New Light on the Sun

Eric W. Crew, FRAS, 26 St Davids Drive, Broxbourne, Herts EN10 7LS, UK.
tel/fax 01992 465638 email eric@brox1.demon.co.uk

Most astronomers believe that powerful magnetic fields are the cause of the immense disturbances on the Sun, but there are still many problems about how this works. The Hungarian astronomer and physicist, Dr Laszlo Körtvélyessy, has now proposed a new theory which seems to answer all these problems. He runs a very profitable business based on an industrial application of this theory.

The problems.

Magnetic fields are considered to be the cause of most of the characteristics of the Sun. It is claimed that a very powerful magnetic field is generated in the interior of the Sun and it periodically emerges to the surface, causing sunspots and many kinds of atmospheric disturbances. However this theory causes many problems concerning the nature of magnetic fields. Statements about this by astronomers and science writers with my comments (indicated by EC) are as follows:

Professor Sir Robert Wilson in Astronomy Through the Ages (Taylor & Francis, London 1997) writes:

p.190 "The most violent events are the solar flares, which are believed to be the result of a catastrophic breakdown in the local magnetic field, they occur very rapidly, hurl out highly energetic particles and produce X-rays. All of these effects of solar activity are the result of the Sun's generation of magnetic fields, both locally and globally, but how these are generated and their cyclical nature, are not understood in any detail, but they are certainly the result of the dynamic motions that occur in the Sun's interior". (my italics. EC)
p.191 Referring to the coronal spectral lines, he states: "The astronomical conclusion was swift and obvious: the corona had to be hot - about a million degrees Kelvin". (This may be an illusion. EC)
p.192 "The mechanism by which the corona is heated is still not fully understood today..." and "the periodicity (of sunspots) is still not understood." Again on the corona: "the precise form of such a heating mechanism is still not understood". (Probably because the apparently extremely high temperature is mainly the result of electrical, not thermal reactions. EC)

Professor Kenneth J. H. Phillips in Guide to the Sun (Cambridge University Press, 1995) writes:

p.72 ".. while the objections to the dynamo mechanism lack convincing answers, it cannot be said that the sun's magnetic field is completely understood."
p.197 (about solar flares) "If these electrons have a distribution of energies like those in a hot gas - a so-called thermal or Maxwellian distribution - the temperature must be enormous, 10^8 or 10^9 K. This has led to the idea that the electrons are not thermal at all, but are accelerated by some process in the flare to energies that extend to very high values ....". (The process is obviously electrical - the attraction of positive protons in the flare to external negative electrons. EC)
p.202 "the motion (of hot plasma at 400 km/s) .... has been ascribed to the convection of gas ..... however there is not a unanimous acceptance of the chromospheric evaporation idea, some claiming it to be too simplistic, and the debate ... continues." (It seems very unlikely that "convection" could produce such a high velocity. EC)
p.215 ref Theories of Solar Activity: ".. it is clear, from both observations and theory, that magnetic fields are responsible for their occurrence. Nevertheless ... the theories have the weakness that they cannot be tested for the conditions met with in the solar atmosphere." (Why can't they be tested on a small scale? EC)
p.360 (in "questions that remain open"): "The nature, or even existence, of the solar dynamo to generate the magnetic fields that give rise to solar activity." (The solar dynamo theory has now been replaced by a theory with none of the problems involving magnetic fields. EC)

Professor Kenneth R. Lang in his book Sun, Earth and Sky (Springer 1997), states:

p.20 "free electrons (in the Sun's core) are set free to move throughout the Sun's core."
(An interesting statement in view of later comments in these notes. EC)
p.81 "The Sun's magnetic fields are spawned by an unseen generator deep in the solar interior. When strong, concentrated magnetism breaks through the visible solar surface, a sunspot is formed." (However, he is not so confident on p.93)
p.93 "Thus, if it exists, the solar dynamo...." and "In the meantime, the ultimate origin of the activity cycle remains an intriguing unsolved mystery." (A note of fully justified uncertainty here, in contast to the above statement on p.81. EC)
p.104 "... astronomers did not expect heat to flow from the cool photosphere into the surrounding hotter corona." (It only appears hotter if thermal processes are assumed to explain observations. EC)
p.107 - 110 (The same problem about million degree temperatures is discussed. What a struggle he has in attempting to explain this! EC)
p.113 "By some as-yet-unknown process material is concentrated to higher densities .... so they emit X-rays more intensely than their surroundings." (This process is not now unknown. See later comments. EC)
p.114 "The coronal loops therefore act like magnetic conduits, or pipes, through which the hot, dense gas flows but cannot escape." ( Does magnetism really behave in this way? It seems to me like an electrical discharge - a form of cosmic lightning which produces a magnetic field. EC)
p.103 "The invisible corona is an energized realm of million-degree temperatures and violent
eruptions." (That is generally accepted, but is it correct? EC)
p.123: "We do not understand the basic driving mechanism of the solar wind..."
p.136 "The electrons have been dubbed non-thermal ... such a pronounced acceleration
cannot occur when a gas is heated by thermal processes." (Here Lang realises that there is an alternative to the assumption of excessive temperature. He describes magnetism as being sheared, stretched, tangled and twisted .... "in much the same way as continually twisting a rubber band increases the tension and stores energy in its kinks and bends." This is nothing like the characteristics of magnetic fields of which I am aware, yet it has been accepted by most solar astronomers for decades. EC)
p.143: "Magnetic energy is slowly built up ... and then abruptly released, like the
sudden flash and crack of a lightning bolt from a storm cloud". ( There is no laboratory or industrial evidence that magnetic fields behave in this way. Lightning occurs because electrical charges are slowly built up until there is a sudden breakdown and a powerful electrical discharge. EC)
p.144 "Stressed magnetism". (This seems another peculiar idea to me. EC) and "Some unknown, catastrophic instability....". (Another problem! EC)
p.150 "The magnetic field is stretched until it snaps....". (I'd like to see this demonstrated in the lab on a small scale, if it really happens. EC)
p.154 " ... we have no direct observational evidence that stored magnetic energy powers eruptions on the Sun. Moreover, even if current-carrying magnetism does supply the energy, the exact mechanism of releasing that energy and converting it into heating the gas and the acceleration of particles remains unknown." Then he adds "Thus the Sun's sudden and unexpected outbursts remain as unpredictable as most human passions. They just keep on happening, and even seem to be necessary to purge the Sun of pent-up frustration and to relieve it of twisted, contorted magnetism. As we shall next see, this erratic, unpredictable, impulsive behaviour of the Sun is of enormous practical interest to us humans on Earth." (More likely that the Sun relieves itself of pent-up electrical charge. EC)

Dr John Gribbin in The Birth of Time (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1999) states (p39)

"... the density at the heart of the Sun is many times the density of lead ... Atomic nuclei are so much smaller than atoms that inside the Sun they can fly about freely ... even at such high densities ... and the stripped-off electrons whiz about between the nuclei ... " ( This is significant in relation to the Körtvélyessy's theory. EC)

The solution.

The Hungarian astronomer and physicist, Dr Laszlo Körtvelyéssy, has for many years made daily observations of the Sun from his observatory in Kleves, Germany, and has proposed an alternative to the magnetic field theory. This is described in his book reviewed in the October 2000 issue of The Observatory (a journal sent to all members of the Royal Astronomical Society and other astronomers). The contents of this review and other details are as follows:

"The Electric Universe, by L. Körtvelyéssy (EFO, Budapest), 1998. Pp. 704, 24 x 17 cm. (hardbound; ISBN 9 638 24319 8).

One of the most perplexing problems of the Sun is how the observed extensive magnetic fields form. An authoritative book states that a question remaining open is "The nature, or even existence, of the solar dynamo to generate the magnetic fields that give rise to solar activity."1. The answer is clearly stated in The Electric Universe; a splendidly illustrated and expensively-produced book by the Hungarian physicist Dr L. Kortvelyessy (ab. L.K.), written in English, with a few minor errors due to language difficulties. The heat of fusion in the solar core causes its atomic particles to attain high velocities, so that there is a continuous current flow along the temperature gradient from core to surface. Electrons are predominant in this
flow as they have well over 1000 times less mass than a proton. This gives the surface of the Sun a layer of negative charge and the core an increasing positive charge. A continuous solar wind is ejected from the surface and periodically the positive charge on the core exceeds the breakdown value, causing planet-sized pieces to break away and be expelled towards the surface. The forces involved are gravitation, electro-magnetic, eddy currents and
gyroscopic.
L.K. shows that this mechanism, briefly sketched here, explains nearly all the solar characteristics, such as sunspots, magnetic fields, flares, prominences, periodic variations, neutrinos, the apparent high temperature of the corona and the influences on Earth's climate.
It is based on a rational explanation of the generated electric power needed for these features. The hypothesis of a dynamo involving moving flows of highly conducting material and "frozen in" magnetic fields inside the Sun is unnecessary. This idea is now a relic of the past.
The evidence for large-scale electrical discharges was described by C.E.R.Bruce (1902 - 1979)2 but his published papers and mine3 were unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of the massive charge separation and accumulation required. Most astronomers ignored the evidence for electrical discharges, even in books claiming to include all aspects of astronomy, but now that L.K. has described a charging process of sufficient magnitude, this attitude can no longer be justified.
L.K. has applied his theory to the design of his very successful patented industrial thermocouples, described in his book4 on the subject. Both conductors of a thermocouple generate a voltage when there is a temperature difference between the junction at the hot end and the instrument connection at the cold end. The temperature reading is caused by the difference of these voltages. His very profitable thermocouple factory has enabled him to establish observatories in Germany and Hungary to study the Sun on a regular basis.
The Electric Universe also includes an explanation of neutron stars and their magnetic fields and also comments on the filamentary nature of the Universe as a whole. L.K. offers his book to astronomers free of charge, and he has posted a copy to many
individuals, but in order to discourage frivolous requests for a copy he asks that unless the book is for a professional library the person requesting a copy should donate an appropriate sum to a charity, say £25 or equivalent. Send requests to Dr L. Körtvelyéssy, Klever Berg
21, D-47433 Kleve, Germany. E-mail contact is <DrLaKy@aol.com>. Further information is on his website http://www.electric-universe.de

E W CREW

References.
(1) K. J. H. Phillips, Guide to the Sun (Cambridge University Press), 1992, page 72.
(2) C. E. R. Bruce, The Observatory, 95, 204, 1975
(3) E. W. Crew, The Observatory, 101, 1040, 1981
(4) L. Körtvelyéssy, Thermoelement Praxis, Vulkan-Verlag Essen, 1981 (in German)."

Dr Körtvelyéssy's theory is based on the fact that when one end of a conductor is heated, the much greater thermal acceleration of free electrons than that of atoms will cause many electrons to travel towards the cooler end of the conductor, thus setting up a voltage gradient. This was experimentally verified many years ago as described in, for example, Direct Conversion of Heat to Electricity ed. Joseph Kaye and John A. Welsh of MIT (John Wiley, 1960) and in Electricity and Magnetism by W. J. Duffin, (McGraw-Hill, London 1965, p322). He claims that the free electrons in the core of the Sun, which have 1836 times smaller mass than protons and neutrons, will be accelerated to much greater thermal velocities, enabling them to penetrate the thousands of km towards the surface, repelled by the electrical repulsion of electrons from below. Their paths are in effectively empty space, since the nucleus of an atom compared with its volume is like a grain of sand in a concert hall. At the surface, some electrons will be ejected as the normal solar wind. Periodically positive matter breaks from the core and may become a coronal mass ejection.

Dr Körtvelyéssy comments "The magnetic field somehow appearing on the surface cannot accelerate particles because its force is the Lorenz-force which is perpendicular to the direction of motion. No component of the force-vector lies in the direction of the motion of the protons. Therefore the magnetic field cannot heat, it cannot move the particles quicker."
An atmospheric electrical current produces a magnetic field tending to compress the discharge channel into one or more filaments (e.g. lightning). It is noteworthy that as space probes have become more developed, the images produced are more detailed and filaments are clearly visible in, for instance solar coronal discharges (TRACE) and there is a striking difference between the image of Cassiopeia A from ROSAT (little more than a blob) and the same object from Chandra (a mass of filaments).

I think astronomers are right to express doubt about the 'dynamo' theory and all the associated conjectures about magnetic fields. I have dealt with powerful magnetic fields in rotating machinery for many years, but I have never experienced or heard of any processes which can be compared with rubber bands twisting and breaking with release of energy. Of course, the solar scale is immense in comparison, but if the theory is correct, one would expect some evidence at small scales. It seems that this 'magnetic' theory is not based on sound physics - it is something entirely theoretical with no support whatever from experimental evidence. It amazes me that so many astronomers accept this unrealistic theory, presumably because they were not aware of a feasible alternative, but they are now.

E W Crew
26 March 2001