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In episode 2 of this presentation, Dr. Michael Clarage continues
his discussion of the Earth's electrical environment
and his ongoing role as a scientist on the SAFIRE Project.
In episode one Dr. Clarage offered his thoughts on a recent space.com report
on mysteries fluctuations of electrons in Earth's atmosphere.
We ask Dr. Clarage to further explain his thoughts on the best experimental approach
to investigating electrical phenomena associated with planets and stars.
As the primary astrophysicist on the SAFIRE Project
it's my job to design the experiments
that will best allow us to explore electrical aspects of planets and stars.
What might the electrical potential between a star and a planet look like.
Here's one model that I am working on, the Earth is on the left the Sun on the right,
that squiggle blue line represents the rough structure of electrical potential
at any point between a planet and a star.
Drawing is quite representational, just trying to sketch out the general shape of things.
This model is based partly on experimental data from SAFIRE
partly on known geophysical data
and partly on NASA satellite data of the Sun and solar wind.
On the left, the potential rises quickly to about 300,000 volts
as you move away from the planet.
This is that 'fair weather' potential I mentioned.
The sawtooth squiggles as you move up are those bands
of increasing and decreasing electron density mentioned in the space.com article.
Then continuing to move away from the Earth we reach the Van Allen belts.
The inner Van Allen belt, dominated by positive charges, is the high point of the curve,
then a potential drop as you move out into the outer Van Allen belt,
dominated by negative charges,
then we have a long slow rise in the potential as we move towards the Sun.
There is data to support a 600 volts rise in potential
from the Van Allen belts to the Sun.
I've spoken about that at several conferences and I'll give you the references below.
Putting everything together on to one graph like this is really breaking new ground.
Astrophysicists are not talking about things this way, not yet at least.
This is understandable, every scientist has enough difficulty keeping up with data
in their own sub-specialty.
It is difficult to be combining measurements from the atmosphere, the ionosphere,
Van Allen belts, interplanetary space, solar atmosphere and photosphere.
And like I said, none of us on the SAFIRE team are pushing any particular model
the real shape of that curve between a planet and a star
might look very different from what I've drawn here.
This still needs much more exploration
and continued work matching SAFIRE data to NASA data,
and further reinterpretation of the NASA data in an electrical context.
Pictures such as these, of the overall electrical potential layers,
are not yet seen in books because most astronomers have continued to assume
that charge separations are not maintainable at cosmological distances.
Is almost an irony to it, because my little drawing is actually the much simpler
first-order effect natural in plasmas.
It should have been the first thing people look for,
but since planetary charge separations were not considered possible
investigations were forced to look at the much more complicated
second-order effects of complex magnetic fields and induced local currents.
With the SAFIRE chamber, we are in a unique position to run experiments
exploring the possible overall electrical nature of stars and planets.
Coming back to the space.com article, I would propose that the phrase
'The case of the missing electrons' is somewhat of a misnomer.
Calling them missing, implies there is something wrong about it,
like an awkward glitch in what should be nature's otherwise tidy charge neutrality.
I have become convinced that the whole mantra of charge neutrality
is preventing us from seeing reality.
Nature is almost never charge neutral,
and by that I mean, if you look at anything interesting in nature,
like a cell, or an organelle in a cell, or a tree, or a thunderstorm,
or the Northern Lights, nature is always separating charges.
Inside our cells all the workings of life are powered by charge separations
across chloroplasts and mitochondria membranes.
Bees always have a greater electrical potential than flowers
so there are always electrical fields connecting bees and flowers.
And when a bee pollinates a flower there is a quite measurable
and very exciting exchange of electric charge between the two.
The more we look at what nature is actually doing, the more we see that
charge neutrality seldom exists in any dynamic environment.
Coming back to the ionosphere, I would say that
the shells of free electrons are not missing from regions of the ionosphere.
I would propose that the electrons in the ionosphere
are simply arranging themselves as needed.
Now, as needed for what? That's a really good question.
There was another recent article, a review article that make similar mistakes,
I would say, in describing large-scale electrical phenomena.
This was the press release describing an unexpected Star Trek shield
protecting the Earth from 'killer electrons'.
Again there's an undertone like something is wrong,
like the Earth should not have high energy electrons around it.
Or if it does, then that somehow a scary thing.
Think an analogy might help here, by way of analogy you could say
that the stomach protects the rest of the body
from the dangerous enzymes and acids in it.
You could certainly say that,
but you need to acknowledge that it's all part of a larger structure.
The enzymes are needed inside the stomach for specific reasons.
The high potency acids are supposed to be there, for the stomach to do its function.
When it comes to studying planetary and stellar structures,
it would be better if we all would broaden our thinking.
We would learn much more if we came to expect
that cosmological structures are performing useful functions also.
For reasons that we do not yet understand
the Earth is supposed to have high energy electrons around it.
That is a required part of a larger structure.
Just because we do not understand, does not mean it's a dangerous accident.
Electrical plasmas naturally form barriers, membranes if you will,
these plasma barriers, or membranes, let through some particles, but not others.
We have a lot to learn about that,
our theoretical understanding of all this is still very primitive,
but such plasma membranes have been known about for about a hundred years.
The SAFIRE team is trying to take us a step back
and explore experimentally some of the basic assumptions
about the electrical nature of the solar system.
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