posted
What is the velocity of the charged particles that are ejected from a star determined by? Is it the star's magnetic field? Is it a constant? I'm toying around with an idea for a SF short story, and while I've done a little bit of looking for this information online, I haven't found it yet. If somebody happens to know, I'd be very interested to hear about it.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I would imagine that you might try a Google under "Solar Max". There's lots of data now on our local solar wind....
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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I would think it would be the temperature of the corona, since temperature is directly related to the velocity of the particles of the stuff involved.
I think there's a sort of mystery, though, as to why the corona is so much hotter than the photosphere, which presumably drives it. It can't be what's driving it, actually. So the velocity must somehow come from the magnetic fields, which are certainly extreme enough to be the source of the energy involved. But the last thing I read about this (I think there was a SciAm article within the last year or two maybe called "The mystery of the corona" or something like that) it was still not at all well understood.
That gives you a good bit of leeway to propose alternative explanations in your story, in fact, so is probably all to the better.
posted
I realized something (by thinking) that I've wanted to tell someone, so that when I die the realization wouldn't be lost. Tornadoes are electromagnetic phenomena. Every attempt to explain them in terms of wind shear and thermal motion of clouds comes up very very lame.
Spirals like that come from sinks. Just like the freaking whirlpools in your tub. You have to have something being sucked away very rapidly to cause it. So what is being sucked away in a tornado? It's not air, of course. Surely it must be electric charge being sucked into the ground.
From observation all my life in Alabama, tornadoes always seem to be accompanied by almost constant lightning. In the absense of this near ubiquitous flashing of lightning, you get some violent storms but no tornadoes. Another thing is the very green look to the sky when tornadoes are about. That green is most likely from ionized oxygen. The day glow is colored green from that same oxygen emission line. When the sky is green it indicates significant amounts of strongly ionized oxygen. (The electrons are jumping back down into their lower energy states, and emitting photons of a certain wavelength.) That ionization also means there will be a lot of charged particles about, and when they are close to the ground it yields quite a strong electromagnetic field gradient. No wonder there's so much lightning. Though whether it's the cause or effect, I'm not sure.
I'm not an atmospheric scientist at all, but this just seems obvious to me from my knowledge of fields and from the strength of the forces that must be involved. Somebody needs to take that idea and run with it.
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flish, are you telling me that my theory is not plausible? Can you elaborate? <tries to see through the opaqueness that is flish lately >
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Like the toroid. The bull. The 2D twisted out, bent into the shapely 3D, comely in simulations. Encrusted with sugar. Glazed with chocolate. or not.
Peter talks quite a bit about his electromagnetic theories for tornado formation. He also hosts a forum discussing the charge sheath vortex, and I think you would probably be able to add something to the discussion. Of course, I don't understand very much of it, but it sounds plausible to me!
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I don't know much about astronomy, but "Coronal Mass Ejection" would make a great name for a punk band.
Posts: 786 | Registered: Jun 2003
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