plasmoids, 11/07/07

[Sparky]

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2011/ ... smoids.htm

TPODs are normally exceptional in many ways. This one is really good.

Question, somewhat related: In an apparent string of stars, if one or more seem to be brighter, would those stars not be associated with the others in the apparent string?

thank you....

[Sparky]

nickc posted in another thread:

From the ES point of view, any star can move quickly across the HR diagram if its electrical environment changes. Anyone who has seen the aurora's plasma curtains moving and folding in the polar sky realizes that Birkeland current filaments are not fixed, static, things. They move around. If the galactic Birkeland currents move around, it is likely they will move relative to some stars - either increasing or decreasing the current densities these stars experience.

now, if a string of stars are part of a circuit, how come all stars in that string are not affected.

[nick c]

Hi Sparky,

nickc posted in another thread:

From the ES point of view, any star can move quickly across the HR diagram if its electrical environment changes. Anyone who has seen the aurora's plasma curtains moving and folding in the polar sky realizes that Birkeland current filaments are not fixed, static, things. They move around. If the galactic Birkeland currents move around, it is likely they will move relative to some stars - either increasing or decreasing the current densities these stars experience.

now, if a string of stars are part of a circuit, how come all stars in that string are not affected.

Just to clarify, those words are not mine but are a quote taken from Don Scott's website,"Stellar Evolution in the Electric Universe."
As far as your question goes, I will hazard my own non expert guess at the answer, by asking a question...are all the lights in the electric circuit in your house necessarily the same?
Some might have a red light some white, some tungsten, some flourescent. There is no reason to assume that all the material compressed in a series of z pinches would be of the exact same sizes or composition of elements.
Just my guess.

Nick

[Sparky]

nickc:

Just to clarify, those words are not mine but are a quote taken from Don Scott's website,"Stellar Evolution in the Electric Universe."
As far as your question goes, I will hazard my own non expert guess at the answer, by asking a question...are all the lights in the electric circuit in your house necessarily the same?
Some might have a red light some white, some tungsten, some flourescent. There is no reason to assume that all the material compressed in a series of z pinches would be of the exact same sizes or composition of elements.
Just my guess.

nick, thank you for Don's link and for your perspective...

My house lights are wired in a parallel circuit, and each has minimal effect on the others, unless the fixture shorts and blows a breaker..

But, back in the day i did xmas, the christmas tree lights were in a series string. If one quits working, all stop lighting. Now, i have never tried it, but introducing additional voltage/current into one light would affect some, if not all lights in that circuit. Maybe we can get someone to splice 120v into a series string of tree lights and report the outcome..

I have made this argument elsewhere, that regardless of initial matter composition, once a star goes into arc mode, the luminosity is determined by diameter and current density on the surface, plasma is plasma, a highly conductive medium, regardless of elemental content. I have to assume that different elements will emit their own energy level photons, which are probably outside the visual range.

If spectral detection can be trusted, a large survey of nebula and stars, comparing their complete spectrum to the visual portion would determine if what i have just speculated is correct. It would surprise me if i was...

thank you

[Sparky]

Last night i was thinking on this experiment and conclude that this is way to vague:

introducing additional voltage/current into one light would affect some, if not all lights in that circuit.

To more accurately simulate a star in a series string crossing through a birkeland current, one would have to use DC, and apply that power source across a single light of a series string circuit, which is operating on DC power. The additional DC would have to be within the power handling capacity of that one light or it would burn it out and all lights would go out. I am stumped as to how such a setup would affect the other lights.

As for a star in such a position, i guess the diameter of the series string it inhabits, if they are really in a series string, would be a factor. Once two birkeland currents meet at the star, node, i don't know if they would interact enough to affect other stars in those circuits.

any thoughts?.... from an electrical engineer?

[jjohnson]

Sparky, I disqualify as an EE, but Don Scott notes that stars' atmospheres with their layers of different voltage potentials could act as PNP transistors, effectively modulating the radiant output of the star within a relatively narrow range. Such action may be frequency-dependent (that is, working largely in an "effective" band of choice, rather than only in one very narrow band or in all bands simultaneously).

That this might be the case with the Sun can be seen in the fact that its output in the optical band of radiation is nearly constant over time (within a range of, say, about 1%). Observed in the X-ray bands, however, our Sun can be classified as a variable star. Cepheids are variable stars, too. Their variability is in the optical bandwidth, although it may be observable above or below the optical, as well. I'm not knowledgeable there.

In thinking of other possibilities, it may be that not all the stars in a "string" are actually being "fed" by the same current, if there are parallel Birkeland filaments separated by double layers to maintain their charge separation. The flow of electrical energy using a conventional conductor (electrons moving along or back-and-forth within a wire) is actually within the electromagnetic field outside the wire, per the Poynting vector discussions elsewhere on this forum. I am trying to determine if Poynting vectors behave any differently in a conductive plasma in which both positive and negative charges are normally present, as opposed to the model of mobile electrons and fixed ions in a metallic crystal lattice in a metal wire. Nothing definitive to report there, yet, unfortunately. But to continue the thought:

Poynting vectors show that the highest values of EM field conducting electrical power are found closest in space to the wire itself (not inside it in the moving charges). A star in a cosmic circuit may not need to be inside a Birkeland current at all in order to effectively exist in a regime where electric power could be effectively delivered to it. Or, it might be that the Birkeland conductors do not contain any stars at all, if there is no Poynting flux within them; or, it may be that, with plasma, the EM field conducting the electricity can exist simultaneously within and outside the conducting filament, albeit at different energy flow rates. ("Flux" is just another term for the flow rate of something, e.g., gallons per minute, electrons per second, ergs or joules per hour,etc. "Rate", of course, is defining of the time unit.) If the Poynting flux values differ significantly at different radii from a Birkeland current, possibly to include the spaces within such a large but low-charge-density current, then it would be no surprise that the energy flow available to power any given star location would vary depending on a number of interacting factors, or variables. As the Holiday Inn ads said some years back, "The best surprise is no surprise."

Since the Electric Universe paradigm and well-known conventional electric circuit theory posit that circuits are required for current to flow, we need to learn a lot more about the plasma circuitry and the associated energy vectors that might constitute the mains to the stars in the Universe. The circuitry itself is not writ large, other than when in glow or arc mode for one reason or another. And even then, do not assume that the flow of energy is somehow confined to the plasma filament or sheet itself. The converse is rather more likely.

Okay; that's enough long-winded musing off the top of my head!

Jim

[Sparky]

jim, thanks for knowledgeable and well expressed post...

I need to do some study and mull over the several points that you made. It seems logical, but i am shaky on this Poynting vectors, and still do not have very detailed understanding of birkeland currents, mostly just an overview...

thank you...

[jjohnson]

Sparky,
I didn't know about Poynting vectors until I read an article by Ian Sefton, University of Sydney, on how circuits work. In response to my e-mailed question, he gave me a list of sources including Poynting's Collected Works, so between these two sources, there's enough info for you to become reasonably conversant with Poynting vectors.

Here is Sefton's paper in PDF format.

Here is a free source of Poynting's papers. I chose to download the B/W version since the yellow cast of the paper wasn't worth the additional file size — it's rather large to begin with (48Mb), because it includes a large obituary from fellow members of the Royal Society as well as several other papers not particularly related to his electrical studies. Look on the pages starting at 175 (Chapter 10, or his first paper on the vectors) and 194, Chapter 11, the second on the induction in the EM field. If your claim to a low-speed dial-up connection is still true, I hope you will be able to spring for a high-speed provider sometime soon, since file sizes and complexity are only going to get larger and more colorful as time passes.

As I responded to Ian, "Every time I think I've run across a new [to me] idea in electricity, it turns out to have been already written up by some guy in the 19th century!" How far behind I feel!

Regarding Birkeland currents, most of what I know other than a few papers on currents from satellite reports around Earth and recent ones on the current estimates for the Io-Jupiter, Enceladus-Saturn currents ,and one on the current in the jet at galaxy 3C303, comes from The Electric Universe and The Electric Sky books. That's not enough other than for introducing newbies like you and me to the conceptual ideas, and that's why I want to learn more about the circuitry and its actions in space, particularly regarding the care and feeding of stars and galaxies in such currents.

So far as I know, plasma physics texts do not address stars' being in electric currents in any fashion at all, and I have three of them now, and have reviewed and "peeked inside" a bunch more. Most of the plasma physics is all about learning the details of plasma and how it is described in equations and using MHD (not widely applicable per Alfvén) and studying instabilities and waves and "magnetic reconnections" etc. - seemingly with an eye toward working toward plasma fusion confinement. Only Peratt's textbook covers the fields of cosmic plasmas with any thoroughness, and even then he doesn't get so much into the details of the circuitry involved as in describing how double layers and accelerated charged particles operate in various environments and scales. His is still the best, despite astronomers' ignoring it wholesale, and dismissing it on other forums.

Jim

[Sparky]

Jim, missed your last post till now....sorry.....thanks for all the info. and the link...i now have the pdf....

i watch a recorded movie or tv program while i wait for things to download....I know there are sites i can't get and functions that will not work, but for now the dial up is working for most of what i want to do...the local library has 10 or more new computers and a wifi i could hook into if i had a wifi laptop..the laptop is top on my list of alternatives....

i still can't envision the current flows and electrical/magnetic fields of a torus, let alone the complex magnetic/electrical fields on the sun.

I may have to focus more on understanding my doggy magnets.

thanks for your time and effort!!!

[jjohnson]

You're more'n welcome. I want you and anyone else interested to know everything I know, and I want it now. In fact I want you to know more than I do, and have links that I don't, and to share it so we all can pick up on that, too. This is a very bootstrap type of operation. Help one, help us all. If I can do it, you can do it. If we can do it, it ain't braggin'.

Jim