Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy
IMO it's a tad ironic that Tom Bridgman spends his free time talking about dealing with creationism in astronomy when he's the one that is claiming that a 'big bang' created all the matter in our universe.
He's essentially peddling a creation event story that requires three (maybe four now) hypothetical entities. Considering his basic belief system, I have no idea why he feels compelled to whine about other people's creation mythologies. Anyway, what struck me about his most recent blog entry was his topic - Magnetic reconnection theory.
What struck me most about this particular post is the blatant ignorance of history, along with the absurd attempt to twist the facts.
In fact it was Kristian Birkeland who first described solar flares as electrical discharges, not James Dungey.
FYI, here's what Hannes Alfven had to say about "magnetic reconnection" theory when he presented his double layer paper that made that theory obsolete:
To discuss electrical discharges in plasma we first need a definition of an electrical discharge from a plasma physics textbook. Anthony Peratt from his book "Physics Of The Plasma Universe":
Now of course Peratt's definition of an electrical discharge in plasma *is inclusive* of "magnetic reconnection' theory in the first place, it's not *exclusive*.
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/Alfven/Currents%20In%20The%20Solar%20Atmosphere%20And%20A%20Theory%20Of%20Solar%20Flares.pdf
He is basically wrong on both counts.
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/Alfven/Double Layers In Astrophysics.pdf
IMO it's a tad ironic that Tom Bridgman spends his free time talking about dealing with creationism in astronomy when he's the one that is claiming that a 'big bang' created all the matter in our universe.
He's essentially peddling a creation event story that requires three (maybe four now) hypothetical entities. Considering his basic belief system, I have no idea why he feels compelled to whine about other people's creation mythologies. Anyway, what struck me about his most recent blog entry was his topic - Magnetic reconnection theory.
What struck me most about this particular post is the blatant ignorance of history, along with the absurd attempt to twist the facts.
There is no misconception. The fact of the matter is that solar flares are "electrical discharges". Bridgman's whole spiel about "like terrestrial lightning" seems to be the area where he intends to play word games.There is a popular misconception, mostly among supporters of Electric Universe (EU) claims, that solar flares and similar eruptive events in plasmas are discharges much like terrestrial lightning or an arc furnace.
In fact it was Kristian Birkeland who first described solar flares as electrical discharges, not James Dungey.
FYI, here's what Hannes Alfven had to say about "magnetic reconnection" theory when he presented his double layer paper that made that theory obsolete:
In short, Alfven openly stated that the entire 'magnetic reconnection' concept was pure pseudoscience. His double layer paper makes it obsolete and Bridgman never even mentioned that.B. Magnetic Merging — A Pseudo-Science
Since then I have stressed in a large number of papers the danger of using the frozen-in concept. For example, in a paper "Electric Current Structure of the Magnetosphere" (Alfvén, 1975), I made a table showing the difference between the real plasma and "a fictitious medium" called "the pseudo-plasma," the latter having frozen in magnetic field lines moving with the plasma. The most important criticism of the "merging" mechanism of energy transfer is due to Heikkila (1973) who with increasing strength has demonstrated that it is wrong. In spite of all this, we have witnessed at the same time an enormously voluminous formalism building up based on this obviously erroneous concept. Indeed, we have been burdened with a gigantic pseudo-science which penetrates large parts of cosmic plasma physics. The monograph CP treats the field-line reconnection (merging) concept in 1.3, 11.3, and 11.5. We may conclude that anyone who uses the merging concepts states by implication that no double layers exist.
A new epoch in magnetospheric physics was inaugurated by L. Lyons and D. Williams' monograph (1985). They treat magnetospheric phenomena systematically by the particle approach and demonstrate that the fluid dynamic approach gives erroneous results. The error of the latter approach is of a basic character. Of course there can be no magnetic merging energy transfer.
I was naive enough to believe that such a pseudo-science would die by itself in the scientific community, and I concentrated my work on more pleasant problems. To my great surprise the opposite has occurred; the "merging" pseudo-science seems to be increasingly powerful. Magnetospheric physics and solar wind physics today are no doubt in a chaotic state, and a major reason for this is that some of the published papers are science and part pseudoscience, perhaps even with a majority for the latter group.
In those parts of solar physics which do not deal with the interior of the Sun and the dense photospheric region (fields where the frozen-in concept may be valid), the state is even worse. It is difficult to find theoretical papers on the low density regions which are correct. The present state of plasma astrophysics seems to be almost completely isolated from the new concepts of plasma which the in situ measurements on space plasma have made necessary (see Section VIII).
I sincerely hope that the increased interest in the study of double layers — which is fatal to this pseudoscience — will change the situation. Whenever we find a double layer (or any other E ll # 0) we hammer a nail into the coffin of the "merging" pseudo-science.
To discuss electrical discharges in plasma we first need a definition of an electrical discharge from a plasma physics textbook. Anthony Peratt from his book "Physics Of The Plasma Universe":
Now of course Peratt studied plasma physics from Alfven, but I have no idea what, if anything, Bridgman understands about plasma physics, or if he's even read a single textbook on the topic of plasma physics.1 .5 Electrίcal Discharges in Cosmic Plasma
An electrical discharge is a sudden release of electric or magnetic stored energy. This generally occurs when the electromagnetic stress exceeds some threshold for breakdown that is usually determined by small scale properties of the energy transmission medium. As such, discharges are local phenomena and are usually accompanied by violent prαesses such as rapid heating, ionization, the creation of pinched and filamentary conduction channels, particle acceleration, and the generation of prodigious amounts of electromagnetic radiation. As an example, multi-terawatt pulsed-power generators on earth rely on strong electrical discharges to produce intense particle beams, Χrays, and microωανes . Megajoules of energy are electrically stored in capacitor banks, whose volume may encompass 250 m^3 . This energy is then transferred to a discharge regίοn, located many meters from the source, viα a transmission line.
BZZZT! Those aren't just magnetic neutral points in Dungey's paper, they are electrically active areas where streams of electrons are flowing, electrons that ultimately *discharge* themselves into to the surrounding plasma.If one actually takes the time to read these papers, one finds that the framework around the process Dungey describes for his use of the term 'discharge' actually fits our modern description of magnetic reconnection! Dungey describes the event in terms of magnetic neutral points, AKA X-points!
Now of course Peratt's definition of an electrical discharge in plasma *is inclusive* of "magnetic reconnection' theory in the first place, it's not *exclusive*.
That line is so false it's pathetic. The electrical discharges in the plasma of Birkeland's experiments came from a source *external* to the plasma itself, and the ionization state of the plasma to start with is utterly irrelevant. Alfven also wrote an entire paper that is devoted to explaining how and why electric fields form in plasma, which Bridgman never mentioned!But solar flares cannot be a 'discharge' in this sense. The solar atmosphere is almost completely ionized and therefore quickly shorts any strong electric field unless that field is created in the plasma configuration itself.
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/Alfven/Currents%20In%20The%20Solar%20Atmosphere%20And%20A%20Theory%20Of%20Solar%20Flares.pdf
He is basically wrong on both counts.
Apparently Bridgman does not begin to even understand Alfven's double layer paper or that paper by James Dungey. That same X marks the spot in Alfven's double layer where the current from both directions slams into each other. It's not just 'magnetic lines' that interact at that X, it's all the charged particles that are interacting at that X. That's true in Alfven's double layer paper, and it's true in the paper by James Dungey as well."X" Marks the Spot
As mentioned above, one of the common characteristics in observations of solar flares was the existence of a magnetic null point near the location of the observed flare. This null point would divide the region up into four zones, forming an 'X'-shaped configuration, as noted above.
That line is a complete misrepresentation of the facts considering my discussion of this topic at JREF. It was the astronomers and the mathematicians that kept claiming that "reconnection' was a "plasma optional" process! It's the maintream that doesn't even understand their own stupid pseudoscientific theories, not the EU proponents.Often, Electric Universe supporters don't even mention that reconnection with energy release can only occur when the field is imbedded in a plasma.
Alfven already did that for him:Now there's a problem, because it is very difficult to mathematically model the behavior of lots of charged particles in electric and magnetic fields, especially when the particles themselves are contributing to the fields controlling their motion. Theorists try to make the problem manageable by abstracting the more complex, small-scale motions into approximations that can be described with some simple parameters.
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/Alfven/Double Layers In Astrophysics.pdf
Their 'discouragement' was a ruse that was designed to ignore the fact the they *are* similar processes! That's their entire game in a nutshell. When they talk about making two "lines" reconnect, they aren't talking about simple magnetic lines, they are talking about current carrying threads of plasma (aka Birkeland currents) that electrically interact through a double layer that forms in between the two currents! There are no simple "magnetic lines' that actually reconnect, there are two *Birkeland currents" that reconnect electrically through a double layer. Alfven's double layer paper makes their "reconnection' theory obsolete in such instances. They can't and won't accept that fact.While some of the details were found to be incorrect, the overall picture of the magnetic field environment remained intact. Because the classical use of the term 'discharge' more correctly fit descriptions of lightning and this did not fit the environment for reconnection, the term 'discharge' was discouraged for solar and magnetospheric eruptive events.
It's a placeholder term for pure pseudoscience according to the author of plasma physics theory. It's a placeholder term for an electrical interaction process in a plasma double layer that is adequately described in Alfven's double layer paper without the need for any magnetic lines disconnecting from or reconnecting to any other magnetic lines."Magnetic reconnection" is another example of a 'place holder' term which we use while we try to learn the details of what's going on.
Not actually. They all occur in "current carrying" environments, and Alfven's double layer paper explains that process already *without* reconnection theory.When physicists use the term 'magnetic reconnection', it covers a wide variety of conditions.
That statement is pure bunk. They are both "electrical discharges" involving huge amount of current through plasma.The bottom line is that Dungey's paper is NOT support for solar and magnetospheric energetic events being physically analogous to terrestrial lighting or arc discharges.
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