Hi mcfc16,
Welcome to the forum.
Cheers. I have snipped for brevity, as well as my own formatting skills, or lack thereof.
As for the definitions you posted, they are very simplistic. So, when you say;
Are you disputing this logic? (As an aside: I propose the that name Solar Wind should be changed to "Solar Current" as the term "wind" is scientifically inaccurate.)
My answer, and that of anybody else qualified in PP, would be 'Yes, and the solar wind is not a current' I refer you to the passage I posted from Alfven's 1939 paper in my first post;
The stream approaching the earth contains positive and negative charge in equal amounts so that the electric current is zero.
Alfven was no idiot. He didn't get everything right, but he had that figured out pretty early on. It has to be that way. Otherwise, as he said;
But, as Schuster has shown, the emission of a sufficient amount of particles, all having the same sign, is impossible because it would give rise to an enormous space charge.
Bolding is mine.
That is not to say that charge imbalance cannot occur in the solar wind, or any other plasma. However, it is usually restricted to ~ the Debye length. Beyond which the plasma restores quasi-neutrality by the setting up of an ambipolar electric field.
So, to go back to the dictionary definitions, let me posit this as a simple exercise;
What is the overall current in the following parcel of plasma?:
-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-
Continue for as many rows as you like and convert it mentally into 3D.
You'll find that the sum of the + charges are cancelled out by the sum of the - charges. Zero current, as Alfven tells us. So, simply moving charged particles around does not equal a current. As I also said previously, for it to be a current, you would need only one sign of charge, an excess of one sign of charge, or the + and - charges to be separated. The latter is what happens as the quasi-neutral solar wind encounters the magnetosphere, as Alfven says in the passage I quoted.
You say;
Overall charge neutrality of a plasma does not make it behave as a gas.
I don't believe I said that. What I did say is that any plasma will act to restore quasi-neutrality when it becomes imbalanced. I mean.... try stopping an electric field from arising when you separate electrons and ions! To keep the charges separated, you need an external force. You have that as the solar wind plasma encounters the magnetosphere of whichever planet that has one.
I cannot stress this enough - the solar wind is not a current, and cannot possibly be one. I refer back to Alfven's enormous space charge, and the Sun exploding due to Coulomb repulsion. The sum of the negative charges leaving the Sun MUST be balanced by the sum of the positive charges leaving the Sun. Things get very messy otherwise!
It is still a plasma and within it are filaments of moving charged particles. It is still a flow of charged particles originating from the Sun. It is therefore an electric current connecting the Earth to the Sun
Wrong, sorry. Of course, it is a free country (at least the one I live in), and you are free to believe whatever you wish. However, you will not find a plasma physicist to agree with you. Including Hannes Alfven. In fact, he directly contradicts your interpretation. My encounters with electric universe proponents over the years led me to believe that Alfven cannot possibly be wrong about anything
He was. But not this. Nor about the Sun being powered by fusion in the core. It's pretty basic stuff.
Auroras are powered by the Sun via the solar wind and CME's.
Yes. Which is what Alfven was talking about in the passage I quoted. The current/s don't exist until the solar wind encounters a magnetosphere. They are induced. They do not exist within the solar wind itself.
The solar wind and CMEs are the electric current that causes the auroras to glow and shimmer.
No. They are not a current, as noted previously. They do not become a current until they encounter the magnetosphere. As Alfven tells us. And as decades of in-situ measurements tell us.
The very existence of the aurora at both poles of our planet, and other planets, is consistent with the proposition that the solar wind is an electric current.
No offence, but not according to anybody who understands plasma physics. If you have a Ouija board, try contacting Hannes, and telling him that he got it all wrong
I requote;
Hannes Alfven:
The stream approaching the earth contains positive and negative charge in equal amounts so that the electric current is zero. Through the action of the magnetic field of the earth the paths of the positives and of the negatives become differentiated, but until the particles reach the forbidden region, the space charge is always zero because the positives and negatives neutralize each other.
Now, do we believe Alfven, and every other plasma physicist on this subject, not to mention decades of in-situ measurements of the solar wind and heliospheric environment, or do we believe .......... whoever is claiming that the solar wind is a current? I know what I'm going with.
All the theoretical or semantic arguments to the contrary, do not change the fact that auroras on this and other planets are powered by the electrical connection of the planets to the Sun, via the solar wind and CME's.
Electrical? Yes, in that they are due to charged particles emitted by the Sun. A current? Nope. I hate to keep quoting Alfven, so I would suggest reading what he said carefully. It is not a current until it reaches what Alfven called the 'forbidden zone'. He was very clear on this. You may wish to junk his interpretation of the formation of the aurorae, but it is close enough (not perfect) that it is still valid, certainly in terms of his interpretation of a current-free solar wind. I know of nobody qualified in PP who thinks the solar wind is a current.
As for your links, they don't seem to be to peer-reviewed literature. Isn't Don Scott the one who thinks he can get a drift current of electrons in from beyond the heliosphere to power the Sun? It should be obvious to anyone conversant with plasma physics, and the solar wind, why that is impossible. He's an engineer, isn't he? Perhaps he ought to stick to that?
If you want a run-down of why that is impossible, just ask. This post is long enough as it is!