Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis

[justcurious]

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Very nice work!
Have you ever considered making illustrations describing the fantastic storyboard and events of Worlds in Collision?

[justcurious]

I understood generally the liney looking contour diagrams that attempt to visualize mag fields (which are more like bubbles or envelopes and not linear onion-like structures) even though they do not at all really tell the viewer what is going in with the meteor and it's explosive/ionized path to destruction.

I've seen bow shock illustrations for years. But with that: wouldn't that diagram be adaptable, generally, to the meteors path and interaction with the air? Wouldn't the phenomena be scalable? It's a place to start to then conceptualize a new diagram that I am tempted to create.

May I suggest, an illustration of a meteor flying through the atmosphere, being stripped of electrons, the plasma tail would be compressed/filamented by the helical magnetic field surrounding it, and then the magnetic field releasing its force/pressure on the air around the meteor and trail when the meteor discharges with a big flash, releasing all that highly compressed charged air, causing a shockwave.

[viscount aero]

PM sent. Here are my online portfolios:
(sorry thunderbolts community that I'm veering off-topic but only for a moment )

storyboards:
http://www.stage32.com/profile/75224/photos

Illustration:
(click the thumbnails to expand the views)
http://www.behance.net/chadglass

Very nice work!
Have you ever considered making illustrations describing the fantastic storyboard and events of Worlds in Collision?

Thank you I haven't considered that specifically but it's a good idea.

[viscount aero]

I understood generally the liney looking contour diagrams that attempt to visualize mag fields (which are more like bubbles or envelopes and not linear onion-like structures) even though they do not at all really tell the viewer what is going in with the meteor and it's explosive/ionized path to destruction.

I've seen bow shock illustrations for years. But with that: wouldn't that diagram be adaptable, generally, to the meteors path and interaction with the air? Wouldn't the phenomena be scalable? It's a place to start to then conceptualize a new diagram that I am tempted to create.

May I suggest, an illustration of a meteor flying through the atmosphere, being stripped of electrons, the plasma tail would be compressed/filamented by the helical magnetic field surrounding it, and then the magnetic field releasing its force/pressure on the air around the meteor and trail when the meteor discharges with a big flash, releasing all that highly compressed charged air, causing a shockwave.

Yes I am/have been considering illustrating the order of events with the Chelyabinsk event. I would have people like you and Charles consult me on the science aspect of it apart from my own ideas of what happened. It would make a cool series of artworks I think.

[CharlesChandler]

May I suggest, an illustration of a meteor flying through the atmosphere, being stripped of electrons, the plasma tail would be compressed/filamented by the helical magnetic field surrounding it, and then the magnetic field releasing its force/pressure on the air around the meteor and trail when the meteor discharges with a big flash, releasing all that highly compressed charged air, causing a shockwave.

I totally agree that to get this thing nailed down, and to finally chase all of the ghosts and goblins out of our thinking, we need diagrams. But we have to cut the guy some slack -- illustrations are extremely labor intensive. We make off-hand suggestions, and he spends hours on a drawing? I think that we could at least come to a consensus on how we think a bolide behaves. Then, if he wanted to draw up our ideas, it might reveal problems, and then we're back to figuring out what we're missing.

So, what about that compressed plasma tail? What causes the "helical magnetic field"? Is the coma actually moving, or are the particles stationary, merely showing the effects of bolide having passed through at a hypersonic speed? If the particles are stationary with respect to the surrounding air, there isn't any magnetic field. There may well be a charge separation in the coma, and in the bolide. But the magnetic field might only be associated with the bolide.

[Sparky]

If the particles are stationary with respect to the surrounding air, there isn't any magnetic field.

The meteor just passed through the ionosphere, is trailing electrons, and may have a charge potential differing from that of the ionosphere. Why wouldn't there be a magnetic field around the tail.?

[viscount aero]

May I suggest, an illustration of a meteor flying through the atmosphere, being stripped of electrons, the plasma tail would be compressed/filamented by the helical magnetic field surrounding it, and then the magnetic field releasing its force/pressure on the air around the meteor and trail when the meteor discharges with a big flash, releasing all that highly compressed charged air, causing a shockwave.

I totally agree that to get this thing nailed down, and to finally chase all of the ghosts and goblins out of our thinking, we need diagrams. But we have to cut the guy some slack -- illustrations are extremely labor intensive. We make off-hand suggestions, and he spends hours on a drawing? I think that we could at least come to a consensus on how we think a bolide behaves. Then, if he wanted to draw up our ideas, it might reveal problems, and then we're back to figuring out what we're missing.

Thank you, Charles. As you from just doing simple diagrams that artwork doesn't just come out of a hat like a rabbit. It's a big commitment of time and personal energy. From our PMs, rough sketches are in order for quite a while before committing to a tight illustration series.

So, what about that compressed plasma tail? What causes the "helical magnetic field"? Is the coma actually moving, or are the particles stationary, merely showing the effects of bolide having passed through at a hypersonic speed? If the particles are stationary with respect to the surrounding air, there isn't any magnetic field. There may well be a charge separation in the coma, and in the bolide. But the magnetic field might only be associated with the bolide.

This is the science that needs to be illustrated, tried, discussed, hashed out, etc... We're all going to have our own pet theories.

[CharlesChandler]

The meteor just passed through the ionosphere, is trailing electrons, and may have a charge potential differing from that of the ionosphere. Why wouldn't there be a magnetic field around the tail.?

Hey Sparky!

In what sense is the meteor trailing electrons? Do you mean to say that a neutral or negative body passed through the positively charged ionosphere, where it started shedding electrons, which are now trailing behind the bolide? If so, I'd disagree, because I don't think that the drift velocity of the electrons would be up to it. In other words, I think that the electrons would get left behind.

We're all going to have our own pet theories.

Yes. And we need to lay them out on the table so they can be inspected by all.

I'm starting to think that this could turn into a great pilot project. We have some juicy data, the likes of which have never been collected before (e.g., the twin trails). We have mainstream, classical EU, and some variant models in consideration. I "think" that it's narrowly defined enough that we "might" be able to nail it. But I'm as interested in the process as I am in the results. Lloyd and I have been having long conversations about this, and we're looking for a pilot project. He's a bit more strict than me, insisting that hypotheses be broken into individual statements, which are then individually inspected. I'm satisfied if an hypothesis is simply written up, in essay format, so that it can be critiqued. Both of us agree that bulletin board back-n-forth doesn't always produce a finished product. People chat until they get tired of it, and then they chat about something else. But seeing true scientific progress happen in real time is exhilarating. To get that out of it, a document has to be produced, detailing the understanding that was achieved. In other words, it's not enough for the last post in a thread to simply say, "Oh, OK. Now I agree." The heads of agreement have to be written up, so all of the logic is in one place, and later, people don't have to read through a long thread to share in the understanding.

So I'd like to suggest that people who have horses in this race should write up their understanding of what happened in Chelyabinsk. We all have different ideas, but I think that among us, we could work this all of the way through.

[Sparky]

Charles, this is what I was referring to:

A falling meteor leaves a trail of light as well as one of electrons that radar can “see”.

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2012/10/ ... -all-over/

You suggested that an asteroid would be "neutral"? Surely it would have a potential, relative to other bodies. And if it is producing/trailing "drifting electrons", then you have current/magnetic field..

Listen to meteors: http://topaz.streamguys.tv/~spaceweather/

[Lloyd]

Essential reading for helping understand comets: http://milesmathis.com/comet.pdf.

[CharlesChandler]

You suggested that an asteroid would be "neutral"? Surely it would have a potential, relative to other bodies.

The interplanetary medium appears to be very nearly neutral, and only slightly positive in charge. So we'd expect an asteroid to have a slight positive charge if it was just sitting there. If it has a detached bow shock, and there is frictional ionization, we'd expect the asteroid itself to have a stronger positive charge, with a negative double-layer on the edge of the bow shock.

So what are the implications of those moving charges?

Out in deep space, the slight positive charge on the asteroid might be generating an Amperian (i.e., circular) magnetic field around it, by the right-hand rule. This will be of little significance, as there isn't much matter in deep space on which the field can operate.

As the asteroid enters the Earth's atmosphere, frictional ionization comes into play, and the charges are much stronger. Now the asteroid, and everything inside the bow shock, has a strong positive charge, and the electrons at the edge of the bow shock give it a strong negative charge. This creates a complex environment, but what I'm saying is that once the asteroid passes by, the particles in the coma are stationary with respect to their environment. The charge separation lingers, due to whatever resistance is present. But those aren't moving charges.

For example, if a motorboat passes by, it leaves a wake that spreads out in a hyperbolic form. Then there is a straight line of turbulence directly behind the motorboat. We'll call that turbulence the coma. Now, the coma appears to "follow" the motorboat, but is the water actually moving in the direction of the motorboat, or is that just a condition in the water? I'm saying that this "condition" does not involve movement of the particles in the coma. Back to asteroids, if the particles in the coma are not moving in the direction of the asteroid, they aren't generating any magnetic field. The only drift current is the electrons on the outside heading toward the positive ions on the inside. That drift will be perpendicular to the direction of the asteroid, and at a trivial velocity. So I don't see significant magnetic fields there, after the asteroid has passed by.

So I'm thinking that the only relevant electrodynamics are right at the bolide itself.

[justcurious]

This is why Alfven kept insisting that we can't just observe magnetic fields without understanding the currents in space plasma, and vice versa. Currents induce magnetic fields, which can induce secondary currents, which can induce other magnetic fields and so on. It can get quite confusing. That's why all aspects must be taken into consideration together, currents, electric fields, magnetic fields, and how one affects the other and vice versa.
Perrat was able to simulate these complex interactions using Cray supercomputers. I presume the supercomputers were needed in order to calculate all these interactions particle by article, applying the well known and proven laws of electromagnetism (all those funny vector math/calculus equations).

[justcurious]

PM sent. Here are my online portfolios:
(sorry thunderbolts community that I'm veering off-topic but only for a moment )

storyboards:
http://www.stage32.com/profile/75224/photos

Illustration:
(click the thumbnails to expand the views)
http://www.behance.net/chadglass

Very nice work!
Have you ever considered making illustrations describing the fantastic storyboard and events of Worlds in Collision?

Thank you I haven't considered that specifically but it's a good idea.

I think it would be very helpful for the engineer geeks like myself, to better visualize what Velikovsky was describing, in order to try and make sense of it from an electrical phenomena perspective.
Also, the description are already there. It would also be far more interesting drawings than a bunch of arrows that only EE geeks in their bubbles can understand and appreciate

[viscount aero]

PM sent. Here are my online portfolios:
(sorry thunderbolts community that I'm veering off-topic but only for a moment )

storyboards:
http://www.stage32.com/profile/75224/photos

Illustration:
(click the thumbnails to expand the views)
http://www.behance.net/chadglass

Very nice work!
Have you ever considered making illustrations describing the fantastic storyboard and events of Worlds in Collision?

Thank you I haven't considered that specifically but it's a good idea.

I think it would be very helpful for the engineer geeks like myself, to better visualize what Velikovsky was describing, in order to try and make sense of it from an electrical phenomena perspective.
Also, the description are already there. It would also be far more interesting drawings than a bunch of arrows that only EE geeks in their bubbles can understand and appreciate

Thanks I agree. Artists and engineers need each other.

[Sparky]

So the meteor is becoming positive? The Earth is considered negative, isn't it? At 50-400v/m? Was the flash equalization?

What about the electrons that radar sees?