The Source of the Aurora Borealis: Electrons Surfing on Alfvén Waves

https://www.energy.gov/science/fes/articles/source-aurora-borealis-electrons-surfing-alfven-waves

by geox • 4 years ago

55 15 4 years ago

energy.gov

emsixteen• 4 years ago

I miss living in the Arctic. 24 hour daylight in summer, aurora when it's not, love it.

dylan6042• 4 years ago

That's a nice spin on 24 hour darkness when it's not

e12e2• 4 years ago

It's 24 hours without the sun over the horizon - hardly 24 hours of darkness (even in December there are several hours of twilight - like a stretched out sunrise/sunset - but with the sun below the horizon - and often deep blue colors).

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

Alfvén was another example of a scientist who got no respect during his lifetime, but turned out to be right while his colleagues were wrong, and a better scientist than them.

Plasma fluid dynamics still does not get anywhere near the respect it deserves. And, Enceladus does not have geysers, it has jets.

I say this not as a plasma fluid physicist.

kryptiskt• 4 years ago

He did win a Nobel prize so he did get some respect, at least from his Swedish colleagues.

cinntaile2• 4 years ago

People are rarely wrong or right across the entire spectrum. To give a concrete example... He was a center figure in the anti-nuclear movement in Sweden and one of the reasons to oppose fission was because he thought fusion was right around the corner. 50 years later and fusion is still right around the corner.

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

Any reason, it turns out, was good enough; each reactor not built is one that won't cost another $billion to dismantle.

Fusion, as currently conceived, will never happen, so that's OK. If D-3He or p-B11 ever works, we will need it in the outer solar system, and we will owe him for laying essential groundwork.

netman21• 4 years ago

Alfvén was pretty much the father of the electric universe theory.

From Wikipedia:

In 1937, Alfvén argued that if plasma pervaded the universe, it could then carry electric currents capable of generating a galactic magnetic field.[6] After winning the Nobel Prize for his works in magnetohydrodynamics, he emphasized that:

    In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure.[7]

His theoretical work on field-aligned electric currents in the aurora (based on earlier work by Kristian Birkeland) was confirmed in 1967,[8] these currents now being known as Birkeland currents.[citation needed]

Alfvén's work was disputed for many years by the senior scientist in space physics, the British mathematician and geophysicist Sydney Chapman.[9] Alfvén was regarded as a person with unorthodox opinions in the field by many physicists,[10] R. H. Stuewer noting that "... he remained an embittered outsider, winning little respect from other scientists even after he received the Nobel Prize..."[11] and was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals. Alfvén recalled:

    When I describe [plasma phenomena] according to this formalism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers are rarely accepted by the leading US journals

----- Plasma does indeed pervade the universe. Electromagnetic forces are 10^^30 times more powerful than gravity and decrease linearly with distance, not with the square. They play a much bigger role in cosmology than gravity. eUniverse theory explains many things, like the rotation of galaxies with no need to invent dark matter. Also, star formation through the pinch effect mentioned above.

criticaltinker• 4 years ago

Thanks! I was going to make a similar comment myself but HN isn’t too keen on these ideas yet. Glad to see other like-minded folks here.

The Wikipedia page for plasma cosmology is extremely biased, so I suggest anyone interested in these topics should read the previous comment I made and some of the resources I linked there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31218219

picture• 4 years ago

Isn't that just the nature of exploring things that are hard to experiment/interact with? (It would be difficult to directly speed up time on cosmological scales or manipulate galactic clusters for experimentation)

How wikipedia explains consensus:

The term non-standard is applied to any theory that does not conform to the scientific consensus. Because the term depends on the prevailing consensus, the meaning of the term changes over time. For example, hot dark matter would not have been considered non-standard in 1990, but would be in 2010. Conversely, a non-zero cosmological constant resulting in an accelerating universe would have been considered non-standard in 1990, but is part of the standard cosmology in 2010.

The Source of the Aurora Borealis: Electrons Surfing on Alfvén Waves

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