Allais Effect: Lunar Wake disturbs Solar Wind

[Solar]

Concept: During eclipse the Moon can disturb the the solar wind which can subsequently induce effects on “the equilibrium of electrical currents and of lines of force of the Earth's magnetic field”. This can then induce disturbances in the Earth’s geomagnetic activity. Localized imbalances (geomagnetic instabilities) are theorized to induce Eddy Currents “into conductive materials”, such as the test devices themself i.e. pendulums. Eddy Currents in the devices in turn induce magnetic fields of their own that interact with the magnetic field of the Earth and may cause the devices to undergo subtle deviations.

Paper: The Lunar Wake as cause of the Allais Effect: by Antonio Iovane 2014

Video: Video Presentation]Iovane - The Lunar Wake as Cause of the Allais Eclipse Effect by Sam Falaki 2014 (a bit rough)

[nick c]

For reference:
http://allais.maurice.free.fr/English/Science.htm

[formerlycbragz]

kia ora...so, assuming the iovanes idea is correct,the same effects ought to be induced when venus is eclipsing the sun also,through the venusian magnetail?...

[Solar]

kia ora...so, assuming the iovanes idea is correct,the same effects ought to be induced when venus is eclipsing the sun also,through the venusian magnetail?...

Some thoughts:

The transit of Venus does have an effect on Earth’s geomagnetic field. Considering how small these effects are, with regard to the Moon alone, trying to detect pendulum perturbations caused by the transit of Venus would undoubtably present an even worse situation than the current Allias Effect.

This next paper is about the detection of “significant deviations” in Earth’s atmospheric potential gradient during the 2004 transit of Venus across the Sun. With regard to Schuman Resonances the paper notes that “on the day of transit, the corresponding amplitude decreases”. Interestingly enough “peaks”, just before and just after the Venusian transit as displayed in (Fig 1) & (Fig 2), were noticed on the day of transit. See:

The effect of recent Venus transit on Earth’s atmosphere: Syam S. De et al

Also noticed in that paper is that the potential gradient decreased from a higher value to a lower value but the Schumann resonance did the opposite; they tend to increase from a lower value to a higher value. Nonetheless, significant deviations from average values were detected which means that the transit of Venus does have an influence on Earth’s Global Electric Circuit (GEC). Not enough to effect “terrestrial phenomena”, according to the authors, but enough to effect the “the depth of interaction between Earth’s magnetosphere and solar radiations.” - which refers to how significant, or intense, the influences might be. This probably signifies an even worse case scenario for detecting pendulum deviations that might be associated with the transit of Venus.

That paper is quite nice and the reference section looks to have good follow up material particularly HARNISCHMACHER, E. and K. RAWER (1981): Lunar and planetary influences upon the peak electron density of the ionosphere.

The moon is obviously closer than Venus so the combined Lunar effects on the GEC would be more pronounced. However, such effects are not always detectable because of the number of influences that might hamper the efforts (location, humidity, aerosols, dust, cloud cover etc). With all of these factors in mind here is a paper that looked for eclipse related electrodynamic "reduction in turbulent transfer of space charge" effects and did not find them:

Effects of the March 2015 solar eclipse on near-surface atmospheric electricity: A. J. Bennett

So, I think A. Iovane has a better approach with correlating long term observations with data from other sources (see his Section 4- The Correlation). The torsind appears to ‘respond’ to geomagnetic activity induced during periods when the Sun is active using data from NOAA GOES 13 satellite data. No wonder he referred to the correlation as “striking”.

As A. Iovane explains the Pugach pendulum was “electrostatically shielded but not magnetically shielded”. The earlier 2011 paper by Pugach notes that the apparatus was grounded in order to “excluded interference from static electricity and reduced magnetic pickups”. The potential influences from “magnetic pickups” were not excluded; they were simply “reduced”. See:

Is the Maurice Allais`s Effect Exclusively Gravitational in Nature?: Alexander Pugach

The title of Pugach's paper is the right question to ask.

Another thing of interest from I. Aiovane's paper is the observation that most of the “positive effects” were “shifted in time” relative to the visual observations "... sometimes by hours". That is interesting when consideration is given to the ‘delay’ that would need to occur for the solar wind to propagate over some distance. The electrodynamic solar wind (now perturbed by the presence of a planet) would need to travel from - for example - Moon to Earth, or Venus to Earth when they are between Earth and Sun.Then, the time it would take for electrodynamic ‘induction’ effects to occur within the Earth’s magnetosphere, then onwards to the Earth’s Global Electric Circuit, then onward into the test apparatus in the form of the proposed Eddy Currents - seems to make sense.

Would gravitational effects, even for pendulums, experience a delay "... sometimes by hours" over such relatively short distances? Probably not.

At the least: shielding against, or the lack thereof, solar wind induced geomagnetic electrodynamic effects is something to keep in mind with regard to these pendulum experiments.

[paladin17]

A few points to consider:
1) Solar wind magnetic field lines [in Earth's vicinity] are oriented not along sunward-antisunward direction, but are tilted to around 45 degrees to it (Parker spiral), so the effects of that sort would have to happen a week or at least few days before the eclipse (which is also unlikely, given the differences in inclination of lunar "orbit" "around the Earth" and Earth's orbit around the Sun);
2) Lunar wake is pretty short and shouldn't really reach the Earth (at least that's what the modeling shows) - it is maybe some 10^4 km long, but a length of 10^5 km is doubtful;
3) If such a minute change in geomagnetism that is [assumed to be] caused by the lunar wake affects the experiments so much, wouldn't they be affected orders of magnitude stronger during a regular decent geomagnetic storm?

[nick c]

Before we come up with explanations of the effect, shouldn't we determine if it is a real phenomenon?
Has the experiment been duplicated?

As a side note, Maurice Allais (1911-2010) was awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Evidently, he was a polymath.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/econo ... ais/facts/

[Solar]

Before we come up with explanations of the effect, shouldn't we determine if it is a real phenomenon?
Has the experiment been duplicated?

As a side note, Maurice Allais (1911-2010) was awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Evidently, he was a polymath.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/econo ... ais/facts/

According to the following NASA page, down at the bottom of said page, there have been a few subsequent positive detections of this effect (last updated 1/14/20). See:

A Solar Eclipse, Global Measurements and a Mystery

I don't think too much official effort is put into the Allias Effect because it is globally sporadic, and very small. Occasionally, one stumbles upon something related to it and I don't recall ever seeing anything suggesting a possible tiny electrical disturbance of this sort.

A few points to consider:
1) Solar wind magnetic field lines [in Earth's vicinity] are oriented not along sunward-antisunward direction, but are tilted to around 45 degrees to it (Parker spiral), so the effects of that sort would have to happen a week or at least few days before the eclipse (which is also unlikely, given the differences in inclination of lunar "orbit" "around the Earth" and Earth's orbit around the Sun);
2) Lunar wake is pretty short and shouldn't really reach the Earth (at least that's what the modeling shows) - it is maybe some 10^4 km long, but a length of 10^5 km is doubtful;
3) If such a minute change in geomagnetism that is [assumed to be] caused by the lunar wake affects the experiments so much, wouldn't they be affected orders of magnitude stronger during a regular decent geomagnetic storm?

Lunar Surface Charging, Transient Lunar Phenomena (flashes), and the Lunar Wake are very interesting electrodynamic phenomena. Yet, the Earth-Moon 'system' is not just a gravitational relationship. Iovane's paper did say that there were effects of this sort observed during sunspot number, and/or "ordinary geomagnetic disturbances, stronger in a non-eclipse day". His point seems to be that these pendulums are regularly detecting such disturbances whether there is an eclipse; or not. Several other factors (humidity, temp etc) come into play though. As for how "short" the Lunar Wake may be see this abstract:

Abstract
Because the solar wind (SW) flow is usually super-sonic, a fast-mode bow shock (BS) is formed in front of the Earth's magnetosphere, and the Moon crosses the BS at both dusk and dawn flanks. On the other hand, behind of the Moon along the SW flow forms a tenuous region called lunar wake, where the flow can be sub-Alfvénic (and thus sub-sonic) because of its low-density status. Here we report, with joint measurement by Chang’E-1 and SELENE, that the Earth's BS surface is drastically deformed in the lunar wake. Despite the quasi-perpendicular shock configuration encountered at dusk flank under the Parker-spiral magnetic field, no clear shock surface can be found in the lunar wake, while instead gradual transition of the magnetic field from the upstream to downstream value was observed for a several-minute interval. This finding suggests that the ‘magnetic ramp’ is highly broadened in the wake where a fast-mode shock is no longer maintained due to the highly reduced density. On the other hand, observations at the 100 km altitude on the dayside show that the fast-mode shock is maintained even when the width of the downstream region is smaller than a typical scale length of a perpendicular shock. Our results suggest that the Moon is not so large to eliminate the BS at 100 km altitude on the dayside, while the magnetic field associated with the shock structure is drastically affected in the lunar wake. - Anomalous deformation of the Earth's bow shock in the lunar wake: Joint measurement by Chang’E-1 and SELENE - Masaki N.Nishino

I'm not defending Antonio Iovane's 2014 work; but I do find it very interesting.