[Bored chemist]

"I know I have not made errors in the topic I have chosen."
You chose to write "ALL magnetic fields are caused by electric currents" Which is still wrong.

Then you wrote "ALL magnetism in connection WITH IONISED GASES is caused by the flow of gases  forming an electric current."
Which is still wrong- there's the diamagentic interaction with the free electrons for example.

And you started off by saying "I have the feeling that when temperatures get high enough for electrons to leave their atoms altogether, the nuclei they leave behind have no means of causing electromagnetic radiation. "
Which is wrong
and
"If electromagnetic radiation is not produced it could be an indication of heat at extremely high temperatures that can't be measured."
Which is wrong.

[Wilf James (OP)]

To Bored Chemist
You wrote:

You chose to write "ALL magnetic fields are caused by electric currents" Which is still wrong.

As I appear to be wrong and ignorant of what you know, please tell me how magnetic fields are generated by other means than by an electric current - AND - what are the most useful applications of these magnetic fields. Please also state the strength typically obtained in these magnetic fields in Gauss, Teslas or Webers per square metre. It would also be interesting to know what energy source produces such magnetic fields.

Then you wrote "ALL magnetism in connection WITH IONISED GASES is caused by the flow of gases  forming an electric current."
Which is still wrong- there's the diamagentic interaction with the free electrons for example.

Please explain how diamagnetic interaction with free electrons will affect the magnetic field created by a stream of ionised gas. (Note: a stream of ionised gas is ionised because it is deficient in electrons.)

A basic part of the definitions concerning electricity and magnetism is the definition of the ampere. The attraction between two infinitely long straght conductors, one metre apart, each carrying one ampere in the same direction is 2 times 10 raised to the minus 7 newtons per metre length.

As a stream of ionised particles is electrostatically positive and electrons are electrostatically negative, free electrons travelling parallel to a stream of ionised particles will be repelled as they will effectively be a current travelling in the opposite direction to the current formed by the ionised particles. The force on the stream of ionised gas will be the same as the force on the (stream?) of electrons. If the ionised gas consisted of (say) helium nuclei with a few electrons missing, The electron stream would be deflected away from the ionised particles around 7200 times as much as the ionised particles are deflected away from the electrons. Thus I fail to see how any diamagnetic interaction with free electrons would be significant in relation to a stream of ionised particles.  The most likely result of free electrons encountering a stream of ionised particles would be to neutralise some of the particles. The magnetic or diamagnetic influence of such 'free' electrons has never been referred to as being of any significance in any of the electrical engineering text books I have read.

In other circumstances where only electrons are involved, as in a CRT, no significant diamagnetic effects are noticeable.

And you started off by saying "I have the feeling that when temperatures get high enough for electrons to leave their atoms altogether, the nuclei they leave behind have no means of causing electromagnetic radiation. "
Which is wrong
and
"If electromagnetic radiation is not produced it could be an indication of heat at extremely high temperatures that can't be measured."
Which is wrong.

I have no anwer for the reason why there are circumstances where no detectable radiation occurs. I have SPECULATED that atomic nuclei may not radiate and that this could be because all electrons have left the atomic nuclei because of extreme heat.  What I do know, and nobody in this forum has denied this point, is that the ionised particles in the solar wind and in the vicinity of sunspots are INVISIBLE. To me that means they do not radiate light. I PRESUME they they don't radiate much heat. (The solar wind particles do not apparently radiate any heat.) I think that nobody would deny that these particles come from a very hot place. I have not said that atomic nuclei do not radiate electromagnetic energy. I have said that there is apparently no radiation that can be detected from what may well be atoms stripped of electrons.

[Bored chemist]

"As I appear to be wrong and ignorant of what you know, please tell me how magnetic fields are generated by other means than by an electric current "
What?
You want me to tell you again?
OK.
Protons have an innate magnetic field. It's not due to a current.
Please make a note of this and don't ask me again.

"what are the most useful applications of these magnetic fields"
Almost certainly MRI imaging (as I said before- were you paying attention?)

They have a magnetic moment of about 14*10^-27 J/T
The field will depend on how far away from you make the measurement.


"(Note: a stream of ionised gas is ionised because it is deficient in electrons.) "
Wrong. it's ionised because the electron are no longer closely associated with the atoms. If the electrons were not there, the stuff would repel itself so much it would fly apart.

"I have SPECULATED that atomic nuclei may not radiate "
And I have pointed out that they certainly can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung

"this could be because all electrons have left the atomic nuclei because of extreme heat."
The electrons won't have got far because of the  electrostatic attraction so, from time to time, they will collide and this will radiate energy. Plasma physics is notoriously complicated.
Who cares?
The solar wind is a whole different ball game, partly the interesting question of the sun's corona.
The original question was about sun spots. The fact is that, even after all this talk, they are still colder than the rest of the Sun's surface.

[Wilf James (OP)]

To Bored Chemist
"As I appear to be wrong and ignorant of what you know, please tell me how magnetic fields are generated by other means than by an electric current "
You wrote:
Protons have an innate magnetic field. It's not due to a current. Please make a note of this and don't ask me again.
"what are the most useful applications of these magnetic fields"
Almost certainly MRI imaging (as I said before- were you paying attention?)

The main actions of protons in an MRI scanner are the way they flip and unflip in a magnetic field causing detectable radiation at around 97MHz. Protons in all elements have a random orientation so that their net magnetic effect is nil.  I repeat, NIL, ZERO! The flip effect is ONLY observable when protons are subjected to an EXTERNAL magnetic field. There is NO WAY that protons alone can GENERATE a magnetic field.
(Did you read what I wrote or do you deliberately misread what I have written?)
For all practical purposes the actions of protons in an MRI scanner have ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE to ionised particles leaving sunspots or the solar wind.

"(Note: a stream of ionised gas is ionised because it is deficient in electrons.) "
Wrong. it's ionised because the electron are no longer closely associated with the atoms. If the electrons were not there, the stuff would repel itself so much it would fly apart.

You show your extreme ignorance here. Ask yourself what ionisation means.
As there are a lot of hydrogen atoms in the sun I will explain how they become ionised.
(This means that electrons leave the nuclei in case you didn't know.)
[Quoting from my physics book:]*
The ionization energy of hydrogen is 13.6 eV.
Using the approximation E = (10^-4 eV/K)T,
we have T = 13.6eV/(10^-4eV/K) = 10^5K.
Temperatures in excess of 10^5 K are found in the interior of the sun, so the hydrogen there is predominantly ionized.
[End of quote]
(Note American spelling of ionised. The quote is from an American book.)

"I have SPECULATED that atomic nuclei may not radiate "
And I have pointed out that they certainly can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung [nofollow]
(I have repeatedly said that I NEVER accept wikipedia as an authoritive reference. You obviously refer to Wikipedia again to annoy me.)
My physics book says:*

Bremstrahlung relates to the production of X radiation produced when materials are subjected to intense electron bombardment.
Using quantum concepts, an electron has charge -e and gains kinetic energy eVAC
when accelerated through a potential increase VAC. The most energetic photon (highest frequency and shortest wavelength) is produced when all the electron's kinetic energy goes to produce one photon; that is,
 eVAC = hƒmax = hc/λmin (bremsstrahlung)
Note that the maximum frequency and minimum wavelength in the bremsstrahlung process do not depend on the target material. The atoms are left in excited levels; when they decay back to their ground levels, they may emit x-ray photons. Since each element has a unique set of atomic energy levels, each also has a characteristic x-ray spectrum. The energy levels associated with x rays are rather different in character from those associated with visible spectra. They involve vacancies in the inner electron configurations of complex atoms. The energy differences between these levels can be hundreds or thousands of electron volts, rather than a few electron volts as is typical for optical spectra.
[End of quote]
This is yet another of your irrelevant (off topic) digressions. There is no known mechanism that produces intense electron bombardment in the vicinity of the sun.

You wrote:
"this could be because all electrons have left the atomic nuclei because of extreme heat."
The electrons won't have got far because of the  electrostatic attraction so, from time to time, they will collide and this will radiate energy. Plasma physics is notoriously complicated.
You show your extreme ignorance again here.
My physics book says:*

Coulomb found that the electric force is proportional to l/r^2 . That is, when the distance r doubles, the force decreases to 1/4 of its initial value; when the distance is halved, the force increases to four times its initial value.
[End of quote]
This indicates that when an electron has left an atom, it does not need to go far before the force to attract it back to tha atom becomes negligible.

You wrote:
Who cares?
I care that a person like you is allowed to continually post irrelevant and destructive comments about the topic under discussion. I have to waste my time pointing out that the points youi have raised are based on your ignorance and your intention to introduce digressions.

You wrote:
The solar wind is a whole different ball game, partly the interesting question of the sun's corona.
The original question was about sun spots. The fact is that, even after all this talk, they are still colder than the rest of the Sun's surface.
Here you go again, bringing up another irrelevant topic. I have never mentioned the sun's corona in this forum.
You claim that what is apparently true about the coolness of sunspots is definitely true. The whole point of all my postings here has been to speculate why and how, if this is the case, a lot of ionised particles are emitted from sunspots at greater than the sun's speed of escape?

You ducked a major point I made. The solar wind is invisible and does not apparently radiate heat. It therefore appears not to produce any electromgnetic radiation we can detect. The same is apparently true for the ionised particles leaving from sunspots. Is it too big a stretch to think that there may be regions of the sun which have similar properties to the invisible ionised particles?

*My physics reference book is:
Sears and Zemansky's University Physics with Modern Physics by Hugh D.Young and Roger A. Freedman 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-50121-9

[Bored chemist]

"There is NO WAY that protons alone can GENERATE a magnetic field."
so you say; however, they still are magnetic dipoles and so they still have a magnetic field. If they don't generate it, what does.

I invite you to go and learn some physics.

I didn't cite wiki to annoy you; I cited it because it's easy to find and generally very reliable. Of course for some things, notably politics, it can be hellishly biassed.

Feel free to look wherever you like; bremsstrahlung is real and it is a means by which any charged particle (including nuclei) can emit radiation.

You can ignore this fact if you like, but it means that you are leaving the realms of science and so, perhaps, you should leave this site since its about science.

BTW, please don't waste your time or the website's bandwidth quoting school text books. I already know that stuff and, it seems, I understand it better than you do.

[Wilf James (OP)]

To Bored Chemist.
The facts you have quoted about protons in MRI scanners and bremstrahlung causing X-rays under intense electron bombardment may be very interesting topics but they have NOTHING to do with ionised particles leaving sunspots and forming a part of the solar wind.
As I have said before THEY ARE OFF TOPIC!

I have yet to discover any reference to protons using their dipoles to PRODUCE an electric current. The fact that they have random magnetism has NOTHING to do with the TOPIC in question.

YOU first referred to WIKIPEDIA.  I just retaliated with an up-to-date reference book. Talk about pots calling kettles black! The quotations I used proved that a lot of what you had claimed was wrong. Is that why you don't like me quoting from a reference book?

Why don't you start another forum of your own so that you can use your alleged scientific knowledge to upset more people with more irrelevant nit-picking sidetracks. It seems to be your aim in life to be a forum WRECKER! If you were a TRUE scientist you would have offered reasonable possible alternative explanations for what is at least a very strange phenomenon.

If you are such a knowledgeable person as you claim to be, please answer my original question.
What launches masses of ionised particles away from sunspots if it isn't heat?
(Magnetism is not a valid answer because it begs the question. It just changes the question to 'What causes the magnetism that launches masses of ionised particles away from sunspots?')

Please also answer my subsidiary questions.
Why don't the ionised particles in the solar wind give off any detectable radiation?
Do the ionised particles leaving sunspots have the same properties as the ionised particles in the solar wind?
Is there a possibility that a region of the sun has similar properties to the ionised particles in the solar wind?

You have ducked these questions at least twice before. You deserve the title COWARD not HERO because you have NEVER made any attempt to provide an intelligent answer to these questions. You have just tried to nit-pick to develop irrelevant OFF-TOPIC sidetracks when I have made statements that apply to the general case.

Judging from the way you have contributed NOTHING useful to this topic, I would like to suggest to the moderator that destructive contributors like you should lose a star for every destructive comment you make about the topic in question. Then your status should change from hero to WRECKER.

[Bored chemist]

"The facts you have quoted about protons in MRI scanners"
A proton does not know that it is an an MRI machine. It acts in the same way  where ever it is. It is always accompanied by a magnetic field, but no current. It is therefore a counter example you your central hypothesis.
I think it is on-topic to point out that your assumption is simply wrong.

"bremstrahlung causing X-rays under intense electron bombardment"
I didn't say anything about electron bombardment. You seem not to have understood that the radiation is emitted whenever any charged particle is made to accelerate, such as by collision with another particle. This is a process that will happen quite often in the solar wind. There is, therefore a mechanism for radiation to be emitted.
It's just that you refused to do the research and find out how.

"I have yet to discover any reference to protons using their dipoles to PRODUCE an electric current. "
You didn't seem to ask.
Anyway, the free induction decay that takes place inside an NMR machine is just such a current.
I know you don't seem to like NMR, but that doesn't stop protons producing currents; the protons are not fussy.

"The fact that they have random magnetism has NOTHING to do with the TOPIC in question"
Hardly "random" since I cited a value for it and, anyway it is clearly related to the topic as I have pointed out before and  others have agreed.

"The quotations I used proved that a lot of what you had claimed was wrong. "
No, they did not.
I still say that if you had a bunch of protons with no electrons near them the electrostatic repulsion would make them fly apart.
You seem to not understand that if I take a hydrogen atom and take the electron to the far side of the galaxy there is still an attraction- strictly speaking it is a highly excited state- it isn't ionised and it never will be. We talk about ionisation where the residual binding energy of the electron is small compared to the other influences.

"Is that why you don't like me quoting from a reference book?"
No, as I said, it's because it's pointless. I think it's clear that I know more about ionisation than you do so quoting a school book isn't the issue. I think there's a relevant quote in "A fish called Wanda" but I can't bring it to mind right now. Perhaps someone else can help me out.

"If you were a TRUE scientist you would have offered reasonable possible alternative explanations for what is at least a very strange phenomenon."
No, a true scientist knows there is no way to prove a theory to be right and accepts that the way to make progress is to ensure that theories that are clearly wrong are weeded out. A theory that depends on, for example, the idea that ions cannot emit radiation is wrong and should be dumped.
"It seems to be your aim in life to be a forum WRECKER!"
Dear me! At the most I might be a thread wrecker. If the thread says "No scientist drinks beer" and I point out that there are several documented incidents of beer drinking scientists, then I accept I have wrecked the thread. On the other hand I don't feel that I have done anything wrong.

"If you are such a knowledgeable person as you claim to be, please answer my original question.
What launches masses of ionised particles away from sunspots if it isn't heat?
(Magnetism is not a valid answer because it begs the question. It just changes the question to 'What causes the magnetism that launches masses of ionised particles away from sunspots?')"

Which do you want?
Do you want me to try to answer the question? How can I do that when you have banned the right answer?
Mind you I think you are getting closer to the truth when you realise the question you ask is equivalent to "What causes the magnetism that launches masses of ionised particles away from sunspots".
I think the answer to that is a combination of convection currents and the sun's magnetic field- as I said before, plasma physics is very complicated. You need to study it before you can tackle these questions. I don't know enough to give a detailed answer. Good luck in your research.

"Why don't the ionised particles in the solar wind give off any detectable radiation?"
It does.
http://www.asiaoceania.org/abstract/ST/58-ST-A0996.pdf

"Do the ionised particles leaving sunspots have the same properties as the ionised particles in the solar wind?"
what properties do you have in mind? They are small particles- they don't have many properties. The only ones that I can think of that might matter are their translational velocity, their temperature and their elemental make-up. To take the last of these first, I think that both sets are almost entirely hydrogen.

I believe their temperatures will be similar a and that any differences are likely to be washed out due to the sun's corona.
I think their translational velocities may be different - pretty much by definition- the solar wind escape the sun so it must have exceeded the escape velocity. On the other hand many particles from the sun spots may well fall back.

"Is there a possibility that a region of the sun has similar properties to the ionised particles in the solar wind?"
for a given definition of "similar" the answer must be yes.

I really don't see how these properties can matter much but you now have your answers.
You might understand that I didn't duck them- I ignored them because they couldn't matter.
The first simply illustrates that, once again, you are wrong. The second and third demonstrate that you can't ask a properly defined question.
Since the rest of your theories rely on things that are not true - like the lack of radiation from the solar wind, I didn't feel inclined to waste time on them/
May I remind you that, since you are putting forward a new theory, it falls to you to prove that it is true rather than anyone else to show that it is false. That's the way science works.

"Judging from the way you have contributed NOTHING useful to this topic, I would like to suggest to the moderator that destructive contributors like you should lose a star for every destructive comment you make about the topic in question. Then your status should change from hero to WRECKER."
I have every confidence in the moderators' ability to judge what label should be given to whom.
Among other things they may wish to consider inappropriate use of capital letters and exclamation marks.
They may also wish to have a quick look here.
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200503/zero-gravity.cfm

[Wilf James (OP)]

To Bored Chemist
You wrote quoting me:
"Why don't the ionised particles in the solar wind give off any detectable radiation?"
It does.
http://www.asiaoceania.org/abstract/ST/58-ST-A0996.pdf [nofollow]

The above shows how truthful you have been in most of your posts to my topic.
It starts: "The  Solar  Probe  will  fly"
In my English the word WILL applies to a future occasion..
The piece refers to a prediction or a forecast or a prophecy that you claim as a fact.
As a result of this indication of the lack of your general veracity I will regard any future comments that you make on my topic as irrelevant noise that should be ignored.

[Geezer]

This is becoming far too personal. Thread locked.