I am sorry to tell you, but EU theories are not young! The EU-ers are hanging on every word Hannes Alfven has written, and he developed his theory aaaaaages ago. So don't come with this rediculous assumption. Alfven got his nobel prize 36 years ago.

If you are reading Alfven's work (cosmical electrodynamics or cosmis plasmas) you are able to do some OOM esitmates using his work. You can even read Peratt (if you can find his book) and find the theory that is central to EU/PU/whateverU.

So, we are not asking too much of the EU/PU supporters, and as already said the "predictions" that Thornhill made are vague enough that they be made to fit any observations, whereas he, as a plasma physicist, should be able to do much better than that. And as we are on the subject of Thornhill, why can't I find any papers of his in ADS?

** OOPS guess I am a little late with this response :-) a whole page came after this message. Ah well.

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

I always laugh when I hear this excuse. If you don't give scientists something to work with, you can't expect them to do produce anything.

It's like calling a painter to paint your house, then having the painter claiming he's a great painter, and to prove it, hand you the paintbrush and expects you to do the painting. There is just no logic to that line of reasoning.

Claiming that scientists are to lazy or closed minded to do the experiment that should be done by the person making the claim is not a good argument. It's just an excuse to shift the burden of proof.

__________________
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

Basically every paper that describes observations will have listed the so-called "instrument papers" which fully describe how the instrument works. Usually, there is a first dry description of the instrument based on the specifications to which it was build, and later there is another paper describing the instrument as it is commisioned (switched on in space) and it shows some first observations, explaining how the insturment works with respect to the expectations of the first paper.

As to measuring the electron velocity in the solar wind perpendicular to the solar equator, or better said to the ecliptic I suppose, is that we would like to have all info on the solar wind. there is a significant part of the interplanetary magnetic field in the z-direction. So it may be puzzeling for you, but it does make sense, and I am sure that other directions were also measured. But I would have to know which satellite you were looking at to (maybe) give you more details about that.

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Hi Metricyard
It is not meant as an excuse, just as an observation. And I am not talking about proof, just about plain curiosity and the lack thereof.
Okay.. naive... I said it already.

regards

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Es gibt keine Tatsachen, es gibt nur Interpretationen. (There are no facts, only interpretations.) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I would like that. Just have to free up enough time to do proper research.
regards

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Es gibt keine Tatsachen, es gibt nur Interpretationen. (There are no facts, only interpretations.) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Excuse, observation, it's all the same. Give some real observations, and/or math, and you just might peak someones curiuosity. Claiming that pyramids are good observations to EU is not going to win any converts. If Einstein claimed that sea-serpents was a great model for relativity, I don't think he would have been taken too seriously.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

Actually, no, not at all, false, ...!

You see, the 'measurements' are made by instruments, which were built using the (standard, accepted, mainstream) theories of physics. IOW, they work (=produce meaningful outputs), only to the extent that you accept the principles embedded in their construction (and that 'reality' accords, within experimental error, to the kinds of things the outputs correspond).

Of course, while those instruments are still here on the ground, you can calibrate the response, and so I imagine you could fudge things quite nicely (= make a case that you don't need the whole 'new physics' shooting match to begin making interpretations). While it would be interesting to explore the (EU) internal consistency in this regard, I find it more interesting to explore that of the outputs of space probes where such "in situ calibration" is clearly not possible.Worse, much, much worse ... you also have to convince yourself (if you are honest) that (for example) the space probe was indeed where the handlers said it was, that it was pointing where they said it was pointing, that the sensors were working the way they said they were working, ...That's a not unreasonable approach to take - if I can't see it, feel it, smell it, ... it doesn't really exist (at least, not unless and until I've "done the math" to convince myself otherwise).

Extending this, I imagine you can get to anything that ground-based (and balloon-based) observatories - with local, human operators - produce.

How you convince yourself about outputs from (say) XMM-Newton, Double Star, Spitzer, FUSE, WMAP, Cluster, Cassini, Voyager [x], ... I am certainly curious to know!But what's the difference between 'scientists' and biknewb? Surely a key aspect of science is that anyone can check the results? All you need is sufficient understanding of the theories, a broadband internet connection, access to the raw data, and you can do your own checking.

Better still, astrophysics is done by publishing papers, which publication requires solid explanation of the methods, sources, techniques, data, ... and the default expectation that anyone else could repeat the work and get essentially the same results (I note in passing that none - yep, NONE - of the EUers seem to have been willing to get to even this level of transparency, honesty, etc).

As Metricyard said, no one at all is holding you back from doing any of this work! Goodness, in the US and the EU (maybe Canada, Japan, Australia, ... too), the governments have insisted that results obtained with taxpayer money be made freely available to all citizens!Now here's a thought for you ... how many ATM ideas do you think there are out there?

And for how many of those ATM ideas could a very similar wish/dream be made?

And if such were to become widely known, how many more?

And how many ATMers would be satisfied with the 'simple' answers to the 'all just in the course of their daily tasks' requests?

Surely far, far better to ask those with the (ATM) ideas to put in the effort themselves, to show that their ideas have legs?

All very good questions iantresman, and any one of them would be good topics in the Q&A or Astronomy section (indeed, we have had several threads on them - singly or in combinations - already).

However, the topic of this thread is the EU idea.That may, or may not, be the case; it may (or may not) be interesting, ...

The scope of this thread, here in the ATM section of BAUT, is the presentation of EU ideas, by folk prepared to defend those ideas ... and the challenging and questioning of those ideas by BAUT members.

I am exceedingly grateful to biknewb for opening my eyes to the nature of at least some EU ideas, the degree to which they are based on a total rejection of essentially all modern physics. Among other things, it means that a two-stage challenge to EU ideas would likely be quite insightful
- first, "to what extent do the (EU) ideas you present incorporate {insert your favourite branch of physics here}, to the extent that that branch has been tested experimentally and observationally?"
- second, "on what do you base your apparent alignment with mainstream astrophysics/physics your incorporation of {insert 'observations' that EU proponent has put forward to support EU claim here}?"

As an example of the latter, Thornhill's 'predictions' (implictly) assume that the data released by the Deep Impact team (or was it NASA?) are just what that team said they are.

But if Thornhill has so profoundly rejected mainstream physics, what makes him so confident that the data are as claimed (and not, for example, as the Moon hoax folk are wont to claim, all filmed in a studio in Hollywood)?

I look forward to posing these kinds of questions to EU proponents.

Ok, I'm trying to show how cometary behaviour of moons can be matched to the EU model. There's Io producing loads of dust orbiting Jupiter, Enceladus doing the same orbiting Saturn, and recently Mab was found to do the same thing orbiting Uranus. The connecting features are a fine-grained dust (apparently they produce "blue rings" at Saturn and Uranus), and the mechanism responsible is what I'm after. Btw I haven't lookd at Triton yet, plan to)

Io is large enough and apparently has an eccentricity large enough for the tidal heating explanation to be a possibility. For Enceladus no such "volcanism" was expected or even thought to be likely, some people attributed the dust to micrometeorites hitting the surface (extremely unlikely imo, that would mean many more moons should be producing such dust which they don't). Now for Mab, at a diameter of 6 km (latest number) the tidal heating is impossible to my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong), because it has an eccentricity of 0.000 and orbits outside Uranus' Roche limit and very little orbital influence from other moons.

It is plausible that for all three moons the same mechanism is responsible. As I mentioned above for Io there is already an old paper from the seventies (I'll try to find an on-line version), which is mentioned in the Dessler paper I linked to, that connects Io to Jupiter electrically. The information from Cassini should be detailed enough to show that the same connection ("radiation belts") around Saturn could power the South polar hotspot on Enceladus ensuring a discharging that produces the material in the plumes. By analogy this mechanism could work for Neptune/Mab as well, having the "advantage" that from the mainstream explanations at least tidal heating is impossible (tidal heating seems to be invoked only if other explanations fail). Any comments?

Cheers.

The Electric Universe is based on the Alfvén's Plasma Universe, which is empirically based, with no new science.

The basis is that the Plasma Universe is the only field that highlights the importance of the electrical description of plasmas (as demonstrated in the laboratory).

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

Just a few points on the non math’s and science side of things concerning an over all approach, curiosity and possibilities.

Put a Pyramid on top of a Tesla coil and you get this. (see attached pic) Seems there maybe something to those "fairytales" if the Universe is electric!! Could even be for our own good.

Or how about a simple plasma ball toy, spend some time "playing" with this it might just make things a little clearer , I'd like to know how it can "sense" your hand is close too it. the plasma ball becomes excited when a place my hand near it, 3-4cm but never actually make a "connection".

Just using pure science and math’s will never be able to fill in the blanks but a holistic view might just be the best approach.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Tim, that's interesting about Velikovsky. I wasn't aware of the relationship. I'm curious, how many of the EU/PU proponents here take Velikovsky seriously? How many are arguing from a different perspective?

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Yes, but do EU-ideas explain why the bread falls butter side down?

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

(A): See Narlikar & Padmanabhan, 2001 & Narlikar, 2003. The primary observational basis for an expanding universe cosmology is the simple interpretation of cosmological redshifts. This has ben discussed at great length on this board, for instance in the More from Arp et al. thread. So far the arguments in opposition to cosmological expansion are just not very good. A better alternative theory, such as an "action at a distance" cosmology would also do the job.
(B): Black holes don't have hard surfaces. Observational programs designed to detect the difference between a hard surface or an event horizon can falsify or verify the existence of black holes. Thus far the evidence is positive in favor of event horizons & therefore black holes (i.e., Remillard, 2005; McClintock, Narayan & Rybicki, 2004; Narayan, 2004 & etc.)
(C): Dark matter is inferred primarily from the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. Show that the inference is wrong, i.e., show that the conclusions in Zwicky, 1937 are wrong. Or show that there is a better explanation for the phenomena from which dark matter is inferred.
(D): A good start would be to falsify the conclusions in Oppenheimer & Volkoff, 1936. They are the ones who first proved that neutron stars were physically possible & stable.
(E): Red herring, creation without a cause has never been a mainstream scientific theory.

No, actually there is nowhere near as much "faith" in science as you imply. In fact, I think it is a typical weakness of "alternative" thinkers, to believe that there is so much "faith" in science. I don't think that most alternative thinkers are capable of handling science, or of understanding it, but will never admit the weakness. I see it all the time. So you assume that there is a lot of "faith" in science, just so you can ignore the hard part, where you actually have to do something, and concentrate on the easy part, where you only have to talk about it. The EU is all talk, and no "do". In fact, the EU is almost nothing but faith.

You assumed that "faith" is a big ingredient in accepting the list of items you mention above, which is why you listed them. But you assumed wrong. They are all simple, straight forward inference from observation. They are all falsifiable by simply coming up with a better inference from the observations.

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The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell

Are you thinking of Ulysses? it did not measure the solar wind perpendicular to the plane of the solar equator, but did fly over the solar poles to do a similar thing. Most of the solar wind probes can only see the solar wind in the plane of the solar system, which leaves open what's happening over the poles. Ulysses showed that the solar magnetic field is not a classical dipole with cusps at the pole, like Earth's magnetic field. Rather, the solar magnetic field over the poles is stretched out radially from the sun, draged by the solar wind. The effect was more pronounced than expected.

Of course, it can also only be done if you know the complete EU theory. i don't think there is such a thing.

I don't think this is either correct, or a fair criticism. We get phone calls, letters & E-mail every day from people hot to prove that Einstein was wrong, all of physics is wrong, or that their own pet theory is right. The EU is just one in a long list. If we did what you suggest, it would be a full time job. You should also remember that the scientists you are talking about are professional people who get paid to do specific tasks. Our bosses are no more happy about us doing a bunch of unrelated stuff on their dollar than any other boss, especially when we are spending government money. If there were a paying position for it, I would be happy to do what you suggest. Probably a lot of scientists would. But in fact, as reality stands today, it is not "a little extra work", it's "a lot of extra work", for which we don't have time, and don't get paid.

Besides, if it is such a small amount of extra work, why haven't Thornhill & friends done it in the 30+ years they have been working on it? After all, Scott is a PhD electrical engineer, and Thornhill does have a BA in physics. What's holding them back?

__________________
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell

Alfven won the nobel for his work in plasma physics and he was not always highly regarded by the scientific establishment of the day. Sagan, for one, didn't approve of Alfven's criticism of the Big Bang. As I have mentioned before, Alfven was one of the first to rcognise the comosological implications of plasma physics.

It is one thing to acknowledge that space is not the vacuum expected by g. theories, but another to suggest that tenuous plasmas may play a role in cosmical structures.

Some of the ideas of Alfven and Birkeland maybe old, but it seems that many of them have only received recent confirmation. Sydney Chapman refused to discuss many of Birkeland's ideas right up until the 70s. Satelites proved Birkeland correct.

The EU crowd contend that so many recent discoveries scream electricity, if you care to look. Some of these are under discussion.

Space was considered to be electrically neutral. Tim Thompson, for one, has asked, "How do the charges become separated?" The EU/Plasma crowd, if you look at their sites, work from the assumption that charges are already separated, and offer we should be working backwards from observation. The Big Bang, of course, also rests on a few assumptions.

In summation, while the work of Alfven and Langmuir has achieved widespread recognition, the cosmological implications of their work seem to be less well known, or at least far more contentious.

I'll ask again. How likely?

Thanks Ian.

Are Thornhill's 'predictions' "based on the Alfvén's Plasma Universe, which is empirically based, with no new science"?

Have you read the paper?

If you have, what did it say concerning the liklihood?

More generally, if you are interested in understanding modern (mainstream) research on comets, please ask appropriate questions in BAUT's Q&A section.

Possibly interesting, but surely irrelevant in this thread?

Of course, it may be relevant to the EU idea - could you please explain its relevance?

No, because I am not a member, hence my question.

Is the presumed 'likelihood' based on good science, or on the assumption that comets are dirty-snowballs, and must therefore contain ice? A lack of ice does seem to be posing a few problems for the standard theory, but the abstract to this paper seems to say that, ah, well, it must be there somewhere.

Consider this vague statement from the abstract:

"The total area of exposed water ice is substantially less than that required to support the observed ambient outgassing from the comet, which likely has additional source regions below the surface."

Perhaps the outgassing is an electrical phenomena, as suggested by the EU sites?

So where are the papers, based on the work of Alfvén and plasma physics (which you can learn by taking the relevant courses, taught in hundreds if not thousands of universities throughout the world), which spell out the following EU ideas:
-> Thornhill's comet 'predictions'?
-> the Sun powered by an ISM current?
-> craters on solar system bodies created by an EDM mechanism?
-> supernovae as instabilities in galactic Birkeland currents?

(for avoidance of doubt, I am asking about papers that contain at least the math, equations, numbers and stuff of plasma physics).Those claims have been made, in this thread, dozens of times over.

However, with the exception of a few papers by Perrat, provided by iantresman*, no EU proponent has been able to show that there is any connection between plasma physics and various observations, beyond handwaving and word salad.

If you, P.Asmah, have 'care[d] to look', by working from the plasma physics equations of Alfvén to matching observations, would you be so kind as to present your results here?

If you know of other EU claims that are explicitly grounded in plasma physics (per published material), which we have not yet in this long thread already discussed, please put them on the table.Indeed.

Yet when asked to provide evidence for the currents which must flow - in order to produce the effects, as a consequence of the separation - no EU proponent has been able to do so. Specifically, no ISM-Sun current sufficient to power the Sun is observed, by any of the dozens of space probes that would have detected it were it there. Specifically, no EU proponent can account for the HR diagram. And so on.

We have been over and over and over this ground, every time with the same result - EU proponents are unable to answer critical questions about the ideas that they put on the table.And how is this relevant to the this thread?Perhaps a more accurate summation would be something like "the work of Alfven and Langmuir has achieved widespread recognition, but the cosmological theories Alfvén created later in his life are inconsistent with millions of good, independently obtained observational and experimental results"

*These have been discussed, and found seriously wanting, not least in terms of the match between prediction and observation.

OK, so why not ask a question in the Q&A section?

(be sure limit your thread to a question, and do not mention any EU ideas).

It provides context and balance.

I said Alfven and Birkeland. Many of the latter's theories were ignored and laughed at, but later turned out to be correct. I see you have ignored this point which I have made at least twice in recent posts.

Thank you for mentioning Langmuir, though, the non-academic scientist who also won a nobel laureat for his work in plasma physics. I think he also proposed the idea of valence electrons?

Anyway, I think it is a wild exaggeration to claim that some of Alfven's later ideas are inconsistent with millions of observations. In fact I would contend that there is growing support for some of them, and I see him increasingly cited in peer-reviewed papers. Here is one.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111358

"We propose a model for stellar binary systems consisting of a magnetic and a non-magnetic white-dwarf pair which is powered principally by electrical energy..."

EDIT: Quotes messed up.

Because the EU comet model is under discussion, and thus contrast and comparison with the standard model is therefore relevant, dare I say, critical.

Of course, you might argue that weaknesses in the standard model do not support the EU model, and EU supporters may argue the contrary, but at least the comparisons provide context and balance!

Can it reasonably be argued otherwise?

Looking at this site you will find a more detailed view on the attitude of Chapman. He did not believe in the polar storms of Birkeland, because they did not fit into the magnetic storm phenomenon, that was measured by mid and low latitude magnetometers. However, later he did see that these polar storms were important, and might just be the separate steps that make a magnetic storm, and called them substorms. Now we know that a magnetic storm is not created by an addition of many substorms. They are separate entities.

I wonder what you mean with "if space is electrically neutral". Do you mean that the whole universe has a net charge, or do you mean that positive and negative charges are separated from eachother? I have the view that most of the universe is plasma, i.e. electrons have come off the atoms, and so we have a sea of positive and negative charge. But I also believe in the quasi-neutrality of space, i.e. over large volumes (with respect to the DeBye sphere) the total net charge is zero.

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Io and Europa and Ganymede and Callisto have an interaction with the magnetic field of Jupiter. You can look at the unipolar inductor model if you like, the magnetic field of Jupiter moves by the moons much faster than the moons rotate around the planet. Which means there is a "v x B" electric field. Furthermore, particles are lost by Io and Europa, which get ionized by various methods which I will not detail here, and these ions hook onto the magnetic field of Jupiter, which has to accelerate them to corotation. This is a drag on the magnetic field and created electric currents, because the magnetic field gets bend backwards. Also, as the magnetic field "slams" into the moon, there is a signal that will travel with the Alfven velocity along the magnetic field line and is transported along with the flow of the magnetic field. These are the so-called Alfven wings. (I have a great paper on the Alfven wing of Europa, if I can only get it published, coz one referee did not like it)

So, if you look at pictures of Jupiters aurora (e.g. published by John Clarck, taken by the Hubble telescope) you will see a bright point which represents the footpoint of Io, and then you will see a trail in front of it, which is representative of the new ions that are being accelerated to corotation. All in all, you see magnetic field that gets slowed down and deformed and tries to get to its old velocity again and to straighten out again. And this happens through electric currents, perpendicular and parallel to the magnetic field.

About Enceladus I have no idea at the moment, because I have not spend any time on it (too busy working with Cluster, DoubleStar and now Venus Express). But I am not sure what you mean with the "radiation belts" coz you have not mentioned radiation belts with Io. (Io creates the Io plasma torus, but that is not a radiation belt).

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Well, how about extremely very highly likely.

What is said in the abstract:
So, if the total of exposed water is not enough for the total outgassing that is observed, then that means that more water is coming out. Rejecting the view that water can be spontaneously created, it has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is from below the surface where there will be a reservoir of liquid water.

But read the paper and you will get a lot more information, than just from a quoted abstract. I know it is hard to read a whole paper (I don't like it myself sometimes) but there is loads of information in there.

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Well, Sol88, if you would just use google, you would have your answer in less then a minute. This page you would have found, with explanations and pictures. Take a look, so we don't have to type it all in here at BAUT.

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善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Thanks for the info Tusenfem, you might want to look at the paper I linked to because the authors see Io's "volcanoes" as as "plasma gun" action (as did Gold in 1979) because of "million A currents and 400 kV potentials".

I think you're wrong about Io not being in a radiation belt, I've seen it mentioned many times. Could you explain what you mean, maybe it's the term "radiation belt" that causes confusion?

Cheers.