Exploding double layers, on a fantastic scale is the only legitimate explanation for these powerful explosions. They are unable to consider this option though, the magneto fluid models they use cannot predict nor produce this well known plasma process.
BTW, electric currents produce powerful magnetic fields, not plasma "rubbing on each other". Pathetic, the pseudoscience of the "dark" ages continues...

Such profound genius! What overwhelming intellect! A pillar of the profession! A polished marble column, thrusting boldly into the sky, erupting with a spray of refined truth.

Truly, you must know things the rest of us can scarcely guess at.

http://en.wikiped...elusions

Such profound genius! What overwhelming intellect!

Well, shucks. I don't know what to say. If I only knew how to do a red faced emoticon on here.

A pillar of the profession!

Not really a professional, more of an interested bystander forced to pay taxes to support junk science.

A polished marble column, erupting with a spray of refined truth.

A polished marble counter top would be more appropriate, that's the type of business I own, but I'm not sure how a counter would erupt with truthiness.

Truly, you must know things the rest of us can scarcely guess at.

You do not need to "scarcely guess at" anything whatsoever, it's called learning. I hear it's the number one cure for ignorance.

http://en.wiki..elusions

The grand delusion is that these magnetic fields exist without the causal electric currents. We don't need to get into the grand delusion on neutron stars, DM, the BB, or any number of other delusions that pervade astrophysics.

Exploding double layers, on a fantastic scale is the only legitimate explanation for these powerful explosions. They are unable to consider this option though, the magneto fluid models they use cannot predict nor produce this well known plasma process. BTW, electric currents produce powerful magnetic fields, not plasma "rubbing on each other". Pathetic, the pseudoscience of the "dark" ages continues

You should totally email them.

Maybe you should start a petition on facebook to get these morons to accept the obvious truth.

Just make sure you include the following link when you email them; it's probably the best explanation of plasma cosmology I have ever seen:

http://en.wikiver...disorder

The grand delusion is that these magnetic fields exist without the causal electric currents. We don't need to get into the grand delusion on neutron stars, DM, the BB, or any number of other delusions that pervade astrophysics

yeah, so take that!

cant & axe,

Please consider how whiny you might sound in your disdain for those who perhaps know a bit more about this sort of physics than you do.

The very short duration and extreme energy of these sorts of gamma ray bursts - like a monsterus flash bulb - can very well be explained by the sudden disconnect and reconnect of the field lines of the intense magnetic field hypothesized above. The same thing is now seen as an explanation for energy of solar flares.

So even if this hypothesizes is wrong, it seem at least to be reasonable and in no way deserving of the bitter seeming disrespect you express.

So even if this hypothesizes is wrong, it seem at least to be reasonable and in no way deserving of the bitter seeming disrespect you express

Axe was making fun of cantdrive, not the article, and so am I. Cantdrive is like hemorrhoids; a PITA that won't go away.

The very short duration and extreme energy of these sorts of gamma ray bursts - like a monsterus flash bulb

Okay, now that I've completed my daily dose of cantdrive-bashing, I'm ready to discuss the article at hand.

It's difficult to even conceptualize the event described above. The event would be relativistically short and fast. The material falling in as the black hole forms would accelerate right up to the edge of the speed of light on their way in. This would be violent beyond the scale of a supernova. The particles in there probably get torn into their composite quasi-particles like quarks and gluons as they get stretched around the center of gravity by the strong field effects.

According to the work above, this looks like a self-organizing system, like a tornado or hurricane, at relativistic speed and force. Hard to imagine this kind of violence.

like a monsterus flash bulb

lol, like the most totally awesome, ultimate, one-time-use, permanently disposable flash bulb.

I wonder how far out the kill zone goes around these? Good thing they aren't common.

"Magnetic reconnection is pseudoscience" Hannes Alfven

I think we've gone over this, "field lines" are merely a mathematical construct to visualize the vector field, they cannot "be reified into 3-D material objects".

This may help put any notion of "magnetic merging/reconnection", "open field lines", or "frozen-in fields" in the pseudo dustbin they belong;
'Real Properties of Electromagnetic Fields and Plasma in the Cosmos' by Dr. Don Scott IEEE
http://electric-c...2007.pdf

Just a quick question regarding this statement in the article

Its short life ends with the catastrophic collapse to a black hole, possibly powering a short gamma-ray burst

Why the 'possibly'? What could prevent such an event from producing a very serious gamma ray burst?

Why the 'possibly'? What could prevent such an event from producing a very serious gamma ray burst?

It could emit at lower frequency, or the emissions could be red-shifted down before they escape. In that case; "These are not the sources of short gamma ray bursts you are looking for". haha. This is just a model, after all.

Or maybe cantdrive is right and it just emits a giant lightning bolt and a new star is born somewhere in the cosmos. Yeah, I think that's really it. Really. Yeah, really.

stronger than ten or hundred million billion times the Earth's magnetic field

The magnetic field strength of Earth is ~0.50G on the surface. Sun is ~3G. Here we are looking at a couple HUNDRED MILLION BILLION.

Could anyone calculate the event horizon radius of this new black hole as a proportion of the radius of the merged neutron star, presumably a smaller radius?

The highest magnetic field ever achieved by humans to now was 16 T

It's quite a bit higher.

Continuous fields:
45T

Pulsed fields:
Strongest non-destructive magnetic field created in a lab: 100T
Strongest destructive magnetic field created in a lab (destroying magnet but not lab): 730T
Strongest destructive magnetic field created with explosives: 2.8kT

http://en.wikiped...field%29

Let me try again, if the new entity is short lived, the radius of the black hole must be almost identical.

Could anyone calculate the event horizon radius of this new black hole

Just plug the mass of the object it into the formula.
http://en.wikiped...d_radius

And just because I recently heard someone (in the field!) mispronounce the name so atrociously. It's not "Schwartz-Child", but "Schwartz-schild" (read: 'shwarts-shild' ... meaning: 'black shield')

Re: "The very short duration and extreme energy of these sorts of gamma ray bursts - like a monsterus flash bulb - can very well be explained by the sudden disconnect and reconnect of the field lines of the intense magnetic field hypothesized above. The same thing is now seen as an explanation for energy of solar flares.

So even if this hypothesizes is wrong, it seem at least to be reasonable and in no way deserving of the bitter seeming disrespect you express."

I think the problem here is that the inferred mechanism is problematic on a basic logical level: Field lines are mathematical entities -- not physical ones.

Also, if you take a close look at Tom Bridgman's answer to these complaints about the MHD models, you will observe that he does not address them. What he *does* say is that gravity can induce electric fields. But, he never responds to the actual critique that Alfven himself delivered at his Nobel speech, and many times before.

Read the Bridgman links before sharing!

Re: "So even if this hypothesizes is wrong, it seem at least to be reasonable and in no way deserving of the bitter seeming disrespect you express."

Cantdrive might be a bit "unprofessional" at times, but so was Socrates. Truth be told, "thinking like a scientist" today is not simply a set of values, but also a collection of ideologies ... Magnetic reconnection being one of them which is increasingly viewed as the mechanism necessary to explain the inverse temperature at the corona. When somebody states rather simply...

"The same thing is now seen as an explanation for energy of solar flares."

...It's important to realize that there is an observational enigma which is driving this inference.

A "professional" is one who simply accepts the box handed to them to do their problem-solving. Critical thinking, by contrast, absolutely involves a process of questioning assumptions. The difference between a talented & mediocre scientist is that s/he can switch between the two, at will.

What seems evident in reading physorg comments is that people generally don't understand what a professional actually is. The public appears to want to believe that scientists are free to disagree with the assumptions of their discipline, as necessary, and yet few people have apparently taken the time to even take a close look at how we actually train PhD's in physics. The undergrads are oftentimes encouraged to be disagreeable, but the situation reverses in the grad programs. Fred Hoyle, Peter Woit and Jeff Schmidt have all spoken about this situation.

Look at the reviews for Jeff Schmidt's book, Disciplined Minds, and then read the book. Until people pay attention to the physics discipline's largest freedom of expression case in its history, there will be no unification within physics, and history will simply continue to repeat itself. The number of people who set the ideologies/agenda for this type of research can probably be counted on one single hand.

Re: It's not "Schwartz-Child", but "Schwartz-schild"

Note that Stephen Crothers points out an apparent problem with the assumptions underlying the mathematics for black holes. The black hole universe ...

(1) is spatially infinite
(2) is eternal
(3) contains only ONE mass
(4) is not expanding
(5) and is asymptotically flat

... whereas a Big Bang universe ...

(1) is spatially finite or infinite
(2) is of finite age
(3) contains radiation and many masses
(4) is expanding
(5) and is not asymptotically flat

It's reason to be suspicious of the construct, since these assumptions appear to be blatantly contradictory.

Try Googling "Flaws in Black Hole Theory and General Relativity" ...

Re: It's not "Schwartz-Child", but "Schwartz-schild"

This has nothing to do with the math at hand. That Schwartzschild means 'black shield' is not connected to the subject of black holes. Schwartzschild is just the name of the guy who came up with the formula (Karl Schwartzschild, who was a german astronomer)

Just plug the mass of the object it into the formula.
http://en.wikiped...d_radiusq

I think what HA is pointing out is how the Schwarzschild radius is based in complete fallacy. According to the original paper by Schwarzschild, there can be no black hole, the argument used by relativists for the radius is based entirely on a misrepresentation of black shields and others work.
http://www.ptep-o...2-11.PDF

"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself any more." Einstein

It's because those mathematicians expounded upon errors Albert, nobody should be expected to understand gobbledygook.

This was meant to be included above as well;
http://www.ptep-o...1-10.PDF

I think the problem here is that the inferred mechanism is problematic on a basic logical level: Field lines are mathematical entities -- not physical ones

Yes and no. While there's not a solid object, there is a physical phenomenon, which the math represents. If you don't like the word "lines" then call them field vectors, which is technically more correct.

EM does 'snap' into place. You can see this when a current flowing in one wire arcs to another wire, or if you have a weak magnet stuck to another weak magnet and you bring in a larger magnet, the small one will jump from the weaker one to the stronger one when they get close enough. This is the concept behind the poorly named reconnection effect. It's not 'reconnecting', but rather changing connections as dominant forces switch from one source to another.

If you don't like the word "lines" then call them field vectors, which is technically more correct.

Best way is always to go with a field representation (if you must visualize it then use iso-lines of fieldstrength)

Visualizing with fieldlines is problematic as that requires lines to spantenously start or end where there are no actual sources (in order to keep the density of lines appropriate).

The reconnection phenomenon using the field representation simply happens when you bring two fields together and the point you're looking (which was formerly squarely within field A gets to be right at a local maximum between fields A and B (which is an unstable point. From there it will suddenly shift from the trough of A to the trough of B).

Visualizing with fieldlines is problematic as that requires lines to spantenously start or end where there are no actual sources (in order to keep the density of lines appropriate).

The other problem with vectors as a visualization tool is that the arrow only depicts the conditions at the starting point, so the actual field strength and polarity changes along its length. That's hard for some people to get.

The reconnection phenomenon using the field representation simply happens when you bring two fields together and the point you're looking (which was formerly squarely within field A gets to be right at a local maximum between fields A and B (which is an unstable point. From there it will suddenly shift from the trough of A to the trough of B).

Yep, exactly. Once the potential from one field excedes the potential of the other, it jumps. This can release energy stored in the difference of potential between them.