Cargo wrote:I challenge SAFIRE to predict what touching the sun feels like before NASA.
I believe that SAFIRE will have to try reversing the polarity to do that properly.
My money is on Birkeland's cathode solar model for several logical reasons which were made all too clear from watching the NASA announcement which I was finally able to this evening.
If you watched the presentation, it was a very nice tribute to the work of Dr. Eugene Parker. Before I start to rip on the mainstream, I'd like to tip my hat to Dr. Parker as well since Dr. Parker did teach me quite a few things about plasma by reading his work, even if I disagree with him about the cause of solar wind.
It's pretty clear that the mainstream and NASA are "doubling down" on "magnetic reconnection' theory by naming this satellite after a *living* scientist. Evidently that's a first for NASA.
What struck me the most is that everyone kept (erroneously) claiming that Dr. Parker was the first person to predict solar wind in 1958. That's simply incorrect and it is historically inaccurate. Kristian Birkeland predicted (and simulated) the existence of high speed solar wind particles about five decades earlier. Like Parker, Birkeland originally called them corpuscles (where did Parker get that term from anyway?) which consisted of both types of charged particles which flowed from the sun and into the Earth. Birkeland even wrote a paper defending his position on the composition of solar wind, and the fact that solar wind contained *both* types of high speed particles flowing from the sun. Parker's famous paper came about 50 years later, and yes, it also predicted high speed solar wind, but Parker certainly wasn't the first individual to mathematically (and physically in Birkeland's case) predict the existence of high speed charged particle flow from the sun. NASA's claim that Dr. Parker was the first individual to predict solar wind is just not an accurate portrayal of the historical facts. Granted Parker was closer to the right speed than Birkeland, because Birkeland actually overestimated the speed by underestimating the density.
I think the reason that Parker's original paper eventually caught on with the mainstream is because his paper came out only a couple of years before satellites in space actually verified the existence of high speed solar wind. His paper was just 'newer' and more current than Birkeland's work, and of course it's based upon putting the magnetic cart in front of the electric horse.
Another interesting revelation in that presentation is that in 1958 Parker also met with a lot of resistance from the mainstream, because everyone in 1958 still seemed to believe that interplanetary space was basically a big vacuum with only minor slow speed particle flow from the sun. All the speakers pretty much confirmed that this was the prevailing theory prior to 1958, 50 years *after* Birkeland first *predicted* and simulated the existence of high speed solar wind particles from the sun. Parker's claim of high speed solar wind was still so controversial in 1958, apparently the APJ rejected Dr. Parker's paper too.
As much as I admire Dr. Parker, he was 5 decades too late to have actually been the 'first' person to predict solar wind. Parker even originally used the very same term as Birkeland, scalling it corpuscular radiation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m58-CfVrsN4
In 2017, the mainstream still remains perplexed by solar wind, even though Birkeland not only "predicted" it's existence a hundred years ago, he actually simulated the process in his lab.
The mainstream could *never* create a full sphere working model of solar wind based on magnetic reconnection theory to this very day. Birkeland did it over 100 years ago using electric fields however.
It's really just amazing to me just how ignorant of Birkeland's work that the mainstream remains to this day. The fact they can even "believe" and publicly state that Parker was the first scientist to predict solar wind just shows you how out of touch with historical reality that they've become. It also shows you how entrenched they remain in terms of insisting on putting the magnetic cart in front of the electric horse. They literally doubled down on magnetic reconnect theory with that presentation, decades after Alfven's double layer paper that made the whole concept obsolete and irrelevant.
The mainstream really does have a very skewed and twisted understanding of history, and that presentation just underscores that point.
I look forward to the data from the new satellite, but I'm already cringing with respect to the mainstream's portrayal of solar physics research, and their complete lack of historical accuracy.
The mainstream overlooked Birkeland's work on aurora for 60 years before they grudgingly accepted his work on aurora, and it may be another 60 years before they *finally* figure out he was right about the electrical aspects of solar physics.
I sure hope that this mission gives NASA some incentive to embrace something other than "pseudoscience'. I'll have to spend some time trying to understand how they intend to measure the electric fields. That's probably the only piece of equipment that could force them to change their models.
This really does have the Chapman/Birkeland debate feel about it too. Like Chapman's math only approach to physics, Parker was able to use "math" to predict a full spherical emission of solar wind, whereas Birkeland not only predicted it with math, he actually *simulated* it in his lab. IMO 1 test is worth a 1000 expert opinions, and I know for a fact that Birkeland's model works in the lab. The mainstream remains entirely phobic when it comes to laboratory experimentation. That's been their primary undoing historically speaking. Will the mainstream *ever* put real effort in creating real solar physics experiments in the lab?
SAFIRE should *not* be the only large scale solar physics laboratory experiment. It's downright embarrassing that Birkeland did more lab work with different configurations and combinations than anyone alive on Earth today. That's just sad IMO.
