Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nrg_crisis who wrote (278364)	11/3/2008 2:16:49 PM
From: Snowshoe	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794009

OT - another physics post... Strange Portal Connects Earth to Sun news.yahoo.com Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer space.com Mon Nov 3, 8:31 am ET Like giant, cosmic chutes between the Earth and sun, magnetic portals open up every eight minutes or so to connect our planet with its host star. Once the portals open, loads of high-energy particles can travel the 93 million miles (150 million km) through the conduit during its brief opening, space scientists say. Called a flux transfer event, or FTE, such cosmic connections not only exist but are possibly twice as common as anyone ever imagined, according to space scientists who attended the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Ala., last week. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible," said David Sibeck, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Dynamic bursts Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected. For instance, particles from the sun are constantly whisked away via the solar wind and often follow magnetic field lines that connect the sun's atmosphere with terra firma. The field lines allow particles to penetrate Earth's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet. "We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was active," Sibeck said. "We were wrong. The connections are not steady at all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic." Several speakers at the workshop outlined the formation of a flux transfer event. One idea is that on the side of Earth facing the sun, our magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. And about every eight minutes, the two fields briefly reconnect, forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. Sibeck said to think of the FTE as a giant rolling pin that lies flat along the boundary between the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields. (He noted the rolling pin would have to be malleable so it could pierce through both magnetic fields while lying flat.) "These FTEs kind of look like roller pins, and they form as little blob roller pins at the tip of the magnetosphere facing the sun," Sibeck told SPACE.com. "They can't decide which way they're going to slide around the Earth, so they grow there into big roller pins and then they take off and sort of spirally roll along [Earth's magnetosphere] like you're pounding out dough." More than one FTE can form at once, he said, and they stay open for about 15 to 20 minutes. More to learn In order to measure such FTEs, spacecraft must not only catch them forming but also be on either end of the magnetic structures (either lengthwise or widthwise). In fact, the European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through, Sibeck said. While these measurements have nailed down the width of an FTE, the length is still uncertain though one measurement put it at up to five Earth radii. One Earth radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers). Astrophysicist Jimmy Raeder of the University of New Hampshire used those measurements to develop computer simulations of the portals. He found the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth's equator and then in December, the FTEs would roll over the North Pole. In July, they roll over the South Pole. Sibeck thinks the events occur twice as often as previously thought, proposing two types of flux transfer events — active and passive. When the magnetic cylinders are active, they allow particles to flow through rather easily, forming important conduits of energy for Earth's magnetosphere, Sibeck said. When passive, the cylinders have more resistance to transiting particles. The internal structure of a passive cylinder makes it tougher for particles and magnetic fields to flow through. Sibeck has calculated the properties of passive FTEs and hopes he and his colleagues will hunt for signs of them in data collected with THEMIS and Cluster. The space scientists at the workshop still want to figure out why the portals form every eight minutes and how magnetic fields inside the cylinders twist and coil.

To: nrg_crisis who wrote (278364)	11/3/2008 2:17:23 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794009

Are you taking or teaching? As I write this, I'm about to start a class on wave-particle duality

To: nrg_crisis who wrote (278364)	11/3/2008 3:31:22 PM
From: LindyBill	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794009

Is Obama really going to repeal the laws of physics as part of his program to heal the planet? Yes, he is. The "laws of Politics." There are laws governing human interaction, [known in philosophy as "Politics"], just as there are laws of motion. None of us would want to be a passenger in a plane designed by people who couldn't define "F=MA," yet we vote for rulers that can't define the premises they use to govern us. My first premise is when looking at the universe is: "Everything is connected to everything else." To me, it's like a river. The headwaters are Philosophy. where we formulate the rules to use to look at the universe. Plato said, "there are two universes, the known and the unknown." Aristotle said, "this is the real world, there isn't any other." He also said, "use reason to discover how it works." I follow Aristotle. Next "down river" is your subject, Classical Physics. Where you really spend all of your time talking about energy, energy, energy, and the rules that affect it's use and conversion, such as time and matter. Because that is all that is in the universe. Which will remain a bit of a muddle until the gravity question is answered. Although I still have trouble getting my brain around the elasticity of time concept. There once was a lady named Bright, Who traveled faster than light. She set out one day, In a relative way, And returned on the previous night. Then Biology, which is still at such a primitive stage that they have never even defined "Life" yet. Best definition of Life that I have read is an operational one: "Life is an open, thermodynamic process that organizes energy." Next down river is the individual. What should I do. We call this "Ethics." The study of what is best for each of us. And finally, down river, "Politics." The study of how we should deal with each other. We not only do not agree to any firm rules in this area, we try to violate known ones of Physics. For instance, a law of thermodynamics when we try to get something for nothing. That's why we fail at Politics. "You can't fool Mother Nature!" I find that looking at the Universe this way really helps me to integrate knowledge. Without it, info coming in tends to get put in the wrong sub-section of my memory. I was taught to look at the world this way about 45 years ago, and it not only gave me a better way of looking ahead, it structured everything I then knew so that I could use it better.

To: nrg_crisis who wrote (278364)	11/3/2008 9:02:40 PM
From: ahhaha	1 Recommendation Respond to of 794009

To me, though, the exact nature of gravity is fun but not really the most interesting problem out there. To me, and to a lot of the theoretical physics community, it's the only game in town. I admit we theory boys can't make much progress at the QCD level, and that's where the resolution of the mechanism generating gravity lies and I don't mean through the Higgs Mechanism which still tries to bend gravity to the will of Electroweak Theory. I'm about to start a class on wave-particle duality, There is no class dedicated to that alone. You get it in QM. The old HUP. There really is no duality there, only humans trying to fit their human condition through two slits at once. a mystery at its core as is so much of modern physics. Why so? Understanding doesn't come instantaneously. One really good aspect of these mysteries of modern physics is the downfall of determinism, implicit in Newtonian mechanics, and limitations placed on what we human beings can know, even in principle. I don't think that quite gets at it. It's more like we can't expect to put new experiences in old boxes. We should be happy at that prospect since it implies there's no TOE. TOE = pretense to knowledge, and knowledge of the universe is unbounded above.