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Spiraling Magnetic Signal Shows Up In the Cosmic Background
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jan 09, 2009 05:22 AM
from the headline-can-only-hold-so-many-words dept.
from the headline-can-only-hold-so-many-words dept.
pln2bz writes "Astronomers looking for confirmation for emissions from early stellar formation in the cosmic microwave background radiation instead found a signal indicating large amounts of unaccounted-for spiraling magnetic fields in space, but without any accompanying infrared emissions. The discovery possibly dredges up the claims of plasma cosmologists like Eric Lerner, who claim that the intergalactic medium is a strong absorber of the CMB with the absorption occurring in a fog of narrow filaments. These filaments are the result of plasma's natural tendency, as observed within the plasma laboratory and in novelty plasma globes, to form braided, ropelike structures which are collimated by coiled magnetic fields."
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A Step Closer To Cheap Nuclear Fusion 404 comments
ewsnow writes "The Focus Fusion Society reports that the scientists and engineers at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics have finally built an operational Dense Plasma Focus device. While still at less than half power, they were able to achieve a pinch on their device. The small company that Eric Lerner started recently gathered enough funding to start a two-year study on the validity of his theory regarding fusion-inducing plasmoids. If the theory holds, the device will produce more electricity than it consumes. In contrast to the billions of dollars spent on Tokamak fusion (think ITER), LPP is conducting their research on a budget around a million dollars. Yet, if it works, it will provide nuclear fusion with much simpler equipment and much less cost. Eric Lerner and Focus Fusion have been discussed on Slashdot before."
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Err..what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This news is too nerdy to understand. Can someone explain it in more detail?
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Informative)
I'll try as best as I can (this topic is beyond my level of understanding of Physics).
Essentially they've found something, they don't know what it is... a speculation is it could be caused by Black Holes which were formed by the first Stars to exist in the Universe Imploding [wikipedia.org] (as predicted by Einstein).
The other part of the submission leads on to say that if they are correct in their first speculation, it could possibly validate other theories like the one made by Eric Lerner, on how the Universe "works" in terms of the various structures of matter and energy in the space between large masses (like planets or stars).
I'm suspect as to the accuracy of the first link in the article, it quotes:
Dust grows over time as stars manufacture heavy elements called metals, like carbon, silicon and oxygen, that make up dust and then spit them out into space.
The reason I'm suspect, is because Oxygen [wikipedia.org] and Carbon [wikipedia.org] are both nonmetallic elements (or at least I understood they were - I checked Wikipedia to confirm).
I hope that helps you a bit, this stuff is a bit of a mindbender.
Parent
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal#Astronomy [wikipedia.org]
Parent
+1 I learned something :) (Score:2)
Thank you, I didn't know that was the correct term.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Informative)
To astronomers, Everything that's not hydrogen or helium, is a metal.
(Chemists have different viewpoints.)
Parent
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the point is that in cosmology or extra-galactic astronomy, almost everything visible is almost entirely Hydrogen or Helium. The sloppy convention is to call the little bit left over "metals," although I know people who call it "dust," depending on the circumstances. Carbon (say) is definitely not a metal, but it would be called that in cosmology. It's just a convention.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Additionally, many textbooks agree that 99.999% of the visible matter in space is matter within the plasma state. In a behavioral sense as far as interpreting astrophysical imagery goes, the state of the matter is arguably just as important as the actual element.
References available at http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/99.999%25_plasma
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Really, it's the cosmologists. If it is not hydrogen or helium, it's a metal. I am not really sure why - maybe because there is a fair amount of lithium, and that is a metal.
This convention is not used by, say, the astronomers who deal with extra-solar system planets.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe because Lithium (a real metal) was also produced in the Big Bang :
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html [berkeley.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
Astronomers call anything heavier than hydrogen and helium "metal".
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's pretty much exactly what it is. It accurately reflects how much the astronomers care about it. There's hydrogen, and helium, and that other shit up there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Funny)
"Spiraling Magnetic Signal, Cosmic Background emissions in the cosmic microwave background radiation, a signal indicating large amounts of unaccounted-for spiraling magnetic fields in space, but without any accompanying infrared emissions. The intergalactic medium is a strong absorber of a fog of narrow filaments. These filaments are the result of plasma's natural tendency, to form braided, ropelike structures which are collimated by coiled magnetic fields."
Jeez Dungeon Master, all I did was cast "Detect Magic", no need to go all cosmic on us...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Spiralling Magnetic Signal sounds like a good name for a geekcore band.
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me it sounds like they've finally found proof of FSM's existence.
Parent
Re:Err..what? (Score:5, Funny)
It's more proof that the Pastafarians are right!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot summary summary:
"Scientists discover something and have theories for it, but they're wrong and a pseudoscience is true."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot enthusiasts appear to not realize that astrophysicists blame either magnetic fields, dark matter or black holes every time that their model fails to predict their observations. If you guys pay more attention, you'll notice the trend. The Standard Model is not resolving its enigmatic observations so much as it is categorizing or binning the mysteries into these three categories, for future resolution.
In a strict sense, this is pretty pseudo-scientific -- especially when it comes to the manufacture
Calling Electric Universe in 3 ... 2 ... 1... (Score:4, Informative)
Had to go look at the Electric Universe's webpage (won't link to it now; the curious can drive traffic). I see no mention of anything like this structure predicted on any sort of scale like this, though they post-hoc claim that galactic-sized spiraly bits can be explained with their theory. Probably their page is in need of revision, though, with these new findings...
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http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060719spacevortex.htm [thunderbolts.info]:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051114currents.htm [thunderbolts.info]:
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Zerkshop, be careful with your open mind. It will get you into trouble in the physics discipline. As you get older, you will come to see that cosmology is unfortunately no place for people with open minds like yourself. The best tactic is to learn your studies as hard as you can, but keep your opinions of "fringe" scientific readings to yourself. I wouldn't even let your professors know that you're reading this stuff. It could very well affect your upward mobility within your field.
(As for psy trance,
pln2bz is a strong proponent of EU theory (Score:4, Insightful)
He has a history of posting any story that can possibly be interpreted as supporting the electric universe theory, along with his speculations as to why the story proves EU correct. Just saying...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the fundamental problem with the Electric Universe theory. It's really quite simple. Our observations do not fit the EU theory. We do not see energy falling into the Sun to ignite fusion. If fusion is occur at or near the surface of the Sun, then it needs to have a substantial input from the external world. We would detect that energy flux on the surface of the Earth (especially at night) since the Earth would intercept a portion of it and in our observations of the Solar System. We do not see it. In
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
....that few will risk their reputation to publish....
Yet, it has been the few, the daring to be different, not the ones feeling safe in the crowd, that have contributed the most to major knowledge in the early history of experimental and observational science.
This was true centuries ago and still is true today. Danish Astronomer Roemer was the first to assert that light did indeed have a finite velocity, even though the prevailing majority opinion (politically correct) at the time was that light travelled
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Yet, it has been the few, the daring to be different, not the ones feeling safe in the crowd, that have contributed the most to major knowledge in the early history of experimental and observational science.
Other early scientists, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur and others also had to fight the majority status quo establishment, but were finally, after a long uphill battle proven to be right.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- attributed to Carl Sagan
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Electric Universe is lumped in with the fringe sciences purely because it is not the conventional paradigm. The model itself is workable because there's a high correlation between observations of the Sun and heliosphere, and the action of an anode within a plasma glow discharge. No mathematical debunking can argue against these key correlations since they are based upon laboratory observations. If the key features match up, then the mathematics can be made to work for a model.
What you might not reali
Holy Crap, Gurren Lagann was right! (Score:4, Funny)
The universe really is made out of spiral energy!
Foil hats at the ready (Score:3, Funny)
Here are the 4 papers (Score:5, Informative)
Interpretation of the extragalactic results (the real source of the OP) :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0559 [arxiv.org]
Note that the above paper does not mention the "wildly speculative" spiraling magnetic fields idea.
Extragalactic results in general :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0555 [arxiv.org]
Galactic results
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0562 [arxiv.org]
A description of the instrument :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0546 [arxiv.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, if you read the New York Times article, these guys are experimentalists, and they are just trying to get theorists involved.
Dr. Kogut and his colleagues stressed that they do not really know where the signal comes from and they hope that theorists will take up the quest."
I would not put too much weight on their theoretical musings.
Re:Here are the 4 papers (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the above paper does not mention the "wildly speculative" spiraling magnetic fields idea.
But this is /., where no one cares about science unless it is wildly speculative.
Good critique of Lerner: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html [ucla.edu] Dunno why the summary mentions him at all.
Parent
Yeah yeah, now answer the important question.. (Score:4, Funny)
...which is "what are the implications of this discovery with regards to the development of FTL travel and subsequent discovery of green alien chicks in bikinis?"
Importance of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect that there are a lot of slashdotters who aren't strong on Cosmology and won't be bothered looking up the significance of the CMB on Wikipedia (I must say the Wikipedia article is particularly dense and won't be the easiest for non-specialists to digest).
So in a nutshell, the CMB is the the radiation we see in every direction of the sky. It's a little more complicated but you can think of it as the afterglow of the big bang. (Note: That is an over-simplication. To understand it better you have to look at a timeline of what happened after the big bang, especially hyper-inflation and recombination).
The reason it's so important is that it is the result of and thus put limits on the conditions at the time of the Big Bang. Since we don't have time machines and can't observe the universe from the outside, it is a critical piece of observational data against which we test our theories.
It is a particularly important piece of the puzzle when trying to work out what's going on with regards to dark matter because the amount of dark matter and the way in which it formed must be consistent with conditions that produced the CMB we observe.
Them spiraling aren't magnetic fields! (Score:2, Funny)
The spending is spiraling out of control, out of this world and is astronomical, as every one knows.
Not this again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Experimental data speculation + crackpot plasma theory = Slashdot science?
So this means... (Score:2, Funny)
That the universe is a big giant plasma ball that hasn't been played with in a while... so what happens when someone plugs us back in and touches the glass again?
Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff. (Score:2, Offtopic)
DNA (Score:2, Insightful)
ELECTRIC UNIVERSE!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Please recall that Mr pln2bz [slashdot.org] is an Electric Universe fanatic, pretending to be an objective outsider who was swayed by the Thunderbolts' persuasive arguments.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Please take those claims with a healthy grain of salt. For whatever reason, the Electric Universe movement is heavily laden with kooky pseudoscience.
I'm not saying you should discredit it completely. Just treat it with a skeptical eye and separate the reasonable EM phenomena from the ridiculous claims.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole of astrophysics and cosmology is laden with kooky psuedoscience. The large number of observations that just won't fit and out-there patches to rescue models that should really be considered as having been falsified should tell you as much.
If you doubt that, consider the following observations: the over 1M Kelvin hot solar corona (where is that energy coming from?), the dark centers of solar spots (should the inside of the sun not
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit. Where is the quantitative explanation for the (obviously magnetodynamic) solar cycle? Whence the twisted plasma filaments edging solar spots? http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3306886.html?page=1&c=y [skyandtelescope.com] Not well understood at all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, it is not the energy density that is the issue but rather the required energy flux. Over half of the massive UV, EUV, and X-Ray coronal emissions are radiated out into intersteller space. This requires continuous extreme heating of the corona to sustain.
Wrong. The energy is produced inside the corona. The energy production mec