Also: if these belts block high-energy electrons, can they teach us to build a force field that does the same? And can that solve the problem of fast-moving spacecraft being destroyed by the first spec of dust they encounter? Or of radiation killing the crew?
What if the only way to protect life against cosmic radiation is to build a planet-sized spacecraft?
Another question due to my weak grasp of modern physics: to a fast-moving spacecraft, are all electrons "high energy"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
but I first learned about it from the book, "Patterns in Nature", by Peter S. Stevens (http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Nature-Peter-S-Stevens/dp/031...), which was recommended to me by a noted poet.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur
The first time I saw it in a store here in Italy I got all excited and started staring at it up close.
My first recollection was during a high-school session to a local university for a science and physics colloquium for high-school students, over a quarter century ago. We were seeing slides of steller objects, and one showed as I recall a galaxy with high-energy jets radiating from both poles. One of the bright kids in the group (ergo, not myself) noted the electron orbital similarity.
Perhaps it's the chagrin at not having noted that myself which has made me highly aware of the symmetry since. But yes, there's an economy of patterns in the Universe. At least at some levels.
We have one of those already, just need to work on the propulsion and life-support systems.
http://www.pornokitsch.com/2012/07/underground-reading-the-w...
Here's a fantastic first part of a video series (long but very educational and interesting; not solid science but not devoid of facts either): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EPlyiW-xGI
The statement "Well there is actually a very electrical and magnetic basis for many of the features and configurations we see in space and in star systems" is highly controversial and pretty unsupported, beyond things like jets and planetary magnetic fields.
Define fast. Electrons get to relativistic-ish speeds in the hundred of kilovolts-ish range. If you look at the specs for a x-ray tube thats a pretty intense / hard to shield x-ray source, not like those wimpy tens of kilovolt xrays from a CRT that don't even make it thru the glass.
So if you're going fast enough for relativity to be an issue, smacking a stationary electron is going to hurt and be a pain to shield, so yeah, all electrons are high energy. On the other hand what we puny humans currently think is a fast spacecraft, is going to be a rounding error compared to solar winds and just random stuff out there, so in a different way, all the electrons that matter are high energy compared to our actual deployed slow spacecraft, sorta.
We know how to build a force field that does the same, it's a magnet. The problem is that it does not protect against neutron radiation.
As a Physicist, I am wary of making such statements since they put the cart before the horse ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology ). I'd be more comfortable saying "In a fluid, we have vortices... as a consequence of the movement of material and energy."
In your case I'm assuming it's just a turn of phrase, but there are some hypotheses which actually attribute abstract "goals" to nature, without providing any explanation in terms of mechanical processes; for example http://www.lawofmaximumentropyproduction.com
In constrast, Darwin explained the theory of evolution using the mechanical process of natural selection. The principle of least action can be explained either physically, using quantum interference (eg. in optics), or mathematically, due to the mixture of inductive steps with deductive ones.
In constrast, the existence of vortices in fluids because of their efficiency would be like claiming crater lakes can't exist because water flows downhill.
The gist of the article seems to be, "The sharpness of the outer edge of the inner Van Allen belt is due to scattering of high-energy belt electrons off cold plasma surrounding the Earth" but it's really difficult to tell.
Three possibly habitable planets in one solar system, 1 out of 3 still habitable even after 4+ billion years, that's not bad.
Also, is laughter a conserved 'shape' in nature, and what is the shape space of nature anyways, is it restricted to the 4 dimensions we inhabit in a way?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/hacking-the-...
I don't know much about the dangers of these particles on the human body. I'm going to assume any environment different to the one on earth poses great risk.
Gee, then, how'd various spacecraft get through it?
Ah, now that I read the details, it's a "nearly impenetrable barrier" to electrons. Okay, now not so amazing! No need to call Captain Kirk!
Such titles are called "click bait" or some such, right?
On the books and journals page are shamelessly listed at least two titles which would be considered heretical by most mainstream space scientists: Eric Lerner's The Big Bang Never Happened and Don Scott's Electric Sky. The former critiques (still) problematical aspects of Lambda-CDM physical cosmology, while the latter explores such ideas as phenomenon like pulsars being essentially electrical in nature (not gravitational) and stars being powered by external electric currents rather than internal nuclear reactions.
Will such "crazy" theories ever make it into mainstream research institutions? Maybe... maybe not... but I'm glad that some serious-minded scientists are willing to buck orthodoxy and risk ridicule in order to explore interesting alternative theories.
Compare your electrostatic sphere example to my crater-lake example: lakes at a high gravitational potential are inefficient, it's less costly for the water to flow up the sides of a crater and down into the ocean. The reason that doesn't happen is because there is no mechanism for it to do so. If we look at liquid helium, there is a mechanism which allows it (the Onnes Effect) so it does happen.
> Electrostatic forces keep the surface of a liquid as taut as they can
Yes, but the interesting part of the sentence is "as they can"; we can't just assume that a liquid's surface will be at minimal energy, since that would allow us to solve NP-complete problems with soap bubbles ( www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf ) :)
It reads like William Gibson reimagined by Michael Bay but I ended being entertained despite myself.