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*Feb 08, 2008*
Spicules Complete the Circuit
*Colossal Birkeland currents conduct the Sun’s energy out
into space but also pull electrons back into its poles.*
On August 25, 1997, NASA launched the Advanced Composition Explorer
(ACE) spacecraft carrying several
high-resolution sensors and monitors designed to sample low-energy solar
emissions, as well as high-energy particles arriving from intra-galactic
space. From its location at LaGrange point L1
ACE has
been analyzing the solar wind for the last ten years (almost a complete
solar cycle ), providing
real-time “space weather” reports about geomagnetic storms.
Onboard the ACE satellite is the Solar Wind Electron Proton Alpha Monitor
(SWEPAM) which is designed for direct
scrutiny of coronal mass ejections (CME), interplanetary shockwaves and
the detailed solar wind structure. Using advanced three-dimensional
interpretive instrumentation, SWEPAM will coordinate its observations with
the Ulysses probe , currently in polar orbit
about the Sun at approximately 673,191,000 kilometers distance.One of the
more unusual discoveries by the ACE/SWEPAM mission is an electron
depletion in the
solar wind due to “backstreaming electrons” flowing into the Sun from the
surrounding space. These electrons are not in sync with the newest
theories of the Sun’s activity, since the conveyance of electric charge is
not considered apropos by astrophysicists. Consequently, they are left
with a mystery when electrical activity presents itself in ways that they
do not expect.
In the conventional view the Sun is accelerating electrons out and away
from its surface through a process akin to amplified sound waves. Referred
to as “p-modes”, they supposedly cause the energetic pulsations in the
solar photosphere as they bounce around the Sun’s interior. When they
travel upward through wave-guides called magnetic flux tubes
they
push the “hot gas” outward in giant structures called spicules
http://www.lmsal.com/Press/spicules2004/images/nature_hm700_new0.qt>. The
spicules rise thousands of kilometers above the photosphere and carry the
hot gasses (plasma) with them.
According to Bart De Pontieu
and his
colleagues at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, the flux
tubes are acoustic chambers focusing the “p-modes” and intensifying their
sound energy. Some researchers have described this process in ways that
allow them to see the Sun as a giant bell
, ringing
with vibratory energy. In such a theoretical model, how could sonic forces
then influence a reflective process that draws negative electric charge
back into the Sun? Thus the “mystery” surrounding the electron flow
returning to the Sun from space.
In 1979, Ralph Juergens wrote
, /The
Photosphere: Is it the Top or Bottom of the Phenomenon We Call the Sun?/
In that seminal work, he first proposed that solar spicules are actually
the way that the Sun re-supplies its electrical potential and maintains
its photospheric double layer. In the image at the top of the page, an
unmistakable twist can be seen in the largest spicule, identifying it as a
Birkeland filament. In past Thunderbolts Picture of the Day articles, we
have noted that these towering filaments are responsible for the
transmission of electrical energy throughout the Sun, the solar system and
the galactic environment.
As Professor Don Scott , electrical
engineer and author of The Electric Sky
recently wrote
in a private communication:
“In order to maintain the double layer above the photosphere that causes
almost all the observed properties of the Sun, a certain ratio of the
number of outgoing positive ions to the number of incoming electrons must
exist. Quoting from Ralph Juergens: ‘In a much cited classical review
paper of 1929, Irving Langmuir demonstrated that a double sheath (DL) is
stable only when the current densities of the positive-ion and electron
flows across [through] it are properly related. The ratio of the electron
current into the tuft to the positive-ion current out of the tuft must
equal the square root of the ion mass divided by the electron mass, which
is to say: (electron current / ion current)^2 = ion mass / electron mass =
1836. Thus electron current / ion current = 43.’
“So there needs to be a lot more (43 times as many) electrons coming down
through the DL as there are positive ions moving outward. Where do they
come from?
“In that same year (1979) Earl Milton composed a paper titled, The Not So
Stable Sun in which he wrote:
“‘In order to maintain a stable sheath between the photosphere and the
corona a great many electrons must flow downward through the sheath for
each ion which passes upward. The solar gas shows an increasing percentage
of ionized-to-neutral atoms with altitude. Some of the rising neutral
atoms become ionized by collision. Some fall back to the solar surface.
The rising ions ascend into the corona where they become the solar wind.
The descending gas flows back to the Sun between the granules - in these
channels the electrical field is such that ions straying out from the
sides of the photospheric tufts flow sunward, and hence the electrons flow
outward. The presence of these channels is critical to the maintenance of
the solar discharge…. Here we have an explanation for the spicules, huge
fountains that spit electrons high into the corona.’
“In my (Don's) opinion this also explains what causes sunspots. Wherever
the #p/#e ratio is not maintained, the DL collapses - the photospheric
tufts disappear. So we get a spot in that location.”
By Stephen Smith