mharratsc wrote:Let me throw out a pic and a description that really drove it home for me and made me believe in externally-supplied power via hydrogen 'power cables' from who-knows-how-far-away...
First of all, this shows how little I know about jets from active galactic nuclei, and it blows up half of my pulsar model. It wasn't exactly central to the model, but in quick searches I had found information only on monopolar jets, so I had stubbed in time-varying magnetic fields (from the pulsar cycle) that would send protons one way and electrons the other, resulting in a monopolar jet. (The protons, with more inertia, would keep going, while the electrons would circle around, not producing a "jet".) The only significance of this was just that it would provide a collimated proton beam that would focus photons due to the mirage effect, which I considered to be useful. As Lloyd pointed out, if a pulsar's luminosity is less than that of a class B star, there doesn't necessarily have to be a beaming mechanism. But then you have to explain how a class B star can turn on and off a thousand times a second.
So now I'm scrounging around for more information on jets, and as Lloyd hinted, the information is sparse. The "double radio active galactic nuclei" (DRAGNs) are only associated with elliptical galaxies (which are only 4% of the population), not spirals or peculiars, and they all occurred a long time ago. That's telling us something very specific, but what? Stellar jets exist, and are thought to come from black holes, where energy liberated outside of the event horizon can accelerate particles above the escape velocity. But the information on stellar jets is even sparser. I personally think that a "black hole" is a natural tokamak, and that the gamma rays and particle streams are from nuclear fusion, either inside the tokamak or from things colliding with it, or with each other on their way in. The "blackness" is an artifact of the relativistic speeds achieved on the way in, as described in a previous post. So I'm totally not buying the standard story.
But I'm not buying the EU story either. On my "to do" list is an analysis of bipolar nebulae (such as
M2-9). The most striking thing about these, and about the jets from NGC383, is the unbelievable symmetry. Far from my flawed conception of opposite charges getting accelerated in opposite directions, these ejecta are being accelerated to precisely the same speeds, at precisely the same temperatures, and are composed of precisely the same elements. I agree that a magnetic pinch is the only possible organizing principle that can keep these jets from dispersing right away. But a magnetic pinch does not necessitate a Point-A-to-Point-B current -- it could be just relativistic jets that were endowed with enough velocity to invoke electrodynamics. This would explain why the jets eventually disperse. If it was an intergalactic current, it would achieve its greatest speed in the intergalactic void, and therefore would be the best organized. Yet this is not what we're seeing. We see jets emerging from active galatic nuclei, and in some cases, from supernova remnants. We're not seeing jets flowing into anything, and we're not seeing them stay organized all of the way from one node to another in the proposed electric grid. If you were just saying that there is "an" energy source there, it wouldn't be as critical that you connect all of the dots. But you're saying that this is "the" energy source. Hence all of the evidence
should be in favor, and there should be a lot of it. In reality, there is little evidence, and it doesn't favor intergalactic currents at all.
Until/if/when somebody can actually present a plausible model for a current flowing through a pinch and producing jets that look like this, I'll be investigating the hypothesis that nuclear fusion of matter flowing in from an accretion disc is the energy source. I believe that the force pulling the matter inward is electric, not gravitational. But I'm going with the "like-likes-like" principle. And it's not that everything is attracted to the center -- it's that everything is attracted to everything, and this gets stuff flowing inward. Once it develops inertia, something is going to happen in the middle, but not because of any point source at the middle. In other words, if gravity was 39 orders of magnitude greater, it would do the same thing, but at the "center of gravity", there isn't any gravity inward -- it's all outward at that point. Nevertheless, stuff that developed inward inertia isn't going to slow down and stop before it reaches the center where there is no net force -- it's going to slam into anything else headed for the center also.
I can't say that I fully understand the EU model of accretion discs, but nothing I've heard so far (e.g., "Birkeland currents can do anything") is what I would call a specific enough model to elicit agreement or disagreement.
mharratsc wrote:...it just doesn't take a big leap of logic to see that those clouds make up the 'Birkeland current filaments'...
This isn't logic at all. There is a little bit of evidence there, but the rest is pure conjecture. With just that much evidence, the total number of epiphanies that could be supported is quite large. Some people believe that DRAGNs are the receiving ends of wormholes, while black holes that do not produce relativistic jets are the sending ends. Same evidence, different conclusion. And the wormhole hypothesis (if you accept the possibility of alternate dimensions, which I do not) can explain why the jets are symmetrical. Intergalactic currents could only create such symmetry if all of the nodes were perfectly spaced, and had exactly the same voltage between them. So forget it.
These are not "hydrogen 'power cables' from who-knows-how-far-away". Hydrogen just isn't good like that. The intergalactic void is a near-perfect conductor. It doesn't need any cables to connect galactic nuclei. If you're going to think like that, you should just think that there is a current there, flowing through free space, and where the stationary particle density increases near galaxies, you see evidence of high-energy collisions. That would certainly be the case, if there was, in fact, a current there. But that wouldn't organize the jets -- it would disperse them. In other words, the electric current would heat the plasma, and the heat would disperse the particles, while the electric current would burrow through the hole in the plasma that it created with ohmic heating, the way it does in lightning on Earth. You wouldn't see fluid dynamic behaviors as we see in the imagery of NGC383, where the particle stream wobbles and then splays out, typical of a high-pressure jet encountering friction. You'd see a piercing bright channel through the plasma, straight to the electrode.
It really comes down to how closely you're looking at the phenomena, and how critical your thinking is. If a superficial similarity is all that you need to jump to a conclusion that two phenomena are related, great. But if you lock down on that, and then refuse to even consider a more detailed analysis, you're not much closer to the truth. If any of my efforts are any indication, initial impressions aren't worth much. I spent 5 years figuring out how tornadoes work. I spent most of the time figuring out why this or that epiphany wasn't going to work. Now I can prove that the active ingredient in tornadoes is the electric force. But it isn't EDM, and therefore, I'll never convince anybody in the "Electric Universe" camp that I figured it out. You're so convinced that the Universe is electric, that you take the first electric answer provided, and then you'll argue if anybody proposes a different answer (even if it's electric also, and more accurate). That isn't showing that the EU is the destination. It's showing that the EU is a dead-end. It's just like the mainstream -- it's broken, and because of the tenacity of its adherents, it cannot be fixed. So you go with the mainstream if you want to be like most people, or you go with the EU if you just want to be different from most. But neither position is accurate.
Solar wrote:As mentioned earlier in this thread there may be some correlations with the so called “ribbon” which might correspond to proximal the ‘curling’, ‘kinking’, or ‘knoting’ as depicted in the Focus Fusion video with sound that you referenced earlier producing a spherical plasmoid. I think most members here like to correspond several aspects because independently no single one has singlehandedly covered all of the bases. As such, and with regard to “without electrostatic repulsion blowing it apart”, I’m also not adverse to consider the ponderings of sonoluminescence and/or plasma ‘cavitation’ [on the cosmic scale] in relation to ‘lightning beading’ along the discharge channel.
These are category errors.
You're comparing toroidal knots in electron streams to the aggregation of solid matter in a planet or star, while the toroidal knots have only been demonstrated in electron streams. If you can build planets and stars out of relativistic electrons, you've got something. Otherwise, that strategy might not carry you over the finish line.
Similarly, "bead lightning" is no metaphor for star formation in an electrified spiral arm. In lightning, the "beads" are artifacts of the stepped leaders that extend the lightning channel. Essentially, lightning is not an instantaneous flash -- it's a complex process that sometimes plays out over several seconds. Somewhere inside the cloud, an instantaneous flash occurs, because the breakdown voltage was exceeded. This creates a discharge channel that is roughly 100 m long. That would be the end of it, except for the fact that the plasma in the discharge channel is a much better conductor than the surrounding air. So now, it's like there is a 100 m wire. Surrounding charge disparities sense that there is a conductor there, and flow toward it. This creates a secondary flash. When those electrons reach the end of the existing discharge channel, they slam into the unsuspecting air at relativistic speeds, extending the channel by another 50~100 m, and creating a hot spot in the air. After the discharge ends, the hot spots will glow a few milliseconds longer than the rest of the channel, because they were a bit hotter. So there is no difference in kind between the hot spots and the straight sections of the dicharge channel connecting them, like beads on a string, where the beads and the string are made of different stuff. It's just an artifact of the way the lightning channel is extended in a stepwise manner.
So... the "beads" are not aggregations of matter -- they're
voids. This is where the current encountered an instantaneous increase in resistance, created hotter temperatures, and evacuated more of the matter. I agree that the electric force is great at condensing matter. But not in lightning (bead or otherwise). Lightning is famous for vaporizing matter, which is different from condensing matter.
