Let's put it this way...mharratsc wrote:One of these days the dam is gonna burst on this stuff, and they're going to start actually talking about the electrodynamics of this stuff, mark my words...
Parallel electric fields in the upward current region of the aurora: Indirect and direct observations, published 2002 Physics of PlasmaObservations from the Polar and FAST satellites have revealed a host of intriguing features of the auroral accelerations processes in the upward current region (UCR). These features include: (i) large-amplitude parallel and perpendicular fluctuating as well as quasi-static electric fields in density cavities, (ii) fairly large-amplitude unipolar parallel electric fields like in a strong double layer (DL), (iii) variety of wave modes, (iv) counter-streaming of upward going ion beams and downward accelerated electrons, (v) horizontally corrugated bottom region of the potential structures (PS), in which electron and ion accelerations occur, (vi) filamentary ion beams in the corrugated PS, and (vii) both upward and downward moving narrow regions of parallel electric fields, inferred from the frequency drifts of the auroral kilometric radiations. Numerical simulations of U-shaped potential structures reveal that such observed features of the UCR are integral parts of dynamically evolving auroral U-shaped potential structures. Using a 2.5-D particle-in-cell (PIC) code we simulate a U-shaped broad potential structure (USBPS). The dynamical behavior revealed by the simulation includes: (i) recurring redistribution of the parallel potential drop (PPD) in the PS, (ii) its up and downward motion, (iii) formation of filaments in the potential and density structures, and (iv) creation of filamentary as well as broad extended density cavities. The formation of the filamentary structures is initiated by an ion-beam driven instability of an oblique ion mode trapped inside a broad cavity, when it becomes sufficiently thin in height. The filaments of the PS create filamentary electron beams, which generate waves at frequencies above the lower hybrid frequency, affecting plasma heating. This results in plasma evacuation and formation of a cavity extended in height. The waves associated with filamentary electron beams also evolve into electron holes. The transverse and parallel scale lengths of the regions with large E Parallel and E Perpendicular as well as their magnitudes are compared with satellite data.
Let's now compare the above Electric Double Layers papers with the following so-called "magnetic reconnection" scientific papers:In this article we present electric field, magnetic field, and charged particle observations from the
upward current region of the aurora focusing on the structure of electric fields at the boundary
between the auroral cavity and the ionosphere. Over 100 high-resolution measurements of the
auroral cavity that were taken by the Fast Auroral Snapshot ~FAST! satellite are included in this
study. The observations support earlier models of the auroral zone that held that quasi-static parallel
electric fields are the primary acceleration mechanism. In addition to the statistical study, several
examples of direct observations of the parallel electric fields at the low-altitude boundary of the
auroral cavity are put forth. These observations suggest that the parallel electric fields at the
boundary between the auroral cavity and the ionosphere are self-consistently supported as oblique
double layers.
Discrepancies between the measured components of E [electric field] and the corresponding components of v B [magnetic field] after a careful error analysis signify a nonideal electric field. We intend to show in a subsequent paper that the Cluster electric field and particle flow data for this event satisfy the criteria for a parallel electric field.
With the instantaneous coordinate system and the parallel electric field established, one can place particle moments, such as velocities, pressures, and temperatures, as well as magnetic and electric field measurements…
Sufficiently accurate ion and electron moments and electric field measurements within this coordinate system delineate ion and electron diffusion regions.
To see the schematic in Figure 1. it is on the second page of seven of the PDF, please go to the link above of the paper:Figure 1. “(bottom [schematic, page 2 of 7] ) : “Zoom-in on the region around the X-line, with the ion and electron diffusion regions indicated by the shading and the rectangular box, respectively. The quadrupolar Hall magnetic field is pointing in and out of the plane of the figure. The Hall electric field [perpendicular electric field] is shown by the red arrows, while the blue arrows mark the oppositely directed jets in the outflow regions. Note that entry and acceleration occur all the way along the current sheet. Figure courtesy of Marit Oieroset.”
So, no electric field — then, there is no “reconnection”.The physics of reconnection depends on the electric field component out of the plane of Fig. 1 at the center of the figure, which is sometimes called the tangential electric field.
If it is zero [the Electric field], the two plasmas flow around each other into or out of the plane of the figure because there is no ExB/B2 flow in the plane of the figure in this central region.
On the other hand, if the tangential electric field is non-zero, the plasmas continue flowing towards each other into the central region of the figure and magnetic field reconnection occurs as discussed below.
Ah, an “electric circuit”, much as Hannes Alfven theorized and demonstrated empirically in the laboratory.Why has there been so much theoretical interest in making Eo [electric field] large?
Consider the current out of the plane in the central region of Fig.1, which is required by the curl of the magnetic field. A non-zero electric field results in a positive value of j·E in the central region of the figure and conversion of electromagnetic energy into particle energy [kinetic energy], which is what magnetic field reconnection is all about.
Where does the energy associated with this positive j·E originate?
To answer this question, an analogy will be made with the electric circuit of Fig. 2, consisting of a battery and a resistor. From freshman physics, the electromagnetic energy conversion rate is VI where V is the battery voltage and I is the current.
And in an interesting comment on "moving magnetic field lines, the Mozer paper states:If the EMF [electromotiveforce] (in the case of Fig.2, a battery) is constant, the energy conversion rate is constant.
The Mozer paper returns explicitly to electromagnetism:This is just one example of problems arising from misinterpretation of the concept of moving magnetic field lines.
More language consistent with an “electric circuit” model just as Hannes Alfven advocated.Where does the converted electromagnetic energy go?
It accelerates the plasma in the central region of Fig. 1 just as the resistor in Fig. 2 warms up due to energy conversion from the battery.
And, yes, the free electrons & ions are accelerated in opposite directions just as in Electric Double Layers.The flux, not the energy, of the ions emerging from the diffusion region increases with the increasing magnitude of the reconnection electric field, Eo.
The author, F. S. Mozer, makes explicit reference to Maxwell’s equations:What happens to the plasma that is accelerated by the electromagnetic energy conversion?
And everybody knows that Maxwell’s equations describe a reciprical relationship between magnetic fields & electric fields. In other words, you can’t have magnetic fields without the presence of the Coulomb attraction, the attraction between opposite charges due to Coulomb force, in a plasma where there is the presence of free electrons & ions.…the magnitude of the magnetic field evolves as is required by Maxwell’s equations if magnetic field lines move with the ExB/B2 velocity.
There’s that pesky “parallel electric field”, right at the heart of the so-called “magnetic reconnection”, just as "parallel electric field" is central to the Electric Double Layer, peer-reviewed scientific papers presented above.This violation of Maxwell’s equations means that there must be a parallel electric field in the central region such that the magnetic field evolution in this region cannot be obtained by any means other than solving Maxwell’s equations.
The discussion thus far has left many unanswered questions. For example:
• How do the ions and electrons move to create the current, j?
• How are the ions accelerated to the Alfven speed?
• How is the parallel electric field in the central region generated?
These questions will all be discussed through application of the Generalized Ohm’s Law as derived from the two-fluid equations of motion for a unit volume of plasma, which are (Spitzer, 1956):
As many Electric Universe advocates know C.-G. Falthammar is a fellow plasma physicist much in agreement with Hannes Alfven's work and conclusions. Also note that this paper was supported by NASA grants -- you can rest assured NASA knows of this paper and it's support for an electromagnetic framework of analysis & interpretation of plasma solar system dynamics.The author [F. S. Mozer] thanks C.-G. Falthammar for many helpful discussions over many years, and his Berkeley colleagues for many helpful comments. This work was supported by NASA Grants NNG05GC72G and NNG05GL27G.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/10/c ... more-27693Like a cosmic light bulb on a dimmer switch, Saturn emitted gradually less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. But unlike an ordinary bulb, Saturn’s southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one. On top of that, energy levels changed with the seasons and differed from the last time a spacecraft visited in the early 1980s. These never-before-seen trends came from an analysis of comprehensive data from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), an instrument built by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as a comparison with earlier data from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. When combined with information about the energy coming to Saturn from the sun, the results could help scientists understand the nature of Saturn’s internal heat source.
The findings were reported November 9 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets by Liming Li of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (now at the University of Houston), and colleagues from several institutions, including Goddard and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena Calif., which manages the Cassini mission. “The Cassini CIRS data are very valuable because they give us a nearly complete picture of Saturn,” says Li. “This is the only single data set that provides so much information about this planet, and it’s the first time that anybody has been able to study the power emitted by one of the giant planets in such detail.”
The planets in our solar system lose energy in the form of heat radiation in wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye. The CIRS instrument picks up wavelengths in the thermal infrared region, which is beyond red light, where the wavelengths correspond to heat emission.
“In planetary science, we tend to think of planets as losing power evenly in all directions and at a steady rate,” says Li. “Now we know Saturn is not doing that.” (Power is the amount of energy emitted per unit of time.)
Instead, Saturn’s flow of outgoing energy was lopsided, with its southern hemisphere giving off about one-sixth more energy than the northern one, Li explains. This effect matched Saturn’s seasons: during those five Earth years, it was summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the northern one. (A season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth years.) Like Earth, Saturn has these seasons because the planet is tilted on its axis, so one hemisphere receives more energy from the sun and experiences summer while the other receives less energy and is shrouded in winter. Saturn’s equinox, when the sun was directly over the equator, occurred in August 2009.
In the study, Saturn’s seasons looked Earth-like in another way: in each hemisphere, its effective temperature, which characterizes its thermal emission to space, started to warm up or cool down as a change of season approached. Because Saturn’s weather is variable and the atmosphere tends to retain heat (called heat inertia), the temperature changes in complicated ways throughout the atmosphere. “The effective temperature provides us a simple way to track the response of Saturn’s atmosphere, as a system, to the seasonal changes,” says Li. Cassini’s observations in the northern hemisphere revealed that the effective temperature gradually dropped from 2005 to 2008 and then started to warm up again by 2009. In Saturn’s southern hemisphere, the effective temperature cooled from 2005 to 2009, as the equinox started to approach.
The emitted energy for each hemisphere rose and fell along with the effective temperature. Even so, during this five-year period, the planet as a whole seemed to be slowly cooling down and emitting less energy.
To find out if similar changes were happening one Saturn year ago, the researchers looked at data collected by Voyager in 1980 and 1981. Like Cassini CIRS, Voyager recorded fluctuations in the energy emitted by the planet and in the effective temperature. But Voyager did not see the imbalance between the southern and northern hemispheres; instead, the two regions were much more consistent with each other.
Why wouldn’t Voyager have seen the same summer-versus-winter difference between the two hemispheres? The amount of energy coming from the sun (called solar radiance), which drives weather and atmospheric temperatures, could have fluctuated from one Saturn year to the next. The patterns in Saturn’s cloud cover and haze could have, too.
“It’s reasonable to think that the changes in Saturn’s emitted power are related to cloud cover,” says Amy Simon-Miller, who heads the Planetary Systems Laboratory at Goddard and is a co-author on the paper. “As the amount of cloud cover changes, the amount of radiation escaping into space also changes. This might vary during a single season and from one Saturn year to another. But to fully understand what is happening on Saturn, we will need the other half of the picture: the amount of power being absorbed by the planet.”Li is finishing an analysis of the solar energy that came to Saturn, based on data sets collected by two other Cassini instruments, the imaging science subsystem and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. He agrees that this information is crucial because Saturn, like its fellow giant planets Jupiter and Neptune, is thought to have its own source of internal energy. (The fourth giant planet, Uranus, does not seem to have an internal source.) By studying the changes in Saturn’s outgoing energy along with the changes in incoming solar energy, scientists can learn about the nature of the planet’s internal energy source and whether it, too, changes over time.
“The differences between Saturn’s northern and southern hemisphere and that fact that Voyager did not see the same asymmetry raise a very important question: does Saturn’s internal heat vary with time?” says Li. “The answer will significantly deepen our understanding of the weather, internal structure and evolution of Saturn and the other giant planets.”
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA Goddard, where the instrument was built.
Yep, they said it.http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassini ... e20101214/
A new analysis based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft finds a causal link between mysterious, periodic signals from Saturn's magnetic field and explosions of hot ionized gas, known as plasma, around the planet.
Scientists have found that enormous clouds of plasma periodically bloom around Saturn and move around the planet like an unbalanced load of laundry on spin cycle. The movement of this hot plasma produces a repeating signature “thump” in measurements of Saturn’s rotating magnetic environment and helps to illustrate why scientists have had such a difficult time measuring the length of a day on Saturn
Video: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/video/videod ... ideoID=221
These enormous clouds of hot plasma recur in the part of the magnetosphere known as the magnetotail roughly every 10 to 11 hours. They rotate around Saturn at a distance of about eight to 15 times the radius of Saturn.
Scientists have finally been able to demonstrate that the pressure contained in these clouds is sufficient to inflate the magnetic field in a manner that is consistent with the periodic magnetic field signals that have puzzled them for so long. As the high- and low-pressure systems of atmospheric weather on Earth produce winds, pressures in space produce huge electrical currents, which in turn distort the magnetic field. The animation is based on data that were collected from Dec. 17 to 18, 2004.
(asterisk mine)“We all *know* that changing rotation periods have been observed at pulsars, millions of light years from our solar system, and now we find that a similar phenomenon is observed right here at Saturn," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator of the magnetospheric imaging instrument, also based at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Academy of Athens, Greece. "With instruments right at the spot where it’s happening, we can tell that plasma flows and complex current systems can mask the real rotation period of the central body. That’s how observations in our solar system help us understand what is seen in distant astrophysical objects.”
...How does the 10-11hr periodicity line up with your work? any dots connecting here with this harmonic or 'coupled' system?
I've already added this to my list of references if that answers your question.Solrey, I take it this phenomena would be well away (altitude) from surface fluid - polar connected hex-models you may be exploring? or not?
Amateurs first sighted the storm earlier this month, but the Cassini spacecraft moved into a good position on Dec. 24 to photograph it from about 1.1 million miles away. Earth received the raw and unprocessed shots today.
The storm has a huge central funnel and a long tail that sweeps around Saturn’s northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of miles.
I think much along the lines of R.Biggins post, a model can be developed to describe the phenomena based on extrapolating known empirical science developed from controlled conditions, but here we now start to explore the expectations of the electrical model *with current density* data supplied from this mission's satellite data. Does the Alfven model fit this expectation?MrAmsterdam wrote:A question. Can this observation be used as proof and be categorised as expected phenomena in an electric universe?
ES simply replaces any magical dynamo's with 'potential' and Alfven's empirical homopolar', regardless much of EU's mechanics seem to be accepted by this quote.pressures in space produce huge electrical currents, which in turn distort the magnetic field
Enceladus: A significant plasma source for Saturn’s magnetosphere:Saturn is a body that participates in an electrical discharge with its solar environment. And like the Sun, Saturn stores electrical energy in an encircling plasmoid. In fact, Saturn has two plasmoids. One is outside the rings, the other inside the rings. Discharges to Saturn must cross the rings. The Voyagers arrived at Saturn during solar maximum and witnessed the effect of such "lightning" discharges. Radial Birkeland currents moved material out of the ring plane which then cast shadows on the bright rings to create "mysterious" dark spokes. Cassini reached Saturn at solar minimum so a steady drift of charge is now shunting the electrical energy across the rings. There is no lightning across the rings. Cassini has seen no ring spokes. However, as solar activity increases we may expect to see the ring spokes return.
The last step in the planetary discharge is to Saturn's ionosphere and atmosphere – causing megalightning. Such powerful lightning punches lower atmosphere matter upwards into the stratosphere where it appears as great white spots and streaks, or storms. That explains the apparent connection between the Saturnian storms and radio signals from the megalightning. - Megalightning at Saturn
One of the significant problems to be had is this idea of "magnetic reconnection." It is ill-defined and its description doesn't allude to the electromagnetic dynamic that I think it may be a variant of; if not the dynamic itself. Little time on my bye for now.Abstract. The Cassini Plasma Spectrometer has reported dramatic perturbations of
the magnetospheric plasma flow in a region extending at least 30 satellite radii away from
Saturn’s small but active icy satellite Enceladus. We interpret these observations here
by means of a steady-state model of the electrodynamic coupling between Enceladus and
Saturn. Neutral water molecules from Enceladus are ionized, predominantly by charge
exchange with ambient ions, to produce a pickup current that accelerates them to the
local plasma velocity. The consequent addition of angular momentum requires Birkeland
(magnetic-field-aligned) currents that couple the newly injected plasma to distant parts
of the flux tube and ultimately to Saturn’s ionosphere. The rate of local ionization in
our model varies with the inverse square of distance from the satellite and is scaled by
a free parameter proportional to the ratio of the total mass-loading rate to Saturn’s ionospheric
Pedersen conductance. To explain the observed velocity perturbations we require
a total mass-loading rate 100 kg/s if the conductance is & 0.1 S as expected. If the
mass-loading region is not strongly coupled to Saturn’s ionosphere, then the appropriate
conductance is the Alfv´en “wing” conductance ~2 S, requiring more than an order
of magnitude more mass loading. In either case, Enceladus is clearly implicated as
a significant, if not dominant, source of Saturn’s magnetospheric plasma. - Enceladus: A significant plasma source for Saturn’s magnetosphere
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