The Secret of the Sun's Heated Atmosphere

eldavojohn writes "There has long been speculation on why the Sun's surface is a mere ten thousand degrees while the atmosphere can reach millions. Space.com is reporting that the mystery has now been solved. Researchers looked for Alfven waves in the solar chromosphere and found them. Followup studies employing simulations demonstrated that the energetics work out to transfer energy from the Sun's surface to its overlying corona.. The magnetic waves may also be the power source behind the solar wind."

Re:Sound?

[pln2bz]

The confusion with the Sun's inverse temperature situation (the corona is around 100x hotter than the Sun's surface) follows naturally from the theory that the Sun has a thermonuclear core, which originated around the time that we discovered that it *could* be the mechanism responsible for the tremendous energies we observe. But beware because the issue is by no means completely settled. Any theory that attempts to explain the inverse temperature problem must also grapple with the fact that the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets! There is no satisfying explanation for that one to date without consideration of an electric field, and the standard solar model miserably fails in explaining it. And this is no minor matter either because the solar wind, taken as a whole, constitutes the largest structure in our solar system, the heliospheric current sheet. Contemplate the implications of that for a moment: astrophysicists do not understand what is causing the motions of the largest structure in our own immediate neighborhood!

Within that context, any certainty about what the Sun is or how it operates has absolutely no basis in the facts that we know to date. An honest assessment that strips out all of the *assumptions* about the Sun that we've accumulated over the years will result in a much wider range of possible theories. The unfortunate fact is that the field of astrophysics currently only studies one such possibility out of the entire set. They have essentially worked their way into a corner, and we get theories like magnetic reconnection to explain the inverse temperature problem. But in the process, they completely ignore the work of many great scientists like Nikola Tesla, Kristian Birkeland, Hannes Alfven and Ralph Juergens.

Mark my word: we will hear more about Nikola Tesla as the years move forward. It appears that Tesla's experiments with impulse currents led him to accidentally discover how to intentionally create either a z- or a theta-pinch (which is the fundamental force for creating planets and stars within plasma-based cosmologies). Tesla discovered that the pinch created a stinging pressure wave that could penetrate both glass and copper Faraday cages! He then discovered that he could pulse-width modulate these explosions at thousands of times per second to eradicate the harmful human effects associated with the electrical explosions. It appears that Tesla essentially discovered a mechanism for longitudinal EM waves. He correctly noticed that the force of these waves tends to outpace the compression wave (the electrons). He had no idea how dramatically true this is though, and the information is largely lost to this day. But it is being slowly rediscovered.

If you have doubts about any of this, then I urge you to read the very compelling materials offered on the Thunderbolts Forum by user junglelord ...

http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=933&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15 [thunderbolts.info]

Once fans of Nikola Tesla wake up to the fact that his findings make total sense within the Electric Universe framework, all hell is going to break loose!

Joseph Preistley is turning in his grave!

[u8i9o0]

I'm not familiar with Alfven, but I offer the following:

Joseph Preistley [wikipedia.org] is credited with discovering oxygen.
That's a wonderful honor and all except his opinion was that air gets clogged with "phlogiston" when material is burned, such that a fire within an enclosed environment gets extinguished because the air can no longer absorb this stuff.
Nowadays, chemists understand that free oxygen gets depleted during a fire - which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Preistley's strongly held belief.

What can I say, "misplaced honor happens".

He did?

[APODNereid]

Hoyle advocated this

He did?

In which of his publications may one read more?

I am not sure why no one is researching it

Perhaps because there's no evidence of any net motion of matter in to the Sun? There is a solar wind, and it flows outward; the Sun is losing mass (matter), not gaining it (the occasional comet or asteroid it eats nowhere nearly makes up for what it loses in the solar wind).

Re:Alfven is turning in his grave!

[adisakp]

When you see a magnetic field, your first question should always be, "Where's the current?"

Have you ever heard of permanent magnets?

There are two methods of producing magnetism: 1) by current and 2) by aligning particles with non-zero magnetic moments (quantum spin) within a substance.

Electromagnets use the first method while permanent magnets use the second.

Once more, with feeling!

[APODNereid]

Setting the record straight ...

there are in fact alternative possible explanations for our observations which astrophysicists tend to ignore

Or, more pertinently, these so-called alternatives fail several key tests, such as internal consistency, consistency with relevant theories whose domains of applicability overlap (quantum mechanics, in this case), and (above all) consistency with good, relevant observations.

They are complicit with ignoring these alternative explanations because math already exists for the conventional paradigms

And you know this because? Your objective evidence is ... what, exactly?

The public has this misconception that astrophysicists have *ruled out* alternative explanations in an honest manner by completing a comprehensive review of all of the theories out there, and what one discovers over time is that in fact, that has not occurred in the slightest

So, once again, if you please ... references to papers, published in relevant peer-reviewed journals, which lay out this/these 'alternative explanation(s)' and which show internal consistency, consistency with quantum mechanics (in the relevant domains of applicability), and (above all) consistency with good, relevant observations and experimental results.

I think I have asked for this nearly ten times now; not once (that I recall) have you answered.

We've seen stars erratically jump all over the HR diagram, including FG Sagittae, V605 Aquilae and V4334 Sagittarii and V838 Monocerotis ("The Electric Sky" by Don Scott points to a total of seven counter-examples to predicted stellar evolution)

Hmm ... not a bad track record then, for standard models of stars ... given that there are detailed records on what, about a billion stars?!

And if any SD reader is interested, a quick check on the relevant, peer-reviewed literature will show that pln2bz's assertion here is, shall we say, only coincidentally consistent with the truth.

In fact, we see unusual things with stars on a weekly basis, and this should rationally induce some self-doubt. And yet, it does not! Every enigmatic observation is just rolled into the standard model as quickly as it goes into the books, and at the expense of people actually proposing creative solutions that better explain *all* of our observations.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but science is a process of discovery ... only by testing, modifying, testing again, and so on, is progress made. After all, if the 'enigmatic observations' cannot be 'rolled up into the standard model', then it's time to change it!

As for 'people actually proposing creative solutions', let's have them roll up their sleeves, write up their solutions, and get them published, shall we? That way everyone can review them, critique them, test them, and so on.

And yet, there are laboratory plasma physicists who argue against things like magnetic reconnection as being redundant of exploding plasma double layers (Alfven included). It is wrong to completely ignore these people. We should foster a public debate on these issues and honestly assess who is right without preferences to either. Instead, what we get is millions of dollars pumped into magnetic reconnection with little to no consideration of exploding plasma double layers.

So, in the last few hours, you've gone from claiming magnetic reconnection cannot possibly be right (because Alfvén said so), to reading the hundreds (or thousands) of published papers on the topic (including the results of lab experiments), and concluded that they all fail because of something else that Alfvén said?

You sure are a fast reader.

So, yeah, parsing criticism until it no longer makes sense is all fun and games. But the big picture is not so funny at all.

Hmm ... are you s

Re:Evidence, please!

[CheshireCatCO]

Neither of your links says that the solar wind is accelerating as it passes Earth. Both say that it accelerates near the Sun (within a few solar radii), which *is* non-controversial and even predicted by Parker's original work. What Parker doesn't explain is the magnitude of the acceleration (see Kivelson and Russel's book, for example), but you're denying that, aren't you?

Can you please bother to read your own links closely enough to verify their relevance? Simply posting a random link and saying, "here's my evidence" may look good at first glance, but it's really a very poor way to make a case.