The Sun: Nuclear Fusion & Electric Reconnection

[CharlesChandler]

A moderator should move this to a new thread, but I'll go ahead and respond anyway.

__The Turbulence or Shear Vortex is easy to produce by creating angled air currents and an updraft

I think that what he's talking about there is what's sometimes called a "corner vortex", which occurs when air is rushing in from the sides to fill a vacuum, and its own sideways inertia opposes the low pressure, resulting in an extreme low pressure inside the vortex. At the scale of a tornado, this would take supersonic airspeeds, which are not physically possible when motivated by low pressure alone. So this is a bad example of another kind of vortex that can occur, other than what Thomson is proposing.

__The Charged Sheath Vortex develops within a large charge cloud
__Repulsion between the charges is cancelled out
__Two stationary particles carrying the same electrical charge will repel each other
__Within an electric field they will form dipoles that attract
__Two streams of dipoles develop a force of attraction
__This vortex is a fast spinning tube of electrically charged air and dust
__The high velocity of the particles creates very large electrodynamic forces (similar to solenoid electromagnet)
__If several charged particles move in parallel, the magnetic forces between them draw them together

All true.

__We know from Z pinch experiments that the electromagnetic forces that draw the particles togther is greater than the electrostatic charge that pushes them apart.

At relativistic speeds, this is true. At sub-sonic speeds this is not true.

__A magnetic field is produced by a moving charged particle
__A moving charge in a magnetic field is subjected to a force perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the velocity
__The particle is thus forced into a circular path
?__The magnetic fields of the moving charged particles cancel the surrounding magnetic field

Here it seems that he is talking about the interaction between the magnetic fields generated by the moving charges, and the Earth's magnetic field. This would, indeed, deflect the particles, in what's known as an ExB drift. The strength of the effect was subsequently calculated, and was determined to be roughly enough to match the friction encountered by a rotating column of air. A vortex 1,000 ft tall, 100 ft wide, and rotating at 100 mph, loses about 1,000 watts of power due to friction in the air. That 1,000 watts "might" come from Lorentz force acceleration, as charged particles drawn into the tornado are moving in the presence of the Earth's magnetic field, and thus experience an ExB drift. But the same tornado expends 1,000,000 watts of power fighting skin friction on the ground. So while the Lorentz force seems adequate to overcome friction in the air, it is not adequate to have accelerated the air to tornadic speeds in the first place, and it is nothing compared to the friction at the ground level. Hence this explanation falls way, way short of explaining tornadoes. See this for more info:

Dehel, T. F, Dickinson, M., Lorge, F., and Startzel, F. Jr., 2007: Electric field and Lorentz force contribution to atmospheric vortex phenomena. Journal of Electrostatics, Vol. 65, Issues 10-11, 631-638.

__Within a large charge cloud, a stream of [single charge?] particles forms a loop if there is no externally applied magnetic field
__Within a large charge cloud, the flow is held as a coherent stream by the attraction between forces moving in parallel
__If a charged particle strays toward the inner field, or toward the reversed outer field, the magnetic force pushes the charged particle back into the sheath

In a solenoid, there IS a powerful magnetic field on the inside. But to think that there is a mirror-image magnetic field wrapping around the outside is ignorant of the laws of electrodynamics. See this image:

Magnetic field lines in a solenoid

?__Any instability in velocity will cause greater magnetic fields in the faster region than in the slower regions
__The faster region with the greater magnetic field will be pinched more, speeding up the flow, which increases the pinch and so on, becoming longer and thinner
__But the extension can only force the stream into a loop, not a straight line
__Since the outer force pushing inwards always remains the stronger, the vortex will compress and narrow
__The opposing sheath wall spinning in the opposite direction prevents further compression

What caused the charge separation?

__Within the center of the charged sheath vortex the fields reinforce each other to produce a powerful solenoidal field
__These forces very powerfully keep the particles from flying outward
__They also prevent the tube from collapsing inward
__If new rotating charged material is constantly being added then this will also lengthen the tube
?__Because all the particles are held very firmly in place the sheath can transmit large amounts of energy from one end to the other [I guess it's similar to transmitting a pressure wave through a solid or liquid.]
__The charge sheath vortex is the mechanism capable of transmitting the energy of a tornado from the clouds to the ground

No, it isn't. The electrodynamic forces will be infinitesimal at sub-sonic speeds, which pretty much puts this hypothesis out of range. My compliments to Thomson for having done a substantial amount of work, and for succeeding in proposing something that could have been physically possible, which put him head-and-shoulders above the meteorologists. So at least he was thinking mechanistically, and in studying his hypothesis, I learned to think mechanistically as well. He just didn't do the range checking to realize that while it's possible, the forces at play leave the essential question unanswered: what is the source of the millions of watts of power expended at the ground level in a small tornado, and the billions of watts in a large one?

How does a charge sheath vortex differ from electric discharge?

An electrostatic discharge is the flow (typically of electrons) from cathode to anode. Thomson's charged sheath vortex is a fluid dynamic vortex reinforced by solenoidal magnetic fields -- not a discharge at all.

Are Birkeland currents charge sheath vortices?

There is a slight similarity between part of what Thomson was saying and part of what Birkeland was saying. The original definition of a Birkeland current was that a charge stream gets deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, because the charge stream is generating its own magnetic field, and the interaction between the fields results in the particles getting deflected toward the north or south pole. Thomson is saying that charged particles flowing toward a tornado are generating magnetic fields, that in the presence of the Earth's magnetic field, will produce a similar deflection. But that only sets up the rotation, and has nothing to do with the "sheath" (if it actually existed). And the term "Birkeland current" is now being used in a much more general sense -- affecting currents well away from the Earth's magnetic field.

[CharlesChandler]

...see the small white circle around a red area near the bottom, just inside the white fuzzy stuff?..green lines swirl in from the left and a few exit to the right...there is a small white spot in that...

Which small white circle, specifically? There is more than one, and I really need to know which one you're talking about, before I can respond.

OK, seriously though, this is a great start, so let's work from here. Now, these are magnetic field lines, right? If so, what is creating these magnetic fields? And here I am actually asking for specificity, because this is where the confusion originates.

[Lloyd]

Charles, I don't know why you wanted the tornado discussion moved to a new thread. I think it's pertinent to the photospheric granules.

[mharratsc]

Charles asked:

...what is the source of the millions of watts of power expended at the ground level in a small tornado, and the billions of watts in a large one?

Well, if a million amps worth of power is conveyed to the Earth in the form of positive hydrogen ions, then basic electrical physics says that there needs to be a negative flow back. If you didn't have this, then you'd have a charge build up that wouldn't actually flow anywhere at all.

So- the Earth therefore has to cough up electrons in equal measure. Electron scavaging. How about the winds that are rushing towards the base of the tornado are negatively charged (much higher values than the fair weather field, right?), and as far as friction goes- a highly ionized surface is going to cut down friction exactly the way that they're doing it on the current stealth aircraft we have in the NATO arsenal- ionize the skin of the plane and whammo- you got waaay less drag coefficient than you would on a standard painted surface!

So thus- you have higher currents to begin with, and you are much more lossless than you might have originally thought...?

Sorry it's not a very quantitative analysis, but it IS consistent with basic (electrical) physics, at least! :\

[CharlesChandler]

I don't know why you wanted the tornado discussion moved to a new thread. I think it's pertinent to the photospheric granules.

I guess I just didn't see how it was going to relate back to solar theory.

If a million amps worth of power is conveyed to the Earth in the form of positive hydrogen ions...

Yes, but we only have a couple hundred amps. When drawn through 1 km of resistance, that works out to hundreds of millions of watts of power (watts = amps x volts), and that's plenty of energy to power the tornado (millions of watts getting expended on the ground fighting friction). But how does an electrostatic discharge move the air? You have to take a close look at the problem to see where the existing constructs break down. Fluid dynamics can't explain tornadoes, but neither can simple electrostatics.

How about the winds that are rushing towards the base of the tornado are negatively charged.

Actually, if the tornadic inflow is charged, the charge has to be positive in order to explain the exact nature of tornadoes. Then there is a flow of electrons down from the cloud, through the reduced resistance in the low-pressure core of the vortex. So there's definitely an electrostatic discharge, and that's an essential ingredient. But it's not between the ionosphere and the ground, and it's not even between the cloud and the ground. It's between the cloud and the air flowing into the tornado. Only if you look at it that way do all of the pieces fall into place.

A highly ionized surface is going to cut down friction.

Exactly. Charged gases, and especially plasma, have a lower viscosity, because the electrostatic repulsion prevents the particle collisions that constitute friction. So positively-charged air flowing into the tornado is attracted to the Earth because of an induced opposite charge, but despite the friction, it flows rapidly. And the friction heats the air, which further reduces the viscosity. The result is that the path of least resistance for the flow of air is along the surface where the friction is the greatest. Doesn't make sense until you take the EM factors into account.

As always, I appreciate the idea ping-ponging.

[mharratsc]

Charles said:

So there's definitely an electrostatic discharge, and that's an essential ingredient. But it's not between the ionosphere and the ground, and it's not even between the cloud and the ground. It's between the cloud and the air flowing into the tornado. Only if you look at it that way do all of the pieces fall into place.

Not sure exactly what you mean by 'all the pieces fall into place'.

However, I have one thing to ask: Where does the "air flowing into the tornado" get it's charge, vs the the rest of the atmosphere in the vicinity? What if the wind is induced by the flow of charge, and not vice versa? o.O

[CharlesChandler]

Not sure exactly what you mean by 'all the pieces fall into place'.

There are many, many distinctive characteristics of tornadoes that can/should be explained, and any theoretical candidate has a lot of tests to pass. If we only look at one aspect of the storm, there are many possible explanations. If we look at a large number of properties, there are few possibilities. If we make a comprehensive review of the distinctive characteristics of tornadic storms, there is only one possibility -- that the air flowing into the tornado is positively-charged, and that there is a negative charge flowing down through the tornado. Then you can explain all of it. So this is why I'm insisting that it's positively-charged inflow -- not because it's the only possibility at first blush, but because it's the only construct that can get all of the way through all of the problems.

Where does the "air flowing into the tornado" get it's charge, vs the the rest of the atmosphere in the vicinity? What if the wind is induced by the flow of charge, and not vice versa?

You'd have to make a more specific statement for me to respond directly, but I can provide a straw man if that would help. One paper (Dehel et. al., 2007) suggested that the tornadic inflow is electrically-charged, and that there is an opposite charge in the cloud, and that it is the electric field that accelerates the air upward inside the tornado. But this asks more questions than it answers.

First, to actually move air, we're talking about moving molecules. And molecules don't tend to move much in response to an electric field. Rather, it's the electrons that do the moving, and the molecules pretty much just sit there. You'd have to strip off the electrons, leaving the molecules positively-charged, and then you'd have to lock the electrons inside a capacitor of some sort, such that there was still an electric field, but the electrons wouldn't be able to move, so the positively-charged molecules would do the moving instead. Then you'd get "wind". But how are you going to develop the capacitance? I actually spent some time trying to establish the plausibility of just such a capacitor inside the cloud, but in the end, it just didn't work. The bottom line is that electric fields in the atmosphere are neutralized by the flow of electrons. There is capacitance in the sense that air is an insulator, and there are magnetic fields generated by moving electric charges (positive and negative) in the cloud, and these can be said to add a tiny bit of capacitance (via the ExB drift of moving charges in a magnetic field). But even if those were really big factors, it would still be the electrons that would do all of the moving. So we still have no wind.

Second, if the air is electrically-charged, why does it wait until it gets inside the tornado to start moving vertically toward the opposite charge aloft? It should have started curving upward as soon as it got exposed to the electric field. Yet the tornadic inflow sticks to the ground until it gets inside the tornado, and then it shoots straight up. Why would it stick to the ground like that, and then all of a sudden respond to the electric field aloft?

So there really isn't a simple E-field explanation. At least not like that there isn't. And that goes for any field (cloud-to-ground, ionosphere-to-ground, etc.).

Of course, neither is there a simple fluid dynamic explanation. The fastest wind speeds are the furthest from the source of the low pressure in the cloud, and the closest to the friction at the ground? By the principles of fluid dynamics, that doesn't make sense.

In my opinion, it goes like this. An upper-level jet stream collides with the back-sheared anvil, which is positively-charged. The water content in the anvil evaporates in the jet stream, cooling it, and creating a downdraft. And because the water content in the anvil is positively-charged, the downdraft in which it evaporated will now be positively-charged. When this downdraft gets near the ground, it will induce an opposite (negative) charge in the ground, and then it will be attracted to the ground. Now there, in the Earth, you have something that can have a lot of electrons, and yet will hold onto them. The electron cloud of the Earth is, of course, huge, and due to the conductivity of the Earth, induced charges appear immediately if the air above is charged. Yet because the air is an insulator, the electrons will not freely flow into the air. Hence the positively-charged air will be drawn to the Earth.

That would be the end of it -- just a bunch of positively-charged air clinging to an induced negative charge in the Earth -- except for the fact that 1 km away there is an updraft, and there is rotating inflow. The rotation creates a low pressure, and the reduced density inside the vortex (still inside the cloud at this point) makes a better conductor. So the large amount of negative charge inside the cloud, wanting to flow toward the positively-charged air nearer the ground, will tend to follow the centerline of the vortex, because of the reduced electrical resistance.

Interestingly, the flow of current down from the cloud toward the ground heats the air, which increases its buoyancy, which accentuates the updraft. The hotter air also allows for the flow of more current. Eventually, the current starts reaching into the most positively-charged air near the surface. Now you have an updraft, that started as a purely thermodynamic updraft inside the cloud, but which has been accentuated by the resistive heating due to a flow of electric current, and then the current flows into positively-charged air, where the charge neutralization creates more heat. Now the warm, positively-charged air clinging to the ground is heated up even more, and the charge that was holding it down has been neutralized. This means that it is free to ascend. And now we can understand why the inflow sticks to the ground until it gets inside the vortex, where it shoots straight up. No other model can directly address that aspect of tornadoes. And yet that's the aspect that distinguishes it from other types of vortexes. So this is the first theory that actually answers the primary question.

[mharratsc]

I gotcha.

But let me ask you something- do you feel that the atmosphere is a bunch of different layers of charge? How do you think lightning starts? And what about high altitude lightning phenomena?

The reason why I ask is this: even if you are correct and the tornado is initiated by thermodynamic forces (and I still think there is an underlying EM constituent to known thermodynamic 'laws' that need to be meshed into existing thermodynamic explanations, but whatever), once the charge separation in the funnel takes place between the upper charge layer of the atmosphere and the Earth, and you get a plasma conduit formed, this is what happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4QRwHC ... re=related

Tornados do cross that double-layer boundary, just as lightning does. I believe that you have modeled the physics of a tornado to a fine degree (and it's great work!) but I really do think that the Earth has multiple charge layers, and therefore anything that travels between layers is a 'spark gap', you know? Somehow that needs to be accounted for (despite the size of the it all). :\

[Sparky]

Charles,"Only if you look at it that way do all of the pieces fall into place.

still running this shell game, eh...well, i haven't guessed the right one yet, but by my illogic, my luck is bound to change!..your theories are way over my head....

what if a tornado has a discharge aspect to it...like tornadoes on mars...?...current flow from earth upwards through the tornado?
dark mode plasma flow with periodic arc mode discharges?

could that be figured in?...

[CharlesChandler]

Do you feel that the atmosphere is a bunch of different layers of charge?

I haven't read anything to that effect. Water is a better conductor than molecular nitrogen and oxygen, so perhaps the enhanced conductivity of the troposphere, due to its water molecules, represents a "layer"? And then there are other layers formed by other factors, such as the ozone layer at the top of the stratosphere, which might have different electrical properties. But I really don't know the answer to that one.

How do you think lightning starts?

It is entirely a matter of storm-scale factors, wherein collisions between ice crystals in the top half of the storm result in a negative charge getting transferred to whichever particle is bigger. Then gravity pulls down the bigger particles faster than the smaller ones, creating a charge separation. The actual charging mechanism is not fully understood, but that it occurs in ice crystals is well understood.

And what about high altitude lightning phenomena?

I don't know much about them, except that they're glow discharges, and that they are thought to occur in the space charge that builds up above the positively-charged anvil of a thunderstorm. When a lightning strike from the anvil down to the ground drains a bunch of charge out of the cloud, the space charge that was attracted to the anvil is released from its electrostatic attraction, and it snaps back up through the stratosphere, vigorously enough to excite the atoms to luminescence. Sometimes there are even arc discharges, but these are more rare. I haven't heard anything that was supercell-specific. The EM structure of a supercell is different from "normal" thunderstorms, but the difference is all in the way things get organized below the anvil. I think that above the anvil, it all looks to the stratosphere like just a normal thunderstorm on steroids. That's all I know.

The Earth has multiple charge layers, and therefore anything that travels between layers is a 'spark gap', you know? Somehow that needs to be accounted for (despite the size of the it all).

Hmmm... I'll have to get back to you on that. Right now, I don't have an opinion one way or the other. I "think" that the storm-scale factors are all far stronger, and that there isn't much left to explain once all of that is taken into account. But more detailed investigations usually turn up discrepancies, and then we go looking for new ideas.

what if a tornado has a discharge aspect to it...like tornadoes on mars...?...current flow from earth upwards through the tornado? dark mode plasma flow with periodic arc mode discharges?

"Tornadoes on Mars" aren't tornadoes -- they're dust devils, which are fair-weather vortexes that are fundamentally different from tornadoes. Mainly, there is no updraft within a storm above to motivate the flow. I'm going to elaborate on a new thread, because that is yet another tangent, and because I have a lengthy response.

[CharlesChandler]

what if a tornado has a discharge aspect to it [...] current flow from earth upwards through the tornado? dark mode plasma flow with periodic arc mode discharges?

Yes, there is very definitely a discharge within the tornado, and without it, there wouldn't be a tornado. But it's not between the cloud (or the ionosphere) and the ground. Rather, it's negative charges from the cloud flowing down through the tornado, and neutralizing positive charges in the tornadic inflow.

[Sparky]

Charles, i've got Nova's ,"Hunt for the super twister" on my dvr and i watched it again last night...they were showing on their radar the "hook", signature of tornado formation, and on the edges of that were smaller hooks where small tornadoes were forming,,they then merged into one....radar image of the hook appeared to be fractal.

i've never noticed before, but is there lightning within the tornado, or just around it?

In one of the TPODS an assertion was made that atmospheric charge ranges from 50v per meter to several hundred...would you know by what instruments that would be measured?

[CharlesChandler]

Is there lightning within the tornado, or just around it?

The tornado occurs in what is known as a "lightning hole", where there is a noticeable reduction in the frequency of lightning strikes. Typically the hole is several kilometers wide. This reduction in lightning led researchers to believe that if there wasn't enough EM activity near the tornado to cause lightning, there would be no way that EM could be responsible for the amount of energy in a tornado. But that dismissal assumed that if tornadoes are EM, they are like lightning, which they obviously are not.

atmospheric charge ranges from 50v per meter to several hundred...

The "fair weather field" (a.k.a., the ionosphere-to-ground potential) is nominally 100 V/m. Under a normal thunderstorm, the potential increases to an average of 10,000 V/m. If it gets up to roughly 30,000 V/m, there's going to be a lightning strike. Under a supercell thunderstorm, the electric field typically inverts, and instead of showing a negative charge aloft, there is a positive charge aloft, but the inverted field typically measures something like 5,000 V/m. My construct asserts that there is a actually a lot of charge present, and that the positive charge is actually a double-layer that forms around the negative charge inside the cloud. So there actually isn't a reduction in the amount of charge, but an increase, but the perceived field at the ground is less, because most of the field is between the positive air below the cloud and the negatively-charged precipitation inside the cloud. At the ground level, we're on the outside edge of the double-layer, where the field is weak.

would you know by what instruments that would be measured?

Electric fields in the atmosphere are typically measured with what's called a "field mill". It's called a "mill" because it has two plates -- one that rotates and one that doesn't, kinda like a grain mill. Anyway, the fixed plate is a conductor, and when exposed to a negative charge aloft, the electrons are chased off of it, but if exposed to a positive charge aloft, electrons flow into it from ground. The rotating plate alternately shields the fixed plate, and then exposes it. This generates a current in the ground wire, as electrons are alternately drawn into the fixed plate and then pushed off of it. The current density in the ground wire then tells you how much electric field is present, and whether it's in phase or out-of-phase with the shielding tells you the polarity of the field.

[ItJustMakesSense]

If I had known about EU when I was 18 I would have went to college(Not having the money though im sure had something to do with it). I'm having a difficult time trying to understand all of this. I've never been more interested in anything before. I want to learn more and my lack of education makes me feel like the peasant I truly am.

[ItJustMakesSense]

I'm curious Charles. If you don't mind me asking what kind of education do you have? I'm asking out of respect.