The mainstream consistently puts the magnetic cart before the electric horse, and then they don't understand why it doesn't work right. In pretty much every instance where the mainstream uses the term "magnetic reconnection", Alfven used circuit theory to explain the same events, from coronal loop activity, to magnetosphere activity and everywhere else in space. Alfven warned that you couldn't really understand what's going on without including all the circuit energy in the whole circuit, and the energy that is sustaining the circuit over time.Cargo wrote:Think about the inverse, when Space offers (near) zero resistance. And you can not have a mag field without an E current. So free flowing E through space is only effected by bodies with their own E output/input that participate in the free E of Space. All the Magnetic fields are a result.
There's a "cause/effect" issue here that matters. Specifically the flow of current creates and sustains' the field aligned currents which the mainstream tries to describe as "lines". It's not really a simple magnetic "line" that they're describing, rather it's a field aligned *current* they're usually referring to when they describe "magnetic reconnection" events. It's really the circuit energy that provides the kinetic energy at the point of 'reconnection" when two or more field aligned currents "reconnect". If they called the process "circuit reconnection", it would actually make a lot more sense, both to them, and to anyone new to the idea who is trying to understand the process which they're trying to describe.
The electric currents sustain and create the magnetic fields, whereas the mainstream seems to start with only a field "line' and then try to describe the event. There are 'good" explanations of the process of course, but then there's the Clinger fiasco that comes from using a ridiculous name for the process.
Magnetic lines are not real, no more real than the topology lines on a 2D topology map to describe the 3rd dimension on the map. Like topology map lines, magnetic lines cannot disconnect from, nor reconnect to any other magnetic lines. The whole *field* forms as a 3D continuum, and it changes as a full 3D continuum as well. When that field changes inside of a conductor, it does in fact induce current flow. That's also true inside of a plasma because plasma is a nearly perfect conductor. In plasma, unlike in solids, the *positively* charged ions also move as a result of the field changes. That's really the only physical difference between ordinary induction in solids and "magnetic reconnection" in plasma.
It is of course possible to transfer magnetic field energy into induced particle movement, but it's still just a form of induction, albeit with ion movements being induced as a result of the changing magnetic field as well as electron movement. There is a real transfer of field energy into particle kinetic energy which occurs, but it's not a "special" type of thing. It's just ordinary induction.
The mainstream makes a "big deal" about what happens in the 'double layer/current sheet" that forms between two "Birkeland currents". Since current flow will seek the path of least resistance, it can ultimately 'rewire" itself over time. It's really just 'circuit reconnection", or particle reconnection, but no magnetic lines are disconnecting from, nor reconnecting to other magnetic lines, so it's not actually "magnetic reconnection". It's "magnetic reconfiguration" perhaps, but the term 'reconnection" should never be applied to a magnetic line.