I often talk about electric stars and how they fit into the concept of a plasma and electric
universe. The mainstream idea of a star is that it is simply a ball of plasma which under pressure
causes a fusion reaction at its core. Many see the concept of plasma to simply mean separate charges
but still in equal quantity. Thereby not having an overall net charge. Just for now let's ignore the
idea of an electric star and only consider the ball of plasma. One mainstream article
attempts to point out that many scientists are ignoring the basic facts that all stars must have
an overall global electrostatic charge. Let's examine and see where it takes us
The average velocity of free electrons is higher than that of free protons
in a plasma in thermodynamic equilibrium. This means that a greater number of
electrons compared to protons would be able to exceed the escape velocity near the surface.
If we assume that the star was perfectly electrically neutral then around 22% of
all the electrons would reach this velocity compared to almost zero for the protons.
In the case of the Sun, the global electrostatic field was deduced
in a theoretical manner in the early 1920’s by a Dutch astronomer Pannekoek
and similar results were obtained by Rosseland in 1924 and Cowling in 1929.
After the second world war, some studies where the electric field were included
were published. This was then extended by Salpeter in 1961 to look at the impact of the
field on the internal structure of white dwarfs. He concluded there was no significant impact.
From this point onwards there was no more mention of the solar electric field in any further papers.
More recent books and review papers on the solar corona or the Sun have generally omitted the
effect of the electric field. Strangely enough no paper was ever published outlining why it should
not exist. The fact that the field was found within a model of the solar corona probably caused
it to be regarded as an attribute of the highest part of the solar atmosphere and its actual nature
remained unnoticed. Consequently the field was put aside together with the obsolete corona models.
The claim that stars are electrically neutral may originate in a misunderstanding of the
net charge on a star. For example in the textbook by GLendennins there is a subsection
entitled ‘Electrical Neutrality of Stars’. Here they derive the upper limit of the net charge.
The net positive charge has to be smaller than 10^-36 qA Coulombs,
where q is the charge of the proton and A is the number of these particles contained in the star.
The author therefore concludes that “the net charge per nucleon,
and therefore the average charge per nucleon on any star, must be very small, essentially zero.
Here we must agree that the charge per nucleon is negligible and even that of a small macroscopic
volume of plasma is usually negligible. What is important to realise is that the value for
A is extremely large at about 10^57 for a one solar mass star. This will
result in a significant global charge of the star as a whole. It is therefore
easy for the reader of this textbook to simply take the zero value as accepted.
Let's examine in more detail why this is wrong. As we previously mentioned the
lighter electrons tend to separate from the heavier protons in plasma
situated in a gravitational field. The separation is stopped by the electric field. The potential
energy of a free proton with mass mp and charge q in a gravitational field o and electric field v is
The potential energy of a free electron with mass me and charge -q in the same field is
The ration of the densities of these particles must remain essentially constant
since not more than the minutest separation of the charges can occur. Hence Wp = We and
Since the global electrostatic stellar field is a function of radial distance,
r, from the centre of the star, a more universal quantity seems to be the charge
inducing this field. For the entire star, it can be given as a single constant.
Using this equation we find that the global electrostatic charge
Qr inside the star centric sphere of radius r in general is
If Mr is given in solar masses Qr = 77.043 Mr
This value is only valid in the case of an ideally quiet, perfectly spherical, non-rotating star.
Obviously stars do not have these ideal conditions meaning the instantaneous
charge of a given star will differ from this value. The important point to consider is
that any star will permanently set up this charging and not be net neutral.
Without the existence of this global charge there would be some serious physical problems
which could not be avoided. It is not possible to describe the thermodynamical equilibrium
between protons and electrons in a proton-electron plasma situation
in the stellar gravitational field without the appropriate electric field.
This becomes important when we consider the forces acting on both the proton and the electron within
the star. For a proton the magnitude of this force is 50% that of the magnitude of gravity
and for an electron it is about 920 times more intensive than gravity.
This concept of a global charge or a global electrostatic field becomes
even more important when we consider a rotating body of plasma enforced by an external force.
Here the acceleration due to this force acting on both the protons and electrons
in a highly conductive plasma will cause a difference in velocities
of both kinds of charge carriers. This flow of current will therefore induce a magnetic field.
So why am I covering this paper? I think it highlights the need to reconsider all options.
The mainstream has for some reason totally forgotten to consider this rather vital force.
Equally when we consider the electrical nature of our universe in terms of an electric or plasma
universe it is often good to remember that in the simplest of situations a charge separation
will occur which could drive many other features we see. Now this paper only talks about stars
but this would equally hold for a gas giant where partial ionisation would be caused by compressive
ionisation due to gravity. This is something I covered when I looked at Wal’s paper on how
the chondritic meteorites formed. This also applies to a lesser extent to a solid body.
When we examined Charles Chandlers concept of electronic tectonics
we saw that compressive ionisation could cause electrons to flow to the surface.
A simple gravitational field will cause charge segregation. There are
some interesting implications for the electric sun model that probably need to be considered
further where under certain circumstances waves of ionisations could be occurring. There are
some very strange anomalies associated with Red Giant stars that cannot be easily explained with
our current understanding of stars but this I will cover in the next part.