- A SYMBOLIC word PERHAPS?
M27: The Dumbbell
Nebula
3.06.2005
The first hint of what will become of
earth the other planets and our Sun was discovered
inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was
compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused
with comets.
The Electric Universe -
Bodies And Circuits
By Mel Acheson
Thunderbolts.info
5-4-5
-
- The flood of surprising space-age
observations is bursting the explanatory limits
of conventional views, which date from the
gaslight era. A new view of the universe is
emerging, one based on the modern discoveries of
the electrical properties of plasma.
- An apple fell on Isaac Newton's
head and he conceived the gravity universe. An
aurora "fell" on Kristian Birkeland's
head and he conceived the plasma universe. The
story of Newton and the apple is apocryphal. But
Birkeland trekked to the Norwegian Arctic, stood
under the aurora, and took measurements that
revealed the presence of electric currents.
- Newton lived in a world of apple
trees, gaslights and gears. Birkeland lived on
the threshold of a world of aurora probes,
electric lights and plasma.
- It's been over 300 years since
Newton encountered his apple, and his conception
of gravity, now modified by Einstein and
supplemented with similar mechanical theories of
solids, liquids and gasses, has become the
popular vision of space-an almost-empty universe
of self-contained bodies. And now it's been 100
years since Birkeland encountered his aurora, and
his conception of electric currents in space,
developed by such pioneers as Irving Langmuir and
Hannes Alfven, has been a footnote to standard
theory, rarely called upon except to explain the
occasional curiosity in space.
- But aided by the new tools of the
space age, we've discovered that the earlier
"curiosities" are much more than
footnotes. They are predictable patterns, and
they point to radically new possibilities. The
cosmic theater has outgrown the Newtonian stage,
and we need a larger setting to understand the
broader cosmic drama. Instead of a vision of
isolated bodies turning gear-like in a vacuum, we
need a vision of electrical circuits embedded in
a conducting medium whose components drive each
other and may be in resonance. We have left the
familiar world of solids, liquids and gasses. We
have entered a world of plasma, where the rules
are different and more complex. We now live in an
Electric Universe.
- Plasma is any substance that
contains charged particles: negatively charged
electrons, positively charged ions, or dust
particles that have an excess of either electrons
or ions. Fluorescent and neon lights are plasma.
Lightning is plasma. Earth's magnetosphere, the
solar wind, and the sun itself are plasma. The
glowing nebulas in space, often called gas clouds
by mistake, are plasma. So are the dark clouds,
composed mostly of molecules of hydrogen, but
revealing themselves to be plasma by their
magnetic fields and radio emissions. Back on
Earth, the familiar world dissolves in the
realization that power lines are plasma; molten
rock is plasma; even raindrops may be plasma.
- A region of plasma may be
quiescent and almost indistinguishable from a
solid or a liquid or a gas. But if a variability
of sufficient intensity develops in some
property-from shock, say, or a magnetic field
variation, or an electric current running through
it-the quiescent plasma can become active. Active
plasma exhibits electrical behavior.
- In regions of active plasma,
sheets and filaments of charged particles flow,
as can be seen in auroras and solar prominences.
Flows of charged particles are electric currents.
Persistent currents "close" in
circuits; otherwise the charged particles would
accumulate and quickly stop the flow.
- This-the existence of circuits-is
the essential distinction between the gravity
vision and the Electric Universe vision. In the
former, theorists use the term
"plasma," but they are thinking of the
kinetic theory of gasses modified to accommodate
magnetic field effects. They overlook the
electrical behaviors of plasma circuits. In the
Electric Universe vision, these electrical
behaviors explain straightforwardly the many
phenomena that have appeared curious and
enigmatic to space-age explorers: radio and x-ray
emissions from planets and comets, polar jets of
braided plasma filaments and hourglass-shaped
nebulosities of stars (such as the Herbig-Haro
objects imaged ), beams of energetic particles
along the spin axes of galaxies, and everywhere
glowing filaments and magnetic fields. The
existence of plasma circuits underlies the
contradiction between the isolated bodies of the
gravity universe and the connected components of
the Electric Universe.
- The behavior of active plasma at
every point is influenced-or driven-by conditions
in the rest of the circuit. Fluctuations are
often driven to form double layers (DLs)-thin
regions of opposite charge build-up with large
voltage drops between them. DLs are electrical
phenomena that do not appear in observations of
magnetic fields. The electric forces in DLs can
be very much stronger than gravitational and
mechanical forces. Gas theory modified to
encompass "magnetism" will overlook
them.
- DLs separate plasma into cells and
filaments that have different qualities-different
temperatures or densities or compositions. These
cellular and filamentary structures show up
especially in planetary nebulas, but they can be
invisible in optical wavelengths and appear in
x-ray or radio observations.
- DLs are "noisy,"
emitting radio waves over a broad band of
frequencies. They can sort matter into regions of
like composition and condense or rarify it. DLs
can accelerate charged particles to cosmic ray
energies.
- And DLs can explode. Energy from
the rest of the circuit flows into the break, and
the explosion can release much more energy than
is present locally. This effect is seen in flares
on the sun and is likely responsible for the
outbursts of novas, the so-called
"exploding" stars.
- The electromagnetic forces in
currents squeeze the conducting channels into
thin thread-like filaments. These filaments
attract each other in pairs, but when they get
close, instead of merging, they spiral around
each other. Pairs of pairs, and more, may entwine
into plasma "cables" that can transmit
electrical power over enormous distances. We see
these cables as the "jets" that connect
Herbig-Haro stars and active galactic nuclei with
DLs that may lie many light-years away.
- But the "cables" can be
invisible, too. These make up the galactic
circuits that power the stars, analogs of the
power lines , invisible at night, that carry
electricity from generating stations to city
lights. The "flux tube" that connects
Jupiter's moon Io to the bright spots in
Jupiter's auroras is an invisible plasma cable,
undetected until a space probe flew through it.
- The new vision of the cosmos
connects components at one scale into circuits
that are coupled to and driven by circuits at
larger scales. This new cosmos is laced with
hierarchies of interacting circuits.
- The question arises: Where is the
generator? At the largest scale we can observe,
that of superclusters of galaxies, all we see are
loads, power-consuming objects. If there is a
generator, it lies beyond the reach of our
telescopes. But the question belies an assumption
carried over from the older vision: the
assumption that the universe begins with neutral
matter and that something-a generator-must
separate charges to start the currents flowing.
But it's equally plausible to assume that the
primordial condition of the universe was (or is)
one of already separated charges. In any case,
what we observe, and where our inquiry begins, is
that charges are combining-electrically-in front
of our eyes and our newly invented sensors.
- See: Subject Index--Plasma, Link: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/00subjectx.htm#Plasma
-
- The Crab Nebula, filled with
mysterious filaments above.
(background Jupiter's moon Io)
- A SYMBOLIC word PERHAPS?
M27: The Dumbbell
Nebula
3.06.2005
The first hint of what will become of
earth the other planets and our Sun was discovered
inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was
compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused
with comets.
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