Economic.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7588329&postcount=254
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7599441&postcount=302
Haha, nothing’s fallen away except your excuses for why you can’t explain the sunspot phenomenon, and I was slightly mistaken about that. My right thumb-test shows me that the flow of charged particles is actually coming out of the sunspot. You know how if you point your thumb in the direction of the flow, your fingers will curl in the direction of the rotation of the magnetic field?
My thumb would have to point up for this kind of rotation. Maybe this is why powerful solar flares explode of them every once in a while. The area around the sunspot gets saturated, and back the flow up for a little while. As a result, the pressure increases until BOOM solar flare.
But at either rate, back to the glass dunes. They seem to occur in crevices, which is where you would expect water to flow I know. It’s a sad coincidence that everything in the Universe has to be related, so many of the same phenomena that you would see being created by one thing will be similar to others.
But what if the lightning arcs creating the glass dunes are what created the crevices we see associated with them? Earthquakes made by underground lightning bolts! On a series of tests conducted by Nikolai Tarasovre where he pumped electromagnetic pulses into the ground, Harvard University’s Dr. Bridget Samuels wrote:
[quote=“[Harvard University’s Bridget Samuels]
(hcs.harvard.edu/~hsr/pdfswinter2003/samuels51-53.pdf)”]Nikolai Tarasovre-analyzed the available data from these tests in 1993 and discovered a striking correlation between the induced charges and the earthquakes that followed. About two thirds of the electromagnetic pulses were followed by earthquakes, some releasing up to a million times as much energy as had been applied during the preceding experiment. This may be because the electricity heated the groundwater and thus increased its pressure, triggering instability (as is known to have occurred in the Rocky Mountain waste disposal site during the 1960’s), or it may be explain-able by the piezoelectric effect…[/quote[
Now what on Earth could be going on Gigo? Do you know? Of course not, which is why people theorize. I think that the electromagnetic pulses “pushed along” some energy that was already stored in the ground, trying to be released, but hey that’s just me. But then maybe they just massaged the tectonic plates and relieved the stress, whatever.
Hmmmm, and you know what’s strange? It seems to be one of those things that is really talked about but that there’s very little research on, but right before a powerful earthquake flames on candles seem to bend back down towards the ground. What the hell is going on there?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=earthquake+candle+flame
I guess you can check out some of the links, I don’t think any of them would be reputable enough for you to believe in them but whatever. I believe it, and some of the same effects have been repeated in labs… with powerful electric equipment.
If you wanna buy it, here’s a link to a paper:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997NW.....84..539I
I’m pretty damn sure they were able to reproduce it, or else why the hell would they write a paper called “Reproduced Earthquake Precursor Legends Using a Van de Graaff Electrostatic Generator: Candle Flame and Dropped Nails” ?
I heard the guy who was recording the electrophonic sound of Columbia’s reentry heard a weird noise that sounded like an earthquake’s right before it blew up.
I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with this picture an amatuere astronomer took during the shuttle’s reentry. You can see the purple corkscrew interacts with the shuttle’s plasma trail, after which the plasma trail immediately brightens in the direction of the shuttle.
Earthquakes are caused by discharges of the electromagnetic kind. 
This is far too funny to ignore.
Your first quote is the first one I actually found interesting. It discusses some of the side-phenomena, unexplained by current theories, of some electrical signs that precede an earthquake. Interesting indeed! (and, strangely, not a “pretty picture”) Kudos!
However, the second one is quite funny indeed. The first link is the Wikipedia entry for Animaniacs!!! 
The third one links to one of your favorite sites: space.org. Do you know what they were writing about? I do: I actually read the article. It’s about the experiments the Columbia Astronauts made, three years ago. The candles mentioned: they were examining soot on Earth’s atmosphere. Additionally, the candle’s height actually grew that far out of gravity’s reach. Strangely, they didn’t mention how electricity figured into it.
Earthquakes? Glad you asked: apparently they were checking out how waterlogged soil behaves during an earthquake…
Do you even bother to look at your own google-searches?
Umm, yeah. I wasn’t refering to that one. When I included the google link, I sorta pointed out what I was talking about: the strange candle flames that precede an earthquake. I wasn’t talking about the space flames. I don’t care about those.
I think you’ve misunderstood the “right-hand rule” as it’s used in physics. This is simply a convention for orienting 3D coordinate systems, which otherwise have two possible orientations, equally aribtrary. (Once you fix two of the axes, the third axis can go in either of two directions.) The right-hand rule is then useful for figuring out which way a cross-product vector will point, for instance, which in electromagnetics tells you how the magnetic field vector is oriented. In the dynamics of a rotating mass, it also tells you how the angular momentum vector should be oriented. And there are other uses.
It would be just as valid though to adopt a “left-hand” rule, as long as you did it everywhere and consistently. All your coordinates would be different whenever you computed something, but the physical results would be the same.
In any case, charged particles will revolve in either direction around magnetic field lines, and will also travel along a field line in either direction, depending on the charge and velocity of the particle.
Without reading the paper, I wouldn’t try to reach any conclusions from it by just the title. Not even the abstract seems to be available (unless I’m overlooking something). I also don’t know what sort of periodical Naturwissenschaften is, if that’s where it was published.
Not yet established, so far as you’ve shown. Conjectured by one Nikolai Tarasov (not even in a published paper, it seems), who might turn out to be right, or wrong, or right under some conditions but not others. When this explanation makes it into the textbooks, then you’ll have something.
I believe that theFonz is referring to this right-hand rule. He seems to be unaware of how to apply it correctly, however. The thumb points in the direction of motion of positive charges; according to theFonz’s previous statements, it is electrons being drawn into the sun that causes sunspots, and the swirling pattern seen in his photo represents the magnetic field produced by these infalling electrons. Except that magnetic field lines are loops, not spirals. Oh, and he eventually got the right orientation of the right-hand rule for magnetic fields, but he had a 50-50 chance to begin with; for electrons falling into the sun, you point the thumb away from the sun. If you are claiming that the electrons are flying away from the sun, you would point the thumb into the sun.
What is more impressive to me is theFonz’s nonchalance about his misunderstood misunderstanding:
This sudden shift seems a bit flippant.
But what the heck - let’s give theFonz another chance to clear up the confusion. Are sunspots caused by infalling or outgoing electrons or infalling or outgoing protons? How does this charge movement create a magnetic field that is a spiral as opposed to circular? And once again, is there ANY evidence that could be presented to you that would cause you to question this electric universe model? Oh, and when referring to ‘charged particles’, please indicate whether they have a positive or negative charge, cause that is kind of important.
Still: two of the first three results have NOTHING to do with your claims! (Unless, of course, you think the Animaniacs show has some relevance to the “electric universe”). That’s plain laziness on your part; you could at least have constructed a more relevant search or maybe even have linked to the results you thought significant.
Not to mention, of course, that current plate-shifting and scientific models for our planet account for the behavior of earthquakes in general, without any mention of electrical boogaboos.
As **DiggitCamara ** mentioned, too funny to ignore.
I’m beginning to picture a cartoon villain curling his mustache. 
Your dishonesty shows in spades here, This is now another straw man, I never had any position regarding the sun spots and their related electrical phenomena, maybe you are confusing me with people like brossa. Here you are demanding I defend a position I never had, obviously using it as a red herring to avoid dealing with the evidence that shows volcanoes, meteor strikes and lava flows are what we see on the surface of Mars and the Moon, a humongous anode (or a charged planet passing by) is the least likely explanation specially when there is no evidence.
Sad coincidence? As **42fish ** and many others have shown, you have problems judging evidence on top of using bad evidence. A reason why you should investigate more before finding yourself landing face first of the floor again and again.
You know the definition of Non sequitur do you? On top of that, **Bytegeist ** and **DiggitCamara ** explaned already the problems with your evidence that in reality is showing something else.
The best evidence points as being the other way around: it is likely that the fracturing of the bedrock is what creates the ELF magnetic waves.
http://www.quakefinder.com/fppt/reference.htm
Like Carl Sagan said, real science is indeed cooler than pseudoscience, or people just theorizing.
I think it’s evidence that Wakko and Dot were responsible for doctoring the Dept of Agriculture stats to hide the 50% drop in wheat production.
Gigo… I just want you to know:
You’re the meaning in my life, you’re the inspiration,
You bring feeling to my life, you’re the inspiration,
Wanna have you near me, I wanna have you hear me saaaay yeah,
No one needs you more than IIIIII neeeed YyyyoooUUU!
I notice that many Dopers worship Wikipedia, so I poked around for a bit and found this:
Maaaan, we just don’t know why the solar wind accelerates off the surface of the Sun. HahaHA! Some additional acceleration mechanism is required, I wonder what that could be? I wonder if it it has anything to do with those charge particles coming out of the sunspots… you know the ones that have the massive solar flares that blow out of them?
Oh Oh OH! Look at this picture on the same page:
Of course this demonstration doesn’t actually have anything to do with how the Sun, our auroras, or solar system works. It’s just another Straight Dope coincidence. :rolleyes:
Sweet Jesus, this looks like that one sunspot…
Magnetism in the solar “wind”? Say it isn’t so!
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/SEGwayed/lessons/exploring_magnetism/in_the_Solar_Wind/
Damn, charged particles flying through space creating magnetic fields, creating glowing rings on our MAGNETIC poles that look and awful lot like ELVES which are electric… does this sound like anything to anybody? Oh… right. Coincidences.
Goodness gracious! I forgot they had it all figured out already. “Mama, who invented electricity?” “The Devil!!!”
http://faraday.physics.uiowa.edu/em/5B30.40.htm
http://isaac.exploratorium.edu/~pauld/trythis/yojitakikawa/magneticflame.html
Of course you’ll say it’s not a U-shaped candle flame, but oh well. I’m pretty sure somebody makes Google suck and not having anything more about this. Most of the crap I find is about the Kobe earthquake in '95 and how the citizens spoke about the u-shaped flames. You can check this one too, and do a search for “electric wind” or “candle” if you want to jump to the main point.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/pira/Sutton/PDFs/PARTIV.pdf
It’s much like this electric wind created in the lab:
that resembles this region of Mars:
STOP!
Hammer time! 
Even on this, you really have no clue.
The worship is only metaphorical, many discussions here have demonstrated that Wikipedia is to be used as a good place to start, but is is a lousy place to use as the base of your points.
(Rest of images and points TheFonz still has the idea I have any position in favor or against cut.)
Get a clue, I can only point out that you really have no answer to what I pointed regarding features on Mars and the Moon, your lack of understanding of evidence and continuing to steal images is ground enough to disregard even the only item you imagine I have a problem with or that you think you understand.
Hey, if Wikipedia’s wrong, why not just go ahead and edit it?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7612695&postcount=370
Please check this post, it’s only up there a little bit of ways but Gigo insists on pushing it up there will nobody will see it. I’m afraid he might be an automated disinformation bot. One of the very advanced ones used to populate the forums and make truths such as the Electric Universe seem ridiculous, by tacking on ridiculous comments left and right inside these threads.
Since regular folk have little to no understanding of science, the strategies employed by these phony users are typical of people who don’t want you to know something, especially with something as important as this. Ridicule, name-calling, cracking jokes, and if all else fails: resorting to your own ignorance of the matters to debate them and then declare themselves the winner.
Then THANK GOODNESS the name of the thread is The Electric Sun.
Oh yes, because I have my very own satellites that I can take pictures of sunspot penumbra with. My not having pictures would make them all go away, wouldn’t it?
Grounds enough to disregard them, what the hell are you talking about? I’ve already seen them, so I’m going to ponder what they mean. This is “Great Debates” so debate or don’t, but quit wasting my bandwidth and quit trying to push my last post up where nobody will read it.
Don’t give him any ideas.
In any case, I said in different words before that there is an electrical component to the sun spots and the solar wind, but I think that is not the whole history, since my experience is with the evidence on Mars and the Moon, I know his ideas are 100% wrong on those locations, His overall theory is already lost in the sands of time.
One can interpolate that and have an educated guess that also his ideas regarding the sun are incorrect, but since he is avoiding answering questions to dopers with experience on the sun like brossa, the educated guess is by default becoming true: He does not have a clue there either.
Gee what a flip flopper! I though you said I was “the meaning in your life” Forget it, from now on I’m only warning others with evidence:
I only show evidence that current scientists are coming with, the fact that real scientists continue to find that there is no big electrical prod reason for the features on Mars or the moon is enough to disregard wild electrical causes. The idea of interpreting a Martian volcano like TYRRHENA PATERA as an structure made by electrical wind is laughable:
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abstract_65478.htm
Researchers like the QuakeSat people are doing work already based on real research, Other theories are not so useful.
Bzzzzzt! The overall theory made the mistake of mentioning the Moon and Mars and apply an electrical explanation to features that have been demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.
Posting images that are devoid of context shows that the poster knows already the cite is lousy or it is reporting something different from the proposed theory.
Great Debates? Actions like that are more like hiding half of the truth (the context of the image) and then lying in the end.
Real scientists across the globe are wondering what caused every known irony meter to shatter at just past 06:30 UDT, 2006-07-25. No electrical discharges had been noted at the time, although there was speculation that there was some sort of connection to the internet.
By the way:
Responding to other posts is how this Forum works: you post something that seems to make no sense, supported by no actual science, using pictures that you have taken out of context, masking their source by putting them in photobucket.com, then another poster does the work to dig up actual science, describing the event to which you allude along with an explanation of what your photo actually demonstrates along with the genuine source of the photo.
The only one whom I see “pushing up” posts is you. (Well, my last little fling at humor might qualify.) If you insist on submitting posts that are incomprehensible claims using hypotheses disproved in the 19th century or theories demonstrated to be baseless from the middle of the 20th century, you have no right to complain that other posters have provided rebuttals.
As to your accusation that another poster is a bot, I am currently assuming that it was an attempt at humor in the way that your other posts are an attempt at science, but it is probably not a good idea to attack other posters, directly.
[ /Moderating ]
In the large, the solar wind exists because high temperature wins over gravity. That’s why there’s a continuous low-level flow. The more interesting, dramatic eruptions are as yet unexplained, as you have pointed out.
Though intriguing, this little mystery does not justify your connecting solar activity with earthquakes, or geological activity anywhere. You (or someone) would have to describe, in mathematical detail, the mechanism involved. The chain of cause and effect. Where the mass and energy goes, quantitatively. And the new model should be better than existing models in its explanatory power, without being contradicted by known observations. The “Electric Universe” doesn’t seem to do any of this yet.
Please, please, stop grabbing images from the Net and dumping them into a photo bucket, at least if you want to have half a chance at persuading anybody of anything. If these images are part of scientific papers, or reports on observations, or computer simulations, or just tutorial diagrams, then we need to know that. We need to see the context.
For example, the thing in that second picture looks like it could be a novelty gift from Spencer’s. Probably not, but I’d like to know exactly what it’s supposed to be. And incidentally, why the photo is so grainy and scratched. And are those lights from electrical arcing? Are they optical fibers? What’s the sphere made of? Glass? Metal? Is this happening in a vacuum, or open air? Is it an experiment, or a classroom demonstration?
But more importantly, what does this have to do with sunspots or solar activity? It looks more like a rough example of the overall magnetic field of a star or planet, not a model for the smaller local magnetic fields around sunspots — which are a lot more convoluted, irregular, and transient. They’re not like a simple, static “bar magnet” field at all.
I’m not sure you’ve demonstrated anything yet, except a mastery of copy and paste.
For instance, this diagram shows . . . what exactly? I’m guessing that it shows the distribution of solar wind density, whose shape is affected by the rotation of the Sun. You get a funky spiral-arm effect, at least around the Sun’s equatorial plane.
But I’m only guessing. And the reason I have to guess is because all you did was snatch an image from somewhere on the Net and toss it onto a web site for public view. Who knows where it’s from.
[ On preview, this image now seems to be missing. ]
I think you’ve misunderstood what people here are arguing. No one claims magnetism is uninvolved with solar ejecta. No one claims electric current and magnetic fields are unrelated. No one claims there aren’t charged particles coming to us from the Sun.
Seriously. Geologists already seem to have a pretty good handle on what causes earthquakes, and they don’t have any need for solar particles to explain the physics. The need for that needs to be shown.
Here is, I think, a problematic question for you. If earthquakes are triggered by incoming solar material, then the frequency or magnitudes of our earthquakes ought to be correllated with the 11-year sunspot cycle. But I don’t think that there is any such relationship.
The experiments you are posting just show that with magnetism and/or electricity one can deflect a candle. Which is all well and good.
Previous posts of yours linked to investigations surrounding electrical phenomena during earthquakes, which are insufficiently explained.
Point taken: there are unexplained electrical phenomena surrounding earthquakes.
However, said phenomena are, at best, secondary effects to what is largely understood, namely, how and where earthquakes are produced. By now, most big fault-lines are mapped and earthquakes usually strike where expected, even if there is no accurate way to predict when they will strike.
The electrical component of earthquakes seems to be relevant and under scientific investigation; however the links you have posted seem to investigate it as a component of earthquakes, not as their cause. (and yes, it seems the “U-shaped candle” is generally acknowledged; however it’s not surprising there aren’t any photographs of it; during an earthquake few people stop to photograph candles).
I would even guess that this added component is present in some earthquakes, not all of them. At least, in my personal experience (Mexico, 1985), nobody reported any electrical manifestations of said earthquake.
No pictures in the article to back up their claims? What’s laughable is that you’re taking their word for it. That link SUCKS. Dig up another, better one. Besides, where is the volcano causing EVERYTHING to be directed away from the middle of this picture?
Take your time.
Excuuuuse me??? Other theories are not so useful? Whaaaa…??? Damn, is anybody ELSE reading this? I thought we were trying to advance not just quake science, but all other fields of science as well. You know, like the additional mechanism that helps explain why the solar wind accelerates. I would think filling in that blank would be useful since the solar “wind” tends to destroy our satellites. Oh, and finding out more about earthquakes would be helpful, too, since they tend to kill lots of people. Not useful my ass. GOD I really hate this guy.
Bzzzzt! You haven’t demonstrated squat. You provide links to crappy sites that don’t provide diagrams and pictures demonstrating their theories. They just babble on about their THEORIES like collapsed lava tubes, the same ones that look like these that are out in the middle of nowhere with NO volcano in sight:
Those are your lava tubes in the making, except since they were the odd scooping and gouging here and there on the surface of the planet they aren’t connected to anything. Water erosion? I don’t see any streams around.
Oh look, lava tubes running perpendicular to themselves, making 90-degree angles once again:
Oh look, hair… in apparent defiance of gravity. Now what is the relationship between gravity and all the other forces again? Oh I forgot, we need more research, right.
Crater chains, or machine gun-like lightning strikes? They all got raised those bumps in the middle and look more like these lab-made craters than anything else.
No actual science? I heard a scientist say the Earth is actually cooling. What a load of crap. I heard whatsisface Gigo give me a link saying that that one picture I posted is actually a volcano, when there’s no cauldera. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. Then I see scientists working with electric phenomena in a lab that strongly resembles much larger features found on a planet, and then I remember scientists told me that we have a magnetic field around our planet, then I remember scientists gathered all the data for me… I’m just interpretting this differently than the mainstream. Hans Alfen was a scientists, won a Nobel prize, and during his acceptance speech said he felt we were leading science in the wrong direction. The science is there, so I don’t know what the hell your talking about. Maybe you’re making the mistake of thinking that since it’s not on the Discovery Channel, that there’s no science backing up these claims?
Then maybe this actually has something to do with the energy in all the atoms of all the rock stored inside these plates? That it’s the differences in these charges and the difficulty in redistributing them that causes them to press together. We need more research, in this direction. U-shaped candle flames are crazy as hell. For something to be able to affect the energy fields of an entire area great enough to cause this cannot be something as simple as rock smashing together.
With that, I close with this picture of the closest thing we have to something that looks like the Sun here on Earth:
and a picture of modern day sorcery, just like our ancient ancestors knew all about:
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h56/unaguave/pdfig4-2.jpg