Magnetic Mayhem

[DustyDevil]

. . .

What I was getting at is scale — that a massive body, possibly with relatively low charge for its size, may have such a slow cyclotron period (time per complete revolution) and such a wide Larmor radius that such an orbital perturbation might well go unnoticed or be attributed to something other than magnetic field acceleration, unlike tiny low-mass charges typically considered in plasma physics and electrodynamics.

Jim

The following press release may help to answer some of your questions about the state of current knowledge of comets and their trajectories:

http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/39 ... ing-comets

Here's a link to a free fultext copy of the journal paper referenced in the above release:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4672

Enjoy!

DD

[hertz]

regarding today's nasa press briefing on the latest voyager data...yawn...while there were some references to the solar wind being a plasma, the heliopause being a permeable membrane, the bubbles being as energetic as a jacuzzi, and a comment from one of the speakers noting that he "would not want to be riding on voyager as it passed through the heliopause" into the intergallactic currents, they failed to take the "next step" as it were and connect the dots...oddly enough their expensive animations mirror the thornhill explanation (posted earlier in this thread) almost to a tee, but the participants either a) do not get it, or b) want to keep their jobs so dare not say it...oh well...you can listen to a replay of the call for the next week or two at: 800-337-6857...here's a link to the briefing material: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyag ... rials.html

[remelic]

One thing's for sure.... if you're an artist NASA will hire you!
lol

They probably hire more artists then anything else.

cheers

[Sparky]

mharratsc,

Well ya know- I don't think anyone is really willing to stick their necks out on this one. :\

hell, fools go where angels fear to tread! so, i'll make a prediction....ya know those backyard bug zappers?? well, it'll be like a gnat hitting one of those....

[orrery]

As far as I am concerned NASA needs to suck it up and start paying Wal a consulting fee.

[jjohnson]

Thanks for the link, DustyDevil; very interesting paper, but it was looking at the revolution of the nucleus of the comet, if I got it right, and not any visible spiraling of the orbital trajectory of the center of the mass that I was alluding to. I have another paper somewhere,investigating the sheath arrangement around a cometary nucleus, but it wasn't about trajectories, either.

The use of the abbreviation "CN" was annoying. It was never formally defined, but it appeared at first to refer to "Cometary Nucleus", the item under study through observations from the ejecta in the coma The first thing that sprang to [my] mind was "cyanogen" or (CN)2, a common molecule in space as well as being able to be manufactured here for a variety of purposes. But cyanogen is a pair of C-N's with the two carbons back to back in the center with the N's sticking out to the sides. Very confusing. I figured it out from their use of the phrase, "...due to fluorescence emission of the violet (0-0) band", and then looking up cometary filters from Lumicon, a filter manufacturer well known in the amateur astronomy community. Sure enough, very light violet-colored filters enhance the near UV light light emitted by "glowing" cyanogen (see CN emission here). <- This Hyperphysics article also uses the "CN" convention. Springer articles also use "C2N2", while "ethanedinitrile" and "dicyanogen" are among other names associated with this molecule.

But no mention of "charged body undergoing cyclotron spiraling in a magnetic field"! It was the spiraling of the tails that they were looking at; the "water sprinkler effect", to uses as clues about nucleus rotation and composition.

Jim

[hertz]

things could get interesting quickly...or not

Data from NASA's Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114827.htm

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2012) — Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased..."The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system's frontier."

[jjohnson]

Well, it's been a year since this Voyager 1 topic was last discussed. Cosmically, it hasn't moved far, but it is definitely in a dynamically changing environment. The article didn't make any interesting conclusions, yet, but as they point out, they're still crunching numbers to determine what they interpret these conditions to mean.

We've seen 'anomalous' accelerations that have changed these spacecrafts' orbits, but it is still way too early to see if those changes result in a slow motion version of a massive charged particle entering a different magnetic field. That may not be known within anyone's lifetime who is currently alive.

One wonders if these metallic devices will attract more charge on their surface, or discharge it and maintain some sort of long-lived level of charge differential WRT their variable EM conditions. Comets seem to discharge as their orbits cause them to encounter differing local plasma conditions on their routes to and from the near-Sun region. Might the Voyagers encounter conditions, as they cross the heliopause's double layer and move into the interstellar medium (ISM), that could force them into a discharge mode to alleviate electrical stress? That would be cool, but they are so tiny and so far that even a bright spark or glow display that occurred probably wouldn't be seen by optical instruments on Earth. It might be able to be monitored, or effects observed by such an action on the Voyagers' own instruments, but visible? Unlikely.

Well, that's speculation. These little explorers are certainly leading scientists along an interesting journey, and amazingly continue to write home about it.

Jim

[303vegas]

they're probably scratching their heads and tyring to invent a special particle or 'force' to explain it all...

[Sparky]

jj,

-but they are so tiny-

that's the question....how large a body has to be to hold a charge for any length of time vs it's change of electrical environment.? I find it difficult to accept that a comet can hold it's charge all the way to the sun...To me, there is something else going on besides accumulated "charge" being equalized.

idonno..

[sjw40364]

I think voyager will encounter the same thing as we first did when entering space from earth, and the reason all spaceships and probes are shielded for, electrical surges. The question is will the power encountered overload the safeguards