Chromium6 wrote:So Charles does your model account for these items? Especially the Maunder type Grand Minima which is periodic over hundreds of years?
That's a pretty open-ended question, so answering it will take some time, but there isn't anything worth watching on TV tonight, so here goes.
My model accounts for all of that stuff, and with physics that is much more straight-forward than the mainstream is trying to use. The bare-faced fact is that though they properly acknowledge that the Sun's magnetic fields are caused by moving charged particles, that is precisely where all of their problems start, and thus that is where the obfuscation starts, because in their models, there aren't any charge separations, nor any reason for net currents. The plasma flows that they identify shouldn't produce any magnetic fields at all, since they "should" be in quasi-neutral matter, and the fields from positive and negative charges moving in the same direction cancel each other out. So the first and toughest problem is explaining the Dynamo Effect without getting all weird with MHD abstractions.
Quite obviously, a dynamo requires that the rotation of the Sun results in
net currents. My model is built from charged double-layers. Each of these layers generates its own field. We would typically assume that friction between these layers would eventually result in solid body rotation, where they all rotated at the same rate. If that were the case, the fields would cancel each other out. But the plasma is nearly frictionless, enabling differential rotation of the layers. And with opposing magnetic fields between them, alternating layers are trying to accelerate themselves and decelerate their opposing layers with the magnetic pressure between them. Thus it isn't surprising that one layer would end up traveling faster, and thus generating a net field. And since we know that different layers inside the Sun rotate at different rates, and that the difference toggles, wherein the faster one slows down, and the slower one speeds up (i.e., torsional oscillation), and that this oscillation is synchronized with the flipping of the net magnetic field, this is hardly conjecture. I simply assign electric charges to those oscillating differential rotations, and I get a dynamo that flips its polarity every 11 years.
To understand the trigger that forces the polarity reversal, we have to take a close look at the nature of the equatorial band, which speeds up early in the active phase, and spans from 30 degree N to 30 degrees S. As the active phase continues, this equatorial band shrinks, eventually only spanning from 5 degrees N to 5 degrees S, before the speed difference disappears altogether in the quiet phase. This band involves the entire depth of the convective zone, which in my model has 3 charged layers, in a PNP configuration. So the net magnetic field isn't coming from the fact that the equatorial band is rotating faster than the polar caps. If that were the case, the acceleration of the equatorial band would always produce the same field, not one that alternates from one cycle to the next. So the net field is coming from the differential rotation of vertically stratified layers of charges within the convective zone. The horizontal differentiation of speeds, between the equatorial band and the polar caps, is what causes a reconfiguration of the net field, triggering a flip in the overall polarity. So to follow along, you have to visualize stacked layers of alternating charges that generate opposing magnetic fields, and where the charge sign that is rotating the fastest generates the dominant field. Then an equatorial band involving all 3 layers rotates faster than the polar caps, generating an even more powerful field that splits the dominant field into pieces. As the equatorial band shrinks, these pieces resolve into an overall field whose polarity is opposite. In the following diagram, positive layers are shown in green, and negative layers are shown in red.
http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Images/C ... ly_wbg.png
The next step is to identify the reasons for sunspots occurring at the edges of the equatorial bands. In my model, sunspots are not eddies in the fluid -- they are electrodynamic hotspots -- "cathode spots" if you will. They form not because of opposing fluid flows, but because this is where the magnetic field intersects the surface perpendicular to it, enabling Birkeland currents to follow the lines of force directly out into space. So sunspots are electric currents enhanced by the orientation of the magnetic field.
So what would cause long-term fluctuations in sunspot activity, such as in the Maunder Minimum? The answer, of course, is that something is causing fluctuations in the intensity of the equatorial bands that form, and which establish the conditions for those sunspots. The faster the rotation of the equatorial bands, the more dramatic the sunspot activity. So then the question is, "What causes this variation in the speed of the equatorial bands?"
The more fundamental question, and which no other model to my knowledge addresses with mechanistic physics, is what causes the equatorial bands in the first place. (We first have to know what causes them, in order to understand why their intensity varies.)
This is yet another feature of the charged double-layer model. The charges are separated by electron degeneracy pressure under gravitational loading. If the pressure was static, the layers would be perfectly stable, and there wouldn't be any currents between them. (Hence they would be true "current-free double-layers" -- CFDLs.) But if the pressure fluctuates, there will be local currents across the boundaries. Under pressure, electrons are forced out of the deeper plasma, leaving it positively charged. If the pressure is relaxed, electrons can flow back into that plasma. If the pressure is restored, the electrons flow back out. And if the pressure fluctuates regularly, due to waves moving through the plasma, there will be alternating currents. So, are there waves in the Sun? Yes -- there are all modes of waves, and inside the Sun, at the boundary between charged double-layers, these waves will drive currents that will generate heat.
The type of wave that is the most significant in regulating the solar cycle is an s-wave that circumnavigates the Sun's equator at a depth of 125 Mm below the surface. Since it goes all of the wave around the Sun, it loops back on itself, and thus it falls into a harmonic frequency. This is the first wave mode in the following image:
http://soi.stanford.edu/press/ssu8-97/pmodes.gif
And while p-waves of many modes can occur inside the Sun, standing s-waves are only stable in the equatorial mode, since in any other direction, they will be refracted by the Coriolis Effect, and thereby dissipated.
The fact that there are s-waves deep inside the Sun is confirmed by the progression of supergranules across the surface in a wave-like pattern. There had to be a heat source to cause these thermal bubbles to rise, and it had to be deep inside the Sun. And it had to be a s-wave, because that's the only type of wave that only travels in an equatorial harmonic frequency. A wave-like heat source deep inside the Sun can only be an s-wave at the boundary between two charged double-layers, where the crests and troughs drive electric currents.
S-waves are also the only mechanistic explanation for the super-rotation of the equatorial bands. Thermal bubbles causes by s-waves will inherit the momentum of the particle motion at the tops of the wave crests, which in an s-wave, is parallel to the motion of the wave.
http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Images/C ... on_wbg.png
Another interesting aspect of these waves is that since the wave crests are driving electric currents, and since those generate heat, and since heat increases the pressure, the wave crests bounce off a wall that pushes back with extra force, so to say. Thus the release of energy by the wave crest pushes it back down, accelerating the next trough, and this attempts to accelerate the entire wave. Ah but the wave is trapped in a harmonic frequency. Anything that attempts to accelerate it will force it to undergo destructive interference that will attenuate the frequency and the height of the wave crests. Thus the waves are regulated, where there is plenty of energy to overcome friction and keep them going, but that energy source cannot create a runaway release, where the wave heights just keep getting bigger and bigger, because the harmonic frequency won't allow it. Nevertheless, in any system regulated by destructive interference that is coupled to the accelerator, the system will oscillate somewhat randomly. (Consider how engines idling with a centrifugal force governor tend to sputter.) So these equatorial s-waves rev up, but that triggers destructive interference that suppresses them, and the whole thing sputters, with an cycle of 11.2 years, but where the length of the cycle, and the intensity of the active phase, varies. And the Maunder Minimum was simply a period in which the sputtering wasn't quite so dramatic.
Next time, if you don't want such a verbose answer, ask a more narrowly-defined question.
who invited PMR onto the forum to defend his work on the CMB 
Any point you would like to make?
)
Anyway...
