No silly answers please.
Henri Wilson.
See my animations at:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/HeWn/index.htm
None. The solar UV plus solar wind shorts them out.
> No silly answers please.
>
> Henri Wilson.
The loud idiot whines about competition.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Here is one thing to consider: The solar wind includes lots of charged particles
and when these jump the gap into the earth's magnetic field we get the auroras.
A planet is far from being electrically isolated system, a clever notion arrived
at after a fraction of a second's thought, far less time than it took you to
write out your nine questions. This rather begs the question, doesn't it:
Why are you asking questions you can easily think about and answer for yourself?
The answer of course lies in your reference to Mercury. Bad troll. Go to the
library. No cookie. Bad troll.
Seen any lightning bolts between the Earth and the Moon Lately? How
much charge difference could get by the corner cubes on the moon,
Henry? Would an electrically conducting geosynchronous satellite stay
geosynchronous if the Earth had a charge? How much charge is to
much, Henry? A -1 / r^3 potential causes orbital precession, not -1 / r.
Doesn't Henry know that? Henry asks silly questions. [Old Man]
<...>
> A planet is far from being electrically isolated system, a clever notion arrived
> at after a fraction of a second's thought, far less time than it took you to
> write out your nine questions. This rather begs the question, doesn't it:
>
> Why are you asking questions you can easily think about and answer for yourself?
>
> The answer of course lies in your reference to Mercury. Bad troll.
OK ... just for the sake of devil's advocate -- a position which we
enjoyed a mutual appreciation of in the fan thread -- is there some
reason it is inherently absurd to think an orbital anomaly might be
due to electromagnetism?
> HenriWilson wrote:
>
> > What is known about residual charge imbalance on planets?
> > Are planets electrically neutral?
> > Is net charge easy to measure?
> > Has planet 'voltage' ever been measured?
> > How might a charge imbalance affect the motion of an orbiting planet?
> > Would a planet near the sun be more likely to be charged than an outer one?
These are reasonable questions, deficient only in legwork.
> > Might the movement of such charge create a magnetic field that interacts with
> > the planet's internal one and that of the sun and other space objects?
This one strikes me as misguided, though. A moving electron creates a
magnetic field, but this magnetic field does not interact with the
electron's intrinsic magnetic moment -- other than by linear addition
in a particular frame -- nor does it react with external fields
(caveat ditto); the "interaction" of moving charge and field is
already accounted for in the Lorentz force law.
> > Could the anomalous perihelion advance of Mercury be caused by the orbital
> > movement of its own charge?
> > Could there be a charge gradient across a planet due for instance to the sun's
> > radiation?
Yes. :-)
> > No silly answers please.
The problem with the Mercury perihelion thing seems to me not that it
is intrinsically impossible, but simply that it is unmotivated,
uncalculated, and the anomaly has already been claimed successfully.
If Wilson had worked out a quantitative explanation along these lines
between 1859 and 1916, there might have been a chance. What was he
doing all those years? :-)
Interesting I _don't_ find this angle among a list of attempts to
explain the shift classically -- which includes "A number of ad hoc
proposals ... including, among others, the existence of a new planet
Vulcan near the Sun, a ring of planetoids, a solar quadrupole moment
and a deviation from the inverse-square law of gravitation".
(http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/node11.html)
"Ad hoc" is post editorializing: finding unknown planets by orbital
perturbations was after all a known game; it just happened not to
produce results in this case. And like the charged planet, a solar
quadrupole moment was not ridiculous, simply wrong.
HenriWilson wrote:
> What is known about residual charge imbalance on planets?
> Are planets electrically neutral?
I seem to recall being told, many decades ago, that the Earth's surface
had a net negative charge, but I don't know that there's any truth to
the statement.
> Is net charge easy to measure?
I doubt it.
> Has planet 'voltage' ever been measured?
The "voltage" would vary depending on whwn and where it were being measured.
The only significant voltages I can think of are the ones involved in
electrical storms.
> How might a charge imbalance affect the motion of an orbiting planet?
The *might* affect the motion significantly, *if* they were very large.
The planets are very far apart.
I don't know that any such effect has ever been noticed.
> Would a planet near the sun be more likely to be charged than an outer one?
I don't know that there's any theory on this.
But if the sun had a net charge then a close planet might well have
different induced charges on the sides facing towards and away from the sun.
> Might the movement of such charge create a magnetic field that interacts with
> the planet's internal one and that of the sun and other space objects?
One would expect so, but if it were significant, the orbits might well
be unstable - suggesting that planets with long stable orbits are almost
completely electrically neutral.
> Could the anomalous perihelion advance of Mercury be caused by the orbital
> movement of its own charge?
I would think that a net charge would make the orbit unstable rather
than cause a precession in the orbit. But that's a guess.
> Could there be a charge gradient across a planet due for instance to the sun's
> radiation?
Due to the sun's charge, yes.
Due to the radiation of charged particles from the sun, yes.
Due to em radiation from the sun, maybe due to interaction between that
radiation and charged particles enveloping the Earth, perhaps.
> No silly answers please.
Oh, sorry, I didn't read that bit.
--
Barry
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
Probably true - but the corresponding positive charge is on the clouds,
not the rest of the solar system.
--
Richard Herring
Poetic after a fashion -- but dead wrong. :-) For starters,
the sun is a gaseous ball.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.
It is inevitable that planets will have some net charge: the only
question is the magnitude of the effect. A preliminary Google search
is not encouraging, however.
It can't have very much of a charge, or gravity would be out the window.
Calculate the charge difference required to equal the gravitational
attraction. Now Calculate the charge difference required between the Sun
and Earth that would produce a measurable deviation in Earth's orbit.
I've calculated this before and it was a surprisingly small difference.
And I think someone else has posted it in former thread as well.
Richard Perry
Calculate the charge per unit mass, rho, to produce an electric force
equal to that of the gravitational force on Earth:
Qq= [ 4*pi*ep0 ][ G*M*m ] C^2
rho = sqrt[ 4*pi*ep0*G ] C / kg
ep0 = 8.854 x 10^(-12)
G = 6.673 x 10^(-11)
m (Earth) = 5.97 x 10^(24) kg
M (Sun) = 2.0 x 10^(30) kg
e = 1.602 x 10^(-19) C
r (Earth-Sun) = 1.5 x 10^(11) m
R (Earth radius) = 6.4 x 10(6) m
rho = 8.6 x 10^(-11) C / kg
rho / e = 5.4 x 10^(8) electrons / kg
q / e (Earth) = 3.2 x 10^(33) electrons <------------
Q (Sun) = 1.7 x 10^(20) C
Electric field, E, at Earth orbit:
E = [ 1 / 4*pi*ep0 ] [ Q / r^2 ] = 68 x 10^(6) volts / meter
So, assuming equal charge densities for Earth and Sun, an electric
field at Earth orbit equivalent to one millionth of the Earth-Sun
gravitational force is 68 volts / meter. That's 870 million volts
through the diameter of the Earth (big solar tides?). [Old Man]
Wouldn't you only have to consider surface charge here?
Or more likely, the charge on the radiation belts.
We can assume that the core has no voltage gradient across it.
It appears from your calculation that a relatively small residual charge would
afect the orbit quite considerably.
So there are many possibilities as far as Mercury is concerned, being so close
to the sun and presumably with a surface that is a very poor conductor.
However any effect on the actual orbit would be an inverse square law
relationship like gravity so should not make any difference to the orbit. What
might affect it is the magnetic force caused by the movement of net charge.
Once again, quite a few possibilities here.
>
>Richard Perry
nightbat
Yes, the metallic core makeup of a stellar or planetary space
body is very important to gravitational position including around a
further dominant stellar body.
the nightbat
The physics of charge separation would determine the appropriate
charge distribution. No assumptions about charge distribution have
been made here. It has been assumed that bulk charge density is
proportional to bulk mass density, but the charge could reside on the
surface as well. The numbers reported above are unchanged. The
tidal effect would be much greater if one assumed that all of the
charge resided on the ocean surface. Henri is welcome to calculate
the results for particular charge distributions and charge densities,
but be forewarned that other assumptions make for very messy
calculations. esthetically rho = sqrt[ 4*pi*ep0*G ] is elegant.
> Or more likely, the charge on the radiation belts.
>
> We can assume that the core has no voltage gradient across it.
>
> It appears from your calculation that a relatively small residual
> charge would afect the orbit quite considerably.
Yes. rho / e = 5.4 x 10^(8) electrons / kg is rather small, and that's
for equal electrical and gravitational force. Water has a neutral pH
with 10^7 H+ ions per mole.
> Henri Wilson.
[Old Man]
Interesting. So the Earth is stroking the Sun's "cloth".
Is this leading to:
[1] a charge imbalance between points on the Earth?
[2] a charge imbalance between the Earth and the Sun?
[3] Other effects?
An interesting tack, that.
There's no real elegant method by which to determine whether
the Earth, when it was basically a big ball of molten rock (and
apparently slamming into other big balls of molten rocks of similar
size) was magnetic or not. At best we might determine the
magnetisim of rocks as they solidified -- but that's after
they're no longer liquid, but sort of plastic.
As far as I can tell orbiting a piece of ferromagnetic material,
say, a needle, around a bar magnet pointing in the same general
direction as the needle will not do all that much for the needle.
However, it turns out the Sun's magnetic field is a little more
complicated than this naive model; it actually describes what
is apparently known as a "Parker spiral", presuambly because
of the Sun's gaseous nature (and the scientist who first described
the effect).
It also turns out the Sun's magnetic field flips every
sunspot cycle. 11 years ago the Sun's magnetic field
is reversed from what it is now. While it is far from
clear that the Sun's been doing this all of its life or
why it does so (I was expecting a constant direction,
like Jupiter's orientation, which turns out to be opposite
from Earth's) it's clear that in its current form the Sun
can't be sustaining Earth's field.
http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/solarmag.html
There is also the issue that the Earth's magnetic field wobbles
and is not aligned with the axis. The Earth's magnetic field
also flips, although the cycle is far longer -- once every 300,000
years or so. Another might happen in about 50,000 years.
(It is hoped the flip does not lead to high amounts of radiation
impinging us from the solar wind.)
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a10819.html
>Earth has one extra electron, the corresponding proton is on Mars, hence our
>increasing proximity to Mars with every passing day.
>
>Here is one thing to consider: The solar wind includes lots of charged particles
>and when these jump the gap into the earth's magnetic field we get the auroras.
>A planet is far from being electrically isolated system, a clever notion arrived
>at after a fraction of a second's thought, far less time than it took you to
>write out your nine questions. This rather begs the question, doesn't it:
>
>Why are you asking questions you can easily think about and answer for yourself?
>
>The answer of course lies in your reference to Mercury. Bad troll. Go to the
>library. No cookie. Bad troll.
Did you write this as an answer to my questions or an exercise in time wasting?
So what are you people trying to say.
Are you agreeing that net surplus charge COULD conceiveably affect a planet's
orbit?
If there were electric charge effects, we would simply make an error in
calculating an orbiting planet's mass. Magnetic interactions with charge bias
could conceiveably affect the perihelion advance of Mercury.
>
>
> the nightbat
Flipping of the Sun's Magnetic Field
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast15feb_1.htm?list125479
Resources - Sun
http://edu-observatory.org/eo/sun.html
You deny observations?
> Our orentation in the field is in cross evry 11 years.
Actually, we cross, say, Jupiter's ecliptic every 6 months.
I'm not sure about the Sun's rotational plane -- after all, the
Sun is a gaseous ball and gaseous balls tend to do weird things. :-)
Including flip magnetic fields, apparently. (I wonder if we can
observe this in other stars as well? Say, through radioastronomy?)
> In 11 years
> our orbit flips the mag because we follow east of our last orbit evry
> orbit. In 22 years 22 orbits with no orbit line on top of another
> ,,,the moon dont ,,,if the moon orbited the eart like the earth orbits
> sun the moon would be up side down half the time.
> The moon would ay the earth fliped.
> Nope ,,just an orbit cycle .
> There is a simple reason the suns mag flips upside down ,,,we moved .
In order to observe the Sun flipping with your hypothesis
(assuming I'm understanding it correctly) we'd have to move
in the opposite direction. Since the starfield doesn't
rotate from year to year (although it does rotate during
the year; Orion, for instance, is a winter constellation
in the northern hemisphere) I'd say that this particular
hypothesis doesn't fly too well.
YOU forgot to make a calculation. Do you know anything about vacuum
physics?!
I suspect that you are a troll yourself!
Harald
Interesting, I did not know that solar UV makes a short circuit in space!
How does that work?
Harald
LOL !
Some people are soooo cleverrrrr than they consider that the only
question that deserves to be asked is theirs.
The complain for losing time answering question but spent time
insulting people and making no-constructive comment.
Don't be too hard : this is a social disease common with driven back
people...
LOL
Arthur
*Our* mag flipped?
Then why don't we have to buy new compasses every 11 years?
The Coulombic component of excess charge on a planet will 'not' cause a
deviation from the prescribed gravitationally induced orbital path,
simply because both are inverse square fields. The only effect of the
charge would be a miscalculation of the ratio (Sun mass)/(Planet mass).
OTOH the 'magnetic component' of force due to the relative motion of the
charges 'will' indeed produce an advance in perihelion, in that owing to
the nature of the magnetic field (it is relative-velocity dependent) the
effect will be equivalent to a periodic change in the net Coulombic
charge. I hold that this is indeed the cause of the deviation, though
not necessarily from an imbalance of charge population, but of an
imbalance of discrete-charge average speed within the masses. It is
exactly this asymmetry that causes, among other effects:
Ampere effect (parallel conductors)
The Hall effect
Galvanic effect
Peltier effect
P and N type material differences
Adhesion
Cohesion
and even Gravity itself
the list is endless
Richard Perry
Ahem.
If the Earth's magfield flipped it would probably *stay* flipped
until it flipped again. (And it turns out it does flip, but at
a far longer cycle than the Sun's. Rocks show some interesting
characteristics traceable to the magnetic polarity reversal.
I'd have to look up the details, admittedly.)
And the Earth and Sun are a little more complicated than a
bar magnet. AFAICT the Earth is creating a magnetic field
because of a torque on the Earth causing the liquid core
to slosh in a characteristic fashion. However, I'd have
to look and/or simulate (I don't have the equipment), and
the processes deep in the Earth are but poorly understood.
(It's a pity we can't go down there and look around,
recent movies notwithstanding. The mantle is way too hot.)
It's chaotic. A few times I've stumbled across some web site
with simulation results that claims they're the first to reproduce
the statistical behavior of these flips, and they required
a 3-D model of the core and its interactions with the field
to do it.
I didn't bookmark it, but I think these might be the guys:
http://www.psc.edu/science/Glatzmaier/glatzmaier.html
- Randy
Good. I'm glad someone agrees with me.
Another nail in the GR coffin eh?