Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [53]
In fact, the condition for gravity to take over—and thus for round bodies, like stars, to form from filaments—is that the density divided by the electric current density must be greater than a certain constant. If the current is almost the same everywhere, this leads to the de Vaucouleurs relation that has been vexing our astronomers: for most of the stars in our galaxy, the mass divided by the radius is nearly the same.
This brief account doesn’t go into many technical details and is far from rigorous. I must at this point refer the reader to the original article [25], as well as the monograph [26] and the popular science book [18].
PLASMA IS AN AMAZING STATE OF MATTER. IT DOES NOT behave like gas, especially when it’s of low density (collisionless). The electromagnetic forces between moving particles make its behavior very complex, almost life-like. Plasma even got its name from a similarity with blood plasma, which coagulates around foreign bodies. Electromagnetic plasma forms double layers around solid bodies immersed in it, shielding them from electrostatic interaction (which is why it’s very hard to determine if planets have significant non-zero electric charge). Double layers also form at the boundaries between plasmas with different physical characterstics (like temperature, chemical composition, etc.).
Plasma does not stay still. It writhes and bucks as if alive, behaving in ways difficult to predict by theory, as the fusion scientists have learned to their chagrin. Even Alfvén’s intuition sometimes failed to anticipate plasma’s behavior.
Formation of filaments and development of cellular structure are characteristic properties of plasma. At the large scale, the universe is made of “great walls” of galaxies separated by enormous voids. Within these walls, galaxies are strung along gigantic Birkeland filaments like beads on a string. So are stars within the galaxies.
During his controversy with Chapman, Alfvén fought against the tendency to consider the Earth as an isolated system. Not only is there the Sun–Earth plasma connection, but there also must be the Sun–Galaxy plasma connection, and so on to the ever larger scales.
In order to sustain complexity and to continue self-organization, a system must keep exchanging energy and entropy with its environment. Had the Sun been isolated from our Milky Way galaxy (except for the gravitational interaction), or had the Earth been likewise separated from the Sun, they would have long since succumbed to the “heat death” or, at the very least, would not have been able to keep the evolutionary spiral going. The galactic currents connected to the Sun’s polar jets, the solar wind continuously engaged in complex interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere, the auroral currents influencing the atmospheric processes—all of this complexity may have allowed life to blossom on the Earth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THESE ARE SOME OF THE SOURCES THAT INFLUENCED THE story. With a few exceptions, scientific articles are not listed. For more information, please visit pinknoise.net.
[1] Alfvén, Hannes O. G. Cosmic Plasma. Springer–Verlag, 1981.
[2] Alfvén, Hannes O. G. Cosmology in the Plasma Universe: An Introductory Exposition. IEEE Transactions in Plasma Science, vol. 18, 1990.
[3] Barabási, Albert-Lázsló. Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. Plume, 2003.
[4] Barthes, Roland. Image – Music – Text. Hill and Wang, 1978.
[5] Beinhocker, Eric D. The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
[6] Berglund, Axel-Ivar. Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism. Indiana University Press, 1976.
[7] Buzsáki, György. Rhythms of the Brain. Oxford University Press, 2006.
[8] Carse, James P. Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility. Ballantine Books, 1987.
[9] Christophorou, Loucas G. Place of Science in a World of Values and Facts. Innovations in Science Education and Technology. Springer, 2001.
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