Synopsis of Widom-Larsen Theory Paper #6

By Lewis G. Larsen, Edited by S. B. Krivit - Jan. 29, 2012 x

"High Energy Particles in the Solar Corona," A. Widom, Y. N. Srivastava, and L. Larsen (April 2008) In this paper the Widom-Larsen theory’s many-body collective magnetic mechanism on very large length scales with high-proton-and-electron-current plasmas with tubular geometries is extended to include organized magnetic structures called “flux tubes” that frequently occur on and around the ‘surface’ of the sun and are also involved in spectacular astronomical events like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Application of the W-L collective many-body theoretical paradigm to this magnetically dominated system is used to explain the longstanding mystery of anomalous heating of the solar corona, which at millions of degrees is vastly hotter than the 4,000 – 6,000 K ‘surface’ temperature of the sun. The paper’s proposed mechanism for coronal heating involves a rather simple ‘betatron-like’ theoretical model; it utilizes a many-body collective magnetic process akin to what happens in an ordinary step-up electrical transformer. In this new model, magnetic fields that spatially organize solar flux tube structures operate to transfer magnetic energy from the comparatively dense plasma in the vicinity of the sun’s ‘surface’ up to the region above the sun’s surface where the vastly less dense solar corona is found. When solar magnetic energy is thus transferred from surface regions up to much smaller numbers of charged particles found in the corona (e.g., electrons) it increases their ‘average’ kinetic energy. In this manner, the process effectively causes local coronal heating which substantially increases the measured temperature of the solar corona relative to that of the sun’s surface. The model also predicts that significant production of neutrons via weak interactions and substantial acceleration of charged particles can occur in solar flux tubes and violent events such as solar flares (essentially flux tubes that become dynamically unstable and ‘explode’ their magnetic fields, which rapidly ‘dumps’ magnetic energy into embedded charged particles which increases their kinetic energy) and coronal mass ejections (CME) that ‘launch’ huge balls of hot plasma outward into space, away from the sun’s surface. A further implication of this paper is that significant amounts of nucleosynthesis can occur in flux tubes and flares well outside the boundaries of the sun’s super-dense, super-hot core. This new idea is contrary to the longstanding belief that fusion processes occurring inside the stellar core are the only nuclear processes of any significance going on in the sun. There is experimental evidence for the new idea: it explains anomalous presence of short-lived radioactive isotopes and other unexpected heavy elements spectroscopically observed in atmospheres of “chemically peculiar” (CP) stars that have unusually high ‘average’ magnetic fields.