(Non-) Electric Universe News for Summer 2013

Magnetic Reconnection
More observational evidence for magnetic reconnection in energetic solar events

• Phys.org: Solar dynamic loops reveal a simultaneous explosion and implosion, plus evidence for magnetic reconnection

and also other observations, courtesy of Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

• NASA.gov: The Heart of Space Weather Observed in Action

Note the reconnection animation at the bottom of the page.  The magnetic field is NOT static.  

• Nature: Imaging coronal magnetic-field reconnection in a solar flare

Additional References

• Wikipedia: Magnetic Reconnection
• Reconnection Experiments at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Magnetic reconnection is one of the favorite 'whipping boys' of the Electric Universe (EU).  I have yet to see an ACCURATE description of the process from EU advocates.  While descriptions of magnetic reconnection are often simplified to the point of inaccuracy in lots of press releases and education areas, even these errors pale to the 'straw man' descriptions of magnetic reconnection pushed by EU 'theorists'.  Most of their descriptions either have the magnetic field only and leave out the action of the plasma, or claim the magnetic field configuration is static, neither of which are true.

• Thunderbolts, 2004: The Myth of Magnetic Reconnection
• Thunderbolts, 2008: Cluster’s "Magnetic Reconnection" Data and the Big Picture
• Thunderbolts, 2008: Magnetic Reconnection – Reinventing the Wheel
• Thunderbolts, 2011: Article 4 : “No” to Magnetic Reconnection and “Yes” to Electrified Plasma

Note that Electric Universe supporters have no experiments - or even testable mathematical models - to support their alternatives - which appears to be some invisbile agent operating invisible electric discharge tubes.

Some mainstream researchers still use the term 'discharges' when discussion the electric fields and current flows generated by magnetic reconnection, which EU supporters have seized upon to claim the researcher is actually talking about a discharge similar to lightning.  I recently wrote about how this is in error (see On Magnetic Reconnection and "Discharges" as well as my section on magnetic reconnection in The Electric Sky - Short-Circuited).

IBEX Contradicts Electric Sun Models AGAIN!
The IBEX mission, which measures the flux of NEUTRAL ATOMS (not ions, not electrons) moving near Earth, seems to have detected the action of the fast and slow components of the solar wind interacting with the interstellar medium along the Sun's heliotail (Wikipedia: heliosphere).  The interaction has provided a distinct signal for the heliotail of the Sun - the 'downwind' component of the heliosphere as it moves through the interstellar medium.  The news is not that the heliotail structure exists - that has been suspected for years.  The news is that we are seeing components (some expected, some unexpected) of it for the first time.

• NASA: NASA’s IBEX Provides First View Of the Solar System’s Tail 
• Phys.org: IBEX spacecraft images the heliotail, revealing an unexpected structure

EUers still don't specify how the neutral atom detectors on IBEX are seeing their claimed star-powering electric currents and some are trying to relate the result to their 'Electric Comet' claims.  Of course, fluid flows, especially compressible flows of neutral fluids, form these types of comet-like structures all the time when moving around obstructions.  Check out some of the images at

• MIT Open Courseware: Compressible Flows
• MIT Compressible Fluid Dynamics

I've written before on how IBEX creates problems for an externally-powered 'Electric Sun':

• IBEX Results Cause Even More Problems for Electric Sun Model

• "Electric Sun Verified"?? - In your dreams...

• IBEX slams the Electric Sun model yet again...

• The IBEX Challenge for the Electric Sun

Those Sneaky Neutrinos...
Still more results showing how the solar neutrino problem was solved by neutrinos changing type as they travelled from the core of the Sun to the Earth.  This result further reinforces the data of how the Sun is powered by INTERNAL nuclear reactions, not external electric currents.

• New results from T2K conclusively show muon neutrinos transform to electron neutrinos

And while mainstream science has plenty of published estimates of the neutrino flux for the standard solar model (Standard solar models, helioseismology, and solar neutrinos), we've yet to see a single estimate or even algorithm to compute the solar neutrino flux for ANY of the Electric Sun models.

Guess the Electric Sun supporters will have to continue to rely on innuendo to discredit the neutrino experiments since they have no facts…

• Neutrino Oscillations: Yet Another Blow Against Non-nuclear Stellar Energy...

When You Can't Win, Rewrite the Dictionary!
As the Electric Unverse advocates keep up their intellectual acrobatics trying to twist modern space science press releases into support for their model, they are running into more and more problems.  I had written about some possibilies they might do as a 'Plan B' to rescue their struggling pseudo-science (see Whines of the Electric Universe. II.). 

I'm finding examples on a variety of science forums where EU supporters, outside their safe zone of the Thunderbolts Forum, occasionally encounter knowledgeable amateurs and people who REALLY do science in space.  When the Electric Universe supporters get cornered on the consequences of their more bizarre claims (as outlined in Challenges for Electric Universe 'Theorists'), they retreat to the claim that they are really correct because they believe gravity is actually an electric phenomena (see Thunderbolts: Article 16 : Implications of the electrical explanation of mass and gravity – Part 1).

With this re-writing of the dictionary, Electric Universe supporters make ALL results of mainstream astronomy become a consequence of their 'electrical' theories!

With this simple trick, the Electric Universe 'theorists' get to claim credit for other peoples' work while doing NO actual work themselves!