PlasmaSphere said:
you raised many important questions Nereid that i would like to see the answers to aswell. I am no expert on this (as you can probably tell) but i do think most of them have answers from some of the material i have seen online. I have limited time at the moment, but just to quickly claify a couple of things before i have to stop posting for a week or so;
This may not be the place to do so ... it seems the mentors are still considering how these topics should be discussed in PF (though I note that iantresman agreed with my suggestion that none of this be treated any differently than any other idea, whether in plasma physics, space physics, astronomy, astrophysics, or cosmology; this is, after all, an avowedly science-based discussion forum).
I admit that my inclusion of Arp's various papers are not really plasma cosmology material, however plasma cosmologists seem to hold his work in a much more prominent position than the establishment, so i had always linked his work with PC. The site I got that list from (http://www.soundintent.com/ by Eric Lerner, and other astronomers, which was about Arps work and had a section about plasma cosmology, but i fully agree that his papers are not really relevant to the plasma universe.
I'm sure you'd be the first to agree that a youtube video is about as far from being acceptable as legitimate source material, for a science-based discussion, as it is possible to get.
I think, if you check the PF rules, you may also find that posting a link to such material falls under 'advertising' (though only a mentor, or admin, can make that determination).
While no papers describe the the sun being powered by giant galaxy wide currents, there are many that attribute solar flares and other features on the suns surface to electrical currents, or birkeland currents, if you prefer.
While perhaps the terminology may not be quite right, the role of magnetic fields, currents, etc in a wide range of solar phenomena, in the IPM (inter-planetary medium), the Earth's magnetosphere, the Jovian magnetosphere, etc, etc, etc is quite uncontroversial. Indeed, you can easily find hundreds, if not thousands, of papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals on these topics.
There are far more detailed explanations of the electric sun hypothesis about, but they are not in mainstream cosmology journals, so I'm not sure of their relevance here.
As I just said, unless and until there is 'electric sun hypothesis' material in relevant, peer-reviewed journals, I personally don't think it's appropriate to even mention it here.
I think that the sun works very much as described by the standard model in nearly every respect, but i think that it is highly likely that it does not consume itself over its lifetime and that the particles that fuel it may be received remotely. The particles emmitted form the billions of surrounding stars have got to end up somewhere, and very few particles would need to be consumed and emitted by the sun to provide a significant amount of nuclear fuel.
Here's the thing, PlasmaSphere: qualitative stuff like this is sometimes disparagingly referred to as 'word salad'. And like the lowest of lo-cal salads, it contains no meat, and nothing substantive, scientifically speaking.
It gets worse (or better, depending upon your point of view): first, the Sun, like the Earth, is surrounded by a magnetosphere, which extends way beyond the orbit of Pluto (one of the Voyagers, I forget which, is only now getting close to the boundary). And has been known for many decades now, very little of the ISM (inter-stellar medium)
plasma can cross the heliosheath. So, if anything, the Sun giveth, but doth not take.
Second, analyses of Moon dust, brought back by the Apollo astronauts, can give strong clues to the history of the solar wind, at least in the Earth's orbit, back ~4 billion years. AFAIK (as far as I know), there is no record of any 'incoming (plasma) particles'.
Third, even the crudest of OOM (order of magnitude) calculations quickly reveals just how little ISM material would have accumulated on the Sun, even if it had collected 100% of its extended cross-section (say, out to 5 solar radii).
Finally, Main Sequence stars like the Sun are not convective down to the core. So even if the Sun had acquired another 10% of its current mass, over the past ~4 billion years, it would not have been added to the fuel available for 'burning'. This will change when the Sun enters its red giant phase ... but that's another 5 billion or so years away yet.
But all these considerations could be quite wrong; perhaps when you start digging into it - quantitatively - you may find a scenario under which the Sun could have added a significant amount of fuel, over the past ~4 billion years. If you do so find, write up your research in the form of a paper (formatted in accord with PF's IR guidelines) and submit it to PF's Independent Research section.
Very little of the standard model would have to be changed to account for this idea, even though it gives a quite different viewpoint of how stellar bodies could work.
You've lost me here, I'm afraid ... if the scenario you just painted makes no difference to the Sun's output, no difference to its evolution, and so on, why mention it (except, perhaps, to exclude it as a viable alternative hypothesis)?
A couple of questions to try to get a consensus to work with in later posts; Does the sun have an ability to retain a charge? (a capacitance),
Loaded question. Of course it has that ability! Even one electron is 'a charge', and one electron among 10
umpteen is all but guarranteed!
Surely the much more important question would be something like "What observational constraints can we put on the net charge of the Sun, over periods ranging from microseconds to millennia?" Now that would be an interesting question!
Do you believe that birkeland currents play any significant role in space? if so what?
This too is loaded ... EU folk use a definition of 'birkeland currents' that is different from that used by scientists who research space plasmas and space physics.
However, it's easily resolved: what do you mean by 'birkeland currents'? and what physical regimes are you asking about when you say 'space' (IPM, ISM, IGM, ...)?
Finally, i would just like to point out I am not trying to prove plasma cosmology, i am not sure about its correctness myself, each side seems to find flaws in each sides arguments and I always try to keep an open mind on all issues, but i feel that as a competing theory to standard models it deserves more attention than most scientists are willing to give it.
Good for you!
However, do keep in mind that:
* 'proof' is not possible in science (it's different in maths or religion)
* 'correctness' and 'flaws' should be re-worded, in order to have a scientific discussion; perhaps 'consistency with all relevant, good observational and experimental results' would be a good place to start
* competing 'theories' should first of all be real scientific theories (not merely 'speculations' or 'guesses', as in one ordinary meaning of the word 'theory'); whatever EU 'theory' is, it is not a scientific theory
* why not roll up your sleeves, learn the relevant parts of plasma physics (etc), and write a paper or three of your own, based on whatever alternative hypotheses or models or theories you wish to develop or modify? After all, a key characteristic of science is its public nature - once published, an idea can be further investigated by anyone, in any way they wish!
* of course, if your feeling ("i feel that as a competing theory to standard models it deserves more attention than most scientists are willing to give it") is not backed by any independent analysis or critical thinking of your own, then why should anyone pay any more attention to it than mine, if I were to say "i feel that as a competing theory to standard models the so-called 'EU theory' richly deserves the scorn heaped upon it by so many professionals; in fact, most scientists have been far too willing to waste hundreds of precious hours of their time on it, time they could have spent on more productive work"
1?
How about it then? May we expect to see a paper from you sometime in the next year or so?
1 For avoidance of doubt, I am NOT saying this! I am using this as a device to highlight the important point that the universe, the data, cares not a jot what you or I may feel about it; what's the line from CSI?[/size]