Quote:
Originally Posted by alatar
My understanding of these Birkeland currents is that they exist and could 'tie' things together like the earth and sun. But the word 'tie' and like the hand-pushing metaphor above may be misconstrued. These electrical forces, relative to local gravity, are several orders of magnitude smaller. Something the size of Venus isn't going to be slowed down/stopped by something so weak. It would be like trying to slow down billiard balls as they bounce around a table with the photons from a flashlight (torch).
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Please take this in the best sense, for so I mean it: could it be that you suffer from a failure of imagination? We are used to electrical currents of relatively minimal voltage. Then there is lightning. Imagine lightning strikes between planets that make lightning strikes in Earth's thunderstorms look like minor pricks. Then suppose there is electrical activity (99% of the universe is made of electrically charged particles) taking place in the formation of stars that makes lightning that flashes between planets look like static electricity shocks. Such activity would have a magnitude far exceeding that of gravity, which is in fact the weakest of the 4 known forces.