Electric suns, solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

[Michael]

Where is the transition region actually located, above or below the surface of the photosphere? Let's take a look at the SDO images and find out!

SDO's 16 megapixel resolution was a giant leap forward in technology over SOHO and Trace. SDO shows the effect the loops have of the surface of the photosphere as they rise up and through, and flow back into that surface. The patterns of magnetism on the surface of the photosphere that are caused by the current in the loops, also match up perfectly with the "bright points" seen in 1600A and 1700A, demonstrating a cause/effect link between the loops and the bright areas on that surface.

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/images/sdo/mfield.mp4
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/images/sdo/hmi-171.mp4
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/images/sdo/discharge1600-131.mp4

The first image shows the magnetic field alignments on the surface of the photosphere using the HMI gear on SDO, overlaid with two iron ion wavelengths, 171A and 193A. What you'll observe is that the surface of the photosphere is black and white only in the areas where the largest loops are located, and those N/S alignments occur right along the trajectory of the loops, exactly as predicted by a subsurface origin of the loops. The second example demonstrates that this alignment occurs in other iron on wavelengths as predicted as well.

The third image is an SDO HMI continuum (white light) image overlaid with a 171A wavelength. You'll notice that the loops tend to flow right down along the penumbral filaments in this image, at exactly the right angles *if* (and only if) the loops are actually descending down into the photosphere. The orientation of 171 loops with the penumbral filaments is certainly no coincidence, it's directly related the orientation of the penumbral filaments. Again, this image is completely consistent with the transition region/subsurface stratification layer being located far under the photosphere. The alignment of the loops with the penumbral filament angles would be meaningless if the base of the loops were actually located a further 1200KM above the photosphere as LMSAL claims.

Pretty much every major prediction that I made related to coronal loop activity, based on very limited SOHO resolution imagery, has now been confirmed in 16 megapixel, high cadence, SDO images. SDO is an absolutely awesome piece of new technology, but it's also the mainstream's worst enemy.

 

[Michael]

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/mpeg/latest_1024_0193.mpg

Wow, that was really a quite powerful dark filament eruption today at around 21:00 on 8/31. Fortunately the CME doesn't look to have been pointed directly at the Earth, but that was a very powerful CME from a very large dark filament eruption. We could get a glancing blow from that eruption. I'll have to keep track of it for awhile to see what develops. The discharge arcade that forms as a result of the filament eruption also leaves quite an obvious mark on the surface of the photosphere.

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/mpeg/latest_1024_1600.mpg

It's gotta be getting a lot harder at this point for LMSAL to justify their claim that million degree coronal loop activity starts 1200 KM *above* the photosphere considering the fact that the loops clearly light up the surface of the photosphere as they pass through it, and the electrical discharges keep blowing chunks of the photosphere out into space.

 

[Michael]

Spaceweather.com has a very good closeup video of yesterday's dark filament eruption in combined iron ion wavelengths:

http://spaceweather.com/images2012/31aug12/ipad/magnificent.m4v?PHPSESSID=p0s6552bu8vh75cd2lgso1ojv2

 

[Michael]

http://spaceweather.com/images2012/31aug12/cme_c3.gif?PHPSESSID=p0s6552bu8vh75cd2lgso1ojv2

Spaceweather.com also has a short snippet from the SOHO LASCO-C3 gear that shows the CME. The fact material is showing up on both the left and right side of the sun suggests that we will take at least a glancing blow, but not a direct shot from that filament eruption and the resulting CME.

 

[Michael]

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/mpeg/latest_1024_1600.mpg

Since the advent of SDO, and now that we've finally entered the 'active' phase of the sun's high energy output, we can see the relatively dramatic effects that the electrical discharges have in the solar atmosphere, particularly on the surface of the photosphere. The discharges in the solar atmosphere are much like the electrical discharges in the Earth atmosphere in the way they light up the plasma in specific areas, sometimes relatively larges areas. It even sort of resembles the discharges observed in clouds from space.

More importantly however, the flares/short-circuits between the current carrying filaments often occur *underneath* of the photosphere as evidenced by the large blowouts of material seen in 1600A and sometimes even 1700A, typically around sunspots from certain flares.

LMSAL has consistently misplaced the location of the 'transition region', where solar moss activity occurs, in relationship to the photosphere. Since before they even launched TRACE (transition region explorer), they simply "assumed" that the "transition region" was located between the chromosphere/corona boundary. In terms of where the loops actually originate however, they actually originate under the photosphere, not above it.

Some of the largest loops around active regions seen in 171A and 193A grow to a large enough size that they pierce up and through the surface of the photosphere that can be seen in 1600A. As they do so, they 'light up' very specific areas of the photosphere surface in 1600A and 1700A, at the points where the loops rise through the photosphere, and fall back into it. A magnetogram image shows the same effect of the large loops on the surface of the photosphere. As the largest loops rise up (and most do not) through the surface of the photosphere, they leave a magnetic field footprint on that surface, with N/S alignments that are directly related to the flow of electrons through the coronal loop, up or down related to the surface of the photosphere. The largest loops even tend to flow along the angled contours of the penumbral filaments as they traverse the surface of the photosphere.

Now that SDO can finally put the surface of the photosphere in relationship to the loops, it's quite clear that only the largest loops actually become large enough to rise up and through the surface of the photosphere because the magnetogram images are mostly grey, not black or white, whereas the whole disk of the sun shows a plethora of large and small coronal loops over the whole disk. If only the largest loops get tall enough to come through the surface of the photosphere, that explains why most of the surface is grey, and only the largest loops correlate with actual N/S alignments on the surface of the photosphere.

It also explains the white 'hot spots' seen in 1600A and 1700A images and why they correlate to the largest loops. It also explains why loops tend to flow at the same angles of the penumbral filaments. It also explains why materials from the photosphere are often blown up and away from that surface. That is because flares occur underneath of that surface and blow material up and outward, tearing off pieces of the surface with it. It also explains why spiracles are observed in Hinode and SDO and now thought to send heat into the upper atmosphere. The spiracles are the points where the million degree loops of fast moving, high temperature plasma traverses the surface of the photosphere.

All the pieces and wavelengths of all the SDO images fit together as long as the "transition region" is located *underneath* the photosphere, not above the surface of the photosphere as LMSAL has "assumed" since day one. The problem with "assuming" stuff is that the assumptions can come back to bite you. In this case they prevent LMSAL from correctly locating solar moss activity in relationship to the surface of the photosphere. It occurs *under* the photosphere, not above it as they have always assumed.

It was relatively easy to miss these various physical relationships in terms of the movement of material up and away from the surface of the photosphere prior to SDO because we couldn't see the whole surface at once in 1600A and 1700A, and their relationship to the iron ion wavelengths prior to SDO. All of the interpretations from SOHO and TRACE took place without the benefit of other wavelengths related to the surface of the photosphere by which to compare things to. SOHO images also were 1 megapixel images, taken 10 minutes apart (TRACE had slightly better cadence). Even the magnificent Hinode images were limited by the fact that it could not image the whole surface at once. SDO however shows 16 megapixel images of the entire surface, and includes the 1600A and 1700A wavelengths, not to mention higher resolution magnetogram images, taken less than 10 seconds apart rather than 10 minutes apart.

Not only has the heliosiesmology data from SDO technologies been unkind to standard solar theory, it's been particularly unkind to LMSAL's interpretation of solar satellite imagery. In some ways, LMSAL became their own worst enemy because their engineers understand physics extremely well, even if their solar physics department has no idea how to correctly interpret the images that the engineers hand them on a silver platter.

FYI, each and every one of the SDO images and helioseismology data are consistent with the predictions of a Birkeland cathode solar model, whereas not a single one of the combined images is actually consistent with standard theory, or standard interpretations of high energy satellite imagery.

 

[Michael]

The SAFIRE Project -- Testing the Electric Sun - YouTube

There is a growing movement within the EU/PC community to begin revisiting Birkeland's "empirical" approach, and to return to the empirical testing of various electric sun models, including both cathode (Birkeland) and anode (Juergen's) configurations, and comparing the lab results to SDO imagery. This is going to be a great decade in terms of our understanding of solar physics IMO. EU theory is about to take over astronomy, starting with solar theory.

 

[Michael]

Plasma screens enhanced as disorder strikes: Study looks at ways to improve the quality of matter akin to that found in plasma screens

Under certain circumstances, plasma tends to form structures such as filaments of electric discharge akin to mini-lightning. The authors specifically investigated a so-called barrier discharge, which features at least one electrical insulating material within the discharge gap that acts as an electrically insulating barrier and can be used as a plasma source.

Most EU haters are so ignorant of plasma physics that they have claimed that electrical discharges could not occur in plasma.

 

[Loudmouth]

Most EU haters are so ignorant of plasma physics that they have claimed that electrical discharges could not occur in plasma.

If I am reading it correctly, it says that the discharge occurs across an insulator and not within the plasma itself.

"Under certain circumstances, plasma tends to form structures such as filaments of electric discharge akin to mini-lightning. The authors specifically investigated a so-called barrier discharge, which features at least one electrical insulating material within the discharge gap that acts as an electrically insulating barrier and can be used as a plasma source."

 

[Michael]

If I am reading it correctly, it says that the discharge occurs across an insulator and not within the plasma itself.

"Under certain circumstances, plasma tends to form structures such as filaments of electric discharge akin to mini-lightning. The authors specifically investigated a so-called barrier discharge, which features at least one electrical insulating material within the discharge gap that acts as an electrically insulating barrier and can be used as a plasma source."

In a pure plasma the "insulator" is typically an evacuated region devoid of material. It can also be a region of low ionization. An "electrical discharge" in plasma is defined as the release of stored electric or magnetic field energy.

 

[Loudmouth]

In a pure plasma the "insulator" is typically an evacuated region devoid of material. It can also be a region of low ionization. An "electrical discharge" in plasma is defined as the release of stored electric or magnetic field energy.

Sure, as long as there is a difference in charge between the two areas of plasma that are separated by the insulator. So how do you get this difference in charge in a free flowing plasma?

 

[Michael]

Sure, as long as there is a difference in charge between the two areas of plasma that are separated by the insulator. So how do you get this difference in charge in a free flowing plasma?

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/Alfven/Currents%20In%20The%20Solar%20Atmosphere%20And%20A%20Theory%20Of%20Solar%20Flares.pdf

Various movements and rotation patterns in plasma result in various charge states at the surface of the photosphere according to Carlqvist and Alfven.

In Birkeland's model the discharges originate at the cathode, rise up and through the surface of the photosphere, and return to a positively charged area of the surface. The charge separation in his model is driven by magnetic field lines deep in the core that direct the flow of current into and out of the sun. Same basic process however in the final analysis.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Just over 100 years ago, Kristian Birkeland conducted a series of experiments related to "cathode sun theory".

Actually he did not. The experiments were to simulate the Earth. His apparatus was a terrella
Wikepedia Terrella

A terrella (meaning "little earth") is a small magnetised model ball representing the Earth, that is thought to have been invented by the English physician William Gilbert while investigating magnetism, and further developed 300 years later by the Norwegian scientist and explorer Kristian Birkeland, while investigating the aurora

What he then noted was that the photos he took looked like

• solar activity.
• the rings of Saturun.
• Nebulae (galaxies)

So he though that the photos were analogies of these objects.

He first thought that the aurora were powered by streams of electrons from the Sun - thus his idea that the Sun and Stars are negatively charges as in the news report you cite.

But then he wrote

He wrote: "It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in 'empty' space."[6]

Which contradicts the idea of a negatively charged Sun and suggests a neutral Sun.

In his experiments, Birkeland created analogies of some features of the Sun

Much of Birkeland's work was quite literally ignored/set aside until the 70's when spacecraft launched into space confirmed his theories related to aurora and the currents flowing through the poles of the earth.

Hannes Alfvén did in fact know about Birkeland's work and the many other people after him who created an actual working model of the Sun. Hannes Alfvén wrote a couple of papers about the standard technique of modeling plasmas as circuit models and applied these to solar flares.

A recent paper by Mann and Onel apply standard circuit models to solar flare events, and include (as many papers about solar flares do) a host of actual satellite images to support that view. Their model requires a magnetic connection between two areas that they suggest will happen as a result of magnetic reconnection (paragraph at the bottom of page 5).

 

[RealityCheck01]

Where is the transition region actually located, above or below the surface of the photosphere? Let's take a look at the SDO images and find out!

You do not have to do "I see bunnies in the cloud" logic by looking at the images.
The physical facts are that any images of the Sun that are filtered will collect light from different parts of the solar atmosphere.
For example look at the TRACE passbands:
trace(dot)lmsal(dot)com/Project/Instrument/inspass.htm
..see the image at the link...
So the broad, 200 and 275 bands detect light from the photosphere which has a temperature of ~5700K and the rest pick up light from hotter (and hight) regions in the atmosphere.

And how do we know that the transition zone is physically above the photosphere - we block out the photosphere in solar telescopes and see that the transition zone is physically above the photosphere !

 

[RealityCheck01]

The alignment of the loops with the penumbral filament angles would be meaningless if the base of the loops were actually located a further 1200KM above the photosphere as LMSAL claims.

And what does LMSAL claim:

Solar moss occurs at the base of certain coronal loops, immense magnetic arches of hot gas that are anchored in the Sun's visible surface and could span several dozen Earths laid end to end.
...
The moss consists of hot gas at about two million degrees Fahrenheit which emits extreme ultraviolet light observed by the TRACE instrument. It occurs in large patches, about 6,000 - 12,000 miles in extent, and appears between 1,000 - 1,500 miles above the Sun's visible surface, sometimes reaching more than 3,000 miles high.

This looks like a failure to understand some solar physics terminology.
The base of a coronal loop is the lowest part of the loop in a specific image. Thus a 171A image will always gave the base of a coronal loop above the photosphere because there is no detectable light from the photosphere in that passband.
See this plot of spectral irradiance against wavelength.
The photosphere has an effective temperature of ~5700 K (the temperature that an equivalent blackbody would have) with a spectral irradiance of ~2.0 W/(m^2 nm)
The photosphere emits no 171A light - the measured spectral irradiance is 0 in the diagram.

On the other hand the footprint of a coronal loop is where it emerges from the photosphere and thus becomes visible in any image for the first time.

 

[Michael]

From duplicate thread:

I have a question related to number 47:

Do you understand how fluorescent tubes ("neon bulbs") work?

Why do we see the spectral lines mainly from Hydrogen and not from Neon if the predominant gas above the Iron is Neon?

I'm one of those nasty science kind of guys who actually took real classes in college that had real labs where I did things like creating slides wh=ith the lines and matching them up.

Did every step myself (along with my lab partner). All by hand, nothing fancier than a prism and a silver emulsion on a slide.

One of the most interesting things to me about the SERTS spectral data of the sun (that's the early data set I used) is that it contained a lot of *highly ionized* Neon and Silicon lines in it. Neon in particular doesn't stay ionized easily, and it supposedly exists in the sun in miniscule percentages in terms of the overall solar composition. Those large numbers of neon lines at high ionization states in the SERTS data did not make a lot of sense to me at first. Once I began to realize that it was possible that the sun had a layered solar atmosphere, and I read Bireland's work and realized the entire atmosphere was likely to be a current carrying environment, that SERTS data suddenly made a lot more sense to me. The bulk of the neon in the photosphere is radiating in a +4 ionization state. Higher ionization states of Neon relate to coronal loop activity as they come up and through the neon layer.

One of the *the* most important 'predictions" of Birkeland's cathode model is the prediction that I made on the blog page about images of the sun that are sensitive to Neon IV. Mainstream models would predict only emissions from the corona in such a filter, whereas a cathode model predicts these emissions will occur all along the surface of the photosphere. It's *the* most radically different characteristic of this model that I could think of to "test". The results would conclusively falsify one model or the other.

The reason I selected Ne IV as the basic energy state of the neon layer (photosphere) is all related to the iron ion wavelengths observed in SDO, SOHO and STEREO images. Unless the atmosphere of the sun is heavily ionized, light at iron ion energy states would not be able to penetrate the photosphere, and even before SDO there was evidence that 171A images were able to penetrate the photosphere. There's an example of a Trace/Yohkoh overlay image that demonstrates this.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Thanks Michael for pointing out that the "Electric suns" in this thread totle is your existing : The surface of the Sun. The sun has a rigid iron surface located under the photosphere that is revealed by satellite imagery The solar surface sits beneath the sun's visible photosphere and is electrically active.


There are many problems with this idea starting with the little fact that the photosphere is defined as the region where light escapes from the Sun. Thus by definition you can not see light from "under the photosphere" !

The opacity of the photosphere means that you cannot even see more than 100 kilometers below the top of the photosphere. Astronomers have tried really hard to look as deep as they can into the photosphere and that is the limit that physics stops them at.

Michael: What do you think the definition of the photosphere is?
First asked 18 October 2012.

 

[RealityCheck01]

The next problem with Michael's the Sun has an iron surface idea is that the temperature of the photosphere is ~5700 K as he admits here (but will probably retract) and the mainstream evidence supports. The melting point of Fe is 1811 K. So no iron surface can exist, rigid or not.

Michael: What is the photosphere temperature and melting point of Fe?
First asked 18 October 2012

Feel free to put your surface below the photosphere and fantasize about the Sun having a lower temperature there. A pity that the laws of physics say that you are wrong.

• Internal power source means that the photosphere temperature is a minimum (The Sun gets hotter with depth).
• External power source means that the photosphere temperature is that same as the interior.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Here is a question that I asked before on the JREF forum:
How can we detect the less than 1 photon per year from your iron crust?
First asked 24 April 2010

This is 1 of 65 questions about your model that you have not been able to answer since May 2011 and earlier. But now you have an actual model with actual predictions. So you should be able to answer the questions now.

 

[RealityCheck01]

If anyone is interested (of course not you Michael since you have selected to remain ignorant about this for over 3 years now!) why thermodynamics rules out an iron surface on the Sun:
8th July 2009: Your hypothetical solid iron surface has been in thermal contact with at least one object that has consistently had a temperature large enough to vaporize iron for about 4.57 billion years.

17th April 2010: Why this iron crust thermodynamically impossible

17th April 2010: Iron Sun Surface Thermodynamically Impossible IV

 

[RealityCheck01]

1958IAUS....6..135D Page 135

FYI, Dungey himself associated the term "magnetic reconnection" with an "electrical discharge" event in plasma.

FYI you are still wrong:
An actual electrical discharge requires the breakdown of a dielectric (insulating) medium. Anthony Peratt states this explicitily in his book 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 detemined by small scale properties of the energy transmission medium.

He then goes on to list means by which electrical discharges create plasma, e.g. lightening.
Thus electrical recharges are impossible in plasma (e.g. the Sun) because there is no dielectric medium to break down.

Dungey states in that 1958 paper: "The defining feature of a discharge in this context is the existence of a large current density."

He is even clearer about this in his 1953 paper
18th October 2011: Dungey's 'electric discharge' = high current density in magnetic reconnection

A 'discharge' will be a region [of a large mass of ionized gas in a more or less complicated state of motion] in which the electrons are accelerated to high energies by the electric field, so that all the electrons are moving in the same direction with large velocities.

An electr