A Mystifying Menagerie

[mague]

He also argues that the longer a star lives, the more metal it will accumulate: "Intense plasma discharges at the stellar surface give rise to starshine. Those discharges synthesize `metals' that continually rain into the star's depths." At some point, the star ejects those metallized accumulations as large, ionized gas giant-type planets. Smaller, rocky objects might also calve from the host star.

Very interessting

So we sit and wait and hope it follows "The heliospheric current sheet" and hope it bounces over our orbit ? Thats going to be a spectacular view i guess.

What would be a realistic estimation about its speed after birth ?

[Sparky]

We should see a representation of what elements are being formed in the solar wind, shouldn't we? I don't remember my periodic table, but iron is the heaviest element that i know of in the solar wind. Where are the heavier ones?

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsolwindcomp.html

The composition of the solar wind is a mixture of materials found in the solar plasma, composed of ionized hydrogen (electrons and protons) with an 8% component of helium (alpha particles) and trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei: C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe ripped apart by heating of the Sun's outer atmosphere, that is, the corona (Feldman et al., 1998).

SOHO also identified traces of some elements for the first time such as P, Ti, Cr and Ni and an assortment of solar wind isotopes identified for the first time: Fe 54 and 56; Ni 58,60,62 (Galvin, 1996).

anything heavier than iron in this list?

[katesisco]

I found T Gold's Deep Hot Biosphere enlightening as to the explanation that all above lead generate energy and at lead the opposite happens, lead costs energy.
I have been hoping for clarity but even this POD cautions us not to take ourselves seriously. http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/daily-tpod/
I think the description of the workings of an electrical universe are leaning more and more toward a capacitor concept. And I think that whether it is on a galactic scale or solar system, or even planetary (science has identified particle accelerators in our cloud tops), a capacitor effect is going to be identified.
If our current compression is due to an approaching neutron bitsy, the lesser compression of 10,000 and then 5,000 is explainable due to its shedding of neutrinos. On the universe scale, neutron stars come closer than anything else to our human span. And they degrade into ordinary atoms when the pressure disappears. So, our current less energetic cycle is not due to a 'gas cloud of lesser energy' but a lesser energy source, the neutron star.

Following this, less compression denies us the fullest expression as science has discovered. I am reminded that Einstien is supposed to have said he was confident that many geniuses existed but were reticent. Or some such. Makes me wonder where the 5,000 y old cohort of geniuses are. In my knols, I speculate as to the source and subsequent disappearance of my beloved BeBes. But they are the 10,000 y cohort, where is the 5,000?

[jjohnson]

Sparky—yes. Look here on this website for a list of the solar abundance of the elements in the periodic table. Uranium is listed, and it is not the least element listed in terms of abundance on the Sun. {Its dot on the graph is higher, vertically, than several lighter elements, and a lot of heavy elements beyond iron like gold, mercury thorium, rhenium etc are definitely present. You can drag the vertical cursor onto each element and read off its relative abundance in the makeup of the Sun. This link is a useful website on the periodic table, in general, and you can organize or plot the elements according to a number of their different characteristics, from atomic number to density to ionization energy, etc.

The EU's take on the elemental abundance is that fusion [of lighter elements into heavier elements] can and does occur in the solar atmosphere where conditions are extreme enough to facilitate that process. We cannot observe whether or not the contemporary viewpoint, or dogma, as some prefer, about the Sun's interior is correct, but there are many plausible arguments against the Sun's being powered internally. Of course, given the lack of observational evidence, the jury is out on that, and conjecture and ideas abound.

However, stellar fusion itself apparently cannot convert lighter elements into anything heavier than iron, so the popular answer by scientists to the question, "where do elements heavier than iron come from?" is that only the conditions present in a supernova can make those heavier elements, like nickel and cobalt signatures, and gold and tantalum, tungsten and iridium, and many others. Or else, that the dusty "cloud" which contracted to create the proto-Sun and "spark its fusion engine" already contained fractional amounts of elements heavier than iron as detritus ejected over time from supernova explosions.

But what if the "anomalously" high temperatures in the solar corona were as conducive to fusion of elements beyond iron as those in a supernova? And what if the dusty plasma entrained and compressed by a cosmically scaled Birkeland current pinch had a sprinkling of heavier element in line with the consensus view, and when the pinching currents created the plasmoid that became the Sun, it already had some measure of elements heavier than iron, and possibly even made more? There's no reason to limit the production of heavy elements to supernovas, though, in the plasma universe. The energy density buildups possible in a high-velocity, high amperage pinch, with large double layers accelerating charged particles to teraWatt power levels, could indeed rival even a supernova release, until things settle down to a more stable mode.

Jim

[Sparky]

Jim, thanks for the link....hope my dellosauras can handle it..

I noticed, after I posted, that there was an element heavier than iron: "Ni 58,60,62 "...

Unless these heavier elements are + or - ions, they wouldn't escape and become part of the solar wind, would they.?

thanks

[jjohnson]

If the elements created via fusion, and heavier than iron, were created in the solar corona (feel free to generalize to "stellar" corona) were either created in the high temperature plasma condition of the corona, or were gathered in via infall and were kept "up" in the corona via collisions with accelerating, high speed ions moving raidally out as the solar 'wind', then it stands to reason (my thought process only) that either 1) they will exist as ions in the plasma and be subject to the same radial acceleration as other charged particles, and/or 2) if actually neutral, they could become entrained in the steady, high speed outbound flow of ions departing the Sun.

This appears to be a common phenomena, as Alfvén and other plasma physicists have noted, the ionized fraction of a partially ionized plasma region can be relatively low, only a few percent of all species present, and as a whole it will still react chiefly to the EM forces rather than viscous and gravity forces when present. As Dr. Paul Bellan, physics professor at the California Institute of Technology notes in his 2006 textbook, Fundamentals of Plasma Physics (Cambridge Press), "Most of the astrophysical plasmas that have been investigated have temperatures in the range of 1—100 eV and these plasmas are usually fully ionized."

In line with a different part of the EU solar model (Thornhill's) the Sun's interior might consist of relatively cool, neutral elements starting at some distance below the photosphere. As this would radiate at longer wavelengths than the visible through X-ray bands, it would be interpreted as "cool" material when viewed through the window of a sunspot's umbra. I still have little information on spectrographic observations centered on an umbral region, so I cannot discuss what scientists have actually observed their by, say, slit spectrometer readings. Wish I knew. Here is a 2008 paper in a report based on oxygen abundance measured in the umbra of a sunspot. Relevant, but limited data.

Jim

[mjv1121]

Jim, Sparky,

I like the idea of plasmatic fusion, but without any scientific thought to back that up. It would certainly be nice and convenient.

Without thinking or looking for reasons, I was most struck that of the all the elements detected, Hydrogen and Helium were right at the top of the abundance list, while Lithium and Beryllium were right at the bottom.

Michael

[jjohnson]

I think that possibly the reason for H and He abundance in the Sun (and stars generally, is due to those 2 elements' prevalence in the Universe at large. If each star represents a microcosm of local elements, chances seem good that it sweeps up a whole lot (>98%) of H and He, and all the rest is whatever existed in whatever percentages were there, locally. I can't peg lithium or beryllium as last by their ionization energies, as they are different and not inconsequential, but if there simply wasn't a lot of either one around "here", our star likely wouldn't have been able to enrich itself very much in those 2 elements, regardless of Marklund convection hypothesized during an EM plasma pinch.

Incidentally, and trivially, beryllium's place on the list was 4th from the least (lithium), with two rare elements between, rhenium and something else. Try choosing a Text sort to see this. As I said, not crucial to this discussion.

Jim