Talking Points on the Electric Sun

[mjv1121]

Mr Amsterdam,

I often stare at my plasma ball in an attempt for understand the detailed mechanisms, but alas, as yet I have no full explanation.

Do you have a full detailed description to pass on? Also, how does this device relate to a star?

Michael

[Goldminer]

Goldminer,

OK, more specifically, a lightning bolt is not a circuit discharge.

I believe (read strongly suspect) that the Sun is "powered" by electrons which in turn are supplied by the quantum vacuum. Electrons subjected to an increased quantum particle flux emit photons. I would suggest that the overwhelming majority of the Sun’s emissions are a consequence of the mutual proximity of such a vast quantity of charge and photon emitters. In other words, the Sun shines bright simply because it is so massive.

Clearly, the outcome of nuclear reactions is a substantial amount of photon emission. Lightning also results in significant photon production without recourse to nuclear reactions. The idea that the Sun may be fed by an inward drift of electrons or more directly by Birkeland "currents" is flawed on many levels, not the least of which is an utter absence of any theory of charge, electromagnetism and electricity.

Michael

I agree with you that the electrons move way more slowly than what we call electricity. But the delivery of electrical energy requires a potential difference. And still nothing happens with the delivery until a circuit is completed. The delivery of the electrical energy only stops when the circuit is broken or the potential difference is equalized.

The lightning bolt is emitting EMF energy all along its length, as well as delivering energy as heat and mechanical energy to the contact points. But it can't do this without receiving the energy from some source. It (the energy) just doesn't jump out of the aether; and the lightning bolt disappears when the potential difference is no longer high enough to ionize the air.

Potential difference (voltage) and amperage are both necessary to deliver electrical energy. You can have high voltage and low amperage or low voltage and high amperage and still deliver the same amount of energy. Low voltage and high amperage will only make a very short "lightning bolt."

"The idea that the Sun may be fed by an inward drift of electrons or more directly by Birkeland "currents" is flawed on many levels, not the least of which is an utter absence of any theory of charge, electromagnetism and electricity."

There certainly is no "utter absence of theory" around here. I don't mean to be bragging, but I seem to grasp what you don't or won't.

.

[mjv1121]

Goldminer,

The lightning bolt is emitting EMF energy

Can you explain the mechanism of this emission? and what is EMF energy?

...the delivery of electrical energy...

...delivering energy as heat and mechanical energy...

...But it can't do this without receiving the energy from some source.

That's a lot of "energy", but surely you meant momentum.


And since you are in possession of so much theory, perhaps you could give me your explanation of electron charge.

Michael

[Goldminer]

Goldminer,

The lightning bolt is emitting EMF energy

Can you explain the mechanism of this emission? and what is EMF energy?

...the delivery of electrical energy...

...delivering energy as heat and mechanical energy...

...But it can't do this without receiving the energy from some source.

That's a lot of "energy", but surely you meant momentum.


And since you are in possession of so much theory, perhaps you could give me your explanation of electron charge.

Michael

Momentum is potential energy, and it can reside in matter but is always relative to some other matter. A flywheel stores energy as momentum. It can be used to power a car for a short time, just like the motor can as long as it has the potential energy of fuel.

Ah yes! Every atom has a credit card. The electron holds the credit card, or is it the proton? I remember, now, the electron holds the credit card and the proton holds the debit card. Anyway when either presents the card and it is accepted, that there is the charge!

I used to have a credit card, but after a few charges I was in debt. Now I am more like a proton; actually more like a black hole!

.

[mjv1121]

Goldminer,

Momentum is potential energy, and it can reside in matter but is always relative to some other matter. A flywheel stores energy as momentum. It can be used to power a car for a short time, just like the motor can as long as it has the potential energy of fuel.

Momentum = Mass x Velocity. All "energy" is potential, since energy does not exist, it is simply a calculated number, a quantifier of the potential to do work. E=1/2mv^2.

it can reside in matter but is always relative to some other matter

This is particularly perplexing, please explain further.

What's all that credit card nonsense? Are you pulling my leg? or have you run out of theory?

Michael

[jjohnson]

About the electricity question: it is a vague subject, in part because we truly do not know down deep exactly what "charge" is, or 'energy', how an electron is constructed, if it is constructed - nor any other subatomic particle including photons, and other thingies that we suspect "do things" upon which the larger world depends and consists. We have a lot of conjecture and even theories (conjecture with accompanying numbers) about the 'quantum' world, but in our minds and guts we honestly only infer, and do not know. As organisms we are superb (by our yardsticks!) second-hand inferencers - everything that causes sensory reactions to the "world" around us and is picked up by our particularly constrained sensory systems has to be processed before it even reaches the conscious mind part of our brains, where we try to make sense, matching patterns from memory and experience, and lacking that, trying out new "imaginative" patterns to try to develop a fit.

—And in part because we use the word "electricity" with a variety of shades or meanings. Is it the motion of charged particles? Not exactly. Is it the electric and magnetic fields that we use in our descriptions of things having features that respond to such imaginings? possibly in part. Is it the force or the energy or the power that results at some targeted destination from a machination or event that creates electricity? Using Talbott's and Nereid's agreement in other posts a while back, agreeing on definitions is the first step to a meaningful and understandable conversation.

I have a problem with the mechanical definition of a field, and I am intrigued by Mathis's and others here definition of all energy transfer as only occurring through "bombardment" or collisions or real particles with mass. If the latter is correct in explaining action at a distance, under which "electricity" certainly seems to fall, then perhaps "fields" are just shorthand notation of such actions. This would be like calling an ocean's contents the "bombardment field" and the equations describing the hydrodynamics of wave phenomena on the surface and beneath it the "actions at a distance". The water molecules that are heaved upward in a sudden slip-strike undersea earthquake are not the ones that form and lift the wave that surfers on Oahu's North Shore catch. For "stuff that happens" in the interstitial spaces between atoms and their subatomic particles, however, we have yet to observe or well describe other than in our heads, some of us, the details of what goes on in there to cause an effect at a remote location.

There aren't really "real" vectors nor field lines nor any of the other useful but insubstantial constructs, either, but if they can model and reproduce the causes and effects that we perceive, for the time being that's good enough for me. As a pragmatist, I am curious about which is more "real": an 'aether' or conducting medium throughout space or which is space that is either composed of "fields" or a closely packed bombardment medium of unknown particles, but when I think of "electricity I think of its gross effects, its physical characteristics, and its perceivable effects.

To me, electricity is "the creation of a pathway via electromagnetic fields by the separation of charge, said fields being created by the charges themselves (the electric field) and their motion (the magnetic field); concurrent with the generation of said fields is the transmission of energy at the nominal speed of light within those fields, able to deliver what we think of as electrical power (energy per second, or J/s) at any place within said fields."

A little reading of Heaviside and Poynting and Ampère will illuminate these ideas - they are hardly mine, as new as I am to all this. They are not based in quantum theory, although in the non-relativistic realm they are pretty accurate, just as are Newton's gravity formulations, until you get into areas where scale mixes things up and other laws or hypotheses have to be formulated to account for anomalous behaviors. Science always just works this way. If we knew it all, how would we ever make any progress? Where would be the fun in that?

In the conventional idea of an electrical circuit, the moving particles are primarily the electrons in metal wires, which are forced into motion by the voltage "pressure" or potential or difference created by a battery or a generator that effects charge separation at a connection to the circuit. To work, the push of the electrons into the circuit by the electric field (for that is what voltage represents - a tension created by having more charges of a particular sign on one side or in one area than in another) is balanced or "completed" by a similar, simultaneous "pull" of electrons back into the charging device from the "other end of the circuit". We use little + and - signs to denote a lack of or fewer number of the "negative" electrons in the first case, and a surplus count of electrons to yield the "-" symbol in the second.

Poynting has it that the electrons' axial motion component within the wiring is a current, and it is simultaneous with and proportional to the magnetic field that accompanies a current. If the current stops, the magnetic field collapses. If the current stops and reverses, then stops and reverses again, we have an alternating current, typical of a generator in circular or harmonic motion. The magnetic field grows and collapses with each surge and stoppage of the electrons' motions.

Poynting reasoned, using vectors and Maxwell's equations, that the transmission of "electricity" throough the circuit is actually done in the fields outside the wires themselves. The electric field from the electrons (charged particles) consists, in vector format, of arrows that point radially outward away from the wire. They may have a net flow associated with the electrons, axially along the wire, in which case, the vector arrows may point outward as well as lean "forward" a little parallel to the wire (in the simplest case). It is the electrical field vector component perpendicular to the wire that is important in the conduction of electricity. But it takes two vectors to create a vector that transmits power from one point to another in a circuit. The magnetic field is the second necessary part to the solution. If either field goes to zero, electricity does not transmit.

The mobile electrons in a metal wire don't "lose" their electric fields, although they can be neutralized if they are so closely bound to their atoms that they can't move much. [But even electrons bound to atoms can create a net current flow in ferrous materials like iron and cobalt, which can create a magnetic field, but this is a static case - electrical power is not transmitted anywhere in a permanent magnet.] But the electric field created along the wire can go to zero if the source of the voltage that "drives" the charged particles into net motions together can be lost or disconnected or depleted, and that will drive the electric field to zero, and the spark plugs don't spark.

Looking at the magnetic field half (the two "fields combined are an electro-magnetic field - "E/M field"), it is in effect while there is net axial motion of the electrons. Stop the electrons, and the magnetic field collapses. Start them again and it perks right up. Its vectors are arrows, too, but they point in the direction that is tangent to a circle centered on the axis of the wire, and perpendicular to it. Because the magnetic field can be thought of as nested (but continuous) cylinders along the wire, a point in space outside the wire will be on one of those cylinders, and the length of the magnetic (or "B") vector will be proportional to the strength of the magnetic field at that distance from the wire, and tangent to the radius line drawn from the point to the center of the wire. In an alternating current (AC) the magnetic field increases in the first half of each cycle, reaches a maximum, and then the cylinders of equal magnetic strength collapse inward toward the wire, transition through a zero value and then grow outward again. Sort of like breathing. At the arbitrarily fixed point in space, then, the magnetic field vector keeps pointing in the perpendicular direction to the radius, but gets shorter as the field collapses and the [imaginary] lower and lower value cylinders collapse inward past it. It disappears as the field strength goes to zero, and then appears and lengthens as the field cycles back up to maximum.

The Poynting vector, which is the density value and direction of the electric power flow, being perpendicular to the electric field vector and the magnetic field vector both [per the "right-hand rule"], is equal in scalar value or intensity to the product of the two field vectors, and is perpendicular to them both. In short, it is parallel to the wire's axis, and exists from the surface of the wire outward. If you could plot the power value out from the wire surface, the E-field strength drops off as the inverse of the square of the radial distance , while the magnetic field, being cylindrical, drops off with the inverse of the radial distance. This means that the product of the two is strongest right next to the conducting wire, and diminished very rapidly with distance away from the wire. Most of the transmission occurs very close to the wire, in other words, tailing off quickly with distance (but supposedly not going to zero unless either or both of the E and B fields goes to zero). No matter how slow or how fast the electron drift velocity is, or if it reverses direction periodically or is steady, as long as there is net charge motion along the wire, there will be magnetic field, and electricity can be transmitted. Much faster than the electrons move, by the way - electric power transmits just like light - at the local value of c. In fact, I can't be too sure just what the difference is between transmission of energy and power by "light" at any wavelength, or electricity. However, light has to have a frequency, or many frequencies, associated with it, while DC electricity still works and has no wavelength or frequency modulation of the field needed for transmission. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

With a non-varying ("steady-state") current of electrons, at any given point the electric and magnetic fields have a particular value that does not change. That's the difference between the two. Both systems successfully transmit electrical power. AC power calculations and circuit laws are a little different from DC, because of the complexity thrown in by the time variable, but they are well known and useful "real" engineering tools.

A lightning bolt is an interesting and slightly different example of a natural and real circuit. By "real" I mean that it can cause perceivable effects, like overloading your circuitry and killing you, rendering you useless. By now you have noticed that there are no copper wires involved, and no generator cranking out the amps, so what's going on?

We observe, from satellite confirmation of Kristian Birkeland's predictions of currents from the Sun reaching the Earth, that there are powerful electric currents in Earth's magnetosphere and its ionosphere, closer to the Earth. We also measure large charge differentials between the Earth and the ionosphere [+ and -]. This voltage is really an electrical field between two separate areas, ground and near-space. Electrons want to jump the gap, and depending on which side has more + and fewer electrons, the electrons will be influenced jump toward that direction. Sometimes the Earth is the +, and sometimes it has the - electrons and the ionosphere is the + side. That is why lightning is observed to arc or "flow" in either direction.

Air is a better insulator than it is a conductor (it is a "dielectric") and for lightning to discharge, it needs to be able to set up a circuit path along which charged particles can move. Fortunately (for lightning) air can be ionized in the presence of very high electric fields. The very electrons are stripped away form the molecules in the air. Suddenly the former air gas turns into air plasma, with positive molecules and atoms, and negative electrons in a hot soup. Lots of loose ("mobile") charges and lots of voltage pressure and suddenly the insulating air blanket has developed "leaks".

As the voltage propagates in the leaky, ionized channels, the ends ionize further and relatively small "leader" currents propagate along, finding pathways along the more or less random ionization channels toward the general direction dictated by the voltage differential. In very slow motion lightning videos, you can't see the currents feeling their way forward in dark mode, but occasionally you see little flickers of light arcing about. It is not until at least one complete circuit is completed between the two charged areas that the full discharge can suddenly and eruptively deliver a very high current flow along a main, fully-ionized air-plasma channel, and very high levels of visible light are radiated from the electrons completing the journey to the electron-poor side of the circuit.

X-ray images have shown us that the auroral currents at Earth's auroral ovals are working constantly, daylight and dark, and this is the part that completes the circuit back to space, or into the planet from surrounding ionosphere and space, replenishing the discharges from space and returning the favor to the ground. Just as lightning goes on constantly all over the planet, so too do the auroras. Both are composed of both up and down currents. I'm not certain we are sure of the initiating charge mechanism(s).

Maybe we can discuss transmission of electric power over parsecs by the currents of charges of which their plasma is composed. Or over shorter distances by some of the moons of the gas giants with their strong magnetic fields and powerful auroras... Io and Enceladus, for example. Where are the Poynting vectors in a rarefied plasma in space? Where are they in the Sun? Inside the Earth in the telluric currents? Perhaps if we observed the invisible pattern of Poynting vectors in space plasmas and currents we would have some more insight as to what is going on, and be better able to plan where and what types of observations to make with future experiments.

Jim

[Goldminer]

Momentum is potential energy, and it can reside in matter but is always relative to some other matter. A flywheel stores energy as momentum. It can be used to power a car for a short time, just like the motor can as long as it has the potential energy of fuel.

Momentum = Mass x Velocity. All "energy" is potential, since energy does not exist, it is simply a calculated number, a quantifier of the potential to do work. E=1/2mv^2.

Yes . . . mass times velocity! Now how is velocity measured? It has to be related to some other mass, right? You can state that the car is going 35 mph, but in relation to what? The train going the opposite direction? The road it is traveling upon? Even rotation is relative to the stopped wheel.

"since energy does not exist . . . "

Well I suppose you can go ahead and think that way; seeing as how adamant you are about your opinion. I think of it as energy getting used up in the sense that it increases entropy as it travels to the equilibrium state.

But then along come the Electrical ejection of a QUASAR and whamo! a new qalaxy is organized, throwing entropy into reset!

it can reside in matter but is always relative to some other matter

This is particularly perplexing, please explain further.

I think of acceleration as kinetic energy, for instance. Not the "purist's" view, I suppose. My schooling taught that there is potential energy and kinetic energy. Take the elliptical orbit of a satellite: The inertia of the system remains constant, or do I mean momentum? Anyway, the potential energy is traded off to kinetic energy as the satellite accelerates and decelerates through out its orbit, all the while being in free fall (weightless), and never experiencing the forces of linear acceleration. How does it do that?

What's all that credit card nonsense? Are you pulling my leg? or have you run out of theory?
Michael

Pulling legs . . . yes . . . got embarrassed once when conversing with a double amputee.

No, Goldminer, that's not even funny, you insensitive SOB.

.

[mjv1121]

Goldminer,

Now how is velocity measured? It has to be related to some other mass, right?

I take your point, but at the same time, I disagree. Yes, for most practical purposes, velocity is relative, but that is not true of electron emissions. Electron emissions, charge and photons, always travel at c, and that velocity is absolute. It is absolute because it is relative to a point at absolute rest. The point of emission never ever moves. The emitter may move, planets and stars and galaxies may move through cosmic space, but the point of emission of every charge quantum and every photon never ever moves, it is at absolute rest.

Michael

[mjv1121]

Goldminer,

Anyway, the potential energy is traded off to kinetic energy as the satellite accelerates and decelerates through out its orbit, all the while being in free fall (weightless), and never experiencing the forces of linear acceleration. How does it do that?

In order to explain gravity, charge and all things E/M, we must inevitably concede to the existence of a material quantum particle field. There is, quite literally, no choice in this matter.

Thus we can now visualise our reality as existing within this field of tiny particles that is the cause and medium of all force fields. While standing on Earth we are subject to the collisional conditions locally prevailing; that is, a net push towards the centre of the Earth by the effect of gravity. If we move up or sideways, and especially if we accelerate, there is a change of collisional effects from the field: we experience inertia. Free falling in the gravity field is the same as not moving against the field. If you were to attempt to steer sideways whilst in free fall, inertia would reappear. If you accelerate downwards faster than gravity, there would again be inertia.

Since electrostatic charge must be an emission and since any particle field movement into a celestial body must be equalled by an outward movement, it stands to reason that there must be a net outward emission of "charge" from all and any body that exists in the quantum vacuum field. In other words all bodies are emitting an outward moving field of the same nature as the net inward effect of gravity - you may think of it as upward gravity if that helps. We are taught that an orbit is achieved by running away from gravity, by the process of continually changing direction - "falling without hitting the ground". But as has been pointed out many times on this forum, gravity is constant, or at the very least, it is very fast. Changing direction in space whilst inside a significant gravity well would be utterly hopeless as a strategy to avoid the push of gravity. However, there is also an emitted field moving outward in opposition to the downward/inward push of gravity. If an orbiter were to remain stationary relative to the planet they would be pushed inward by the effect of gravity. But, since the push of gravity is constant at all points through the orbit, if an orbiter can travel around the planet at a given velocity appropriate to the distance from the planet, then they may encounter sufficient outward pushing force to balance the inward push of gravity. At that balance point an object in effectively weightless, since there is no net gravity field. Also, at that point and at that velocity in those prevailing field conditions there is no inertial effect to the orbit. Orbits are a balance of gravity and "charge".

One may also wish to muse on an area of space just beyond the bulk of the atmosphere - namely the ionosphere or ionisation "layer". One may also look to an object such as Saturn, where the "electrical" activity of the Saturnian system does not appear to correlate to its distance from the Sun. Saturn, and all planetary bodies, is producing its own charge field. But as charge fields, ionospheres and "electrical" activity goes, the king of the hill by a wide margin, is the Sun. The Sun doesn't need to be fed by "currents", its immense mass contains a vast quantity of charge and photon emitters confined in close proximity by gravity. Any nuclear reactions or Birkeland currents are not cause they are effect. A star shines simply because it is so massive.

Michael

[Sparky]

michael, what is the mechanism for cme's and solar wind ions?

[Goldminer]

A star shines simply because it is so massive.
Michael

I give up! You should get with Ron L Hubbard and found a new religion! At least found a new thermodynamics. This is news to all of Physics!

[mjv1121]

Goldminer,

To further understand the interactions between electrons, perhaps you should consider the work of André-Marie Ampère:

The results showed, that in the case of the pair wise interaction of two infinitesimally small elements of direct current electricity within conductors, the force between the elements was not simply dependent on the inverse square of their distance of separation, but also depended on the angles which these infinitesimal, directional elements made with the line connecting their centres, and with each other.


Baying at the Moon will certainly not help.

Michael

[mjv1121]

Sparky,

what is the mechanism for cme's and solar wind ions?

I think we may defer to Plasma Physics.

Michael

[Sparky]

Michael,

-because it is so massive.

what i was getting at is that this is standard model, isn't it?

can charge, producing effects that we see , be supported by a mathematical model?

or were you inferring that charge emitting could be powered by quantum phield?

problems i see are how did the sun become so big.?

the sun ejects tons of matter, so if it is self-contained, mass must be decreasing.

[Goldminer]

Now how is velocity measured? It has to be related to some other mass, right?

I take your point, but at the same time, I disagree. Yes, for most practical purposes, velocity is relative, but that is not true of electron emissions. Electron emissions, charge and photons, always travel at c, and that velocity is absolute. It is absolute because it is relative to a point at absolute rest. The point of emission never ever moves. The emitter may move, planets and stars and galaxies may move through cosmic space, but the point of emission of every charge quantum and every photon never ever moves, it is at absolute rest.
Michael

Who besides you believes that? When you see a jet airplane, for instance, fly overhead; the emissions of light waves that travel to your eyes moment by moment and form the image of the jet are from successive points in space; and yes the jet no longer occupies that space, but to claim that those points are at absolute rest is nonsense. Let's say the jet flew very close to a radio tower. The point the jet occupied above the tower is still there, but we know that the tower is on the Earth, and the Earth rotates on its axis, orbits the Sun, travels around the galaxy, and the galaxy travels through inter galactic space.

So . . . you "point of emission" that is at absolute rest has no meaning and no effect because eventually it will be located in intergalactic space; and all matter and light waves and anything else you can think of will have left it far behind. Meanwhile, right now that "point of emission" above the tower, where the jet occupied a while back, is now marking new territory continuously as the world turns, with or without any new jets that may fly by.

I am struggling to not say sheesh!

.