jacmac wrote:
Perhaps the sun is the nucleus of a massive cell we call the Heliosphere ?
That is, a cell structure of plasma similar to a cell in biology.
...
When looking for an externally driven current are we forgetting the self organizing abilities of Plasma ?
This seems more or less in line with the Sun = plasmoid idea. I think it's a decent avenue for further research.
nick c wrote:
Juergens explains it in his articles with calculations and descriptions of the mechanism. He describes a situation where most electrons within the heliosphere are not powering the Sun, but superimposed upon that milieu is small percentage of electrons moving toward the Sun.
So ultimately he says that the absolute majority of the charged particles
are not noticing the field at all, right? And somehow only the chosen few are affected by it. That sounds like magic to me.
Still, if we for a second assume that this is possible and take the figure given by Thornhill (10^10 V), the required current (to produce the solar luminosity) would still be 10^16 A (or 10^(-7) A*m^(-2) at Earth's orbit). That is, we'd need a net flux of 10^12 electrons per m^2 per second towards the Sun (at Earth's orbit). It's very far (
billions of times far) from 3000 that Juergens and Thornhill report (I guess the problem is caused by them using volumetric density instead of flux per unit of area). It is actually comparable to the total solar wind flux of ~ 10^13 particles per m^2 per second (at Earth's orbit).
So Juergens' model would work if about 1/10 of the solar wind electrons were going inwards instead of outwards (which is not observed),
and there would be an external electric field of 10^10 V. In practice, however, this field would have been immediately neutralized by polarization of interplanetary plasma itself - e.g. in the form of yet another double layer.
nick c wrote:
the criticism that he had postulated no mechanism or that the "The EU community has tried to find the electric circuit model that explains the sun." is untrue
Perhaps it's a matter of taste, but to me the constant decrease of galactic potential in order to keep the shining of the Sun, postulated by Juergens', seems like a completely
ad hoc invention. It's a dark matter type of scientific artefact:
Ralph Juergens wrote:
To explain why the sun does not quickly achieve balance with its galactic surroundings, I have to postulate continually increasing electrification in the galactic atmosphere, so that we have a steady-state situation in which the sun draws enough current to hold its own, but not enough to close the gap between its potential and that of galactic space.
So yes. So far Juergens' idea doesn't seem so bright from any angle to me.
(High energy cosmic rays - most of which are protons - are also unexplained in this model; but it has so many other problems already, that it indeed seems almost cruel to even mention that).