It's not a dogma... and the terminology of magnetic reconnection is only used (to my knowledge) by theoretical astrophysicists who are neither proper phyicists/scientists and know little about electromagnetism.seasmith wrote:That's the current EU community dogma, but little has been done to Improve the Terminology. Too much fun to rail against the "establishment".There's no such thing as "magnetic re-connection".
I believe that these theory guys are a minority in the space sciences who believe in and use these terms.
There seems to be a disconnect between the theoreticians and the engineers and experimental scientists.
I don't believe the theoreticians speak for all members of the establishments, but speak on "behalf of" the establishment when it comes to popular science as black holes and dark energy make for nice headlines and keep the public bewildered and amused.
The magnetic field lines don't interact.seasmith wrote:Yes, now how would thee describe the interaction of two (or more) magnetic domains/magnetic flux-fields,One Birkeland current crosses paths with another Birkeland current and the circuitry gets re-arranged (new path
from two (or more) spherical permanent magnets (of different strengths),
converging in space ?
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... lefie.html
In Electrical Engineering school we learned that fields from multiple charges add to each-other (vector addition).
What you see in space are charges flowing along magnetic field lines, but they don't always have to do so.
With the Earth, the reason they are flowing along field lines is there is an attraction to/from the Earth, either to close a circuit or to find some sort of charge equilibrium. However, a charge moving perpendicular to a magnetic field will have a force exerted on it which will deviate its trajectory. When moving parallel to the field line there is no force exerted on it (see Maxwell's equations, cross product in math, and right hand rule). That is why particles entering the Earth's domain face on get scattered, and some have enough momentum to penetrate a bit deeper and end up spinning around and colliding with other matter and ionizing it etc (Van Allen belts). However particles coming in at higher latitudes may find their way to the Earth by following the magnetic field lines (which only connect to the Earth through the higher latitudes).
So the following of the field lines as Birkeland currents is nature's way of taking the path of least resistance, in fact it's the only way that the charged particles can enter/exit the Earth's domain since any other way would cause the particles to scatter sideways. The real question is, why are charged particles attracted to or repelled from the Earth, what is the driving force? Is the Earth at a different voltage potential than the rest ofthe space surrounding it? Different than the contents of CMEs? Or perhaps the Earth is part of a circuit?
The electric field is the driver (gas pedal), the magnetic field only steers.
Now to the re-connection... I really don't see much point in studying these noisy micro-phenomena in great detail.
It's like pouring water out of a bottle on the street and trying to analyse why and how different water stream are exactly formed, the important thing is to know that water flows downhill.
Whenever I water my plants too much, they start to overflow onto the floor.
The first one creates a stream towards the lower part of the floor. The next plant also creates a stream flowing downhill. If the second water stream happens to cross paths with the first one, it will tend to join and reinforce the first stream rather than continuing on a path of its own.
Voila, they "connected". From my point of view, magnetic "re-connection" is somewhat similar.
At least I hope the analogy demonstrates the point.