There is next to no resistance in space. Free electrons are free to go where they will best balance charges.

Also concerning thermal xrays... It is simply black-body radiation. This is efficient enough for clouds of very hot gas the size we are seeing to be wonderful xray sources. Not bizarre electric current in a neon tube explanation is needed.

I believe that there are currents, magnetic fields, and small charges in space, and that there are phenomena that are visible because of this, but these are small compared to the phenomena associated with gravity and heat. The electric universe guys think gravity and heat are small compared to the effects of electricity in space.

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I think that a lot of the people that support the electric or plasma universe are attracted to the symmetries that are presented in studying electromagnetism.

From what I have read on a number of sites, it appears to have a familiar ring left behind by Eric Lerner's "The Big Bang Never Happened".

Hannes Alfven described our sun in its pre-main-sequence stage as transferring
angular momentum to the planets by a current system where plasma clouds
moving in the magnetic field of the sun generate a current that returns to the protostar. The interaction of the magnetic field and the current would then, according to Alfven, accelerate the plasma cloud. Returning current is supposed to
then interact with the sun's magnetic field, slowing down its angular momentum
and causing contraction..

Like Kepler's Platonic solids description of the solar system, it comes with plenty of math and evidence shaped under false basis.

This model perceives spiral galaxies as being galaxies in their infancy when evidence shows its the other way around. The Hubble sees no spiral galaxies in
its deep fields. It does see galaxies that look more like train wrecks than filaments
twisting together.

One could take this to a ridiculous extreme that can still sound like it makes sense.

The laws of motion could be said to be completely governed by electrcity..
DC current = uniform motion...AC current= accelerating motion....Ground=random
motion. From this I could conclude that all accelerating motions can simply have
interference with other accelerating motions that are equal in amplitude and out of
phase with each other by 180 degrees and the result should be either a uniform motion or a random one...Head-on collisions could be avoided if two oncoming cars simply pass through a highway oscillator that keeps everyone out of phase
and, with the adding of field rotations, everybody misses everybody...

It holds no water.

They started out by condeming the BB because it was based on theory while their
theory was based on observation...Observation now contradicts those visions of Alfven.

They perceive an eternal universe..Where's all the matter that is 10 ^6000 years
old? If just one atom from each year back to infinity was still around, then over
99% of what I'm breathing should be matter that is even older than that..Proton decay, if it exists, would be all around us giving off gamma radiation and Helium stars should dominate the universe...The most fundamental particle should be electrically influenced.. They aren't. It is the stretching of gluon fields that creates quark/antiquark pairs and this has been verified..Therefore stretching, or spatial
expansion, is a prequisite for quark generation..

But I like its attempts. Alternative theories sometimes are invalid in one sense but
certain aspects can resurface that help explain other future problems. They give us practice at debating matters and reveal things in a way that allows an uninformed eavesdropper to get a better grasp.

blueshift

That doesn't exclude charge separation and the formation of double layers.

Heating of rarefied gas is an extremely inefficient way to generate X-rays, if it wasn't my dentist would just use some kind of oven instead of the electrically generated X-ray source he uses now.


For gravity to make a difference we need massive objects (gravitational collapse of clouds of molecules is not a realistic way to form stars and planets), electromagnetic forces can make the difference on exactly that type of circumstances through the Z-pinch effect. Accreting matter comes first, gravity can come in later when enough matter is accreted.

Blueshift, I think the reason people are attracted to the Plasma/Electric model is that the current BBT model is not adequately explaining all the observations and it has too many ad hoc additions every time a new window on the cosmos is opened. The problem is that most scientists are unable to look outside de BB box because it is tied in with so many other theories that untangling the mess is a huge task. People want to see "extraordinary" evidence whenever the BB is falsified by observations. There aren't many competing theories around so the EU/Plasma model is a natural model to turn to.

That really depends on how you look at it, deep field images are biased towards the brightest parts of the galaxies and I have yet to see evidence that the "early Universe" contains only young galaxies, in fact recent studies reveal surprisingly mature galaxies in the early Universe.


I don't see any observations contradicting Alfvén's ideas, but his model is some 40 years old and will need some work, in fact the EU people are busy doing just that, filling more and more details.

On the whole the EU model has a lot more to prove but their predictions hold up so far (see Stardust topic), so maybe the idea that electric interactions are much more important than first thought is not so strange. Space is no longer empty, and magnetic fields are accepted everywhere, just the electric part is still missing.

Cheers.

VanderL,

Thanks for responding...Just curious. Have you read Tim Thompson's
critique on the Electric Universe at his site? I'd be curious to your response.
He seems to take it on point by point and critiques the equation of the Reynold's
number..( I think I got that word right )

Go to:

http://tim-thompson.com/electric-sun.html


Clear skies...

blueshift

The electric Sun model is utterly falsified by helioseismology, data from which matches standard Solar Models to less than 0.1%. And neutrinos are no longer an issue because all varieties can be see - and ARE seen - with the latest detectors like Sudbury. Hence the supposed "evidence" for an electric Sun has evaporated.

qraal

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Hi qraal,

The data from helioseismology and the recent neutrino oscillations do not utterly falsify the Electric model. The evidence for an electric Sun must come from other observations, neutrino data are still important to confirm the EU model because the fusion (which is indeed happening in the Sun) is postulated to take place at the solar surface and must show variability connected to surface features of the Sun (e.g. Sunspots). What is happening at the Sun's core is not known in the EU model, the only thing certain in that model is that nuclear fusion is only a minor source of energy. And the impressive sounding 0.1 % match is only true if all the assumptions are correct.

Cheers.

The match up is true even if the assumptions are wrong. But while we're discussing this, why don't you enumerate the assumptions you think are suspect, and give us some error bars to indicate how far off you think they might be.

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VanderL,


If fusion takes place out near the surface of the star, how do you account
for such a dramatic reduction in gamma ray energy?

Have gamma rays in a lab been reduced to optical wavelengths in very short times?

Wouldn't FUSE have picked up some reading by now?

Further, experiments show that it takes a combination of density and temperature
to produce fusion..Temperature alone won't do it. The high temperature of the corona fails to produce fusion due to low density..

Do you see density shifting around in the star like raisins in raisin bread?

blueshift

blueshift:
"The Hubble sees no spiral galaxies in
its deep fields. It does see galaxies that look more like train wrecks than filaments
twisting together."

hubble does see spirals in its deep field shots...the trick until recently was to see mature ellipticals (as well) at high z.

you can see "train wrecks" and "proto galaxies" at any "era" of the universe....they shouldn't be seen as proof of hierarchy.

madman,
Thanks for the post and reply..

However, the most compelling evidence against an infinite universe is still quite
local and doesn't need any use of telescopes..

Distance does not determine age in an ageless universe model.
It does in a BB model..

The Earth cannot be constantly moving through virgin spacetime..If just one atom from each year back to infinity survives, the majority of what we breath should be very, very ancient..Where is it? Where is matter that is at least 10^ 6000th power
years old? There should be a lot of it and it should be all over...

Radioactive decay can measure how old a given mixture of atoms is. Rubidium and strontium are found in rock and when Rb-87 decays into Sr-87, it does with the rate of a half life of 47 billion years..


Go to:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/age.html

Then come back and tell me where all that ancient matter is..

This brings up a question of proton decay..On both sides of that coin the ageless universe gets into trouble...

If protons do decay, we should see it all around us and gamma radiation should be given off, killing a lot of people...We should see helium stars in dominance
and evolution shouldn't have happened...

But there is a way to save the ageless model here by giving decayed protons a place to go...a place the ageless True Believers don't want it to go...to dark matter
or dark energy...

If protons don't decay another problem pops up...Now we have an absolute...
Sounds a bit religious, doesn't it? Further, helium nuclei would have trouble forming from fusing of protons that can't decay into it...

Now explain the quantum universe...It does not continuously subdivide. An ageless
universe that is infinite should be infinitly small as well. It isn't..It gives a limiting
wall that we run into..

Fritz Zwicky was an argumentive person. He was one of founding fathers of both Dark Matter and Tired Light theories...Now, years later, his disciples have their own
form of a sitcom "spinoff", with each group pointing at the other, claiming to have
observational science by its side...

It's the Hatfields vs. the McCoys...high tech

blueshift

Sorry, I don't see what you mean with this question.


The fusion in an Electric model is thought to happen in the photosphere where strong magnetic fields are an indication of the energy that is released there, apparently enough to get fusion of elements (btw the Standard model also acknowledges fusion during flares/CME's).
An indication that this is really happening would come from measuring neutrino flux while sunspot groups are crossing the field, possibly influencing the neutrino flux (all flavours).

blueshift....
when you talk about "age of matter"...you refer to atomic/molecular constructions undergoing processes like "decay".

these are not primary particles...they are organised structures undergoing changes of state not related to the reason of "why the matter exists" or "how long it has existed".

protons seem to be a stable longlasting form....it doesn't mean that they must be unable to decay.....just that they tend not to decay?

why is proton stability a problem for the "ageless universe" crew?


"Now explain the quantum universe...It does not continuously subdivide. An ageless
universe that is infinite should be infinitly small as well. It isn't..It gives a limiting
wall that we run into.."

the upcoming atlas experiment will supposedly show us a whole new family of sub-quark particles?

First madman...I think I cut him short...but good questions anyway..
The quantum world can very well find things smaller than a quark. It is hypothesized that preons exist, two per quark, one describing flavor and the other
defining color. This was proposed by Abdus Salam somewhere between 1989 and 1995..

The size of that preon will still be above the planck length..That barrier won't be popped...If Lee Smolin's LoopQuantum Theory is proven valid ( we'll know that in just a few years) then spacetime itself will prove to be quantized as well.

Secondly, to deal with your other comment...When rock solidifies chemical elements often get separated into different crystalline grains within it. Sodium and calcium are both common elements with different chemical behavior and show up in different grains in differentiated rock..

Rubidium and strontium behave in a similar manner and are found in different
grains of rock..Rb 87 decays into Sr-87 with a half life of 47 billion years..

But strontium-86 (Sr-86) is not produced by any Rb decay...Sr-87 is radiogenic while Sr-86 is not. Sr-86 is used to determine what fraction of of the Sr-87 was produced by decay..Ratios get compared...Sr-87/Sr-86 to Rb-87/Sr-86.

At rock formation there is a fixed ratio of Sr87/Sr86 in all the different grains.
There's a wide range of ratios of Rb87/ Sr-86...

After the rock has been solid for several years, a fraction of Rb-87 decays into Sr-87..From here you need to go to that site I mentioned. It's got a bit of math that
winds up with a slope term to solve for age...

This method is not perfect. Isochron methodology is better and has more measurements taken from several rocks dealing with the amount of a different isotope of the same element as the daughter...Do a google search and I'm sure you'll find a better explanation than I gave...This isn't as main of a point as the principle of how much ancient matter should be right here....It's had eternity to get
here....

Our spectroscopes should be showing some strange lines popping up that don't
make any sense and we should be continuosly confused by the different star dust
spectra...I expect many more globular clusters than I see and they should contain an enormous number of white dwarfs...They should be very close and many galaxies should be nothing but white dwarfs, dimming away...There should be so many that no one should be arguing about Dark Matter..This is what infinity should
provide...

VanderL,

Fusion does take place near the surface and even in envelopes of H in big stars..
Density there and in many flares is strong enough....I was asking a " I don't know"
question more than a leading question...

I'm curious, from your viewpoint, how the gamma radiation from p-p fusion
gets dragged down by so many levels...I picture rising and falling cells in the standard model having the cooler falling gases dropping things down a bit...

But I also know that modern day refridgeration is using magnetic fields to cool
things down...Do you see the mag field, twisting about and bringing about such cooling...Or are conditions impossible here ??


blueshift

blueshift...regardless of salam's preons or the supposed cutoff point at planck scale ....the proof will be found through direct detection only.....

**************************

on the other point of "age of matter"....again you are considering only molecular constructions....they have no bearing on how old the constituent parts are..ie: protons/electrons/neutrons/neutrinos etc.

I think you are mixing the different models with your question, fusion in an Electric model can be likened to fusion in a "plasma gun" where high magnetic fields are used to create the high density/temperature necessary for fusion (originally to start the reaction in the big fusion reactors). In these plasma guns most of the elements present at the solar surface can be generated (or so it is claimed). In the Electric model, the magnetic field in the Sun is only a surface feature because that is where the electric potential gradient (in a double layer; the photosphere) is maximum. In the Standard Model the idea of rising and falling "cells" in the convection layer presupposes that these features can be stable over the enormous dictances from the core to the surface (more like tubes).
In the Electric model, the solar interior is not active, just a ball of plasma accomodating the electric input from the Birkeland currents in space (where variable input is responsible for the sunspot cycle and different acceleration conditions for the solar wind), everything important is happening at the surface.

Cheers.

I've been pointing to the bright spots on the surface of comet Wild 2 in the Stardust thread.
The bright spots are connected to the jets as is stated by the NASA/JPL people in the Science articles. I only have an Abstract but it seems clear that the jets are the result of electrical activity as claimed by the EU people .


This means that there is a direct confirmation of the electrical nature of cometary activity and imo it could be evidence that the Sun is also electrically powered.

Cheers.

It seeming clear to you is not physical proof.

Please take a look at the site for the Rosetta probe, and tell me if the instruments on it, and on the lander will be able to make a definitive statement as to whether that comet has a powerful source of electrons in it.

Rosetta Probe

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madman,

Apparently you are perceiving a pre-molecular time that is infinitely old?

Secondly, if space is continuosly subdividable, Zeno's arrow cannot get from point A to point B because there is infinite space between all points..Motion shouldn't exist..

As far as direct contact being the only way to observe, I don't think that holds up.
Do we touch the Sun to find out its hot?

And, are you putting an undeserved halo on observational science?

Observational science by itself is a total failure.
Theoretical science by itself is a failure...

Reductionism by itself is a failure and inductive reasoning by itself is a failure..

blueshift

The bright spots are connected to the jets (physical proof), and the bright spots are a prediction of the EU people that the jets are electrically generated and no explanation as to why these spots should be there has come from the Stardust team. So until anyone can tell me why those spots are there and why the unusual jets from the dark side crater are generated, I think the observations support the EU model.


If the probe/lander has a camera and polarisation filters it should be able to show exactly where the jets are formed, and in the "dirty snowball" model there should be holes, gaps or crevices where the jets start, in the EU model no "holes" are needed. The arcs will also show up in X-ray, I think, I'm not sure if the Rosetta probe is equipped to see them. Other than that the probe seems to be equipped with any imaginable instrument, so it will definitely show us how comets work.

Maybe the returned samples of Stardust will have given us additional clues.

Cheers.

On previous occassions, you have chastised me saying that the lack of another explanation [thought up so far] does not prove the only known explanation. I agreed, and have since been careful about this. Now you are taking a different position...

None the less, if a comet has a tar like surface of non-ejected residue that get broken though by the whiter volatile ices [whether the break through is from an impact or an explosion] -- that would result in jets coming from relatively bright spots. We could tell the difference between the EU scenario and mine because in the EU case, the bright spots should be wildly incandescent, and in mine they should be much lighter colored than the charcoal colored surface.

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I don't claim it is definite proof, but merely state evidence that supports the EU model, which is clearly aginst what most people think and has been attacked for several reasons, some with good reason and good counter-explanations, others have been nothing more than off-hand rejections. My point is always to see what the data reveal and then look at what explanation fits. Also, my opinion is nothing more than that, different views are what we discuss here if I offended in any way, please tell me, I never intend to attack people.

On the rest of your post, the surface shows clearly rocky features and is not the pile of rubble that was thought first, so new models is where I put my money, yours or the EU model, just not the "dirty snowball" model, I think that has become much clearer I hope.

Cheers.

"madman,

Apparently you are perceiving a pre-molecular time that is infinitely old"

no....i consider that the material of the universe might be infinitely old....but that doesn't stop it from being organised into forms that alter their state over time (which is what we see).

i am pointing out that your evidence for the age of the universe is based on these states only.

it's like you're looking at an apple that has just ripened and trying to tell us that because it only has a few weeks before it goes bad..that that is a true indicator of the age of the universe in toto.

"Secondly, if space is continuosly subdividable, Zeno's arrow cannot get from point A to point B because there is infinite space between all points..Motion shouldn't exist.."

there is no proof of that (Zeno's arrow cannot get from point A to point B because there is infinite space between all points).......i am just saying that there is also no proof yet of a cutoff point.


"As far as direct contact being the only way to observe, I don't think that holds up.
Do we touch the Sun to find out its hot?"

no...instead we can feel the light that it emits...which vibrates electrons and gives the sensation of "heat"....that is our proof without touching the sun....without that real detected effect we would not register the phenomenon called "heat".


"And, are you putting an undeserved halo on observational science?

Observational science by itself is a total failure.
Theoretical science by itself is a failure...

Reductionism by itself is a failure and inductive reasoning by itself is a failure..

blueshift "


then which science is a success?....which bits can you quote or use for your arguments?
how can you use terms like "zeno's arrow...or "decay" if all is a total failure....where can your arguments progress from?.

madman,

Good reply..Now we're getting some place...A couple of terms may have slipped you by...A metaphor is in order...

Does an electric field...BY ITSELF...constitute a wave?
Does a magnetic field...BY ITSELF..constitute a wave?

When tools and material is given to someone to build a house...or to experiment with the trade of building houses, it took a marriage of theoretical science to use
math and design the tools and bricks and to mass produce them..Standards of measure must exist...

Mao Tse Tung was an extreme admirer of Thomas Edison and Einstein. He felt that
if he could make every backyard in China a place for people to experiment and invent that, having a billion potential inventors, inventions would pop out like flowers...His Great Leap Forward became a Great Leap Backward...There were no spare parts and each inventor wanted his or hers to be the prototype...the amount of reworking it took to make something in one back yard fit something in the next back yard ttok away time needed to work fields...Starvation resulted...

There are garages all over America that catch fire each year by people who are trapped in their closed world of "learning by doing" and you are exchanging with someone who has been around too much bad experience when observational science tries to deny theoretical science...Trial and error doesn't work...It makes pack rats out of people and breeds fire hazards...It does fix a few wounded autos here and there and can build a few porches..( with too much wood left over ), but it's a dead end..

Likewise, theoretical science lives in a duped world where it tries to make the world fit what is written in books....Just sit up straight in class, shut off your brain,
take orders, put your name up in the right hand corner, and pass multiple choice
tests....all which has little to do with discovery...

Parts of each, however, can be coordinated and reworked

Science is a methodology that seeks to find out whether something is workable or not in a low risk environment, where the possible failure is affordable and untrapping..Prototypes shouldn't be pushed that are unworkable..Yet, they do get pushed forward at times when budgets show they spent too much on the protoype, resulting in disasters...Or, they get pushed when someone's idea gets
falsely protected because daddy is on the board of governors..The reduction gear starters in old Chryslers is an example..

As for the statements I made concerning reductionism and inductionism..just
review the November Revolution of 1974...at SLAC and Brookhaven...and the results it produced...

As far as taking an apple to measure the age of anything...no, not quite..Meteorites are not apples...But if a basket of apples half rots in one week
and none are rotten...I would say that one week has not gone by.....

Six trillion year old material should be around here...Micrometeorite dust falls to
Earth each day...It's had forever to get here and simple probabalistic math says that it should outnumber all the grains of sand on the planet...Where is it? It should stick out like a sore thumb and be seen from outer space...

There's a possibility here that you were sat down in some class and got force- fed
the Cambridge School of Cosmology...This is truth...agree or no pass...If that's the case, I can't hold it against you to reject it...I was lucky...I didn't go to college.

Everything in the universe has shown to have a limit..Birth, maturity, death, and decay..Why should the universe be any different?

Prove infinity...You can't..Eric Lerner admitted he can't...If it's not provable, is it science?



blueshift

again you mention molecular constructs as indicators of age....if a dust grain (or whatever) exhibits no signature of age...how can you tell it's age?

************************************************** *****
not being able to prove the universe is infinite in age....doesn't mean it's not.

it might not even be possible to prove at the moment...if the viewable universe is a minor creation (with a "lifetime")...sitting within a larger universe...that might be infinite in age.

regardless...i'm not bothered either way.

************************************************** *****

Here's an interesting paper exploring the topic of the alignment of dust grains in interstellar clouds. Among the mechanism that could cause this alignment is the interstellar magnetic fields.

Among other things this paper tells us a few things about the strength and uniformity of the magnetic field implied by this polarization. There's some math, but not overwhelming if you've had some calculus.

Grain Alignment in Molecular Clouds

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Here's another paper that discusses possible large observed effects of magnetic fields. In this case it is about the orbital periods of close binaries in cases where at least one of them is a large convective star. The idea is that there is a small measurable change in the orbital period based on the changing magnetic cycle of the larger star.

Cyclic Period Changes in Close Binaries

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Hi Antoniseb,

Thanks for the links to the papers, I hope you don't mind me asking why you post them here. These papers are interesting, but are frustratingly vague on how the magnetic fields are formed and where exactly the fields can be found. In your opinion are these papers telling us something in favour of the notion of an electric Universe or maybe just the opposite, or are they pointing to something else entirely? Thanks,

Louis.

In my opinion, these papers are putting definite limits on the intensity, and scale of electric and magnetic fields in stars and interstellar space. The net result is a confirmation that there are meaningfully large fields, but that they are nothing like the fields described in the Electric Universe web-site.

It is my opinion that these papers provide a sort of middle ground that confirm that E&M are important, but which demonstrate that the more extreme claims of the electric universe are not supported by observation.

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Thanks for the clarification Antoniseb,

I'm not sure what you mean by this, how are these large fields generated? And what are the EU claims that are contradicted by these papers?
I admire the way you keep pointing towards novel findings, it is much appreciated and helps to gain more insight.

Cheers.

Early in this thread I asked Tim Thompson about the solar wind and what happens to it near the boundary or heliosphere. Here is a similar question by a plasma engineer that nicely describes where the problem with the standard view lies.

Cheers.