CFDL solar model passes another test

[CharlesChandler]

There are quite a few stars within 100 ly. Have you concluded that all or many of those stars were formed in the same GMC implosion that formed the Sun?

I don't know what defines the limits of GMCs, but apparently, any number of stars might form within the same GMC.

The energy of the sun comes mostly from the initial energy of the dusty plasma that formed it, and not from external currents?

That's correct.

Find the lightest star known, and use its estimated mass to tell you what the minimum pressure is, and what its approximate collapse velocity is. Then you have the minimum pressure empirically, and can form a hypothesis as to why it takes that value from there.

Some of us believe that planets, such as the Earth, were once stars, and that all we have left is the heavy-element core. If that's true, we could set the limits considerably lower than the smallest known star. Thinking...

[Lloyd]

CC said: Some of us believe that planets, such as the Earth, were once stars, and that all we have left is the heavy-element core. If that's true, we could set the limits considerably lower than the smallest known star. Thinking...

Do you mean you don't think planets could form directly in a GMC implosion? Do you mean neither rocky nor gas giant planets could form directly? But that they can only form from a decaying star? I thought it depended on whether more matter is being received than is being radiated away. If much matter were falling in on a gas giant planet, could it become a star?

[CharlesChandler]

Do you mean you don't think planets could form directly in a GMC implosion? Do you mean neither rocky nor gas giant planets could form directly? But that they can only form from a decaying star? I thought it depended on whether more matter is being received than is being radiated away. If much matter were falling in on a gas giant planet, could it become a star?

I believe that all spherical aggregates formed in the implosion of some portion of a GMC. I believe that it takes a certain amount of force in that implosion to invoke electron degeneracy pressure, which creates charged double-layers that latch onto the matter, and prevent the otherwise inescapable rebound that would have re-dispersed the matter. Now, some objects are large enough, and imploded violently enough, to glow brightly. Other objects might not glow quite so brightly. And with time, even the bright ones get dim, as they cool down. This produces what we call planets. But like Jeffrey says, it isn't a difference in kind -- it's a difference in age and/or size.

[Lloyd]

I believe that all spherical aggregates formed in the implosion of some portion of a GMC.

And did all non-spherical aggregates form from collisions with spherical aggregates?
If non-spherical aggregates were collected together, could gravity form them into spherical aggregates with CFDLs?
If enough comets or asteroids fall into Jupiter, would it become a star, like a brown dwarf star?

[CharlesChandler]

And did all non-spherical aggregates form from collisions with spherical aggregates?
If non-spherical aggregates were collected together, could gravity form them into spherical aggregates with CFDLs?
If enough comets or asteroids fall into Jupiter, would it become a star, like a brown dwarf star?

IMO, the complex chemistry of asteroids and comets is indicative of previous membership in a far larger organization. You aren't going to get rock-like minerals just by vapor deposition in the near void of deep space. You're only going to get layer after layer of the same simple chemistry that is found in the interplanetary medium. So yes, the asteroids and comets were part of star/planets, and there have a few collisions, most notably the one between Theia and Ceres that produced the asteroid belt.

Now, could accretion slowly accumulate enough matter for an aggregate to transition from a collection of loosely-packed stuff to a tightly bound star/planet, complete with CFDLs, and with electric currents producing heat and light? Since Jupiter radiates more energy than it receives, it already qualifies as a brown dwarf, or perhaps a "near-black" dwarf. (Is that a star type? ) Anyway, this is an interesting question, and the quick answer is always "I don't know", but it's worth considering at least the possibility that accretion just isn't going to do the job -- it takes a huge amount of extra force to compress matter to the point that charges are separated due to electron degeneracy pressure (EDP), and without the EDP, you don't get CFDLs, and without CFDLs, you don't get electric currents. (In other words, the layers are not entirely current-free -- dynamics within the sphere create pressure fluctuations that shift the threshold for EDP, alternately ionizing and de-ionizing matter at the boundary between charged layers, and thus driving currents across the boundary.) So I'm brewing the idea that a simple rubble pile just isn't going to have the density to generate a gravitational field necessary for EDP, no matter how big it gets. If that's true, rubble piles are possible, but they will never be star/planets. Gravity is a function not just of the size of an object, but just as importantly, of the density of the object, since gravity falls off with the square of the distance. So if you took all of the super-dense matter inside the Sun, and loosely packed it into a rubble pile, you'll get exponentially less gravity. Also, the pressure waves that drive electric currents inside the Sun and the Earth (by shifting the threshold for EDP) aren't going to propagate in a rubble pile. So my working hypothesis is that dust grains and rubble piles in dusty plasmas don't accrete into star/planets.

[Lloyd]

Accretion onto Planets

L: If enough comets or asteroids fall into Jupiter, would it become a star, like a brown dwarf star?
CC: accretion just isn't going to do the job -- it takes a huge amount of extra force to compress matter to the point that charges are separated due to electron degeneracy pressure (EDP), and without the EDP, you don't get CFDLs []
[] So my working hypothesis is that dust grains and rubble piles in dusty plasmas don't accrete into star/planets.

If a huge flood deposited sand or clay or chalk one or two miles deep on a planet like Earth, what math formula would you use to determine the pressure at the bottom of the sediments? How much pressure would be needed to produce electron stripping and CFDLs? And how deep would the sediment need to be to equal that pressure?

One website says: Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure due to the weight of a fluid.
p = rho x g x h
where:
ρ (rho) is density of the fluid (eg water density is almost 1000 kg/m3);
g is the acceleration due to gravity (conventional, 9.8 m/s2 to the sea surface);
h is the height of column of liquid (in meters).

Would that apply to flood deposited sediments?

[CharlesChandler]

p = rho x g x h
where:
ρ (rho) is density of the fluid (eg water density is almost 1000 kg/m3);
g is the acceleration due to gravity (conventional, 9.8 m/s2 to the sea surface);
h is the height of column of liquid (in meters).

Would that apply to flood deposited sediments?

Yes. But you're working with the Earth's existing density. What's the density of a dust bunny? I can see aggregates forming in space. But they wouldn't be tightly packed spheres, with 9.8 m/s2 gravitational accelerations. They'd be dust bunnies. So how big does something like that have to be, before the gravity starts adding up to something? Remember that gravity obeys the inverse square law, so bigger doesn't directly equate with stronger gravity. At a very low density, the rest of the mass is so far away that the gravitational attraction will be slight. I think that it would take 3/4 of an eternity for something like that to finally get big enough to start collapsing under its own weight. So OK, maybe time is infinite, and maybe infinitely long ago, monsta dust bunnies roamed the primordial Universe. Eventually, one of them collapsed into something more dense. Then perhaps another. Then perhaps two of them collided, producing the UV radiation and particulate ejecta necessary to get neighboring dusty plasmas to collapse. And this is the kind of thing going on in the present Universe. But I don't see star/planets forming just by accretion in the first place.

[Lloyd]

Sorry my question wasn't clearer. I accept that gravitational accretion of dust into planets or stars doesn't work. What I'm wondering is if existing planets can gravitationally accrete into stars. So do you have any figures on what amount of pressure is enough for EDP, electron stripping? Was it Robitaile that you got your CFDL info from? Whoever you got it from, did they say what EDP pressure would be? I guess it varies with different elements. Doesn't it? If you know about what the minimum pressure would be, then would it be easy to figure how deep a layer of sediments would be needed to get that pressure? If you're not that interested in the question, I can understand.

[CharlesChandler]

I accept that gravitational accretion of dust into planets or stars doesn't work. What I'm wondering is if existing planets can gravitationally accrete into stars.

Oh, OK. Well, the critical difference between a planet and a star is the temperature. The star got its heat from the implosion that formed it (mainly from the momentum in the implosion, but also a little bit just from the heat that was already in the dusty plasma before it imploded). I found that the dusty plasma that imploded to form the Sun got up to 86% of the speed of light before slamming into itself and forming a star. That's a lot of energy. As the Sun cools, that energy is gone. I'm saying that the Earth was born the same way, but it was smaller, and therefore didn't have as much energy, thus it cooled faster. But sedimentation isn't much of a heat source, so it will take more than that. Only if enough stuff accumulated that the pressure became sufficient for nuclear fusion would there be a heat source that was just a straight function of pressure. But the Earth is way past that point. It would take an insane amount of pressure to initiate fusion of the iron/nickel in the core, and even if that pressure was achieved, fusing elements heavier than iron is an energy sink, not a source. So the only way the Earth is going to be a star again will be if something collides with it, to deliver the energy necessary for greater luminosity.

So do you have any figures on what amount of pressure is enough for EDP, electron stripping? [...] I guess it varies with different elements.

Yes, it varies with the elements & compounds, so it isn't a strict function of pressure. It's where the pressure becomes equal to the ionization potential of whatever chemical is at that depth. Under the oceanic crust, the Moho occurs at a depth of roughly 10 km, where the pressure is roughly 211 kPa, while under the continents, the Moho occurs at an average depth of 35 km, where the pressure is roughly 961 kPa. So it isn't an isobar like I sometimes call it -- it's an ionization threshold.

[CharlesChandler]

I just realized that a general understanding of Debye cells might turn out to be the key to solving yet another mystery: supercooled water vapor. It has been well known for a long time that at the tops of clouds, the water vapor regularly drops far below the freezing point -- without freezing. In the laboratory, vapor temps at standard pressure have been measured as low as −48.3 °C, which should be quite impossible. It was also found that this only happens in the absence of any sort of nuclei of condensation. So if there is already an ice crystal, or a dust particle, the vapor will condense onto it (and immediately freeze at that temperature), but without anything solid already there, the vapor stays gaseous. Cloud seeding helps the process along, by spraying particulate matter on the tops of clouds, providing the nuclei of condensation, and thus initiating the formation of ice crystals, which grow into snowflakes that fall to the ground, as snow (like today in the eastern US), or as rain in the summer. The whole process has been quantified, but it hasn't been explained. By conventional wisdom, the freezing point is defined by the balance between the energy in the momentum of atoms, versus the strength of the covalent bonding. At high particle velocities, the momentum is greater, and the particles bounce off of each other, but at low velocities, the covalent bonding captures the particles, and they stick together, forming a crystal lattice. OK, so why would two slow-moving particles need for there to be a large crystal already there?

My study of Debye cells revealed that a cell with a charged nucleus that is surrounded by an oppositely charged atmosphere (of some sort) repels similar cells. This is because of the inverse square law. If we're talking about atoms, the nucleus is positive, surrounded by a negative electron cloud. Neighboring atoms have the same configuration. And the nearest aspects of such assemblies to each other are the electron clouds, which are like-charged. So if you add up all of the attractive and repulsive forces between two cells, you find a slight net repulsion, because of the proximity of the like-charged electron clouds. Thus there is more to condensation than just the momentum versus the strength of covalent bonding -- you also have to get past the electrostatic repulsion between these miniature Debye cells.

This is where the nuclei of condensation comes into play. Any solid surrounded by a gas will pick up a negative charge, because at any given temperature, free electrons travel faster than atomic nuclei, due to their smaller mass. Thus a dust particle will get bombarded by more electrons than +ions. Up to about 1 extra electron per million neutrals, the covalent bonds within the dust particle are capable of holding onto the extra electron -- a greater charge density than that is less stable, and while even small molecules can temporarily host a net negative charge, it doesn't take much to liberate the charge. So the stability of the net negative charge increases with the size of the dust particle. The significance is that the dust particle can support a much more powerful net negative charge, by scavenging free electrons. Then, the +ions in the vicinity (which donated the free electrons that the dust particle grabbed and wouldn't let go) are attracted to the dust particle by the electric force, and there is no repulsion whatsoever to keep them from getting captured by the dust particle. So at that point, you get a runaway chain reaction, where the vapor condenses faster and faster as the particle becomes bigger and bigger.

Thus the same principle that explains the formation of Debye cells in dusty plasmas (without which stars wouldn't be possible) and explains why dusty plasmas don't ordinarily collapse into stars, also explains why water vapor doesn't ordinarily condense into snowflakes. And as discussed earlier, this principle also explains the regular spacing of the planets in Bode's Law -- the planets repel each other, due to the repulsion of their ionospheres. Nearer to the Sun, the Sun's gravity is a bigger factor, and the inner planets are packed together more tightly, while further from the Sun, gravity is exponentially less, and electrostatics dictates an exponentially greater separation.

[Lloyd]

Another nice finding. It's more fun to read your findings than to do the work to make them. For me the work would involve years of study that might not be all that interesting to me. The math especially.

Bode's Law Thoughts
If Venus, Mars, Earth and the Moon used to be part of the Saturn system in that order, can you calculate how far each of them should have been apart, either at the heliopause or approaching Saturn's present orbit slowly from outside?

In the solar system, would the sizes of the planets have much to do with the charge on them and thus on the spacing between adjacent planets? Do you think the asteroids would collectively have enough charge to repel Mars and Jupiter over long periods of time? I imagine they'd have little effect on Jupiter.

Bode's Law of electric repulsion would apply to each planet's moons too, I suppose. Agree? And to the Kuiper belt objects?

Wouldn't such electric repulsion between orbiting objects help to circularize the orbits of Venus, Mars, Earth and the Moon within a thousand years, if they broke away from Saturn at Saturn's present orbit?

Have you thought about a better formula for Bode's Law that would take orbiting bodies' electric charges into account?

[CharlesChandler]

Bode's Law Thoughts
If Venus, Mars, Earth and the Moon used to be part of the Saturn system in that order, can you calculate how far each of them should have been apart, either at the heliopause or approaching Saturn's present orbit slowly from outside?

That would require a lot of knowledge that we don't have. One of the biggest factors would be the shape of the comas. We have a rough idea of the density of the interstellar medium. If we knew what kind of atmospheres the planets had, and how fast they were traveling, we could start guessing at the length of the comas, the robustness of which would determine the strength of the attractive force between the planets. In other words, if the planets are negatively charged, and the atmospheres are positively charged, and if the atmospheres are swept into comas by friction with the interstellar medium, you've got rubber bands connecting the planets, made of the attraction of negatively charged planets to the shared positive charge between them in the comas. How strong are the rubber bands? And what is the equilibrium point, where if the planets got too close together, their repulsion from each other would be stronger than their attraction to the opposite charge between them? I dunno.

In the solar system, would the sizes of the planets have much to do with the charge on them and thus on the spacing between adjacent planets?

I guess that there could be a lot of factors. Venus is smaller than the Earth, but it appears to have more surface charge, with its highly electrified atmosphere. But I agree that charge would determine the spacing.

Do you think the asteroids would collectively have enough charge to repel Mars and Jupiter over long periods of time? I imagine they'd have little effect on Jupiter.

No, but maybe Ceres did, before Theia hit it.

Bode's Law of electric repulsion would apply to each planet's moons too, I suppose. Agree? And to the Kuiper belt objects?

Yes.

Wouldn't such electric repulsion between orbiting objects help to circularize the orbits of Venus, Mars, Earth and the Moon within a thousand years, if they broke away from Saturn at Saturn's present orbit?

I "think" that it would help circularize the orbits, but not in a thousand years. Halley's Comet was first observed in 240 BC, and has been observed a total of 30 times in just over two thousand years, and it has a highly elliptical orbit. My guess is that the circularizing would take at least 3.79 RLT, where RLT = "Really Long Time". In other words, I don't have a clue, but my guess would be that it isn't in range for human memory.

Have you thought about a better formula for Bode's Law that would take orbiting bodies' electric charges into account?

I could run my Debye cell code if it was just a static distribution. Of course, it isn't -- the planets are in orbit, and the forces between them are complex. Just roughly speaking, the ratio of the size of the planets to the distances separating them is in the same range as the size of the dust grains in space plasmas versus the size of the Debye cells.

earth diameter (km) = 1.27 × 104
distance between earth and venus (km) = 4.14 × 107
planetary diameter over distance = 3.08 × 10−4

dust grain diameter (m) = 1.00 × 10−4
distance between dust grains (m) = 10.00
dust grain diameter over distance = 1.00 × 10−5

So that's within an order of magnitude. To get better numbers, I'd have to know the electrostatic profiles of all of the planets and their atmospheres. I guess I could just calculate it with all of them in line, and see if there is a net attraction or repulsion. Of course, we'd guess that they're in equilibrium, but it would be interesting to see the calcs (someday).

[CharlesChandler]

BTW, it has been mentioned elsewhere, but while we're on the topic, I just wanted to reiterate that this Debye force, which is far more powerful than gravity, and which is typically repulsive, but can be attractive (if the sheaths are stripped off of the nuclei), is present at every level, from sub-microscopic dust grains, to stellar/planetary systems, all the way up to collections of them in galaxies, especially the arms of spirals. And again, it's far more powerful than gravity. This means that the "gravity" that Newton quantified in his explanation of the orbits of celestial bodies breaks down into two pieces -- gravity and the electric force. The mass of the objects is probably relatively constant, and therefore the gravity is constant, while the electric charge can fluctuate. This produces the so-called "gravity anomalies" in astrophysics. The variance is relatively small, but this doesn't mean that the electric force is weak when compared to gravity -- it means that the fluctuation in charge is relatively small. The electric force might actually be the larger component. Analogously, if you had a mixture of two substances, and if the mixture's volume varied by 1% with every degree of temperature difference, and if you knew that only one of the substances was compressible, you wouldn't conclude that the compressible substance was only 1% of the mixture, because that wouldn't be correct -- the 1% variation in volume couldn't all be coming from just 1% of the mixture. To actually determine the ratio of the two substances, you have to know the compressibility of the one -- your mixture might actually have 5 times more of that than of the other substance, just to get that 1% variance in volume. Likewise, astrophysical "gravity" might actually be 4 parts electric force and 1 part gravity. Only with considerably more accurate measurements -- and an open mind -- will we be able to isolate the fundamental forces responsible for the observations.