I think it’s time to demonstrate the dishonest and unethical behaviors of the mainstream, and their attempt at engaging themselves in a public disinformation campaign with respect to EU/PC theory, in this case by Tom Bridgman. The amount of time that haters spend in public intentionally *misrepresenting* the work of various EU/PC authors is simply staggering, appalling and highly unethical.
I had to wait three weeks for Mr. Bridgman to even post my previous response on his website, and we all know that he’s hiding behind his own website because he cannot handle an open and fair debate on this topic in a live forum. I think it would be more appropriate for me to respond to his most recent nonsense on this forum in the unlikely event that he would like to actually to come apologize to this community for his unethical public behaviors.
At no time did Kristian Birkeland ever promote or support three different suns or different “solar models” as Bridgman erroneously and falsely continues to claim. Bridgman made up that ridiculous and false claim in his own head. He then tries to justify that erroneous claim based on the contents of a *single* paragraph from an absolutely *huge* volume of work, but even worse for Bridgman, the paragraph he personally selected from BIrkeland's work actually refutes his own false assertion as I will demonstrate below.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Electric Universe: The Three Suns of Kristian Birkeland. I.
The only solar “model” that Birkeland publicly promoted and spoke about in public over a period of many years was his one and only one ‘cathode sun’ model, where the surface of the sun is more negatively charged than the surrounding “space”. Period. Any claim to the contrary by Bridgman is simply false, and intentionally misleading.
So far, so good.In the early 1900s, electromagnetism had reached the level of a well-understood phenomenon, particularly after it was placed on a firm mathematical foundation by the work of Maxwell. Many researchers were continuing to explore the nuances and predictions of these equations, applying them to different Earth-based as well as cosmic problems to see if they yielded any insights at the level that Newton's gravitation did for celestial mechanics.
Some of the more interesting experiments exploring cosmic electromagnetism were done by Kristian Birkeland in the early 1900s. Birkeland documented these experiments and his other ideas in his tome The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition (which I will reference as NAPE) which was published in two sections. Section 1 was published in 1908 and deals largely with the aurora expeditions and observations as well as Birkeland's initial terella experiments. In Section 2, published in 1913, Birkeland attempts to expand the scope of the interpretation of his experiments.
As a consequence of Birkeland's work with the aurora and the laboratory terella (which I will explore in a future post), Birkeland explored a number of ideas about the nature of the Sun.
This is a perfect example of the disingenuous nature of EU/PC haters and the facts that they choose to selectively ignore and/or misrepresent. I specifically sent Mr. Bridgman a link to a New York Times article that covers a lecture that was given by Birkeland about a decade after he published the volume that Bridgman is using as a reference.Birkeland speculated that sun was powered by the decay of radium (NAPE, pg 314, 670). It was not a new idea and it did not originate with him, as the question of the energy source of the Sun had been a long-standing problem. With the discovery of radioactivity, the question of the heat source within the Earth was thought to be solved (1907JRASC...1..145R). The term 'transmutation' was apparently first used (with some trepidation) in 1901 by Rutherford and Soddy in describing nuclear decay of thorium to radium (Wikipedia). Beyond nuclear decay, other nuclear reactions such as fission or fusion were not yet known. The first artificially-induced nuclear reaction would not be discovered until 1919, by Rutherford, and after the death of Birkeland.
Birkeland mentions Rutherford's ideas that in the solar interior, that ordinary matter may become radioactive (NAPE, pg 315). However, in reading NAPE cover-to-cover, I found no use of the term 'transmutation' at all, much less in context of nuclear reactions.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.h ... 946296D6CF
It most certainly *does* use the term ‘transmutation of elements’ to describe the power source of Birkeland's cathode sun model. Mr. Bridgman simply ignored that point entirely. Why? Birkeland’s writings are not limited to the single NAPE volume which Bridgman refers to, and I personally went out of my way to send Mr. Bridgman an article that does mention and discuss a “transmutation of elements” as the solar power source of Birkeland's cathode sun model.
It is true that Birkeland died before the concept of fusion was understood to be a potential power source of the sun, and it’s true that Birkeland proposed an internally powered solar model. It’s also true that the only nuclear reaction that was known at the time which might explain his proposed internal power source was something closer to fission rather than fusion. Birkeland was certainly convinced that the sun was internally powered, and he did in fact propose radiometric decay as a potential power source of the sun. I’m equally sure that if fusion were known to him at the time, or anytime within his lifetime, that he would have listed it as a potential source as well. The key points here are that Birkeland *assumed* A) the sun was internally powered, and B) it was powered by a nuclear type of power source. Based on the neutrino counts, he was essentially correct on both of those points.
So in all likelihood Birkeland would simply have switched to a fusion power source had he known that it existed as an option, and had he been aware of later observations to support the idea.These speculations on the solar energy source may have been the motivation of spectroscopic searches for radium in the Sun common around this time. However, a number of other elements such as iron, titanium, and lanthanum had spectral lines very close to those of radium so the status remained unclear for some time (1912AN....192..265M, 1912Obs....35..360E, 1913PA.....21..321M). Eventually the spectral measurements become sufficiently accurate to conclude there was no significant amount of radium in the Sun (1929ApJ....70..160S).
Here’s where Bridgman engages himself in blatantly dishonest behavior with respect to Birkeland’s beliefs and writings, because while three different electrical configurations were discussed, Birkeland selected only one of them as his preferred “solar model”.
This false assertion about Birkeland having three different “solar models” is simply unethical. What Bridgman is attempting to do is to ignore his use of the term 'imagine", and *utterly ignore* the value and usefulness of *empirical testing* in the lab with respect to what Birkeland just stated. He’s also misrepresenting what Birkeland stated. He stated that there are different possible electrical arrangements, but he also made it very clear which one of those three arrangement that he *preferred* over the other options based on his *empirical testing*! Worse yet, I also sent Bridgman that New York Times article from a decade later when Birkeland makes it very clear which solar “model” that Birkeland preferred, and discussed, namely the very same one that he talked about, and claimed to prefer in the single paragraph that Bridgman mentioned! It’s entirely unethical for Bridgman to claim that Birkeland promoted three different “suns” or three different “models” when Birkeland made it very clear which one of those options that he preferred!At the bottom of page 665 in NAPE, Birkeland proposed THREE possible solar electrical configurations:
1) Photosphere is cathode & anode located below.
"In the first place, it might be imagined that the interior of the sun formed the positive pole for enormous electric currents, while perhaps the faculae, in particular, round the spots, formed the negative poles."
2) Photosphere is cathode & anode located above in corona
"Or it might be imagined that the positive poles for the discharges were to be found outside the photosphere, for instance in the sun's corona, the primary cause of the discharge being the driving away of negative ions from the outermost layers of the sun's atmosphere in some way or other for instance, as ARRHENIUS has assumed, by light-pressure after condensation of matter round them."
Note that Birkeland introduces this model with 'or' to label it as an alternative to model 1.
3) Photosphere is cathode & anode located above in interplanetary space
"Finally, it might be assumed and this, according to the experimental analogies, seems the most probable assumption that the sun, in relation to space, has an enormous negative electric tension of about 600 million volts."
Well, Bridgman is correct that option #1 is the certainly the odd man out in terms of the direction of current flow, whereas options #2&3 are “similar” in terms of the placement of the anode being *outside* of the photosphere. In fact the sun actually generates surface to surface discharges too, but that occurs in virtually all electric sun models in the lab, including anode surface models.Models 1 & 2 are clearly different, placing the anode on opposite sides of the photosphere. It might be tempting to consider 2 & 3 as the same model, with the anode just further away in model 3, but model 3 places Earth IN the space of the anode, which has stronger implications for measurements near Earth not possible in model 2.
Emphasis mine. Then those are not actually different “suns” or different solar ‘models” Mr. Bridgman, they are potential current flow variations on the same cathode theme, and two of those variations he rejected in favor of the one *model* which most matched solar observations and lab experimentation.So Birkeland describes three different cathode-anode configurations for an electromagnetic solar model. All the models keep the cathode at or on the solar photosphere, perhaps at sunspots. The anode is proposed at three possible locations: inside the sun, just above the photosphere in the corona, and further out in interplanetary space. The final configuration is apparently favored by Birkeland, probably for its similarity to his terella configuration.
Birkeland did in fact mention several variations on the same cathode theme, but Birkeland also made it very clear which specific variation of those options was most compatible with his lab tests! Bridgman simply ignored the key fact that he even said which one those options was most congruent with the lab work with respect to how many sun theories he supported. He then tried to build a federal case about Birkeland having multiple different suns, or “solar models” over his use of the term “or” in a single paragraph. Birkeland was simply noting potential wiring variations did exist, but he specifically selected a *preferred one of them* based upon it’s compatibility with his experimental processes. Bridgman simply ignored that experimental verification aspect entirely simply so that he could misrepresent what Birkeland actually said! How unethical can you be Mr. Bridgman? He clearly stated with *one* of those options was his preferred *single* model in the very paragraph that you selected!
You have gone way out of your way to misrepresent the *one* solar model he preferred and turn it into a three ring circus. That is unethical behavior and unprofessional behavior.
Yes, indeed they do have different *physical* implications, so Birkeland did the laboratory "science thing" that the mainstream hates and fears, and he tried them out in his lab. After doing so, he picked the *one* arrangement that most matched the solar observations based on the results of those laboratory experiments, a fact that Bridgman simply *ignored* and/or didn’t bother to listen to or consider.Of course, since these configurations all have a common cathode, it might also be possible to consider combinations of the anode positions: 1+2, 2+3, 1+3, 1+2+3, analogous to the multi-grid electron tubes (Wikipedia) used in the first half of the 20th century, providing up to seven possible configurations. Each one of these configurations would require a different analysis as the each has different implications for where and how we can make measurements.
I have no idea why Mr. Bridgman found it “difficult” since I personally sent him a later New York Times article that made it very clear which of the three potential wiring options that Birkeland preferred and sold to the public, and the paragraph from NAPE that Bridgman cited also makes that point entirely clear to anyone who cared to actually listen.It's difficult to find more specific information on these models with only very limited information in NAPE (pg 665, 716). Apparently there are more details in the French publication:
K. Birkeland. Sur la source de 1’eleclricite des etoiles. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de l’Academie des Sciences, T. 155:1467–1470, December 1912.
but the description in Science Abstracts seems to be mostly based on some of Birkeland's experimental configurations.
This is typical EU/PC hater nonsense. Instead of taking Birkeland at his word in that single NAPE paragraph, that only one of the listed wiring options was most consistent with his experiments and solar observations, Bridgman intentionally and blatantly ignored that point and acted like he never said it!
So now Mr. Bridgman is simply ignoring the original issue that I complained about to him personally, and he’s making up more stuff for me to complain about.However, even in NAPE, it appears that Birkeland recognized the model had serious problems that would require more than Maxwell's equations to resolve (NAPE pg 720):
……my personal pet math homework assignments that I think I can require other people to do while I simply ignore all the falsified predictions of the mainstream model with respect to solar convection speeds for over three years and counting."According to our manner of looking at the matter, every star in the universe would be the seat and field of activity of electric forces of a strength that no one could imagine.
We have no certain opinion as to how the assumed enormous electric currents with enormous tension are produced, but it is certainly not in accordance with the principles we employ in technics on the earth at the present time. One may well believe, however, that a knowledge in the future of electrotechnics of the heavens would be of great practical value to our electrical engineers." [italics mine]
Each one of these models above have the same problem: How is the electric potential maintained? In model 2, Birkeland suggests Arrehenus' idea of electrons driven out by radiation pressure might help maintain such a voltage. However, other researchers, such as Milne, Rosseland, Panneokeok and others explored the voltages possible driven by particle speeds, but the predicted voltages turned out to be FAR lower than Birkeland needed. Rosseland also explored mechanisms for generating currents in sun for solar magnetic field (1925CMWCI.302....1R).
In part II of this post, I will go over some of the other problems associated with Birkeland's solar models, some of which were apparently recognized by Birkeland.
A Note for those Wishing to Comment on this Topic (under this or other posts):
No comments supporting the Birkeland solar model will be posted to these comment streams unless the commenter can provide correct numerical answers to……
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/w ... projected/
Remember that question and conversation Tom? Wow.
I turns out that Bridgman is also a complete hypocrite. He desperately wants to write off an entire EU/PC solar model based on some “single mathematical flaw’ that he thinks he might find in some math formula while blatantly ignoring the massive internal problems with his own mathematical model!
He not only misrepresented Birkeland’s statements about "three suns" after effectively ruling two of them out, he’s also a first class hypocrite with respect to his falsified solar convection speed problems. If one mathematical difference between observation and “mathematical prediction’ is all it takes to falsify an entire solar model, then the mainstream solar model is utterly and totally falsified Mr. Bridgman.
Based on the “math flaw” concept, your own mainstream solar model is obviously toasted by that revelation that convection is only 1 percent of the mainstream model.
I have a suggestion for you Mr. Bridgman. Since by your logic, your own solar model is falsified and dead, how about trying out Birkeland’s cathode model on your own? Why not do your own busy math work for yourself, and come up with some realistic numbers that work to your liking? What have you got to lose in light of the untimely death of your own solar model in 2012? Birkeland gave you some nice round numbers to work with, and we have much better measured number to work with now that Birkeland never had access to. Why should other individuals have to do your math homework assignments for you, when/if you’re supposed to be the so called ‘professional”?
Let me clue you in Mr. Bridgman. No solar theory, no cosmology theory, and in fact no theory in physics rises or falls on the math skills of yours truly. Nobody owes you any guestimated numbers that are best discovered in the lab to begin with. Nobody is going to believe you when you attempt to ignore your own math flaws with respect to convection, and try to falsify a whole EU/PC solar model based on one perceived mathematical difference anyway.
I look forward to your next installment of BS on Birkeland’s solar model. You’ve consistently misrepresented his statements so far, so round 2 should be pretty much the same nonsense.