Yes.Lloyd wrote:Do you agree that the heliosphere is a plasma cell?
Yes, anything moving fast enough, and encountering a radical difference in potential, could flare.Lloyd wrote:...a brown dwarf encountering the heliosphere for the first time would or could have flared on contact.
It wouldn't even need to enter at a low angle. The Voyager data are indicating that the heliopause is turbulent. So an object entering with extreme velocity could flare multiple times as it passed through a variety of small cells in the turbulent heliopause.Lloyd wrote:is it possible that the heliosphere surface could have been wavy enough for Saturn to have penetrated several waves while entering at a low angle to the heliosphere surface?
I don't know about the interstellar medium -- I "think" that it is quasi-neutral (photo-ionized, but with equal quantities of both charges, a.k.a., "net neutral"). The interplanetary medium appears to be net positive, though infinitesimally so, at least by electrostatic standards. Most astronomers would say that it's net neutral, but recent research indicates that it has a slight positive charge. Its electrons were stripped off when the interstellar wind impinged on the solar wind, and interstellar nucleons burrowed deeper into the solar wind than the electrons. Therefore, there is a layer of negative charge in the heliopause, from all of those electrons that got stripped off. The charge density there is much greater, since in that layer are all of the electrons that the entire rest of the heliosphere is missing. So the interior of the heliosphere has a large volume with a small positive charge density, while the heliopause has a much smaller volume, and therefore a much greater negative charge density, since the total charges match.Lloyd wrote:Am I right that you've said that interstellar and interplanetary media are positive charged, while planetoids and stars are negative? If so, did you also say it's because of photo-ionization? Or would it be by the process that Bridgman mentioned, in which electrons are able to move much faster and farther than positive ions, so they naturally tend to separate in a gaseous environment? And then those separated electrons tend to attract to planetoids and stars initially by gravity and by the "like^3" principle?
I don't recall Bridgman's statement, but it sounds like he was talking about Debye sheaths, which are positively charged halos that form around solid particles, because the fast-moving electrons from the halo can get lost in the electron cloud of the solid particle, leaving the particle negative, and the halo positive. Out in space, the most common source of free electrons is photo-ionization. So the sequence of sub-atomic events is: photo-ionization, which liberates electrons, which move much more rapidly than nucleons, and therefore impact nearby solid particles more frequently, leaving the particle negative and the surrounding plasma positive.
The "like-likes-like" force then comes into play, since neighboring negative particles are attracted to their shared Debye sheaths. But this will not cause accretion immediately. The LLL force only operates at a distance. When the negative particles get close enough together that the positive sheaths have been squeezed out, the net force is repulsive. So the only way that the LLL force could cause the condensation of a star or planet would be to build up enough momentum that the matter overshoots its electrostatic equilibrium, and condenses in spite of the repulsive force at short ranges. If it does, then yes, the star/planet will still be bearing the negative charge of the particles from which it condensed, and its newly formed atmosphere will have the positive charge of all of the Debye sheaths that were squeezed out when the matter condensed.
There has to be a charge separation mechanism, and some resistance to maintain it.Lloyd wrote:How do the plasmasphere surfaces of plasma cells form?
Plasma cells can form anywhere. For example, in the heliopause, and in the bow shock of a supersonic bolide, the charge separator is just the Newtonian force of colliding particles, where nucleons burrow deeper into the plasma than electrons, making the interior of the cell positively charged, surrounded by a layer of negative charge formed by the electrons that were stripped off. In a thunderstorm, the charge separator is the action of gravity on charged water particles, which pulls the heavier particles down, and thus away, from lighter particles. The heavier particles (e.g., hail) are negatively charged, and if these are pulled down, it leaves a net positive charge at the top of the cloud. Then a "screening layer" of negative charge gets organized on top of the cloud, attracted to the positive charges in the anvil, but not able to recombine right away, due to the resistance of the air. So a thunderstorm is a plasma cell.Lloyd wrote:Would they form only from stellar and planetary winds, like the solar wind? Would the plasmasphere surfaces be electric double layers with positive inside and negative outside?
To answer these questions in a particular circumstance, you have to go back to the prime mover(s). A plasma cell is just charge-separated matter, where the opposite charges cling together due to the electric force, but cannot recombine right away due to the resistance. So it is an attractive force, but with buffering. To know what the cell as a whole is going to do, you have to look at the external factors. For example, a thunderstorm is a plasma cell, but to know what the storm as a whole is going to do, you have to look at which way the external winds are blowing. In the heliopause, we'd expect things to be more or less stationary, but with some turbulence due to irregularities in the wafts of solar and interstellar winds colliding. This could create waves, or bubbles, or who knows what else. But in a plasma cell, opposite charges move together in the same direction, bound to each other by the electric force, but buffered from each other by the resistance.Lloyd wrote:Would the layers be stationary, or would they tend to flow in opposite directions as in electric filaments? Would the plasma cell surfaces tend to form filaments, or sheets? If sheets, could the sheets develop waves, such as from the approach of large objects and would such waves accelerate outward?
To get a "twisted pair" filament, such as in a Birkeland current, the charge separator has to be relativistic velocities, generating extremely powerful magnetic fields that pull like charges together, and push opposite charges apart. This puts the electric and magnetic forces in opposition. Thus there is charge separation, but also buffering.
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Due to the difference in mass between nucleons and electrons, the magnetic pressure will get the lighter charge stream to spiral around the heavier one, producing the "twisted pair" current. I "guess" you could still call this a plasma cell, but the electrodynamics of it are better described simply as a Birkeland current.
I have no idea what to make of this, since I'm so new to the topic of continent building.Lloyd wrote:Cardona thinks proto-Saturn flares rained detritus onto the Earth.
I think that we can answer the question by looking at what happens to the 3.43 × 107 kg/s yield from CMEs, and I don't see any mountain building from solar wind. It's possible that the Earth is gaining mass from such particles, but I'm not sure that the rate is sufficient for continent building in a few thousand years.Lloyd wrote:Could a brown dwarf star encountering plasma cell double layers cause ion compressed matter inside it to explode to produce a flare and a rain of detritus?
If it's a Coulomb explosion, due to a strong positive charge through the body, the whole thing gets blown apart. If it's just an electrostatic discharge, you might get some surface EDM, but not an explosion, and nothing that you would call detritus.Lloyd wrote:If such an explosion started in ion compressed matter in a brown dwarf, would there be ways to stop it from exploding the entire star?
This was one of the things that lured me into the study of astronomy in the first place -- I couldn't understand how tidal forces could break up a comet, because I couldn't understand how gravity could be more powerful than the covalent bonding that holds a solid together. I'm now of the opinion that SL9 broke up due to the internal Coulomb force when it entered Jupiter's atmosphere and the detached bow shock sucked the electrons out of the comet.Lloyd wrote:Since the SL9 comet fragments formed a line in single file before they hit Jupiter in 1994...
I think that the momentum of celestial bodies is far and away the largest energy source, and which can only be altered by impacts, or by lesser forces operating over extremely long periods of time.Lloyd wrote:Do you think it's plausible that Venus, Mars and Earth could have followed behind dwarf star Saturn in single file?
I'm not sure that it's possible. If the planets are self-contained plasma cells, they show no electric field beyond their outer atmospheres. With no interplanetary electric field, there isn't going to be a discharge.Lloyd wrote:Does the plasma tube between the planets seem plausible?
It isn't that simple. Typically, there is an outflow of positive charges from an anode (and/or an inflow of negative charges). If you sample the solar wind, you'll find both charges, but that doesn't tell you anything. In a current-carrying wire, the atoms are neutrally charged, and the current is instantiated by the flow of electrons. So you have to determine which way the charges are flowing. In the case of the solar wind, where everything is flowing outward, you have to figure out whether positive or negative charges are flowing faster. In plasma, there isn't an instrument (to my knowledge) that can incontrovertibly determine this. Electron velocities are greater anyway, due to the smaller mass, but they tend to bounce around within the plasma. If all of it is moving in the same direction, and you measured the velocity of impacts of nucleons and electrons, the electron velocity would be greater, even if there wasn't any net current. The easiest way to determine the direction of the current is to simply measure the electric field. But out in space, instruments get surrounded by shielding layers (i.e., they become insulated plasma cells), and the strongest field is entirely within the cell. It gets more complicated still if the reason for the "current" wasn't an electric field, but rather, something like a CME that accelerated positive charges away from the Sun, and the electrons flowed outward to catch up. During the CME, you could think of the Sun as an anode, expelling positive charges. After the CME, the Sun becomes a cathode, expelling negative charges. At some distance from the Sun, the negative charges catch up to the positive charges, and when the electrons slam into the nucleons, the nucleons are accelerated. Now you have both charges moving away from the Sun in a quasi-neutral plasma, but can you call it a current?D_Archer wrote:The Anode is outflow and the Cathode is inflow. The solar wind proves the Sun is anode.
The bottom line is that we have to look at all of the data, and observe the form of the discharge, in order to determine the polarity.
I'm not sure that he got that specific about it.Lloyd wrote:Is Scott's PNP transistor meant to equate the photosphere and corona to positive and the chromosphere to negative?
I think so, but you'll have to ask Thornhill for more specificity on the Electric Sun model. I'm definitely saying that the granular surface of the Sun is a positive double-layer clinging tightly to an underlying negative layer, and where the net charge is negative, but the visible characteristics at the surface are defined by the behaviors of positive charges clinging to a cathode. The ES model says the Sun is positive, and leaves it at that. Hence we'd be putting words in Thornhill's mouth if we were to say that the granules are the positive electrode (and not the anode glow, which occurs in a negative double-layer). So he'll have to elaborate.Lloyd wrote:Do both sides consider the photosphere to be positive tufts, one being positive tufts on an anode and the other positive tufts on a cathode?
I agree that these terms are confusing. To be clear, I'm saying that the Sun has a net negative charge, with a flow of electrons out of the Sun, and where ohmic heating in a positive double-layer generates the heat and light that we receive from the Sun. The top of the positive double-layer is the visible surface, which is granular.Lloyd wrote:From this it seems that it might be best not to use the terms anode or cathode.