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Gravity versus Electricity, in the terms of how a star works. What's great about
being here for a conference that's focusing on energy and energy production,
the Sun, every star is a perfect example of something that puts out an enormous
amount of energy. And so, we can learn from that; we can study how a Sun does it
and then maybe there's aspects of that that we can learn from. Since the time of
Newton, we have talked about forces as what changes the world. This is a very
simple, elegant formulation which has fueled a lot of mechanistic science for
hundreds of years. It's a very useful way to look at the world if you're a
scientist; forces cause change. It would be a much longer lecture to tell the
story of how this chart came to be. Those are the forces that are considered in
modern astrophysics: the first, gravity is considered the king; gravity is
considered to cause everything else to come about. We then take into account the
effect of magnetic fields, nuclear forces, the weak force - why is the electric
force then left out? I won't go into the why, but it has been: electric fields,
electric currents - not allowed. If you imagine the gravity model. I'll talk us
through now the causation, through the gravity model. We imagine space with dust,
debris and a lot of emptiness. But gravity is considered to be acting;
it pulls together matter. That pulling together, creates great pressure, great
temperature and eventually, boom! You get a star – a star is created. Some key aspects
of this to highlight. One is the star is all alone in the gravity model. it is
separate from the rest of the universe; it's on its own, burning its own fuel. It
only came about because of some accident, that there just happened to be enough
matter, that just happened to come together. That's it.
The star in this model gets all of its energy from itself. Another drawback of
this model though, is that it has never been observed, to actually happen in
nature, and has never been replicated in the laboratory. Another aspect of the
problem here is that it violates the laws of thermodynamics, this model. So
those are some pretty big strikes against it. What then would happen if we
included the idea of electricity, electric fields, electric currents into
the picture? It definitely changes the story. What do you call it when you
include electricity? You can call it plasma cosmology. Some people refer to it
as an Electric Universe - I don't know what term is better or not.
It is important to know that the SAFIRE team were not associated with the
Electric Universe group. We're a separate organization, which is fine. They do a lot
of really good work; we do a lot of really good work. Let's talk through then
what the story would be if we include electricity. What story could we tell
about the origin of stars? Again, we have space but now it's no longer empty. There
is no such thing as empty space. Matter is permeated by electric fields and
electric currents. Plasma is perfect at conducting electricity;
it’s the best conductor that we have. It naturally forms into rivers of current.
It also naturally supports strong electric fields. These electric fields
and currents naturally organize themselves, and the matter that they go
through, and there is no violation of any laws of thermodynamics. The matter
condensed into a variety of localized structures, some of which we know about
in the laboratory, such as plasmoids. Others we are learning about by studying
the interstellar medium and the picture is that then stars live along these
currents, electric currents. The Stars then receive their energy from the space
around them, or better to say, from their relationship with the space around them.
We still envision a center core which is made up of variety of elements, depending
upon the star, the history of the star, or what the star’s purpose is in the galaxy.
In the model that's a positive pole - think of an anode - and that's in an
environment that is relatively negative, compared to the positive. As was said
yesterday, we often run into discussion problems when people fight
over the word ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. Maybe they're not the best choice of
words; maybe we don't understand electricity, but we can do some good
physics by talking about it this way. So the surrounding medium is the cathode in
this model. The star lives, again, inside of a larger electrical structure. The
plasma will seek equilibrium: there's that separation between the plus and the
minus, that creates a lot of motion, a lot of activity. Things try to come to
equilibrium, but they don't; they can't. Just like you and me, living here,
you could argue, we're trying to come to equilibrium,
but we never do - right until we die and then we're in equilibrium. That striving
to come to some equilibrium...the byproduct of that is this immense amount
of energy and light that comes from that struggle. To highlight again what I said
before. In this model, the star is not creating its own energy; the star is,
better to say, transforming energy. And that energy comes about through the
star’s relationship to the space around it; its relationship to other stars; its
relationship to the galactic medium, is the source of the energy. Planets get
their energy from the Sun; the Sun gets its energy from its larger world. We live
in a hierarchical universe. There's some blueprint that's being manifested
over and over and over, that has to do with energy transformation. How do you
transform energy from a star to a planet. Stellar energy is way too intense for a
planet; direct stellar energy would fry a planet - it would be gone. So how do you
step it down; how do you bring that energy, its solar energy, down to a level
that a planet can use. Same is true with you and me: if you put us up into the
magnetosphere, we would die. Too intense. How do you step that energy then down to
a level that you and I can live in; so we can have things like broccoli and
hamburger, and we can eat and we can get on. Help me I'm going off-script.
That's fine – you’re doing fine. it's wonderfully entertaining. Yes, it was the
broccoli part. Can you take over? Sure. Okay, there you go.
This is how it works in the lab. Well I've got a pointer. Thank you, Michael.
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