Electric Stars
“According to our manner of looking at the matter,
every star in the universe would be the seat and field of activity of electric forces of a strength that no one could imagine”58
Books about the Sun state unequivocally that the energy of the Sun is produced by conversion of hydrogen into helium deep in the interior and carried to the surface by radiation and convection. It sounds simple and plausible. Yet no scientific experiment has shown how a hydrogen fusion reaction can be controlled at the center of the Sun, even at the extreme temperature and pressure that scientists speculate to be present. Laboratory testing cannot measure the supposed reaction rate. So we are left with assurances from solar physicists that the imagined nuclear fusion must be happening, since the by-product of nuclear
fusion—neutrinos—are indeed being emitted from the Sun, albeit in severely deficient numbers.
We should not be surprised that after 80 years of research almost everything we have discovered about the Sun remains mysterious to astrophysicists and this includes virtually all of the Sun’s defining features. The most obvious solar features include the sunspot cycle and the structure of sunspots, the faster rotation of the equator than the higher latitudes, the blisteringly hot corona above a cool photo- sphere, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and the accelera-
tion of the solar wind.
Eventually, astrophysicists came to see that solar mysteries are linked to magnetic fields. and as one professional confessed, “When we don’t understand something we blame it on magnetism.”59 But magnetism requires an electric current. So the most obvious place to begin is to treat the magnetic field of the Sun as the effect of electric currents, not as a mysterious and un- explained excuse for enigmatic and surprising behavior. And rather than entertain speculations about the hidden interior of the Sun, a logical approach should begin with the enigmatic behavior in plain view.
More than 60 years ago, Dr. Charles E. R. Bruce, of the Electrical Research Association in England, offered a new perspective on the Sun. An electrical researcher, astronomer, and expert on the
effects of lightning, Bruce’s interest in the Sun began in 1941, inspired
Popular ideas about the Sun have not fared well under the tests of a scientific theory. The formulators of the standard solar model worked with gravity, gas laws, and nuclear fusion. But closer observation of the Sun has shown that, in dozens of ways, electrical and magnetic properties dominate solar behavior—implying that the Sun possesses an electric charge whose presence requires fundamental changes in solar science.
Dr. Charles Bruce (1902-1979) indicating planetary nebulae that are not simply expanding shells. He claimed their temperatures and hour-glass shapes are electric discharge effects.
Courtesy of E. W. Crew
58 K. Birkeland, Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903, Christiana, Norway, Aschehoug, 1908.
59 Dr. P. Sackett, Director, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, ANU, at a seminar, “One hundred New Worlds: the extrasolar planet explosion,” 12 Sept. 2002.
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What Makes the Sun Shine?
While standard gas theory predicted a sharp demarcation between the Sun’s photosphere and surrounding space, new observations have revealed instead a bloated envelope with jets and colossal explosions hurling billions of tons of matter
— at hundreds of kilometers per second— toward the planets.
A dark sunspot reveals the cooler interior of the Sun. The “granules” that make up the Sun’s visible surface show the tops of tornadic discharges thousands of kilometers long and lasting only minutes.
Magnetic fields on the Sun trace electric currents flowing along the field lines. The Sun can only be understood in terms of electrical circuits, not magnetic “flux tubes” from the solar interior.
INFORMATION PANEL
“If there is no other way out we may have to suppose that bright line spectra in the stars are produced by electric dis- charges similar to those producing bright line spectra in a vacuum tube...” — A. S. Eddington, “The Internal Constitution of Stars,” 1926.
What makes the Sun shine? The answers given have al- ways reflected human experience: Is the Sun a celestial camp- fire in the sky? In 1854, Helmholtz proposed that the heat of the Sun was generated by slow “gravitational collapse” and meteoric infall. But if so, the Sun would shine for only a few million years.
Then, in the early 20th century, the famous British as- tronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington, posed the basic problem: “In seeking a source of energy other than contraction the first question is whether the energy to be radiated in future is now hidden in the star or whether it is being picked up continuously from outside.”
He went on to assume what was yet to be proven: “It is not enough to provide for the external radiation of the star. We must provide for the maintenance of the high internal tempera- ture, without which the star would collapse.” He assumed the Sun is merely a neutral ball of hot gas. New developments in atomic physics allowed Eddington to propose a nuclear furnace within the Sun—a model with the added virtue that it extended the Sun’s theoretical life to billions of years. Like its predeces- sors, the fusion theory envisions the Sun slowly consuming itself in splendid isolation.
Again, external sources of energy for the Sun were not mentioned. Yet we now know the Sun is not a ball of gas; it is a ball of plasma. Gravitational, electrical and magnetic fields will all induce drift currents and charge separation in plasma. And in dense plasma like the Sun, with its strong gravitational field, there will be an internal polarization set up by distorted hydro- gen atoms. Eddington canvassed none of these possibilities.
His mathematics treated the Sun as an ideal gas. He convinced himself that charge separation inside the Sun could be ignored.
But if Eddington was incorrect in this assumption (if the Sun is an electrical discharge phenomenon), then the photo- sphere is a luminous plasma sheath at some unknown height above the body of the Sun. And if the Sun is charged positively at depth by a gravitationally-induced drift of electrons toward the surface, then electrical repulsion will prevent collapse.
The Sun is electrically active. Seeing the implication of this will help us understand its strange features. After all, Na- ture usually does things the easy way. If the Sun shines as an electric light ‘plugged in’ to the Electric Universe, the objective tests become obvious.
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The Electric Photosphere
The images (LEFT), courtesy of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, are among the sharpest available of the granular solar surface. Following the standard model, solar physicists imagine sunspots to be locations where thermal convection currents are held back by magnetic fields. “But exactly what happens and why these kind of structures are formed, we don’t know.” says Dan Kiselman of the RSAS.
To explain sunspots structure, astrophysicists imagine convection (the rise of heated gases) being obstructed by magnetic fields. They are certainly correct that magnetic fields are present! But the or- derly behavior and detailed structure of the granules and filaments do not conform to turbulent convec- tion. And there is no sign of the heat supposedly diverted from a sunspot.
In the electric model, the Sun beneath the pho-
tosphere is simply cool throughout. The powerful magnetic field of a sunspot is due to a strong field aligned current punching a hole through the bright photospheric plasma. Such ‘Birkeland currents’ show long-range attraction and short-range repul- sion. That is why sunspots of the same magnetic polarity are ‘mysteriously’ drawn together while largely maintaining their identity.
The bright polygonal photospheric granules
are outlined by thin dark lanes. This peculiar di- chotomy is mimicked by the bright ‘tufts’ some- times seen above the anode in discharge tubes. When the electric current to an anode becomes ex-
The key to understanding all tornadoes is that they are the result of rapidly rotating electric charge. Just as electrons carry current in copper wires, they have the same role in the tornado. However, elec- trons are moving at many meters per second in the tornado while they take several hours to move one meter in a copper wire! The result is that enor- mously powerful electro-
magnetic forces are in con-
trol of a tornado. Earthly tornadoes scale up to match penumbral filaments. The circulating cylinder of bright plasma radiates heat and light so that a solar tornado will appear, side on, to have a dark core.
The strong magnetic
field created by each vortex gives rise to the observed filamentary magnetic field in the penumbra. It is thus
cessive, further ionization of the medium takes place, and a second, bright plasma forms within the first. The bright anode tufts repel each other so that on the Sun, where they are closely packed, they form polygons. In the sunspot penumbrae we see
electrical arcing that delivers power to the top of the granule, creating the unresolved bright spots.
Varying levels of such
An artificial tornado of fire shows the darker core of the vortex. [Courtesy Reel EFX. Inc.]
that the granulations are the result of electrically heated material issuing from the tops of twisted dis- charge filaments with thin dark cores. They are tor- nadic ‘charge sheath vortexes.’
‘lightning’ activity above each granule could explain the observed variation in their brightness. It is noteworthy also that large faint granules have never been seen. They would not be expected on this model .
INFORMATION PANEL
LEFT: A solar prominence, described by NASA spokesmen as “loops of magnetic fields with hot gas trapped inside.” But what is the source of the electricity required to generate magnetic fields and heat the gases? The parallel filaments of the solar prominence match plasma discharge phenomena in the laboratory, using intense currents very nearly parallel to the magnetic field.
RIGHT: Such laboratory discharge phenomena are called “spheromaks.” See: www.llnl.gov/str/September05/ Hill.html.
by information about solar flares given by a man who, ironically, had earlier derided Kristian Birkeland’s electrical work— Sydney Chapman. Bruce saw that solar flares behave like lightning. He proposed eleven ‘laws’ governing the two phenomena and that the cause of this ‘solar lightning’ was the electrification of the Sun’s atmosphere in a way analogous to the electrification of storm clouds on Earth.
Bruce’s work led him to assert in 1944 that the Sun’s “photosphere has the appearance, the temperature and the
spectrum of an electric arc; it has arc characteristics because it is an electric arc, or a large number of arcs in parallel.” This discharge characteristic, he claimed, “accounts for the observed granulation of the solar surface.”60
To Chapman’s credit, he took an interest in Bruce’s hypothesis, inviting him to present a brief summary of his ideas and publishing this summary with a series of his own lectures in 1963. Though he did not embrace Bruce’s electrical hypothesis, Chapman wrote, “It is pertinent to note, in this connection, that there are still many unsettled questions concerning the lightning storms that occur only a few miles above our heads in our own atmosphere.”61 In fact, as we noted in the previous chapter, no sufficient explanation is available in orthodox thinking, either for charge separation in terrestrial storm clouds or charge separation on the Sun. The theoretical ‘bootstrapping’ of isolated, charge-neutral systems into electrically active systems invariably falls short.
The situation changed in 1972, however, when a U.S. engineer, Ralph Juergens, added a new consideration. Juergens wrote, “The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the sun’s energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the solar interior is contradicted by nearly every observable aspect of the sun.”62
Inspired by Bruce, Juergens published a series of articles proposing that the Sun is not an isolated body in space. Instead, it is the most positively charged body in the solar system and the focus of a galaxy-powered ‘glow discharge.’ But how could the planets remain unaffected by this? Juergens wrote, “in a solar system pervaded by plasma, each charged planet with a potential unlike that of the local plasma must have its electric field bound up in a space-charge sheath
60 C. E. R. Bruce, A New Approach in Astrophysics and Cosmogony, 1944.
61 S. Chapman, The Solar Wind, Conference Proceedings 1964, p. xxiv.
62 R. E. Juergens, “Stellar Thermonuclear Energy: A False Trail?,” KRONOS, Vol IV, No. 4, Summer 1979, pp. 16-27.
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The Sun’s Electric Discharge Environment
“The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge--the probable source of all its radiant energy.” – Ralph Juergens, 1972.
Ralph Juergens’ glow discharge model has the Sun as a high voltage anode imbedded in galactic plasma of lower voltage. A charged body in plasma forms a bubble or sheath around it to pro- vide a smooth transition between the differing electric potentials of the two plasma regions. The Sun’s plasma sheath may be equated with the heliosphere boundary (seen in the diagram, enclosing the solar system). Conventionally this boundary is thought to be the result of mechanical collision between the supersonic solar wind (red arrows inside the sheath) and the tenuous galactic atmosphere. However, it is more complicated than that since powerful electrical forces dominate the heliospheric plasma sheath.
There are several important features of a glow discharge. Cobine notes: “The positive column is a region of almost equal numbers of positive ions and electrons and is characterized by a very low voltage gradient.” Of course, in the solar system the word ‘column’ is inappropriate. In the Sun’s environment, the only bright regions are very close to the Sun because the energy density there is high enough to excite a glow. The current is carried throughout the solar system by a relatively low density of ioniza- tion. That is the situation we find within the heliosphere, where the planets orbit. The weak electric field causes the acceleration of the solar wind in the inner solar system and a slow drift of electrons toward the Sun. The weak but constant electric field explains the puzzling steady deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft, which be- come negatively charged in space.
Another feature in the heliospheric sheath is a reversed elec- tric field that will cause protons in the solar wind to slow down and ‘bunch up.’ The electric field is strongest within the sheath at the point of inflection between the regions of negative and positive space charge density. Voyager 1 seems to have reached the inner edge of the heliospheric sheath and confirmed this structure. Also, neutral atoms from outside the solar system drift into the helio- sphere. Some become ionized by collision and are then acceler- ated, by means not understood, to become ‘anomalous cosmic rays’ (ACR’s). Voyager 1 has discovered ACR’s coming from be- yond the solar wind pile-up region where the strong accelerating electric field is expected. On the far side of the heliospheric sheath protons from the solar wind experience almost the full voltage dif- ference between the Sun and its galactic environment. It is where true cosmic rays are generated by all stars.
Ralph Juergens (1924-1979) at the Grand Canyon in 1975. He was a civil engineer and associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication.
The solar system out to its boundary with interstellar space (heliosphere) is shown below the electrical features of a glow discharge tube, aligned for comparison. The glow discharge diagram is from J. D. Cobine’s book Gaseous Conductors.
INFORMATION PANEL
[misnamed a ‘magnetosphere’] of limited volume. When no orbital conflict exists, the system operates serenely under the direction of forces accounted for in conventional celestial mechanics.” Juergens was the first to make the theoretical leap to considering an electrically powered Sun, without presuming to know the origin of the universal electrical supply.
Juergens’ answer solved, in a single stroke, the most puzzling as- pect of the Sun. As Prof. R L F Boyd stated the dilemma, “A star like the Sun is remarkable… We have the strange phenomenon of a rela- tively cool body in space enveloped in an immensely hot atmosphere.” But Boyd then adds this parenthetical observation: “We can note in passing that the Earth’s upper atmosphere is hotter than its surface but this is less remarkable [because] in the Earth’s case the energy comes from without.”63
The parenthetical remark confirms that, as an article of faith, the thermonuclear model of the Sun encourages astrophysicists to over- look the possibility of an external energy source of the Sun.
Yet the faith has its foundation in Eddington’s use of standard gas laws, which do not apply in a plasma discharge (see information panel
- 54). Nevertheless, the faith of astrophysicists remained unshaken even when the required abundances of neutrinos from the Sun’s nuclear furnace were not found. To save the model, astrophysicists were forced to propose that neutrinos change their identity on their flight from the Sun. But then it was discovered that the neutrino flux from the Sun seems to vary with surface effects – sunspot numbers and the solar wind. So the discomfort has only grown. We had been told that events on the surface were the final result of a nuclear furnace so far from the surface that heating took hundreds of thousands of years as energy was passed, first, through a hypothetical ‘radiative zone,’ then through a ‘convective’ zone. Direct observation, on the other hand, suggests that the emitted neutrinos, a byproduct of nuclear reactions, are being produced in the vicinity of the photosphere, not the core of the Sun. There is no radiative zone and no convective zone, only a positively charged body, exhibiting the plasma glow discharge that would be expected of such a sphere in space.
It was astrophysicists’ disinterest in the possibility of an external energy source for the Sun that left the door open for Juergens to explore this source. Yet even mainstream theorists have, without realizing the implications of their words, occasionally resorted to electrical analogies. For example, in discussing the ‘advantage’ of the thermonuclear model, the official Nobel Prize website recently used the analogy of a device which, rather than being driven by a battery, receives its energy “from an electrical power outlet in the wall.” The comparison is ironic: the most obvious distinction between the nuclear
63 R. L. F. Boyd, F.R.S., Space Physics: the study of plasmas in space, p. 61.
Chapter 3 — Electric Stars
and electrical models is that, while the electric model draws on a limitless external supply, the thermonuclear model depends on the equivalent of a long-lived battery at the center of the Sun, steadily running down! The web page was replaced in 2006.64
Much of the difficulty in communication here is due to a simple misunderstanding. The first objection to the electric model of the Sun is almost always based on classical electrostatic principles as illustrated by pith ball experiments, in which a charged ball gradually loses its charge through ‘charge exchange’ with an external object or the environment. Were this the ‘electric’ Sun, it would progressively lose charge. So the skeptics use a simple ‘back of an envelope’ calculation to show that an electric Sun won’t work.
But as Alfvén pointed out long ago, popular assumptions about plasma behavior are almost always wrong. We must turn to the labora- tory for a reliable picture of how plasma discharges actually work.65
Juergens’ seminal contribution was to provide a laboratory plasma discharge model that offers a plausible explanation for all of the Sun’s observed and often weird behavior.66 His model is based on a much studied phenomenon called ‘low pressure glow discharge’ (see information panel p. 54).
A Geissler tube. When powered up the plasma glows brightly near the electrodes and the glass fluoresces green where the cathode rays strike, particularly at the constricted mid-point of the tube.
A well-known example of a glow discharge is the ‘Geissler tube’ (above) often demonstrated in high school physics classes. The device involves a high DC voltage applied between two metal disc electrodes at each end of a closed glass tube. As a vacuum pump reduces the air pressure in the tube, the first visible effect is a long spark, which then broadens into a glow that fills the tube. Then the glow breaks into bands that, as the pressure continues to drop, move away from the cathode, or negatively charged electrode, toward the
64 See nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/fusion/index.html
65 H. Alfvén, “Double Layers and Circuits in Astrophysics,” IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. PS-14, No. 6, December 1986, p. 779. “Students using astro- physical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma con- cepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century.”
66 R. E. Juergens, “The Photosphere: Is It the Top or the Bottom of the Phenomenon We Call the Sun?” KRONOS, Vol. IV, No. 4 Summer 1979.
Here we see the changes to the glow discharge as the gas pressure inside the glass tube is reduced (from top to bottom).
anode, or positively charged electrode. Finally, at very low pressures, the glowing anode is all that one sees, except for some fluorescence in the glass itself due to cathode rays striking the glass walls of the tube. Is it possible to explain stars in terms of these low-pressure gas discharge phenomena? The accepted model of bright stars is very odd. It envisions them as stifled thermonuclear bombs undergoing a slow, sus- tained reaction at their cores. They are the only material bodies believed to transfer internal heat by radiation instead of con- duction and convection.67 And one of the slowest thermonu- clear reactions, which produces deuterium and controls the rate at which energy is produced, is so unlikely that it cannot be tested in the laboratory.68 Also, as noted earlier, the thermonu-
clear model failed the only test available—neutrino production.
Theorists were also compelled to wave away an apparently insurmountable problem inherent in the assumed nuclear reactions. It is well established that the rate of reactions would be highly unstable since reaction rate is particularly sensitive to core temperature (sensitivity rises to the fifth power of core temperature in the Sun and much higher for some reactions in other stars). Therefore, it is no overstatement to say that the serenity of the night sky belies the ‘hydrogen bomb’ model of stars—which would, with virtual certainty, punctuate the heavens with unstable nuclear stellar reactions!
Indeed, the plasma laboratory, to which the electrical theorists turn for guidelines on plasma behavior, has demonstrated the point rather well. After many decades of effort and billions of dollars expended, no laboratory has achieved a stable fusion reaction, the very thing needed to verify what astrophysicists claim to be business as usual inside stars. In stark contrast, the electrical model of the Sun could be investigated at a low cost in a small laboratory.
The Sun’s Corona
In the electric model, the key variable that determines a star’s ap- parent size, brightness and color is electrical stress, which depends on each star’s size and voltage in relation to its surroundings. The Sun is immersed in a medium of extremely low-density plasma. So there are few atoms to be excited to emit visible light in an electrical discharge except very close to the Sun, in the corona and the photosphere.
The most energetic activity of the Sun occurs far above the Sun’s photosphere, in the corona—the spectacular halo which shows up
67 P. M. Robitaille, “Internal thermal equilibrium within the Sun must be achieved using convection and conduction, as is the case for every other object.” from a paper sub- mitted to the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, arXiv:astro-ph/0410075 v2 4 Oct 2004
68 R. Bowers & T. Deeming, Astrophysics I: Stars, p. 155.
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The Mystery of the Solar Cycle
“The solar activity cycle has fascinated scientists and amateurs alike for over a century, but its mystery re- mains, and even deepens, as we collect new data that reveal its full complexity.”
—D. A. Rabin et al, Solar Interior and Atmosphere,
- Cox, Livingston & Matthews, p. 782.
The solar cycle relates to sunspot behavior and the switching of the Sun’s dipolar magnetic field every 11 years. Unsuccessful attempts have been made to explain the solar cycle by the winding up inside the Sun of a mysteriously generated magnetic field.
However, in the early 1900’s Birkeland demon- strated the gross features of sunspots in his Terrella experiments. In the electrical discharge (left) a donut
of circulating charge can be seen about the magnet- ized sphere. The Sun ex- hibits a similar donut when seen in UV light by the SOHO spacecraft (be- low).
In the laboratory, as the current is increased, the discharges move from mid- to low-latitudes. This means that sunspots are not formed by twisted mag- netic fields popping through the photosphere. Sun- spots are the footprints of powerful discharges from the encircling equatorial plasma donut to lower levels in the Sun’s atmosphere. The discharge takes the form of a plasma “pinch,” where magnetic-field- aligned Birkeland currents are drawn together by their increasing electrical currents. That explains the strong magnetic field of sunspots and their tendency to draw together while maintaining individual integ- rity. The simplest model for the 22 year magnetic sunspot cycle involves modulation of the electrical power input from the galaxy. The galactic power is direct current (DC) and the solar cycle is due to a
Seen above in X-rays by the Yokhoh satellite, from solar minimum to maximum, the Sun is a variable star.
- rays are the signature of electric
varying DC power supply to the Sun. The solar cir- cuitry seems to behave like a secondary winding on a transformer, which responds to the varying DC cur- rent to produce a magnetic field which switches po- larity. It is rather encouraging that this picture of the Sun adheres to simple electrical engineering princi- ples.
Of course, the immediate question is ‘where does the electrical power for the Sun come from?’ Studies of magnetic fields in the spiral arms of galaxies shows that electrical currents flow along the arms in the form of spiraling Birkeland filaments. As the filaments rotate past the solar system, the Sun will experience quasi-periodic power fluctuations – the origin of the solar activity cycle.
Ultimately, we don’t know where the power comes from. But within the visible universe we find magnetic fields linking galaxies, showing that the galaxies are ‘threaded like beads on a string,’ along cosmic power lines. The galaxies and stars within them are driven to rotate like the very simplest of electric motors, known as the ‘homopolar’ or Faraday motor. The ubiquitous spiral arms of galaxies trace the current paths between the galactic nucleus and the periphery.
This large-scale picture of the Electric Universe is from the new electrical engineering discipline of Plasma Cosmology. The point of departure here is to suggest that stars, once formed in a galactic plasma pinch, begin to shine as stellar electric lights.
INFORMATION PANEL
The Sun’s corona as seen in a total eclipse. Paradoxically, the solar atmosphere gets hotter the further away from the surface you get. It is acknowledged that understanding the physics of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration remain the outstanding unsolved problems of solar physics. The rayed, bipolar structure is also unexplained.
when the Sun’s light is blocked by a solar eclipse (left).
The corona is a surrounding shell heated to two million degrees Kelvin, but lying above a vastly cooler surface (see p. 66 for more on the concept of temperature, when applied to plasma).
The temperature gradient from the Sun’s surface to the corona has always presented a problem for astronomical models. If the Sun were like a glowing ember or a flame (or a nuclear furnace), one would expect the temperature to drop off with distance from the central heat source. But it doesn’t. Instead the temperature gradi- ent has been likened to ‘boiling a kettle on a cold stove.’ At about 500 kilometers (310 miles) above the base of the photosphere, we find the coldest measurable temperature of the Sun, about 4400 de-
grees K. Moving outward, the temperature then rises steadily to about 20,000 degrees K at the top of the chromosphere, some 2200 kilome- ters (1200 miles) above the Sun’s surface. Here it abruptly jumps hun- dreds of thousands of degrees, then continues slowly rising, eventually reaching 2 million degrees. And incredibly, ionized oxygen atoms at a distance of 1 or 2 solar diameters reach 200 million degrees!
On the face of it, the reversed temperature gradient alone refutes the assumption of an isolated ball of gas generating its heat through internal nuclear fusion. The gradient suggests an energetic interaction of the Sun with an external energy source. But in recent years solar theorists, most with little or no training in plasma discharge phenom- ena, have resorted to a disturbingly popular fiction they call ‘magnetic reconnection.’ Though the concept directly contradicts Maxwell’s well-tested electromagnetic theory, these theorists claim that, on its own, complex magnetic field behavior transfers internal energy of the Sun to a region far above the Sun (see information panel p. 64).
In this new and exotic theory, abstractions become something ‘real,’ as magnetic field lines (the direction of the magnetic field, not a thing) are treated like ‘rubber bands,’ mysteriously generated inside the Sun, then stretching, twisting, breaking—and finally ‘reconnecting.’ Such language is anathema to experts in electrodynamics. What the theorists are seeing is an electric discharge phenomenon with explosive changes in magnetic field direction. The idea that the changes in field direction are the cause of the discharge energies can only retard progress in astrophysics.
Photospheric Granulation
Another puzzle of the Sun is the ‘rice grain’ appearance of its photosphere (image next page), which gave rise to the phrase ‘photospheric granulation.’ Scientists now believe that each granule is the top of a ‘convection cell’ because the opaque gases of the Sun, in the nuclear fusion model, need a mechanism for slowly transferring internal heat to the surface.
Immediately, problems arise with this interpretation. The gas density in the photosphere diminishes rapidly with height so that convection there should be completely turbulent. Instead, the granules seem to quietly appear, grow brighter for some minutes, then fade. It is admitted by physicists that “Convection remains the outstanding unsolved problem in photospheric physics...”69 The statement confirms what Juergens wrote years earlier, “...photospheric granulation is explainable in terms of convection only if we disregard what we know about convection. Surely the cellular structure is not to be expected.”70
Juergens proposed instead that “a [photospheric] granule may be viewed as a relatively dense, highly luminous, secondary plasma that springs into being in the embrace of a thinner, less luminous, primary plasma. ...we are led directly to ask whether the granules might not be akin to certain highly luminous tufts of discharge plasma variously described in the literature as anode glows, anode tufts, and anode arcs.”70
Anode tufts appear as bright spots above an anode surface and increase in number as the voltage and current is increased. The tufts arrange themselves so that they avoid each other (thus the systematic appearance of ‘granulation’). They may be stationary or move about over the anode surface.71
To see the role of electric currents in shaping the sunspot penumbra one must step back (or ‘up’) from the visible surface and follow the paths of the filamentary structures, as shown in a digital metamorphosis sequence. The image on the right shows the sunspot in false-color from two different heights above the surface or photosphere. The first image shows the Sun’s photosphere as we normally see it, covered with granules. The large dark sunspot sports a clear dark umbra in the center, through which we can peer into the cooler region beneath the surface.
Surrounding the sunspot is the lighter penumbra, composed of rope-like-vortices rising from beneath the photosphere.
The lower image is the last in a sequence, showing the Sun at a few thousand kilometers up into the chromosphere, the layer of the Sun’s atmosphere just above the photosphere. Here we see the ‘ropes’ of the sunspot penumbra extending outward into a
surrounding maze of filaments, the electric currents they convey all constrained to follow the ambient magnetic field. Following Alfvén’s warning, we must understand the electrical circuitry evident in the
69 L. S. Anderson & E. H. Avrett, “The Photosphere as a Radiative Boundary,” Solar Interior and Atmosphere, ed. Cox, Livingston & Matthews, p. 671.
70 R. E. Juergens, “The Photosphere: is it the top or the bottom of the phenomenon we call the Sun?” Kronos, June 1979, p. 34.
A high resolution image (down to 70 km) of photospheric granulation from the Swedish 1-meter solar telescope on La Palma. It shows the polygonal structure and narrow dark lanes between granules, a vital consideration in the electric model. (See information panel p. 55.)
The lower image shows the sunspot in false color at a high elevation.
Astrophysicists had long believed that the penumbra filaments are ‘convection cells.’ Now it is clear that they are highly structured electric discharge vortexes. See http:// antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ ap050216.html
Credit: Dutch Open Telescope/ Sterrekundig Insituut Utrecht.
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‘Magnetic Reconnection’ - A Modern Myth
In 1946, while searching for an explanation for solar flaring, noted solar physicist Ronald Giovanelli (left) proposed the idea of magnetic reconnection. Its development provides a good example of theory departing from common- sense.
Michael Faraday introduced the concept of ‘magnetic lines of force’ in the early 1800s after seeing the pattern formed by
iron filings that were sprinkled on a sheet of paper placed over a bar magnet. Each filing aligns itself, like a compass needle, with the direction of the magnetic field. But because each filing is also acting as a tiny bar magnet with its own tiny field, nearby filings are pushed away from each other into equilibrium positions with filings on each side, as illustrated above. This leads to the appearance of lines of filings, though the magnetic field is actually continuous. ‘Lines of force’ are a graphic means of representing the direction and strength of the continuous magnetic force at any point in space.
They have no physical existence.
But the imaginary has been reified in the concept of ‘magnetic reconnection,’ a popular myth now appearing regularly in discussions of energetic events in magnetized plasma. In fact it has become a favorite explanation for solar flares and other intensely energetic phenomena seen in deep space.
In this misconception, ‘lines of force’ are treated not as indicators of direction, like contour lines on a map, but physically, like a rubber band that can stretch and break. For example, if the solar wind buffets the Earth’s magnetosphere with an op-
INFORMATION PANEL
positely di- rected mag- netic field, as shown in the diagram, a ‘miracle’ oc- curs in the blue region. Here, two field lines from the Sun have ‘snapped’ and ‘recon- nected’ with their opposites to form the upper and lower highly kinked field
lines. In straightening the field lines, magnetic en- ergy is supposed to accelerate the combined solar and earthly plasma to form jets.
In a 1975 paper, “Electric Current Structure of the Magnetosphere,” Alfvén showed the difference between real plasma and “a fictitious medium” called “pseudo-plasma,” the latter having frozen in magnetic field lines moving with the plasma. Alfvén had proposed the ‘frozen in’ concept in his 1950 book, Cosmical Electrodynamics, then repudiated the idea in the 1963 reprint. In retrospect, he writes: “At that time (1950) we already knew enough to understand that a frozen-in treatment of the magne- tosphere was absurd.”
But the concept became popular among astro- physicists. Alfvén wrote in 1986, “we have been burdened with a gigantic pseudo-science which penetrates large parts of cosmic plasma physics. We may conclude that anyone who uses the merging concepts states by implication that no double layers exist.” Double layers form naturally at the bounda- ries between two different plasma regimes.
Sadly, the myth of magnetic reconnection is today one of the prime obstacles to a proper understanding of electricity in plasma. For wherever electric discharge jets occur, magnetic fields will be present to deceive astrophysicists into thinking they have found another instance of ‘magnetic reconnection.’ To truly understand what is going on we must return to first principles and consider the behavior of the charged particles in the plasma.
sunspot before we can understand sunspots.
In other words, it is a misapplication of traditional gas laws and thermodynamics that led solar physicists to identify penumbral filaments as ‘convection cells.’ In the future, photospheric granulation may be investigated in the laboratory simply by a detailed study of ‘anode tufting’ in a low-pressure gas discharge.
Our Variable Star
Boyd writes, “the Sun is a variable X-ray star; it is fortunate for us that the variability is not reflected in the energy flux in the visible.”72 But what makes us so fortunate? In the laboratory, plasma exhibits a life-like ability to self-organize and to cope with the stresses of its electrical environment. This responsiveness offers clues as to how a variable X-ray star like the Sun achieves such a steady radiant output. At solar minimum, when the average monthly sunspot count is its lowest, the ‘X-ray Sun’ goes dark. That is a key because X-rays are efficiently produced by electrical discharges and are there- fore a sensitive indicator of the electrical power being received by the Sun (see information panel p. 61).
Juergens went to great pains to explain the complex and exquisitely tuned feedback mechanism of the solar discharge. His insights are of para- mount importance for an understanding of the Sun and for clarity on one of the most frequently asked questions: can we rely upon the Sun as a constant source of life-giving energy?
The diagram presented here is adapted from a curve of the electric
potential distribution across an anode
Here we see a large sunspot group. The white spots, called “plages” (in French, “beaches”), are markers for active regions that may spawn sunspots. E. N. Parker, a leading expert on solar physics, once described a sunspot as “a phenomenon lacking scientific explanation.” Credit: SOHO/MDI
tuft, as found from laboratory experiments by W. P. Allis.73 Like the Sun’s photosphere, the dynamic activity is com- plex. So we will deal only with the most prominent and essential features. We begin at the true solar surface and follow what happens to protons (and positively charged atoms, or positive ions) as we move to the right, away from the Sun. Protons in the region (a) to (b) must have sufficient energy to climb the voltage ‘barrier’ formed by the tuft plasma, (b) to (c). This barrier prevents the unlim- ited escape of charge from the Sun. And on occasions when the tuft plasma is breached, we may expect mass
72 R. L. F. Boyd, Space Physics: the study of plasmas in space, p. 61.
The Sun’s plasma sheath. The white curve shows how
the voltage changes within the solar plasma as we move outward from the the body of the Sun. Positively charged protons will tend to “roll down the hills.” So the photospheric tuft plasma acts as a barrier to limit the Sun’s power output. The plateau between (b) and (c) and beyond (e) defines a normal quasi-neutral plasma. The chromosphere has a strong electric field which flattens out but remains non-zero throughout the solar system. As protons accelerate down the chromospheric slope, heading to the right, they encounter turbulence at (e), which heats the solar corona to millions of degrees. The small, but relatively constant, accelerating voltage gradient beyond the corona is responsible for accelerating the solar wind away from the Sun. Credit: W. Thornhill (after W. Allis & R. Juergens).
This remarkable close-up ultraviolet image by NASA’s TRACE satellite shows
miles.
ejections like those seen in flares and coronal mass ejec- tions.
Within the photospheric tufts themselves there is little electric field and the current is carried by electrons drifting toward the Sun and protons drifting in the opposite direction. These bright tufts are regions where neutral gas from the Sun is ionized to provide protons for the solar discharge. Ions are also provided by exotic ion fountains called ‘spicules’ rising here and there from the dark lanes between the bright granules. Each spicule is about 300 miles in diameter, and rises to a height of 2,000 to 5,000
an active region on the sun, just after a
massive flare erupted. Dubbed the ‘slinky,’ each loop is far larger than the diameter of the Earth.
The inset shows a model of current filaments in plasma. The lines represent both current paths and magnetic field lines. In the strong currents associated with a solar flare, the solar gases are heated to millions of degrees and the helix develops kink instabilities which eject the hot plasma into space. The cause is electrical, producing the secondary magnetic effects seen here.
Credit: NASA, Trace
The Sun’s chromosphere seen in detail by the Hinode spacecraft. Where astrophysicists expected to see a calm region called the chromosphere, they saw a seething mass of swaying spikes. "Everything we thought we knew about X-ray images of the Sun is now out of date," says Leon Golub from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We've seen many new and unexpected things.”
Image: Hinode JAXA/NASA
This supply of ionizable gas through a porous anode is a tech- nique used in some arc lamps—which mimic photospheric radiation. We also see the bright ionized tornadoes, thousands of kilometers high and flecked with lightning, that provide the heat and visible light of the Sun. This feature, too, is well worth noting, because the highly ionized tuft atmosphere is an extreme form of the kind of electrical weather occurring in miniature on Earth (see information panel p. 55).
Protons that drift to the right over the edge of the voltage barrier accelerate into the chromosphere. In doing so they lose their random motion, a vital consideration because it is random motion that we measure as temperature. In the language of solar physics, the protons become ‘dethermalized’—their motions will no longer show up as temperature. Dethermalization is the reason why the so-called ‘tem- perature minimum’ of the Sun lies just above the photosphere within the chromosphere. So a crucial principle is in play here: as noted by Alfvén and his colleagues many years ago, in an electric field, tem- perature is no longer a reliable measure of energy.
Protons (and neutral atoms propelled by them) will continue to accelerate strongly until they reach the primary plasma, or corona. There, collisions between high-speed particles and the surrounding plasma medium causes randomization of particle motion, and it is this effect that we measure as the ‘millions-of-degrees temperature’ of the corona. The puzzle of how the corona is so ‘hot’ above a relatively ‘cold’ photosphere is neatly solved. It is a mistake to use thermal measures of energy in regions of low temperature and high electric field like the chromosphere (see left).
It is also significant that the high-speed solar wind originates in so-called ‘coronal holes,’ where the temperature is low. In conventional terms this makes no sense because the solar wind is
supposed to be ‘boiling off’ the hot corona. But in the electrical model,
the temperature is low where the accelerating electric field is strong.
If we turn the curve on page 65 upside down, we see how the tuft barrier looks to electrons arriving from the corona. The tufts behave as sinks for receiving electrons. This means that with time the electric
potential of a tuft must decrease: eventually it can no longer sustain the bright discharge. So the tuft simply fades, or its electric ‘tornado’ rapidly expands and dissipates in what is known as an ‘exploding’ granule.
Juergens provided a much more detailed explanation that is deserving of serious study. With the wealth of new information provided by sophisticated space probes and new telescopes there is an urgent need to re-examine the data from the perspective of an electric Sun. Surely the model presented here is sufficiently specific. It should be easily tested and, if incorrect, readily falsified.
Virtual Cathode
If the Sun is the anode, the positively charged focal point of a plasma discharge, where is the cathode in the discharge? It is essential that one see discharge of the electric Sun in terms analogous to the corona discharge from a high-voltage power line into the atmosphere, where a ‘virtual cathode’ is formed in the plasma surrounding the wire. The Sun, too, has a virtual cathode, an invisible cellular boundary at the limit of the Sun’s electrical influence. Once again, such cellular forms arise naturally to separate regions of dissimilar plasma properties.
One critical distinction must be made, however. Juergens was expecting electrons in the vicinity of Earth to be rushing toward the Sun at ‘relativistic’ velocities—that is, velocities approaching the speed of light. This was, in fact, a requirement because he envisioned interplanetary space as the region of the ‘cathode drop,’ across which the electric field would be sufficient to power the Sun. He wrote, “The chromosphere we shall interpret as the inner limit of this negative glow. Only the photosphere, at the inner limit of the vast discharge cavity, will be assigned an anode function in this model.”
If the Earth and other planets are moving through the region of the cathode drop, then a powerful electric field across this drop will accelerate electrons to relativistic velocities. Since this is not occurring, it is evident that the ‘positive column’ of the Sun’s glow discharge fills the heliosphere, where charged particles drift in a weak but relatively steady electric field in quasi-neutral plasma. The region of the positive column is distinguished by “almost equal concentrations of positive ions and electrons and is characterized by a very low voltage gradient”74 (see information panel p. 57).
The Sun’s virtual cathode was, in fact, found by Voyager 1, beginning almost 100 times further from the Sun than the Earth, as it began to enter the boundary of the Sun’s influence. It is now clear that the Sun’s cellular plasma sheath protects the solar system as a whole
Low energy corona discharge into air from a circular wire.
74 J. D. Cobine, Gaseous Conductors, Dover 1958, p. 215.
from the enveloping galactic plasma. Astronomers call this boundary the ‘heliosphere.’ In the glow discharge model of the Sun, almost the entire voltage difference between the Sun’s own plasma sheath and its galactic environment occurs across the sheath of the heliosphere, whose electrical nature astronomers have yet to grasp. Thinking in mechanical terms, they imagine a ‘bow shock’ where the plasma of the solar wind meets the interstellar medium.
Acceleration of the Solar Wind
Though weak in absolute terms and impossible to measure across short distances, the electric field of the Sun across interplanetary space represents an immense potential. And as electrical engineers will im- mediately recognize, we can confirm the presence of this electric field beyond any reasonable doubt by simply observing the acceleration of charged particles in the solar wind, as great volumes of material depart from the Sun without regard to its massive gravitational tug.
The Sun’s blast of particles typically reaches speeds of 400 to 700 kilometers per second. And though a few authorities anticipated a ‘wind’ from the Sun, the rapid acceleration of charged particles, fol- lowed by continued acceleration out past the planets, came as a sur- prise.
Since the discovery of this acceleration it has remained one of the pre-eminent mysteries of solar behavior. Giving the benefit of the doubt to every experimental effort and to every theoretical guess, it is fair to say that solar physicists have, at best, ‘explained’ some 50 per- cent of the typical solar wind acceleration.
But the challenge for a model comes from its ability to account for extremes. The average coronal mass ejection (CME) will reach Earth in perhaps 24 hours. But an acid test of the nuclear Sun came in Janu- ary of 2005, when a CME exploded from the Sun, to be accelerated so rapidly that it reached Earth in only 30 minutes, leading to what NASA scientists called “the most intense proton storm in decades.” When the protons reached Earth they were traveling at nearly one quarter the speed of light—a theory-busting testament to the power of an electric Sun.
- Thornhill
The Galactic Circuit
The Sun and its satellites occupy a spiral arm of the Milky Way. Alfvén and the plasma cosmologists that followed assure us that electric currents flow along the arms of the galaxy, creating helical magnetic fields, confining and ‘pinching’ the galactic plasma naturally into the spiral structure observed (left).
The electric model of the Sun merely extends the findings of plasma cosmology to identify these galactic currents as the Sun’s
—and all stars’—energy source, eliminating the need for a com-
plicated theoretical internal source that is no longer tenable. While nuclear reactions certainly occur at the surface of the Sun (not in the core), in the electric model these reactions are driven by the true source of the Sun’s energy—galactic cur- rents.
This provision of the electric model sets up a critical test that will immediately disprove the model if it is incorrect. Electric currents can not fail to produce magnetic fields. The Sun itself has a magnetic field, which the standard model at- tributes to a hidden and poorly understood inter- nal ‘dynamo.’ But if the electric model is correct, the magnetic field of the Sun cannot be divorced from the galactic field induced by a larger circuit and current flow.
A dilemma arises. Every magnetic field line must ‘close.’ That is, in a diagram of the mag- netic field, each field line must form a closed
‘circuit.’ But it seems that, in the case of the Sun, one of the most ele- mentary rules of magnetism is being violated. Solar physicists speak of the Sun’s ‘open magnetic field lines.’ They are field lines leaving the Sun’s coronal holes that, by all appearances, do not close. Tracing their path out from the Sun, it is as if they disappear to an imagined infinity.
Or have the physicists, locked into the thermonuclear model of the Sun, overlooked a clue pointing directly to the electrical Sun? The lines are surely anchored as the laws of electromagnetism require, but they are not anchored in the Sun. The so-called ‘open field lines’ are connected to the ambient galactic field that, in electrical terms, must be there. The ‘open’ field lines trace the helical galactic Birkeland currents converging on the Sun in a mild hourglass-shaped ‘Z-pinch.’ Coronal holes, in this interpretation, become a strong argument for the galactic connection.
The Ulysses spacecraft sprang a surprise on astrophysicists recently. A massive solar flare erupted near the equator and was followed by a similar outburst near the Sun’s south pole. It was described by NASA news in the following terms, “Imagine hiking across Antarctica, through ice, cold and bitter wind, enduring months of hardship, and finally arriving at the doorstep of the South Pole itself. At that moment you get hit by a Sahara sandstorm.” The polar outburst was “a puzzle NASA is keen to solve” because it was thought that the Sun’s magnetic field should have kept the flare “bottled up” in the equatorial plane.
There is no puzzle when you acknowledge the Sun’s electric circuit.
The solar polar and equatorial currents are part of the same circuit.
The Sun’s magnetic field has been mapped above the poles by the Ulysses spacecraft. The thermonuclear model has nothing useful to tell us about why the Sun’s magnetic field should have such an odd configuration. Nor does it have any answers to the final destination of the ‘open’ polar magnetic field lines.
Credit: S. T. Suess.