Thunderbolts Forum

2012-03-30, 14:20 upriver	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Reality Check wrote: Lloyd wrote: * In that case, I hope that it is not Brant who is advocating that light can escape from 4800 km under the surface of the Sun. He should know that the opacity of the solar plasma means that any light source is partially blocked (opacity) and that the blocking is cumulative, i.e. that 1/e above is for each 50 km and roughly (0.37)^96 for a light source 4800 km below the surface of the Sun. This is a factor of about 10^-42!The JREF calculation is that a light source the intensity of the Sun at 3000 km below the surface of the Sun would emit one photon per 4 years from the surface. I suspect that Brant just quoted Michael Mozina without thinking critically about what was said. Hey RC. Nice to see you..... I am advocating that light can escape from under the "photosphere" because I went to the TOPS data base and did the opacity calcs. If the light source is bright enough, like a white light flare, it will penetrate the photosphere at the right wavelengths, 171nm. The photosphere is extremely tenuous. Interesting video. Is this something bouncing off the solar surface? I doubt it would bounce off of the photosphere because its not dense enough. However if the solar surface is solid right under the photosphere, then that would explain this movie. Notice the "hot iron" trail...... http://alien-ufo-community.ning.com/vid ... ff-the-sun
2012-03-30, 14:28 upriver	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient CharlesChandler wrote: Lloyd wrote: Lloyd wrote: Brant has said that neutral matter constantly enters the heliosphere and goes into the Sun, if I remember right. So, if that's the case, the Sun may be losing less mass than it seems, or may be keeping the same mass, or may be gaining. He and Mathis also say the Sun is receiving aether or photons from the galaxy which are transforming into electrons, which may also be causing an increase in mass. How would that affect your model? My model just sorta says vaguely that extreme temperatures in the photosphere will accelerate particles (nucleons & electrons) outward, hence identifying the source of the solar wind. I'm also convinced that there is mass loss. That's as far as I've gotten. "The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) probe flying around the Sun has spotted mysterious clouds of gas falling towards our star. The gas clouds are very close to the Sun and they actually move against the so-called solar wind, which is composed of fast-moving streams of gas pouring out continuously from the Sun. As solar magnetism envelops Earth, it quarrels with our planet's own magnetic field, but also helps protect us from cosmic rays from other stars. Scientists suggest the inward flow of gases is due to frequent local changes in the Sun's magnetic field. Glowing fountains on the Sun. Astronomers have known for a long time that glowing fountains and arches of hot gas rise and fall in the Sun's lower atmosphere. The newly-discovered gas clouds seem to begin their descent farther out in the Sun's atmosphere. An inflow can start 1,700,000 miles above the Sun's visible surface. That distance is equal to twice the Sun's diameter. At that altitude, the departing accelerating solar wind reaches a speed of 75 miles per second. Flying in the face of that, the gas clouds travel inward at 31 to 62 miles per second. It seems to stop about 435,000 miles out. LASCO. The inward flowing gas clouds have been found in images collected since 1996 by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument aboard SOHO. Altogether, some 8,000 inflow events have been logged. Most have been seen since 1998 during a time when the Sun has been at its most active with the highest numer of sunspots. " http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Sun/Su ... nward.html
2012-04-02, 13:09 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient * Thanks, Charles, Nick et al for condolences. * Charles, will you let us know when you get your paper updated? I don't have time to look myself yet. * Hopefully, we can get to discussing all of the other evidence that may require further modifications or confirmation of your overall theory. * Are the S-waves caused by P-waves? Or does your paper already explain that? * How many positive and negative layers does your model have for the Sun now? Positive heavy core; negative iron alloy zone; positive liquid hydrogen zone; negative plasma hydrogen zone; positive photosphere?
2012-04-03, 04:02 CharlesChandler	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Lloyd wrote: Charles, will you let us know when you get your paper updated? I'll let you know. I'm still mulling over the extents of the "Expulsion Zone" that we have been discussing. I like your idea that most, if not all, of the upper half of the convective zone is negatively charged. Then, plasma in the photosphere that gives up its electrons in thermionic emissions becomes positively charged, which means that it is pulled forcefully downward, attracted to the negative charges just below. The one other factor to be taken into account is s-waves in the photosphere from flares. These start out at a supersonic speed, and then they accelerate. To me, this proves that the photosphere is positively charged. If it was neutrally charged, the s-waves would obey simply hydrodynamic laws, and the waves would radiate at no more than the speed of sound, and they wouldn't accelerate. Negatively charged plasma would do the same thing. When one negatively charged atom got closer to another in the wave-train, electrostatic repulsion would push the excess electron off the atom. In essence, all of the electrons would stay in place, while a wave would pass through the atoms, shifting and sliding due to changes in hydrostatic pressure. But the wave would travel at the same speed as in neutral plasma. But if the plasma is positively charged, the wave will travel much faster than expected. This is because an atom will start pushing on the next atom in line long before a collision would have taken place, because the atoms are exerting Coulomb forces on each other. Hence positive plasma has a rigidity that neutral and negative plasma does not. So the photosphere is positively charged. But does that tell us anything about the depth of that plasma? That's as far as I've gotten. Lloyd wrote: Are the S-waves [at the top of the liquid hydrogen in the convective zone] caused by P-waves? It seems that in the proposed environment, they would be self-sustaining. The crest of an s-wave initiates charge recombination, that creates a lot of heat, and pressure. The pressure pushes the crest back down, which sustains the wave. So it would merely take something to get them started, and then they would keep going. That something could be anything, including exotic stuff like meteor impacts. Maybe all was quiet and dark until an unsuspecting meteor got too close to the Sun and got sucked in. The splash that resulted initiated waves deeper down, which started releasing electrostatic potential. This is not a proposal — I'm just saying that a wide variety of events could have triggered this process, and now it's self-sustaining. Lloyd wrote: How many positive and negative layers does your model have for the Sun now? I'm counting 9 at this point. Layers of charge in the Sun, due to compressive ionization and induction. The prime movers are the two liquid regions (the core, and the lower half of the convective zone). These support three negative layers at their boundaries (one above the core, one below the convective zone, and one above the convective zone). Similarly, the negative layers support two more positive layers (one in the radiative zone and one above the convective zone). Then there is one more proposed negative layer in the middle of the radiative zone (shown in orange). This isn't terribly significant theoretically, but I'll explain it anyway. At the top and bottom of the radiative zone, there are negative layers, so the bulk of the radiative zone is positive. But suppose we have to negatively charged plates. We'd expect the greatest positive charge densities to be nearest the plates, and for there to be a neutral zone in the middle. The "neutral zone" might even become a negative layer, if there is enough space for it. This is purely an induced charged, and whether or not it would actually exist would depend entirely on how far apart the "plates" are. The only reason why I even mention it is because there are some seismic anomalies in the radiative zone that don't really make sense if it's all iron plasma as my model maintains, and the electrostatics "could" support a negative layer in the middle, which would affect p-wave transmission speeds.
2012-04-03, 22:03 Michael Mozina	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Lloyd wrote: * Interesting, but I don't have time to comment now. Catching a bus home to Illinois for Dad's funeral. He's 90 and died at home working, which is probably the way he'd have wanted it. I'm sorry to hear that Lloyd. I'm also sorry for the delayed response. I didn't catch up on this thread until just tonight.
2012-04-06, 18:47 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient * Thanks, Michael. I hope you get a chance to comment on Charles' present solar model soon. * Charles, the image at your link http://scs-inc.us/Other/QuickDisclosure/2ndParty/Images/Cha~ is hard to read. But I hope we can get some of the TB team to consider your model of charge layers sometime somewhat soon.
2012-05-05, 08:55 CharlesChandler	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Lloyd has been bugging me for more specificity, and though I'm still not done, I guess I owe him an update. Mainly I've been wrestling with his insistence that the bulk of the upper convective zone is negatively charged. I have come to agree with him on that. The photosphere itself has the characteristics of positively charged plasma (e.g., supersonic p-wave transmission). So it's a positive double-layer riding on top of a layer of negative charge. So what is the depth of this layer of positive charge at the top? To try to chase this into a corner, I've been looking both below and above the photosphere. Below the photosphere, there is only one indicator of the depth of an underlying layer of negative charge. Sunspots, with their solenoidal magnetic fields, appear to be conduits for electric currents. If the photosphere is positively charged, and there is an underlying layer of negative charge, there's the reason for the current. So what is the typical depth of a sunspot? Nobody is committing to exact numbers, but the quotes are running between 10,000 and 20,000 km. For the time being, I'm going with the higher number, though there isn't any huge theoretical reason for preferring either one of them. The convective zone itself is 200,000 km deep. The lower 85,000 km is liquid helium & hydrogen, which has been ionized by compression, so it's positively charged. Above that is a layer of negative charge that is 95,000 km deep, and at the top, there is a layer of positive charge that is 20,000 km (or so) deep. Lloyd was also asking about the volume of mass loss due to solar wind radiating outward from the photosphere, so I've been studying that too, and I haven't made much progress, but I'm running into interesting details. I was assuming, as perhaps many do, that the "solar wind" is both protons & electrons, and that the "wind" starts at the photosphere. This might not be correct. Some of the stuff that I'm reading is saying that the majority of particles emitted by the photosphere are electrons, and that the protons are picked up in the corona, where high-energy collisions create extreme temperatures that actually drive the "wind" away from the Sun. This would make sense if there was a lot of negative charge not far below the surface of the Sun. Thermionic emissions of electrons in the photosphere release electrons, which are then repelled by the powerful negative charge not below the surface (~20,000 km). So just as the positive plasma in the photosphere is pulled back down due to its positive charge, the free electrons are ejected away from the Sun, due to their negative charge. We can also suspect that free electrons will be pulled away from the Sun by their attraction to the positive plasma in the interplanetary medium. This was one of the things that always bugged me about the EU model, at least as best as I understood it. The Sun is said to have a positive charge, and then electrons come streaming in from outer space, is that correct? The problem is that the plasma in space tends to be positively charged, which begs the question of where these electrons are coming from, and why they don't just recombine with the positive plasma long before getting to the Sun. The other thing that bugged me about the EU model was that if there was a flow of electrons from the interplanetary medium toward the Sun, I'd expect this current to get pinched down into a discrete channel approaching the Sun, and to connect with the surface of the Sun as an arc discharge. Yet the coronagraphs show the exact opposite. There are steady streams of particles, but they don't get pinched at the surface of the Sun. Rather, they get pinched together as they move away. So there IS an electric current, and the photosphere IS positively charged. But the electrons are actually coming from inside the Sun, bubbling up through the photosphere in granules, getting ejected by thermionic emissions in the photosphere, and then accelerating outward due to their attraction to the positively charged interplanetary medium. So I'm starting to agree with what Brant was saying about there being a net inflow of plasma. Positive charges in the IPM will be attracted inward to the net negative charge of the Sun, just as the electrons are pulled outward. When they collide, extreme temperatures are created, which motivates the "wind". Less visible will be cooler batches of plasma that have not been hit by streamers, and which will be moving toward the Sun. Here I should like to point out that the literature I've been reading is suggesting that the fast solar wind, the slow solar wind, and CMEs are all very different things, with different speeds, and different constituent particles. Tentatively, I'm thinking of the steady-state streamers as flows of electrons away from the Sun, which light up the positive ions in the corona on impact. That's the "slow wind" that emanates from the equatorial belt. Where there aren't many ions to slow down the electrons, they shoot outward at a much faster rate, though the luminosity is less (for the same reason). That's the "fast wind" shooting through the coronal holes. Then there are CMEs, which eject whatever happens to be in their way.
2012-05-06, 07:19 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Schedule Discussion? * It's good to see some more updating of your theory here, Charles. I wouldn't say you owe me, but it's fun to read updates. It would be nice if you and Mozina or Brant could get together online at the same time to discuss some of your disagreements to help provide each other with info that could refine all of your ideas and come up with a more complete theory. Do you have time for that, maybe for an hour once a week or month or so? If yous could schedule a time in advance, I could come up with some questions on points of disagreement etc. S-Waves * If solar flares produce the S-waves that put everything in motion at the bottom of the convection zone, would one flare per week be able to keep the S-waves going enough to maintain constant solar output? Wikipedia says: The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies, from several per day when the Sun is particularly "active" to less than one every week when the Sun is "quiet". * You also said a wide variety of events could produce the S-waves, including meteor strikes. Do you think meteors could produce strong enough waves to reach the depth of the convection zone? Granules and Supergranules * You've increased the depth of the photosphere from 5,000 to 20,000 km. The 5,000 figure was based on the size of the granules. Is the formula for calculating depth, based on granule width, very flexible? And do you think you really need supergranules below granules? It seems to me it's more likely that the supergranule constitutes the entire layer below the photosphere, because, otherwise, I think there'd be patterns visible on the surface showing the edges of supergranules. * I'll try to discuss more later on today.
2012-05-06, 17:23 CharlesChandler	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Lloyd wrote: It would be nice if you and Mozina or Brant could get together online at the same time to discuss some of your disagreements to help provide each other with info that could refine all of your ideas and come up with a more complete theory. That's an excellent idea. Most of us do most of our work in isolation, but things move so much faster if you're bouncing ideas off of other people. I've gotten more done in the last couple of months online than I did in the previous year. Of course, you have to bring something to the party, and that's where offline work comes into play. But then you have to lay it all on the table, and see what you can make of what everybody else brought. And that's when you really start to make progress. My schedule is flexible. I don't know if we all have to be online at the same time, but I'd definitely like to see a more determined effort to get out of the epiphanies and into some major advances. I think that we have enough information to solve these problems. Mainstream scientists cannot take advantage of all of the new data that have been collected, because for the sake of their credibility, they have to stick with their existing story. It took them 100 years to convince everybody that General Relativity is the way to go. It wasn't easy, but they worked hard at it, and now they're stuck. They keep collecting data, which keep getting harder and harder to wrangle into the GR astro-babble. Clearly the mainstream is missing something. But walking away from GR would make liars out of them, and they can't get there. Yet we don't have that problem! This means that the responsibility for the next round of major advances falls on us, because we're the ones who are positioned to move forward. Lloyd wrote: I could come up with some questions on points of disagreement etc. Excellent! You're hosting a great party here. My sincerest compliments and thanks to you on that. Lloyd wrote: If solar flares produce the S-waves that put everything in motion at the bottom of the convection zone, would one flare per week be able to keep the S-waves going enough to maintain constant solar output? The s-waves at the liquid line would be self-propagating. As an s-wave crests above the liquid line, it converts to plasma, with room between the atoms for electron uptake. The charge recombination releases a lot of heat, and causes the expansion of the plasma. This creates a supergranule, which eventually rises to the surface. But it also pushes the wave back down. So in a sense, the wave "bounces off" the liquid line, yet with more force than it had originally, accentuating the next trough, and accelerating the wave. In this model, the only thing that limits how big these waves can become is the resonance frequencies of the Sun itself. The positive feedback mechanism that accelerates the waves when they crest above the liquid line will accelerate them beyond their resonance frequencies. Then, destructive interference attenuates the waves. Once back into the harmonic frequencies, the positive feedback kicks back in. So it would have only taken one flare, or the impact of one meteor, to initiate the process. Past that point, it would keep going, and it would be self-regulating. The next step in this direction appears to be a more detailed analysis of the harmonic frequencies. The question that I'm asking at this point is, "Why does more energy get released at the Sun's equator than at the poles?" The following image shows standing p-waves that go back and forth through the Sun, but the same thing holds true for s-waves traveling around the Sun. http://soi.stanford.edu/results/solarmode.gif As just a big ball of plasma, there should be no preference for the equator, or deference away from the poles. S-waves of all kinds should be bouncing around in all directions, like at the neighborhood pool with a least one kid per minute jumping in to make a big splash. But there are updrafts and downdrafts in the convective zone, and at the equator, the convection is different because of the way angular momentum is preserved by updrafts and downdrafts. Maybe I could explain it better if I understood it better, but downdrafts get deflected forward while updrafts get deflected back, relative to the rotation of the Sun. This creates forces that merge into the meriodonal flows in the convective zone, with the surface flowing pole-ward and the bottom flowing equator-ward. The net result is that at the bottom of the convective zone, stuff flowing toward the equator gets pre-heated by the energy released at the liquid line. So at the equator, the effect is accentuated, while waves across the poles are flowing through cooler, denser plasma, which slows them down, and attenuates the crests. Lloyd wrote: You've increased the depth of the photosphere from 5,000 to 20,000 km. Actually, I need to update the images on my site (again) to make this clearer, because I'm not increasing the depth of the photosphere. I'm going with conventional estimates of 3,000 ~ 5,000 km. But I'm saying that the photosphere is the top of a positive double-layer that is 20,000 km deep. As you mentioned, I liked the 5,000 km dimension for the photosphere, based on the size of the granules, which are 1,000 km wide on average, and cannot originate from deeper than 5,000 km without merging into bigger bubbles. But other factors, such as the structure of sunspots, are suggesting that it's not just the photosphere that is positively charged — it's just the outer edge of a larger body. So I'm going with 3,000 ~ 5,000 km for the photosphere, and 10,000 ~ 20,000 km for the total depth of the positive double layer. Note that this model also assigns roughly the same proportions to supergranules. These are roughly 20,000 km across. The liquid line in the convective zone is at 115,000 km below the surface. So the supergranules originate from a depth that is roughly 5 times greater than their width. Lloyd wrote: Is the formula for calculating depth, based on granule width, very flexible? I don't know if I'd call it a "formula" — it's more like a general observation, but I'm going with bubbles that originate from a depth no more than 5x their width. Lloyd wrote: And do you think you really need supergranules below granules? The very existence of upergranules is contentious, but it seems that most agree that there are broad upwellings in the photosphere, on a scale much larger than the granules themselves, indicating that there is an updraft originating from much deeper in the convective zone. Conventionally, the source of the energy in the convective zone is at the bottom, where radiant heat gets into stuff thin enough that it can flow, hence the convection that transports the heat to the surface. But that never made sense to me, and bubbles originating from 200,000 km below the surface wouldn't be only 20,000 km wide — they'd be much bigger. Also, if the conventional model was correct, that would all be ionized hydrogen in the "radiative" zone, which would flow quite nicely, as ionized liquids are like ideal gases — the Coulomb force prevents friction, so the liquids flow effortlessly. So in the conventional model, the whole concept of a rigid radiative zone and a fluid convective zone is non-sensical. The only way that distinct flows could form would be if there were stratified layers of different elements, with different physical characteristics. That's how I got onto the track that I'm pursuing now. But my model doesn't provide an energy source at the radiative-convective boundary, because that's iron plasma topped by liquid helium, and there's nothing going on there. Based on the size of the supergranules, I looked higher for a heat source, and found the s-waves at the top of the liquid hydrogen layer, 115,000 km from the surface.
2012-05-07, 16:50 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Online Discussion * Glad to hear of your willingness to discuss this stuff online, Charles. I just emailed you and Michael Mozina, hoping the 3 of us can start trying this out. If we use Google Docs, I can arrange for TB forum members to watch the discussion and even make comments on the side, if they like. A Google Document is different from the spreadsheet we used before. I'll come up with ideas for rules, so things don't get too confusing, assuming that we may try that. Coronal Heating * Michael has commented on another thread on the coronal heating issue. I think he says that the coronal loops likely do much of the heating of the photosphere, chromosphere and corona and that the loops seem to stay mostly under the photosphere. Iron Interior * Your further info on S-waves, supergranules, sunspots as circuits etc is interesting. As far as the iron interior, you said your "model doesn't provide an energy source at the radiative-convective boundary, because that's iron plasma topped by liquid helium, and there's nothing going on there." So I don't see yet in your model a means for iron plasma to show up as densely as it does on spectra from the top of the photosphere. That applies to the other elements in the spectra as well.
2012-05-07, 19:56 CharlesChandler	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Lloyd wrote: I think he says that the coronal loops likely do much of the heating of the photosphere, chromosphere and corona and that the loops seem to stay mostly under the photosphere. Coronal loops are certainly very hot, and the mainstream says that sub-photospheric loops are responsible for solar flares, which are also very hot. But the loops in question are generated by sunspots. What is the source of heat during inactive periods? Is he saying that sunspots occur all of the time, but that they only poke up through the photosphere during the active phases? Also, is he making specific contentions concerning the nature of these loops, or is he just saying that whatever they are, they're the source of all of that heat? I'm saying that sunspots are conduits for electric currents between the positive layer at the top and an underlying negative layer (tentatively beginning at 20,000 km below the surface). The upward motion of electrons in the presence of the Sun's overall magnetic field generates a Lorentz force that converts linear motion into a helical flow of electrons. Once established, the rotation around the centerline of the sunspot generates a huge magnetic field (4,000 times greater than the resting field). Once the electrons get to the photosphere, they're looking for the first opportunity to recombine with positive charges, so they splay outward. This outward motion coincides with the solenoidal magnetic field lines generated by the helical flow up through the sunspot. So the central upward current splits into so many smaller field-aligned currents flowing outward through the penumbra. Once the filaments dive back into the photosphere, we can't see what's going on, but in my model, each filament splits into a Lichtenberg pattern, as the electrons seek positive charges. If there are two sunspots close to each other, of opposite magnetic polarity, the magnetic field lines can come up out of one and dive back down into the other, and there can be currents following these field lines. But the arcing that we see in the photosphere just before a flare doesn't follow the magnetic lines of force. So I think that the arcing is between the negative charges inside the sunspot and the positive charges outside of it. After the flare, huge coronal loops appear. If coronal loops cause flares, why are they the strongest after the flare? I think that the arcing in the flare creates a deficiency of electrons at the top of the sunspots, encouraging a new upward flow, generating new, more powerful solenoidal magnetic fields as the electrons surge up from below. Hence in my model, coronal loops do not cause flares, and they are not a primary source of heat. Rather, electric arcs between sunspots and the surrounding photosphere create flares. This is a source of heat during the active period, and perhaps accounts for the 1% increase in thermal radiation. The other 99% during the active period, and 100% during the sunspot minima, is from charge recombination in the photospheric granules. Arcing at the liquid hydrogen line (115,000 km below the surface) causes supergranules, which keep stirring things up, otherwise eventually the photospheric process would die out. Lloyd wrote: So I don't see yet in your model a means for iron plasma to show up as densely as it does on spectra from the top of the photosphere. That applies to the other elements in the spectra as well. Excellent question. In the photosphere, we're seeing 1010 hydrogen atoms compared to 106 iron atoms, so there's 1 iron atom for every 10,000 hydrogen atoms. For osmium, it's 1 part per 10 billion hydrogen atoms. These are not high concentrations, and the convective zone has enough stirring to keep heavier particles suspended, at least for a little while. Nevertheless, stirring notwithstanding, we'd expect the heavier particles to all fall out eventually. There are a number of possibilities here. First, there could be one or more stirring mechanisms deeper in the Sun. The "fusion furnace" model certainly would do a lot of stirring — actually, too much IMO, and I consider this to be another reason to reject that model. We are told that the core and the radiative zone are too densely packed to flow. Yet in that same model, the hydrogen and helium would be under sufficient pressure to be fully ionized, and therefore would behave as a frictionless ideal gas that would flow effortlessly. So there would definitely be major convection, starting at the "furnace" itself, and the entire Sun would be thoroughly mixed. But then there would be no way that hydrogen & helium, with liquid densities of 68 & 145 kg/m3 respectively, could create a Sun with an average density of 1408 kg/m3. So that model is a few fries short of a happy meal. In my model, there could be arcing in s-waves at the liquid nickel line, which would cause convection starting near the bottom of the radiative zone. But would that get osmium & platinum out of the core and all of the way up to the photosphere where we could measure it? Hmmm... Second, the elements that we see in the photosphere might not be heavier stuff that got stirred up from the interior, but rather, stuff that is still falling into the Sun from the interplanetary medium, which hasn't settled out yet. In other words, the composition of the photosphere isn't much different from the composition of the plasma in space, or from comets & meteors that impact the Sun every once in a while. The implication is that there is no direct connection between photospheric composition and bulk abundances in the solar interior. As an analogy, we wouldn't estimate bulk abundances inside the Earth simply by re-weighting abundances in the Earth's atmosphere, naively assuming that anything inside the Earth will be represented in the atmosphere if just a little stirring is happening. We should rather think that most of the settling has already happened, and that the atmosphere is composed of the lighter elements, plus whatever streams into it from the solar wind. Nevertheless, the conclusion is the same. If the elements in the photosphere are coming from the outside, then eventually the Sun's interior will fill up with heavier elements due to mass separation (i.e., "settling"). So the photospheric composition presages the eventual bulk abundances. If there is any stirring going on in the interior, we'll see heavier elements suspended in convective currents at altitudes higher than their densities would allow in a quiescent Sun. So the photospheric composition reflects the current bulk abundances in the interior. Either way, the two are related. And it may be just a coincidence that re-weighting the abundances to get the correct overall density produces distinct boundaries at .27 and .70 SR, as confirmed by helioseismology. But if so, that's a heckuva coincidence. At the very least, my model constitutes the "best fit", and it takes the complete assortment of data into account. The "fusion furnace" model is just a "best fit" of the energy budget, but which does not take into account the physical properties of the Sun that preclude fusion in the core. So there are best fits, and then there are Best Fits, so to say. While scientists like to take one fact and extrapolate it out, frequently to the illogical extreme, I'm a big believer in laying out all of the facts at the very outset, and using everything available to sanity check the proposal in question. That produces a totally different kind of "best fit", which is far more likely to be correct.
2012-05-08, 06:19 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient * Excellent answers, as usual, Charles, assuming I'm competent to judge, and I am, pretty much. Online Electric Sun Discussion * Michael Mozina says he can participate in the discussion sometime between 5 to 8 PM Pacific time, which is 8 to 11 PM Eastern time. You'll both have to let me know what day of the week yous prefer and how much time you'd like to discuss each time we meet there. * I have a Google Doc started for the discussion at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_wUsGgmF-W4j1vd1pQPvSuj~. * Anyone with the link can view it at any time and can also leave comments on the side. * I put some rules for discussion on the Doc. Let me know if you favor any changes to those rules. Viewers can also leave suggestions for the rules in the Comments section. * Anyone may also ask to join in such a discussion, or make suggestions for who should be asked to join it. You may also ask them yourself. * Looks like we're going to be having a small group discussion soon.
2012-05-08, 11:17 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Supergranules Above Photosphere? * I don't think I've read about supergranules before, aside from your writings, Charles. So I did some reading on the internet. - At http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Sun/chromosphere.html, discussing The Sun's Chromosphere, it says the chromosphere "has big convection cells ("supergranulation"). At the edges of the supergranules one sees gas spikes called spicules. Here is a cartoon (not to scale)" http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Sun/supergranulation.gif "Davison E. Soper, Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403 USA soper@bovine.uoregon.edu" * Is this person wrong? He/she puts the supergranules above the photosphere, while you put them below it. - At http://soi.stanford.edu/papers/Two.Year/index.html it says: "MDI simultaneous observations of granulation and magnetic fields has allowed detailed comparisons of supergranular flow and magnetic fields. The fields are seen to be in the supergranule boundries. The field is seen to exist in small clumps which migrate along the flow-convergence lines and collect at the vertices. Small bipolar field elements can appear at any location but quickly the two components migrate to the supergranule boundries where they either cancel existing field or replace it." * Here's an image of supergranule boundaries, apparently based on magnetic field locations. http://soi.stanford.edu/papers/Two.Year/figures/full_cluste~ - At http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=666 it says: Supergranules are around 30,000 kilometers (18,600 miles) across. The whole solar surface is covered by several thousand supergranules. - At http://folk.uio.no/gardini/sun.html it says: Supergranules: Diameter: ~30,000 km Duration: ~24 h Rising flow speed: ~50-100 m/s Horizontal flow speed: ~200-400 m/s Sinking flow speed: ~200 m/s - At http://people.physics.carleton.ca/~watson/Physics/Astrophys~ it says: ""Spicules: "flames" of hot gas, mixed with mag fields, which appear at edge of supergranules: 500 km across, extend 10,000 km above chromosphere. Speeds ≈ 20 km/s"" http://people.physics.carleton.ca/~watson/Physics/Gifs/Sun/~ - At http://soi.stanford.edu/results/ave_30min.html it says: "Supergranules are convective cells, so their motion is convective, but they are on a much larger scale than granules, and observers usually see mostly the horizontal motion.) Close inspection shows that the supergranules flow outwards from their centers so that the edges towards the center are dark (motion toward SOHO) and the edges towards the Sun's limb are bright (motion away from SOHO). These flows are about 400 m/s. SOHO will allow a detailed study of such large scale convective motions." - At http://news.stanford.edu/news/2003/january8/sunwave-18.html it says: "It is likely that the interaction between convection and rotation is at the origin of the supergranular waves. An important property of the supergranulation is that it transports the magnetic fields near the solar surface, which may be a key part of the solar cycle."
2012-05-08, 16:53 CharlesChandler	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient Your first reference is using the term in a non-standard way. Here's a quote from a NASA webpage (with my bolding): NASA wrote: Supergranules cover the Sun's visible surface (photosphere) in a network, called supergranulation, of cells: irregular bright regions that are horizontal outflows of electrified gas (plasma). Supergranule cells get their name from their resemblance to smaller features in the photosphere called granules. Granules are believed to be convection cells of plasma that transfer heat from the solar interior to the surface. They resemble the cells seen at the surface of a simmering pot of soup, although granules are much larger (about the size of Texas at 1,000 kilometers or about 620 miles across). Supergranules are larger still — at around 30,000 kilometers (18,600 miles) across, they could comfortably frame two Earths. The whole solar surface is covered by several thousands of supergranules. Data from SOHO's Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) reveal that the pattern of supergranulation moves across the solar surface in waves. There may also be convection in the corona. I hadn't heard of that before, but that would be a different thing. BTW, it's interesting to note that recent research is confirming that supergranules occur in wave-like patterns that move across the surface. This makes sense if the source of the energy is s-waves propagating at the liquid line in the convective zone's interior. I'll check out the other references, and see what additional info I can glean from them.
2012-05-09, 02:25 Lloyd	Re: The Sun's Density Gradient * I see that Wikipedia says ""Below the photosphere is a layer of "supergranules" up to 30,000 kilometers in diameter with lifespans of up to 24 hours."" And do you say that the middle of the convection zone where the S-waves make waves is also responsible for the waves of the supergranules?