© Charles Chandler

 

While it goes without saying that many of the extreme conditions inside and outside of the Sun are beyond experimental duplication, it might be possible to replicate some of the behaviors in a scale model. Specifically, the central contention is that the Sun is a cathode sitting on a current divider. There is a positive charge deeper inside the Sun, and another in the heliosphere. The negative layer on top emits electrons that move toward the heliosphere, but they move slowly at first, as they are in the middle of a tri-polar field, with positive charges in both directions. As they move away from the current divider, they accelerate.

 

The effect of a current in this configuration is that the discharge from the sphere will not pinch down into discrete discharge channels, as they do in a plasma ball for example. Rather, the slow drift away from the cathode will emanate from all points, as the Coulomb force will keep the electrons evenly distributed. Only as the electrons move away from the current divider will they accelerate to the point that they start to pinch into discrete channels (such as the tips of helmet streamers).

 

Furthermore, the present model asserts that high-pressure plasma emits 5525 K blackbody radiation, while the tenuous granular layer is responsible for specific absorption lines in the BB spectrum. It might be possible to build a sphere and cover it with tungsten foil, which could be heated to 5525 K, such that it would produce the correct blackbody radiation. A tenuous atmosphere will then absorb lines in that radiation. That much is well-understood, and need not be reproduced to prove that it is so. But it might be useful to get the tenuous atmosphere to cling to the cathode, as a "cathode sheath," to see if tufting can be reproduced.

 

A possible design for an apparatus that might demonstrate these behaviors can be found here.