The Sun: Nuclear Fusion & Electric Reconnection

[tayga]

What forms and sustains persistent double layers? You need a charge separation mechanism, and then you need some capacitance. What's the separation mechanism, and what provides the capacitance? (Plasma is highly-conductive, as others have pointed out, so capacitance is an issue.) And how do they explode?

There's a fairly concise article on double layers here.

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Double_layer

I couldn't answer your question myself so I looked here. Hell, even I can understand it!

[Lloyd]

[Oh, I see Tayga replied too.]
* You might get some answers from here: http://www.plasma-universe.com/Birkeland_current.
* The following comes from there. See especially Sun's Prominences.
Cosmic Birkeland currents

Adjacent Birkeland current filaments tend to be long-range attractive (F ~ 1/r), and short range repulsive (f ~ 1/r3).[14] - Plasma physicists suggest that many structures in the universe exhibiting filamentation are due to Birkeland currents. Peratt notes that "Regardless of scale, the motion of charged particles produces a self-magnetic field that can act on other collections of charged particles, internally or externally.[15] Plasmas in relative motion are coupled via currents that they drive though each other". (See Plasma scaling). Examples include:
Size Current Description
20 × 10^3 m ------- Venus Flux ropes
------------------------- Cometary tails
10^2–10^5 m 10^6 A Earth's Aurora
10^8 m 10^5–10^6 A Magnetosphere inverted V events
10^7–10^8 m 10^11 A Sun's prominences (spicules, coronal streamers)
------------------------ Interstellar structures: various nebulae
10^18 m -------------- Galactic center
6 × 10^20 m ------- Double radio galaxies: bright lobes
Source: Peratt (1992).

* It seems that double layers automatically keep charges separate, unless there's a sudden charge build-up, in which case there's an explosion. So, ordinarily I guess capacitance isn't needed, because charge isn't stored; instead it's always moving. I think the charges move in opposite directions in the double layers, but I'm not certain. I'm not clear on what happens in exploding double layers. Novae and supernovae are examples of exploding double layers. So are surges in power lines on Earth.
* I'm not sure what separates charge, but large mass may do so, at least for non-solid mass. Electrons are said to get stripped off atoms within a large mass, then they move to the surface, leaving positive charge behind. Charge separation apparently starts when AGNs, active galactic nuclei, form plasma guns which shoot quasars out, usually 2 at a time in opposite directions through the poles of the galaxy, sometimes through an arm, like with the Dogleg galaxy. The electric or magnetic field of the AGN detains electrons and shoots quasars out as positive ion plasma balls, maybe like ball lightning. The AGN field then reduces and allows the excess electrons to shoot out after the quasars. Thornhill has discussed this. He got the idea partly from Arp.

[CharlesChandler]

According to:

http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Double_layer

The electrostatic potential in the Sun's double layer is 109 - 1011 V. (That's an "estimated" number.) That's one order of magnitude greater than the potential from the top of a thunderstorm cloud down to the ground on Earth. The limiting factor in the terrestrial thunderstorm is the resistance of the air, so over a 10 km distance, you're not going to get much above 108 V before a lightning strike will occur. So how are you going to get an order of magnitude more voltage in the Sun, where the plasma, at 3,000 ~ 6,000 K, is an excellent conductor? It would help to know the distance that this voltage is spanning, and then we could add up the (infinitesimal) resistance of the plasma, to see if it could actually sustain that kind of potential. But this information is not given. There IS a mention of the typical thickness of a double layer (in the "Features and characteristics of double layers" section).

The thickness of a double layer is of the order of ten Debye lengths, which is a few centimeters in the ionosphere, a few tens of meters in the interplanetary medium, and tens of kilometers in the intergalactic medium.

Aside from the fact that such small distances are not suitable for explaining the structures on the Sun's surface, which are hundreds of kilometers across, 109 V across a couple of meters of excellent conductor is laughable if you're thinking of charges just sitting there that built up in a shielding layer. To get the capacitance to sustain such voltages, you'd need electrodynamic forces -- opposing magnetic fields generated by plasma moving at extreme velocities. That's not a problem, since the plasma IS moving at extreme velocities. But now you need to explain how the plasma got moving that fast, and what keeps it moving. And don't say that it's the electric force, because that would beg the question. And don't say that it's time-varying magnetic fields that induced the current to flow fast enough to generate magnetic fields that could separate the charges, because then you'd need to explain what generated the magnetic fields.

In order to work all of the way through the problem, you have to identify the prime mover, and then trace the energy through whatever conversions might happen, to result in the eventual energy release that we observe. You can't just label an anomaly and then fiddle around in your physics grab-bag until you find something that looks like that.

Now, don't let me be misunderstood here. My model has a prime mover -- that I don't know anything about. I'm saying that plasma jets "erupting" from the bottom of the convective zone will get their charges separated by the magnetic force. This sets the stage for an energetic recombination in the photosphere. So what gets the plasma jets to "erupt"? Simple convection is not the answer. The possibilities are purely conjectural (as mentioned previously). But at least I've got my Achilles heel clearly labeled. You may be right and you may be wrong, but you'll never know either way until you start insisting on tracing everything back to prime movers.

I'll read the article on Birkeland currents next.

[CharlesChandler]

OK, there's nothing in the article on Birkeland currents with which I disagree. In fact, Birkeland currents are central to my proposal. The twist that I'm adding is that I'm saying that under the right conditions, it should be possible to get the oppositely-charged strands of a Birkeland current to reconnect if they can get into a loop.

But I should elaborate just a bit on this. This conceptual model...

Figure 5. Fast-moving electric charges can recombine if they form a loop.

...when put into context...

Figure 6. The photons that we see from the Sun are from electric arcs in the photosphere.

...establishes a possible explanation for solar filaments, prominences, and the penumbra around the outside of a sunspot. But a complete description of the photosphere might at least touch on the nature of the granules which constitute 99% of surface of the Sun.

I'll work on a drawing of the idea that I have, but in the meantime (and to help me clarify my thinking), here's a verbal description. As a plasma jet "erupts" through the photosphere, it then experiences a sharp reduction in ambient pressure, as the photosphere is some sort of a shell that contains the density and pressure within. Once the plasma jet crosses the threshold into the low pressure at the edge of the photosphere, it can then expand dramatically. So we will expect some sort of mushrooming effect. The curvature in its path is then significant because it resolves the conflict between the opposing magnetic fields between the positive and negative strands (or core and sheath) in the Birkeland current. If the positive and negative particles within the stream have been fully separated when they hit the photosphere, they'll emerge as opposite polarity sunspots, with filaments and prominences transporting charges between them, responding to the electric field, and constricted into discreet channels by the magnetic pinch effect. But if the plasma jet is a positive core with a negative sheath, the "loop" will be a mushroom shape, with the positive charges curving outward, and negative charges inward, to recombine as a granule.

I really haven't thought this through all of the way, but that's what I'm thinking. I mention this simply because in the discussion of these ideas, you won't understand what I'm saying if you don't know that I'm thinking that all of the electrical activity in the photosphere is of this nature -- charged-separated plasma that recombines due to the electric force, in a curving path (loops or mushroom tops) as this resolves the conflict between the opposing magnetic fields. And the difference between this and the EU model is that this has all of the electric field between the different components of plasma jets within the Sun, as opposed to an electric field between the Sun and the corona.

[biknewb]

Hi Charles
May I suggest you read some more about Birkeland currents? The two strands that form it are of the same sign, not oppositely charged.
Double layers in a plasma do not need any external mechanism to form, they form automatically when the difference between two regions becomes large enough. Forming double layers is one of those hard to comprehend inherent properties of plasma.
In the Electric Universe Model charge separation is a given. Observations seem to make more sense when charges are assumed to be separated. The true mechanism behind this separation is better left unexplained for the time being. Explaining observed phenomena in electric terms is already a formidable task.

I do like your enthusiasm and creative modeling. There may be just a problem with those fast moving charges. When you accept the consensus of a complex magnetic field, moving charges would not be able to move in straight lines for long due to Lorentz forces and the complexity of that field.

Keep thinking about alternatives for what we can see the Sun do. With those ever more sophisticated instruments out there, we should be able to eventually explain the true nature of our Sun's radiance.

[CharlesChandler]

May I suggest you read some more about Birkeland currents? The two strands that form it are of the same sign, not oppositely charged.

OK, it's starting to look like what I'm talking about is not a Birkeland current at all. Some of the usages of the term are strict, and some are loose, but I think that my usage has been just plain incorrect. I'm not talking about plasma, as a conductor, moving in a magnetic field, which induces an electric current, just like an electric generator. I'm talking about a z-pinched current responding to an electric field, and where the only magnetic fields are those generated by the moving electric charges themselves. I have removed references to Birkeland currents in the write-up on my site. Sorry for the confusion.

Double layers in a plasma do not need any external mechanism to form, they form automatically when the difference between two regions becomes large enough.

There are many instabilities that can emerge in a dynamic context. But you still have to establish the prime mover, and then explain the energy conversions. You've got a prime mover...

In the Electric Universe Model charge separation is a given.

So you've got an electrostatic force. Now how do you get the magnetic fields that establish the context in which conductors (that somehow are moving within the field) result in induced currents that have double layers? I just haven't seen anybody lay all of this out, and it makes me wonder whether anybody has bothered, or if the phenomena just can't be marshaled with that approach.

Forming double layers is one of those hard to comprehend inherent properties of plasma. [...] Observations seem to make more sense when charges are assumed to be separated. [...] The true mechanism behind this separation is better left unexplained for the time being. Explaining observed phenomena in electric terms is already a formidable task.

You're oscillating...

There may be just a problem with those fast moving charges.

Yup. We know that they're there, so the problem is not that I'm asserting the existence of something that hasn't been measured. The problem is that I have only hypothetical forces that could motivate such plasma jets. Once they get moving, it's easier to see how they might keep moving. The "electric reconnection" events in my model seem to be capable of nuclear fusion. My original idea was that the imploding discharge channels would create the pressures and temperatures necessary for thermonuclear explosions. Don Scott contends that just the magnetic pinch effect within the discharges should be sufficient for fusion, though I have yet to connect the dots between the solar and tokamak data to make a complete picture. Either way, ejecta from fusion events will be traveling at millions of km per hour, so sure, we have the speeds necessary for yet another charge separation by opposing magnetic fields, which sets the stage for yet another electric reconnection event, and so on. But this is pure conjecture.

[Sparky]

hey, charles..see you are still at it....

a quote of yours,"I'm not talking about plasma, as a conductor, moving in a magnetic field, which induces an electric current, just like an electric generator. I'm talking about a z-pinched current responding to an electric field, and where the only magnetic fields are those generated by the moving electric charges themselves."

to expand and clarify:
As i understand it, plasma in space is just there, floating around. When a voltage is applied and a charge separation is felt by the plasma, it will form current carrying filaments, and magnetic fields will instantly form around those filaments. When there is no longer a charge separation, the current ceases, the magnetic fields collapse, and plasma takes a break, floating around, waiting for the next voltage to get it up and moving. If while in conduction mode a circuit is completed with a voltage source in it, the plasma filaments will continue to conduct.

You must have plasma filaments, conducting current within a circuit, with magnetic fields around them, in order to create a z pinch from the attractive electric force and magnetic fields that they generate.

Plasma, in the highly electrified region of the sun will be formed filaments and part of the circuits entering the sun , within the sun, or leaving it.

And all filaments are being affected by magnetic fields other than their own.

Again, translating your terms, which are sometimes loosely applied, make it difficult to imagine where you are going. If you would adopt, consistently, accepted electrical terms such as voltage, current, charge separation, inductance, and magnetic field, translating your terms would not be necessary.
Specifically, "moving charge", sounds like a battery or a charged capacitor is being transported.

If my remarks are in error , i am open to correction.

hang in there, charles!

thanks

[CharlesChandler]

hey, charles..see you are still at it....

Why give up -- I'm still learning here!

As i understand it, plasma in space is just there, floating around. When a voltage is applied and a charge separation is felt by the plasma, it will form current carrying filaments, and magnetic fields will instantly form around those filaments. When there is no longer a charge separation, the current ceases, the magnetic fields collapse, and plasma takes a break, floating around, waiting for the next voltage to get it up and moving. If while in conduction mode a circuit is completed with a voltage source in it, the plasma filaments will continue to conduct. You must have plasma filaments, conducting current within a circuit, with magnetic fields around them, in order to create a z pinch from the attractive electric force and magnetic fields that they generate.

That's exactly how I was thinking of it. But that's not a Birkeland current, technically speaking. I had been aware that there were some differences between how it is used in the literature and what I was actually thinking, but I thought that the difference was trivial. Actually, there IS a difference, and it's significant. Here's the standard definition (with my bold)...

A Birkeland current is a specific magnetic field aligned current in the Earth’s magnetosphere which flows from the magnetotail towards the Earth on the dawn side and in the other direction on the dusk side of the magnetosphere. Lately, the term Birkeland currents has been expanded by some authors to include magnetic field aligned currents in general space plasmas.

So "Birkeland current" means that you've got a current (it doesn't say whether it's because of an external voltage or because of time-varying magnetic fields), and the form of this current is modulated by the external magnetic field (due, of course, to its interaction with the magnetic field generated by the current).

The EU model has voltages between all celestial bodies, and Birkeland currents responding to those voltages, while following paths determined by external magnetic fields (if they are using the term correctly, as I understand it). (The "external magnetic fields" would be stuff like the Earth's magnetic field, the origin of which is unspecified, and irrelevant within this context.) The standard MHD model has time-varying magnetic fields inducing currents, so these are Birkeland currents too (in the most general sense).

Since I'm not relying on any external magnetic fields to modulate the path taken by the currents responding to the voltages, I'm not talking about Birkeland currents. I guess they're just "currents." Or maybe they're "Chandler currents," I don't know. But anyway, it was sloppy usage on my part to be talking like that.

Plasma, in the highly electrified region of the sun will be formed filaments and part of the circuits entering the sun, within the sun, or leaving it.

Then you have to specify which regions are electrified, and how they developed their voltages, etc.

And all filaments are being affected by magnetic fields other than their own.

My understanding is that if there is some sort of static magnetic field in which all of this is occurring, the filament can be called a Birkeland current. If it's just other plasmas that are moving, and generating their own magnetic fields, it's a Sparky current or something. If it's a neutral plasma stream that became charge-separated by its own motion, and where the opposing magnetic fields kept the charges separate until they recombine in a loop, then it's a Chandler current.

Specifically, "moving charge", sounds like a battery or a charged capacitor is being transported.

Part of the problem here is that I was not formally trained in any of this stuff. But the reason for my speaking of "moving electric charges" instead of currents is that for people who have been formally trained, "current" always means electrons. At 1/4000 the mass of a proton/neutron pair, it's the electrons that always do the moving. Well, almost always. If you have plasma jets doing several km/sec, even if there aren't any electrons around, you'll get magnetic fields and z-pinches, without any current. So I thought that it would "clarify" things to speak of moving electric charges -- oh well. Feel free to correct me, in the terminology as well as in the theory of electromagnetism. I'm not on this board because I wanted YOU to learn something...

[Lloyd]

* Charles, if you want info on solar granulation etc, Michael G. suggests the following.

Well, one can always mine Holoscience.com for a few references on granules & granulation (each has a few short or medium length snippets relating to granulation, among other topics covered):
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=s9ke93mf
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=jdjcab6s
--> http://members.cox.net/dascott3/SDLIEEE.pdf (This paper by Don Scott talks about anode tufting in slightly more technical detail. Referred to in the prior Holoscience article)
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=x49g6gsf
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=e511t4z2
The Don Scott paper goes into some level of detail with even a few maths thrown in for kicks and good science. ;o]

* Have you already checked those out?
* Here's something from Scott's paper regarding the heat of the corona.

Near the Sun's visible surface - the photosphere - its atmosphere is coolest, approximately 6000K. It is cooler at the deepest part of its sunspots. But then, with increasing distance from the photospheric surface, the temperature of the atmosphere first begins to fall off, but then reverses itself and rises smoothly – then abruptly jumps to 2 million K in the tenuous lower corona. Standard models view this temperature discontinuity as an inconvenience for which several ad hoc explanations have been offered. Figure 2. The temperature profile of the Sun. (Note: The vertical axis in figure 2 is logarithmic.) [Image Credit: Big Bear Solar Observatory] It has been suggested that magnetic loops and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves throw heat out into the lower corona. The question of what mechanism converts thermal energy directly into magnetic fields inside the Sun and then performs the inverse operation in the lower corona remains unanswered. Dwivedi and Phillips state as much: “Astronomers have implicated magnetic fields in the coronal heating; where those fields are strongest, the corona is hottest. Such fields can transport energy in a form other than heat, thereby sidestepping the usual thermodynamic restrictions. The energy must still be converted to heat, and researchers are testing two possible theories: small scale magnetic field reconnections - the same process involved in solar flares – and magnetic waves.” The notion that magnetic field lines reconnect is impossible to reconcile with Maxwell's equation (•B 0 ). Magnetic field “lines” do not actually exist in three-dimensional space and therefore cannot move. They are simply graphic artifices to aid visualization of the field’s strength and direction. A magnetic field is a continuum, not a set of discrete lines.

[CharlesChandler]

In response to Don Scott ("Solar Surface Transistor Action"):

• The temperature of the corona is enigmatic, but the size of the problem is not to be taken out of proportion. The actual amount of energy is vanishingly small.
• The energy that IS present can be adequately explained by gravitational acceleration. This is not the mainstream view. Regardless, gravity is present, and its effects need to be taken into account, and if they are, the particle speeds and energy releases make sense. The Sun pulls particles toward it, and in the near-perfect vacuum of space, particles reach extreme speeds. When approaching anything that has an atmosphere (such as the Sun), the first couple of collisions will be extremely high-energy events. Then there is little left to explain. (See http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/research/sun.htm for more info.) I agree that the original formation of the Sun out of a huge cloud of gas, on the basis of gravitational attraction alone, is not reasonable -- only EM forces could do that. But once formed, gravity is a force that needs to be taken into account in any attempt at a complete description.
• Attributing the presence of 68 of the 92 known elements in the Sun's atmosphere to nuclear fusion due to magnetic pinches in the DL is an eyebrow raiser. They're in the atmosphere, but not in coronal mass ejections, which suggests that they're not coming from the Sun. The list of elements, and their relative proportions, roughly matches the constitution of comets and the rest of the solar system for that matter. What happens to comet tails? What happens to any particle trapped by the Sun's gravitational field? We would expect to find such elements in the Sun's atmosphere, so this isn't an anomaly and it doesn't need to be explained, nor can it be cited as support for the contention that a DL is causing fusion.
• If fusion IS occurring in the photosphere, it is far more likely to be the result of imploding discharge channels, rather than just z-pinches while the currents are still active.

This (and pretty much all of the other EU literature that I've read) identifies specific anomalies in the mainstream model, but instead of offering a more accurate model, the EU literature just says, "DLs are good like that" and that's the end of it.

I want to see a clearly-labeled diagram showing where the charges are, how they got separated, what is keeping them separate, how the charges are recombining, and why the recombination takes the observed form -- all with plausible physics. You have to make specific, falsifiable contentions in order to have anything at all. With the amount of time and effort that has been put into the EU model, people now are beginning to say that if it had any promise, it would have evolved into specific contentions by now. The fact that it hasn't makes people think that EU theorists tried to go the next step, but they must have hit a brick wall, and so they just backed up, repaired the front-end damage, and headed back to town to get more people interested in heading this way. But what are we going to find?

If there's no forward progress on this road, and if we already know that the main highway is a dead-end, it's time to look for another road.

I'm not saying that I have all of the answers. I'm not saying that I understand all of the questions. But I know hand-waving when I see it, and this is all starting to look like nothing but hand-waving to me (and to other people). I agree that the Universe is fundamentally electric, and I agree that the existing models (gravity and MHD) are gibberish. It has become accepted that astronomers are bad at predicting things. In other words, astronomers are bad at producing new value. They're only good at inventing, after the fact, abstract ways of describing that which they do not understand. But there's no value in that. So I agree that the general direction of the EU community is correct, and that's why I'm on this board. But I disagree that galactic currents offer an accurate description of the Sun. The form of the energy release doesn't make sense if it's an exchange between the Sun and its external environment. That's why I'm looking at forces within the Sun. I agree that a fusion furnace in the Sun's core wouldn't produce the observed effects, and that the evidence of EM forces is substantial. Somewhere in here, there is a way past these roadblocks...

[Sparky]

charles, i'm just going to modify a bit what i said before...

As i understand it, plasma in space is just there, floating around. When a voltage is applied and a charge separation is felt by the plasma, it will form current [electrons]carrying filaments, and magnetic fields will instantly form around those filaments.[ these electron conducting plasma filaments will take the form of twisted pairs, named Birkeland currents.] When there is no longer a charge separation, the current ceases, the magnetic fields collapse, and plasma takes a break, floating around, waiting for the next voltage to get it up and moving. If while in conduction mode a circuit is completed with a voltage source in it, the plasma filaments will continue to conduct. You must have plasma filaments, conducting current[electrons] within a circuit, with magnetic fields around them,[Birkeland currents] in order to create a z pinch from the attractive electric force and magnetic fields that they generate.

If you do not have a difference of voltage charges between two regions that causes a discharge between them, a temporary electron current within a plasma Birkeland current will not develop. Electrons are electrical current. Plasma is the conductive medium, whether within the confinement of a copper wire or the confinement of the self insulating Birkeland filament pairs.

Plasma, in the highly electrified region of the sun [, which is a node of an electrical circuit ] will be formed. The twisted, electron carrying filaments [Birkeland currents] [ made up from plasma will be ] part of the circuits entering the sun, within the sun, or leaving it.

..The sun is plugged into an outlet outside of our solar system.

there are no birkeland currents without electrons moving through them, being supplied by a voltage source. If an arc mode birkeland current is conducting into an area that disperses the current into glow or even dark mode, the filament may appear to be disconnected, but if the arc can be seen there is current [electron] flow. And the arc will not loop back onto itself because it is basically of the same charge [voltage] throughout.

it seems you are trying to reconnect things that can not reconnect because disconnecting them would destroy the structure required for them to exist. You've been listening to the magnetic reconnection magicians..

you can not violate the laws governing electricity and invent scenarios which just can't happen...not in this dimension . We may have to move this thread to another, more tolerant one.

hang in there..

[Lloyd]

* Sparky, I haven't read your entire post yet, but I think I've read Dave Talbott or someone say that, wherever plasma has been observed in the universe, electric currents or magnetic fields have also been observed. So it seems that plasma generally may not hang around anywhere for long. Maybe there are conditions on Earth etc that differ from the general rule, if it's a rule.
* Charles, you seem to make some good points, so I'm trying to elicit some comprehensive answers from our experts. But I don't know if they'll have time soon to provide them.
* I'm not greatly familiar with electric or plasma phenomena, so I don't understand a number of things being discussed in this thread. Can you explain the difference between an "imploding discharge channel" and active current z-pinches?

You said: But I disagree that galactic currents offer an accurate description of the Sun. The form of the energy release doesn't make sense if it's an exchange between the Sun and its external environment. That's why I'm looking at forces within the Sun.

* I don't know if you've already explained that, but what "form of the energy release" from the Sun's environment to the Sun would you expect to observe?
* And what "form of energy release" from what to the Sun do you consider that you do observe?
* If you're looking for something below the Sun's photosphere, have you considered the jet streams within the Sun?

[CharlesChandler]

there are no birkeland currents without electrons moving through them, being supplied by a voltage source. If an arc mode birkeland current is conducting into an area that disperses the current into glow or even dark mode, the filament may appear to be disconnected, but if the arc can be seen there is current [electron] flow. And the arc will not loop back onto itself because it is basically of the same charge [voltage] throughout.

It was my mistake to be talking about Birkeland currents, and the more I come to understand them, the greater the difference between them and what I am imagining. So let's take a stroll through what I think I'm saying, and let's not think Birkeland currents, but rather let's call them New Type of Current X (or something).

For the sake of the visual image, we need a prime mover. This is where the construct is the weakest, but we need something as a starting point, so that we can at least inspect the mechanistic properties of the rest of it. So let's use a nuclear explosion deep in the convective zone as the prime mover. For our purposes, we neither know nor care what caused this explosion -- we'll just use this as the stand-in prime mover. Anyway, as a consequence of the explosion, a bunch of neutrally-charged matter is accelerated to an extreme speed. In the ejecta, there will be atomic nuclei (some of them newly-fused into heavier atoms, and some of them just other atoms that got ejected from the explosion without being part of it) and there will be electrons. But at the temperatures in question, the atoms won't be able to hold onto the electrons, so it will all be pure plasma.

Now let's consider what will happen as the plasma expands outward from the explosion. Initially it will be traveling at thousands of km/sec. If the explosion occurs deep in the convective zone, the plasma will encounter friction from the surrounding plasma that will slow it down, but at least at first it will be traveling at an extremely high velocity. So what's going to happen?

We know that electric currents generate magnetic fields that then exert back-pressure on the currents, consolidating them in the effect known as z-pinch. Normally we think of this as an effect on moving electrons. But protons have electric charges too, so they should be capable of generating magnetic fields too, and thereby getting their own pinch going.

So this isn't really a "current" at all -- it's a plasma jet. And so far, the charges haven't been separated, so we really can't call it an electric current. It's just a bunch of matter moving at an extreme speed, that overall is neutrally charged, though it's all pure plasma.

But the magnetic fields generated by positive and negative charges spin in opposite directions, and therefore repel each other. So we won't expect just the electrons to get pinched, and for the atomic nuclei to get pinched as well -- all in the same jet. Rather, we would expect positive and negative charges to get split into parallel streams. So we'll end up with all of the electrons in one pinched stream, and all of the atomic nuclei in another pinched stream, and with some distance between them. Here's the image:

Figure 4. Opposite charges traveling in the same direction are attracted by the electric force, but repelled by the magnetic force.

If this is not correct, I need to know, because then probably the whole construct needs to be tossed. I'm not actually sure that I have ever read about this anywhere -- maybe this is just my imagination, based on what (little) I know about the theory of it all. But it stands to reason that if the speeds in question are capable of z-pinching charge streams, then opposite-polarity magnetic fields should be capable of separating charges. If opposite magnetic fields didn't repel, electric motors wouldn't work, so I think I'm correct here.

Anyway, now we have a charge-separated plasma jet. We started out with 360 degree radial expansion from a nuclear explosion. But because of the z-pinches, we end up with focused jets, and they're charge-separated streams.

So these aren't Birkeland currents at all -- they're charge-separated plasma jets. The only sense in which they are "currents" at all is that they are "moving electric charges" generating magnetic fields as they go. But they are not responding to an external voltage. (So are they still "currents"?) Anyway...

The interesting thing is that we now have parallel, oppositely-charged streams, so there is a voltage between them. Now, if all of the above is correct, and if all other factors were the same, we'd expect these parallel streams to speed out into space, attracted by the E field between them, but buffered from each other by the opposing magnetic fields.

But all other factors are not the same. What if these streams are pushing their way up through the convective zone, and being slowed down by friction? Then they will decelerate. And we know that the strength of a magnetic field is a function of the amount of charge, and the speed at which the charge is moving. So as friction slows down the charge streams, the force that is keeping them separate (i.e., the magnetic force) is getting weaker, while the force that is pulling them together (i.e., the electric force) is still there. Eventually, the magnetic force won't be able to keep the opposite charges apart, and the voltage between them will affect charge recombination.

You've been listening to the magnetic reconnection magicians..

OK, here's where the terminology that I'm using, and that the MHD theorists are using, becomes dangerously similar, drawing the accusation... I'm actually not sure that we're not talking about the same thing, but when they talk about magnetic reconnection, especially as an explosive force, they're talking pure gibberish. But both of us might be looking at the same thing...

Now, we have two parallel charge streams, that are generating opposite-polarity magnetic fields that have been keeping the charges separate, but which are now weakening. So the opposite charges begin to curve inward toward each other. Interestingly, if all of the above is correct, the magnetic fields will actually help the charges curve inward. If the charges can curve inward such that they meet head-on, the opposite-polarity magnetic fields will no longer repel. Opposite charges traveling in opposite directions generate the SAME magnetic field.

Figure 5. Fast-moving electric charges can recombine if they form a loop.

So these opposite-polarity magnetic fields get book-matched back together as the charge streams curve inward and meet head-on. So perhaps this is what MHD calls magnetic reconnection, but that's fiction. I'm saying that it's electric reconnection, and that the magnetic fields simply figure out a way to stop fighting each other, and with explosive results -- due to the electric force.

you can not violate the laws governing electricity and invent scenarios which just can't happen...not in this dimension. We may have to move this thread to another, more tolerant one.

Please let me know if I have goofed somewhere in here. The whole construct is purely hypothetical, but I don't think that I'm violating any laws. (But officer, I didn't see the freaking sign -- now what do you want from me...football tickets?)

So the whole point of this exercise is that now I have a construct (legally or otherwise ) that establishes a vigorous charge separation and recombination mechanism, and that will create loops in the photosphere and chromosphere that look exactly like what actually happens. I'm still working on a variant of this construct that explains photospheric "tufting".

Charles, you seem to make some good points, so I'm trying to elicit some comprehensive answers from our experts. But I don't know if they'll have time soon to provide them.

No worries -- if they took the time to smack down epiphanists like me, they'd never get anything done. But I'd love to hear what they might have to say. Perhaps if this line of reasoning matures a bit, it would be worthy of a critical response. Right now, it's just some new ideas.

I'm not greatly familiar with electric or plasma phenomena, so I don't understand a number of things being discussed in this thread. Can you explain the difference between an "imploding discharge channel" and active current z-pinches?

Let's consider what happens in a lightning bolt here on Earth. There is an electrostatic potential between the cloud and the ground. Electrons start moving in response to that potential. Due to the magnetic pinch effect, the flow of electrons gets consolidated into discrete channels. The consolidated electron avalanche heats the air. Interestingly, hotter air is a better conductor, so it allows the passage of more current. Soon, the air is excited to a glow discharge, and ultimately, to a full-scale arc discharge, where the increased charge density and greatly increased particle speeds generate a z-pinch that tightens the current into a channel less the 5 cm wide, with a temperature of roughly 2500 degrees Celsius. But this is nothing compared to the heat that will be created next. As soon as the electrostatic potential is released, the current stops. Now there's this 5 cm wide column of superheated air that no longer has a reason to be superheated. In the presence of the surrounding atmospheric pressure, the near-perfect vacuum inside the obsolete discharge channel collapses. The air actually fills the vacuum moving at the speed of sound, so it's actually an imploding shock wave. When that shock wave meets at the centerline of the channel, the temperature shoots up to roughly 25,000 degrees Celsius. This is what actually creates thunder, and is the source of the X-ray emissions from lightning.

So, if a 5 cm wide imploding shock wave can generate 25,000 degrees Celsius, then a 500 cm wide channel (too big for a lightning strike on Earth, but still theoretically possible) will generate temperatures in the range of 2,500,000 degrees Celsius. And that's hot enough for nuclear fusion. Now what would a discharge channel on the surface of the Sun, 500 km wide, do? Better put in your ear plugs!

But I disagree that galactic currents offer an accurate description of the Sun. The form of the energy release doesn't make sense if it's an exchange between the Sun and its external environment. That's why I'm looking at forces within the Sun.

I don't know if you've already explained that, but what "form of the energy release" from the Sun's environment to the Sun would you expect to observe?

I'd expect tightly-pinched currents, like lightning bolts, perhaps radiating outward into glow discharges as the voltage drops off away from the Sun. In other words, I'd expect sorta like a frayed cotton-ball effect. The corona IS filamented, but the filaments are going in the wrong direction, as if the matter is being ejected from the Sun, and is getting pinched into filaments as it heads off. Yet the EU model has the Sun positively-charged, so we would expect electrons to be streaming in, and to pinch down into arc discharges on connection with the Sun. The might be an extremely naive set of assumptions, but I haven't heard the specific reasons why a current capable of lighting up the Sun wouldn't behave like that. And don't just tell me that plasma is good like that.

[Sparky]

lloyd,"-I think I've read Dave Talbott or someone say that, wherever plasma has been observed in the universe, electric currents or magnetic fields have also been observed. So it seems that plasma generally may not hang around anywhere for long."

If there are magnetic fields or other voltage source that begins to influencing the regions containing "idle plasma", indeed, it would conduct and would at that time show up on our detectors...but, i think there are magnetic "holes" in space that indicate no electrical activity...there,i would expect
to find ions and dust....i was trying to simplify the overly complex hypothesis which seems to violate electrical laws.

charles."-so it will all be pure plasma."

yes, agreed....and most of it will be in arc mode, conducting, using either Birkeland or here to fore undiscovered "X currents."..

"-It's just a bunch of matter moving at an extreme speed, that overall is neutrally charged, though it's all pure plasma."

Fusion Bomb? With no created voltage/magnetic/current pulse?...okay, let's call that "strange Fusion". But in a normal H He fusion there are voltage/magnetic/current pulse and all that plasma would conduct like crazy. if it is plasma in the sun, it is probably conducting, etc.

"-Opposite charges traveling in the same direction-"
there we go with opposite, traveling charges...i would have to translate that into "normal electric current, electrons", and "variation #2 anti-electrical current, protons , somehow conducting, as an anti=electric current in ionic soup.

okay, i'm with you, but getting more confused with these inventions.

"-if the speeds in question are capable of z-pinching charge streams-"

i suspect that z-pinch is more of a function of current density = magnetic field strength than any "speed" of the current carrying medium.

"Let's consider what happens in a lightning bolt here on Earth. There is an electrostatic potential between the cloud and the ground. Electrons start moving in response to that potential. Due to the magnetic pinch effect, the flow of electrons gets consolidated into discrete channels. The consolidated electron avalanche heats the air. Interestingly, hotter air is a better conductor, so it allows the passage of more current. Soon, the air is excited to a glow discharge, and ultimately, to a full-scale arc discharge, where the increased charge density and greatly increased particle speeds generate a z-pinch that tightens the current into a channel less the 5 cm wide, with a temperature of roughly 2500 degrees Celsius. But this is nothing compared to the heat that will be created next. As soon as the electrostatic potential is released, the current stops. Now there's this 5 cm wide column of superheated air that no longer has a reason to be superheated. In the presence of the surrounding atmospheric pressure, the near-perfect vacuum inside the obsolete discharge channel collapses. The air actually fills the vacuum moving at the speed of sound, so it's actually an imploding shock wave. When that shock wave meets at the centerline of the channel, the temperature shoots up to roughly 25,000 degrees Celsius. This is what actually creates thunder, and is the source of the X-ray emissions from lightning.

So, if a 5 cm wide imploding shock wave can generate 25,000 degrees Celsius, then a 500 cm wide channel (too big for a lightning strike on Earth, but still theoretically possible) will generate temperatures in the range of 2,500,000 degrees Celsius. And that's hot enough for nuclear fusion. Now what would a discharge channel on the surface of the Sun, 500 km wide, do? Better put in your ear plugs!"

I included this because i mostly agree with it. Though i don't know how they calculated the heat of the collapsing lightning strike, i will acquiesce to you on all math constructs..

"I haven't heard the specific reasons why a current capable of lighting up the Sun wouldn't behave like that."

maybe you need to step back and observe what appears to be happening in space. we detect currents flowing at various densities, up to arc mode. we see what appears to be plasma instabilities, that conventional gravity theorists explain away as massive objects. these "suns", "dark holes", and "neutron stars" appear to be created in huge z-pinches, or suns fissioning from other '"massive" objects which generate large energetic emissions. it is, in fact, the energetic emissions beyond our visual spectrum which can be detected and analyzed and compared to lab experiments.

btw, the "fusion sun' hypothesis, with anomalies covered up with speculations and assumptions, remains an accepted theory, though falsified by measured and observed anomalies....the hypothesis of fusion was a new and exciting idea during the atomic age, as was the burning of hydrogen hypothesis before it.

hang in there, charles, you're doin good....

[mharratsc]

Heya Charles- have you checked out Prof. Scott's site http://www.electric-cosmos.org?

Mebbe something there might clear some things up?