During this experiment the plasma is turned off. Within a fraction of a second after the injection some 100,000 particles get together to form a big agglomerate (big blob in the center, magnified in the right image [below]) together with many smaller clusters (with totally the same mass as the big one). This result indicates a "run-away process". Further investigations showed that the clusters were charged, positively or negatively.
Due to this experiment we might soon understand what happens in the early phase of planetary formation in a protoplanetary disk and how from microscopic particles finally planets like the Earth form - with the help of electrical charging.
Mo wrote:Isn't this evidence of star formation rather than planet formation ?
Mo
Due to this experiment we might soon understand what happens in the early phase of planetary formation in a protoplanetary disk and how from microscopic particles finally planets like the Earth form - with the help of electrical charging.
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics wrote:Forces and potential energy inside the void
A complex plasma is, under certain conditions, expected to build up a regular 3-D structure, a 'plasma crystal', that fills the whole volume of the plasma in microgravity. But most experiments with PKE-Nefedov aboard the ISS showed an inhomogeneous filling of the plasma discharge space. The micro-particles are located around a particle-free zone in the center, the so-called 'void'.
Often the void reaches a size half of the diameter of the whole discharge. This unexpected feature that prevents large undisturbed plasma crystals needs further investigation, also to learn more about the forces inside the plasma.
In one dedicated experiment the plasma crystal was disturbed by a gas puff and particles were placed inside the void where they were expelled immediately. (See image on the right side.) From 198 trajectories (marked in the image) we can derive the effective potential acting on the particles inside the void.
See the original data movie: AVI (4.4 MB).
First observation: After the puff the void swings back and forth. But if we take into account this motion we get distorted trajectories! The particles move in the reference frame of the plasma chamber. This means the feature that causes the void is independent from the particle cloud. It acts with reference to the plasma chamber.
[the] Fastest sustained wind on the planet, the katabatic wind can be a true danger. Only tornadoes are faster but they don't last very long. This wind can lift you right off the ground and also last for days. It's not a wind caused by storms or clouds, but by gravity slowly accelerating cold air along the long smooth slopes of the continent until it reaches record speeds near the shores, sometimes augmented by funneling effects of valleys, like at the old Port-Martin base where a world record wind of 325km/h wind has been recorded. If there is some recently fallen snow on the continent, it gets carried by the wind into a total whiteout of wind and snow fury that get inside any entrance: your collar or a slit on the side of a building window. After it has been blowing for several days and all the snow's been carried away, you can get this crazy wind with a clear blue sky like this picture shows. Since the wind always comes from the continent, it doesn't have time to form huge waves... usually. Look here to see what happens when it can form waves.
Another interesting application of scatterometry data over Antarctica is to derive the pattern of winds from patterns that occur in between different azimuth angles. Katabatic winds, which are gravity-driven winds of dense, cold air flowing down slope from the high elevation regions of Antarctica, dominate the Antarctic climate. These winds are some of the most persistent winds on the planet (Hildore and Oliver, 1993), closely following the topography and thus the same direction over long stretches of time. These stable winds carve characteristic patterns into the Antarctic surface over time at different scales: forming sastrugi, strange abstract sculpture like shapes, which are a meter or more tall and aligned in the direction of the wind, spatially coherent snow dunes with wavelengths of about 10 km, and large basin-scale surface waves on the scale of about 100 km (Long and Drinkwater, 2000).
Abstract
The detail analysis of the aerological data from Vostok station (Antarctica) for 1978–1992 made it possible to find the dramatic changes of the troposphere temperature influenced by strong fluctuations of the interplanetary electric field ESW. The warming is observed at ground level and cooling at h>10 km if the electric field of dawn–dusk direction is enhanced (when interplanetary magnetic field ?BZ<0>10 km) is observed if the dawn–dusk electric field decreases (when ?BZ>0). There is a linear relationship between the value of ?ESW and ground temperature at Vostok station: the larger is leap in the ESW the stronger is temperature deviation. The effect reaches maximum within one day and is damped equally quickly. The temperature deviations occur not only while passing the front of the interplanetary shocks but while crossing the layers of interaction between the quasi-stationary slow and fast solar wind fluxes those are not accompanied by the cosmic ray variations at all. The appropriate response to the ESW changes is observed in tropospheric pressure and wind as well. It is suggested that the interplanetary electric field influences the katabatic system of atmospheric circulation, typical of the ice dome in winter Antarctic.
davesmith_au wrote:Giday all.
After following the links from lite-brite's post here: http://web4.ehost-services.com/rainbow1 ... .php?t=437 to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics; http://www.mpe.mpg.de/pke/PKE/Results1_e.html I kept reading the article and came across one of the experiments with plasma being carried out on the International Space Station:
<snip image>During this experiment the plasma is turned off. Within a fraction of a second after the injection some 100,000 particles get together to form a big agglomerate (big blob in the center, magnified in the right image [below]) together with many smaller clusters (with totally the same mass as the big one). This result indicates a "run-away process". Further investigations showed that the clusters were charged, positively or negatively.
<snip image>
(original caption) Superposition of several video frames. You can clearly see the oscillations of
single particles, which means that they carry an electric charge...Due to this experiment we might soon understand what happens in the early phase of planetary formation in a protoplanetary disk and how from microscopic particles finally planets like the Earth form - with the help of electrical charging.
I think ScienceApologist and a few of his mates are going to soon have to re-think their notion of "There is electricity in space, but it doesn't do anything..."
Thoughts, anyone?
Cheers, Dave Smith.
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