[My reply to Brant on Wed, June 5, 2013 9:49:21 AM]

Thanks, Brant.

Mathis vs EU Too - Mathis isn't just refuting the mainstream. He's also refuting the EU view. He says the solar wind and other movements of ions are caused by mass photon movements, emitted from all matter, especially ionized matter, mainly in the infrared I think. He calls the mass photons the charge field. That seems to me to be quite similar to your aether theory. It's just that the photons are the aether. And he explains in an easily understood way how photons are converted into electrons, protons etc, whereas I don't know if Aetherometry has an explanation for how aether converts into electrons.

Mathis' Proof? - I thought the issue of low plasma density in space, in this case the Jupiter system, might be a proof of his theory, if such low density isn't able to transmit such high electric power. I think there are also a lot of other proofs of his theory, but I like to discuss the easiest and strongest proofs first.

Lightning in Space, Charles? - Charles, you've studied terrestrial lightning. Do you think plasma conditions in space could produce similar electric effects to lightning on Io from Jupiter? As for the solar atmosphere, it's thinner than Earth's at sea level and it produces coronal loops, which I think you guys have considered to be arc discharges. Is that right? What's the maximum height of loops? The tallest I find mentioned online are 68,000 km. But Io is 422,000 km from Jupiter. Since lightning occurs in Mars' very thin atmosphere, could it occur in the space between Jupiter and Io, which is much thinner still?

Solar Prominence Questions - Wikipedia says: "Some prominences are so powerful that they throw out matter from the Sun into space at speeds ranging from 600 km/s to more than 1000 km/s. Other prominences form huge loops or arching columns of glowing gases over sunspots that can reach heights of hundreds of thousands of kilometres. Prominences may last for a few days or even for a few months." Are prominences like CMEs? This paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.4014 says "Solar filament eruptions play a crucial role in triggering coronal mass ejections. ... the most efficient mechanism for CMEs is the loss-of-equilibrium or torus instability, when the flux rope has reached an unstable threshold determined by a decay index of the external magnetic field."

Fluxtube & Filament Questions - Wikipedia says "The density of the interplanetary medium is very low, about 5 particles per cubic centimeter in the vicinity of the Earth; it decreases with increasing distance from the sun, in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. It is variable, and may [] rise to as high as 100 particles/cm³. [] [It] is a plasma [which] exhibits filamentation (such as in aurora[s])." A paper at IOP Science suggests that each coronal loop consists of 7 filaments. 

Brant, was the Io flux tube actually detected? Or was it just calculated? Were the 20,000 plus amu/cc, presumably mostly protons, actually detected spectroscopically, or any other way? Or were they calculated based on mere assumptions? It appears that the normal density near Jupiter must be only about .19 amu/cc. So to get the 20,000 plus amu would require scavenging amu from over 100,000 cc of space into 1 cc. Assuming the densities were real, do you have any idea why the electron density was so low, only around 1500 electrons per cc? Since the flux tube is a bit wider than Io, would Io be entirely within it? Or would the flux tube touch Io's surface somewhere? I assume that flux ropes or filaments would form in a helical pattern within the flux tube wall. And the hot spots on Io must be points where filaments touched down. Isn't that the best guess?

The main question is: Can the flux tubes carry 2 trillion watts of power? Another question is: Would the filaments that touch down on Io produce the hot spots and the pseudo-volcanoes?

Interstellar space appears to consist of plasma in filaments, as I was discussing on the TB forum some weeks back. Charles has suggested that plasma Debye sheaths should tend to form into filaments to minimize repulsion between like charges. And I thought the hydrogen atoms should likewise do so. Now I want to see what more Mathis has to say about star formation. It seems it's already similar to Charles' theory.