- In January 2005, some remarkable things happened on the
Sun, and the implications are still reverberating through the scientific
community. Between January 15th and 19th four powerful solar flares erupted
from "sunspot 720", shown in the picture above. Then on January
20 the fifth explosion produced a coronal mass ejection (CME) that achieved
velocities incomparably greater than anything astronomers had seen before.
While it often takes more than 24 hours for the charged particles of a
solar outburst to reach the Earth, this one was a profound exception. Just
thirty minutes after the explosion, Earth (some 96 million miles from the
Sun) was immersed in what NASA scientists called "the most intense
proton storm in decades". Proton storms get their name from the "rain"
of positively charged particles when a mass ejection reaches the Earth.
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- One reason proton storms get attention is that they interfere
with satellite communications and can even penetrate the skin of space
suits and make astronauts sick. But for the proponents of popular theories
about the Sun, this "storm" was far more than an irritant. According
to a NASA news release, the event "has shaken the foundations of space
weather theory".
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- Prior to this event, how did astronomers explain proton
storms? NASA's "Headline News" story tells us that the mass ejection
"begins with an explosion, usually above a sunspot. Sunspots are places
where strong magnetic fields poke through the surface of the Sun. For reasons
no one completely understands, these fields can become unstable and explode,
unleashing as much energy as 10 billion hydrogen bombs".
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- Powerful ejections can throw off a billion tons of solar
material against the enormous gravitational tug of the Sun. Normally the
ejections travel relatively slowly. "Even the fastest ones, traveling
one to two thousand km/s, take a day or so to reach Earth. You know a CME
has just arrived when you see auroras in the sky".
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- But how does the ejected material attain its observed
speeds? Even common ejections travel faster and faster as they move outward
from the Sun, achieving speeds up to a thousand miles per second or more.
This acceleration, some solar theorist surmise, can be explained by the
"shock waves" that the CME produces. "Shock waves in front
of the CME can accelerate these protons in our direction"hence the
proton storm".
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- But this space weather theory is "soon to be revised",
the story says. Here's why: Though the speeds of typical CMEs are impressive,
and have posed a deep mystery for decades, they do not come close to the
speed of the January 20 ejection. Light from the Sun (or from a solar flare)
reaches Earth in 8 minutes. An ejection reaching Earth in 30 minutes must
be rapidly accelerated to velocities more than a quarter of the speed of
light. From the traditional viewpoint, this is unthinkable. And yet it
happened.
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- How, then, do theorists of the Electric Universe see
all of this? Most are amused by the commotion. In the universe now observed
with better and more versatile instruments, we see plasma jets and ejected
material often attaining velocities approaching the speed of light. In
electrical terms, the explanation is direct and obvious: electric fields
in space accelerate charged particles. On this electrical principle there
is no debate. But by banishing electric fields from their theoretical models,
astronomers and astrophysicists are left with no mechanism to account for
the things they now see. One after another, the ad hoc guesses must be
abandoned.
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- The electrical theorists accept the observed facts concerning
CMEs, but they consider the astronomer's theoretical framework to be a
decades-long disaster. It is neither sufficient nor accurate to describe
sunspots as "places where strong magnetic fields poke through the
surface of the Sun". Such a claim fails to account for the magnetic
fields themselves and leaves the associated sunspot events unexplained.
When the NASA story says that the magnetic fields "become unstable
and explode, unleashing as much energy as 10 billion hydrogen bombs",
it adds that "no one completely understands" how this occurs.
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- The authors of the news release are clearly not familiar
with electrical discharge in plasma, a phenomenon outlined in great detail
by Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven, the founder of plasma cosmology. Alfven's
contributions were rooted in direct observation of plasma discharge in
the laboratory. He described how the insulating layers of the cellular
structures that form in electrified plasma often break down, causing instabilities.
Such instabilities are typified by the energetic explosions we see above
sunspots.
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- But even when the implications are obvious to the electrical
theorists, they seem to elude solar physicists. Reflecting on the January
20 outburst, astrophysicist Robert Lin of UC Berkeley affirmed that, "We
have an important clue". He noted that when the explosion occurred,
sunspot 720 was located at a special place on the Sun: 60 degrees west
longitude. This is significant, he said, because from this location "the
sunspot was magnetically connected to Earth". By this he meant that
the lines of force of the Sun,s magnetic field, followed outward from that
point along their spiraling path, lead directly to the Earth. The NASA
headline article called this "a superhighway for protons leading all
the way from sunspot 720 to our planet".
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- Though the article accurately describes the "highway"
taken by the charged particles, it concludes, "How they were accelerated,
however, remains a mystery". It's a mystery only to them. Neither
Lin nor the article's author is familiar with the "field aligned currents"
documented by Alfvén. By following the direction of the induced
magnetic fields, electric currents move efficiently, like transmission
lines, across the vast distances of interplanetary, interstellar, and intergalactic
space.
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- Plasma specialist Anthony Peratt, in his textbook The
Physics of the Plasma Universe, begins the description of field-aligned
currents with this overview: "...electric fields aligned along the
magnetic field direction freely accelerate particles. Electrons and ions
are accelerated in opposite directions, giving rise to a current along
the magnetic field lines".
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- Retired professor of electrical engineering, Donald Scott,
does not mince words when responding to the astrophysicists' lack of knowledge
of electrical phenomena: "Any student of physics who has heard of
electric charge and electric fields knows that the easiest way to get electrically
charged particles to accelerate is to apply an electric field to them.
The acceleration of the positively charged solar "wind" particles
is clearly an electrical phenomenon. It is accurately predicted by the
Electric Sun model".
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- The quarter-light-speed CME of January 20 is not just
an isolated exception to the "normal" solar wind. It demonstrates
that the "normal" explanation for the solar wind is mistaken
and unable to account for the extremes of solar wind behavior. (On some
occasions, the wind had stopped--an event just as unexplainable by standard
theory as the January 20 event.) The electrical acceleration of plasma
accounts for the entire range of wind behavior.
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- For an overview of the electric sun hypothesis see--
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- http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050617penumbra.htm
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- For a review of the dilemma facing popular sunspot theory
see--
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- http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050617penumbra.htm
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- For a brief discussion of the most common error made
in assessing the electric sun hypothesis, see--
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- http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050301pithballs.htm
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- (Thanks to Michael Armstrong for much of the factual
content in this article.)
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