The Gestation of Solar Systems
Marklund Convection
The picture above is a recent composite from the James Webb telescope & Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and I think it is a good argument for the role of electricity in the formation of solar systems. Pascucci et al just published the data & analysis. This image is from what looks like a young solar system - a disc of material with hints of orbits that might be planets. Out of the top and bottom of this disc are jets of energy and matter. The image above is a closeup of the jet. The blue line in the center is from Iron. The green line around it is from Hydrogen. Iron in the center and Hydrogen surrounding is what would naturally happen if strong electric currents were forming the baby solar system.
I will lay out that argument, then I will explain why a grain of salt is needed.
Marklund Convection
The idea developed by Göran Marklund in 1979 is that electric current flow through space will naturally cause a segregation of elements and compounds. Elements such as Iron, while they are moving along, will go toward the center of the current, while elements such as Hydrogen and Helium will migrate to the outside. The segregation depends upon the ionization energy. If you more easily lose an electron, your end up in the center.
You can also check out a couple of good videos
Heavy elements like Iron will more easily lose an electron, and hence become positively charged. This ease of becoming positive make these atoms more susceptible to the Lorentz force hence bringing those ions more towards the center of the current because of their interaction with the magnetic field of the current. Elements like Hydrogen & Helium are less likely to become ionized, hence fewer of them will feel the inward pull, and they will segregate to the outside.
You can work this all out if you are willing to learn the famous right hand rule. But it will require you spinning your hands around in public, pointing at nothing. Which might garnered a certain delight from those around you if you are in a delightful beer patio-garden-picnic area
I will point out that when a physicist works through all this, two mysteries must be invoked:
Mystery #1: a current flow produces a magnetic field that circles around the line of the current.
Mystery #2: a charged particle moving in a magnetic field will experience a force that is perpendicular to both its own motion and the magnetic field.
In classical physics there is no explanation for these two mysteries, they are observed and then formalized into Maxwell’s equations and the Lorentz force, which correspond to items #1 and #2. These two mysteries are handled much better in electrodynamics formulated by Weber and Hertz, but as you know the big guns come out if you make a peep against Maxwell, so I will let my audience explore the works of Thomas Phipps Jr and Andre Koch Torres Assis to see for yourself why Maxwell’s dynamics and the Lorentz/Einstein relativity that results leave much to be desired. I have dived into those waters and swam back to shore quite breathless. I now know that Weber & Hertz & Phipps & Assis are more correct than Maxwell. But I am not strong enough to jump in a save anyone else whose dares those waters.
Getting back to the image from the recent Pascucci paper. We know that when electric currents flow through space, there will be a natural segregation of elements. Heavier elements such as Iron will migrate to the center; lighter elements like Hydrogen will migrate to the outside. And they will form layers.
This is observation is exactly what Pascucci et al have published.
The red outer layer is from Carbon Monoxide (CO). Carbon Monoxide has a slightly lower ionization energy than Hydrogen, so you would reasonably wonder why it would be outside the Hydrogen - but Marklund only calculated for atoms. CO has electric dipole and magnetic susceptibility that would need to be factored in, so I am willing to let that slide for now.
Pascucci et al, of course, are not advocating an Electric model of solar formation. They are advocating a gravity model, with magnetic fields that are a consequence of gravity. How does the gravity model predict the observed segregation? Short answer is that it does not. You can examine their model of various thermal and magnetic winds and see if you find it satisfying. I got a little lost.
I worked for a while with Richard Lovelace at Cornell astrophysics exploring the difference between the gravity model and electric model for star formation. He was delightfully tolerant of the Electric model. I only have good things to say about him. His gravity model went something like this. Gravity causes dust & gas to compress, and there is some amount of angular momentum in the system (two adjustable parameters). The compressing gas releases some energy through friction with itself (another 4 parameters). The ions and electrons each have their own temperatures, which can lead to a net current flow (I think this was 6 parameters). MagnetoHydroDynamic models allow for a solution where a vortex of magnetic flux flows out perpendicular to the disc rotation which drags away particles and angular momentum (I never understood this part, though it involved easily another 4 adjustable parameters). All of this was played out on computer simulations. The code was years-old from many graduate student-lives of contribution. There was nothing in the model that addressed different elements being radially segregated. The model had many adjustable parameters, which might be chosen in ways that are physically meaningful, or might be chosen in ways that will give you the answer you want. Professor Lovelace is great, so no complaints there. I knew I would never spend enough time to dig into the model and code to form any clear opinion of my own on it. So I left it, and went back to the Electric Models.
As some of you know, using gravity to explain disc collapse is very tricky. If you imagine the dust falling in to some center, then the dust will just spin faster as it collapses, which will stop it collapsing. But if enough did somehow compress to make a star, then the stellar ignition will blast away any forming planets. The gravity model has some pretty basic problems. Many of you have probably seen Pierre Marie Robitaille’s work where he explains that gravity collapse is impossible. There is a lot of math in all these arguments, and I do weary from mathematicians telling Nature what she can and cannot do.
To summarize - the electric model immediately predicts that you will see Iron in the center of the jet with Hydrogen on the outside. The gravity model is still struggling to explain this - let alone predict it. Hence, I say that the recent observations are a major win for the electric model.
What about the Salt?
The grain of salt in all this is: we don’t actually know what these objects are. We imagine they are young solar systems. Some of them probably are.
But others might be something else entirely which we do not yet have a name or category for.
The image above was taken by Hubble, though I can hardly believe that is raw data - it looks too much like an artists fancy. That fine jet of plasma shoots for many billions of miles, and it does not widen even a fraction of a degree. Do you think that MagnetoHydroDynamics predicts that? Do all solar systems form this way? Seems not. Why do these objects form this way? Unclear.
These are all dubbed proto-stellar discs. When I hear the word “proto” I think two things
You have already decided that there are only stars out there, and nothing else
People only use the preface “proto” when they do not know what they are talking about.
My grain of salt has to do with assuming we know what we are looking at. Whatever these objects are, it sure looks like some of them have a strong electric current flow and the resulting segregation of elements. Some of these objects might be gestating solar systems. Some of them might be something else.
The Marklund convection – “that electric current flow through space will naturally cause a segregation of elements and compounds”, makes me wonder if the way that molten rock flows to the surface of the planet and seems to naturally cause the segregation and formation of different rocks and minerals, that this may somehow be the same thing!
Dear Dr. Clarage i’ve been a fan of your work since I discovered the videos on the thunderbolts project, though Matthew Ehret’s channel. Thank you for publishing your researches. Since I began to study the birkeland currents and the marklund convection, I’ve been trying to link that with the flow of bioelectricity in the body. I believe that all the energetic meridians, and all the emotional flow that follows intention in the body they are bioelectrical. It seems that they are tiny birkeland currents and they ARE bioelectrical convections. Do you believe this correspondance can be thought that way?