Plasma Double Layer = Local Fluff in Cosmology Lingo!

[Pianoman]

Thanks earls

[earls]

tolenio, has provided a hint to a link: http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~fraisse ... rogram.htm

Great presentations of collected data up to 2007. Look for "Primordial Magnetic Field".

[Pianoman]

Thanks earls

[tolenio]

Hello,

A magnetic field is depicted in this way;



Please note the field direction lines.

Can anybody tell me, in layman's terms, what occurs at the point where those field lines come together in a singlarity? Whether you wish to answer electrically, magnetically or otherwise it is fine with me.

I only ask from the standpoint of the galactic magnetic field and the point of magnetic singlarity of that immese magnetic field.

Thanks.

Tom

[mharratsc]

Magnetic field lines don't exist, except in schematic diagrams, to begin with.

That isn't to say that matter won't form itself into a 'line' in a 3-dimensional magnetic field if it aligns itself in a dipolar fashion, depending on the characteristics of the matter and the magnetic field strength. However, as far as I know it- in the real world and not in a formula or simulation- there's no such thing as a "magnetic line of force"... there are only "magnetic fields of force."

Some of the guys studying the Sun are convinced they exist, however. They see a [url2=http://www.plasma-universe.com/Birkeland_current]Birkeland current[/url2] and think they are looking at a magnetic field line, rather than a self-contained helical magnetic field perpendicular to another larger magnetic field. There is a lot of confusion around that point, I think.

Try as I might, I can't find a good definition of "magnetic singularity" on the web, so I can't help ya there. I saw that a couple of papers on the subject at arxiv.org were pulled by their authors, and the only other references to it that I saw were from some quantum theory papers, another theoretical work on magnetic monopoles (scoff), and my favorite- from a site devoted to the game 'Command-and-Conquer'!

If you want to see what the magnetic fields of a typical galaxy look like, I suggest you check out [url2=http://plasmascience.net/tpu/mag_fields.html]this link.[/url2] I believe this page, and everything at this site, is the baby of Anthony Peratt. He's a world expert on the subject.

Mike H.

[tolenio]

Hello,

For lines of force that do not exist they sure do leave a tell tale trail.

When I say magnetic singularity I am talking about the point where all the tell trail trails lead to and from.

What is unique and going on in that point?

Tom

[earls]

Tom, what I believe happens is that the magnetic field lines are compacted and twisted together into a density such that the fields "break off" into smaller independent fields (particles) and are ejected from the "z-pinch" point.

[mharratsc]

Mike H.

[Osmosis]

Mike H. has the answer!

[earls]

Here's a great physical example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXsvy2tBJlU

Consider the water to be the magnetic field. It can be split and layered as seen.

A couple points to consider:

1. There needs to be a power supply for the current which is the preferred direction of movement. This would create structure instead of the magnetic bubbles just flying around randomly. Perhaps the current naturally drops out after getting super small? A large number of tiny bubbles moving in the same direction would manifest as a current?

2. Technically the water molecules volume is a self contained electromagnetic field... A bubble (although a highly ordered group of smaller electromagnetic bubbles) within our bubble.

[jjohnson]

I don't like the word 'singularity' due to its connotation of black holes and mathematical singularities. Those are okay in math, but they do not map onto the real world in which we (usually) operate. I do not think that there is a 'pole' upon which the field lines converge. Actually, filed lines represent descriptive field surfaces representing specified strength values in 3D which have been cut by a plane for visualization purposes only, exactly like a contour map or isophotes depicting E/M intensity or isopleths depicting intensities in a sound field. -if that's enlightening...

Anyway, we DO NOT have the slightest idea (at least which I have heard of or read anywhere yet) of what the basic motive force is that creates the voltage differentials which keep the local or the intergalactic currents going. Is it some individual kick charge within stars and galaxies that feeds their jets back into the circuit or a great big DieHard
battery or The Great Attractor just over the observable horizon or what? What precisely recycles energy and reintroduces it into the universe in a way to keep things movin' along? For me, I'm just riding drag and can't see where it's all going for all the dust!

[mharratsc]

The way that I understand it- a good analogy to visualizing a magnetic field with curl (EM) is to envision a street lamp on a foggy night. The glow is brightest near the bulb, and lessens in intensity as you proceed radially outward. The difference being that- with a dipolar magnetic field, the radial field also curls in at the poles.

So therefore- imagine the glow of a streetlight on a foggy night, but imagine that the glow looks like a donut, and it's dark on the top and bottom of the lightbulb...

If you wanted to demonstrate to someone on a flat piece of paper how the intensity of the light diminished radially with distance, you would use lines wrapping around the circular drawing you made of the spherical bulb to represent the diminishing intensity, wouldn't you? It is literally the same thing for the representation of the vector field around the Sun, for example. However, the lines do not exist in reality- they are a conceptual tool meant to convey a field intensity at a particular point in the field.

The confusion *really* started when people started seeing coronal arcs (much akin to the spark gap commonly referred to as a Jacob's Ladder), which would leave the surface of the Sun until the plasma attenuated to the point where it lost cohesion against the thermokinetic pressure. At this point the current through the loop ceased causing the magnetic field to collapse, at which point the energy stored in the twisting pair of Birkeland currents was violently released.

This, in my opinion, is where they got the idea for explosive magnetic reconnection... because they saw the same two points on the surface of the Sun begin another arc of plasma... just like a Jacob's Ladder will. The Wikipedia explanation for how the spark gap works explains that the current between the two rods ionizes the air and creates a spark gap. However, the heated air molecules rise in the cooler air surrounding it, pulling it up the two rods (hence why the rods are always vertical, and separate slightly towards the top). Once the ionized air becomes too tenuous to support the current flow, the arc collapses... just not nearly as violently as a coronal arc, or even a blown switch at a power substation.

Odd that Wiki won't allow EU proponents to show the identical similarity between a coronal arc and their own definition of a spark gap, but... that's the way ScienceApologist works, ya know? :\

Now that you sort of define 'magnetic singularity', I would have to ask if you consider a 'magnetic singularity' to have length, width and depth, or is it a one-dimensional point? I would say that the latter could not exist, based upon my understanding. If you were talking about an area of greatest field strength however, I would say that there would be one at both poles, but I would imagine that those areas of greatest field strength would be measurable in 3 dimensions.

Mike H.

[squiz]

Hi folks, I believe another dramatic discovery in favour of EU.

December 23, 2009: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.

"Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."

The puzzle they claim to have explained sidesteps why it is so magnetised and relates to a pressure model once again.

Shouldn't exist and mystery solved in the same paragraph?

Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected—between 4 and 5 microgauss*," says Opher. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."

The fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate and the ability of astronauts to travel safely through space. On the other hand, astronauts wouldn't have to travel so far because interstellar space would be closer than ever. These events would play out on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, which is how long it takes for the solar system to move from one cloud to the next.

"There could be interesting times ahead!" says Opher.

To read the original research, look in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature for Opher et al's article, "A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009 ... oyager.htm

I'd first heard of this years ago from a Russian scientists, I'll try and find the name when I have some time. He was talking about it some 15 years ago, Unless I'm getting my wires crossed, it was a long time ago. He was claiming the cloud was exciting the atmospheres of the outer planets, interestingly he was claiming this was due to an external power source from the cloud of charged particles.

Edit : My apolagees, I just found Jungle Lords thread http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpB ... f=3&t=2774

Mods Feel free to delete this.

[WCSally]

Pulsars and D.R.A.G.O.N.s

There was a very nice program on the Telly yesterday about Pulsars, and their jets.

Is it possible that this energy field is kept alive by the intermittent crossing of one or more jets from a Milky Way Pulsar --ours are mapped now, I think?-- (or something more distant?)? The more distant item being the spike (?) waveform classification: D.R.A.G.O.N. Distant Rotating Arc (oops ... ) ... Googles poorly ... too popular a word!

Anyway, the cause for this "fluffy cloud" phenomina being found, I could stop obsessing over it, and go back to other things .. The temperature blows me away --for such a nebulous item!! In dreary and totally freezing space especially.
But I have no way to compare the gauss (is there is a link on gaus?)! .. ... Maybe Wiki ... Vector Calculus

Intuitively, it states that the sum of all sources minus the sum of all sinks gives the net flow out of a region.

I did see the Gaus Compare on the article, I just crave more of a spread of comparison.

Like how does this compare to the EM milking of IO, and will the water (ostensibly) composing IO become something besides water eventually because of this interaction?
And could the interaction be causing things to happen with the molecules in the water ... (gestation moon?)?
YIPE .. I have drifted off topic yet again.

And could clouds like this, if we understood them better, become something like energy stations for interstellar craft?
(I refer of course to the "ships" seen recharging their hydrogen supplies over the volcano in Mexico near Mexico Cilty.)

[jjohnson]

Are you talking about DRAGNs (Double Radiosource from Active Galactic Nucleus) as in the illustrated radiotelescope images catalog from Jodrell Bank?

What are you asking here, precisely, so we might be able to give it a go? Also, see today's Picture of the Day article by Stephan Smith about what pulsars really are under EU/PC interpretation of these phenomena. Gauss (named after...Gauss) is a unit of magnetic field strength. Not gaus.