Most Thorough Model

[CharlesChandler]

What resistance are you talking about there? You said "as the resistance increases with the thickness of the photosphere". Do you mean the electrical resistance, since ohmic heating means electrical resistance heating?

Yes, it's electrical resistance.

Is there more electrical resistance when the photosphere ions/atoms are farther apart?

Not because of the spacing, but because of the cooling. Electrical resistance increases with decreasing temperature. At extremely high temperatures, hydrogen plasma is a near perfect conductor, but at room temperature, it's an insulator.

How would the negative layer under the photosphere get deeper?

I'm saying that the boundaries between positive and negative layers are all isobars. If the pressure relaxes, the same isobar is to be found deeper within the Sun.

Do you mean because the photosphere expands?

And yes, at the same time, the photosphere also expands upward. The force that is holding it down is its electrostatic attraction to the underlying negative layer. If that gets further away, the electric field isn't as strong. This will allow the photosphere to expand.

Is it at all plausible to you that Saturn may have been a brown dwarf...

Yes.

...and flared up like that about 4,500 years ago?

How would humans have survived?

If so, could Saturn have lost a lot of mass in such a flare, so that it shrank into a gas giant planet?

Where did the mass go?

And, by the way, have you studied bipolar jets from brown dwarfs yet? [...] I assume they would not form the way natural tokamak jets form.

No, I haven't gotten to that yet. But I don't know of another way of producing a jet, so I wouldn't rule out the "natural tokamak" model. My current working hypothesis for red giants is that they are the atmospheres around white dwarfs. So the two distinctly different emissions are not coming from a binary system containing a red giant and a white dwarf -- they're coming from two different aspects of the same star. The same could be true of brown dwarfs with jets.

An article, called Jets from a Possible Young Brown Dwarf, at https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200932.html says: Like most young stars, HH211 emits bipolar jets of material as it evolves; the jets help to reduce the star's spin as it ages and contracts. The jets thereby facilitate further contraction, and probably play a role in the formation of any developing planetary system.

That's astro-babble for "we don't have a physical mechanism for bipolar jets".

They seem to compare brown dwarf bipolar jets to cometary jets etc.

But cometary jets are not bipolar -- they shoot out wherever they feel like. In my model, frictional charging as the comets cruises through the interplanetary medium results in the comet getting surrounded by a positively charged sheath. As the entire comet gets positively charged, electrostatic repulsion can drive jets through cracks in the frozen surface.

It's fun to read the progress you keep making on your model. I guess it's fun for you too.

It's exhilarating when the picture comes into clear focus -- it makes me feel like I'm out there watching things happen first hand.

Eccentricity I just read a little of the paper above and noticed this: The solutions show that an eccentric secondary’s semimajor axis and inclination both evolve monotonically with time. Therefore, the orbital plane always moves towards a pole unless the orbit is circular. The higher the eccentricity, the faster this movement. If the jet at the south pole is stronger than that at the north pole ( ̇M down u down > ̇M up u up), then the inclination always decreases. The greater the asymmetry, the faster the inclination changes. Also, although the eccentricity remains static, the location of the pericentre is a function of time.

First, I thought it may be suggesting that orbital eccentricity can change quickly, but I guess that impression is wrong. It seems to say only that planets' axial tilts can change quickly.

That's interesting -- I'll have to check it out.

[celeste]

Thacker's Arguments
Distance to the Stars at
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Essays-Astrophysics/Download/4635
Several reasons are given there for why relative parallax calculations for star distances are in error. The main reason seems to be that the light from many stars is bent somewhat around other stars, so the actual path to stars is often much closer than the distance the light travels.

Three items of evidence that help confirm the error are:
1. Graphs of parallax distance vs velocity of stars shows stars having greater velocity with greater distance from the Sun; In reality velocities are very likely to remain within the same range at all distances.
2. Many of these stars show transverse velocities over 100 km/s, whereas radial velocities are rarely over 60 km/s; in reality actual transverse velocities are very likely to be equal to or less than radial velocities.
3. Graphs of parallax distance vs absolute magnitude of stars shows stars being brighter at the source when they are farther away; in reality the absolute magnitudes are very likely to remain within the same range at all distances.
See the graphs at the link above.

This is comparable to the Fingers of God distortion found with conventional quasar distance estimates based on redshift (https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/041018fingers-god.htm).

Llyod, Thanks for posting this. I need to know more of his evidence for points 1. and 2. I believe we actually should see these effects, and that they are indeed real.
Remember how our sun fits in here http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/lchimney.jpg ? This means that most of the stars close enough to us for parallax measurements, are actually inside this "tube". If this is actually a current filament, then we would expect stars near us (at nearly the the same radius from the chimney axis), to be traveling more or less with us, while stars at a different radius should in fact have higher velocities relative to us (they should be travelling faster down this filament, or spiraling faster around the filament than we are). In other words,if our sun is in a large scale current filament, then we should have higher velocities for more distant stars, as Thacker found.
More importantly,his point 2., is also predicted. If we are in a current filament, then looking outward/inward, we may find stars spiraling around the filament (transverse velocity to us), or we may see stars traveling more along the filament (still transverse velocity to us), but we should not see stars traveling radially towards us.

You see why his observations are important, and why I'm interested in more source information here? These star motions are what we expect in a current filament, but more importantly, they will help us map exactly the spiraling of stars in our filament.

[ElecGeekMom]

Charles, if stars shrink to become planets/moons, and if stars' cores and inner layers have elements heavier than Manganese, shouldn't planets/moons have a larger percentage of such elements?

Maybe they do -- just deeper down.

If a planetoid were on an elliptical orbit with a perihelion inside Jupiter's orbit and an aphelion outside, can you calculate whether close approaches between the planetoid and Jupiter would more likely result in the planetoid being repelled from Jupiter or being gravitationally pulled into Jupiter resulting in a crash?

The electric force can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on the charge and thickness of the object's atmosphere. If the atmosphere gets stretched into a coma, the force between that body and another one is attractive. There might also be frictional charging, as a comet gets into a planet's atmosphere. I think that SL9 broke apart due to internal electrostatic pressure.

I was just thinking about that and was about to raise the question. So many times, we see artists' depictions of rocks in space hitting other rocks in space, then breaking apart upon impact.

But that certainly wasn't what we observed when SL9 was destroyed as it approached Jupiter.

I have wanted to raise the question of "Why are planets spherical?" We have seen many cases where smaller bodies are shaped irregularly, or like barbells.

I'm inclined to think that it's a balance of energy within and without a planet that makes it mostly spherical. And yet when emissions from the sun arrive, or comets enter the solar system, when things get aligned a certain way, then major earthquakes take place. I'm wondering if it's because the energies' balance gets disrupted.

[CharlesChandler]

I was just thinking about that and was about to raise the question. So many times, we see artists' depictions of rocks in space hitting other rocks in space, then breaking apart upon impact. But that certainly wasn't what we observed when SL9 was destroyed as it approached Jupiter.

Indeed. And it's fairly common to see strings of impact craters, on the Moon and on Mars. This has led EU proponents to the conclusion that the craters were made by electrical discharges, but there is another EM interpretation -- the bolide was subjected to frictional charging as it entered the atmosphere, leaving it with a strong positive charge. When that charge exceeded the bolide's internal strength, it broke apart. Tidal forces aren't strong enough to break the crystal lattices in solids, but EM forces are.

I have wanted to raise the question of "Why are planets spherical?" We have seen many cases where smaller bodies are shaped irregularly, or like barbells.

Viscount Aero was studying the barbell shape of asteroids -- I hope he got it figured out, or that he's still working on it, because I really that there is something to it.

Above a certain size, all celestial bodies are spherical. And again, gravity isn't strong enough to force everything into a sphere -- if it was, things like Mount Everest wouldn't be possible. So it will take a force more powerful than gravity to convert a "rubble pile" into a sphere. And what force is more powerful than gravity?

I can show that when the gravitational loading becomes sufficient, matter starts getting ionized, because the atoms are being forced closer together than the outer electron shells allow, and then the electrons start getting expelled. This creates a positively charged core surrounded by a negatively charged outer shell. Then the electric force between the charged double-layers pulls them together, to the limits of the electrostatic repulsion in the core. Interestingly, the compaction of the outer layer adds to the gravitational loading on the core, which increases the degree of ionization, and which strengthens the charged double-layers. So at that point, you have a force feedback loop. And now you have enough force to coerce the "rubble pile" into a sphere.

And yes, other objects in the vicinity can disrupt the electrical balance within the orb, resulting in earthquakes. Tidal forces defy the laws of gravity. We can all understand why there would be a bulge on the near side of an orb, facing the gravity field of another orb. But why would there be a bulge on the far side of both orbs? That doesn't make sense in Newtonian terms, but equal-and-opposite reactions are the norm in electrostatics -- the bodies are getting polarized with respect to each other. So yes, it's all electrical.

[ElecGeekMom]

Thanks, Charles!

I am still digesting your reply. (insert "digesting" emoji here)

So now I'm wondering what impact the sun's weakening has on that process. They say the earth's magnetic field has been weakening. IIRC, the quickening of that process seems to have happened as we have descended into the solar minimum.

Can we assume that the process you describe, that involves ionization, will weaken also, or slow down?

[CharlesChandler]

So now I'm wondering what impact the sun's weakening has on that process. They say the earth's magnetic field has been weakening. IIRC, the quickening of that process seems to have happened as we have descended into the solar minimum. Can we assume that the process you describe, that involves ionization, will weaken also, or slow down?

The ionization is gravity-fed, so that isn't going to change. But other things can happen. Once charges get separated inside the Earth into layers, you then have the makings of a dynamo. Net neutral matter that is rotating doesn't generate a magnetic field, because the fields from positive and negative charges cancel each other out. But if you have positive and negative layers of charge, and if there is differential rotation between those layers, the one that is rotating faster will generate the dominant field. If that layer slows down, and the other layer speeds up, the magnetic field will flip in polarity. But I'm not sure what influence the Sun would have on this.

[Lloyd]

Charles, what did you say is the minimum velocity of an impactor needed to produce a thermonuclear explosion? Did you say 30 km/s, or something else? I just noticed that Mike Fischer said the average impactor velocity is 20 km/s and he based his estimate of the Shock Dynamics impact on that velocity. But I imagine the impact would have produced a thermonuclear explosion. He calculated the diameter of the asteroid to be 42.5 km.

Would you expect an impact on deep water to produce a thermonuclear explosion starting at the surface? Or would it have to hit more solid matter underneath? What would a slower bollide do?

[CharlesChandler]

Charles, what did you say is the minimum velocity of an impactor needed to produce a thermonuclear explosion? Did you say 30 km/s, or something else?

I don't recall saying. It would depend on the velocity, the mass, and on the rigidity of the impacting surfaces, to develop the concentration of energy necessary to set it off.

I just noticed that Mike Fischer said the average impactor velocity is 20 km/s and he based his estimate of the Shock Dynamics impact on that velocity. But I imagine the impact would have produced a thermonuclear explosion. He calculated the diameter of the asteroid to be 42.5 km.

If it had hit the ocean, the instantaneous impact would have been absorbed and distributed the energy. It would have served the same purpose for Shock Dynamics.

Would you expect an impact on deep water to produce a thermonuclear explosion starting at the surface? Or would it have to hit more solid matter underneath?

For the impactor to get obliterated, I think that it has to hit a solid surface, and it has to be solid itself. And big enough.

What would a slower bolide do?

That would mean less energy.

[Lloyd]

Moon Rilles
Charles, I think you've explained how charge builds up on bolides moving rapidly through Earth's atmosphere and can lead to detonation of an airburst, or can carve out rilles near the bolide's point of impact. There are much larger rilles on the Moon. How could bolides have built up charge without moving through an atmosphere? You've said that charge can build up on comets moving through the solar system. Would bolides be able to build up enough charge that way to carve electrically such large rilles on the Moon? Would you like to try to figure out how much charge was needed to form the rille of the Moon crater, Aristarchus? I think it might be called Schroeter's Valley.

[CharlesChandler]

Charles, I think you've explained how charge builds up on bolides moving rapidly through Earth's atmosphere and can lead to detonation of an airburst,

Yes, by "frictional charging". Particles impinging on the bolide's boundary layer get their electrons stripped off, due to their lower inertial forces, while the +ions burrow deeper into the boundary layer. This makes the boundary layer positively charged, surrounded by a negatively charged sheath.

or can carve out rilles near the bolide's point of impact.

I don't know about the rilles getting carved by EDM.

How could bolides have built up charge without moving through an atmosphere? You've said that charge can build up on comets moving through the solar system.

Your second statement answers your question, but certainly if there is an atmosphere, the charging will be much more robust.

[Lloyd]

Impact Rilles
Charles, I suppose the Moon may have had an atmosphere when the bombardment occurred, since Titan is about the same size and has an atmosphere. And an atmosphere would have made detonations at impact much stronger. Wouldn't they? I think you agreed in the past that Juergens' reasoning about rilles seemed very sound and rather conclusive, i.e. that they were formed electrically. I think I discussed with you rilles associated with impact craters on Earth and you agreed that the charge on the impactors could have carved them. I think a TPOD said there's a rille associated with Meteor Crater in AZ. Do you remember Juergens' copy of the 1949 National Geographic photo of a rille on a baseball diamond in Florida caused by lightning which killed one or more players? If lightning can dig a trench about a foot wide and deep and ten or twenty feet long on Earth, could it be calculated how much charge from an impactor would have been able to carve Schroeter's Valley by Aristarchus crater on the Moon? Could that calculation help determine if the Moon had atmosphere and how much?

Age of Solar System?
In your Light Curves paper at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=18943 , you calculate that the solar system, or at least the Sun, can apparently not be over about 378 million years old. Have you tried to determine the minimum age of the Sun and maybe the solar system? Would it help to know which direction the solar system originated? Brant has suggested that it originated around the Vela pulsar, I think. Do you think there should be any traces remaining of the filament/s from which the solar system originated? Didn't you say that it could take a filament millions of years to complete an implosion process?

[CharlesChandler]

Impact Rilles: I think you agreed in the past that Juergens' reasoning about rilles seemed very sound and rather conclusive, i.e. that they were formed electrically.

I don't remember that. Anyway, my study of the Chelyabinsk bolide led me to the conclusion that the charge separation is entirely within the bolide's coma, with a positively charged interior, and negatively charged exterior. The electric potential wasn't between the bolide and the Earth, nor was there any bolide-to-Earth discharge. Rather, there were flare-ups due to excessive potentials between the positive interior and negative exterior of the coma.

I think a TPOD said there's a rille associated with Meteor Crater in AZ.

They said it, but they didn't show a picture of the rille. Do you know where this can be found?

Do you remember Juergens' copy of the 1949 National Geographic photo of a rille on a baseball diamond in Florida caused by lightning which killed one or more players? If lightning can dig a trench about a foot wide and deep and ten or twenty feet long on Earth, could it be calculated how much charge from an impactor would have been able to carve Schroeter's Valley by Aristarchus crater on the Moon?

If Schroeter's Valley had been formed by EDM, I'd expect it to be a star-burst pattern, not a singular rille.

Age of Solar System?: In your Light Curves paper at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=18943 , you calculate that the solar system, or at least the Sun, can apparently not be over about 378 million years old.

Yes, I improved the accuracy of the calcs, and added a few more constraints, and that's the number I came up with. There's still a bit of wiggle room, but no matter what I do, I get numbers that are way smaller than the standard model's. So I'm saying that the radiometric dating needs to be refigured, given that radioactive decay rates increase with temperature, and both the Sun and the Earth were a lot hotter during their early days. Not taking this into account would (does) result in falsely over-estimated dates.

Have you tried to determine the minimum age of the Sun and maybe the solar system?

I think that everything in our solar system formed at the same time -- 378 million years ago.

Do you think there should be any traces remaining of the filament/s from which the solar system originated?

I don't know -- maybe the entire filament was consumed in the process of forming the Sun, the planets, and the moons.

Didn't you say that it could take a filament millions of years to complete an implosion process?

I got an estimate of 100 million years for the dusty plasma to implode.

[Lloyd]

Rilles

I think a TPOD said there's a rille associated with Meteor Crater in AZ.

CC: They said it, but they didn't show a picture of the rille. Do you know where this can be found?

Do you remember Juergens' copy of the 1949 National Geographic photo of a rille on a baseball diamond in Florida caused by lightning which killed one or more players? If lightning can dig a trench about a foot wide and deep and ten or twenty feet long on Earth, could it be calculated how much charge from an impactor would have been able to carve Schroeter's Valley by Aristarchus crater on the Moon?

CC: If Schroeter's Valley had been formed by EDM, I'd expect it to be a star-burst pattern, not a singular rille.

Is EDM the only possible electrical means for rille formation?

Here's Juergens' comparison of rille formation theories.
http://saturniancosmology.org/juergensa.htm

Rille Char. - - - - - - Proposed Rille Origin Theory
----------------------- erosion - erosion - formed by - formed by - electric
--------------------- via water - gas cloud - gas blow - lava tube - eruption
wider at high end - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
channel sinuous - - A - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - C - - - - - - A
upper end crater - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
ends at diff. elev. - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - A
no out wash dep. - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - A
no chan. bridges - - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - B-C - - - - - A
chan. cratering - - - O - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A
trav. high ground - X - - - - - - - X - - - - - - B - - - - - - X - - - - - - B
stray fr. surf. dip - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - B
on ridge crest - - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
strata exposure - - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - A - - - - - - C-X - - - - A-B
strata upturned - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - X - - - - - - A
rille clustering - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B-C - - - - B-C - - - - - A-B
rille crossing - - - - - C-X - - - - C-X - - - - - A-O - - - - C-X - - - - - B
2nd rille in bottom - B - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B

Do you agree with his rating of each theory for each rille feature?

And here's an image (link) of rilles that cross each other and obviously go up and down over terrain of different elevations, unlike water erosion or other kinds of erosion: https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/image07/071121crater-rille.jpg.

Your theory seems to explain everything else best, but do you see a way to explain these rilles as well? Did you say before that they're earthquake faults?

(I wasn't able to quickly find an Earth rille associated with a crater, but the baseball diamond lightning strike trench seems to be a possible rille. Don't you think? See link above for image.)

[CharlesChandler]

Rilles Rille Char. - - - - - - Proposed Rille Origin Theory
----------------------- erosion - erosion - formed by - formed by - electric
--------------------- via water - gas cloud - gas blow - lava tube - eruption
wider at high end - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
channel sinuous - - A - - - - - - C - - - - - - O - - - - - - C - - - - - - A
upper end crater - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - O - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
ends at diff. elev. - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - A
no out wash dep. - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - A
no chan. bridges - - A - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - B-C - - - - - A
chan. cratering - - - O - - - - - - O - - - - - - A - - - - - - O - - - - - - A
trav. high ground - X - - - - - - - X - - - - - - B - - - - - - X - - - - - - B
stray fr. surf. dip - C-X - - - - - C-X - - - - - B - - - - - - C-X - - - - - B
on ridge crest - - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - B - - - - - - A
strata exposure - - - B - - - - - - B - - - - - - A - - - - - - C-X - - - - A-B
strata upturned - - - X - - - - - - X - - - - - - A - - - - - - X - - - - - - A
rille clustering - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B-C - - - - B-C - - - - - A-B
rille crossing - - - - - C-X - - - - C-X - - - - - A-O - - - - C-X - - - - - B
2nd rille in bottom - B - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - C - - - - - - B

Do you agree with his rating of each theory for each rille feature?

They look reasonable, but there is one theory that he didn't include -- that the rilles were caused by rifting. In this case, it would have been crustal shrinkage, due to cooling, that would have opened up the rifts.

I'd like to add that there are a number of instances of channel cratering, and that this is easy to understand as the same sort of thing. If the crust was already under tensile stress due to shrinkage, and if a meteorite landed, the resulting crustal fracture would necessarily pass through the crater, because it was the crater that initiated the crack. Since meteors often break up (due in my model to electrostatic repulsion within the meteor), a line of them will impact the surface at pretty much the same time. And again, if the crust was already under tensile stress, you'll get a fracture running through the line of craters.

I don't know if this explains all of the rilles, but it should be considered as one possible mechanism.

[Lloyd]

Fault Rilles & Sinuous Rilles
I agree that rilles that are fairly straight seem to be due to faults, which is discussed in this article: http://blog.moonzoo.org/2010/07/24/the-moon-has-its-faults. Several good images of possible faults are shown too.

Sinuous rilles and those containing lots of craters seem to me to be different. Don't you think? Did you get a good look at the 20 ft or so rille carved by lightning in a baseball diamond?

Sinuous rilles are similar in shape to galactic filaments and to Lichtenburg figures in acrylic etc. Could the conditions around an impactor be similar to either of those events? It seems that pieces of an impactor can break or explode off of it just before impact, which might produce a line of smaller impactors that could make a sinuous form like Schroeter's Valley. And it seems that the valley between the smaller impacts could be carved like that on the baseball diamond, although I don't have a clear idea about that. But what do you think about these possibilities?

Here are some sinuous rilles:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/image06/060310crater.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Triesnecker_crater_rilles_4102_h1.jpg
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/image06/060321hyginus.jpg

Sun's Age
I thought 378 million years was your upper limit for the Sun's age. But now you're saying that's the approximately exact age. Do you base the age on the rate at which temperature decreases exponentially and on the size and temperature at which the Sun started out? Are you fairly sure what size and temperature the Sun had initially? Isn't it possible that the Sun could have started at near it's present size and temperature? And isn't it also possible that it could have formed at one size and then accreted other bodies and gotten larger a long time later? And, if it got larger by accretion, wouldn't it also have gotten hotter? And wouldn't that mean it could be very young? By the way, I'm not prejudiced.