As I have noted, "The Electric Comet" document that pln2bz provided a link to, by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott, has the following at the bottom right of the first page:
POSTER PRESENTATION Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 33rd International Conference on Plasma Sciences (ICOPS) Traverse City, Michigan June 4-8, 2006 Here is the 33rd ICOPS requirement for posters (http://www.icops2006.org/oral-poster/index.html):
Posters should fit on 4-by-8-foot boards. You will need to bring a finished, printed version of your poster. We will not be able to print posters at the conference. There are 3 poster sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. Each poster will be assigned a number, and you will need to mount your poster on the appropriately numbered board. Posters must be mounted by 10am on the day of your relevant poster session, and taken down by 6pm the same day. And here is the complete list of posters at this conference: http://www.icops2006.org/technical_program/poster_order.html
Notice something(s) odd?
The Thornhill & Talbott document doesn't look like it conforms to the 33rd ICOPS requirement for posters.
The Thornhill & Talbott (T&T) document is not listed as one of the 2006 ICOPS Poster Sessions.
I wonder, if pln2bz reads this, if he could ask Thornhill (or Talbott) for a clarification.
It would seem that this T&T document follows a quite different convention from at least one other poster at this conference (click on the link to "ICOPS 2006 Poster"; it's a > 1MB PDF): http://www.gangolee.com/research.html. Note that the Ombrello et al. poster is quite similar, in format and meta-content (references, etc), to the AAS LSST one I linked to in an earlier comment. I think those who have attended plasma physics, space physics, space science, or astronomy conferences might like to chime in: to what extent does the T&T document seem to conform to the conventions of posters you've seen at such conferences (wrt references, quantitative detail, etc)?
So one 'incorrect' thing about this document is that it does not seem to be what it purports to be.
The answer to pln2bz' question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"?), for eight (of nine) of the specific, physical mechanisms in the electric comet model (as presented in the PDF document he supplied a link to) is they are neither correct, nor incorrect; rather they are meaningless*. However, there is a possibility that the last mechanism - the charging of comets - somehow breathes meaning into the mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma, jets, and filaments.
The charging of comets.
This mechanism is succinctly described in the second bullet of the ECM, on page 5: "Comets follow their elongated paths within a weak electrical field centered on the Sun. In approaching the Sun, a charge imbalance develops between the nucleus and the higher voltage and charge density near the Sun", and elaborated on p6 "The comet spends most of its time far from the Sun, where the plasma voltage is low relative to the Sun. In remote regions, the comet moves slowly and its charge easily comes into balance with its surroundings. But as the comet falls toward the Sun, it begins to move at a furious speed through regions of increasing voltage. The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization", p16 "The Sun's radial electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary space. In a constant radial electric field, the voltage decreases linearly with distance. A comet on an elongated orbit spends most of its time far from the Sun and acquires a charge in balance with the voltage at that distance. But when a comet speeds inward for a quick spin around the Sun, the voltage of the comet becomes increasingly out of balance with that nearer the Sun", and p 18 "The long-period comets spend a longer time in a region of lower plasma potential than the short-period comets. Consequently, their voltage difference on their approach to the Sun will be higher".
There is also an external reference for this mechanism: "In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Juergens [...] proposed that the Sun is a glow discharge, the center of an electric field extending to the heliopause."
In a nutshell, a comet's motion through the Sun's weak, constant radial electric (or electrical, the document uses both words) field causes the charging of the comet. The external reference at least admits the possibility that this mechanism may not be as meaningless as the other eight examined so far. Further, to the extent that at least some of the other mechanisms require an electric (or electrical) field, at least one aspect of them may not be meaningless*.
Assume, for now, that sufficient consistency between the electric (or electrical) field in the ECM and in Juergens' proposal can be demonstrated. Would there then be sufficient meaning for pln2bz' question to be answered, one way or the other?
Unfortunately not.
Why? Because the mechanism is poorly quantified. On the plus side, the use of terms such as "radial" (centred on the Sun), "constant with distance", "decreases linearly with distance" nails things down to within a constant (or several constants, or zero points); in the middle is the nature of comets' orbits (though see below); on the negative side, the relationship between a comet's speed (relative to the Sun, in a radial direction?), how fast it "comes into balance with its surroundings", and the charge it acquires at any point in its orbit is not described. By implication, a comet's charge imbalance is lessened by an aspect of one or more of the other mechanisms (electric(al) arc discharge, (other) plasma discharge, electrostatic cleaning), but whether there are other mechanisms, what the relative importance of these three is, and how any vary with any other factor (speed, radial distance, comet size, comet composition,...) is not even hinted at.
At first glance, it would seem that the nature of comets' orbits should be well-constrained;
With respect to specific, physical mechanisms in the electric comet model, per the PDF document in pln2bz' comment, we can already answer his question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"?) for two (of eight) mechanisms: they are neither correct, nor incorrect; rather they are meaningless*.
Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma (and tail).
This statement, on page 16, pretty much says it all: "Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the solar plasma is taken up in a double layer of charge, called a plasma sheath, that surrounds the comet. When the electrical stress is great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical cometary coma and tail." Only two other statements add anything to the mechanism: "It is the electric force that holds the spherical cometary coma in place as the comet races around the Sun" (p5, where the ECM is laid out) and "The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization and by forming [...] and a visible plasma sheath, or coma." (p6).
One more statement completes the explanations of these two mechanisms: "[a comet's] well-defined filaments extending up to tens of millions of miles without dissipating in the vacuum of space [revealed in its tails] is to be expected of a plasma discharge within the ambient electric field of the Sun." (p5).
So, in a nutshell, electric field plus plasma = coma; add "a plasma discharge" and you get the filaments in tails.
However, with no external references for any of this, and nothing more than the above (in the document itself), these mechanisms are just as meaningless as those covered in my previous comment... unless the fundamental mechanism (the charging of comets) somehow breathes meaning into them. Oh, and the specific mechanism for tails - either formation or maintenance - is empty (only filaments are explained, in terms of a mechanism)*.
Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of jets and filaments.
In the ECM, filaments and jets are intimately linked, but it is the mechanism for jets that is described in some detail: "The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus, [...] excavated material is accelerated into space along the jets' observed filamentary arcs"; "The collimation of such jets [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge"; "The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode jets"; and "an electric field accelerates matter in the jet; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin jets many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial sublimation; and instabilities and fluctuations suddenly relocate jets in exceedingly short periods of time".
And, as mentioned in my previous comment, the jets are also linked with EDM: "Intermittent and wandering arcs erode the surface and burn it black, leaving the distinctive scarring patterns of electric discharges"; and "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining".
But how much meat is there, really? Let's substitute "electric arc discharge" for "jet", per the primary definition:
"The collimation of such electric arc discharges [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" - so "electric arc discharges" are a subset of "plasma discharges"
"The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode electric arc discharges" - consistent
"an electric field accelerates matter in the electric arc discharge; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin electric arc discharges many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial su
Before I look at some of the eight specific physical mechanisms in the ECM, a note about the PDF document itself.
It is sub-titled "Poster Presentation Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 33rd International Conference on Plasma Sciences Traverse City Michigan June 4-8, 2006". For an example - in terms of references, sources, etc (not content) - of what astronomers are used to, consider this one (big!) page LSST poster, from the 209th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, early last year (it's about the same size as the ElectricComet document) http://www.lsst.org/Meetings/AAS/2007/JanPosters/newman_086.06.pdf. Note too that ADS will turn up lots of papers by the authors of this LSST paper, but none by either W. Thornhill or D. Talbott.
Three of the eight specific physical mechanisms are easily addressed (EDM and electrostatic cleaning of the surfaces of comets, electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on their surfaces) - the 21 page PDF contains no external references, and only the following internal ones (simple re-statements omitted):
- the image titled "Carving of Surface Relief" has a caption which includes "the surface on the right, produced by electric discharge machining (EDM)" (note there's nothing to say whether "electrical discharge machining" is the same as "electric discharge machining" or not)
- "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining" - this repeats the link of EDM to the action of jets ("The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus")
- "The asteroid appears to have attracted considerable surface debris electrostatically".
Note that the first time the terms "electrical discharge machining" and "electrostatic cleaning" are used, they are in quote marks, signifying that they have special, non-standard meanings (if the authors follow a common orthographic convention)... yet no definitions are given.
So two of the three mechanisms are empty - you could rewrite the parts of the document which mention them using nonsense words and they would have just the same meaning.
EDM is linked to "jets"; next comment I shall examine four (of the other five) mechanisms (the formation of coma and tail, of jets and filaments, maintenance of coma and filaments) and also look at whether there's any more meat to EDM than there is to "electrostatic cleaning" or "attracted back to the nucleus electrostatically".
Before I comment on the "Electric Comet Model" (ECM), as presented in the document ElectricComet.pdf, I would like to thank pln2bz for bringing it to SD readers' attention. From the evident glee in the writing of EU proponents these last few days, about this document, one may conclude that this is particularly good material, from the perspective of a concrete example of the Electric Universe framework and approach in action, both in terms of its internals (evidence, logic, consistency, etc) and match to observed phenomena (i.e. the ultimate test of anything scientific).
Page 5 of the document presents the ECM as a set of eight bullet points. True to its name, the physical mechanisms in the ECM have to do with electric currents and fields. Leaving aside (for now) the origin of comets (covered in the first part of the first bullet), here are the key mechanisms:
+ the charging of comets
+ the formation of coma and tail
+ "electrical discharge machining" (EDM) of the surfaces of comets
+ the formation of jets and filaments
+ the maintenance of filaments
+ the maintenance of the coma
+ "electrostatic cleaning" of the surfaces of comets
+ electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on the surfaces of comets.
No references are given. It is as if these mechanisms appeared in the document without any help from others, apparently Thornhill and Talbott did not need to stand on the shoulders of anyone, giant or not (thank you Newton). There are hints that others contributed to building the foundation: "The collimation of such jets is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" for example (though the relationship between EDM and plasma discharge is not mentioned), a debt to "engineer Ralph Juergens" is acknowledged on page 6, and there are several mentions of un-named "electrical theorists" (and one of "electric theorists") on other pages, with the implication that they had a hand in developing at least parts of the ECM^.
How, then, to answer pln2bz' question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"), as it refers to these eight ECM physical mechanisms? Given the absence of any references, I can think of only two approaches: 1) examine them using only what's written in the document, and 2) make an arbitrary choice of external references.
In my next comment I'll proceed with approach 1).
I am reluctant to put too much effort into approach 2), except in so far as that effort can contribute directly to testing my working hypothesis #2 ("EU theories cannot be falsified, even in principle, by any experimental ("in the lab") or observational results").
(to be continued)
A final note: does it really matter whether or not my working hypothesis #2a ("Within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source, nor be fully attributed; copyrights need not be respected" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22209504) is validated? I think it does, because it is a short logical step to "material presented by EU proponents cannot have more than minimal credibility" and "no matter how many times he says "trust me"*, as long as pln2bz is working within the EU framework and approach, you can't". Of course, it may be that highly inaccurate presentations, very poor attribution, and so on may be (very) rare (and so maybe EU material is mostly credible); naturally, formulating the working hypothesis in a quantitative form, and then testing it, should address this caveat.
^ Remember that here I am examining only the ECM as presented on page 5, and references to it, sans the bit about origins. So, for example, the reference to Alfvén's ideas on CMEs is beyond scope.
* I need to dig up the URL of the SD comment, or comments, in which pln2bz wrote this.
you are assuming that I have a case to make I was (so assuming); shame on me for making such baseless assumptions.
The theoretical models of the Solar Wind suggest that it accelerates at least an order of magnitude beyond "a few solar radii", and it I am not mistaken, the graph at 1AU is still rising, which I believe is an acceleration, albeit small. Slashdot is not a very good place to try to get up to speed quickly on such a rich and complex phenomenon as the solar wind.
Note pln2bz' original comment ("the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets!"); note my response ("This is just as inaccurate as your earlier comment about magnetic reconnection."), and then he dug himself into a hole ("The solar wind does indeed continue to accelerate even as it passes the planets.").
As you said yourself, you are an amateur; the "solar wind" in a richly complex bundle of phenomena.
For starters, the solar wind pln2bz was probably referring to (unbeknowst to him), and which you are also (even though you quoted the title of the page in one of your links - fast solar wind), is a subset of solar winds (if one may summarise so crudely), the 'fast solar wind'.
Finally, there's pln2bz' "the planets" (not "some of the planets", nor "Mercury and Venus", nor...). In the context of the SD comment where he first used these two words*, it's pretty clear he means all the planets, and gives no hint that he's aware of the complexity of the solar wind phenomena.
If any reader of this comment is interested, I'd be happy to suggest some internet discussion fora where they may pursue these fascinating and complex phenomena in more detail (and where it would be much easier to discuss the hundreds/thousands of papers on the topic... and that's just those published in the last decade).
* "Any theory that attempts to explain the inverse temperature problem must also grapple with the fact that the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets! There is no satisfying explanation for that one to date without consideration of an electric field, and the standard solar model miserably fails in explaining it. And this is no minor matter either because the solar wind, taken as a whole, constitutes the largest structure in our solar system, the heliospheric current sheet. Contemplate the implications of that for a moment: astrophysicists do not understand what is causing the motions of the largest structure in our own immediate neighborhood!"
Here's pln2bz' comment, that began this rat's nest of comments:
the fact that the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets! Note that he's referring to *observations*, not theory.
CheshireCatCO already busted pln2bz' assertion earlier (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148128): "Neither of your links says that the solar wind is accelerating as it passes Earth. Both say that it accelerates near the Sun (within a few solar radii), which *is* non-controversial and even predicted by Parker's original work. What Parker doesn't explain is the magnitude of the acceleration (see Kivelson and Russel's book, for example), but you're denying that, aren't you?
Can you please bother to read your own links closely enough to verify their relevance? Simply posting a random link and saying, "here's my evidence" may look good at first glance, but it's really a very poor way to make a case."
The three links you provided, iantresman, support CheshireCatCO's comment... and provide another rebuttal of pln2bz' assertion.
Did you, an apparently prolific proponent of EU ideas, intend to (directly) contradict pln2bz, who is also such a proponent?
Working hypothesis #2a: Within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source, nor be fully attributed; copyrights need not be respected.
In that comment I provided examples of evidence that was not fully attributed, and (in an addendum (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22208968) of one image with a copyright that was not respected). Thus, these two parts of the working hypothesis are validated.
An example of "evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source"^ might be something like this:
In a paper published in the 1990s, Alfvén said "Whether this [a Big Bang cosmological model] is correct or not can only be found if the observed present state of the universe is used as a basis for a reconstruction of increasingly old states. It is reasonable to use well established laws of nature as a first approximation."* Clearly, Alfvén is here stating his unequivocal support for General Relativity-based FRW cosmologies, as GR is one of the most well-established of the laws of nature.
There is a paper, by Alfvén, published in the 1990s, which contains those words... but unless you are very familiar with his papers, it's unlikely you'll find it easily (i.e. in this example, the evidence is poorly attributed).
Further, if you do manage to find the paper, you'll quickly see that this quote - while accurate - is used to make a point almost the opposite of what Alfvén went on to say! In other words, it's taken well and truly out of context.
Can the hypothesis that within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source be validated^^? Can such validation be found in the Electric Comet document? Stay tuned.
^ this could do with some editing; it's poorly expressed.
* Note that this is considerably longer than almost all the quotes used in the Electric Comet document.
^^ The answer, of course, is YES! As mentioned earlier "If you look carefully at the image, you can see that there is still a slight connective filament between them in the infrared" is a clear example of evidence presented that does not accurately reflect the source.
I said:
yet at least some of the images used have copyrights of their own On further investigation, it seems that only one of the images^ whose sources I have been able to find has a copyright (there are some - such as the one on page 1 - that I have so far been unable to source).
However, several have usage statements.
For example, the Comet Linear image, from the STScI: "it is requested that in any subsequent use of this work NASA and STScI be given appropriate acknowledgement." (http://hubblesite.org/copyright/)
^ The image of asteroid Itokawa, from JAXA, has this: "When using materials, JAXA should be credited as the source. (Unless noted otherwise, the copyrights of the materials in the Photo Archives belong to JAXA.)" (http://jda.jaxa.jp/jda/service_e.html)
What is dubious? Please, explain which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect... [URL snipped]
This comment of mine is the first of several which will examine the document pln2bz provided in the SD comment to which this is a reply.
Here I will take a first-pass look at what, empirically, constitutes "evidence" within the EU framework and approach.
This is important for two reasons:
first, I need to develop hypotheses concerning "evidence" for my investigation of the EU framework and approach, esp working hypothesis #2 ("EU theories cannot be falsified, even in principle, by any experimental ("in the lab") or observational results" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22183818); and
GENERAL CAVEAT: The results presented below are from an informal analysis of the PDF document; in particular, key terms (e.g. "images") are not defined. Among other things this means that if you, dear reader, choose to do your own analysis, your results may differ somewhat from those below. Also, I may have made some mistakes (if you chose to point them out, I would be grateful).
This 21 page PDF document, called a poster by the authors, contains ~20 direct quotes (examples: ""Comets are perhaps at once the most spectacular and the least well understood members of the solar system." M. Neugebauer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory", "According to a Stardust project press release, mission scientists expected "a dirty, black, fluffy snowball" with a couple of jets that would be "dispersed into a halo."", "When a coronal mass ejection greeted Comet NEAT, space scientists called it a spectacular "coincidence.""). Not one of these is given a clear attribution! Of course, with Google, a sceptical reader with an open mind could, probably, find most of these fairly quickly.
Most (>70%) of the direct quotes seem to be from press releases, or news conferences; at least one is from a book... but none seem to be from papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journal. Two such papers are mentioned ("The results of the Deep Impact mission were published in the journal Science" and "In a paper published in the 1960s Dr. Brian G. Marsden, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drew attention to the anomaly of comet fragmentation"), but a curious reader may no
I'm sure you guys will just view this as more "word soup", but to be honest, I think maybe you need to get off of your strict diet of mathematics. I can't speak for anyone else who may have read this, but I would not say this is just more word salad; rather, it seems to convey - rather clearly - a profound ignorance of plasma physics.
Worse, for one who has written so glowingly about Alfvén, it seems pln2bz has not read much of the plasma physics which earned Alfvén his scientific reputation.
But wait! What does the author of this graduate course in plasma physics have to say about the domain of applicability of Alfvén's great work?
This, from the introduction section (my emphasis):
It is often observed that the above set of equations [the MHD equations] are identical to the equations governing the motion of an inviscid, adiabatic, perfectly conducting, electrically neutral liquid. Indeed, this observation is sometimes used as the sole justification for the MHD equations. After all, a hot, tenuous, quasi-neutral plasma is highly conducting, and if the motion is sufficiently fast then both viscosity and heat conduction can be plausibly neglected. However, we can appreciate, from Sect. 3, that this is a highly oversimplified and misleading argument. The problem is, of course, that a weakly coupled plasma is a far more complicated dynamical system than a conducting liquid. So, if one insists on drawing conclusions about what plasma physics is, and how it is applied, without even reading introductory texts on it, what could we say about the approach which leads to such a conclusion?
Let's take the example of magnetic reconnection: there is little interest in legitimately testing the claims of magnetic reconnection against competing theories. The fact that exploding double layers are excluded as a possible cause for the observations introduces a very serious problem of creating a complete set of interpretations for observations. You guys are allowing assumptions to creep into your conclusions by virtue of restricting interpretations to those that lend support to the conventional theories. (my emphasis)
In an earlier SD comment I posted a link to an online graduate level course in plasma physics. Even a cursory read of the relevant parts of that course would show that this comment of pln2bz' is woefully ignorant... the math is there for anyone to read, along with the assumptions, and so on.
"Magnetic reconnection" is used to model plasmas and explain observed behaviour (whether in the lab or in space) in part because it is a tractable approach. If anyone wants to develop an alternative that has the benefit for easier math, or a greater domain of applicability, or some other nice attribute, then I'm sure they will find many receptive audiences.
But no one - except, perhaps, a few EU proponents who simply don't understand the relevant physics - would confuse two different ways of handling complex mechanisms with "competing theories"! The electrons and ions do their things just the same way, no matter what approach is used to try to get a handle on the complexity (and gnarly math).
OTOH (on the other hand), if the underlying physics of "exploding double layers" is, in fact, different from that which the shorthand "magnetic reconnection" describes, then it would indeed be remiss of the plasma physicists to not recognise this, and investigate it.
And it should come as no surprise to SD readers that lab experiments have been done on "exploding double layers"! Indeed, here is a PhD thesis on just this topic (the author did this at no less an august lab than the Alfvén Lab, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden): http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993JPhD...26.1192V. Now that may be a little difficult to get one's hands on, and it is now nearly 15 years' old, so how about something more recent and accessible? Like "TOPICAL REVIEW: A review of recent laboratory double layer experiments" perhaps (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007PSST...16....1C)? Here's the abstract:
Recent developments in laboratory double layers from the late 1980s to the spring of 2007 are reviewed. The paper begins by a lead up to electric double layers in the laboratory. Then an overview of the main double layer devices and properties is presented with an emphasis on current-free double layers. Some of the double layer models and simulations are analysed before giving a more complete description of current-free double layers in radiofrequency plasmas expanding in a diverging magnetic field. Astrophysics double layers are briefly reported. Finally, applications of double layers to the field of plasma processing and electric propulsion are discussed. Oh, and I have a recollection that a certain prolific EU proponent wrote, quite recently, about having an open mind, and scepticism... it couldn't be that "EU theorists" are somewhat closed-minded about "magnetic reconnection" could it?
n fact, that is the fundamental principle of the Electric Universe, for if something can be disproven within the laboratory, then it is effectively invalid. SD readers may be sick and tired of having me ask/say this by now...
You mean the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of laboratory experiments which demonstrated, unequivocally, the existence of magnetic reconnection means that those parts of Alfvén's work where he railed against it are now invalid?
How about the non-existence, in any laboratory, of plasma which emits the two green [O III] lines? What does this have to say about the source of so much emission in so many astronomical objects?
Or the complete lack of any laboratory demonstration of a gravitationally^ induced small atomic dipole (the mechanism at the heart of at least one EU proposal)?
Or does the universal lack of any laboratory demonstration of an "intrinsic redshift" of >~1 mean Arp's observations are thus effectively invalid?
Of course, pln2bz may mean that a good lab experiment may rule out explanations like the small atomic dipole (ultracentrifuges subject atoms to far, far higher g-forces than would be found in, or on, the Sun), but cannot rule out things like green [O III] lines or "intrinsic redshift" - after all, you can't "prove a negative".
No, that can't be right either... if you allow green [O III] lines and "intrinsic redshift", then you have no grounds for ruling out black holes, dark (non-baryonic) matter, and dark energy (etc).
Does any reader of this comment know how the EU framework and method addresses these apparent conundrums?
^ The lab tests of this are done every day, by the thousand - in the ultracentrifuges in so many industrial and medical facilites, for example, not to mention university labs.
Nereid, you've given me absolutely nothing to work with here. You're doing nothing more than pointing out what you disagree with. If you have a problem, for instance, with my statement regarding the continued acceleration of the solar wind, then perhaps you should present the basis for your problem, and I'll forward it on to Don, Wal, Dave and the others. You have to understand though that I'm a filter for those guys. I value the work that they do, and wouldn't dream of wasting their time with vague assertions. Who wrote this, on 23 Jan, 2008? And which SD writer were they referring to? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22160452
"Are you just now figuring out right now that I don't read your messages?"
"An good example is our friend a few posts up who insists that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets. A few weeks ago I had the same argument with another electric universer who insisted that all our space probes show this to be true. So I posted links to the solar wind velocity graphs from SOHO and Voyager that show the opposite is true."
Note that there wasn't anything at all vague about what ceoyoyo wrote, and anyone reading this can independently verify what she (he?) wrote, by doing their own googling.
Now here's the real shocker (or not): this evidence about the behaviour of the solar wind has been known for over a decade (or even three); given the repeated insistence that the EU framework and method is "actualistic", and the importance the the electric Sun idea to EU proponents, am I the only reader of pln2bz' comment to find it rather odd that only in 2008 is he discovering something that a sceptic with an open mind could have discovered before many reading this today were even born?
Oh, and for the n-th time, the handle is APODNereid!
^ or perhaps it was CheshireCatCO http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148128 "Neither of your links says that the solar wind is accelerating as it passes Earth. Both say that it accelerates near the Sun (within a few solar radii), which *is* non-controversial and even predicted by Parker's original work. What Parker doesn't explain is the magnitude of the acceleration (see Kivelson and Russel's book, for example), but you're denying that, aren't you?
Can you please bother to read your own links closely enough to verify their relevance? Simply posting a random link and saying, "here's my evidence" may look good at first glance, but it's really a very poor way to make a case."
Wallace Thornhill and Dave Talbott, believe it or not, are *NOT* the Electric Universe. You can dislike the people and their style of work, but don't confuse the people with the methodology or concepts. The rest of us are not afraid to tell those guys that we don't agree with them. That's another thing about EU: We're not striving to achieve consensus. We encourage creative problem solving and debate, even on the big questions. Behind the scenes, there are plenty more characters involved than you hear about. And it's not a hierarchical discussion. The geologist is listened to just as much as Wal or the nuclear physicist, or the guy who works on translating ancient documents. We have people from *all* of the disciplines talking with one another on the various issues, and although they all agree on the core conceptual framework and methodology, they don't always come to agreement on the details. And honestly, I find that to be completely perfect because it means that we're being cautious and open-minded. In other words, we've learned from the mistakes of establishment science. Let's take a closer look at this, step by step (my emphasis, in all cases).
We encourage creative problem solving and debate, even on the big questions. And just how is this problem solving and debate conducted?
What are the "rules of evidence"?
What are the legitimate forms of logic?
What is the role of open publication, of independent verification and validation?
What is the role of hypothesis formation and testing?
although they all agree on the core conceptual framework and methodology, they don't always come to agreement on the details Where is this "core conceptual framework and methodology" published?
How has it been tested?
How are the numerous internal inconsistencies and inconsistencies with good experimental and observational results addressed?
[this is] completely perfect because it means that we're being cautious and open-minded. And yet, as far as I can tell by reading pln2bz' SD comments, there are no proposals to use any telescopes, or any space missions, to actually test any of the ideas presented.
Take the what, hundreds?, of TBPODs (several of which pln2bz has provided links to, in SD comments).
Where among them can you read something like "and electrical engineers and EU plasma physicists have published proposals for several new space-based telescopes, with particular emphasis on how they should be able to address the following key issues in EU theory {insert list here}. These science cases may be found {insert list of papers here}"? or "{insert name here}, a leading EU theorist, today published, in {insert name of relevant peer-reviewed journal here}, a proposal for an instrument to augment the TMT. He said that such an instrument would, in all likelihood, provide crucial data for tests of {insert EU hypotheses here}"? Or "click here for a poster on a science program using the LSST that is designed specifically to examine a core assumption in EU theory, namely {insert details here}"?
Excuse me for expressing negative feelings about how a framework and methodology could be described as "completely perfect" when it omits even hints of what has brought physics its manifest huge successes - testing and experimentation.
EU is a conceptual framework and methodology. It emphasizes laboratory work with plasmas (Hannes Alfven's "actualistic approach") over prophetic computer-code style instructions for how to build a universe from scratch. There is certainly a place in science for such scientific work, even if you refuse to acknowledge or appreciate the value, and even if you don't appreciate the work of Thornhill, Talbott, Peratt and others. It's the concepts and approach that are important. Here is another example of the topsy-turvy nature of this EU paradigm (a.k.a. "conceptual framework and methodology").
Take "magnetic reconnection", for example.
The laboratory work with plasmas includes exploration of the nature of magnetic reconnection, surely as pure an example of "Hannes Alfven's "actualistic approach" over prophetic computer-code style instructions" as you could possibly imagine, right? And yet pln2bz's very first comment in this story thread seems to be the exact opposite: staunch defence of a (simplistic) interpretation of a theory, and a trashing of dozens of solid experimental results, from laboratory work with plasmas.
Take "build a universe from scratch".
The EU conceptual framework and methodology emphasises plasmas, as 99.{insert as many 9's here as you wish}% of the baryonic matter in the observable universe is in this state.
But ALL baryonic matter is composed of electrons and quarks^! And laboratory work with these - an "actualistic approach" for sure - has lead to an hugely successful set of theories, based on quantum mechanics, such as QED (Quantum Electrodynamics). It has also lead to the resolution of the EPR paradox, with its mind-bending implications. So intellectually disturbing that not a few of the best physicists are on record as saying, in effect, the only thing we can do is "shut up and calculate".
Which surely leads to a bit of a dilemma for EU proponents, doesn't it? I mean, what is all this quantum theory stuff if not "prophetic computer-code style instructions for how to build a universe from scratch"? One simply can NOT work with this except through fifty-two weeks of Sundays of math, math, and still more math - "common sense" and "intuition" are quite unreliable guides. Yet every new lab experiment to test this stuff results in yet more medals for the theory.
So this hugely successful set of theories is BOTH "actualistic" AND "prophetic"!
How do such leading proponents of the EU paradigm ("Thornhill, Talbott, Peratt and others") deal with this part of physics? As far as I can tell (so far), they simply ignore it.
Or, more harshly, the EU paradigm seems to be the intellectual equivalent, in physics, of the Luddites.
(to be continued)
^ there are exceptions, of course, but for the most part they play no role in plasmas
Cosmic rays and the magnetic field of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.3542, abstract (my emphasis):
Using radio polarimetry we study the connection between the transport of cosmic rays (CR's), the three-dimensional magnetic field structure, and features of other ISM phases in the halo of NGC 253. We present a new sensitive radio continuum map of NGC 253 obtained from combined VLA and Effelsberg observations at lambda 6.2 cm. We find a prominent radio halo with a scaleheight of the thick radio disk of 1.7 kpc. The linear dependence between the local scaleheight of the vertical continuum emission and the cosmic ray electron (CRE) lifetime requires a vertical CR bulk speed of 270 km s^-1. The magnetic field structure of NGC 253 resembles an ``X''-shaped configuration where the orientation of the large-scale magnetic field is plane-parallel only in the inner regions of the disk and at small distances from the galactic midplane. At larger galactocentric radii and further away from the midplane the vertical component becomes important. This is most clearly visible at the location of the ``radio spur'' southeast of the nucleus, where the magnetic field orientation is almost vertical. We made a simple model for the dominant toroidal (r,phi) magnetic field component using a spiral magnetic field with prescribed inclination and pitch angle. The residual poloidal (r,phi,z) magnetic field component which was revealed by subtracting the model from the observations shows a distinct ``X''-shaped magnetic field orientation centered on the nucleus. The orientation angle of the poloidal magnetic field is consistent with a magnetic field transport described by the superposition of the vertical CR bulk speed and the rotation velocity. Hence, we propose a disk wind which transports cosmic rays, magnetic field, and (partially) ionized gas from the disk into the halo. First optical detection from the supernova remnant G 15.1-1.6 http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.3591, abstract (my emphasis):
Deep optical CCD images of the supernova remnant G 15.1-1.6 were obtained and filamentary and diffuse emission has been discovered. The images, taken in the emission lines of Halpha+[N II], [S II] and [O III], reveal filamentary and diffuse structures all around the remnant. The radio emission at 4850 MHz in the same area is found to be well correlated with the brightest optical filaments. The IRAS 60 micron emission may also be correlated with the optical emission but to a lesser extent. The flux calibrated images suggest that the optical emission originates from shock-heated gas ([S II]/Halpha > 0.4), while there is a possible HII region ([S II]/Halpha ~0.3) contaminating the supernova remnant's emission to the east. Furthermore, deep long-slit spectra were taken at two bright filaments and also show that the emission originates from shock heated gas. An [O III] filamentary structure has also been detected further to the west but it lies outside the remnant's boundaries and possibly is not associated to it. The [O III] flux suggests shock velocities into the interstellar "clouds" ~100 km/s, while the [S II] 6716/6731 ratio indicates electron densities up to ~250 cm^{-3}. Finally, the Halpha emission has been measured to be between 2 to 7 x 10^{-16} erg/s/cm^2/arcsec^2, while the lower limit to the distance is estimated at 2.2 kpc. Not bad, eh? Three preprints with EU hot-button words in their abstracts, posted in a period of only three days!
Of course, the extent to which any subset of these provides support for any EU ideas is surely impossible to determine... if only because no "Electric Universe theory" has been published, in a form sufficiently quantitative to even begin such a mini-project.
There's too much in the last comment to address in a single reply, so this is but the first.
It's not rocket science and your "outgassing" is nothing but electrical machining.
Please quantify the current, its source, and duration of this "electrical machining". A back of the envelope (a.k.a. "order of magnitude" (OOM)) estimate will do. And please, no more word salad.
Please, explain which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect...
Thanks for the invitation... I will gladly do so, to whatever depth any SD reader requests.
However, it will take some time; after all, that document is 21 pages long. I'll start either later in a later comment.
This is why I initially came to Slashdot: to learn what was wrong with the Electric Universe theory through immersion. The problem is that you guys never back your allegations up with hard, painful facts.
(my emphasis)
Shall I repeat, verbatim, your comment, earlier in this story thread (or was it the other recent one)? About how you refuse to read what I write?
Of course, nothing in SD's rules stops you from being disingenuous, dishonest, {insert stronger words here, to your taste}; as far as I can tell, the only method of censure for such objectionable behaviour is for your karma to go to "Troll", and that can happen only if your comments are consistently moderated negatively.
Here is a short list of "hard, painful facts" that are direct rebuttals of "the Electric Universe theory", as you have presented it recently. Note that this is far, far from being complete.
* magnetic reconnection does not exist, the focus of the ire of your first comment on this story thread (and many others in SD) - not only is it well-established in plasma physics, but has actually been studied in plasma physics laboratories (including that of your hero Peratt - LANL).
* "solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets" - busted in an earlier set of exchanges, by direct observation (I need to find the actual SD comment, so I can add it to my "EU theory" URL library)
* there is an alternative^, workable, science-based cosmology (some kind of "plasma universe" cosmology) - despite being asked, several times, where any curious reader could find such, that quantitatively accounts for why the night sky is dark (and ~five other sets of astronomical observations), you have not replied... perhaps that's because there is no such cosmology?
* "Arguing that space must be charge neutral on some scale is tantamount to declaring that we've reached a conclusion on a metaphysical question" - busted several months ago, here in SD.
I've seen numerous images and facts that just have no credible explanation within your own paradigm. And it's real simple stuff too -- like the rays of Tycho and Aristarchus, like chains of craters that are actually the shapes of Lichtenbergs, and the numerous enigmatic temperature distributions of planets. The conventional theories have done a horrible job of explaining some of these things, and they ignore things that they do not work well with their theories. And this is what I find so compelling and straightforward. You guys just don't challenge yourself. You're so willing to just accept an explanation once mathematics is offered. It's as if there is a systemic fear of uncertainty within your discipline.
This is a good example of what seems to me to be a core method in the EU paradigm; to re-state it crudely:
"{insert selected observation/evidence/etc here} has no credible explanation within your paradigm, THEREFORE the EU paradigm MUST be correct!"
This kind of logical fallacy has a name - false dichotomy, or false dilemma^^.
Now to be fair, here's how the paragraph I just quoted begins: "Actually, EU is incredibly effective at describing many things that you guys just dismiss".
Namely: what methods to use to develop the hypotheses and then test them?
For example, if, upon detailed investigation, it turns out that the "rules of evidence" and/or "rules of logic/inference" and/or inherent immunity to falsifiability of the EU paradigm combine to be so weak as to preclude anything but the most facile of investigation, should I use such rules (etc) in my own investigations? If I do, and if they turn out to be so weak, I'll be stuck with the equivalent of "anything goes", won't I? If I don't, and use rules (etc) typical of those of modern day astronomers and physicists (for example), what (meta-) validity would my conclusions have?
But perhaps it doesn't matter; either way, my own knowledge of the relationship of the EU paradigm to the standard methods of at least the branches of modern science called astronomy, astrophysics, and (maybe) physics will have been substantially clarified.
Besides, why worry about such possibilities ahead of doing the research?
there is apparently an article in there that asks the question if Jupiter is powered by a Z-Pinch I think the background to the meat in this article may be found partly on Tristan Guillot's Home Page: http://www.oca.eu/guillot/.
Click on the "Preprints & online articles" link, and explore! You may find the morning, afternoon, or more, that you spend reading both educational and rewarding.
My speculative guess is that the connection between Z-Pinches and Jupiter is that an Earthly lab with a powerful Z-Pinch has been used to explore regions of materials/matter parameter space, otherwise inaccessible, that have some correspondence to those hypothesised to occur in Jupiter's interior.
Nothing to do with "Electric Universe theories", as far as I understand such speculative prose (to borrow an AC's colourful term).
But, I could be wrong; when you've had a chance to read over this material, please let SD readers know what you found.
Being a rather chaotic, eclectic collection of snippets... not unlike how many scientific projects get started actually.
leokor's SD comment is already noted; still the only EU SD comment that explicitly addresses the scope of this project that I have found.
Quite a few AC's SD comments are quite insightful and helpful, so can be ruthlessly exploited*; for example: pln: "There is absolutely *nothing* about the Electric Universe that has been "debunked"." AC: "Everything not defined in terms so vague as to be un-debunkable have been debunked. Everything else you cling to is not science, but fanciful speculation and wishful thinking, or outright jealousy." source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148840
pln: "Who can say that they are right when the issue is rarely even discussed?" AC: "[Science] works by having ways to know when you've found wrong ideas, which is called reductionism. [... A discussion about EU ideas] will not advance human knowledge, but will serve only to placate the proponents of such a theory (hah! not likely) and distract people from exploring more promising and fruitful paths of scientific inquiry. Your rantings on Slashdot and elsewhere would require [many kinds of scientists] to devote their minds and careers to Electric Universe when they can see even superficially in many cases how it doesn't work. That you cannot underscores how little of the available human knowledge you understand or can be bothered to investigate [...]." source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22149382
AC: "the whole EU concept break[s] this inductive step [modern science, including astronomy et. al, can only say that what we observe in the future must be consistent with what we observe now, and that what we observe now must be consistent with what we observe now (i.e. our models must be consistent)] in two ways. 1) You deny the inductive step mainstream science makes when it says "there are probably no electric comets because none we've looked at so far were electric", and cling to the possibility that we might see one someday, as indeed we might. 2) You make large inductive steps, saying things like "If we can make formations resembling lunar craters with plasma guns, lunar craters must be caused by plasma discharges." That's the fallacy of hasty generalization; not using inductive logic." source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22150550
AC: "We theorize, then interrogate nature. We can interrogate nature by observation and experimentation. You seem only to accept what you call "lab work" or "laboratory experimentation" but never observation! There is [] fundamentally no difference between *observing* an experiment at arm's length and *observing* phenomena across the street and *observing* phenomena many light years distant. In a scientific inquiry, the critical difference is that an experiment allows you to interrogate nature in (at least a few) ways of your choosing instead of in ways of nature's choosing. That's why it's correct to say, as you often do, that "it's perfectly legitimate to try to explain the universe in terms of plasmas." However, plasma cosmologies are less successful at describing the phenomena we observe than are other cosmologies [...]" source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423972&cid=22123690
AC: "It's similar hubris for self-labeled "plasma physicists" (and even the occasional *actual* plasma physicist) to claim that a superficial resemblance of a few plasma effects they've seen in their work or models they've done on computers supersede the observations (of which they are largely unaware) of astronomers, cosmologi
why don't you guys focus on explaining why [misunderstood aspect of latest news article's hyped summary]? In today's wired world, you can obtain a great deal of high quality astronomical data, for free*.
You can even get the lecture notes for a (graduate) university course in plasma physics (http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/plasma/plasma.html - as an aside, note how often the word "astrophysics" occurs in these lecture notes^).
What do you say to rolling up your sleeves and doing some research yourself?
* As an example, here is a list of publications on Cas A (a.k.a. G111.7-2.1), from the 1990s to 2006; note that many of these publications tell you how to go about getting the observational data used in the papers, and that much of it is available online, for free: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/surveys/snrs/snrs.G111.7-2.1.html
^ I found this, in the introduction section, quite interesting, in light of a common, unsubstantiated, assertion in so many of your SD comments: "astrophysicists quickly recognized that much of the Universe consists of plasma, and, thus, that a better understanding of astrophysical phenomena requires a better grasp of plasma physics. The pioneer in this field was Hannes Alfvén, who around 1940 developed the theory of magnetohydrodyamics, or MHD, in which plasma is treated essentially as a conducting fluid. This theory has been both widely and successfully employed to investigate sunspots, solar flares, the solar wind, star formation, and a host of other topics in astrophysics. Two topics of particular interest in MHD theory are magnetic reconnection and dynamo theory."
In light of your interest in filaments, you may find this preprint interesting "Structure of the interstellar medium around Cas A" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.3267).
Here is the abstract:
We present a three-year series of observations at 24 microns with the Spitzer Space Telescope of the interstellar material in a 200 x 200 arcmin square area centered on Cassiopeia A. Interstellar dust heated by the outward light pulse from the supernova explosion emits in the form of compact, moving features. Their sequential outward movements allow us to study the complicated three-dimensional structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) behind and near Cassiopeia A. The ISM consists of sheets and filaments, with many structures on a scale of a parsec or less. The spatial power spectrum of the ISM appears to be similar to that of fractals with a spectral index of 3.5. The filling factor for the small structures above the spatial wavenumber k ~ 0.5 cycles/pc is only ~ 0.4%. In light of your less than electrifying (shall we say) track record re the NACO/VLT observations of 2M1207 (A and b), you may wish to consider taking the trouble to understand the observations ("evidence") reported in this preprint, including the long chains of theory-based logic, before you write something you may later regret.
Also, note that this is a preprint (though the Comments include "accepted by The Astrophysical Journal").
I think the paper that this story is based on is "Comparison of Comet 81P/Wild 2 Dust with Interplanetary Dust from Comets" http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5862/447. If so, it doesn't appear in either ADS or arXiv (yet).
support for electric cometary theory I am unfamiliar with any such theory; would you be kind enough to provide all those who read this comment with references to it (preferably papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals, but preprints or conference proceedings may be an acceptable substitute)?
Once readers of this comment have such materials in hand, as well as the Ishii et al. paper, I'm sure they will be able to make up their own minds as to how much support (or lack of it) the quantitative results provide.
Oh, and by the way, how are you doing in terms of getting those references I (and other SD writers) have asked for? You know, the ones that describe the relevant "Electric Universe" theories (quantitatively of course), and which show how well said theories match (all) the relevant, good astronomical observations (quantitatively, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
33rd International Conference on Plasma Sciences (ICOPS)
Traverse City, Michigan
June 4-8, 2006 Here is the 33rd ICOPS requirement for posters (http://www.icops2006.org/oral-poster/index.html): Posters should fit on 4-by-8-foot boards. You will need to bring a finished, printed version of your poster. We will not be able to print posters at the conference. There are 3 poster sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. Each poster will be assigned a number, and you will need to mount your poster on the appropriately numbered board. Posters must be mounted by 10am on the day of your relevant poster session, and taken down by 6pm the same day. And here is the complete list of posters at this conference: http://www.icops2006.org/technical_program/poster_order.html
Notice something(s) odd?
The Thornhill & Talbott document doesn't look like it conforms to the 33rd ICOPS requirement for posters.
The Thornhill & Talbott (T&T) document is not listed as one of the 2006 ICOPS Poster Sessions.
I wonder, if pln2bz reads this, if he could ask Thornhill (or Talbott) for a clarification.
It would seem that this T&T document follows a quite different convention from at least one other poster at this conference (click on the link to "ICOPS 2006 Poster"; it's a > 1MB PDF): http://www.gangolee.com/research.html. Note that the Ombrello et al. poster is quite similar, in format and meta-content (references, etc), to the AAS LSST one I linked to in an earlier comment. I think those who have attended plasma physics, space physics, space science, or astronomy conferences might like to chime in: to what extent does the T&T document seem to conform to the conventions of posters you've seen at such conferences (wrt references, quantitative detail, etc)?
So one 'incorrect' thing about this document is that it does not seem to be what it purports to be.
The answer to pln2bz' question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"?), for eight (of nine) of the specific, physical mechanisms in the electric comet model (as presented in the PDF document he supplied a link to) is they are neither correct, nor incorrect; rather they are meaningless*. However, there is a possibility that the last mechanism - the charging of comets - somehow breathes meaning into the mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma, jets, and filaments.
...) is not even hinted at.
The charging of comets.
This mechanism is succinctly described in the second bullet of the ECM, on page 5: "Comets follow their elongated paths within a weak electrical field centered on the Sun. In approaching the Sun, a charge imbalance develops between the nucleus and the higher voltage and charge density near the Sun", and elaborated on p6 "The comet spends most of its time far from the Sun, where the plasma voltage is low relative to the Sun. In remote regions, the comet moves slowly and its charge easily comes into balance with its surroundings. But as the comet falls toward the Sun, it begins to move at a furious speed through regions of increasing voltage. The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization", p16 "The Sun's radial electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary space. In a constant radial electric field, the voltage decreases linearly with distance. A comet on an elongated orbit spends most of its time far from the Sun and acquires a charge in balance with the voltage at that distance. But when a comet speeds inward for a quick spin around the Sun, the voltage of the comet becomes increasingly out of balance with that nearer the Sun", and p 18 "The long-period comets spend a longer time in a region of lower plasma potential than the short-period comets. Consequently, their voltage difference on their approach to the Sun will be higher".
There is also an external reference for this mechanism: "In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Juergens [...] proposed that the Sun is a glow discharge, the center of an electric field extending to the heliopause."
In a nutshell, a comet's motion through the Sun's weak, constant radial electric (or electrical, the document uses both words) field causes the charging of the comet. The external reference at least admits the possibility that this mechanism may not be as meaningless as the other eight examined so far. Further, to the extent that at least some of the other mechanisms require an electric (or electrical) field, at least one aspect of them may not be meaningless*.
Assume, for now, that sufficient consistency between the electric (or electrical) field in the ECM and in Juergens' proposal can be demonstrated. Would there then be sufficient meaning for pln2bz' question to be answered, one way or the other?
Unfortunately not.
Why? Because the mechanism is poorly quantified. On the plus side, the use of terms such as "radial" (centred on the Sun), "constant with distance", "decreases linearly with distance" nails things down to within a constant (or several constants, or zero points); in the middle is the nature of comets' orbits (though see below); on the negative side, the relationship between a comet's speed (relative to the Sun, in a radial direction?), how fast it "comes into balance with its surroundings", and the charge it acquires at any point in its orbit is not described. By implication, a comet's charge imbalance is lessened by an aspect of one or more of the other mechanisms (electric(al) arc discharge, (other) plasma discharge, electrostatic cleaning), but whether there are other mechanisms, what the relative importance of these three is, and how any vary with any other factor (speed, radial distance, comet size, comet composition,
At first glance, it would seem that the nature of comets' orbits should be well-constrained;
With respect to specific, physical mechanisms in the electric comet model, per the PDF document in pln2bz' comment, we can already answer his question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"?) for two (of eight) mechanisms: they are neither correct, nor incorrect; rather they are meaningless*.
... unless the fundamental mechanism (the charging of comets) somehow breathes meaning into them. Oh, and the specific mechanism for tails - either formation or maintenance - is empty (only filaments are explained, in terms of a mechanism)*.
Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma (and tail).
This statement, on page 16, pretty much says it all: "Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the solar plasma is taken up in a double layer of charge, called a plasma sheath, that surrounds the comet. When the electrical stress is great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical cometary coma and tail." Only two other statements add anything to the mechanism: "It is the electric force that holds the spherical cometary coma in place as the comet races around the Sun" (p5, where the ECM is laid out) and "The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization and by forming [...] and a visible plasma sheath, or coma." (p6).
One more statement completes the explanations of these two mechanisms: "[a comet's] well-defined filaments extending up to tens of millions of miles without dissipating in the vacuum of space [revealed in its tails] is to be expected of a plasma discharge within the ambient electric field of the Sun." (p5).
So, in a nutshell, electric field plus plasma = coma; add "a plasma discharge" and you get the filaments in tails.
However, with no external references for any of this, and nothing more than the above (in the document itself), these mechanisms are just as meaningless as those covered in my previous comment
Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of jets and filaments.
In the ECM, filaments and jets are intimately linked, but it is the mechanism for jets that is described in some detail: "The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus, [...] excavated material is accelerated into space along the jets' observed filamentary arcs"; "The collimation of such jets [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge"; "The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode jets"; and "an electric field accelerates matter in the jet; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin jets many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial sublimation; and instabilities and fluctuations suddenly relocate jets in exceedingly short periods of time".
And, as mentioned in my previous comment, the jets are also linked with EDM: "Intermittent and wandering arcs erode the surface and burn it black, leaving the distinctive scarring patterns of electric discharges"; and "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining".
But how much meat is there, really? Let's substitute "electric arc discharge" for "jet", per the primary definition:
"The collimation of such electric arc discharges [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" - so "electric arc discharges" are a subset of "plasma discharges"
"The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode electric arc discharges" - consistent
"an electric field accelerates matter in the electric arc discharge; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin electric arc discharges many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial su
Before I look at some of the eight specific physical mechanisms in the ECM, a note about the PDF document itself.
... yet no definitions are given.
It is sub-titled "Poster Presentation Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 33rd International Conference on Plasma Sciences Traverse City Michigan June 4-8, 2006". For an example - in terms of references, sources, etc (not content) - of what astronomers are used to, consider this one (big!) page LSST poster, from the 209th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, early last year (it's about the same size as the ElectricComet document) http://www.lsst.org/Meetings/AAS/2007/JanPosters/newman_086.06.pdf. Note too that ADS will turn up lots of papers by the authors of this LSST paper, but none by either W. Thornhill or D. Talbott.
Three of the eight specific physical mechanisms are easily addressed (EDM and electrostatic cleaning of the surfaces of comets, electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on their surfaces) - the 21 page PDF contains no external references, and only the following internal ones (simple re-statements omitted):
- the image titled "Carving of Surface Relief" has a caption which includes "the surface on the right, produced by electric discharge machining (EDM)" (note there's nothing to say whether "electrical discharge machining" is the same as "electric discharge machining" or not)
- "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining" - this repeats the link of EDM to the action of jets ("The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus")
- "The asteroid appears to have attracted considerable surface debris electrostatically".
Note that the first time the terms "electrical discharge machining" and "electrostatic cleaning" are used, they are in quote marks, signifying that they have special, non-standard meanings (if the authors follow a common orthographic convention)
So two of the three mechanisms are empty - you could rewrite the parts of the document which mention them using nonsense words and they would have just the same meaning.
EDM is linked to "jets"; next comment I shall examine four (of the other five) mechanisms (the formation of coma and tail, of jets and filaments, maintenance of coma and filaments) and also look at whether there's any more meat to EDM than there is to "electrostatic cleaning" or "attracted back to the nucleus electrostatically".
(to be continued)
Before I comment on the "Electric Comet Model" (ECM), as presented in the document ElectricComet.pdf, I would like to thank pln2bz for bringing it to SD readers' attention. From the evident glee in the writing of EU proponents these last few days, about this document, one may conclude that this is particularly good material, from the perspective of a concrete example of the Electric Universe framework and approach in action, both in terms of its internals (evidence, logic, consistency, etc) and match to observed phenomena (i.e. the ultimate test of anything scientific).
Page 5 of the document presents the ECM as a set of eight bullet points. True to its name, the physical mechanisms in the ECM have to do with electric currents and fields. Leaving aside (for now) the origin of comets (covered in the first part of the first bullet), here are the key mechanisms:
+ the charging of comets
+ the formation of coma and tail
+ "electrical discharge machining" (EDM) of the surfaces of comets
+ the formation of jets and filaments
+ the maintenance of filaments
+ the maintenance of the coma
+ "electrostatic cleaning" of the surfaces of comets
+ electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on the surfaces of comets.
No references are given. It is as if these mechanisms appeared in the document without any help from others, apparently Thornhill and Talbott did not need to stand on the shoulders of anyone, giant or not (thank you Newton). There are hints that others contributed to building the foundation: "The collimation of such jets is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" for example (though the relationship between EDM and plasma discharge is not mentioned), a debt to "engineer Ralph Juergens" is acknowledged on page 6, and there are several mentions of un-named "electrical theorists" (and one of "electric theorists") on other pages, with the implication that they had a hand in developing at least parts of the ECM^.
How, then, to answer pln2bz' question ("which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect"), as it refers to these eight ECM physical mechanisms? Given the absence of any references, I can think of only two approaches: 1) examine them using only what's written in the document, and 2) make an arbitrary choice of external references.
In my next comment I'll proceed with approach 1).
I am reluctant to put too much effort into approach 2), except in so far as that effort can contribute directly to testing my working hypothesis #2 ("EU theories cannot be falsified, even in principle, by any experimental ("in the lab") or observational results").
(to be continued)
A final note: does it really matter whether or not my working hypothesis #2a ("Within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source, nor be fully attributed; copyrights need not be respected" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22209504) is validated? I think it does, because it is a short logical step to "material presented by EU proponents cannot have more than minimal credibility" and "no matter how many times he says "trust me"*, as long as pln2bz is working within the EU framework and approach, you can't". Of course, it may be that highly inaccurate presentations, very poor attribution, and so on may be (very) rare (and so maybe EU material is mostly credible); naturally, formulating the working hypothesis in a quantitative form, and then testing it, should address this caveat.
^ Remember that here I am examining only the ECM as presented on page 5, and references to it, sans the bit about origins. So, for example, the reference to Alfvén's ideas on CMEs is beyond scope.
* I need to dig up the URL of the SD comment, or comments, in which pln2bz wrote this.
Note pln2bz' original comment ("the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets!"); note my response ("This is just as inaccurate as your earlier comment about magnetic reconnection."), and then he dug himself into a hole ("The solar wind does indeed continue to accelerate even as it passes the planets.").
As you said yourself, you are an amateur; the "solar wind" in a richly complex bundle of phenomena.
For starters, the solar wind pln2bz was probably referring to (unbeknowst to him), and which you are also (even though you quoted the title of the page in one of your links - fast solar wind), is a subset of solar winds (if one may summarise so crudely), the 'fast solar wind'.
Then the first link you gave is about one theoretical model (and Parker's, by way of comparison) of the fast solar wind. There are many such models; for example "A 3D MHD Solar Wind Model With Pickup Protons: Comparison With Voyager Data" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFMSH51A1201U, "Solar Wind Structure at Solar Minimum: 3D MHD Solar Wind Model Results Compared with STEREO and ACE Observations" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMSH33A1076L, "Modelling of Solar Wind, CME Initiation and CME Propagation" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005SSRv..121...91V, and "A Turbulence Model for Acceleration of the High Latitude Fast Solar Wind" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006ESASP.617E.150V.
Finally, there's pln2bz' "the planets" (not "some of the planets", nor "Mercury and Venus", nor
If any reader of this comment is interested, I'd be happy to suggest some internet discussion fora where they may pursue these fascinating and complex phenomena in more detail (and where it would be much easier to discuss the hundreds/thousands of papers on the topic
* "Any theory that attempts to explain the inverse temperature problem must also grapple with the fact that the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets! There is no satisfying explanation for that one to date without consideration of an electric field, and the standard solar model miserably fails in explaining it. And this is no minor matter either because the solar wind, taken as a whole, constitutes the largest structure in our solar system, the heliospheric current sheet. Contemplate the implications of that for a moment: astrophysicists do not understand what is causing the motions of the largest structure in our own immediate neighborhood!"
CheshireCatCO already busted pln2bz' assertion earlier (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148128): "Neither of your links says that the solar wind is accelerating as it passes Earth. Both say that it accelerates near the Sun (within a few solar radii), which *is* non-controversial and even predicted by Parker's original work. What Parker doesn't explain is the magnitude of the acceleration (see Kivelson and Russel's book, for example), but you're denying that, aren't you?
Can you please bother to read your own links closely enough to verify their relevance? Simply posting a random link and saying, "here's my evidence" may look good at first glance, but it's really a very poor way to make a case."
The three links you provided, iantresman, support CheshireCatCO's comment
Did you, an apparently prolific proponent of EU ideas, intend to (directly) contradict pln2bz, who is also such a proponent?
Working hypothesis #2a: Within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source, nor be fully attributed; copyrights need not be respected.
... but unless you are very familiar with his papers, it's unlikely you'll find it easily (i.e. in this example, the evidence is poorly attributed).
In an earlier comment today (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22208390), I presented an analysis of a document purporting to be written within the EU paradigm.
In that comment I provided examples of evidence that was not fully attributed, and (in an addendum (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22208968) of one image with a copyright that was not respected). Thus, these two parts of the working hypothesis are validated.
An example of "evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source"^ might be something like this:
In a paper published in the 1990s, Alfvén said "Whether this [a Big Bang cosmological model] is correct or not can only be found if the observed present state of the universe is used as a basis for a reconstruction of increasingly old states. It is reasonable to use well established laws of nature as a first approximation."* Clearly, Alfvén is here stating his unequivocal support for General Relativity-based FRW cosmologies, as GR is one of the most well-established of the laws of nature.
There is a paper, by Alfvén, published in the 1990s, which contains those words
Further, if you do manage to find the paper, you'll quickly see that this quote - while accurate - is used to make a point almost the opposite of what Alfvén went on to say! In other words, it's taken well and truly out of context.
Can the hypothesis that within the Electric Universe framework and approach, evidence presented does not need to accurately reflect its source be validated^^? Can such validation be found in the Electric Comet document? Stay tuned.
^ this could do with some editing; it's poorly expressed.
* Note that this is considerably longer than almost all the quotes used in the Electric Comet document.
^^ The answer, of course, is YES! As mentioned earlier "If you look carefully at the image, you can see that there is still a slight connective filament between them in the infrared" is a clear example of evidence presented that does not accurately reflect the source.
However, several have usage statements.
For example, the Comet Linear image, from the STScI: "it is requested that in any subsequent use of this work NASA and STScI be given appropriate acknowledgement." (http://hubblesite.org/copyright/)
And the Comet NEAT image, from SOHO: "It is requested, however, that any such use properly attributes the source of the images or data" (http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/summary/copyright.html).
^ The image of asteroid Itokawa, from JAXA, has this: "When using materials, JAXA should be credited as the source. (Unless noted otherwise, the copyrights of the materials in the Photo Archives belong to JAXA.)" (http://jda.jaxa.jp/jda/service_e.html)
What is dubious? Please, explain which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect ... [URL snipped]
This comment of mine is the first of several which will examine the document pln2bz provided in the SD comment to which this is a reply.
... but none seem to be from papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journal. Two such papers are mentioned ("The results of the Deep Impact mission were published in the journal Science" and "In a paper published in the 1960s Dr. Brian G. Marsden, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drew attention to the anomaly of comet fragmentation"), but a curious reader may no
Here I will take a first-pass look at what, empirically, constitutes "evidence" within the EU framework and approach.
This is important for two reasons:
first, I need to develop hypotheses concerning "evidence" for my investigation of the EU framework and approach, esp working hypothesis #2 ("EU theories cannot be falsified, even in principle, by any experimental ("in the lab") or observational results" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22183818); and
second, if pln2bz' SD comments are a reliable guide, EU proponents' track record of credibility is poor (examples:
"the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets!" BUSTED http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148864, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148128;
"Arguing that space must be charge neutral on some scale is tantamount to declaring that we've reached a conclusion on a metaphysical question" BUSTED http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=358211&cid=21392029;
"And shame on everybody for just going along with the idea that Maxwell's Equations are meaningless in space. When you see a magnetic field, your first question should always be, "Where's the current?" To assume that it is not present even when you can see the magnetic field is just mind-boggling!" BUSTED http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22181096;
"If you look carefully at the image, you can see that there is still a slight connective filament between them in the infrared" BUSTED http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22160038).
GENERAL CAVEAT: The results presented below are from an informal analysis of the PDF document; in particular, key terms (e.g. "images") are not defined. Among other things this means that if you, dear reader, choose to do your own analysis, your results may differ somewhat from those below. Also, I may have made some mistakes (if you chose to point them out, I would be grateful).
This 21 page PDF document, called a poster by the authors, contains ~20 direct quotes (examples: ""Comets are perhaps at once the most spectacular and the least well understood members of the solar system." M. Neugebauer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory", "According to a Stardust project press release, mission scientists expected "a dirty, black, fluffy snowball" with a couple of jets that would be "dispersed into a halo."", "When a coronal mass ejection greeted Comet NEAT, space scientists called it a spectacular "coincidence.""). Not one of these is given a clear attribution! Of course, with Google, a sceptical reader with an open mind could, probably, find most of these fairly quickly.
Most (>70%) of the direct quotes seem to be from press releases, or news conferences; at least one is from a book
Worse, for one who has written so glowingly about Alfvén, it seems pln2bz has not read much of the plasma physics which earned Alfvén his scientific reputation.
What, if not a mathematical tour de force, is MHD (magnetohydrodynamics http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/plasma/lectures/node60.html)? And who got a Nobel Prize for developing this?
But wait! What does the author of this graduate course in plasma physics have to say about the domain of applicability of Alfvén's great work?
This, from the introduction section (my emphasis): It is often observed that the above set of equations [the MHD equations] are identical to the equations governing the motion of an inviscid, adiabatic, perfectly conducting, electrically neutral liquid. Indeed, this observation is sometimes used as the sole justification for the MHD equations. After all, a hot, tenuous, quasi-neutral plasma is highly conducting, and if the motion is sufficiently fast then both viscosity and heat conduction can be plausibly neglected. However, we can appreciate, from Sect. 3, that this is a highly oversimplified and misleading argument. The problem is, of course, that a weakly coupled plasma is a far more complicated dynamical system than a conducting liquid. So, if one insists on drawing conclusions about what plasma physics is, and how it is applied, without even reading introductory texts on it, what could we say about the approach which leads to such a conclusion?
In an earlier SD comment I posted a link to an online graduate level course in plasma physics. Even a cursory read of the relevant parts of that course would show that this comment of pln2bz' is woefully ignorant
"Magnetic reconnection" is used to model plasmas and explain observed behaviour (whether in the lab or in space) in part because it is a tractable approach. If anyone wants to develop an alternative that has the benefit for easier math, or a greater domain of applicability, or some other nice attribute, then I'm sure they will find many receptive audiences.
But no one - except, perhaps, a few EU proponents who simply don't understand the relevant physics - would confuse two different ways of handling complex mechanisms with "competing theories"! The electrons and ions do their things just the same way, no matter what approach is used to try to get a handle on the complexity (and gnarly math).
OTOH (on the other hand), if the underlying physics of "exploding double layers" is, in fact, different from that which the shorthand "magnetic reconnection" describes, then it would indeed be remiss of the plasma physicists to not recognise this, and investigate it.
And it should come as no surprise to SD readers that lab experiments have been done on "exploding double layers"! Indeed, here is a PhD thesis on just this topic (the author did this at no less an august lab than the Alfvén Lab, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden): http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993JPhD...26.1192V. Now that may be a little difficult to get one's hands on, and it is now nearly 15 years' old, so how about something more recent and accessible? Like "TOPICAL REVIEW: A review of recent laboratory double layer experiments" perhaps (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007PSST...16....1C)? Here's the abstract: Recent developments in laboratory double layers from the late 1980s to the spring of 2007 are reviewed. The paper begins by a lead up to electric double layers in the laboratory. Then an overview of the main double layer devices and properties is presented with an emphasis on current-free double layers. Some of the double layer models and simulations are analysed before giving a more complete description of current-free double layers in radiofrequency plasmas expanding in a diverging magnetic field. Astrophysics double layers are briefly reported. Finally, applications of double layers to the field of plasma processing and electric propulsion are discussed. Oh, and I have a recollection that a certain prolific EU proponent wrote, quite recently, about having an open mind, and scepticism
You mean the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of laboratory experiments which demonstrated, unequivocally, the existence of magnetic reconnection means that those parts of Alfvén's work where he railed against it are now invalid?
How about the non-existence, in any laboratory, of plasma which emits the two green [O III] lines? What does this have to say about the source of so much emission in so many astronomical objects?
Or the complete lack of any laboratory demonstration of a gravitationally^ induced small atomic dipole (the mechanism at the heart of at least one EU proposal)?
Or does the universal lack of any laboratory demonstration of an "intrinsic redshift" of >~1 mean Arp's observations are thus effectively invalid?
Of course, pln2bz may mean that a good lab experiment may rule out explanations like the small atomic dipole (ultracentrifuges subject atoms to far, far higher g-forces than would be found in, or on, the Sun), but cannot rule out things like green [O III] lines or "intrinsic redshift" - after all, you can't "prove a negative".
No, that can't be right either
Does any reader of this comment know how the EU framework and method addresses these apparent conundrums?
^ The lab tests of this are done every day, by the thousand - in the ultracentrifuges in so many industrial and medical facilites, for example, not to mention university labs.
"Are you just now figuring out right now that I don't read your messages?"
There's objectively verifiable evidence that the SD writer being referred to was ceoyoyo^ http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22150192:
"An good example is our friend a few posts up who insists that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets. A few weeks ago I had the same argument with another electric universer who insisted that all our space probes show this to be true. So I posted links to the solar wind velocity graphs from SOHO and Voyager that show the opposite is true."
A few minutes with Google can indeed turn up exactly what ceoyoyo mentioned; for example, SOHO: http://www.dxlc.com/solar/solwind.html and Voyager: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994PhDT.........1V.
Note that there wasn't anything at all vague about what ceoyoyo wrote, and anyone reading this can independently verify what she (he?) wrote, by doing their own googling.
Now here's the real shocker (or not): this evidence about the behaviour of the solar wind has been known for over a decade (or even three); given the repeated insistence that the EU framework and method is "actualistic", and the importance the the electric Sun idea to EU proponents, am I the only reader of pln2bz' comment to find it rather odd that only in 2008 is he discovering something that a sceptic with an open mind could have discovered before many reading this today were even born?
Oh, and for the n-th time, the handle is APODNereid!
^ or perhaps it was CheshireCatCO http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148128 "Neither of your links says that the solar wind is accelerating as it passes Earth. Both say that it accelerates near the Sun (within a few solar radii), which *is* non-controversial and even predicted by Parker's original work. What Parker doesn't explain is the magnitude of the acceleration (see Kivelson and Russel's book, for example), but you're denying that, aren't you?
Can you please bother to read your own links closely enough to verify their relevance? Simply posting a random link and saying, "here's my evidence" may look good at first glance, but it's really a very poor way to make a case."
What are the "rules of evidence"?
What are the legitimate forms of logic?
What is the role of open publication, of independent verification and validation?
What is the role of hypothesis formation and testing? although they all agree on the core conceptual framework and methodology, they don't always come to agreement on the details Where is this "core conceptual framework and methodology" published?
How has it been tested?
How are the numerous internal inconsistencies and inconsistencies with good experimental and observational results addressed? [this is] completely perfect because it means that we're being cautious and open-minded. And yet, as far as I can tell by reading pln2bz' SD comments, there are no proposals to use any telescopes, or any space missions, to actually test any of the ideas presented.
Take the what, hundreds?, of TBPODs (several of which pln2bz has provided links to, in SD comments).
Where among them can you read something like "and electrical engineers and EU plasma physicists have published proposals for several new space-based telescopes, with particular emphasis on how they should be able to address the following key issues in EU theory {insert list here}. These science cases may be found {insert list of papers here}"? or "{insert name here}, a leading EU theorist, today published, in {insert name of relevant peer-reviewed journal here}, a proposal for an instrument to augment the TMT. He said that such an instrument would, in all likelihood, provide crucial data for tests of {insert EU hypotheses here}"? Or "click here for a poster on a science program using the LSST that is designed specifically to examine a core assumption in EU theory, namely {insert details here}"?
Excuse me for expressing negative feelings about how a framework and methodology could be described as "completely perfect" when it omits even hints of what has brought physics its manifest huge successes - testing and experimentation.
Take "magnetic reconnection", for example.
The laboratory work with plasmas includes exploration of the nature of magnetic reconnection, surely as pure an example of "Hannes Alfven's "actualistic approach" over prophetic computer-code style instructions" as you could possibly imagine, right? And yet pln2bz's very first comment in this story thread seems to be the exact opposite: staunch defence of a (simplistic) interpretation of a theory, and a trashing of dozens of solid experimental results, from laboratory work with plasmas.
Take "build a universe from scratch".
The EU conceptual framework and methodology emphasises plasmas, as 99.{insert as many 9's here as you wish}% of the baryonic matter in the observable universe is in this state.
But ALL baryonic matter is composed of electrons and quarks^! And laboratory work with these - an "actualistic approach" for sure - has lead to an hugely successful set of theories, based on quantum mechanics, such as QED (Quantum Electrodynamics). It has also lead to the resolution of the EPR paradox, with its mind-bending implications. So intellectually disturbing that not a few of the best physicists are on record as saying, in effect, the only thing we can do is "shut up and calculate".
Which surely leads to a bit of a dilemma for EU proponents, doesn't it? I mean, what is all this quantum theory stuff if not "prophetic computer-code style instructions for how to build a universe from scratch"? One simply can NOT work with this except through fifty-two weeks of Sundays of math, math, and still more math - "common sense" and "intuition" are quite unreliable guides. Yet every new lab experiment to test this stuff results in yet more medals for the theory.
So this hugely successful set of theories is BOTH "actualistic" AND "prophetic"!
How do such leading proponents of the EU paradigm ("Thornhill, Talbott, Peratt and others") deal with this part of physics? As far as I can tell (so far), they simply ignore it.
Or, more harshly, the EU paradigm seems to be the intellectual equivalent, in physics, of the Luddites.
(to be continued)
^ there are exceptions, of course, but for the most part they play no role in plasmas
Of course, the extent to which any subset of these provides support for any EU ideas is surely impossible to determine
It's not rocket science and your "outgassing" is nothing but electrical machining.
Please quantify the current, its source, and duration of this "electrical machining". A back of the envelope (a.k.a. "order of magnitude" (OOM)) estimate will do. And please, no more word salad.
Please, explain which parts of the Electric Comet document are incorrect ...
Thanks for the invitation ... I will gladly do so, to whatever depth any SD reader requests.
However, it will take some time; after all, that document is 21 pages long. I'll start either later in a later comment.
This is why I initially came to Slashdot: to learn what was wrong with the Electric Universe theory through immersion. The problem is that you guys never back your allegations up with hard, painful facts.
(my emphasis)
... perhaps that's because there is no such cosmology?
Shall I repeat, verbatim, your comment, earlier in this story thread (or was it the other recent one)? About how you refuse to read what I write?
Of course, nothing in SD's rules stops you from being disingenuous, dishonest, {insert stronger words here, to your taste}; as far as I can tell, the only method of censure for such objectionable behaviour is for your karma to go to "Troll", and that can happen only if your comments are consistently moderated negatively.
Here is a short list of "hard, painful facts" that are direct rebuttals of "the Electric Universe theory", as you have presented it recently. Note that this is far, far from being complete.
* magnetic reconnection does not exist, the focus of the ire of your first comment on this story thread (and many others in SD) - not only is it well-established in plasma physics, but has actually been studied in plasma physics laboratories (including that of your hero Peratt - LANL).
* "solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets" - busted in an earlier set of exchanges, by direct observation (I need to find the actual SD comment, so I can add it to my "EU theory" URL library)
* there is an alternative^, workable, science-based cosmology (some kind of "plasma universe" cosmology) - despite being asked, several times, where any curious reader could find such, that quantitatively accounts for why the night sky is dark (and ~five other sets of astronomical observations), you have not replied
* "Arguing that space must be charge neutral on some scale is tantamount to declaring that we've reached a conclusion on a metaphysical question" - busted several months ago, here in SD.
I've seen numerous images and facts that just have no credible explanation within your own paradigm. And it's real simple stuff too -- like the rays of Tycho and Aristarchus, like chains of craters that are actually the shapes of Lichtenbergs, and the numerous enigmatic temperature distributions of planets. The conventional theories have done a horrible job of explaining some of these things, and they ignore things that they do not work well with their theories. And this is what I find so compelling and straightforward. You guys just don't challenge yourself. You're so willing to just accept an explanation once mathematics is offered. It's as if there is a systemic fear of uncertainty within your discipline.
This is a good example of what seems to me to be a core method in the EU paradigm; to re-state it crudely:
"{insert selected observation/evidence/etc here} has no credible explanation within your paradigm, THEREFORE the EU paradigm MUST be correct!"
This kind of logical fallacy has a name - false dichotomy, or false dilemma^^.
Now to be fair, here's how the paragraph I just quoted begins: "Actually, EU is incredibly effective at describing many things that you guys just dismiss".
And thi
Namely: what methods to use to develop the hypotheses and then test them?
For example, if, upon detailed investigation, it turns out that the "rules of evidence" and/or "rules of logic/inference" and/or inherent immunity to falsifiability of the EU paradigm combine to be so weak as to preclude anything but the most facile of investigation, should I use such rules (etc) in my own investigations? If I do, and if they turn out to be so weak, I'll be stuck with the equivalent of "anything goes", won't I? If I don't, and use rules (etc) typical of those of modern day astronomers and physicists (for example), what (meta-) validity would my conclusions have?
But perhaps it doesn't matter; either way, my own knowledge of the relationship of the EU paradigm to the standard methods of at least the branches of modern science called astronomy, astrophysics, and (maybe) physics will have been substantially clarified.
Besides, why worry about such possibilities ahead of doing the research?
Click on the "Preprints & online articles" link, and explore! You may find the morning, afternoon, or more, that you spend reading both educational and rewarding.
My speculative guess is that the connection between Z-Pinches and Jupiter is that an Earthly lab with a powerful Z-Pinch has been used to explore regions of materials/matter parameter space, otherwise inaccessible, that have some correspondence to those hypothesised to occur in Jupiter's interior.
Nothing to do with "Electric Universe theories", as far as I understand such speculative prose (to borrow an AC's colourful term).
But, I could be wrong; when you've had a chance to read over this material, please let SD readers know what you found.
There were several (three?) only a few hours ago; now they've disappeared!
Being a rather chaotic, eclectic collection of snippets ... not unlike how many scientific projects get started actually.
leokor's SD comment is already noted; still the only EU SD comment that explicitly addresses the scope of this project that I have found.
Quite a few AC's SD comments are quite insightful and helpful, so can be ruthlessly exploited*; for example:
pln: "There is absolutely *nothing* about the Electric Universe that has been "debunked"."
AC: "Everything not defined in terms so vague as to be un-debunkable have been debunked. Everything else you cling to is not science, but fanciful speculation and wishful thinking, or outright jealousy."
source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22148840
pln: "Who can say that they are right when the issue is rarely even discussed?"
AC: "[Science] works by having ways to know when you've found wrong ideas, which is called reductionism. [... A discussion about EU ideas] will not advance human knowledge, but will serve only to placate the proponents of such a theory (hah! not likely) and distract people from exploring more promising and fruitful paths of scientific inquiry. Your rantings on Slashdot and elsewhere would require [many kinds of scientists] to devote their minds and careers to Electric Universe when they can see even superficially in many cases how it doesn't work. That you cannot underscores how little of the available human knowledge you understand or can be bothered to investigate [...]."
source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22149382
AC: "the whole EU concept break[s] this inductive step [modern science, including astronomy et. al, can only say that what we observe in the future must be consistent with what we observe now, and that what we observe now must be consistent with what we observe now (i.e. our models must be consistent)] in two ways. 1) You deny the inductive step mainstream science makes when it says "there are probably no electric comets because none we've looked at so far were electric", and cling to the possibility that we might see one someday, as indeed we might. 2) You make large inductive steps, saying things like "If we can make formations resembling lunar craters with plasma guns, lunar craters must be caused by plasma discharges." That's the fallacy of hasty generalization; not using inductive logic."
source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22150550
AC: "We theorize, then interrogate nature. We can interrogate nature by observation and experimentation. You seem only to accept what you call "lab work" or "laboratory experimentation" but never observation! There is [] fundamentally no difference between *observing* an experiment at arm's length and *observing* phenomena across the street and *observing* phenomena many light years distant. In a scientific inquiry, the critical difference is that an experiment allows you to interrogate nature in (at least a few) ways of your choosing instead of in ways of nature's choosing. That's why it's correct to say, as you often do, that "it's perfectly legitimate to try to explain the universe in terms of plasmas." However, plasma cosmologies are less successful at describing the phenomena we observe than are other cosmologies [...]"
source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423972&cid=22123690
AC: "It's similar hubris for self-labeled "plasma physicists" (and even the occasional *actual* plasma physicist) to claim that a superficial resemblance of a few plasma effects they've seen in their work or models they've done on computers supersede the observations (of which they are largely unaware) of astronomers, cosmologi
You can even get the lecture notes for a (graduate) university course in plasma physics (http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/plasma/plasma.html - as an aside, note how often the word "astrophysics" occurs in these lecture notes^).
What do you say to rolling up your sleeves and doing some research yourself?
* As an example, here is a list of publications on Cas A (a.k.a. G111.7-2.1), from the 1990s to 2006; note that many of these publications tell you how to go about getting the observational data used in the papers, and that much of it is available online, for free: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/surveys/snrs/snrs.G111.7-2.1.html
^ I found this, in the introduction section, quite interesting, in light of a common, unsubstantiated, assertion in so many of your SD comments: "astrophysicists quickly recognized that much of the Universe consists of plasma, and, thus, that a better understanding of astrophysical phenomena requires a better grasp of plasma physics. The pioneer in this field was Hannes Alfvén, who around 1940 developed the theory of magnetohydrodyamics, or MHD, in which plasma is treated essentially as a conducting fluid. This theory has been both widely and successfully employed to investigate sunspots, solar flares, the solar wind, star formation, and a host of other topics in astrophysics. Two topics of particular interest in MHD theory are magnetic reconnection and dynamo theory."
Here is the abstract: We present a three-year series of observations at 24 microns with the Spitzer Space Telescope of the interstellar material in a 200 x 200 arcmin square area centered on Cassiopeia A. Interstellar dust heated by the outward light pulse from the supernova explosion emits in the form of compact, moving features. Their sequential outward movements allow us to study the complicated three-dimensional structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) behind and near Cassiopeia A. The ISM consists of sheets and filaments, with many structures on a scale of a parsec or less. The spatial power spectrum of the ISM appears to be similar to that of fractals with a spectral index of 3.5. The filling factor for the small structures above the spatial wavenumber k ~ 0.5 cycles/pc is only ~ 0.4%. In light of your less than electrifying (shall we say) track record re the NACO/VLT observations of 2M1207 (A and b), you may wish to consider taking the trouble to understand the observations ("evidence") reported in this preprint, including the long chains of theory-based logic, before you write something you may later regret.
Also, note that this is a preprint (though the Comments include "accepted by The Astrophysical Journal").
Once readers of this comment have such materials in hand, as well as the Ishii et al. paper, I'm sure they will be able to make up their own minds as to how much support (or lack of it) the quantitative results provide.
Oh, and by the way, how are you doing in terms of getting those references I (and other SD writers) have asked for? You know, the ones that describe the relevant "Electric Universe" theories (quantitatively of course), and which show how well said theories match (all) the relevant, good astronomical observations (quantitatively, of course).