CC CRITIQUE OF SCOTT'S E.U.
That's Don Scott's E.U. Solar Model
Re: Debate: Aristarchus vs. Chandler
post by CharlesChandler » Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:02 am
Lloyd wrote: Doesn't the Sun's magnetic field reverse polarity at the end of each 11 year cycle? So that would make a 22 year cycle in which the field is north on "top" for 11 years and then north on "bottom" for the next 11 years. Is this right?
Yes.
Lloyd wrote: If so, how does it fit in with what you explained about the active and quiet phases caused by the Sun's differential rotation?
The Sun is a dynamo, which generates a magnetic field as it rotates. This requires a charge separation, which my model incorporates, as charged double-layers. If all of the matter in the Sun was neutral, the rotation wouldn't generate a net magnetic field, since the fields from positive and negative charges would cancel each other out. But if there are charged double-layers, and if they rotate at different rates, the faster one generates the dominant field. So how could the polarity flip? The faster layer has to slow down, and the slower layer speeds up. So the charged double-layers take 11 year turns in generating the dominant field. This is called "torsional oscillation", which scientists have known about for some time, including the fact that it's tied to the solar cycle. But they can't connect the dots with the solar dynamo, because they have the Sun as totally quasi-neutral, meaning that they have no idea how the Sun generates a magnetic field in the first place, much less one that alternates.
My model goes on to explain how differential rotation helps toggle the polarity. The following diagram shows how the magnetic field changes through the cycle. In the "early active phase", a surge in the differential rotation generates a powerful field in the equatorial region that closes on itself locally, without involving the higher latitudes. This field still has the same polarity, but it splits the field in the mid-latitudes. That's where a field with an opposite polarity forms, to bridge the split. Then, as the width of the equatorial band shrinks in the "late active phase", its field gets smaller, and the bridging field takes up the slack. Once the bridging field has expanded to the point that there is more of that polarity than the other, it over-rides the other fields, and becomes the dominant field for the next 11 years.
qdl.scs-inc .us/2ndParty/Images/Charles/Sun/MagneticButterfly_wbg.png
Lloyd wrote: You said you agree with Scott "that there are charge separations, inside the Sun, between the Sun and the heliosphere, and within the heliosphere itself." Did you mean in the second case "between the Sun and the heliopause" or "... heliosphere"?
No, I meant "heliosphere". More specifically, the heliosphere within 10 AU. In my model, the heliopause is a different domain.
Lloyd wrote: And how do you and Scott differ on these separations?
In my model, the Sun has 5 charged layers, of alternating sign. The core is positively charged; the radiative zone is negatively charged, and there is a PNP configuration in the convective zone. The Sun as a whole is net neutral, but for the discrepancies caused by CMEs, which affect a net loss of positive charge, driving an equal-but-opposite electron drift. Out in the heliosphere, in the first 10 AU, there is a net positive charge, which would only get fully neutralized if the Sun stopped producing CMEs. From 10 to 100 AU, the heliosphere is neutral, and without any electric currents. Lastly, the inside of the heliopause is positively charged, and the outside is negatively charged. This is because particles in the interstellar winds impinging on the heliosphere get their electrons stripped in collisions. But like I said, that's a different domain, because there is neither a field or a current associated with that charge separation in the vast space between 10 and 100 AU.
In Scott's model, the Sun simply has a net positive charge, and the heliopause has a net negative charge. Then, there is a steady flow of +ions out of the Sun toward the heliopause.
Lloyd wrote: And how is Scott wrong?
1. In any electric field, electrons respond far more quickly than +ions, due to their smaller inertial forces. So if the field was like Scott says it is, the +ions wouldn't be flowing out of the Sun -- the electrons would be zipping in from the heliopause. But what we actually see is a steady stream of +ions and electrons away from the Sun, with the electrons moving faster than the +ions within the first 10 AU, and only quasi-neutral particles expanding past 10 AU.
2. Even in weak electric fields, if the resistance is slight, electrons can quickly get accelerated to relativistic velocities. When they do, they generate powerful magnetic fields that pinch the electron streams down into discrete discharge channels. Within these channels, collisions with any remaining +ions knock the ions out of the channels, leaving nothing at all to impede the flow of the electrons. Thus the discharge channels become near perfect conductors. As such, the electron streams will stay consolidated until they get to the anode. If this was how the Sun worked, we would expect for there to be a finite number of discrete discharge channels intersecting with the Sun's surface, like a plasma lamp. These would be impossible to miss, as they would be carrying all of the current. Yet we look in the vicinity of the Sun, and we see none of this.
3. In the excellent conductivity of the plasma, a sustained current requires an amp regulator, or all of the potential will get discharged in an instant. Yet Scott's DL model is unrealistic. He has the photosphere positively charged, and then, in the chromosphere, there is a double-layer, with the positive charge facing inward, and the negative charge facing outward. Repulsion between the inner aspect of that DL and the photosphere is what throttles the current -- only +ions capable of making it past that repulsion get to flow out into the heliosphere. But that begs unanswerable questions:
a) If the DL is exerting electrostatic force on the photosphere to regulate the current, then the photosphere is likewise exerting the exact same force on the DL. So what counters the force being exerted on the DL, to keep it in place? And don't answer that it's gravity, because gravity is no match for the electric force, if the two are pitted against each other.
b) DLs in plasma are temporary, and their life expectancy is a straight function of the resistance, which in the chromosphere will be slight. So what keeps the DLs from recombining?
c) If something did keep the DL organized, +ions escaping from the Sun, getting past the positive layer and then sliding down the potential gradient through the negative layer, would surely recombine with negative charges there. If so, recombination in the outer DL would be the source of the photons that we get from the Sun. In other words, the upper chromosphere would be the photosphere, not the photosphere. And that would be just wrong.
d) Positive ions recombining with electrons in the upper chromosphere would eliminate the charge in that layer, thus eliminating the DL amp regulator.
All in all, it isn't that there is something wrong with Scott's model. I can't find anything that's right about it. All of the structural members are either physically impossible, or the opposite from what is actually observed.
Lloyd wrote: You said Scott said Q or E cannot be measured, but you think it can be, using the Stark and Zeeman effects on solar spectra. Can Brant help with that?
Last I heard, Brant was still working on his cometary flare-up model. With Siding Spring due for a Martian fly-by on the 19th of this month, I suppose he has his hands full with that. CosmicLettuce said that he would work up the webpages to support data analysis, and then Brant and/or myself will set up the hosting. This looks promising, but it will take some industrial strength physics, to make sure that we get it right. Both Brant and CosmicLettuce have more hands-on experience with that kind of thing, so I'll defer to them. But I can certainly use the results, because the strength of the E-field bears directly on my estimates of the power (watts = volts * amps). I'm currently using Alfven's estimate of 1.6 GV, but that was from 1941, and I never found a more recent estimate. Anything within an order of magnitude of that wouldn't blow up my numbers, considering the roughness of the other numbers, such as the mass of CMEs, the degree of ionization in CMEs, etc. Two orders of magnitude would be cause for concern.
I don't know where to even begin plugging numbers into Scott's model, since he has never stipulated anything like that.
Lloyd wrote: What data would prove the Sun is powered at least in part by galactic currents? You've stated before that, if galactic currents powered the Sun, there should be very visible powerful electric arcs like those seen in plasma globes and maybe Tesla coils, but between the Sun and the heliopause. Can you put specific numbers on that? Like how wide would the arcs be and how long and maybe how bright etc?
If the Sun was powered by galactic currents, the discharge wouldn't be just from the Sun to the heliopause -- it would be from the Sun out into the interstellar medium, and beyond. To drive such a current, we'd have to be in an electric field, so I'd really expect just one incoming and one outgoing discharge channel. The Sun wouldn't be a sphere -- it would be a tube. Anyway, I don't know where to begin with something so unrealistic.
Lloyd wrote: I think Michael Mozina also stated before that such galactic currents should have very strong magnetic fields easily measured from somewhere, I guess here on Earth or on satellites somewhere. Do you agree?
Yes -- aside from that big, bright tube across the daytime sky, there would be a magnetic field, which could be measured (e.g., by the synchrotron radiation). But nope, it isn't there.
Lloyd wrote: Michael also said, if stars are merely loads on galactic circuits, like electric lights are loads on home electric circuits, the generators of the currents have to be somewhere.
The more fundamental question is what forces the current through the stars? A perfect vacuum is a perfect conductor, and galactic currents should go around stars, not through them, because the interstellar medium is a better vacuum than the heliosphere. But yes, for there to be a current with a load on it, there has to be a generator, and no, to my knowledge, the EU doesn't suggest any mechanisms for that. I think I heard that Thornhill's position on that is that it is unknowable. I'd accept that, except for the fact that none of the near-field observations are consistent with any sort of galactic through-put.
Re: Debate: Aristarchus vs. Chandler
post by CharlesChandler » Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:49 pm
Lloyd wrote: [Juergens asked] why does the Sun have a distinct surface? Why doesn't it gradually diminish, like planetary atmospheres do?
Excellent questions! I follow Juergens letter-for-letter on this point -- the Sun's density gradient is clear proof of forces other than gravity and hydrostatic pressure, which can only be EM. And it can't just be one charge, because then the Coulomb force would cause the density to thin out even more. So it has to be at least two charged layers, being pulled forcefully together, to get a distinct limb.
Lloyd wrote: Do you know the history of the EU model well enough to see where the EU model went off-track? Was it mainly in assuming that the vacuum of space is an insulator?
I haven't done a step-by-step chronological analysis, but yes, I consider this to be a major error from early on, with vast implications for EU theory. It wasn't Juergens' fault, because half of the EE community seems to think that vacuums are perfect insulators. In my study of EM in tornadoes, I had to work all of the way through this issue, because tornadoes have major pressure deficits, and I needed to know what that did to the conductivity. I eventually tracked it all of the way down to the sub-atomic formulas, as provided by GSU. Vacuums are, in fact, perfect conductors. The drift speed is a straight function of the strength of the electric field, the charged particle's inertia, the mean free path, and the time lost to particle collisions. In a perfect vacuum, there are no particle collisions, so the drift speed is just a function of the E-field and the inertia, hence perfect conductivity
The implication for EU theory is that if a vacuum is a perfect insulator, (hypothesized) galactic currents need extension cords to follow, and these cords will lead through aggregates of matter, such as stars. But if a vacuum is a perfect conductor, such currents would avoid such aggregates, preferring the more vacuous interstellar medium, and leaving galactic currents unqualified as the source of stellar power. After reading The Electric Universe and The Electric Sky, I bought into the whole EM paradigm, but on closer scrutiny, I just couldn't go along with the galactic current thing, and started searching for other ways in which EM could do the job.
Lloyd wrote: Did Juergens think DLs are more self-sustaining than they actually are?
If Juergens was using DLs as described by Alfven and Langmuir, he should have expected very weak charge separations, and/or for very short periods of time. This is why I started looking for a more powerful charge separation mechanism. The Pannekoek-Rossland field also seemed insufficient. Further research turned up electron degeneracy pressure, which is very poorly understood, but which has all of the right characteristics to be the charge separation mechanism inside the Sun (and the Earth too, for that matter)
And yes, Debye cells are double-layers, but they are typically very weakly charged. These are the kinds of things that caused Langmuir to use the term "plasma" to refer to assemblies organized by the electric force, but which do not react electrically with their environment, like the plasma cells in our bloodstreams, which wrap themselves around antigens, neutralizing their effect on the rest of the body. With this as the fundamental precept, mainstream astronomy was predisposed to think that the electric force isn't a factor in the collapse of dusty plasmas into stars, so they stuck with their Newtonian model. It appears that I was the first one to realize that a cloud collision will strip the Debye sheaths off of the dust particles, radically changing the electrical configuration, and resulting in a huge body force, easily capable of causing the collapse of the dusty plasma into a star
But Langmuir-style DLs are insufficient to explain the density gradient in the Sun -- the charge separation has to be far more robust.
Lloyd wrote: You and the other independents say the Sun is a cathode. Is it a cathode all the time, or just under certain circumstances? Like during the active or quiet phase? Is it ever an anode? If so, when? Or is it sometimes neutral? Or would there be no solar wind if it were neutral?
If the Sun was ever neutral, it would go dark! So yes, it's always a cathode (IMO).
Lloyd wrote: Do you know what happens to the solar wind after 10 AU?
The solar wind continues to expand past 10 AU, but the +ions and electrons are both traveling at the same speed, so there isn't any current. So yes, we could say that all of the charges have recombined, but not in such great numbers that it produces visible radiation.
Lloyd wrote: And how are the outer planets affected differently than the inner ones, if the former aren't in the heliospheric current sheet?
The planets within 10 AU, and which have strong magnetic fields, have more powerful auroras.
Lloyd wrote: Does the EU model require that the current sheet go the remaining 90 AU to reach the heliopause?
I don't recall EU proponents talking about the heliospheric current sheet. So they require a current, but have no use for the one that we know about. (?) I "think" that this is because little was known about the HCS when the EU building blocks were being laid. But IMO, people talking about solar currents have to assimilate the HCS data into their models, or stop talking about solar currents.
Lloyd wrote: Do you have a list of the Sun's features and which features your model explains and which ones the EU model explain?
… I maintain a hierarchical list that by its nature can handle an unlimited amount of material….
Lloyd wrote: Do both models explain the acceleration of the seismic waves on the photosphere?
Mine does. I don't recall the EU mentioning it.
Re: Debate: Aristarchus vs. Chandler
by CharlesChandler » Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:32 am
_A: Aristarchus wrote:
Charles Chandler wrote: CC: On page #3 of the referenced paper, he shows a diagram of random electron motions. Yes, those might be moving at 10^5 m/s. But that doesn't mean that the net drift velocity is that. The net drift velocity is 0 from Brownian motion.
_A: Scott … doesn't just show a diagram, he explains it with text. Why didn't you mention that? Let's look at the text, shall we - and pay heed to my bold emphasis?
"Plasmas have what is called the “plasma frequency”. Even after an electron is freed om an atom (producing an ionized on/electron pair) that electron tends to oscillate around the +ion at a certain frequency. The electron is free to drift away from the ionic center, but often continues to dance around it until it jumps over to the vicinity of another ion. Visualize a set of 20,000 (ionized) ion/electron pairs in a plasma where only one of them at a time jumps (drifts) to a neighboring ion. The vast sea of dancing (in Brownian motion) electrons easily camouflages the drift motion of one out of 20,000 electrons. That is why the criticism of the Juergens ES model that says, “We only see equal numbers of ions and electrons moving in the solar wind.” Is not a valid one.
_A: You see the word games CC is playing here? No? Let me explain. Scott explains that the drift motion is one out of every 20,000 electrons.
I'm not the one playing word games here. Scott explicitly states that the "random current density" constitutes the solar discharge, and he shows the numbers for that...
_Scott wrote: http://electric-cosmos.org/SolarElecFlux2013.pdf
At the time Juergens made his calculation (1979), current estimates of the state of ionization of the interstellar gas were that there should be at least 100,000 free electrons per cubic m. But in light of the new update (see #2 above), this is now increased 100 fold to 10^7/m^3. The random electric current of these electrons would be Ir = Nev where N is the electron density per cubic meter, e is the electron charge in coulombs, and v is the average velocity of the electrons (in m/s). Using these values, we find that Ir = Nev = 10^7 electrons x 1.6x10^-19 Coulombs/electron x 10^5 m/s
so the random electric current density is about 1.6x10^-7 Amp per square meter through a surface oriented at any angle.
The total electron current that can be drawn by the solar discharge is the product of this random current density and the surface area of the sphere occupied by the cathode drop.
But he finds that this yields 20,000 times more current that is actually necessary to light up the Sun. So then he says that "the vast sea of dancing (in Brownian motion) electrons easily camouflages the drift motion of one out of 20,000 electrons." Well, yes, but try to follow the logic. He is saying that Brownian motion constitutes a current (which is not correct). Then he says that this particular Brownian motion causes 20,000 times more current than could possibly be there. Oops. So the Brownian motion doesn't cause the current -- it just camouflages the real drift that actually does the work. But then Brownian motion actually isn't a factor, so why did he mention it? I'll tell you why: he pulled a bait-n-switch, using Brownian motion as camouflage (literally and figuratively). To the unsuspecting reader, he successfully established 1) plenty of current, and 2) the plausibility of a drift. But Brownian motion doesn't constitute a current, so really he's just making a bald assertion that the drift is there, and hoping that the bait-n-switch made it sound convincing.
CRITIQUE OF SCOTT
_In all due fairness to others who missed this, I read the paper several times over the last couple of years, before spotting the bait-n-switch. Similarly, I read about Scott's chromospheric current regulator several times, and it sounded technical enough, and Scott has a PhD in EE, so I thought that it just had to be correct -- until I actually went through the whole thing step-by-step, and realized that it isn't what it appears to be. He has the voltage drop in the chromosphere, which is what (supposedly) regulates the discharge in the photosphere. Yet if the voltage drop was in the chromosphere, that's where the discharge would be! So that's just another bait-n-switch.
_OK, he's good at it. Like I said, if somebody with a PhD in EE spews a bunch of jargon and shows some numbers in scientific notation, if you're not paying attention, you just might give him the benefit of the doubt, and a carefully crafted deception might get past you. But if you apply the same critical scrutiny to Scott's model as you do the mainstream models, you will find that like the mainstream, he's leveraging bad intuition to make something sound reasonable that actually isn't going to work.
_And then, if you review the proceedings of this forum, and of the EU conferences, you'll find that his model hasn't changed in 10 years. And you'll also find a lack of responsiveness to issues that have been raised. A good paradigm continues to bear new fruit. The EU is starting to look like a dead paradigm.
ESTABLISHMENT BACKING EU
_And then we see the ES model getting financial support from senior defense contractors and presidential campaign managers (i.e., SAFIRE). Clearly people within the establishment are pushing the EU agenda. Why would they do this, if the EU has locked down on EM configurations that are not correct? I'll tell you why -- it's because the EU has locked down on EM configurations that are not correct. They're sand-bagging their opponents. You can go with the mainstream models, or you can dabble in the EU alternative, but that isn't correct, which brings all of the prodigal sons back home to the mainstream.
_You'll see this same tactic employed in a lot of different areas, if you know what you're looking for. When I started doing independent research over 10 years ago, I wondered why people could get major funding to do things like String Theory, which by definition is untestable, and I couldn't get anybody to seriously consider electric tornado theory. I'm now convinced that the reason is that I was disagreeing with the mainstream, and not obviously wrong. You can get funding within the mainstream, or outside of it -- if you're definitely wrong. But you cannot get funding to demonstrate that there is a better way.
_And you repeatedly call me a shill? That's a serious charge in this business, but OK, since you opened the door, let's go inside and have a look around. Your posts are turning out to be an encyclopedia of rhetorical tactics, and it's a classic technique for frauds to call somebody else a fraud, to get the label to stick to somebody else, lest it invariably end up sticking to them. But if you're going to make accusations like that, you have to back them up, or the charge of fraud will fall back on you. Frankly, I think that it is your intention to show that the EU can be just as specious, and just as hateful, as the mainstream, so that the mainstream doesn't look bad by comparison. The EU can be a religion that has to be taken on faith, and the EU will flame you really bad if you don't see the same vision. It can dismiss an absence of evidence in support as inconclusive, which sometimes is OK, but then if one in a million of the data are in support, they'll call it validation, which is not OK. You can't call the large body of data inconclusive if it doesn't support your model, and then draw conclusions from the extremely small portion of it that IS in support without violating your own standards for proper data interpretation. And you can't claim that your model has been verified (e.g., Electric Sun Verified) by data that the model didn't predict, and which are inconsistent with it. The ES model predicts that the current density continues to relax with distance from the Sun. This is why they didn't predict a spike in current density in the heliopause, and why it doesn't verify the ES model. If we give all of the data consistent treatment, those data are just as inconclusive as the absence of verification from the many more satellites closer to the Sun.
_And the way that you're using the philosophy of science to validate the EU is fallacious, and in the academic community, this is a well-known fallacy. It is true that new paradigms require a shift in the way we think, which forfeits the support of … all of the material developed within the previous paradigm. It is also true that new paradigms have provided an enormous amount of value in the history of science. But it would be an undistributed middle to say that all new paradigms will provide an enormous amount of value. Some of those paradigms are demonstrably wrong, and there is no value in that. To have anything more than garden-variety rhetorical techniques, you have to demonstrate that the new paradigm has cash value. And I don't mean that it's something that is nice to think about. I mean that you have to show that the new paradigm can solve problems that the old one cannot. And by "solve" I mean "really solve" -- not just jargon and numbers that look good, without actually having anything to do with reality. I mean identifying the physical mechanisms at work, in a way that yields predictive capability of humanitarian utility. That was my motivation in the development of a more accurate theory of tornadoes, and has continued to be my motivation as I apply the same methods to other topics, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and CMEs. I'm not developing a belief system that is just something that is cool to think about. I'm looking for tangible benefits to society -- the kinds of things that would benefit people even if they didn't believe in the model -- thereby proving that belief was not the active ingredient.
_And finally, if you're going to toss all manner of classical analysis (such as what I'm doing), and claim that T. S. Kuhn said that it would be OK, that's fine. But don't turn around and attempt to support this new paradigm with calculations of current densities, trying to make it look like classical science. If it's a brave new paradigm that don't need no stinkin' physics, that’s fine -- just explicitly state what it is. But if you claim to be doing "real science" while actually ignoring classical methods, you'll draw the charge of fraud.