors of supercritical fluids?
- The reason why I need to know is that we cannot directly observe the interior of the Sun.
- So we can only start with a thorough understanding of first principles.
- That might not give us all of the answers.
- But it will define a finite solution domain, and some of the proposals (such as the "fusion furnace" model) will be found to be outside of the limits of physical possibilities.
- Once in a physics-constrained environment, we can then test each of the possibilities, to see whether or not they would be capable of generating the observations.
- Maybe in the end we'll have several possibilities, or maybe we'll be able to narrow it down to just one.
- But we should definitely eliminate all of the impossibilities! :)
- Maol wrote: This is not to say a supercritical fluid could not be ionized, I don't see why not.
- Newtonian and Maxwellian physics are often treated separately.
- So you've got your ideal gas laws, and then oh by the way, the matter can also be ionized, but that doesn't affect the ideal gas laws.
- Ah, but it certainly does! Without making any change to the temperature or pressure, you can shift matter all of the way through the solid-liquid-gas-plasma series, just by sucking electrons out of the mix.
- Hydrogen at absolute zero would normally be solid, but in a powerful electric field, it can be fully ionized.
- Now what physical state is it in?
- (It's plasma.) Furthermore, extreme temperatures cause ionization.
- So hydrogen at 6000 K isn't maybe ionized or maybe neutral, though too hot to be molecular.
- That's all plasma! At that temperature, the electron momenta are greater than the electric forces, and the electrons spend most of their time in the unbound state.
- (Only randomization in the particle velocities enables electron uptake, but the electrons don't stay bound for long.)
- So a complete treatment of the topic necessitates the identification of the microphysics responsible for the observations.
- As concerns solids, liquids, & gases, we already have a mechanistic model.
- For supercritical fluids, the observations exist, but I haven't found a nuts-n-bolts model that matches the lab results.
- So this is a theoretical endeavor.
- But it goes without saying that all of the forces have to be taken into account.
- It isn't just thermal momentum.
- If it was that simple, you wouldn't need quantum mechanics to issue theoretical predictions of supercritical properties, nor would anybody be scratching their heads, wondering why the lab results don't match the QM predictions.
- Electric charges produce respectable forces at the atomic level, and I'm betting that the mechanistic model that will emerge [someday] will include such forces.

--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids and Compressive Ionization
Postby CharlesChandler» Sat Nov 03, 2012 3:43 am
- BTW, before the issue of the behavior of solar supercritical fluids is closed, we should consider one of the other implications of enormous electric fields.
- (I'll grant you that the fields might not come from "compressive ionization" as I simplistically put it, but rather, from gravity acting more forcefully on nucleons than on electrons. Regardless...)
- If there is a charge separation mechanism, it removes degrees of freedom, and thus heat.
- We know this just by the conservation of energy.
- When charges recombine, they generate heat.
- Where did they get that heat?
- It is a conversion of electrostatic potential to thermal kinetics.
- And what was the effect of the electrostatic potential being created in the first place?
- It was a conversion of thermal kinetics to electrostatic potential.
- So the energy is conserved all of the way through.
- I briefly touched on this in a previous post concerning the energy budget of a dusty plasma that condenses into a star.
- (Something has to cool the plasma, or the 1020 K just might preclude condensation.) The implication at the atomic level is that the matter might actually be very cool.
- In fact, the temperature in the core might actually be absolute zero! It would be a mistake to underestimate the amount of "potential heat" (if you will) that it has, and would release if the pressure was relaxed.
- But if we stuck a thermometer in there, we might get 0 K.
- This would make sense of an interesting fact: the core is acoustically opaque.
- We know that it's there, by the helioseismic shadow that it casts on the opposite side of the Sun.
- But waves going in one side and coming out the other have never been detected.
- If the core was a compressible supercritical fluid, it would be acoustically transparent.
- But taking the Coulomb force between ions into account, it might be pressed down into a closest-packed arrangement, in what we might call a liquid crystal configuration (i.e., "crystal" because of the rigidly ordered arrangement of the atoms, but "liquid" because of a lack of covalent bonds).
- Acoustically, this will act like one solid mass, and only something forceful enough to move the entire mass all at once could get energy coming out the other side.
- The p-waves bouncing around inside the Sun do not have this force.
- So they are simply reflected back out.
- So if the core is frozen rock solid, is it a supercritical fluid?
- Matter isn't supercritical unless both the temperature and the pressure are above the critical point.
- What if the pressure is a lot greater, but the temperature is a lot less?
- Then the atoms are not going to be ionized just by temperature, and you have to re-introduce all of those electrons shells that you didn't have in the supercritical state.
- Then, at sufficient pressures, the matter will be ionized by the pressure.
- So compressive ionization comes back into the picture.
- If anybody can present the physics with a higher degree of confidence, I'd love to hear it.
- It gives me no comfort to be working through the permutations of different configurations of forces, knowing that a little twitch in the theoretical substrate could cause a devastating earthquake in the framework I'm building.
- So I have to leave a lot of possibilities open, and the only way that I can proceed is to just keep narrowing the solution domain by looking for mutually constraining data.
- But the existing models are flatly naive by comparison.
- For example, the Dalsgaard model simply runs out the ideal gas laws, knowing the overall mass of the Sun, the external temperature, and the "fusion furnace" model core temperature.
- That produces a steady increase in density, which would be OK for a simple supercritical fluid.
- But helioseismology detects 3 distinct layers in the Sun: the core, the "radiative" zone, and the "convective" zone.
- (The last two get their names from the role that they play in the fusion furnace model, but their existence was certified by helioseismology, and never would have been predicted by the principles of nuclear fusion.)
- So if the Sun is all just supercritical hydrogen, what produces the 3 distinct layers in the Sun?
- IMO, the only reasonable approach is to take all of the facts into account, and to keep sifting through candidates until we find one that cannot be eliminated by any of the known facts.

--- Compressive Ionization and Thornhill
Postby CharlesChandler» Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:05 am
- Lloyd wrote: When you started discussing your C.I. Electric Sun model, I remember you saying at that time that you got your idea for CI from some scientist, whose name I forget (something like Robitaille?).
- Robitaille is worth studying in detail, as is Aspden, for the valuable work that they have done on a variety of related topics.
- But as concerns just the issue of compressive ionization, here is a good example, with the full abstract (since it's so central to the topics at hand).
- Saumon, D.; Chabrier, G., 1992: Fluid hydrogen at high density: Pressure ionization.
- Physical Review A, 46 (4): 2084-2100 wrote:
- In an earlier paper [Phys. Rev. A 44, 5122 (1991)], we presented a Helmholtz-free-energy model for nonideal mixtures of hydrogen atoms and molecules.
- In the present paper, we extend this model to describe an interacting mixture of H2, H, H+, and e- in chemical equilibrium.
- This general model describes the phenomena of dissociation and ionization caused by pressure and temperature effects, as encountered in astrophysical situations and high-pressure experiments.
- The present model is thermodynamically unstable in the pressure-ionization regime and predicts the existence of a plasma phase transition with a critical point at Tc=15 300 K, Pc=0.614 Mbar, and ?c=0.35 g/cm3.
- The transition occurs between a weakly ionized phase and a partially (?50%) ionized phase.
- Molecular dissociation and pressure ionization occur in the same narrow density range; atoms play a minor role in pressure ionization.
- In the high-density phase, complete pressure ionization is reached gradually.
- The sensitivity of the coexistence curve and of the critical point to model parameters and assumptions is discussed in detail.
- I then apply these principles to all elements, where the heavier elements will be more easily ionized, as their outer electrons are not so tightly bound.
- Lloyd wrote: Thornhill had discussed the same idea on his site, though I don't think he mentioned the term C.I.
- He had said that atoms in the core of a large body should gravitationally form dipoles, so that the negative sides face outward and the positive face inward.
- I think he "waved his hands" and the negative electron sides of the atoms formed electric currents toward the surface, leaving behind the positive nuclei.
- He then suggested that the nuclei would repel each other and result in equal pressure throughout the core.
- He said helioseismology showed that the Sun is indeed like that inside.
- Does that seem reasonable?
- Helioseismology actually doesn't tell us much about the core, except that it is definitely there, and it definitely has a different density, because it produces a distinct shadow on the opposite side of the Sun.
- But p-waves don't pass through the core, so we don't know anything about the density gradient (if any).
- This, in fact, is what leaves the topic open to the speculation that it's hollow, while my take is that it's frozen rock solid, and p-waves bounce off of its rigidity.
- I agree that the density is probably quite consistent, and I agree that the reason would be electrostatic repulsion between ions.
- But we can't say that the seismic data support these assertions.
- Regardless, the basic idea that gravity creates ionization is very reasonable.
- (See page 114 of Aspden, H., 2003: The Physics of Creation.
- Southampton, England: Sabberton Publications.) Protons are 1836 times heavier than electrons, and so will be more affected by gravity.
- A helium nucleus is 1836 x 4 times heavier, so the effect is even stronger.
- Hence positive ions will be pulled toward the core, and electrons will bubble up to the top, within the limits of the Coulomb forces at play (repulsion of like charges and attraction of opposite charges).
- Since the electric force is so much more powerful than gravity, it wouldn't seem that there would be much of a charge separation.
- But it's all relative.
- The Sun is 333,000 times more massive than the Earth, so there is 333,000 times more gravity, and 333,000 times more of a "fair weather field" than we have on Earth.
- Is an electric field like that going to start to display some distinctive properties? I think so. ;)
- But I really think that there is a lot more to it than just gravitational separation.
- The actual amount of gravitational force acting on any given particle is extremely small.
- But the weight of all of the particles above it adds up to a respectable force, once you get a couple hundred thousand kilometers inside the Sun.
- The pressure is, of course, an effect of gravity, but you wouldn't call it gravitational separation, but rather, compressive ionization.
- Lloyd wrote: Did the scientist say how far apart the adjacent nuclei would be at CI pressures?
- Different scientists say different things. ;)
- The absolute limit for hydrogen "seems" to be 106 pm between nuclei, because 53 pm is the radius of the k-shell, which is the lowest electron level for hydrogen.
- At that distance, the density is 1.41 g/cm3.
- Robitaille refers to the threshold of liquid metallic hydrogen, which is 0.6 g/cm3, roughly 1/2 the absolute limit.
- The paper cited above found a threshold at 0.35 g/cm3, which is 1/4 the absolute limit.
- At room temperature, hydrogen compressed to 0.07 g/cm3 becomes an incompressible liquid, and this is at 1/20 of the absolute limit.
- Why so many different numbers? Great question!
- Lloyd wrote: Kanarev in Russia seems to have done many experiments and determined the size and the toroidal shape of electrons (and protons).
- He found the electrons to be something like 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger than protons.
- In that case it seems reasonable to me that the interatomic space might be too small for them.
- This gets into a whole different brand of theory, about which I know extremely little.
- It's all interrelated, so how can you answer one question without answering all questions? :D
- For now, I'm leaving the sub-atomic physics up to other theorists, and I'm using compressive ionization as a working hypothesis.
- There is support for it, though not everybody agrees.
- Unfortunately, it's a tough thing to test, and there are few practical applications, so the lab results are sparse, and the theories are unconstrained.
- But it certainly seems to explain a lot of stuff.
- Lloyd wrote: What would prevent electrons from being drawn back in between the positive nuclei?
- The electrons should be strongly "drawn" toward the nuclei.
- This can only be because the nuclei are too close together, and there isn't the room for electrons.
- Maybe it's that the shells got broken, or, as Kanarev says, the electrons are too big.
- But if something like this were not the case, matter would be easily compressible down to the density of a neutron star, because the "degenerate matter" would have atomic nuclei and free electrons (and no electron shells) with no net electrostatic repulsion, and hence nothing to prevent the gravitational collapse.
- Yet this certainly isn't the rule, and might actually never happen (i.e., neutron stars might be impossible).
- And if it was possible, what would prevent it in the core pressure (i.e., 1017 N/m2) inside the Sun?
- So there has to be something preventing it.
- That's the "something" that is the foundation of the compressive ionization model.
- Lloyd wrote: Artificial diamonds are produced by subjecting carbon to extreme pressure. [...]
- Could diamonds be temporarily CI material when first formed?
- I "think" that the graphite~diamond transition occurs before any sort of ionization kicks in.
- Graphite has a highly regular crystal lattice, and so do diamonds. But they're different.
- To go from the one to the other, you have to supply enough force to overcome the covalent bonds in the graphite, sending the electrons into higher energy states, to push the atoms closer.
- In the diamond arrangement, there are a new set of covalent bonds that can form, so the electrons settle back into lower states, and the new crystal lattice is stable in the new configuration.
- But I "think" that the electrons are never actually expelled, and thus it isn't ionization.
- Lloyd wrote: The formation of a natural diamond requires very specific conditions [...] met in two places on Earth: the lithospheric mantle below relatively stable continental plates, and at the site of a meteorite impact.
- This is why I track meteors — if one of them ever impacts the Earth and I'm the first one there, I'll be rich! :D And if I don't find any diamonds, I can still make beaucoup bucks doing an appearance on the "World's Most Dangerous Jobs" TV series. :D

INDEX

[1] Star Formation by Compressive Ionization
--- Summary of CC's Solar Model
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Solar Model Summary
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Accretion Theory Flaws --- Electrical Accretion Summary
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Accretion
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Formation Theory Methodology
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Math Support
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Fusion
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Heavy Elements Formation --- Star to Planet Evolution --- Stellar Collisions
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Collisions
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- External Fields, Tensile Strength
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- EM Fields
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Magnetic Flux Tubes
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Thermal Energy Calculation
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Solar Energy Sources
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- CME Prediction
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stars vs Planets
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
  Supercritical Fluids
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Stellar Supercritical Fluids and Compressive Ionization
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~
--- Compressive Ionization and Thornhill
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&am~