Oh No...the EU are going to LOVE this!!

[renormalised]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028174.900-universes-highest-electric-current-found.html

They've probably already found it and are salivating over their LCD screens:P

Astronomers from the University of Toronto have found evidence for an enormous electrical current, being generated by a SMBH (Supermassive Black Hole) in the centre of a galaxy 2billion light years away. The current that they detected is on the order of 10^18 amps, which is lighting up the jet from the centre of the galaxy, out to a distance of 150Kly.

The current is the equivalent of a trillion terrestrial lightening bolts.

This will probably become the poster child for more moronic pronouncements from the sparky clan. Despite the amperage, it still wouldn't be enough to light their collective neural matter's light bulbs:):P

For the real deal....the journal paper is here...http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.1397

[CraigS]

Hmm .. they've used Faraday Rotation measures in combined radio and X-Ray images and background sources, to isolate the jet's physical parameters (including current).

I like this quote also ..



So, the absence of inflowing giant intergalactic Birkeland Currents actually enabled the measurements this time, eh ?

(We're a bit late on this one … they've been at it since last Wednesday …).

Here ya go bojan … a transducer is involved … and it is only 1 to 20% efficient !...



Cheers

[CraigS]

Its interesting … the debate which seems to happening around the various forums stimulated by this article, seems to be about how energy is propagated in a conductor.

Most textbooks say that moving electrons in connecting wires, carry energy around a circuit. It seems that the Poynting flux, the magnitude of which they've deduced from these measurements, is what delivers the energy. The drift current in a conductor is too slow for the the energy to be propagated by moving electrons.

Here's a paper (http://sydney.edu.au/science/uniserve_science/school/curric/stage6/phys/stw2002/sefton.pdf) by Ian Sefton of Sydney Uni.

He says …


Interesting ..

Cheers

[renormalised]

I haven't read the paper yet, but it wouldn't surprise at all this is getting big coverage over at EU central and that they went trawling for this once they got a whiff of its existence.

They're probably having "electrogasms" over this:):P

[renormalised]

a.k.a Fairy Floss:):P

[sjastro]

Probably resulting in premature ejaculation (from a grammatical viewpoint.:P)

[CraigS]

Actually the Sefton paper came from a thread running over at the BAUT Forum … where men are men, and 'EU groupies' get banned !

I had to laugh at their reference to our beloved Alex as 'EU groupie Jarvamundo'
Don't we defend IIS members when they're attacked elsewhere ?
:P :)
Cheers

[renormalised]

Well, that's a pretty fair and reasonable description of Sparky:):P

[CraigS]

I find this issue, which arises very frequently around the various forums, to be intriguing … and perplexing at the same time.

My view of the issue of where energy resides in a galactic jet, or in a wire carrying current, resembles the issue of whether light is a particle or a wave. Any, and all is correct because it is an inter-related, multi-variable definition which characterises the behaviours.

The issue seems to be more of a concern for those who seek a mechanical explanation for how the EMF (Electromotive Force) originates and moves from one form to another. Perhaps this would also be of interest to say Alex (Push Grav) as well ?

Thinking through the issue more, leaves me towards querying the reality of a field. From what I've seen, folk who seek a mechanical explanation seem to have great difficulty in accepting a field as real, (any field .. gravitational or EM). If the effect of a given field is capable of being measured, and if it has a direct measurable influence over other measurable matter, then it is real in my book.

Which comes first … the electric field, or the current or … the gravitational field, or the mass .. to me, is kind of like a chicken or egg thing.

Have I read the issue correctly do you think ?

Comments welcome.

Cheers

[avandonk]

Craig nothing is real! We have labels for things we can perceive directly with our limited senses and our brain gives us an interpretation. Then we go and put labels on things we can only perceive indirectly with ever more exotic instruments.

Reality is stranger than we can imagine. The classic double slit experiment showing inteference of light looks quite logical until you only have one photon at a time in the system and the interference pattern is still there.

This has been done with Buckyballs. So a C60 molecule has interfered with itself by going through two slits!

The only conclusion I can draw is nothing is real until it interacts to produce a macro phenomena.

Taken to its logical extreme our conciousness only exists because of lots of fields and particles interact constantly. Stop looking or being looked at and you cease to exist.

Even quantum entanglement is stranger than usual. Here

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624111942.htm


I am going out to play in my observatory before it dissapears. May just check my tinnies in the fridge as well since they seem to dissapear for no known reason.

Bert

[CraigS]

Ahhh .. its 'Biocentric Bert' ! (Just kidding). thanks for that Bert .. I'll have a read of the article .. and do some more thinking and leave you to visit your observatory .. I've seen a picture of that thing, too .. it can't be real from what I've seen !! (Kidding again ..)

Cheers

[renormalised]

Your tinnies are disappearing, Bert, because of the phantom beer drinkers from Dimension X:):P

They're raiding your fridge:):P

Either that, or the one of you in all those infinite possible realities is taking advantage of superposition and raiding your fridge:):P

[CraigS]

So Bert ..
We are all based on nothing real … and yet we have an effect on things around us (which is measurable) … which makes us real …

Bring on the multi-dimensions of M Theory !!
At least that way, we can perhaps visualise (albeit via mathematics), why things look so strange.

Pity no-one understands it yet though ..

Hilarious ..

Cheers

[renormalised]

Here's the nature article that the Science Daily report was based upon...

[renormalised]

In time....in time:):)

It's our consciousness which makes it all real by projecting itself into and onto the unreal. Now I'm starting to sound like a Buddhist!!!:):P

[renormalised]

Just had a quick read of the article....funny how the news article talks about "quantum magic" because in the Nature article, it shows the representations of the measurements in the article as projected onto 3D space, and guess what....they form a pentagram!!!:):P Now, there's something familiar to anyone who knows anything about the occult and magic:):)

Maybe there is something to it after all:):P

[CraigS]

Thanks Carl .. was reading the abstract but was thwarted by the paywall.

Just once .. only once … would I like for these topics to not end up in philosophy … :sadeyes:

Surely there's a region of reality between plain, ordinary ol' Maxwellian physics, and the annoyance and frustration of QM !

Whenever we end up stuck in QM nothing is ever gained .. by any of us !!

For something as basic as what causes an electric current to flow, I would have hoped there was some middle ground. :shrug:

Then again, I guess there's not much more basic than light, either, eh ?
:)
Cheers

[renormalised]

Speaking of the double slit experiment and large molecules, if you had enough time and managed to push a person through the double slits, they too would form an interference pattern. But the time it would take to do this would be inordinately long.

Ouch:)

So, you could say you have your own individual, personal barcode ID already in your own makeup:):P

[renormalised]

You're lucky I have a permanent account at uni:)

I'm afraid quantum physics and philosophy go hand in hand. It's the nature of the beast because the quantum world and philosophy (or in actual fact, having to deal with consciousness and its nature) are intimately linked.

We have to account for it....I don't find it onerous in the least:)

What we perceived as being the cause for the flow of electricity was obviously not as comprehensive in it's explanation as we thought it was. In actual fact, it was only ever going to be a classical approximation of a quantum process which we barely understand at this present time.

But how basic is light....it's not as simple as it looks. Is it:)

[avandonk]

Without the underlying base of chance there would be no US. It would be a totally deterministic Universe without life and boring.

My niece is doing her PhD in quantum computing. She has a MsC in Astrophysics. She is often surprised that an old bloke like me is up with the latest 'magic'.

We used to stand on the shore of an infinite sea. We are now at about knee height. We have a lot to learn before we can swim in this ocean.

Bert

[renormalised]

Only problem, Bert, is if we walk out till we're upto our waist or neck in water, will we be able to swim??!!.

I don't know if a deterministic Universe would be without life, necessarily, but it would certainly be awfully boring.

Although, the classicists amongst us would be in their element:)

[avandonk]

Thanks for the reference Carl.

Many years ago (1980) I postulated that the brain was a quantum device that somehow worked at room temperature.

My only evidence was the fact a solution to many of my scientific problems came from nowhere. Some people call this inspiration. I call it spooky.

Since then it has been shown that photosythesis depends on quantum effects for it's efficiency. All of life on our planet relies on this solar energy conservation for it's existence.

Bert

[renormalised]

It wouldn't surprise me if it was.....the microtubules in the neuronal axons within the brain most likely record and pass along information via quantum processes, probably entanglement, superposition and tunneling. They've hardly touched the physiology of the tubules simply because they're hard to study. Not only that, most physiologists and biologist understand jack about QM.

[avandonk]

Carl I worked in a biological division of CSIRO. I picked up enough biology in thirty years to agree with your premise. Microtubules are in all living things and are self assembling.
The biologists just never got what we trying to tell them.

We also have this problem that all our desires are just molecular in origin and our higher thought processes rely on fleeting electrical impulses and neurotransmitters that all seem to be random?

I am having a molecular driven drink right now!

Bert

[renormalised]

I can see what you're trying to get at, is it the instigation of the current (the moving electrons) or the field they produce (Poynting Flux) which carries the energy along the conductor (in this case, the jets from the BH). It probably is a chicken and egg case in that you cannot have one without the other, but the manner in which the energy is dispersed along the conductor is another matter entirely. It would appear that because of the resistance in the "conductor", the electrons only move at a crawl so they cannot deliver the energy in their movement to the other end of the conductor quick enough. So the energy has to be transported in some other form...that being the Poynting flux, which is essentially the EMF. Since EMF in a vacuum = c, the energy would travel at that velocity to the other end of the jet. The electrons would catchup later on.

[CraigS]

Here's another one … no-one really understands what causes static electricity …
What You Learned About Static Electricity Is Wrong (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/how-static-electricity-works/)



More of the basics go out the window !

Cheers

[avandonk]

Craig I told you quite some time ago ALL science is counterintuitive!

Bert

[CraigS]

Yep … the old tap-delivering-water-to-one end-of-the-pipe analogy, (ie: battery connecting two ends of a wire, battery providing the impetus to get electrons moving), … would now seem passe.

Interesting ..

Cheers

[CraigS]

Sure, Bert … no arguments there !

Others perusing these links may find some of this surprising, though.

Cheers

[renormalised]

The microtubules, or to be more precise, the compartments making up the microtubules may act like the p-n junctions in solid state transistors in silicon chips, acting as quantum switches where the information is encoded by the spin flip of the electrons within the tubules. The tubules themselves would then act like the paths between the transistors/switches moving information about. A neuron would then, in essence, be much like a cpu in a computer.

[renormalised]

That would suggest that a chemical bond occurs between the surfaces and that, in effect, the apparent transfer of charge is just either an ionic or covalent bonding and sharing of electrons between the surfaces. No permanent transfer of electrons is involved.

Also seems some of the surface is sloughed off onto the other, which may carry some charge with it. Meaning, in reality, it's a bit of a messy arrangement.