Thanks for the explanations I've forgotten how high voltages can be in a tv.

Among others, I think Nereid summed it up nicely when she wrote "… regular readers will be wondering 'what is this "Electric Sun model"?' and 'how does this model explain the relevant observations?'

And regular readers will also know the answer: there is no such model … at least, no scientific model." So perhaps my question is entirely irrelevant if even proponents of an 'Electric Sun' cannot even agree on the basics of their 'idea', much less articulate it!

Thanks, Ivan, very kind of you to answer that question in such a detail. My answer to ND would have been much shorter, something like

"YES".

In a simple electric field, charged particles accelerate as far as the field extends. But the energy the particles can gain depends on the strength of the electric field. It does not work that a potential drop (voltage) of, say, 1V accelerates particles to almost light-speed, just by placing the anode and cathode far enough away from each other.

The energy a charged particle can gain in an electric field is

W=q*U (Energy = charge * potential drop).

So the energy that an electron (q=1e) can gain in a potential drop of 1V is exactly 1eV no matter how far the field extends (this is how the unit "eV" is defined).
And why does it not depend on the extension of the field? That is, because the electric field is (simplified) the potential drop over the "length" of the drop, something like

E = U / l (electric field = voltage / length)

This is, indeed, very simplistic (normally one would say that the electric field is the gradient of the potential drop vec(E)=del(V) (in some places del is also called nabla…)).
And I am not sure if every detail is really correct – so if someone finds a mistake, please correct it!

Thanks! I'm glad that someone finds me amusing.

Oh, err… that should be Your, not "You're".

@ ND,

Since it's the early morning in Germany, at the time of writing this, and DrFlimmer is probably in still bed, I'll answer your question as a have a background in electronics, and also I am a night owl with nothing better to do…

The simplest particle accelerator is the Cathode Ray Tube that you find in older television sets and computer monitors. In a typical colour TV electron gun assembly, a stream of electrons is generated from a hot cathode via thermionic emission, then three anodes turn the cloud of electrons into an electron beam: the first anode (at > 300 V+) attracts and accelerates the electrons towards the screen; the second anode (at 4.2 to 5 kV+) further accelerates and focuses the stream of electrons into a very fine beam; the third anode (at 25 to 50 kV+) accelerates the beam even further towards the screen shadowmask (also at 25 to 50kV+) which forms the fourth and final anode — this is necessary to prevent negative charge build-up from the electrons, which would otherwise repel the incoming electrons. Particle accelerators operate on a similar principle, but on a much more "embiggened" scale.

So, considering the fact that a voltage multiplier pumped by a flyback transformer is required to generate the E.H.T. potential for the third and fourth anodes, and the flyback transformer itself requires a power source derived from the TV's mains supply, can Anaconda (where the bloody hell are you?!) explain to us "modern" astronomy adherents what and/or where the bloody hell is that alleged celestial power source for the 'electric comet' hypothesis — not theory; a theory is something based on fact, like the theory of gravity — and also the perpetual 'electric field' in the solar system that allegedly "accelerate[s] the charged particles" (all in the same direction?!) "past the Earth"? That is about as realistic as Russel's celestial teapot!

If let's say there was an electric field across the length of the solar system with the sun being one end of the the potential and charged particles flowing according to their charge (not something that's observed currently in the solar wind), these particles would continue to accelerate, no?

That's why I called it an idea….

This is an extract from his "rebuttal" of Tom Bridgman's "The Electric Sky, Short-Circuited":

The fast solar wind from the 'cooler‘ coronal holes is easily explained by the Electric Sun model but has no conventional explanation. The 'temperature‘ is low where the electric field is strong.

(bold added)

Of course, regular readers will be wondering 'what is this "Electric Sun model"?' and 'how does this model explain the relevant observations?'

And regular readers will also know the answer: there is no such model … at least, no scientific model. In fact, if you read Bridgman's blog, you'll see that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to construct just such a scientific model (or models), by poring over Scott's published material (including the infamous book) in minute detail, only to have vitriol poured on him by EU proponents for not getting it right (no surprise though to learn that none of those who heap scorn on him deign to clarify just what the model actually IS)!

But hope springs eternal; perhaps Anaconda will provide us with the crucial details, and at last the world will have a genuinely scientific Electric Sun model to study …

(references for everything I've noted available; just ask)

You're welcome, I'm glad to help.

Now, referring to the ArXiV abstract link provided by Nereid above on the subject of coronal holes — unlike Anaconda who gets his information from colonic holes — this is what I've found at the ESA website…

Solar Wind Origin in Coronal Funnels:

A Chinese-German team of scientists have identified the magnetic structures in the solar corona where the fast solar wind originates. Using images and Doppler maps from the Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation (SUMER) spectrometer and magnetograms delivered by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on the space-based Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) of ESA and NASA, they observed solar wind flows coming from funnel-shaped magnetic fields which are anchored in the lanes of the magnetic network near the surface of the Sun

Click to continue…

Thanks for the links, that's what I was looking for.

One question, though, what evidence would be acceptable to debunk the 'Electric Universe' concept.

@ Jon Hanford

I am not sure what you are explicitly referring to, but the solar wind obviously falsifies the EU model, since the "electric sun"-idea says (according to Annaconda) that the sun is on a 10billion volt potential, in other words there should be an electric field around us which accelerates the particles of the solar wind (I think, this is what Anaconda is talking about right here).
The consequences are presented in one of my previous posts

Another thing that always bothered me with the electric sun idea is that an electric field will always cancel if it can. That is the reason why we need power plants on earth, to keep the electric field (the potential drop) in our cables alive. And since the particles in outer space are not bound to something, i.e. they can flow around as they want to, such a potential drop would be easily destroyed. The sun would just accumulate enough charges (of the opposite side) and would be (overall) neutral again. And such things would happen rather quickly.

As Ivan3man used to ask: Where is the power plant that keeps the electric field (or some mysterious currents that power stars from the outside, since there is no fusion going on inside) going?

So, HTML (or other) code gurus: what is it about that URL which causes it to not display, when included in a comment (as in, the whole comment fails to show)?

I think that it has something to do with the anti-spam filter setting of this website, which gets twitchy over certain 'bad' keywords. If you should encounter the problem again in future, then simply convert the offending URL to a TinyURL version at TinyURL.com.

Solar Wind Outflow and the Chromospheric Magnetic Network

One question, though, what evidence would be acceptable to debunk the 'Electric Universe' concept. I mean, your theory(s) are falsifiable, are they not ? Or is there no way to falsify this concept? (Sounds more like a religion than a science…'Wherever the facts lead……." Yeah, right.

Observations of outflow velocities in coronal holes (regions of open coronal magnetic field) have recently been obtained with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Velocity maps of Ne7+ from its bright resonance line at 770 angstroms, formed at the base of the corona, show a relationship between outflow velocity and chromospheric magnetic network structure, suggesting that the solar wind is rooted at its base to this structure, emanating from localized regions along boundaries and boundary intersections of magnetic network cells. This apparent relation to the chromospheric magnetic network and the relatively large outflow velocity signatures will improve understanding of the complex structure and dynamics at the base of the corona and the source region of the solar wind.

The abstract from the 2002 paper:

This paper reviews the current state of our understanding of high-speed solar wind acceleration in coronal holes. Observations by SOHO, coupled with interplanetary particle measurements going back several decades, have put strong constraints on possible explanations for how the protons, electrons, and minor ions receive their extreme kinetic properties. The asymptotic plasma conditions of the wind depend on energy and momentum deposition both at the coronal base (where, e.g., the mass flux is determined) and in the extended acceleration region between 2 and 10 solar radii (where the plasma becomes collisionless and individual particle species begin to exhibit non-Maxwellian velocity distributions with different moments). The dissipation of magnetohydrodynamic fluctuations (i.e., waves, turbulence, and shocks) is believed to dominate the heating in the extended corona, and spectroscopic observations from the UVCS instrument on SOHO have helped to narrow the field of possibilities for the precise modes, generation mechanisms, and damping channels. We will survey recent theoretical and observational results that have contributed to new insights, and we will also show how next-generation instruments can be designed to identify and characterize the dominant physical processes to an unprecedented degree.

And the URL:
http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0209301

An even more reduced version, without even part of the URL …

The "30.000 km/s at the surface" is in the PR that Anaconda cites.

The paper the OP is based on is "Solar Wind Outflow and the Chromospheric Magnetic Network". It seems the abstract is available for free, but not the paper; in any case, the origin of the "30.000 km/s at the surface" is unclear.

[URL goes here!]

From the abstract alone it is impossible to tell, but it seems to me that this paper is about coronal holes, the corona, and the origin of the solar wind … it says nothing about the solar wind accelerating past the Earth.

Among the more than 100 papers which cite this is "Solar wind acceleration in coronal holes", published in 2002 (I'll provide a link to the ArXiV abstract in my next comment).

It has been more than four decades since the existence of the solar wind has been confirmed by the measurements of the Mariner 2 spacecraft. However, the solar wind's acceleration at supersonic speeds of about 700-800 km/s still remains unexplained. Parker's theory, based on thermal conduction, results into a very low speed; this led most of the scientists to look for an additional form of energy in order to explain this acceleration. A team of astronomers working at LESIA at the Paris Observatory has proposed an alternative theory based on the role of electrons that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; these electrons would be the main driving force of the acceleration. This approach explains, for the first time, the fast solar wind without any assumption of additional energy.

Click for more…