...so it seems in some folks' theories;
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/ ... fusion.htm
The Sun is just a big fusor!
Re: The Sun is just a big fusor!
Well as soon as I started seeing the electric universe BS ....chrismb wrote:...so it seems in some folks' theories;
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/ ... fusion.htm
Re: The Sun is just a big fusor!
What do you mean by "electric universe BS..."?IntLibber wrote: Well as soon as I started seeing the electric universe BS ....
Re: The Sun is just a big fusor!
What needs explaining? If you follow the link and read, it becomes clear they have no real knowledge of how pressure in plasma works. They try to claim that because the protons are heavier then electrons, electrons "float" (which may or may not be significant), and so pull the sun outward explaining how the sun can be so big without thermal pressure. This is ridiculous because you still need thermal pressure to keep everything pushed out, whether or not the electrons are in fact "floating" like they say. Plus they seem deny that neutrino oscillations occur between the sun and earth, even though it is experimentally verified that they can oscillate from one side of the earth to the other. And then proceed to offer an explanation for this "lack" of oscillation.KitemanSA wrote:What do you mean by "electric universe BS..."?IntLibber wrote: Well as soon as I started seeing the electric universe BS ....
Carter
A copy of my response in another forum:
All that is said earlier in the linked article is reasonable. This last paragraph though is completely unsupported by earlier assertions. "The stars receive their power from outside, not inside. Any nuclear reactions are taking place on the surface of the Sun and not in its core. The solar wind is an electric current connecting the Sun with its family of planets and with its galactic clan, so the 90-year-old theory of fusion firing the solar furnace needs to be reexamined."
The Sun is of course a big ball of plasma, any positive and negative charged particle flows in one net direction (like the solar wind)represents a current . Why do thay think this powers the fusion in / on the Sun.? The Heliopause represents the shock front where the out flowing solar wind is finally stopped by the galactic background . If that somehow magically drove fusion, how does it do so? The Solar charged particals do not accumulate much at the heliopause, they are just indistinguishable from the general galactic 'wind' that they become a part of.
In the Solar corona, there is probably fusion occurring. But the important consideration here is that the very low density in this region greatly decreases the reaction rate of the bulk plasma, despite any advantage from higher temperatures from deeper in the Sun- till a point where the dense inner Sun plasma becomes even hotter than the corona (core is at ~ 15 million degrees while the corona is at perhaps a few million degrees K. The fusion rate increases as the square of the density. The core is ~ 10^30 particles per M^3, while the corona has a density of ~ 10^15 [EDIT] particles per M^3. That is a difference of 10^15. That squared is ~ 10^30 times as much fusion per unit volume. The corona has a larger volume, but still the core is doing well over 10^30 times as much fusion (depending on the volume you assign to the corona and it's progressively lower density as you move away from the Sun).
Stellar fusion is a well studied field. This alternate fusion method no doubt occurs, but it is so rare that attempts to detect any fusion in the corona has been difficult, while Solar fusion in general is very obvious- all you have to do is look outside, measure neutrinos, etc. If electrostatic forces power solar fusion- especially if this fusion is supposed to be dominated at the surface, I think it would be very difficult to explain the existence of stars. The heat produced buy fusion in the core is the only explanation for the buoyancy of stars- the prevention of continued gravitational collapse. If the heat was generated at the surface, I don't think there could be a convoluted argument against collapse. Add to that the presumed understanding of stellar evolution- the Hertzsprung Russel diagram, how stars are born, first generation vs second generation stars , their size limits, their fuel mixing, their fates, etc, etc. are all complaint with the idea of core driven fusion. Any other explanation would need to be consistent with all of these observations and interpretations (or if the interpretation is different, it would need to be defended).
Does electrostatically driven fusion occur in, on, or above the Sun? Of course it does. Dose it amount to more than 1 billionth of 1 billionth of 1 billionth ..... of the total? I don't think so.
The source of stellar power has been thought upon for centuries. One theory was that it was powered by coal- calculations concluded that it could have been powered in this fashion for perhaps 10,000 years (I don't know where they thought the oxygen came from). Once it was accepted that the Earth was older than this, thinkers came up idea that the heating from gravitational collapse/ condensation might power the Sun for millions of years. Finally, it was recognized that this still fell far short of what was needed. Gravitational collapse, though, does explain the formation of stars, and with the concept of core fusion, the limits on their sizes, lifetimes, and evolution.. Could electrostatic driven fusion accommodate any of these processes? Well, if you assumed there was convergence with the vast majority of the heating thus coming from the core, maybe. But how do the accelerating ions get there with out losing their kinetic energy. Mean free path becomes very short. Gravity manages to concentrate this thermal energy to such a density that interesting things happen. Electrostatic forces might do similar things if enough contortions are used, but why bother. And even if electrostatic forces could lead to dense core fusion (or contribute to it) it is irrelevant to the argument that Solar fusion occurs dominantly at or above the surface of the Sun.
Dan Tibbets
All that is said earlier in the linked article is reasonable. This last paragraph though is completely unsupported by earlier assertions. "The stars receive their power from outside, not inside. Any nuclear reactions are taking place on the surface of the Sun and not in its core. The solar wind is an electric current connecting the Sun with its family of planets and with its galactic clan, so the 90-year-old theory of fusion firing the solar furnace needs to be reexamined."
The Sun is of course a big ball of plasma, any positive and negative charged particle flows in one net direction (like the solar wind)represents a current . Why do thay think this powers the fusion in / on the Sun.? The Heliopause represents the shock front where the out flowing solar wind is finally stopped by the galactic background . If that somehow magically drove fusion, how does it do so? The Solar charged particals do not accumulate much at the heliopause, they are just indistinguishable from the general galactic 'wind' that they become a part of.
In the Solar corona, there is probably fusion occurring. But the important consideration here is that the very low density in this region greatly decreases the reaction rate of the bulk plasma, despite any advantage from higher temperatures from deeper in the Sun- till a point where the dense inner Sun plasma becomes even hotter than the corona (core is at ~ 15 million degrees while the corona is at perhaps a few million degrees K. The fusion rate increases as the square of the density. The core is ~ 10^30 particles per M^3, while the corona has a density of ~ 10^15 [EDIT] particles per M^3. That is a difference of 10^15. That squared is ~ 10^30 times as much fusion per unit volume. The corona has a larger volume, but still the core is doing well over 10^30 times as much fusion (depending on the volume you assign to the corona and it's progressively lower density as you move away from the Sun).
Stellar fusion is a well studied field. This alternate fusion method no doubt occurs, but it is so rare that attempts to detect any fusion in the corona has been difficult, while Solar fusion in general is very obvious- all you have to do is look outside, measure neutrinos, etc. If electrostatic forces power solar fusion- especially if this fusion is supposed to be dominated at the surface, I think it would be very difficult to explain the existence of stars. The heat produced buy fusion in the core is the only explanation for the buoyancy of stars- the prevention of continued gravitational collapse. If the heat was generated at the surface, I don't think there could be a convoluted argument against collapse. Add to that the presumed understanding of stellar evolution- the Hertzsprung Russel diagram, how stars are born, first generation vs second generation stars , their size limits, their fuel mixing, their fates, etc, etc. are all complaint with the idea of core driven fusion. Any other explanation would need to be consistent with all of these observations and interpretations (or if the interpretation is different, it would need to be defended).
Does electrostatically driven fusion occur in, on, or above the Sun? Of course it does. Dose it amount to more than 1 billionth of 1 billionth of 1 billionth ..... of the total? I don't think so.
The source of stellar power has been thought upon for centuries. One theory was that it was powered by coal- calculations concluded that it could have been powered in this fashion for perhaps 10,000 years (I don't know where they thought the oxygen came from). Once it was accepted that the Earth was older than this, thinkers came up idea that the heating from gravitational collapse/ condensation might power the Sun for millions of years. Finally, it was recognized that this still fell far short of what was needed. Gravitational collapse, though, does explain the formation of stars, and with the concept of core fusion, the limits on their sizes, lifetimes, and evolution.. Could electrostatic driven fusion accommodate any of these processes? Well, if you assumed there was convergence with the vast majority of the heating thus coming from the core, maybe. But how do the accelerating ions get there with out losing their kinetic energy. Mean free path becomes very short. Gravity manages to concentrate this thermal energy to such a density that interesting things happen. Electrostatic forces might do similar things if enough contortions are used, but why bother. And even if electrostatic forces could lead to dense core fusion (or contribute to it) it is irrelevant to the argument that Solar fusion occurs dominantly at or above the surface of the Sun.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
PS: I might add that depending on how convoluted you wanted to become. You could say the Sun is powered from outside. The initial gas cloud that formed the Sun was outside the volume of the current Sun. The energy that powers the Sun is derived from that cloud- initially from gravitational collapse of that cloud, until core fusion counterbalanced this collapse (perhaps for another 5 billion years). Of course, electrostatic forces can be considered as part of all fusion, once you start talking about unified field theories. Electrostatic forces are the same as the strong and weak forces. You can go back to claiming that the Big Bang powers stars. Then the question becomes - what powered the Big Bang, and what powerd that, and what powered that, and .................
Dan Tibbets
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
My very limited knowledge concerning Stark broadening (from reading a couple of brief links) is that it is the broadening or splitting of spectral lines in the atmospheres (read as corona and perhaps some of the highest regions of the photosphere) of hot stars due to electrical fields. The spectral lines of stars are generally absorption spectra. The black body light from the photosphere is absorbed by the elements higher up in the stars atmosphere and show up as dark bands. I don't think the effect would be related to the source of fusion directly, except how would you explain the black body glow of the photosphere and its intensity if the only long term energy source of main sequence stars is fusion occurring in the very low density corona.chrismb wrote:Would Stark broadening be visible, if this were true, and if so has anyone looked for it?
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
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rjaypeters
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