ITN: Primordial Deep Space Magnetic Fields - Page 3

renormalised (Carl) · #41 28-09-2010, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Initial comment/observation is that these are all pretty old papers.
There are many other Peratt etc papers, mostly published in IEEE and other publications.

As would be expected....he is an electrical engineer after all, not an astrophysicist/astronomer/particle/nuclear physicist. The few he has published in astronomy journals have been in those (except for maybe 2 papers) with more lax peer review procedures and low citation rates.

S & T would hardly be classed as a peer reviewed journal!!!!. I wouldn't even bother to cite something as ridiculous as that and quite frankly it wouldn't even get a look at if someone were to cite that as a source for a paper

It's just a good read of popular astronomy. Keeps amateurs informed on what's happening.

renormalised (Carl) · #42 28-09-2010, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Outbackmanyep

I found evidence that there was a huge crater on a planet, and from it stemmed an electrical discharge that had a distinct green appearance about it, it shot out from the rims and centre of the crater and travelled through space to arrive at a destination which caused catastrophic destruction.
It was called the "Dantooine" effect.
Here is a photo of the effect.

Clever

Jarvamundo (Alex) · #43 28-09-2010, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

I've told you why, a number of times and yet it just doesn't seem to sink in. It's not who or what funds his work, or what he may have published that makes him what he is, it's his qualifications. Example....Tesla had years of experience working with electrical systems, so did Edison, but neither of them were an electrical engineer, nor could they claim to be. Lerner may have an undergrad degree in physics but he is not a plasma physicist. He doesn't have the necessary qualifications. He doesn't have any graduate degrees, let alone a PhD or post doctoral research experience under the supervision of a professor/lecturer at an university. All he has is the right to claim to be a CEO of his own company that deals in this area of physics...nothing more or less. Now, do I have to tell you for the umpteenth time again and again???

How thick can you be??

As for your last paragraph, don't try and hide behind it to make me out as being nonsensical. Crawling to Craig by appealing to him (or others by proxy) will not help you out one little bit. This has nothing to do with inquisitiveness or anything else. This has to do with your inability to to be able to show any verifiable evidence for anything you say....

What has the current density in a transmission line and modes of plasma got to do with plasma cosmology or anything in astrophysics??!!!. You have been told on any number of occasions by not only Steven and myself, but by others, that you cannot apply a lab experiment to a real life situation just by scaling things up (or down). At the very best, you only have an approximation of what is going on, and in most cases you cannot tell what is happening simply because you cannot scale many of the factors involved in order to get a reasonable analogue. But that doesn't seem to sink in.

You have no idea about plasmas...do you??? Dark mode...you guys also love to trot that out as some mysterious factor hiding these currents. Do you even know what dark mode actually is??? Where is either the synchrotron radiation or bremsstrahlung from your said dark mode current??? It must be there, Alex...it's the nature of the current running through a resistive medium (the plasma and interplanetary gas/dust) or electrons accelerated in a magnetic field. Dark current doesn't mean hidden, it's the current that runs through a device (or in this case a plasma sheet) when there is no external input via another source (in the case of a CCD, photons....the plasma sheet, solar wind and CME's). Oh that's right, something is masking it. If something masks a current, Alex, the current breaks down because the separation of charge is negated in the plasma by the other ions present there. Go and read up on your plasmas, Alex. As a matter of fact, describing the plasma sheet as having a dark current is a furphy as there is always an input occurring via the solar wind. So trying to apply some engineering term to an astrophysical process is erroneous to begin with as there is no analogue present.

Here is a definition of dark (mode) current....

You can't even apply it with respect to planetary aurorae for exactly the same reasons. It is not being hidden by anything as any flow of electrons will generate a detectable source of radiation thermal and/or non thermal (synchrotron, x-ray, radio etc). Anything which can mask a current's flow or emissions will collapse the generation of that current...and in the case of the aurorae, there's goes your Birkeland currents.

So, Alex, I suggest it's back to the drawing boards for you all.

You absolute fool.
You do nothing but clutch to copying and pasting wikipedia articles in some vein attempt to come across as knowledgeable?

There are 3 modes of plasma emission, which track a non linear voltage gradients, all very well understood and scalable.
Dark = yep, generally dark (solar wind etc)... occasionally radio emissions exist.
Glow = yep.. it glows... go figure (flouro lamps, auroras).
Arc = yep... arcs... (lightning).

Sydney Chapman tried to tell Kristian Birkeland he couldn't scale plasmas... guess who had the last laugh, once spaceprobes could take insitu measurements (nasa themis image)?

Plasmas can and do scale, this is a well established empirical fact.

All the best,

PS: only you have said that plasmas and experiments cannot scale, Steven has not.
PS: "It's not who or what funds his work, or what he may have published that makes him what he is, it's his qualifications"
sorry mate... Oliver Heaviside was brilliant... should we begin on countless others? I'd rather go off their achievements and contributions rather than pieces of paper with fancy embossing... maybe we've found our difference here carl?

CraigS · #44 29-09-2010, 07:53 AM

Ok.
So, I had a quick read of Peratt's 1995 paper on Pulsar Magnetospheres yesterday. I intend to have a closer read when I get a chance. It appears he has created an electrical transmission line model, done some (limited) measurements on equipment available at the time, and developed some hypotheses. At the moment, I can't see any big problems with that approach (except the age of the paper). I should look at mainstream's critiques of this paper, in order to absorb it all (this'll probably be a spaghetti jungle, however).

On a different scale, is the Intergalactic Magnetic Field strength issue:

THEMIS measured 650K amp, Sun sourced flux ropes flowing into the Earth's Magnetosphere. The Intergalactic magnetic field strength discussed in the original paper is about 1.2 nanoTeslas - a huge difference !

Frankly, one would expect there to be all sorts of 'flux rope' equivalents interconnecting close proximity active stars/quasars/BHs/magnetars/planets etc. There's likely to be an entire network out there .. good material for further research would be to attempt to map it all, so everyone could get a view on it.

As far as these fields extending across intergalactic space and being comparable with obvious intergalactic gravitational fields however, depends on a leap of faith - the scalability issue.

There appears to be no indicators of intergalactic magnetic field strengths of the necessary magnitudes that would make a difference to shaping galaxies, effect orbits etc - ie: intergalactic synchrotron radiation, bremsstrahlung spectra, for instance. Lab experiments scaled up requires an extrapolation of small scale physics, but unless someone can produce measurements of some kind, of significant magnitudes in intergalactic space, it just seems to be an intellectual exercise.

I'm not sure I have the energy to argue over intellectual exercises. I'm happy to keep them as such and pursue them independently, however. I mean, what are we trying to say here ? Gravity rules over Electromagnetism ?? What's the point in this ? Seems we are trying to pursue some kind of Grand Unification Theory without the measurements .. others are in a far better situation than us to do this, I would have thought !!

Cheers & Regards.
PS: A suggestion for the Moderators - I reckon IIS needs an "Alternative Science Forum", for those wanting to discuss Alternative concepts… every other site like IIS seems to have one .. so why not here ?? Would certainly beat having to lock threads all the time and I can see another one coming up, right here !!
And Carl would be the perfect person to moderate it !!

(Ok .. I'm a stirrer … but hey .. what can you expect from a Hamster ?? Witten's Hamster, that is !!)

bojan · #45 29-09-2010, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraigS

Ok.
So, I had a quick read of Peratt's 1995 paper on Pulsar Magnetospheres yesterday. I intend to have a closer read when I get a chance. It appears he has created an electrical transmission line model, done some (limited) measurements on equipment available at the time, and developed some hypotheses. At the moment, I can't see any big problems with that approach (except the age of the paper). I should look at the mainstream critic's views of this paper, to absorb it all (this'll probably be a spaghetti jungle, however).

I do see a lot of problems here.
It looks very much as RF engineer-like approach... and this is what is wrong here.
Being myself a RF engineer, I cant see how oscillations are generated in this model.
Also I don't see anu explanation for sudden glitches (in neutron star model, this was explained as star-quake).

Interesting mind-game, intellectual exercise..... but that's all me thinks.

CraigS · #46 29-09-2010, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bojan

I do see a lot of problems here.
It looks very much as RF engineer-like approach... and this is what is wrong here.
Being myself a RF engineer, I cant see how oscillations are generated in this model.
Also I don't see anu explanation for sudden glitches (in neutron star model, this was explained as star-quake).

Interesting mind-game, intellectual exercise..... but that's all me thinks.

Ah .. you're saying that the problems stem from the model chosen, huh? (As distinct from the approach)?

Maybe the explanation comes in 'the next chapter' .. its an old paper.

Cheers

renormalised (Carl) · #47 29-09-2010, 09:33 AM

The approach is faulty too....you can't just compartmentalise astrophysical process like they do in engineering parlance. There's no "black box" approach to any problem in astrophysics and as a matter of fact, astrophysicists would tell you that if you do this, you're missing most of the problem. Astrophysical phenomena occur in a continuum...the boundaries between physical interactions within systems isn't cut and dried and you can't divorce one part of the system from the other in order to model what's happening. The whole has to be considered.

You want to find out about pulsar magnetospheres....here's 559 papers on the subject.

bojan · #48 29-09-2010, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraigS

Ah .. you're saying that the problems stem from the model chosen, huh? (As distinct from the approach)?

Maybe the explanation comes in 'the next chapter' .. its an old paper.

Cheers

Both model and approach are dubious (as Carl pointed out nicely).
We are not dealing with electronics circuit here (even if we say it is a circuit with distributed parameters), however we (or them, actually) would want to...

You can't even input this model into one of those RF simulation programs...no model for active element could be built, without full understanding of mechanism of the process (a neutron star is not a transistor.. or valve). And this understanding is not shown there
Also, he was mentioning relaxation oscillators earlier. This is not a relaxation oscillator, it looks to me like oscillator with transmission line as frequency control element.

As I said, it is just a mind game, nothing else. Waste of time.

CraigS · #49 29-09-2010, 10:33 AM

Ok .. so, remember guys … I'm no 'believer' in PC/EU ...

In the Peratt/Healy paper, the initial 'model' used for simulations is crude and they do pay credence to the fact that it has shortcomings. Consideration is given to the boundary definitions. They consider the effects of adding plasma flowing between current boundaries and then make observations on the simulated waveforms (page 244). So what they are in effect are doing, is creating a strawman model, relating it to outcomes observable via simulations and then coming to a conclusion that further work needs to be done to explain further observations in space.

This is a typical iterative modelling approach. It is an old paper. I'd like to understand where it ended up ... with the 21st Century updates.

For compariative purposes, I pulled out a copy of a random sample of paper (from Carl's arXiV search), called: "The magnetar emission in the IR band: the role of magnetospheric currents" which is dated, April 2010. The Abstract reads:

Quote:

There is a general consensus about the fact that the magnetar scenario provides a convincing explanation for several of the observed properties of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars and the Soft Gamma Repeaters. However, the origin of the emission observed at low energies is still an open issue. We present a quantitative model for the emission in the optical/infrared band produced by curvature radiation from magnetospheric charges, and compare results with current magnetars observations.

The conclusions …

Quote:

a number of key issues are still unresolved
…
Our model is based on a number of simplifying assumptions.
…
In order to reach firmer conclusions about the entire multi-wavelength spectrum a more detailed study of the magnetosphere is required, and will be matter of future work (see also Beloborodov, this volume).

Whilst I can relate to the more modern paper more closely, the older Peratt/Healy paper follows a similar approach, considers defiencies in the model, and comes to more or less, similar conclusions.

Having said that, I agree that I can't see the relaxation oscillator model, as Bojan points out. I am prepared to look into where it all ended up in modern times.

Carl .. you have always said, you have to read the whole saga of anyone writing scientific papers in order to understand where they're coming from .. and perhaps then … trash 'em !! Sometimes this journey results in an increased understanding …. of something !

Bojan .. I'm not assuming that this paper is necessarily the answer to your original question .. even though it was presented to you in that way. The abstract describes its intention as being an 'exploratory' paper.

I feel the 'usual' frustration experienced in encounters with EU stuff. You are not alone …

Cheers & Rgds.

renormalised (Carl) · #50 29-09-2010, 11:04 AM

The problem with all of Peratt's simulations is that they were restrictive in the number of parameters they dealt with, excluded a lot of others that are essential to modeling these systems (e.g. gravity, for instance) and were done on computers an average netbook computer could outperform these days. The code for the simulation software could be vastly improved and implemented on a modern computer, but neither Peratt or any of the EU/PC crowd have bothered. They just keep rehashing the same old, tired simulations and quoting from the results. That's not science.

Quote:

In the Peratt/Healy paper, the initial 'model' used for simulations is crude and they do pay credence to the fact that it has shortcomings. Consideration is given to the boundary definitions. They consider the effects of adding plasma flowing between current boundaries and then make observations on the simulated waveforms (page 244). So what they are in effect are doing, is creating a strawman model, relating it to outcomes observable via simulations and then coming to a conclusion that further work needs to be done to explain further observations in space.

This is a typical iterative modelling approach. It is an old paper. I'd like to understand where it ended up ... with the 21st Century updates.

Like I said, this "black box" approach is faulty.

Creating "strawman" models then concluding more work needs to be done is a waste of time. It's basically saying a lot of stuff for nothing. They could've written their whole paper in one or maybe two paragraphs. If they were really honest about it, they probably could've done it in a couple of sentences.

renormalised (Carl) · #51 29-09-2010, 11:21 AM

Their whole premise for the mechanism behind pulsars (EM interactions in close binary systems) is so easy to shoot down it's not funny. Simple observation of these objects is enough to make their ideas a laughing stock. For one, most pulsars are single objects and that is observationally verifiable, whether the pulsar is part of a remnant or not. If they were close binaries, where's the spectroscopic evidence, let alone evidence from light curve/photometric and astrometric analysis. There is none and never has been. The EU/PC crowd seem to forget about these glaringly obvious astrophysical questions and just assume that their assumptions are correct despite all the evidence and observations to the contrary.

It's like seeing a tsunami coming straight at your face and then denying it exists..."Oh, I'll be OK, it's not really there." Too bad when you get crushed and washed away by the wave.

CraigS · #52 29-09-2010, 12:22 PM

This is the kind of stuff that pre-peer review should sort out.

The 1995 paper was published in "Astrophys. Space Sci.".

I presume this is the AstroPhysical Journal (am I wrong ?)

Cheers

Outbackmanyep · #53 29-09-2010, 12:28 PM

It's tantamount to a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there!

renormalised (Carl) · #54 29-09-2010, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraigS

This is the kind of stuff that pre-peer review should sort out.

The 1995 paper was published in "Astrophys. Space Sci.".

I presume this is the AstroPhysical Journal (am I wrong ?)

Cheers

No, it's not ApJ...it's a different journal. ApJ is far more cited and used than Ap&SS and the peer review process in ApJ is far more stringent.

CraigS · #55 29-09-2010, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

No, it's not ApJ...it's a different journal. ApJ is far more cited and used than Ap&SS and the peer review process in ApJ is far more stringent.

Fair enough, then …

Comes back to writing outside of the review process/world you're attempting to live in .. and the formal training/background of the writer ..

…I'm cool with that…

Cheers

renormalised (Carl) · #56 29-09-2010, 01:44 PM

I wouldn't mind betting that most of the gripe that the EU/PC guys go on about peer review stems from Peratt, Scott and Co trying to get their papers accepted into journals such as ApJ, MNRAS, AJ, PR Letters etc and then being told to go and write a science fiction novel based on their submissions because that's all they were good for. So, they hunted down those journals they knew they could publish in....in their own fields (IEEE PPT), those with lax peer review and such, plus some of the left of centre "alternative" science "journals" and magazines including those popular amateur astronomy ones.

CraigS · #57 29-09-2010, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

I wouldn't mind betting that most of the gripe that the EU/PC guys go on about peer review stems from Peratt, Scott and Co trying to get their papers accepted into journals such as ApJ, MNRAS, AJ, PR Letters etc and then being told to go and write a science fiction novel based on their submissions because that's all they were good for. So, they hunted down those journals they knew they could publish in....in their own fields (IEEE PPT), those with lax peer review and such, plus some of the left of centre "alternative" science "journals" and magazines including those popular amateur astronomy ones.

The thing I find very unsettling is the problem that is created when these guys are told things like what you mention. They don't just go away because someone has rejected their ideas. They go on, and on, and on, and develop entire communities of faith based followers which then comes back around and undermines the science/scientists who rejected them, in the first place.

It becomes a problem created by (i) the rejection process itself and (ii) a perfectly understandable, incomplete knowledge of the topic, by the applicant.

Science has created pseudoscientists !!

There has to be a more mature way of handling these issues, showing an acceptance of the fundamental responsibility for handling people.

Especially as the material becomes more and more complex.

I am reminded of Ted Haggard (evangelist) grappling with Dawkins: .."Excuse me sir, this is exactly the reason why so many join our faith .. the arrogance of: 'you don't have such and such a book .. so you you'll never understand'." .. or words to that effect.

Its a real problem, because it eventually impacts funding for mainstream Scientific research !

Cheers

bojan · #58 29-09-2010, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraigS

I am reminded of Ted Haggard (evangelist) grappling with Dawkins: .."Excuse me sir, this is exactly the reason why so many join our faith .. the arrogance of: 'you don't have such and such a book .. so you you'll never understand'." .. or words to that effect.
Its a real problem, because it eventually impacts funding for mainstream Scientific research !

Cheers

Yes, you are very right here.

Many times in my life I wanted to react to arrogance of mainstream scientists (not on this forum, though) but what was the alternative?
To send sheep straight into lion's den! Or to just allow them going there by themselves if they choose so..
So I kept quiet, thinking that this way I am doing less damage.

The right way of popularisation (without vulgarisation) of science is soo important...

CraigS · #59 29-09-2010, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bojan

Yes, you are very right here.

Many times in my life I wanted to react to arrogance of mainstream scientists (not on this forum, though) but what was the alternative?
To send sheep straight into lion's den!
So I kept quiet, thinking that this way I am doing less damage.

Did you satisfy your inquisitiveness and further your knowledge in any way by taking this approach ?

Cheers

PS: Our posts got out of synch here .. sorry 'bout that.

renormalised (Carl) · #60 29-09-2010, 03:14 PM

They wouldn't be literally told by the peer review committees that their submission was like that, not unless it was really bad science. They would be told it was rejected and why. So if they wanted to resubmit it at a later date, they would be told where to fix the problems that were seen in it and how to resubmit it with the corrections in place.

Although, the recommendations may appear to be harsh, they're tough for a reason. The big problem is that the paper, or pet project/idea, of the person submitting it may just not be up to standard. Quite a few can't handle being told that, or think because they have "x" years of experience etc, that their papers should automatically be accepted and they react badly to the review. That's why some go off in a huff and start publishing it anywhere they can get away with it...usually in the less stringent journals and the popular press, or they publish it as their own book or create a journal of their own, like Aeon and the JIDS (Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies).