I really haven't followed this thread so please forgive me if my question is something that has already been discussed.

What - in this thread - is meant by a "weak radial electric field"? A quick summary is fine.

The reason I ask is I'm trying to understand the context in which we would be fried after sunrise each day. The Earth's magnetic field protects us from large amounts of radiation generated by the solar magnetic cycle. I'm just looking for some clarification as to what the nature of this weak field is that would be capable of penetrating the normal protection offered by the Earth's magnetosphere.

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"The scientist who asks the right question reconnoiters a new patch of the unknown, and may, with luck, bring it within the constricted but expanding boundaries of the known."

~Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit) 1982

Good idea Tim, have you got a question that would be fairly definitive in your mind something a psudo scientist like my self could glean of the net with no funding or $$$ involved, and have a crack at answering it. If it involves sending probes to space and expensive lab set ups, then I'm afraid I'd fall a bit short on the data.

Me, well I'd like to see a big arse Tesla coil, parked in a L1 orbit using solar panels for initial power (charge up some new fangeled,high tech capacitors) set up a resonant frequency and send it back to Earth orbit (EM'tly) to receivers tuned to the same resonant frequency and then to ground stations to supply us with essential free and unlimited power!!! .

This could be safer than having and Earth based system in case things get a bit out of hand.

This as Tesla and Westinghouse stated, would be a "gift to humanity", even if all they did was supply light, via fluorescents, to us westerners and third world family’s, but as they found out, if you can't make money out of it then it will never work.

Greed and stupidity can be hard to over come, but energy equality would help , I hope, smooth a lot of the upcoming global energy dramas.

So I hope based on sound interdisciplinary (holistic?) science, this paradigm of the Electric universe and all the possibilities it opens up, will take hold and spread as a useable, practical science.

So what would happen running a coil in space? instead of the Tethered satellite experiment, would this not be worth investigating?

This would be a good place to start APOD's pic of the day

Seems to me there are a lot more stories recently, hinting strongly at the electrical nature of the universe. this story if looked at not from a "black hole" but a "homoplolar motor" point of view, makes perfect sense. It's mother natures most efficient energy conversion motor

And it has all the hallmarks of an electrical event.

I would agree with Tim.
There is a general path but nothing is really examined along the way.
I for one would like to concentrate on the sun and ways that a radial electric field could be developed or if that is truly the way the sun is powered(langmuir probe model, etc). The circuit could be different.
From what I understand the radial electric field could be developed from the velocity difference in solar wind particle species.

As far as longevity, I would expect an electric sun to start sooner and outlast a fusion sun. As soon as you have a filament large enough it would pinch to form a sun. And there are plasma pinches that have been mistaken for a star.
Skip iron sun disscussion(Which I think is the only way the ES model will work is to have an iron sun). Fast forward to today.

Neutrinos would be formed by fusion events on the surface. I think there are problems with neutrinos that have mass but I dont know enough.
Evidence was brought up that they are dexcitation events that generate the gammas as opposed to actual fusion events being detected.

If you look at the movies at the TRACE website, you finally begin to understand what fusion really looks like when it takes place as a pinch in a flare.

Deriving an experiment to test some of these hypothesis almost requires tools that we may not have access to so I am trying to take all the observations and distill the things that clearly dont fit.
But what the heck I think I see areas of the EU model that need work so thats what I'm doing.

Unless I have missed something the issue with the EU comet is enough voltage to perfom EDM and jetting. My friends EDM machine will EDM at voltages from 50 to 100 volts. Will the local field provide enough energy or do you need to pipe it in via a ion tail? I would probably assume if there is enough energy(available locally or remotely) then that is the cause of the jets.....

Is there a separate Electric comet thread? Maybe that would be good.
And focus this one on the suns exact power method.

You could probably learn all the essentials of the EU model in the alloted time but I think there are issues with understanding power distribution in the EU model so would they be the correct essentials? So now you have a situation where the model is "dissproved" with out really knowing the true parameters(Michealson-Morley comes to mind).

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"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." - M. C. Escher

"Freedom is popular." -Ron Paul

For 4 days I was out and now I find all kinds of new developments

Focusing on a single item is a good idea. It also is very unholistic. The holistic aproach seems to be an essential part of the EU ideas: to investigate the complete picture, in all branches of sciences at once. Unfortunately this is a slow process.
So as this thread would be getting more focused it would also move away from basic EU principles.
Why not start sub-threads?
- the sun's power
- the electric comet
- the homopolar motor galaxy.
-
O well, one would be hard enough to keep up with.

gerards regards

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

I visulize a magnetic/electric field much the same as you see for Earth, Jupiter, Sol...etc and when moons/rocks/dust/comets move thru this field, an electric charge is produced. The higher the angle of attack (steeper to the radial field) the faster the charge rate.

Sol

The trouble is -- as Westinghouse remarked -- some of Tesla's idea could break the power industry financially!

Good idea!

Since we've covered a huge amount of ground in this thread, how about we ask the following of the OP, of any "focussed EU idea" thread?

* State whether the idea includes only mainstream physics (e.g. plasma physics, classical electromagnetism), or includes at least some new physics. If in doubt, assume the latter.

* If the idea has a (public) history, provide a succinct summary of its antecedents, and where one can read the prior work done on it.

* If the idea is chacterised as a theory, or a model (or includes these), provide references to (publicly available) material which details the theory or model (doesn't have to be a peer-reviewed publication, though that would be nice).

* If the idea is not quantitative (maths, OOM, numbers, equations, etc), provide a summary of how the idea could be tested, in principle, using today's technology.

As always with ATM ideas, be prepared to have the idea challenged ... and be so prepared to defend it.

Good ideas, particularly this one.

Mainstreamers could probably also help out with this, instead of effectively saying, "If you ain't already done the math ... we don't want to know!"

Thanks.It seems that the purpose of this ATM section of BAUT is being misunderstood.

This ATM section is an opportunity for anyone with an ATM idea to propose it, and have other BAUT members challenge and question the idea. Should the proposer (or anyone else) wish to develop the idea further, to address those challenges and questions, they are free to do so - indeed, welcome to do so.

This purpose is clearly set out in the BAUT rules:If you are looking for someone to help you develop your idea (other than through having it challenged and questioned), then BAUT's ATM section is the wrong place for that purpose.

Except insofar as an idea that is very broad, and covers a lot of wide-ranging observations, can be morphed through the challenge process as some elements may get identified as untenable, and replaced within the thread by proponents (or other similar processes).

Say for example, some small element of the EU idea was totally destroyed by a new observation, but a substantial portion of the idea was undisturbed by the observation, and a new explanation were offered; that would be a way that the idea is developed (or better yet, refined) here in the ATM section.

I agree that some new idea ("Eintein was wrong because jellyfish don't have bones") is not going to be developed or refined here.

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Forming opinions as we speak

How?

I mean, how does it 'make perfect sense'?

In your answer, please be sure to provide OOM estimates, or state clearly that you have no quantitative basis for your claim.What does this mean?

I mean, the statement itself is pretty unambiguous ("most efficient" means, among other things, "there is no other mechanism, known to early 21st century Homo sapiens or not yet so known, that is more efficient").

What is the efficiency coefficient? How was such efficiency determined? measured?

In terms of the 'homopolar motor', what are the parameters which characterise NGC 4696's homopolar motor? (I guess, this being an EU thread, that they involve things like charges, currents, magnetic fields, and so on)What are those 'hallmarks'? How many of them are there? (be sure that you have listed "all" in your reply) What is the duration of this 'electrical event'?

What is the quantitative relationship between 'angle of attack' and 'charge rate'?

At what point (or points), in [angle of attack, charge rate] space can a calibration be obtained?

Hi dgruss, this article and this article both explain the nature of the weak electric field centered on the Sun, on both pages there is an an illustration of the characteristic of a glow discharge (adapted from J.D. Cobine, Gaseous Conductors). In the EU model the planets (and comets) occupy the "positive column" region, one of the features of a postive column is a weak radial electric field. In these webpages it is explained that the weak E-field is responsible for cometary activity because comets have a strong radial component to their orbits.

Hope this helps,

Cheers.

Thanks for the info, VanderL.

I note that "weak [radial] electric field" occurs just once in the first document ("It is easy to see that we have within the solar plasma sheath a weak but constant electric field that accelerates solar protons away from the Sun in the form of the solar wind and causes electrons to drift toward the Sun (and causes negatively charged spacecraft, like Pioneer 10, to accelerate anomalously backwards toward the Sun). The overall result of the charge drifts in opposite directions is the current that lights the Sun."), and that the theory of this field is (apparently) attributed to Alfvén ("IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. PS-14, No. 6, Dec 1986").

If any BAUT reader were to check that Alfvén reference, would they find any (OOM) estimates of the field (e.g. volts per au)? If not, where might such estimates be found (in EU literature or otherwise)? If there are no such estimates, what is the meaning of the term 'weak'?

The phrase "weak [radial] electric field" also occurs just once in the second article ("The next most important feature of the positive column region of a spherical glow discharge is that throughout most of its volume the plasma maintains a weak but constant radial electric field."). This second article does not attribute the underlying theory to Alfvén, but to "Ralph Juergens". Specifically, to a modified version of Juergens' idea ("I propose that Juergens' model be modified and that interplanetary space is the extensive 'positive column' region of a glow discharge"). Where might one read the (quantitative) details of this 'modified Juergens' model'? Specifically, where can one read the (quantitative) reasoning for the term 'weak'?

Incidentally, the second article also contains the following phrase: "Astronomers in the 20th century were never taught the physics of gas discharges, and the idea of electricity in space was anathema to them." For avoidance of doubt, would you please state unambiguously if you are (or are not) prepared to defend this?

If you were to try and transport matter any distance what would be the best way? This usually implies the most efficient.

Maybe my misunderstanding but the article stated they saw NGC 4696 in X-Ray, Radio and UV and I just assumed that meant most other frequencies as well, while in fact it is true that the article did not in fact mention ELECTRICITY well..., my bad for just assuming without first seeing the OOM and quantative hypotheses, that these observed frequencies would require, obviously, vast amounts of electrical power, a few OOM above that which is observed within the solar system.

But if it was a black hole, Where does all that matter end up?

The duration could be, on our time scale as Homo Sapiens, Aeons.

Sorry unable to provide peer reviewed OOM's at this point in time.


Sol

I'd like to test our collective space faring smarts. How about putting a multimeter on a highly eliptical short period comet and seeing what the data says, wonder if there would be any suprises?

I also find numbers helpful and explanations of abreviations. Please correct:
ATM = the against the mainstream portion of www.badastronomy.com
EU = electric universe = an old idea that refuses to die even though the details have not yet been stated.
EDU = electric discharge of matter = a plume of plasma which becomes a plume of nano size dust as it cools
OOM = Order Of Magnitude. A numerical answer within a power of ten (or so).

OOM=Order Of Magnitude. A numerical answer within a power of ten (or so).

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Forming opinions as we speak

While I think a SPS = solar power satellite can be built (I think 3% of the intercepted solar energy would reach our power grid) I doubt that it would be cost effective even if we can make deliveries to GEO = geostationary orbit altitude for $200 per pound = $440 per kilogram.
The SPS frequency will likely be 556 megahertz or more. What is the "resonant/Tesla" frequency that would permit energy to be sent from space to Earth? Is this beam of energy electomagnetic photons or some unexplained energy beam of a somewhat different nature? If different, are humans less valnerable to 0.1 watts per square cm = one kilowatt per square meter than the microwave energy proposed for the SPS? Other details will be helpful = I don't want to read all of this 79 page thread. Neil

Would it be accurate to say that your "I visulize" post is nothing more than speculation, unsubstantiated by anything quantitative?

You are mistaken if you think the quote is from Alfvén's 1986 paper.

I suspect you already knew the answer to your own questions, the paper can be downloaded from Peratt's website. To my knowledge no such estimate is published yet; we have been discussing and trying to get some answer earlier in this thread, I could only guess at the magnitude.

The reasoning is very simple, the EU attributes solar activity to a glow discharge, which has as a direct consequence a weak radial electric field (see Cobine's illustration). The magnitude depends on the size of the heliosphere and the magnitude of the voltage drop over the heliospheric boundary. Fwiw, I think the field would be "very small but not zero"; since the "breakdown field" in space is estimated to be 1V/m, my guess would be in the order of microVolts/m.

Do you mean I need to defend this claim? Do you think I should adhere to every word written by EU proponents? I think the claim is based on Alfvén's 1986 paper, but I can't tell you how accurate this statement is (or was), but maybe you can check for yourself? Anyway, I think such generalisations are not very important and only made to get the message across that electricity in space is more important than once believed.

Cheers.

I hear what you are saying, as they say, but we are not talking about the work of one individual here. Rather, we are looking at a broad sweep of ideas that enjoy growing interest, and many of them would seem to have a reasonable basis in sound [plasma] physics.

The trouble is, it is one thing to acknowledge the work of pioneers like Alfven, Langmuir, and Birkeland, and quite another to recognise the potential cosmological implications, especially when so many these are lacking in OOM.

There is obviously so much more to find out about what is going on out there, and the electrodynamic ideas may have some merit. I think that so many observations are down to interpretation, and herein lies the main problem, I think.

Dr Charles Bruce looked to the heavens and recognised phenomena that screamed EM. He was an astronomer and an expert in high voltage engineering. The 'mainstream', on the other hand, see gravitational stuff happening.

Do we really believe what we see ... or see what we believe?

Per post #2314, this thread is now closed.

Later today (or tomorrow), I will add a post (or edit this one) with pointers to how discussion of specific, concrete, focussed EU ideas can continue, here in the ATM section of BAUT.

This will include guidelines on any future (focussed) EU threads (per #2348), as well as re-opening once the June Plasma conference has concluded.

[Edit: here are the promised pointers.

An EU proponent may start a new thread, on one, specific EU topic, so that we may have a focussed discussion of it.

The guidelines for the thread starter are:

* State whether the EU idea includes only mainstream physics (e.g. plasma physics, classical electromagnetism), or includes at least some new physics. If in doubt, assume the latter.

* If the EU idea has a (public) history, provide a succinct summary of its antecedents, and where one can read the prior work done on it.

* If the EU idea is chacterised as a theory, or a model (or includes these), provide references to (publicly available) material which details the theory or model (doesn't have to be a peer-reviewed publication, though that would be nice).

* If the EU idea is not quantitative (maths, OOM, numbers, equations, etc), provide a summary of how the idea could be tested, in principle, using today's technology.

* As always with ATM ideas, be prepared to have the idea challenged ... and be so prepared to defend it.

* For further suggestions, please read this Tim Thompson post.

Both upriver and VanderL have indicated that they are working on some new EU material; I look forward to them starting new threads, in the new format, to present the results of their work on specific, focussed EU areas.

There is a "Table of Contents" thread, for folk to create a link summary of this thread, to allow for references to discussion on specific topics within the EU idea to be quickly located.

In closing, I note that this EU thread has the distinction of being the longest, by far (>400 posts longer than #2), of all threads in this ATM section; I hope that UT and BAUT participants have found it educational and rewarding.]

Three new threads, each discussing a specific, focussed set of EU claims, have been started since this thread was closed:

EU: Jets and Birkeland currents.

Electric Comets

The Electric Sun

In addition, Plasma physics, MHD, Alfvén, etc, the General Science section, is open for discussion of the basics of plasma physics, MHD, Alfvén, etc (i.e. mainstream plasma physics).

If any BAUT member is attending this meeting, learns of new EU developments, is interested to present them, and is prepared to defend those against challenges from other BAUT members, please send me (or another mod) a PM, and this thread will be re-opened.

Please note that, should this thread be re-opened, discussion will be limited to the new EU developments posted by EU proponents.