justcurious wrote: Yes. Although I can't understand most of it. It does not answer this question of what the solar magnetic field looks like.. this supposed magnetic dipole, divided by a current sheet extending out to the heliosphere... am I the only person in the world who believes this is of great significance?
In the quiet Sun, it's basically a solenoidal field. Here is a diagram that shows the average magnetic field per latitude, through three 11-year cycles:
Magnetic Butterfly Diagram 1
This summarizes those data. (Note that "north/south" doesn't indicate magnetic polarity, but just that it's a view along the equatorial plane.)
Magnetic Butterfly Diagram 2
justcurious wrote: Also... your explanation is based on the rotation of the sun or its surface. The problem with that is, the magnetic poles switch between north and south but the rotation doesn't.
The second image also shows my hypothesized charged layers, where red = negative and green = positive. I'm the only one who is saying that these layers are charged, but everybody agrees that the layers rotate at different speeds with respect to each other, and that this oscillates through the cycles. This is known as "torsional oscillation". If the layers are charged, then they very definitely will generate magnetic fields, though the fields will tend to cancel each other out, and only the field from the faster layer will be measurable. In the next cycle, torsional oscillation shifts dominance to the other layer, and the polarity of the field switches. So it isn't one dynamo — it's two of them, one inside the other, and the dominant field flips back and forth as the layers speed up and slow down with respect to each other.
The heliospheric current sheet begins at the tips of the helmet streamers (not shown in these images), and extends outward from there.
CharlesChandler
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
@justcurious: here are some more images. This one shows the solenoidal lines getting converted to open lines on the equatorial plane:
Here's a page on the interplanetary magnetic field, with an image showing that the heliospheric current sheet emerges at the tips of the helmet streamers:
justcurious wrote: Yes. Although I can't understand most of it. It does not answer this question of what the solar magnetic field looks like.. this supposed magnetic dipole, divided by a current sheet extending out to the heliosphere... am I the only person in the world who believes this is of great significance?
In the quiet Sun, it's basically a solenoidal field. Here is a diagram that shows the average magnetic field per latitude, through three 11-year cycles:
Magnetic Butterfly Diagram 1
This summarizes those data. (Note that "north/south" doesn't indicate magnetic polarity, but just that it's a view along the equatorial plane.)
The averages are over a 30 period according to the above chart, I don't see any use of that data, at some point during this time period the poles would have flipped. It does not clarify anything and only adds confusion.
CharlesChandler wrote: Magnetic Butterfly Diagram 2
The above magnetic butterfly diagram is pretty useless. You are showing the quiet sun as a normal dipole similiar to the Earth's magnetic field. So where does North meet South in your quiet Sun diagrams above? Is it inside the heliosphere? Do your magnetic lines go through the current sheet? Do they meet outside the heliosphere?
CharlesChandler wrote:
justcurious wrote: Also... your explanation is based on the rotation of the sun or its surface. The problem with that is, the magnetic poles switch between north and south but the rotation doesn't.
The second image also shows my hypothesized charged layers, where red = negative and green = positive. I'm the only one who is saying that these layers are charged, but everybody agrees that the layers rotate at different speeds with respect to each other, and that this oscillates through the cycles. This is known as "torsional oscillation". If the layers are charged, then they very definitely will generate magnetic fields, though the fields will tend to cancel each other out, and only the field from the faster layer will be measurable. In the next cycle, torsional oscillation shifts dominance to the other layer, and the polarity of the field switches. So it isn't one dynamo — it's two of them, one inside the other, and the dominant field flips back and forth as the layers speed up and slow down with respect to each other.
The heliospheric current sheet begins at the tips of the helmet streamers (not shown in these images), and extends outward from there.
I still don't understand your speculations and theories in this last paragraph. The "noise" that occurs during solar activity and sunspots is clearly chaotic. your last paragraph has no bearing on the question. The question was "what does the magnetic field look like, seen from far". You're going off the deep-end again.
justcurious
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
CharlesChandler wrote: @justcurious: here are some more images. This one shows the solenoidal lines getting converted to open lines on the equatorial plane:
Here's a page on the interplanetary magnetic field, with an image showing that the heliospheric current sheet emerges at the tips of the helmet streamers:
There is no such thing as an "open magnetic field line". Only Electric field lines can extend to infinity. I have come across these types of images as the one you you showed above and variants all over the web.
CharlesChandler
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
justcurious wrote: The averages are over a 30 period according to the above chart, I don't see any use of that data, at some point during this time period the poles would have flipped. It does not clarify anything and only adds confusion.
Sorry for not being more helpful. In the upper left corner of the first image, there is a predominance of yellow. That's what they're calling a positive magnetic field. (I don't know whether that's north or south, but they use +/- because "north" always refers to the Sun's top pole, not to the polarity.) Anyway, traveling along the top of the image, do you see where the dominant color shifts to blue? That's what they're calling a negative field. Then it shifts back to yellow, and then back to blue. OK, now look along the bottom. Do you see those numbers? Those are dates. Now observe that the yellow/blue stretches last about 11 years. Those are the solar cycles. When yellow is at the top, and blue is at the bottom, that's one overall polarity. When blue is at the top and yellow is at the bottom, that's the other way around, so that's the other polarity. Hence this is showing that the polarity inverts from one 11-year cycle to the next. Does that make it any clearer, or are you still confused about the polarity reversal, and how to read the data diagrams?
justcurious wrote: The above magnetic butterfly diagram is pretty useless. You are showing the quiet sun as a normal dipole similar to the Earth's magnetic field.
Yes, because that's the way it is. If you don't find that to be useful information, then don't harsh your mellow by looking at it.
justcurious wrote: So where does North meet South in your quiet Sun diagrams above? Is it inside the heliosphere? Do your magnetic lines go through the current sheet? Do they meet outside the heliosphere?
The diagram shows north meeting south after following a typical toroidal path. Do you see the little arrows? That indicates field direction. So all of these field lines are closing locally. The only aspect that I'm not showing (because it was outside of the scope of what I was doing when I made the diagram) is the tips of the helmet streamers, for which I subsequently provided additional links.
justcurious wrote: I still don't understand your speculations and theories in this last paragraph. The "noise" that occurs during solar activity and sunspots is clearly chaotic. your last paragraph has no bearing on the question. The question was "what does the magnetic field look like, seen from far". You're going off the deep-end again.
You're welcome to go with somebody else's explanation of what causes the overall field, and the polarity reversals. But I didn't make up the data — I'm just trying to figure out what causes it. IMO, the dynamo effect is the simplest explanation for a solenoidal field, and torsional oscillation between charged layers is the simplest explanation of a field that inverts in step with the torsional oscillation. Got anything simpler, tied that closely to the data?
As concerns the field from afar, the only information available is just that any lines that didn't close locally never close. I should like to add that despite the fact that it doesn't make sense to you, magnetic fields are easy to detect from a distance, so these are reliable data, and are not to be dismissed.
justcurious wrote: There is no such thing as an "open magnetic field line".
How about the axial line inside a Birkeland current?
justcurious
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
CharlesChandler wrote: As concerns the field from afar, the only information available is just that any lines that didn't close locally never close. I should like to add that despite the fact that it doesn't make sense to you, magnetic fields are easy to detect from a distance, so these are reliable data, and are not to be dismissed.
Please show me the data about the larger magnetic field. This is what I have been looking for. Not the surface noise that you call helmets, but the larger field. you seem to forget that there is a HCS separating the north and south pole fields. So I'm not sure where you got the idea that the magnetic field lines cross the HCS. If you have data supporting it I would love to know about it. Keep in mind that the HCS is the largest "thing" in our solar system.
CharlesChandler wrote:
justcurious wrote: There is no such thing as an "open magnetic field line".
How about the axial line inside a Birkeland current?
B-Fields around electric currents are circular. They are closed loops. That good old right hand rule thing.
Charles: I really don't want to be dominating this board with a discussion between you and I. The question was about the overall shape of the Sun's magnetic field based on the assumptions that there is a north pole and a south pole and they switch every 11 years, and the north and south poles are separated by the HCS. I don't need a bunch of graphs to tell me that the sun's magnetic poles flip every 11 years. If you can't understand the question, please refrain from commenting on my posts and ask me privately.
PersianPaladin
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
CharlesChandler wrote: @justcurious: here are some more images. This one shows the solenoidal lines getting converted to open lines on the equatorial plane:
justcurious wrote: Please show me the data about the larger magnetic field.
I can show it to you. For the life of me I don't know how I'm going to make you look at it. But sometimes persistence is a virtue, so here's the link (again):
If you click your mouse on that link, a webpage will come up. At the upper right is this image:
In that image, look carefully for where it says (in blue text), "interplanetary current sheet". That's the HCS. (Note that the terms "interplanetary" and "heliospheric" are used interchangeably in the literature. Also note that the HCS doesn't start right at the Sun, but rather, where the magnetic field lines converge.) Now look carefully for where it says (in red text), "open solar magnetic field lines". Those lines represent the entirety of what we know about the larger magnetic field. Lines that don't close locally don't close ever. That's all of the information we have. Hope this helps. (One can always hope.)
justcurious wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote:
justcurious wrote: There is no such thing as an "open magnetic field line".
How about the axial line inside a Birkeland current?
B-Fields around electric currents are circular. They are closed loops. That good old right hand rule thing.
In a Birkeland current, the current is circular (or rather, helical), and the B-field is axial. The right hand rule is still in effect, but once the helical current gets organized, the B-field lines no longer close locally — they follow the current. Maybe once the current gets where it's going, the axial field lines are released, and are free to loop all of the way back to where the current started. In the case of the IMF, since we have both polarities extending outward, we'd rather expect that if the current ever stopped, the opposing polarities would close on each other. So in the image above, maybe the lines extend out to the heliopause, where the current stops, and the magnetic lines close there. If you believe that the current is galactic, then you have to carry the lines all of the way to the galactic center before they'll get a chance to close. But there aren't any data concerning what becomes of these "open field lines", and there's no evidence that the HCS extends beyond the heliopause.
At the risk of answering a question you didn't ask, and further inviting the full fury of your wrath, I'd like to mention that IMO, the mainstream has made a mess of this, and physical principles need to be applied to sort it out. I think that the "open field lines" can only be evidence of Birkeland currents, and that as such, the "open field lines" and the HCS are actually the same thing. In other words, at the tip of every helmet streamer is a charge stream that got pinched into a discrete current, and that stays organized due to its own magnetic fields. These emanate more from the equatorial plane, at least in the quiet phase, so this produces a "sheet" of current. But if we were to look closely at the sheet, we'd find that it's made of threads, and the threads are Birkeland currents. And in those currents, we find the axial B-fields. So it's all the same thing. I might be wrong about this, but I haven't seen anything in the data so far that actually precludes it, and the whole thing would sure make a lot more sense if this is the case. So I'll continue investigating this possibility.
justcurious wrote: The question was about the overall shape of the Sun's magnetic field based on the assumptions that there is a north pole and a south pole and they switch every 11 years, and the north and south poles are separated by the HCS. I don't need a bunch of graphs to tell me that the sun's magnetic poles flip every 11 years. If you can't understand the question, please refrain from commenting on my posts and ask me privately.
In 4 diagrams, I showed the source data (which give us the polarity at the surface), the summary in terms of magnetic field lines that close locally (most of them do), and two more diagrams that show the heliospheric field lines (one showing the HCS as well). The problem is not that I don't understand the question. The problem is that you didn't get the answer you expected. But that's not my problem.
justcurious wrote: Alfvén would be turning in his grave right now.
That's his problem.
justcurious
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
Charles... there seems to be some communication breakdown somewhere. The model you show of the magnetic field with the lines going to nowhere, that is exactly what is wrong, and that is what I have been questioning from the very beginning. So we're going around in circles, you answered my question with... my question. There are no such things as open magnetic field lines. If there were, we would need to rewrite a lot of engineering textbooks. Unless I have good reason to think otherwise, I'll assume there is no such thing as a magnetic monopole.
Regarding the Birkeland currents and their magnetic fields, I believe you are mistaken and confusing the circular b-fields surrounding currents, with those magnetic field lines the currents sometimes seem to follow. The b-field around a current is always circular. Now if you give a helical shape to that current, the b-field may have an axial component along the axis of the helix (although I never bothered to model it). But in your case, I believe you are thinking about "magnetic re-connection". So-called "magnetic re-connection" is when a current takes the path of least resistance (as currents like to do), which in some cases will be on a path parallel to the b-field and hence "force-free", and the currents will appear to be following a "magnetic line". The question of why these currents are attracted to taking these paths is usually ignored (in the mainstream), and the cause & effect are confused.
CharlesChandler
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
justcurious wrote: There seems to be some communication breakdown somewhere.
The problem is that you don't know what a Birkeland current is.
justcurious wrote: The model you show of the magnetic field with the lines going to nowhere, that is exactly what is wrong, and that is what I have been questioning from the very beginning.
That isn't my model. It's a schematic representation of the data, done by the Southwest Research Institute. As concerns what is wrong with that picture, we should consider how this whole "discussion" got started.
justcurious wrote: And while on the topic of the Sun's magnetic field, dose anyone know what it looks like? Because from what I read so far the North and South magnetic poles are separated by the HCS which extends all the way out to the Heliosphere. So where would the field lines meet? If they don't, then we have a Sun composed of two monopoles, something considered impossible by all scientists and engineers.
CharlesChandler wrote: Indeed, "open field lines" shouldn't be possible, and on that topic, the mainstream just starts issuing MHD astrobabble to mask their confusion. IMO, this is easy to understand. The quiet Sun's rotation generates a solenoidal magnetic field, though it has alternating layers of charge, and whichever layer is rotating faster generates the dominant field. Due to a phenomenon known as torsional oscillation, layers inside the Sun speed up and slow down with respect to each other as part of the solar cycle. If those are charged layers, it also explains the inversion of the solenoidal field through the cycle. The active Sun is, of course, considerably more complex. Anyway, as mentioned above, in addition to the solenoidal field, there is also an electron drift that gets consolidated into distinct charge streams at the tips of the helmet streamers. The magnetic field lines follow the outside of the streamers, to the tip, and then continue on out into space. To me, this just means that solenoidal lines of force got redirected into axial lines of force inside Birkeland currents, which never "close" the way solenoidal lines do. So whenever the literature refers to "open magnetic flux tubes", I hear "Birkeland currents with axial magnetic fields".
Ummm... I "think" that we started out agreeing that open field lines shouldn't be possible. But because you don't understand Birkeland currents, you didn't understand my answer to the question, and you concluded that I didn't answer your question, and then you blamed me. I'm only calling your attention to this because I'd rather not have to go through this again.
justcurious wrote: The b-field around a current is always circular. Now if you give a helical shape to that current, the b-field may have an axial component along the axis of the helix (although I never bothered to model it).
Why don't you go ahead and model it, and show us what you come up with. Imagine a coil of wire with a current flowing through it. Apply the right hand rule to get your initial take on the magnetic fields that will be generated. According to you, the B-field around a current is always circular. But magnetic field lines cannot intersect. So what happens when the little circular fields from each wrap in the coil overlap each other? They superimpose into a solenoidal field, with a dense axial field, and with the lines splaying outward at the start and stop of the coil. Now imagine that the coil is 1,000 km wide and 100 AU long, and generating a B-field that averages 6 nT (according to the Southwest Research Institute). Theoretically, if the coil stops at the heliopause (i.e., 100 AU), the axial lines of force should wrap around the outside, to close at the beginning of the coil (i.e., back where the HCS first got started). But if you're going to say that the permeability of the interplanetary medium is going to sustain a closing (i.e., unassisted) 6 nT field through 100 AU, I'll ask you to show me the math. Effectively speaking, those lines don't close.
But as I mentioned in my last post, those lines wouldn't loop all of the way back to the beginning anyway — not if there is an opposite-polarity field nearby. So imagine two coils, 1,000 km wide, 100 AU long, and wound in opposite directions, such that the magnetic polarities are opposite. Out at the far end (i.e., 100 AU from the beginning), what do you think is going to happen to the closing lines? Will they ignore each other, and loop all of the way back to the beginning of the coils? Or will they close on each other? I'm betting that they'll close on each other out at the heliopause. So in that image, where it says (in red text) "open solar magnetic field lines", notice that they're in pairs, and they're opposite in polarity. Just take those, and close them on each other, wherever the current stops.
Then you just have to figure out why the mainstream identifies magnetic flux tubes leading off to nowhere, without any electric currents in them, and in-between the flux tubes, there is this current sheet with no identifiable magnetic field associated with it. IMO, if you have a magnetic field coming from an unidentified electric current, and you have an electric current but no known magnetic field from it, you can answer both riddles by saying that the charge streams in the HCS are generating the observed magnetic fields. Hence the flux tubes and the HCS are the same thing.
justcurious wrote: But in your case, I believe you are thinking about "magnetic re-connection".
Where did I say that?
justcurious wrote: So-called "magnetic re-connection" is when a current takes the path of least resistance (as currents like to do), which in some cases will be on a path parallel to the b-field and hence "force-free", and the currents will appear to be following a "magnetic line".
Actually, "magnetic reconnection" (as used by the mainstream) is a non-physical construct supposedly responsible for solar flares and similar releases of stored energy. As used by the mainstream, there aren't any electric currents in it — it's just (imaginary) energy stored in magnetic flux tubes that explode every once in a while. But that's a non-physical construct. If you're going to try to explain it in physical terms, you're misusing the term.
justcurious
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
How did a simple open question turn into a novel of he says she says Charles... I'm really not interested in your opinion, please go and have a debate with someone else.
CharlesChandler
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
Was it something I said?
justcurious
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
CharlesChandler wrote: :cry: Was it something I said?
Not really. It's just too much information. I don't have that much time on my hands for "point by point" debates about speculative ideas and imaginings. I like radical speculations, but when I look for that I try and go on the mad insights and new ideas board. All I was looking for is a viable solar magnetic model or an explanation of where south meets north, something seemingly overlooked in some of the literature and discussions. It turns out there is no such thing, but I have a hunch that Alfven must have discussed that somewhere (need to read a bit more). I'm also a bit embarassed of having a massive dialogues about things like "which way a b-field points around a wire" and hogging all the space on the board.
GaryN
Re: The Anode Sun Vs The Plasmoid Model
All I was looking for is a viable solar magnetic model or an explanation of where south meets north, something seemingly overlooked in some of the literature and discussions.
Based on Hinode data: Dipolar Sun. Quadrupolar Sun.
The cause behind the shifts in polar fields is not understood.
I , like I suspect many, have followed this thread with interest. Previously not posted any comment because I had nothing much to say, that would not derail/detract.
But fwiw I would like to echo JC (justcurious - btw great interweb name!)
Congratulations to Bob Johnson. Just incase he does revisit this thread? Thankyou !, for posting slides and transcript for those of us who haven't enough speculative time to watch 'promising' videos. It was a BRILLIANT presentation!
Also big thumbs up /applause to the greater EU community (leaders) who would allow or promote critical review at a prime event.
Hoz . (PP) thankyou also for bringing it to the attention of many who read with great interest the contents of one of the best discussion forums currently on the planet.
This discussion does highlight glaring gaps and inconsistencies within the general EU hypothesis.
("Debate" means that you claim to have a firm, defendable position/argument. Ddespite interesting points of view expressed, I haven't seen any such 'position/argument' presented. I hope Thunderbolts forum remains intelligent discussion and exchange of ideas and not a chest beating 'i am right' fight.)
Was it something I said?
