What is it about?
Studies have shown that the heavier positive ions in the solar wind travel faster than the protons and electrons. This makes the solar wind de facto an electric current of positive ions. This paper shows how the positive ion current in the solar wind interacts with structures within the sun identified by heliosiesmology to produce rotation, differential rotation and a harmonic magnetic cycle. The model gives the source of sunspots, reveals the nature of the “solar dynamo” and shows how the different rotation rates of the northern and southern solar hemispheres produce helmet streamers, two north poles or two south poles. The principles presented also explain why the solar surface rotates slower than the interior and this can be extended to show why the poles rotate faster than the equator in anti-solar-type stars. The study also implies that the corona is the sun’s aurora.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
While hydrodynamic models yield useful results, they generally address single features like the corona, the solar wind or the solar dynamo but convey little insight into the processes involved. Based in part on helioseismic findings, this study models the sun as a system and presents it in terms of known physical phenomena. Many aspects of behaviour and features observed for the sun arise organically out of the model. By way of examples, the model can show why the sun reverses magnetic polarity near the maximum of the sunspot cycle, that the solar magnetic field has a monopole component, as found by the Ulysses spacecraft and that the solar magnetic field is an active magnetic field and not regenerated from a fossil field.
Perspectives
Given the information before me, this is the only study which shows that the solar wind is actually an electric current of positive ions emanating from the sun and traveling through the heliosphere. As such, the solar wind creates its own intrinsic magnetic field rather than carry away part of the sun’s magnetic field. The sun is a “current source” and no “return path” or “closed circuit” is necessary for the ion current to flow. This positive ion current flowing away from the sun would be interpreted by space-based instruments as a conventional (electron) current flowing towards the sun. Inclusion of the monopole component in the solar magnetic field does not in any way contradict Maxwell’s fourth equation when viewed in its historical context. After all, the monopolar field has been confirmed by satellite measurements and reproduced in laboratory experiments. Its existence cannot continue to be denied - but it must be explained. According to historical accounts, Maxwell developed his equations empirically from his experiments. He investigated the magnetic fields in wires and wave-guides, which at best have only cylindrical symmetry. The sun ideally has spherical symmetry. Therefore, viewed in context, Maxwell’s fourth equation is his expression of the fact that he did not find a monopolar magnetic field within the rectangular or cylindrical co-ordinate systems in which he investigated. The sun, having spherical symmetry, is an as yet un-investigated case which is still to be included in Maxwell’s fourth equation. Therefore Maxwell’s fourth equation requires additional terms to account for the monopole component of the solar magnetic field. This should engender new and rather interesting ways of looking at, understanding and characterising the sun, the solar wind and solar-terrestrial relationships. All the possibilities of the model described here have not been explicitly covered in this paper since it is a page-restricted version of a poster presentation.
Milton Munroe
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Behavioural Model of the Solar Magnetic Cycle, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, July 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s174392131800056x.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
