1. What did you all do to the guys over at bad astronomy? I wrote a post that said "I was reading about the electric universe theory and I had a question about plasma models and frozen-in magnetic fields..." and the replies were full of knee-jerk vitriol. At any rate, they do not like you.
2. Regarding the solar dynamo theory. The electric sun model treats the inside of the sun as a sort of dynamo right? I mean, if it's a conducive fluid that is rotating in the presence of a magnetic field, it shouldn't matter if the magnetic field is from a permanent magnet or from electric current or whatever black magic is behind a self-sustaining dynamo. If I stir salt water next to a magnet then electric and magnetic fields will show up in and around the water. Now of course, if you take the magnet away then the water's electric and magnetic fields eventually disappear regardless of how much you stir, and that means the self-sustaining dynamo idea is kinda silly. Incidentally, don't try to explain that on bad astronomy unless you have thicker skin than I do. I ended up calling a guy a curve-fitter and meant it as an insult. It was passive aggressive in a pathetic way.
Anyway, wouldn't a star in a electric sun/universe model still behave like a dynamo? If the solar substance is rotating below the surface then shouldn't there be induced electric and magnetic fields? I'm hoping to understand the differences between the electric and fusion models for the sun. When I read about dynamos to understand some of the stuff from the fusion model it struck me that the notion that the sun or a star can be a dynamo seemed pretty reasonable. Not an entire or self-sustaining dynamo, a normal dynamo, where the substance is in the presence of external electric or magnetic forces, forces the resulting dynamo action did not create.
Also, would it be worth my time to try to examine the solar dynamo models to actually understand what's supposed to be behind the self-sustaining dynamo? I'm really hoping for a shortcut here because I've taken a peak and all I see is a pile of equations a mile deep. Anyone know what's supposed to be going on?
A related question. Aren't both models using the exact same constituent equations for plasma physics/magnetohydrodynamics? It seems like the only difference is what sort of assumptions are made in the models. Also, I can't imagine you all actually have working computer models for high current density (J) but low magnetic reynold's number plasmas. Isn't that the situation where all the field aligned currents spontaneously form into Birkland twists and dual layers? My brain can't comprehend how the same set of equations could model the fluid dynamic/collisional and MHD qualities of areas without higher complexity structures, and model the structures that form. Even if you could somehow do that, how in the world could you model transitions in and out of the forms? I mean, wouldn't you have to have completely different sets of equations for areas with and without higher order structures and wouldn't the conditions that lead to the transitions be totally chaotic?
Finally, I read recently about people who sent a lot of seismic waves through the Earth to receiver stations on opposite sides. They claim that they analyzed the time it took to send waves from different places on the surface to the other side and that they could conclude that the very center of the Earth has a crystal structure that is different from the magma in between that center structure and the crust we inhabit. By structure I'm referring to what materials science would call FCC, BCC etc. It refers to the orientation atoms take toward each other in space. One formation will have atoms arranged on the corners of cubes, others will have that but also an atom in the center of the cube, there are a lot of varieties. The analysis, and I wish I could find the original, I'm kinda hoping you all read the same article I did, concluded what the two particular types of structure were. Now, suppose for the sake of argument that the central structure is a permanent magnet, and that the magma around that structure is conductive somehow, could currents resulting from dynamo phenomena in the magma influence the magnetic field of the Earth? If so, what would affect the contribution to the overall magnetic field from the permanent magnet and the dynamo fluid considered separably? Also, I have this nagging feeling that it's been proven that there is no permanent magnet inside the Earth, if so then I really meant this question as a pure thought project from the start, honest.
3. Please help me understand redshift in light. As I understand it a photon detector (of which there are several dozen varieties, each working over a certain region) does not actually measure wavelength, but rather it measures energy. The wavelength/frequency that is reported is the measured value either multiplied or divided by Plank's constant right? I figure that if whatever you're using to measure the incoming energy happens to be moving in the direction of the source of the incoming light, that the measured energy would have to be greater because the relative momentum of the thermometer (forgive the lay terminology) itself is contributing to the measured value. Isn't that what is required by conservation of momentum? I understand that because momentum is a classical phenomena that conservation of momentum doesn't really make sense when applied to a quantum situation, but I"m pretty sure that if you move a detector in the direction of the source of light that the measured energy will be greater than the energy you put into the emitter and that the change is pretty strictly related to the movement of the detector. And I think that the reverse should be true for a detector that is moving away from the source of light.
Now, I suppose I can't complain if some people want to phrase the situation as "the wavelength of the incoming light is either red or blue shifted," although I think if my understanding of the reason for the phenomena is right then that's somewhat inaccurate. It's not that the wavelength of the incoming light has somehow changed since it was emitted, it's that the energy of the impact on the sensor includes both a contribution from the light and from the momentum of the sensor. If I'm in a car going 50 miles per hour and I hit a car head on that's also going 50 miles an hour, it's going to hurt almost exactly as much as it would if I drove into a brick wall at 100 mph. But that doesn't mean that I was not actually moving on the highway, and that the car that hit me was actually going 100 mph. I figure a similar analogy can explain the situation from the point of view of a moving emitter and a standing detector. The motion of the emitter contributes to the wavelength of the light.
Where I get confused is in the transition from a red or blue shift measurement to a distance. I can understand how the red or blue shift could be expressed in the form of a velocity, in that regardless of the measured red or blue shift, and regardless of the source, the energy difference can be expressed in terms of the velocity of a sensor that would be required to produce the measured difference, or I suppose the convention is to calculate the velocity of a receding emitter relative to a stationary detector. Where I get lost is the transition from velocity to distance.
Suppose two universes, one where nothing is really moving relative to anything else over a large distance. All the relative motion is contained within galaxies/rotations/small scales. The amount of space in between any two objects will constantly increase when their actual motion relative to each other can be neglected (large distance scale). The other universe can be a place where those conditions do not hold. I can understand how an energy difference become wavelength shift become velocity could become distance in the first kind of universe, but I can't understand how the velocity could become a distance in the other universe. Can anyone help?
Also, I've read that the electric universe theory has proposed an explanation for red/blue shift that proposes that the incoming light's wavelength actually is different than what we would expect to see from an emitter like our sun for example. Isn't it that a "young" atom's nucleus is somehow less massive than the variety we find in our solar system and that an "old" atom's nucleus is somehow more massive than the versions found in our solar system? Please feel free to dispel any misconceptions I may have about the theory or elaborate competing theories if you have the time, but fundamentally I'd like to know if any of the proposed mechanisms for an actually different wavelength have experimental evidence to back them up.
May I close by thanking any reader for making it this far. Also, I swear I'm not trying to pick a fight, so if I've slighted your favorite hypothesis PLEASE don't take it personally. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm asking questions, even if they might sound like a lecture.
