Star Jets

Herbig Haro star HH 24. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)/Hubble-Europe (ESA) Collaboration, D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), and B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)

Herbig Haro star HH 24. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)/Hubble-Europe (ESA) Collaboration, D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), and B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)

 

Jul 28, 2016

How can superheated gas create a jet almost 1500 light-years long?

According to a recent press release, collimated jets are normally considered to result from matter falling into the putative gravity field of a black hole. As stellar matter orbits closer to the black hole, it is accelerated to extreme velocities, causing violent collisions among the particles that can generate X-rays and other high frequency radiation. Eventually, somehow, the acceleration creates a powerful filamentary jet. Hubble’s images show that jets form close to a star rather than in the surrounding disk. Recent research is reconsidering the necessity for a disk to form a nozzle for collimating the jets, like a garden hose.

Astronomers sometimes see ionized particles and X-rays erupting from various stars. Explaining them ranks as one of their most difficult tasks. As mentioned, the prevailing theory is that dust and gas are energized by collisions as they orbit within a black hole’s accretion disk. Gas and dust grains heating up as they orbit does not address the jets. There is only one force that can hold a matter stream together over long distances: electromagnetism. The only way to generate that electromagnetic confinement is with electricity.

Electromagnetic fields are just one part of the story. Failing to realize that electric charge flow creates magnetic fields has led many physicists to model plasma in space without considering electricity. Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén noted that plasma is “too complicated and awkward” for the tastes of mathematicians. It is “not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories” and requires laboratory experiments.

Alfvén observed that the plasma Universe had become “the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong”. He thought that the underlying assumptions of cosmologists “are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not ‘understand’ how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them”.

As previously written, stars are nodes in electric circuits. Their electromagnetic energy could be stored in the equatorial current sheets surrounding them until some trigger event causes them to switch into a polar discharge. The electric jet could receive its energy from a natural particle-accelerator, a plasma double layer with a strong electric field. Toroidal magnetic fields would form because of the polar plasma discharge, confining it into a narrow channel.

Electric Universe advocate Wal Thornhill wrote: “Plasma cosmology has one great advantage in that the phenomena are scaleable from galaxies down to stars, planets and the lab. So it is possible to bring cosmology back down to earth and do away with invisible dark matter, neutron stars, black holes and the Big Bang. They are unnecessary when the electric force is a thousand trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity!”

Stephen Smith

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