Electrical Transfers Through the Heliosphere

[Michael Mozina]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... lar-system

A couple of quotes from the article seemed noteworthy to me:

Far from being a distinct boundary, the very edge of our Solar System actually churns with roiling magnetic fields, clashing stellar windstorms, storms of high energy particles and swirling radiation.

The only way to end up with "roiling magnetic fields" in a plasma is to have electric current, and this type of activity is exactly what we'd expect to see in the outermost "double layer" of the sun, the heliosphere.

“The estimate from the Voyagers is that the heliopause is about one astronomical unit thick (93 million miles, which is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun),” says Provornikova. “It's not really a surface. It's a region with complex processes. And we don’t know what’s going on there.”

Not only do solar and interstellar winds create a turbulent tug of war in the boundary region, but particles appear to swap charges and momentum. As a result, a portion of the interstellar medium becomes converted to solar wind, actually increasing the outward push of the bubble.

So essentially the swap of electrical charges, between the sun and "space" takes inside of a double layer that is about 1AU in thickness.

It appears that what happens outside the heliosphere matters much more than what happens within. The solar wind can wax or wane over time without appearing to dramatically affect the bubble. But if that bubble moves into a region of the galaxy with denser or less dense interstellar wind, then it will shrink or grow.

So essentially the outside particle activity matters more to the overall size of the heliosphere than the inside. The density of the interstellar wind has the greatest effect on the size of the heliosphere.

If we're going to characterize the plasma environment outside of the heliosphere, we'd have to include the effect of cosmic rays where are *overwhelmingly*(99%) positively charged particles moving at close the speed of light, and bombarding our solar system continuously with positively charged particles.

There would undoubtedly tend to be Birkeland current filaments connecting the various stars to the current flow patterns moving throughout the galaxy. Presumably the galaxy would also tend to generate a "bubble" around itself and between the galaxy and the intercluster medium. At the largest levels, superclusters are embedded current carrying filaments of massive proportions.

[Michael Mozina]

https://youtu.be/S4eg95rG18M?t=422

This is an interesting video on this topic, particularly around the 7:10 mark. It seems the double layer at the boundary of the heliosphere blocks/absorbs/diverts about 70 percent of the positively charged cosmic rays. The temperature increases and density increases shouldn't have been a surprise to astronomers, but alas, apparently it was.

[Lloyd]

Michael, in his paper, Heliosphere, at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=9774 Charles Chandler says as follows.

"The part of the standard model that isn't correct is the termination shock. ... If the Sun has been burning for a billion years, the heliopause should be a billion times thicker. But such a build-up of density in the heliopause doesn't exist, as data from Voyager I have shown. Rather, the density is greater beyond the heliopause,3 because the ISM is cooler and denser than the heliosphere, while inside the heliopause, as determined by chemical composition, magnetic fields, etc., the density follows the rule in Figure 1. ... the total mass of the IPM is just 3.53 × 10^16 kg, and with the mass of the solar wind being 3.15 × 10^16 kg/yr,4:409,5 the solar wind should be able to populate the IPM to its current density in just 1.21 years. So if the Sun has been burning longer than that, where are all of the particles from years gone by? The interstellar winds, moving at only 23 km/s, won't be able to remove material being supplied by the solar wind at 450 km/s. So where does all of the mass in the solar wind go, if it isn't being whisked away by the interstellar winds, and if it isn't building up in a termination shock at the heliopause? It actually seems to be raining back down on the Sun.6,7 It's tough to see in the blinding light of charge streams excited to greater than 1 MK in the corona, but once neutralized, particles are free to fall back to the Sun due to the force of gravity, as long as they can stay out of the helmet streamers. In other words, the wind pressure isn't the same in all directions, and while the highly energetic outflow is easy to see, there is an equal-but-opposite inflow that gently recycles neutralized matter. Most of the density in the IPM is very near the Sun, as we can see in Figure 2, and which is due simply to the Sun's 274 m/s2 gravitational acceleration. So that's the 3.15 × 10^16 kg/yr making its way back to the Sun."
"Away from the Sun, the boundary between the IPM and the ISM actually seems to be somewhat less dramatic of a transition than had been expected — there is some turbulence in the heliopause, and the magnetic fields flip every time the wind changes direction. But there is no termination shock. The IPM is hotter, and as a consequence it's less dense, while the ISM is cooler and more dense. Still, the ideal gas laws show that both are at roughly the same pressure (i.e., ~10^−21 pascals). The IPM is a little less dense than it should be, but it also has a slight positive charge, meaning that electrostatic repulsion contributes to the hydrostatic pressure. Thus the IPM and the ISM are in equilibrium, just on the basis of temperature and charge, and without the need for any wind pressure to help maintain the bubble. The positive charge in the IPM begins with the ejection of +ions in CMEs. But at the heliopause, there appears to be another mechanism that increases the positive charge in the IPM. Recent research has demonstrated that when neutral interstellar atoms impinge on the heliosphere, the electrons are stripped off in particle collisions, while the +ions continue into the IPM due to their greater momenta.8,9 Electrostatic repulsion within the IPM then distributes the positive charges. So when CMEs eject +ions out into the IPM, they are simply adding to an existing positive charge there, and the electrons flowing out of the Sun to re-establish charge equilibrium are attracted to the combined positive charge."

He also explains the Heliospheric Current Sheet and the Auroras. Apparently the HCS ends between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. The charges recombine by then and fall back to the Sun as neutral atoms. Most of that occurs much closer to the Sun.

Aren't the electric currents at the heliopause just static electricity? It doesn't look to me like the electric currents connect or power the stars, since the HCS ends before the orbit of Saturn.

[nick c]

It doesn't look to me like the electric currents connect or power the stars, since the HCS ends before the orbit of Saturn.

No, the HCS extends through out the Heliosphere, which is the plasma bubble created by the Sun, insulating the solar system from the interstellar medium.
The quote below is from a paper written in 2001, however the Voyagers were well beyond the orbit of Neptune at that time having passed Neptune in 1989.

The heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is the boundary between open oppositely directed magnetic field lines which commonly originate as the outward extension of the solar magnetic dipole. The dipole tilt, the rotation of the Sun, and the outward propagation of the solar wind cause peaks and valleys in the current sheet which spiral outward. The HCS extends throughout the heliosphere to the greatest distances reached by Pioneer and Voyager.

[bold added]
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001J ... S/abstract

[nick c]

Aren't the electric currents at the heliopause just static electricity?

The heliopause is the interface between two plasma conditions; the heliosphere and the interstellar medium. Looking at it from a static electricity perspective is working from an a priori false assumption and can only lead to wrong conclusions.
see:
Of Pith Balls and Plasma

[Lloyd]

I was wrong about the HCS not reaching Saturn. Charles says the HCS is what causes Saturn's auroras. Although the paper Nick mentioned says the HCS goes well past Neptune, I think it gets progressively weaker with distance from the Sun. I don't know if static electricity is the same as electrostatics, but Charles says as follows.

_"Away from the Sun, the boundary between the IPM and the ISM actually seems to be somewhat less dramatic of a transition than had been expected — there is some turbulence in the heliopause, and the magnetic fields flip every time the wind changes direction. But there is no termination shock. The IPM is hotter, and as a consequence it's less dense, while the ISM is cooler and more dense. Still, the ideal gas laws show that both are at roughly the same pressure (i.e., ~10−21 pascals). The IPM is a little less dense than it should be, but it also has a slight positive charge, meaning that electrostatic repulsion contributes to the hydrostatic pressure. Thus the IPM and the ISM are in equilibrium, just on the basis of temperature and charge, and without the need for any wind pressure to help maintain the bubble.
_"The positive charge in the IPM begins with the ejection of +ions in CMEs. But at the heliopause, there appears to be another mechanism that increases the positive charge in the IPM. Recent research has demonstrated that when neutral interstellar atoms impinge on the heliosphere, the electrons are stripped off in particle collisions, while the +ions continue into the IPM due to their greater momenta.8,9 Electrostatic repulsion within the IPM then distributes the positive charges. So when CMEs eject +ions out into the IPM, they are simply adding to an existing positive charge there, and the electrons flowing out of the Sun to re-establish charge equilibrium are attracted to the combined positive charge."

8. May, H. D. (2008): A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 36 (5): 2876-2879 ⇧
A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere
Author(s): May, H. D.
Date: 2008/10
Abstract: It is a widely held belief that a large-scale electric field of any significant magnitude cannot be present in the heliosphere because of electric currents through the highly conductive plasma, present throughout the heliosphere, which would immediately neutralize any nascent electric fields. This paper questions that longstanding belief and describes a mechanism to account for such a field. Some of the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) ions lose almost all of their kinetic energy from solar modulation and, due to their short radii of gyration, are effectively deposited continuously throughout the heliosphere inside the solar wind termination shock. It is pointed out here that the deposition of these ions occurs at a greater rate than that for GCR electrons, and that a large-scale static electric field is sustained by the ions because of the time delay in the arrival of neutralizing electron currents.
Publisher: IEEE
Journal (full): IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
9. May, H. D. (2010): A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere (Part II). viXra, Astrophysics: 1005.0090 ⇧
A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere (Part II)
Author(s): May, H. D.
Date: 2010/05/21
Abstract: In Part I of this paper [1] it was proposed that a static electric potential of about +800 MV is present in the heliosphere, sustained by the continual inflow of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) protons. Charge neutralization cannot occur because the solar wind and magnetic fields allow more protons than electrons to pass through the termination shock (TS) deeply into the heliosphere. The result is a quasi-static electric field, at dynamic equilibrium, inside the heliosphere. This paper adds some important details that were not included in Part I, and makes some clarifications. The presence of the heliospheric electric field opens up the possibility of accounting for the Pioneer Anomaly, and also the anomalous cosmic rays, as caused by electric fields.

I don't know the difference between electrostatics and electrodynamics, but in Charles' model at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=6031 electrostatics is responsible for the formation of galactic filaments from supernova shock waves and gas cloud collisions, and for the implosion of filaments into stars, and for the formation of current-free double layers in stars, and for the stellar winds that stars produce. So electrostatics seems to be sufficiently powerful to produce the universe. Eh?