How the sun shines

Michael Mozina
Michael Mozina
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RE: I know you introduced

Message 71653 in response to message 71650

Quote:
I know you introduced comments along the lines of 'no acceleration in the Z-axis' elsewhere, but I've forgotten what you intend by it; would you mind elaborating please?

If you go back to Newton's analogy of a rock on a string, the force on the string will increase if while swinging the string we also ride up an elevator during that process. There is additional force on the system (the string) due to our acceleration in the z-axis while riding the elevator. You seem to think the universe is accelerating don't you?

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You seem to be saying, here, that at least a significant minority of stars have masses of the order of 10 to 100 (or more) times that of the average MS (Main Sequence) star, and/or that astronomers have mis-estimated at least these stars' masses.

Yep, I think that they underestimate the masses of stars and they underestimate the amount of mass inside the ions and electrons that flow between stars. Birkeland seemed to believe that there was more mass in the plasma between the stars than there was mass inside the solar system. He may be right, but it's probably threaded and localized in filaments as he also predicted.

Before we go any further: Did you read the book Cosmic Plasma, yes or no? If not, you have no business even asking me any questions about EU theory anymore Nereid. I've answered your questions for years and you've never once lifted a finger to educate yourself from the people who can actually best answer you quantification questions. Birkeland and Alfven were also into mathematics. Their work would be a far better starting point as it relates to learning about EU theory quantitatively than yacking with me in cyberspace. I can't really help you, but they can. I know I can't help you, because you've made it clear that you aren't interested in educating yourself in the ways that I have suggested, and I don't know how else you might hope to educate yourself about the mathematical principles behind plasma physics than to study the teachings of the Nobel prize winning scientist that developed them.

Michael Mozina
Michael Mozina
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RE: RE: How is the sun in

Message 71654 in response to message 71651

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How is the sun in anyway in "hydrostatic equilibrium' in your opinion?

How does that transport of energy get past that "stratification subsurface" that Kosovichev found at .995R?

For what? Do you presume that the sun is not mass separated by chance? If so, why?
...


Back in September, 2007, in this thread, peanut asked whether [your website] was a "quack" site or not. Based on what you wrote (above), I can see why so many have concluded that it is. After all, if you don't (apparently) even know what terms like 'hydrostatic equilibrium' and 'convective and radiative transport of energy' mean, it may well be reasonable to conclude that you also don't understand the physics of electromagnetism either, much less plasma physics.

First you seem to read into my posts a series of statements that I never made, and now you've concluded you know more about convection and such from a series of simple scientific questions I asked you to explain. This is absolutely amazing behavior Nereid. I hope you don't attempt to go into the mind reading business or into editing, you don't seem to be very good at it.

That stratification subsurface Kosovichev found at .995R wasn't predicted to exist inside the middle of your presumably open convection zone. What's it doing there?

You know you can't hide from reality forever. Even NASA now is starting to release data that is consistent with EU theory Nereid. I really don't know why you seem intent on crusading against the idea. I mean if you're wrong about Birkeland (like Chapman was wrong about Birkeland), you could go down as the world's biggest cyberspace anti-electricity smuck. Even Chapman didn't have the benefit of Alfven's work. Why do you feel the need to publicly burn the electric witches Nereid?

My website is not a "quack" website, because it is based upon the sweat equity science of the likes of Birkeland, and Bruce and Alfven. It is not based upon what I personally have done, or what any single individual has done, but rather what scientists as a whole have done to reveal the electrical nature of physical reality on cosmic scales.

Sooner or later, you're going to have to realize that EM fields can explain why solar wind accelerates as it leaves the photosphere. Electricity heats plasma in the Earths atmosphere to such high temperatures and kinetic energies that they emit gamma rays in the Earth's atmosphere. That same process occurs in the solar atmosphere as well. Electricity is all around us Nereid. It's in those "magnetic ropes" between the sun and the Earth. It's in those gamma ray and neutron capture events we observe in the solar atmosphere too. It's the force that accelerates the solar wind particles, and it's the force that is 39 orders of magnitude more powerful than gravity.

People called Birkeland a quack too. They called Alfven an quack. They called Bruce a quack. They gave Alfven a Nobel prize and still called him a quack. I guess I'm in good company at least.

The funny part in all this is that Chapmans elegant mathematics was preferred for many years over Birkelands "sloppy" and "messy" explanations. It wasn't for another 70 years that this debate between mathematics and physical testing could be resolved, but in the end, it was physical lab tests that won out. In the end Nereid, all your huffing and puffing and crusading against Birkeland's theories will only make you into another one of histories Chapman stories. Greater mathematicians than you have stood against Birkeland's ideas and been blown away in the end. So it will be with all your petty insults and all your crusades. You'll be the last women on earth that realizes the electrical nature of physical reality, and it will be documented on the internet. :)

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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OK, this is my 'without

OK, this is my 'without prejudice' statement ..... :-)

Any and all participants should review advice on posting given here, plus the smaller pane on the left side headed 'Rules' that appears when you compose a post.

Polite topical discussion is fine from whatever viewpoints, and this is healthy. However any further personal insults ( precise, vague, disingenuous, or disguised ) will result in deletion.

This is about as grumpy as you will see me. :-)
[ Because after that I just start deleting .... ]

Cheers, Mike.

NB. On the scientific side, while the proof of any theory is always experiment & observation - it is also true that a considerable amount of cosmic behaviour is really not accounted for and understood in a genuine sense.

Alas, because they are "null" definitions, dark matter and dark energy explanations are at present indistinguishable from "don't know". That is the trap with a "definition by exclusion" approach. Many cosmologists have admitted this.

[ A good source of such opinion, though time consuming, is the SLAC Summer Institute lectures. Search from here, particularly 2003 Cosmic Connections for video streaming of the lectures. As the title suggests, large scale phenomena can/do depend on the small scale. ]

I have no idea whether EU is adequate or mature enough to account for any data, cosmic or local - my ignorance is complete there! :-)

However there is quite a need for some theory/paradigm shift/addition, as our 'local' observations don't seem to generalise well enough to fully explain the really distant/huge/old stuff. There are stunning exceptions to this problem though, the CMB spectrum for instance ....

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Nereid
Nereid
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RE: RE: I know you

Message 71656 in response to message 71653

Quote:
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I know you introduced comments along the lines of 'no acceleration in the Z-axis' elsewhere, but I've forgotten what you intend by it; would you mind elaborating please?

If you go back to Newton's analogy of a rock on a string, the force on the string will increase if while swinging the string we also ride up an elevator during that process. There is additional force on the system (the string) due to our acceleration in the z-axis while riding the elevator. You seem to think the universe is accelerating don't you?


Thanks.

I don't really follow this, and as this website doesn't support LaTeX (or similar), it's probably not a good idea to ask you to expand on it, by writing the relevant (Newtonian) equations, showing that estimates of the mass of a primary from (for example) analysis of positions of an orbiting secondary vary depending upon what plane the secondaries are in with respect to an acceleration vector of the system as a whole. Have you seen discussion of this in any celestial mechanics textbook?

In any case, if I understand your point correctly, there are at least three ways to easily, and independently, test it:

1) plenty of objects in our solar system orbit the Sun in planes inclined to that of the Earth's orbit; any 'z-axis effect' would show up as a systematic trend in estimates of the Sun's mass by orbital inclination. As far as I know, no such effect has ever been reported, so the Sun's mass is probably known to an accuracy of better than 1 part per thousand, possibly 1 ppm.

2) the (GR) deflection of light (or any electromagnetic radiation) as it passes the Sun ('gravitational lensing') is independent of any acceleration. Such deflection has been measured now in multiple wavebands, over a wide range of impact angles. As far as I know, there are no reports of any systematic differences in the estimated mass of the Sun, and the mass estimated by this method agrees with the classical, Newtonian, one, within the uncertainty limits.

3) the acceleration of the solar system barycentre, with respect to a set of pulsars, can be estimated using secular changes in arrival times of the pulses (i.e. using the pulsars as clocks). I recall reading a paper which looked for such acceleration, and found none, down to ~10^-11 m/s^2. If you - or any other reader - are interested, I'll see if I can dig it up.

I don't understand how an acceleration of the universe, consistent with good observational data, would affect estimates of the mass of the Sun - could you elaborate please?

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You seem to be saying, here, that at least a significant minority of stars have masses of the order of 10 to 100 (or more) times that of the average MS (Main Sequence) star, and/or that astronomers have mis-estimated at least these stars' masses.

Yep, I think that they underestimate the masses of stars and they underestimate the amount of mass inside the ions and electrons that flow between stars. Birkeland seemed to believe that there was more mass in the plasma between the stars than there was mass inside the solar system. He may be right, but it's probably threaded and localized in filaments as he also predicted.


Showing that astronomers have underestimated the mass of stars, by factors of even a few, let alone tens or hundreds, would be a radical discovery! If independently confirmed, it would almost certainly result in a trip to Sweden for those who first showed it.

To what extent can you show that the standard astronomical methods of estimating the mass of stars is off by such large factors?

The ISM (interstellar medium) has been studied for centuries now, and its baryonic component (ions, atoms, electrons, molecules, dust grains, ...) is well understood.

The ionised parts of the ISM reveal themselves to us by their emission lines, their absorption lines, and their broadband emission.

The total mass of the ISM can also be constrained by analysis of the motions of stars in our neighbourhood, with techniques first used by Oort (in the 1920s, IIRC) and revised and extended by Bahcall (1960s?). I am not aware of any reports of the (local) ISM being as massive as you suggest, from the results of such research.

The various 'local lensing' surveys - such as MACHO, OGLE, and MOA - would also have detected any compact filaments massive enough to cause outweigh the stars; again, I am not aware of any of these surveys finding any such mass.

That said, there certainly are galaxies whose ISM is more massive than the stars; however, they are few in number, and their total mass is trivial compared with, say, the giant ellipticals found at the centres of rich clusters.

While showing that astronomers have underestimated the mass of the ionised component of the ISM by several orders of magnitude, at least in our galaxy, and others in the Local Group, would not be quite as radical as showing that astronomers have dramatically underestimated the mass of stars, it would still propel the discoverer into the astronomy hall of fame.

To what extent can you show that the standard astronomical methods of estimating the mass of the ISM (ionised component or total) is off by such large factors?

Nereid
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One more technique that

One more technique that constrains the (baryonic) composition of the ISM: interstellar scintillation, which may be considered as the 'twinkling' of 'radio stars', analogous to the twinkling of stars we see in the night sky with our unaided vision.

This a phenomenon well-known to radio astronomers, and can be used to explore the small-scale structure (down to an au or less) of the ISM, particularly its (free) electron density. There are, of course, other, independent, methods for estimating the ISM's electron density, though they tend to produce estimates of the integrated electron density, smearing out any small-scale structure.

While there are several puzzles concerning the small-scale (electron density) structure of the ISM, which structure seems to be present in both ionised and neutral ISM phases, as far as I know, there are no reports which point to electron densities many dozens of orders of magnitude higher than the corresponding, estimated densities of ions or atoms. In this respect at least, the mass of ISM (free) electrons is way below the mass of stars, at least in our local galactic neighbourhood.

Michael Mozina
Michael Mozina
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RE: One more technique that

Message 71658 in response to message 71657

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One more technique that constrains the (baryonic) composition of the ISM: interstellar scintillation, which may be considered as the 'twinkling' of 'radio stars', analogous to the twinkling of stars we see in the night sky with our unaided vision.

I'm going to ignore the z-axis movement conversation in this thread and focus on this specific issue since it is directly related to "powering" the stars, and the amount of mass in a galaxy.

Let's start with Kristian Birkeland's quote from the PDF file I posted earlier:

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One of the most peculiar features of this cosmogony is that space beyond the heavenly bodies is assumed to be filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds in such densities that the aggregate mass of the heavenly bodies within a limited, very large space would be only a very small fraction of the aggregate mass of the flying atoms and corpuscles there.

In other words, Birkeland calculated (math was his thing by the way) that most of the mass of a galaxy and the universe was contained in the plasma steams and electrons streams between the stars, not in the stars themselves. If we're looking for "missing mass" or underestimated mass explanations, Birkeland would suggest that we look to the flying atoms and electrons for the bulk of that mass. Some of the mass could be contained in some underestimation process related to solar theory (acceleration), but most of the mass of a galaxy would be inside the plasma threads, not inside the suns according to Birkeland.

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/AdvancesII.annotated.pdf

Peratt's description of how a galaxy functions and flows according to electromagnetic cosmology theory (I like that term) seems to suggest that the flow pattern of the ions and electrons coming into the galaxy, affect the flow pattern of the galaxy itself. That seems logical to me.

It seems then that any "missing mass" we might find as a result of lensing observations is bound to be located inside the flowing filaments of plasma, and we are likely to be underestimating the mass in those filaments according to Birkeland and Peratt. Peratt's probably your best resource when it comes to quantifying plasma physical interactions since he's done the most computer modeling of such movements in plasma and also works at Los Alamos and can verify that his models match observations in a lab.

Nereid
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RE: [snip] Let's start

Message 71659 in response to message 71658

Quote:


[snip]

Let's start with Kristian Birkeland's quote from the PDF file I posted earlier:

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One of the most peculiar features of this cosmogony is that space beyond the heavenly bodies is assumed to be filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds in such densities that the aggregate mass of the heavenly bodies within a limited, very large space would be only a very small fraction of the aggregate mass of the flying atoms and corpuscles there.

In other words, Birkeland calculated (math was his thing by the way) that most of the mass of a galaxy and the universe was contained in the plasma steams and electrons streams between the stars, not in the stars themselves. If we're looking for "missing mass" or underestimated mass explanations, Birkeland would suggest that we look to the flying atoms and electrons for the bulk of that mass. Some of the mass could be contained in some underestimation process related to solar theory (acceleration), but most of the mass of a galaxy would be inside the plasma threads, not inside the suns according to Birkeland.

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/AdvancesII.annotated.pdf

Peratt's description of how a galaxy functions and flows according to electromagnetic cosmology theory (I like that term) seems to suggest that the flow pattern of the ions and electrons coming into the galaxy, affect the flow pattern of the galaxy itself. That seems logical to me.

It seems then that any "missing mass" we might find as a result of lensing observations is bound to be located inside the flowing filaments of plasma, and we are likely to be underestimating the mass in those filaments according to Birkeland and Peratt. Peratt's probably your best resource when it comes to quantifying plasma physical interactions since he's done the most computer modeling of such movements in plasma and also works at Los Alamos and can verify that his models match observations in a lab.


I'm somewhat surprised at one aspect of Peratt's write up of Birkeland's 'cosmogonic theory' - Birkeland died in 1917, yet 'galaxies'* were not recognised as different 'island universes', a quite different kind of object from the other 'nebulae', until a decade later. I don't know if Peratt purposely introduced the anachronism - in order to provide a nice hook to his own work with the supercomputer perhaps - but it certainly detracted from the quality of the article for me.

Of course, he was not writing a paper for a peer-reviewed journal, so in that sense his sin (if we may use that term) is no worse than that of hundreds of marketing folk who churn out PRs for astronomical institutions (how many times, for example, have you read of the Big Bang theory stating that the universe began in an infinitely dense, infinitely hot singularity?).

More substantively, it's clear, from the Birkeland quote (that you have reproduced here), that he (Birkeland) assumed that the mass of what we (today) call the ISM is greater than that of the stars within it. In this respect, your gloss appears inaccurate - Birkeland did NOT "calculate[] [...] that most of the mass of a galaxy and the universe was contained in the plasma steams and electrons streams between the stars, not in the stars themselves".

Do you know of any Birkeland papers in which he summarises any such calculations, and provides the input values, assumptions or postulates?

In any case, I doubt that Birkeland was familiar with even the contemporary rudimentary (by today's standards) observations that constrain the mass of the ISM, and of course he could not possibly have been aware of even the techniques used in the last quarter century or so that have produced so many independent, mutually consistent conclusions about the composition of the ISM.

I'm familiar with Peratt's supercomputer simulations of galaxy morphology, and I think the lack of citations to his papers on this speaks volumes ... his work on plasmas in the LANL lab may be excellent, but the extreme narrowness of the observables that he sought to match his simulation results with means those results are next to useless, in terms of testing his stated hypotheses.

In any case, IIRC, Peratt's simulated galaxies are not dominated (in mass) by the ISM, so they are not models of Birkeland's 'cosmogonic theory'.

Finally, it is unnecessary to take such an indirect route (per your post) to conclude that the ISM may contain more (baryonic) mass than in stars; as I said in my earlier post, you can perform a range of direct, empirical observations of the ISM. From those observations, it is straight-forward to calculate robust estimates of the density, composition, temperature, etc of the ISM.

If you know of dramatic shortcomings in either the direct observations or the straight-forward analyses of them, such that the (baryonic) mass of the ISM has been underestimated by at least four orders of magnitude, please write up a paper! Immediately!! Once independently validated and verified, such a paper would be most welcome to astronomers.

Footnote: in one sense, Birkeland was quite right; in rich clusters of galaxies, the IGM (inter-galactic medium) dominates, in terms of the total cluster mass. However, his being 'right' here cannot possibly have been due to an anachronistic theory of galaxies, cluster of same, and the IGM ... in the first decade of the 20th century, there was no 'IGM'. However, in another sense, Birkeland was quite wrong; the most consistent interpretation of a range of independent observations of the IGM is that its baryonic ("electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds", plus neutral atoms and molecules, plus dust, plust ...) component is a relatively minor (~10-20%) contributor to its total mass.

* the 'galactic systems' in the 1902-03 quote from Birkeland refer (I'm pretty sure) to systems within the galaxy (i.e. the Milky Way); note his term 'spiral nebulae' for what we, today, call spiral galaxies.

Michael Mozina
Michael Mozina
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RE: More substantively,

Message 71660 in response to message 71659

Quote:
More substantively, it's clear, from the Birkeland quote (that you have reproduced here), that he (Birkeland) assumed that the mass of what we (today) call the ISM is greater than that of the stars within it. In this respect, your gloss appears inaccurate - Birkeland did NOT "calculate[] [...] that most of the mass of a galaxy and the universe was contained in the plasma steams and electrons streams between the stars, not in the stars themselves".

http://ia340919.us.archive.org/2/items/norwegianaurorap01chririch/norwegianaurorap01chririch.pdf

No, actually, he indeed "calculated" it. I'll have to skim through the pdf when I get a chance to find that same quote. His calculation was shortly after that flying ion quote as I recall. Before you write Birkeland off Nereid, take a gander at the the math he provides around page 650-770. Birkeland was every bit as capable of doing the math as you are, or Alfven was. None of you were slouches in the areas of quantification methods and mathematical calculation. I think his density calculations is on page 720, or somewhere around there.

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I'm familiar with Peratt's supercomputer simulations of galaxy morphology, and I think the lack of citations to his papers on this speaks volumes ... his work on plasmas in the LANL lab may be excellent, but the extreme narrowness of the observables that he sought to match his simulation results with means those results are next to useless, in terms of testing his stated hypotheses.

You know, this statement in particular seems ridiculous. Plasma cosmology theory (and reality for that matter) cannot be "graded" by the number of paper citations one receives. His work in LANL has paid his bills Nereid, and they've kept him around too. He build computer models for you and everything. How in the world can you simply brush him off with a some glib comment about paper citations? For someone who claims to be interesting in quantification, you certainly are picky about your sources, and you're very creative about the way you justify handwaving away all the heavy duty mathematics behind these theories.

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In any case, IIRC, Peratt's simulated galaxies are not dominated (in mass) by the ISM, so they are not models of Birkeland's 'cosmogonic theory'.

No, but I don't think Peratt added enough Iron and Nickel atoms to his simulations. I'm not sure how it would play out in a mass separated concept using Manuel's elemental abundance figures. It might be interesting to rerun his simulations with Manuals elemental abundance figures and see where the mass ends up then. Birkeland used iron as one of the elements he based his mass calculations on. I'm not sure of all the details behind Peratt's simulations, but I doubt they included Manuel's abundance figures.

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Finally, it is unnecessary to take such an indirect route (per your post) to conclude that the ISM may contain more (baryonic) mass than in stars;

I was attempting to provide you with a bit of the "history" behind the theory. It certainly wasn't intended to be the most direct method of communicating a personal opinion on the topic.

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as I said in my earlier post, you can perform a range of direct, empirical observations of the ISM. From those observations, it is straight-forward to calculate robust estimates of the density, composition, temperature, etc of the ISM.

Do these simulations include Bennett Pinches/Magnetic ropes in them?

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If you know of dramatic shortcomings in either the direct observations or the straight-forward analyses of them, such that the (baryonic) mass of the ISM has been underestimated by at least four orders of magnitude, please write up a paper! Immediately!!

I don't have to, it's been done a lot of times. All the authors note that mass calculations can't account for the actual mass, at which point they promptly stuff "dark matter" into the gaps of the otherwise failed calculation. If you've got any evidence that any of the "missing mass" you're looking for can come from non-baryonic dark matter (I'll give you neutrino mass if you like), then please provide empirical evidence that such mass actually exists in nature in a controlled laboratory experiment like Birkeland performed. It's ironic that he was one of the early proponents of an ISM, and an ISM was one of his key "predictions" based on experimental evidence. Got any experimental evidence that any exotic forms of non baryonic dark matter actually exist? I hear that non-baryonic matter tastes lovely in the spring, but every time I try to verify that claim, non one seems to be able to produce any to taste, or to weigh, or to experiment with in any way.

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Once independently validated and verified, such a paper would be most welcome to astronomers.

I think I'm on of the least "welcome" individuals that you know Nereid, published papers or no published papers. :) I've already published papers related to iron suns that were based on chemistry, and heliosiesmology and satellite imagery. Your side of the aisle doesn't seem interested in chemistry or heliosiesmology, or satellite images for that matter. I have all the evidence I need to demonstrate that the sun is not mostly made of hydrogen and helium.

Quote:

Footnote: in one sense, Birkeland was quite right; in rich clusters of galaxies, the IGM (inter-galactic medium) dominates, in terms of the total cluster mass. However, his being 'right' here cannot possibly have been due to an anachronistic theory of galaxies, cluster of same, and the IGM ... in the first decade of the 20th century, there was no 'IGM'. However, in another sense, Birkeland was quite wrong; the most consistent interpretation of a range of independent observations of the IGM is that its baryonic ("electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds", plus neutral atoms and molecules, plus dust, plust ...) component is a relatively minor (~10-20%) contributor to its total mass.

* the 'galactic systems' in the 1902-03 quote from Birkeland refer (I'm pretty sure) to systems within the galaxy (i.e. the Milky Way); note his term 'spiral nebulae' for what we, today, call spiral galaxies.

I'll have to track down the "spiral galaxy" part of Peratt's comments from that previous paper. Your point about the timeline of the discovery of galaxies seems valid, but I suspect there is a terminology change over time aspect to Peratts comments. I don't think he just made that up. I can't recall what Birkeland said about "spiral nebulae" at this point, but I do vaguely recall such a comment. It's been awhile since I've read Birkeland's work. I'll have to look through Birkeland's work again to see where Peratt got that idea.

Nereid
Nereid
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RE: RE: More

Message 71661 in response to message 71660

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More substantively, it's clear, from the Birkeland quote (that you have reproduced here), that he (Birkeland) assumed that the mass of what we (today) call the ISM is greater than that of the stars within it. In this respect, your gloss appears inaccurate - Birkeland did NOT "calculate[] [...] that most of the mass of a galaxy and the universe was contained in the plasma steams and electrons streams between the stars, not in the stars themselves".

http://ia340919.us.archive.org/2/items/norwegianaurorap01chririch/norwegianaurorap01chririch.pdf

No, actually, he indeed "calculated" it. I'll have to skim through the pdf when I get a chance to find that same quote. His calculation was shortly after that flying ion quote as I recall. Before you write Birkeland off Nereid, take a gander at the the math he provides around page 650-770. Birkeland was every bit as capable of doing the math as you are, or Alfven was. None of you were slouches in the areas of quantification methods and mathematical calculation. I think his density calculations is on page 720, or somewhere around there.


Thanks; that's a lot more help, in terms of making a 'Birkeland' case than Peratt's summary!

I'll look into this and comment further later.

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I'm familiar with Peratt's supercomputer simulations of galaxy morphology, and I think the lack of citations to his papers on this speaks volumes ... his work on plasmas in the LANL lab may be excellent, but the extreme narrowness of the observables that he sought to match his simulation results with means those results are next to useless, in terms of testing his stated hypotheses.

You know, this statement in particular seems ridiculous. Plasma cosmology theory (and reality for that matter) cannot be "graded" by the number of paper citations one receives. His work in LANL has paid his bills Nereid, and they've kept him around too. He build computer models for you and everything. How in the world can you simply brush him off with a some glib comment about paper citations? For someone who claims to be interesting in quantification, you certainly are picky about your sources, and you're very creative about the way you justify handwaving away all the heavy duty mathematics behind these theories.


I'd appreciate it Michael if you responded to what I actually wrote.

But perhaps I wasn't clear enough; my fault then ... I'll try again.

Here's the logic of the part of my post you quoted:

* Peratt's papers on simulating spiral galaxies are next to useless, in terms of testing (his stated) hypotheses

* why? because the simulated observables he reported, in those papers, are very narrow in range - only a 'velocity curve' and some ill-defined morphology*

(* also because he failed to address the manifest shortcomings of the simulated observables he did report; this comment was not included in my original)

* with such a narrow range of reported results, given how easy it would have been to report more extensive ones, many of the astronomers who actually read the papers would have found them unconvincing

(* also, he did not give enough detail of the code he used in the simulations (I may have mis-remembered here), making it quite a challenge for anyone to independently verify his results; this comment was not included in my original)

* it is for at least these shortcomings in his published work, from the perspective of doing astrophysics, that his papers are not cited.

To say this another way: the lack of citations is a result of the weakness of his science (as presented in the papers themselves; only he knows how good the science is that he didn't present), not the other way round.

Perhaps I can illustrate this better by taking a recent example: "High Galactic Latitude Interstellar Neutral Hydrogen Structure and Associated (WMAP) High Frequency Continuum Emission", by Gerrit Verschuur (source: http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.1125). There was quite a fuss about this when the v1 preprint appeared on arXiv - concrete evidence that the CMB may not be 'C' (cosmic) after all! However, that v1 was so full of flaws that those who were familiar with the relevant observations dismissed it as rubbish. v2, which may eventually be published, in ApJ, fixes these (at least the obvious flaws).

Curiously, the endorser (Richard Lieu) got some of his grad students to do a simple test, using publicly available code, and found the original Verschuur paper's main conclusion (that at least a part of the CMB may have a 'local' signature on it) is not, in fact, consistent with the observations Verschuur chose.

In this case, a hypothesis was proposed, a paper written based on it, and a method of testing the hypothesis presented (in v2, not v1). Normal science, peer-review working well, and the paper will join thousands of others as providing a tiny bit of extra evidence for modern cosmological models (though that was clearly not the hope of either Verschuur or Lieu).

Back to Peratt's papers. By choosing to publish them in a journal far removed from astrophysics, Peratt lost the chance to get robust comments (from anonymous reviewers), and, perhaps, the chance to write a paper that provided a much better test of his hypotheses.

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In any case, IIRC, Peratt's simulated galaxies are not dominated (in mass) by the ISM, so they are not models of Birkeland's 'cosmogonic theory'.

No, but I don't think Peratt added enough Iron and Nickel atoms to his simulations. I'm not sure how it would play out in a mass separated concept using Manuel's elemental abundance figures. It might be interesting to rerun his simulations with Manuals elemental abundance figures and see where the mass ends up then. Birkeland used iron as one of the elements he based his mass calculations on. I'm not sure of all the details behind Peratt's simulations, but I doubt they included Manuel's abundance figures.


I don't quite follow you here Michael - the ISM contains essentially no iron or nickel; it is dominated by H and He ... except for some parts of some supernovae remnants (and planetary nebulae).

These conclusions come from a great many direct astronomical observations, using several independent methods, so whatever "Manuel's elemental abundance figures" are, they would seem to be inconsistent with the data (for the ISM).

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Finally, it is unnecessary to take such an indirect route (per your post) to conclude that the ISM may contain more (baryonic) mass than in stars;

I was attempting to provide you with a bit of the "history" behind the theory. It certainly wasn't intended to be the most direct method of communicating a personal opinion on the topic.

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as I said in my earlier post, you can perform a range of direct, empirical observations of the ISM. From those observations, it is straight-forward to calculate robust estimates of the density, composition, temperature, etc of the ISM.

Do these simulations include Bennett Pinches/Magnetic ropes in them?


They're not 'simulations' Michael; they are direct observations, followed by pretty simple analyses.

Take just one example, optical 'nebular' emission lines: the composition and density of regions of the ISM where these emission lines are observed follows from standard tables of line oscillator strengths, plus an extension of laboratory spectroscopy - so much light in this line, so much in that line, turn the handle and robust estimates of densities and compositions fall out. To get absolute numbers, the only extra thing you need is an estimate of distance. All quite straight-forward and quite uncontroversial.

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If you know of dramatic shortcomings in either the direct observations or the straight-forward analyses of them, such that the (baryonic) mass of the ISM has been underestimated by at least four orders of magnitude, please write up a paper! Immediately!!

I don't have to, it's been done a lot of times. All the authors note that mass calculations can't account for the actual mass, at which point they promptly stuff "dark matter" into the gaps of the otherwise failed calculation. If you've got any evidence that any of the "missing mass" you're looking for can come from non-baryonic dark matter (I'll give you neutrino mass if you like), then please provide empirical evidence that such mass actually exists in nature in a controlled laboratory experiment like Birkeland performed. It's ironic that he was one of the early proponents of an ISM, and an ISM was one of his key "predictions" based on experimental evidence. Got any experimental evidence that any exotic forms of non baryonic dark matter actually exist? I hear that non-baryonic matter tastes lovely in the spring, but every time I try to verify that claim, non one seems to be able to produce any to taste, or to weigh, or to experiment with in any way.


This is news to me ... we are talking about the ISM, aren't we?

Within our own galaxy, there's little observational evidence for dark matter in the thin disk (it's in the halo).

Perhaps you could point us to papers making the case for non-baryonic matter being a significant component of the thin disk ISM in our galaxy?

Otherwise, yes, if you claim the ISM (at least in our local region of the galaxy) contains, in line with Birkeland, significantly more mass (in the form of electrons and ions) than that in the stars of this region, then you do have to make that case ... by showing the (observational, analytical) shortcomings in the standard methods of estimating the ISM's mass, for example.

Oh and can we get past this 'if I can't make it in a lab it doesn't exist' please? I mean, you already said no one has even a single gram of 'neutron star material' in any Earthly lab, much less a gram of a MECO. Further, no one has produced, in the lab, many of the nebular lines (including the very common green [OIII] one). And no Earthly lab contains a 2 x 10^30 kg lump of 75% H, 23% He, 2% other elements!

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Footnote: in one sense, Birkeland was quite right; in rich clusters of galaxies, the IGM (inter-galactic medium) dominates, in terms of the total cluster mass. However, his being 'right' here cannot possibly have been due to an anachronistic theory of galaxies, cluster of same, and the IGM ... in the first decade of the 20th century, there was no 'IGM'. However, in another sense, Birkeland was quite wrong; the most consistent interpretation of a range of independent observations of the IGM is that its baryonic ("electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds", plus neutral atoms and molecules, plus dust, plust ...) component is a relatively minor (~10-20%) contributor to its total mass.

* the 'galactic systems' in the 1902-03 quote from Birkeland refer (I'm pretty sure) to systems within the galaxy (i.e. the Milky Way); note his term 'spiral nebulae' for what we, today, call spiral galaxies.

I'll have to track down the "spiral galaxy" part of Peratt's comments from that previous paper. Your point about the timeline of the discovery of galaxies seems valid, but I suspect there is a terminology change over time aspect to Peratts comments. I don't think he just made that up. I can't recall what Birkeland said about "spiral nebulae" at this point, but I do vaguely recall such a comment. It's been awhile since I've read Birkeland's work. I'll have to look through Birkeland's work again to see where Peratt got that idea.


I'm looking forward to it.

* With very little additional effort he could have captured, and reported, a range of simulated observables, from SEDs to relative intensities (in the two main wavebands astronomers of the time had the most experience with, light and radio) to polarisations to ...

Nereid
Nereid
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 79
Credit: 925034
RAC: 0

If we can get back to the

If we can get back to the topic of this thread ("How the sun shines"), I'd like to present this summary:

The primary requirements of any theory purporting to explain how the Sun shines are as follows:
1. energy output of 3.8 x 10^26 W
2. SED approximately that of a 5780 K blackbody (another source says 5530 K)
3. energy output has varied by ~<0.1% over the past ~30 years
4. energy output has varied by ~<30% over the past ~<4.5 billion years.

We may classify sources of the Sun's energy as internal, external, or a combination.

As far as I know (AFAIK), the following sources have been proposed:

A. core fusion of H into He; the current mainstream view, with thousands of published papers

B. chemical burning, e.g. of coal; an idea discounted over 100 years ago

C. gravitational collapse; ditto

D. 'Manuel's mechanism', something to do with a neutron star core; only a few published papers on this

E. an external (electrical) current, the central concept in 'EU Theory'; AFAIK, there are no published papers on this

F. another internal source, or sources

G. another external source, or sources.

How does each of these eight fare with respect to (wrt) the four requirements?

AFAIK, only A meets all four.

Showing that B and C fail requirement 4 is, today, often a classroom exercise in undergraduate physics courses, or even advanced science/physics in high school.

F and G obviously cannot be tested!

IIRC, in at least one of Manuel's paper there is a case presented for D meeting requirements 1 and 4. However, Manual's idea would seem to require that the Sun is a very special star. If we add requirements similar to 1 through 4, for Main Sequence (MS) stars, and add a requirement concerning the observed dominance of MS stars, I'm not sure D would meet all the requirements (no surprise that A does, as thousands of papers attest). Perhaps the weakest link here is in robustly, and independently, estimating the ages of MS stars ... I think such robust estimates can be made, but they are not easy to describe in 1,000 words or less. Of course, invoking some form of the Copernican principle side-steps the need for such estimates, at least for stars that are, by direct observation, very similar to the Sun.

Perhaps Michael Mozina would be kind enough to provide references which address how E meets requirements 1 through 4?

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